For ever since the prelates were made lords and
nobles, the plough standeth; there is no work done, the people starve.
They hawk, they hunt, they card, they dice; they pastime in their
prelacies with gallant gentlemen, with their dancing minions, and with
their fresh companions, so that ploughing is set aside: and by their
lording and loitering, preaching and ploughing is clean gone. And thus
if the ploughmen of the country were as negligent in their office as
prelates be, we should not long live, for lack of sustenance. And as it
is necessary for to have this ploughing for the sustentation of the body,
so must we have also the other for the satisfaction of the soul, or else
we cannot live long ghostly. For as the body wasteth and consumeth away
for lack of bodily meat, so doth the soul pine away for default of
ghostly meat. But there be two kinds of inclosing, to let or hinder both
these kinds of ploughing: the one is an inclosing to let or hinder the
bodily ploughing, and the other to let or hinder the holiday-ploughing,
the church-ploughing.
The bodily ploughing is taken in and inclosed through singular commodity.
For what man will let go, or diminish his private commodity for a
commonwealth? And who will sustain any damage for the respect of a
public commodity? The other plough also no man is diligent to set
forward, nor no man will hearken to it.
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