Page:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu/335

302 ought to be applied to that use, and not to any other (saving, however, the authority of the Apostolic See), we, detesting such negligence and abuse, ordain, with the approbation of this sacared council, that those to whom that duty appertains by right or statute, framed at the time of forming the places, or by custom legitimately prescribed, or by privilege of the Apostolic See, should make it their study to introduce wholesome reforms into these same places in all the aforesaid particulars, and cause those that have been unduly seized on, lost, and sequestered, to be brought back to the due state, and that they should not omit to force the aforesaid rectors to admit these miserable persons, and to allow them due support, according to the means and revenues of the places themselves. In which, if they perchance evince any negligence or deficiency, we enjoin the ordinaries of the places, that although the aforesaid pious places may possess the privilege of exemption, they are to fulfil all and each of the preceding particulars, and that they compel those same rectors, not privileged by their own, but those exempted and other privileged persons by the apostolic authority; restrainrng all refractory persons, of what state or condition soever they may be, or those who abet the same rectors by their counsel, aid, or favour touching the matters premised, by means of ecclesiastical censure and other remedies of the law; yet thereby occasioning no prejudice to the exemptions or privileges themselves as to other matters. But in order that what has been premised may more properly be observed, let none of these places be conferred on secular clergy as a benefice, although this may have been observed by custom (which we condemn entirely), unless at their foundation it may have been constituted otherwise, or provision regarding a rector may have to be made for such places by election. But let the government of these be intrusted to provident, competent men of good testimony, who may know how, be willing and able to direct the places themselves, their goods and rights, and faithfully to dispense their proceeds and revenues to the use of miserable persons, and men who are not likely to apply the aforesaid goods to other uses; in which we burden the consciences of those to whom the commission of the aforesaid places appertains, under the