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 is written, the oxen
were ploughing and the asses feeding beside them: since it is the
duty of the discreet to preach, but of the simple to feed
themselves in silence by the hearing of sacred eloquence. How
many stones ye fling upon the heap of Mercury nowadays! How many
marriages ye procure for the eunuchs of wisdom! How many blind
watchmen ye bid go round about the walls of the Church!

O idle fishermen, using only the nets of others, which when torn
it is all ye can do to clumsily repair, but can net no new ones
of your own! ye enter on the labours of others, ye repeat the
lessons of others, ye mouth with theatric effort the
superficially repeated wisdom of others. As the silly parrot
imitates the words that he has heard, so such men are mere
reciters of all, but authors of nothing, imitating Balaam's ass,