that high table are full of mercy towards those whom they see straying
in one pasture with the creatures who eat grass and acorns.

And forasmuch as Mercy is the Mother of Benevolence, those who know
how, do always liberally offer their good wealth to the true poor, and
are like a living stream, whose water cools the before-named natural
thirst. I, then, who sit not at the blessed table, but having fled
from the pasture of the common herd, lie at the feet of those who sit
there and gather up what falls from them, by the sweetness which I
find in that which I collect little by little, I know the wretched
life of those whom I have left behind me; and moved mercifully for the
unhappy ones, not forgetting myself, I have reserved something which I
have shown to their eyes long ago, and for this I have made them
greatly desirous. Wherefore, now wishing to prepare for them, I mean
to make a common Banquet of this which I have shown to them, and of
that needed bread without which food such as this could not be eaten
by them at their feast; bread fit for such meat, which I know, without
it, would be furnished forth in vain. And therefore I desire that no
one should sit at this Banquet whose members are so unfitly disposed
that he has neither teeth, nor tongue, nor palate: nor any follower of
vice; inasmuch as his stomach is full of venomous and hurtful humours,
so that it will retain no food whatever. But let those come to us,
whosoever they be, who, pressed by the management of civil and
domestic life, have felt this human hunger, and at one table with
others who have been in like bondage, let them sit. But at their feet
let us place all those who have been the slaves of sloth, and who are
not worthy to sit higher: and then let these and those eat of my dish,
with the bread which I will cause them to taste and to digest.

The meat at this repast will be prepared in fourteen different ways,