Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/337

 Martin Bucer on Education 333 children for him with the greatest care, and should assign each of them to those arts and functions to which the Lord himself has made each one best fitted, and that the state should employ each as a healthy and useful member of its body, and a portion profitable to the whole, and that no one, like a drone, should lazily feed on the labors of others. For this is the edict of divine law: He who does not labor shall not eat. Hence, just as any one who lives a slothful life ought to be excluded from the communion of the Church, so a Christian state ought not to suffer any one who does not give himself to some work or business which is worthy and useful to the state. For men are obviously unable to do nothing. Hence Satan entangles in wicked and hurtful desires and actions those who are occupied with no upright and salutary cares and activities. For when men so wickedly and basely put off the image and nature of God who is ever working and procuring good things for his creatures in which they have been made and established, that they have no care how they may show themselves honest citizens, of service to their neighbors and to the whole country, they give over and betray themselves to Satan as captives to his lusts, that he may use them as instruments for the injury of men. These are the ones by whom snares are spread for chastity and force used against it, pernicious pleasures are devised and intolerable luxury in the use of food, drink, and of other things relating to the use or ornament of the body introduced. Laws and the public regulation of morals are overthrown, and" shaken; reverence and obedience, which are the due of princes, magistrates, and men distinguished for prudence and authority, are overturned; thefts, murders and robberies increase, and seditions are planned. And I hear from very many good and religious men that in this realm too many perish from sloth, for not merely the nobles, but the bishops and prelates also, support very large crowds of idle men, whose sloth the others imitate so far as they are able, and this is the reason why those in charge of the services of the churches, and of the care of students, are so slow in teaching, and so few. For that reason builders are few, and there is so small a number of master- builders among them; agriculture is worse, and the wages of working men and working women so increased, and day by day increasing. And when so many from among a small number of men give themselves to sloth, it follows that very many abstain from holy wedlock, and the procreation of children; by which not only is the number of citiens diminished, but those who are concerned with no worthy business and lead a celibate life not for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, but because of their own sluggishness, cause great danger to chastity and bring in disease. Hence these are sins because of which the wrath of God comes, even on peoples who do not know Christ. How much less impunity, then, would God give to peoples glorying in his kingdom! The welfare of so many believing men calls loudly upon Your Majesty, against this disease of the state, sluggish and harmful idleness, for a remedial law and a strict enforcement of it, by which this root of so many evils may be torn up, and from childhood all may be trained for and devoted to industry that is holy and useful to the state, and to the desire of all beneficial works. The first section of this law to be set up ought to be this: that in every village, town, and county, certain men, in proportion to the number of the