Why and How to Take the Fruit and Leave the Chaff

The Nun’s Priest, concluding his tale to the Canterbury pilgrims, and apprehensive that it might be dismissed as a worthless “folly,” cites the authority of Saint Paul against this potential error:

But ye that holden this tale a folye
As of a fox, or of a cok and hen,
Taketh the moralitee, goode men.
For Saint Paul saith that al that writen is
To our doctrine it is ywrit, ywis:
Taketh the fruit, and lat the chaf be stille.