Many of these
might seem ingrate and unkind children, that will no better acknowledge
and recognise their parents in words and outward pretence, but abrenounce
and cast them off, as though they hated them as dogs and serpents.
Howbeit they, in this wise, are most grateful to their parents, because
they be most like them, so lively representing them in countenance and
conditions, that their parents seem in them to be young again, forasmuch
as they ever say one thing and think another. They shew themselves to be
as sober, as temperate, as Curius the Roman was, and live every day as
though all their life were a shroving time. They be like their parents,
I say, inasmuch as they, in following them, seem and make men believe
they hate them. Thus grandfather Devil, father World, and mother
Hypocrisy, have brought them up. Thus good obedient sons have borne away
their parents' commandments; neither these be solitary, how religious,
how mocking, how monking, I would say, soever they be.
O ye will lay this to my charge, that _monachus_ and _solitarius_
signifieth all one. I grant this to be so, yet these be so solitary that
they be not alone, but accompanied with great flocks of fraternities. And
I marvel if there be not a great sort of bishops and prelates, that are
brethren germain unto these; and as a great sort, so even as right born,
and world's children by as good title as they.
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