Amend therefore; and ye that be prelates, look well to your office, for right prelating is busy labouring and not lording. Therefore preach and teach and let your plough be doing; ye lords, I say, that live like loiterers, look well to your office; the plough is your office and charge. If you live idle and loiter, you do not your duty, you follow not your vocation; let your plough therefore be going and not cease, that true ground may bring forth good fruit. But now, me thinketh I hear one say unto me, wot you what you say? Is it a work? Is it a labour? How then hath it happened that we have had so many hundred years so many unpreaching prelates, lording loiterers, and idle ministers? Ye would have me here to make answer and to shew the cause thereof. Nay, this land is not for me to plough, it is too strong, too thorny, too hard for me to plough. They have so many things that make for them, so many things to lay for themselves, that it is not for my weak team to plough them. They have to lay for themselves long customs and ceremonies and authority, placing in parliament, and many things more. And I feare me this land is not yet ripe to be ploughed. For, as the saying is, it lacketh weathering; at least way it is not for me to plough. For what shall I look for among thornes but pricking and scratching? What among stones, but stumbling? What (I had almost said) among serpents, but stinging? But this much I dare say, that since lording and loitering hath come up, preaching hath come down, contrary to the Apostles' times. For they preached and lorded not. And now they lord and preach not. But now for the fault of unpreaching prelates, me thinke, I could guess, what might be said for excusing of them: They are so troubled with lordly living, they be so placed in palaces, couched in courts, ruffling in their rents, dancing in their dominions, and burdened with ambassages, pampering of their paunches like a monk that maketh his jubilee, munching in their mangers and moiling in their gay manors and mansions, and so troubled with loitering in their Lordships: that they cannot attend it. They are otherwise occupied, some in the king's matters, some are ambassadors, some of the Privy Council, some to furnish the court, some are Lords of Parliament, some are presidents and some are comptrollers of mints. Is this their duty? Is this their office? Should we have ministers of the Church to be comptrollers of the mints? Is this a meet office for a prieste that hath the cure of Souls? Is this his charge? I would here ask one question? I would fain know who controlleth the devil at home at his parish while he comptrolleth the mint? If the Apostles might not leave the office of preaching to be deacons, shall one leave it for minting?