The Friars are not bound to every Evangelical counsel. The Friars are bound to all that pertains to the three vows.

4.

 Therefore first of all since from that which is in the beginning of the said rule: "The Rule and life of the Friars Minor is this: namely to observe the Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, by living in obedience, without property, and in chastity." Likewise there follows: "Having truly finished the year of probation, let them be received into obedience promising always to observe this very life and rule." Likewise about the end of the rule: "That We may observe, as We have firmly promised, the poverty, humility, and Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ": it had been hesitated, whether the Friars of this same Order are bound from the profession of their rule to everything, the precepts as well as counsels of the Gospel: by certain ones saying, that they are obliged to all: others however asserting, only to those three counsels, namely, to live in obedience, in chastity, and without property, and to those things, which are proposed under obligatory words in the rule. We, adhering to the footprints of Our predecessors concerning this article, and pursuing this very article for the sake of something more clear, have considered that to the said hesitation it must be replied, that since one judges the determinate vow of whomsoever to fall sub certo, one vowing the rule cannot be said to be held from the force of a vow of this kind to those Evangelical counsels, which are not proposed in the rule, and indeed this is proved to have been the intention of blessed Francis, the author of the Rule, from this that certain Evangelical counsels are proposed in the rule, others omitted. For if by this passage: "The Rule and life of the Friars Minor is this: etc." he had intended to oblige them to every evangelical counsel, he would have expressed superfluously and frivolously in the rule certain of those things, while suppressing others. Since however one judges this by the nature of a restrictive term, that it so excludes the extraneous from itself, that it circumscribes all things pertaining to itself: We declare and say, that the said Friars are not only obliged merely and absolutely to those three vows ratified by the profession of their rule, but they are bound even to fulfill all those, pertaining to the aforesaid three, which are proposed by the Rule itself. For if according to these aforesaid three so briefly and merely promising themselves to observe the rule by living in obedience, chastity, and without property, and not even to every thing contained in the rule, which these three modify, they are constrained for nothing and vainly they have professed these words: "I promise always to observe this Rule": from which by these words no obligation would arise. Nor for all that is it to be thought, that blessed Francis intended the professors of this rule to be equally obligated, as much as to every thing contained in the rule which modifies the three vows, or to others expressed in the same; rather he patently more ably distinguished, that in respect to certain things from the force of the words the transgression of which is mortal, and in respect to certain other things, not so: since he adds the word of "precept" to certain things of the same, or of "equipollent" to another, and in respect to other things he is content to use other words.