The cushion is
withdrawn that should support our evangelical sides, which ought
to have the first claim upon the incomes of the clergy, and the
common necessaries of life thus be for ever provided for us, who
are entrusted to their charge.
Again, we complain of another sort of injury which is too often
unjustly inflicted upon our persons. We are sold for bondmen and
bondwomen, and lie as hostages in taverns with no one to redeem
us. We fall a prey to the cruel shambles, where we see sheep and
cattle slaughtered not without pious tears, and where we die a
thousand times from such terrors as might frighten even the
brave. We are handed over to Jews, Saracens, heretics and
infidels, whose poison we always dread above everything, and by
whom it is well known that some of our parents have been infected
with pestiferous venom. In sooth, we who should be treated as
masters in the sciences, and bear rule over the mechanics who
should be subject to us, are instead handed over to the
government of subordinates, as though some supremely noble
monarch should be trodden under foot by rustic heels. Any
seamster or cobbler or tailor or artificer of any trade keeps us
shut up in prison for the luxurious and wanton pleasures of the
clergy.
Now we would pursue a new kind of injury by which we suffer alike
in person and in fame, the dearest thing we have. Our purity of
race is diminished every day, while new authors' names are
imposed upon us by worthless compilers, translators, and
transformers, and losing our ancient nobility, while we are
reborn in successive generations, we become wholly degenerate;
and thus against our will the name of some wretched stepfather is
affixed to us, and the sons are robbed of the names of their true
fathers.
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