, they thought it the highest gain to spend in buying
or correcting books. Whose worldly contemporaries observing their
devotion and study bestowed upon them for the edification of the whole
Church the books which they had collected at great expense in the
various parts of the world.

In truth, in these days as ye are engaged with all diligence in pursuit
of gain, it may be reasonably believed, if we speak according to human
notions, that God thinks less upon those whom He perceives to distrust
His promises, putting their hope in human providence, not considering
the raven, nor the lilies, whom the Most High feeds and arrays. Ye do
not think upon Daniel and the bearer of the mess of boiled pottage, nor
recollect Elijah who was delivered from hunger once in the desert by
angels, again in the torrent by ravens, and again in Sarepta by the
widow, through the divine bounty, which gives to all flesh their meat
in due season. Ye descend (as we fear) by a wretched anticlimax,
distrust of the divine goodness producing reliance upon your own
prudence, and reliance upon your own prudence begetting anxiety about
worldly things, and excessive anxiety about worldly things taking away
the love as well as the study of books; and thus poverty in these days
is abused to the injury of the Word of God, which ye have chosen only
for profit's sake.

With summer fruit, as the people gossip, ye attract boys to religion,
whom when they have taken the vows ye do not instruct by fear and
force, as their age requires, but allow them to devote themselves to
begging expeditions, and suffer them to spend the time, in which they
might be learning, in procuring the favour of friends, to the annoyance
of their parents, the danger of the boys, and the detriment of the
order. And thus no doubt it happens that those who were not compelled
to learn as unwilling boys, when they grow up presume to teach though
utterly unworthy and unlearned, and a small error in the beginning
becomes a very great one in the end. For there grows up among your
promiscuous flock of laity a pestilent multitude of creatures, who
nevertheless the more shamelessly force themselves into the office of
preaching, the less they understand what they are saying, to the
contempt of the Divine Word and the injury of souls. In truth, against
the law ye plough with an ox and an ass together, in committing the
cultivation of the Lord's field to learned and unlearned. Side by
side, it