Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/203

Rh synod, burning with the desire of restoring that pristine usage, decrees that, for the future, such ministries shall not be exercised but by those who are constituted in the said orders; and it exhorts in the Lord all and each of the prelates of the churches, and enjoins them, that they take care to restore such functions, as far as can conveniently be done, in the cathedral, collegiate, and parochial churches of their dioceses, where the number of the people and the revenues of the church shall be able to support it; and, to those who exercise those functions, they snail assign stipeends out of some part of the revenues of any simple benfices, or those of the fabric of the church, if the revenues allow of it, or out of the revenues of both together, of which [stipends] they may, if they be negligent, be mulcted in a part, or be wholly deprived thereof, according to the judgment of the Ordinary. And if there should not be immarried clerks at hand to exercise the functions of the four minor orders, their place may be supplied by married clerks of approved life; provided they have not been twice married, be competent to discharge those duties, and wear the tonsure and the clerical dress in church.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Whereas the age of youth, unless it be rightly trained, is prone to pursue the pleasures of the world; and unless it be formed, from its tender years, unto piety and religion, before habits of vice have wholly taken possession of men, it never will perfectly, and without the greatest, and almost singular, help of Almighty God, persevere in ecclesiastical discipline; the holy synod ordains, that all cathedral, metropolitan, and other churches greater than these, shall be bound, each according to the measure of its means and the extent of the diocese, to maintain, to educate religiously, and to instruct in ecclesiastical discipline, a certain number of youths of their city and diocese, or, if [that number] cannot there be found, of that province, in a college to be chosen by the bishop for this purpose near the said churches,