Note 143 — Chapter V · CLERGY AND LAITY

Ibid., p. 735. Sir Thomas More, in his Dyalogue, thinks that the number of priests without very definite work had tended to diminish the respect paid to them by the laity. “But were I Pope,” he says, … “I could not well devise better provisions than by the laws of the Church are provided already, if they were as well kept as they are well made. But as for the number, I would surely see such a way therein that we should not have such a rabble that every mean man must have a priest in his house to wait upon his wife. This no mean man lacketh now, to the contempt of the priesthood, (placed) in as vile an office as his horsekeeper. That is truth indeed, quod he, and in worse, too, for they keep hawks and dogs.” If the laws of the Church were kept, there would not be the excessive number of priests for fit and proper positions, so that “the whole order is rebuked by the priests’ begging and lewd living who are either obliged to walk as rovers, and live upon trentals or worse, or serve in a secular man’s house” (English Works, p. 223).