preferers of them to our
universities, the gifts of a great number of almshouses builded for
the maimed and impotent soldiers by princes and good men heretofore
moved with a pitiful consideration of the poor distressed, how
rewards, pensions, and annuities also do reign in other cases whereby
the giver is brought sometimes into extreme misery, and that not so
much as the room of a common soldier is not obtained oftentimes
without a _"What will you give me?"_ I am brought into such a mistrust
of the sequel of this device that I dare pronounce (almost for
certain) that, if Homer were now alive, it should be said to him:

"Tuque licet venias musis comitatus Homere,
Si nihil attuleris, ibis Homere foras!"

More I could say, and more I would say, of these and other things,
were it not that in mine own judgment I have said enough already for
the advertisement of such as be wise. Nevertheless, before I finish
this chapter, I will add a word or two (so briefly as I can) of the
old estate of cathedral churches, which I have collected together here
and there among the writers, and whereby it shall easily be seen what
they were, and how near the government of ours do in these days
approach unto them; for that there is an irreconcilable odds between
them and those of the Papists. I hope there is no learned man indeed
but will acknowledge and yield unto it.

We find therefore in the time of the primitive church that there was
in every see or jurisdiction one school at the least, whereunto such
as were catechists in Christian religion did resort. And hereof, as we
may find great testimony for Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and Jerusalem,
so no small notice is left of the like in the inferior sort, if the
names of such as taught in them be called to mind, and the histories
well read which make report of the same. These schools were under the
jurisdiction of the bishops, and from thence did they and the rest of
the elders choose out such as were the ripest scholars, and willing to
serve in the ministry, whom they placed also in their cathedral
churches, there not only to be further instructed in the knowledge of
the world, but also to inure them to the delivery of the same unto the
people in sound manner, to minister the sacraments, to visit the sick
and brethren imprisoned, and to perform such other duties as then
belonged to their charges. The bishop himself and elders of the church
were also hearers and examiners of their doc