Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/181

Rh  to observe them, by ecclesiastical censures and other penalties, which may be appointed at their pleasure; any privileges, exemptions, appeals, and customs whatsoever, to the contrary notwithstanding.  

The same sacred and holy, œcumenical and general Synod of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost,—the same legates of the Apostolic See presiding therein,—to the end that the business of Reformation may be pursued, has thought fit that the following things be ordained in the present session.

CHAPTER I.

The Decrees touching the Life and Propriety of Conduct of Clerks are renewed.

There is nothing that continually instructs others unto piety, and the worship of God, more than the life and example of those who have dedicated themselves to the divine ministry. For whereas they are seen to be raised from above the things of this world to a higher position, others cast their eyes upon them as upon a mirror, and derive from them what they should imitate. Wherefore it by all means becometh clerks called to have the Lord for their portion, so to regulate their life and manners, as that in their dress, gesture, gait, discourse, and all things else, they, bear nothing about them but what is grave, moderate, and replete with religiousness; that they avoid even slight faults, which in them would be most grievous; that so their actions may impress all with veneration. Whereas, therefore, the more useful and decorous these things are in the Church of God, so much the more carefully also are they to be observed; the holy synod ordains, that those things which have been elsewhere copiously and wholesomely enacted by the sovereign pontiffs and sacred councils, touching the life, propriety, dress, and learning of clerks, and also touching luxury, feastings, dances, gambling, sports, and all sorts of crimes whatever, as also the secular employments to be [by them] avoided, the same shall hereafter be observed, under the same penalties, or greater, to be imposed at the discretion of the ordinary; nor shall any appeal suspend the