mands, forbids, appoints,
orders, binds and looses, and honor, fear and love the spiritual
authority as we honor, love and fear our natural parents, and
yield to it in all things which are not contrary to the first
three Commandments.

[Sidenote: The Neglected Duty of the Church]

Now with regard to this work, things are almost worse than with
regard to the first. The spiritual authority should punish sin
with the ban and with laws, and constrain its spiritual children
to be good, in order that they might have reason to do this work
and to exercise themselves in obeying and honoring it. Such zeal
one does not see now; they act toward their subjects like the
mothers who forsake their children and run after their lovers, as
Hosea ii. [Hos. 2:5] says; they do not preach, they do not teach,
they do not hinder, they do not punish, and there is no spiritual
government at all left in Christendom.

What can I say of this work? A few fast-days and feast-days are
left, and these had better be done away with. But no one gives
this a thought, and there is nothing left except the ban for
debt, and this should not be. But spiritual authority should
look to it, that adultery, unchastity, usury, gluttony, worldly
show, excessive adornment, and such like open sin and shame might
be most severely punished and corrected; and they should properly
manage the endowments, monastic houses, parishes and schools, and
earnestly maintain worship in them, provide for the young people,
boys and girls, in schools and cloisters, with learned, pious men
as teachers, that they might all be well trained, and so the
older people give a good example and Christendom be filled and
adorned with fine young people. So St. Paul teaches his disciple
Titus, that he should rightly instruct and govern all classes,
young and old, men and women. [Tit. 2:1-10] But now he goes to
school who wishes; he is taught who governs and teaches himself;
nay, it has, alas! come to such a pass that the places where good
should be taught have become schools of knavery, and no one at
all takes thought for the wild youth.

[Sidenote: The Worldliness of the Church]

VIII. If the above order prevailed, one could say how honor and
obedience should be given to the spiritual authority. But now the
case is like that of the natural parents who let their children
do as they please; at present the spiritual authority threatens,
dispenses, takes money, and pardons more than it has power