They
have required in you a long season, and yet require, diligence and
sincerity. I commanded you, that with all industry and labour ye should
feed my sheep: ye earnestly feed yourselves from day to day, wallowing in
delights and idleness. I commanded you to teach my commandments, and not
your fancies; and that ye should seek my glory and my vantage: you teach
your own traditions, and seek your own glory and profit. You preach very
seldom; and when ye do preach, do nothing but cumber them that preach
truly, as much as lieth in you: that it were much better such were not to
preach at all, than so perniciously to preach. Oh, what hear I of you?
You, that ought to be my preachers, what other thing do you, than apply
all your study hither, to bring all my preachers to envy, shame,
contempt? Yea, more than this, ye pull them into perils, into prisons,
and, as much as in you lieth, to cruel deaths. To be short, I would that
christian people should hear my doctrine, and at their convenient leisure
read it also, as many as would: your care is not that all men may hear
it, but all your care is, that no lay man do read it: surely, being
afraid lest they by the reading should understand it, and understanding,
learn to rebuke our slothfulness.
Pages:
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69