Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/204

172 or in some other convenient place. And into this college shall be received such as are at least twelve years old, born in lawful wedlock, and who know how to read and write competently, and whose disposition and inclination afford a hope that they will always serve in the ecclesiastical ministries. And it wishes that the children of the poor be principally selected; though it does not however exclude those of the more wealthy, provided they be maintained at their own expense, and carry before them a desire of serving God and the Church. The bishop, having divided these youths into as many classes as shall seem fit to him, according to their number, age, and progress in ecclesiastical discipline, shall, when it seems convenient to him, assign some of them to the ministry of the churches, [and] keep the others in the college to be instructed; and shall supply the place of those who have been withdrawn, by others; that so this college may be a perpetual seminary of ministers of God. And to the end that the youths may be the more conveniently trained in the aforesaid ecclesiastical discipline, they shall always at once wear the tonsure and the clerical dress; they shall learn grammar, singing, ecclesiastical computation, and the other liberal arts; they shall be instructed in sacred Scripture; ecclesiastical books; the homilies of the saints; the manner of administering the sacraments, especially those things which shall seem suited unto hearing confessions; and the forms of the rites and ceremonies. The bishop shall take care that they be every day present at the sacrifice of the mass, and that they confess their sins at least once a month; and receive the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the judgment of their confessor; and on festivals serve in the cathedral and other churches of the place. All which, and other things advantageous and needful unto this object, all bishops shall ordain, with the advice of two of the senior and most discreet canons whom themselves have chosen, as the Holy Spirit shall have suggested; and shall make it their care, by frequent visitation, that the same be always observed. The froward, and incorrigible, and the disseminators of evil morals, they shall punish sharply, even, if necessary by expulsion; and,