collecting all their force of intellect, devoted themselves to
labours upon the sacred scripture, meditating day and night on
the law of the Lord. And whatever they could steal from their
famishing belly, or intercept from their half-covered body, 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