Sermones quadraginta | de destructione Ninive, hoc est |o[mn] is generis vitioru[m], authore fra|tre Guillermo Pepin, sacre theo |logie professore optime merito. by Guillaume Pépin 1467?-1533 - 1525: Colophon: Apud inclyta[m] Parisio[rum] Lu|tetia[m], in edib[us] Claudij Cheual|loni, sub i[n]signi Solis aurei, in| via ad diuu[m] Jacobu[m]: anno d[omi]ni| M.cccccxxv. me[n]se Septe[m]bri. Bound in later green morocco.

Perhaps the fullest of all pictures of the relations between ecclesiastic and peasant , is to be found in that course of sermons On the Destruction of Nineveh which the Dominican Guillaume Pépin , Doctor of Theology , preached in the convent of his Order at Evreux in 1524 , and dedicated to the Bishop of Lisieux . He is bitter against the new Lutherans ; but on almost every page he warns his hearers that society cannot go on indefinitely on its present lines ; he takes as his text Jonah iii , 4 : " Yet forty days , and Nineveh shall be destroyed . " There is little to choose morally between the tyrannous rich and the oppressed poor . The Jews were forbidden to eat certain unclean birds of prey ; these typify men who live by rapine , and such are almost all knights and squires ( nowadays ] ; for they are not content with their own revenues but rob the poor peasants . Not only do they seize victuals in sufficiency , but after excessive gluttony they despoil the peasants of all that they can get in garments or in money , so that the poor say they would not be worse treated by our enemies , if these were among us . Nor are these mad dogs restrained by the princes or their lieutenants or captains . . . . Such tyrants give the poor man ' s crops as pasture for their horses ? .? Serm . 23 , f . 180 , col . 1 .