The commonwealth’s many evils have their seedbed in us. We invite this evil ourselves and deserve every insult and every misery that meanwhile befalls us, since we do not do our utmost to resist it. For what can we expect when so many poor students, men of no known parentage and petty fellows of every rank are admitted to degrees each day, indiscriminately and in a rush? If they have learned one or two definitions and distinctions by heart and spent the customary number of years on dialectic, it does not matter what progress they have made or what sort of men they are: ignoramuses, triflers, idlers, gamblers, drinking companions, worthless men, servants of lust and pleasure—

Penelope’s suitors, and Alcinous’s good-for-nothings—

provided they have spent the required years at the university and passed themselves off as men of the gown, they are presented for degrees, for profit’s sake and through their friends’ intervention. Sometimes, I would add, they are presented with splendid praises of their conduct and learning. And when they are about to leave, they are honoured with testimonials, written most lavishly in their favour by men who undoubtedly sacrifice their own trustworthiness and reputation in doing so.

For doctors and professors, as that author says, care only to advance their own interests through frequent academic ceremonies, hasty rather than properly conducted, and to increase their own wealth at the public’s expense. For the most part, the officers appointed for the year want only to squeeze money from the number of candidates taking degrees. It matters little whether these are mere dabblers in letters or learned men, provided they are plump, sleek, handsome to look at and, to put it in one word, wealthy.

Pretended philosophers are licensed in the arts though they possess no art; men with no wisdom are declared wise, and bring nothing to their degree except the wish to obtain it. Sham theologians—provided they pay—are more than learned enough; they are carried up and climb through every rank of honour.

Hence such vile buffoons, such crowds of ignoramuses, living in the twilight of learning—masks of pastors, market-place charlatans, vagrants, simpletons, blockheads, dullards, asses, nothing but cattle—burst with unwashed feet into theology’s holy precincts. They bring nothing but a shameless face, some commonplace rubbish and a few scraps of schoolroom nonsense unworthy even of a place at the crossroads.

This is that unworthy breed of men, hungry, needy, wandering, enslaved to their bellies, who ought rather to be sent back to the plough, fitter for pigsties than altars, and who shamefully prostitute these divine writings. These are the men who fill the pulpits and creep into noble houses. Lacking other means of livelihood and, through poverty of body and mind, unfit for any other role in the commonwealth, they flee to this sacred anchor, grasping at the priesthood by any means, “not in sincerity”, as Paul says, but “peddling the word of God”.

Let no one meanwhile suppose that I mean to detract from good men. The Church of England has very many of them: exceptionally learned, distinguished men of unblemished reputation, perhaps more than any other country in Europe. Nor do I mean to detract from our flourishing universities, which produce in abundance men of the widest learning, admirable for every kind of virtue. Both Church and universities would have many more such men and shine far more brightly if this filth did not darken their splendid light, if corruption did not obstruct them, and if certain trafficking Harpies and low fellows did not begrudge us this good.

For no one is so blind in mind as not to see this, so dull as not to understand it, or so obstinate in judgement as not to acknowledge that these ignorant charlatans pollute sacred theology and prostitute the heavenly Muses as though they were something profane. “Vile and shameless souls”—as Luther calls them somewhere—fly to the tables of nobles and great men for a little gain, like flies to milk-pails. In hope of a church appointment, any honour or office, they thrust themselves into any court or city and adapt themselves to any service:

Like a wooden puppet, moved by another’s strings, he is led about.

Chasing a morsel, like parrots, they blurt out anything in hope of a prize. “Obliging parasites,” Erasmus says, “teach, say, write and recommend anything, and approve it against their conscience, not to bring their flock to salvation, but to secure a splendid fortune for themselves.”

They support any opinions and decrees, even against God’s word, so as not to offend their patron, but to retain the favour of the great and the people’s applause, and heap up riches for themselves. For that is generally the spirit in which they approach theology: to conduct their own business, not God’s; to plunder the Church’s wealth, not advance its welfare.

As Paul says, they seek “their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ”: not the Lord’s treasure, but treasure for themselves and their families. Nor is this confined to those of poorer fortune and low station. The evil has invaded the middle ranks, the highest, the exalted—not to say the bishops.

Tell me, priests, what business has gold in holy things?

“Greed often drives the greatest men off course.” Men who would outshine others in upright conduct carry the torch before them towards simony. Striking this rock of corruption, they do not shear the flock but skin it; wherever they go, they plunder, drain and scrape everything bare, making a terrible shipwreck of their reputation, if not of their soul. The evil seems to have flowed from the highest to the lowest, rather than from the lowest to the highest, making true that old jest: “He bought it first; he has a right to sell it.”

For the simoniac—to speak with Leo—has not received grace; if he does not receive it, he does not have it, and if he does not have it, he cannot enjoy God’s favour. Indeed, some of those who sit at the helm are so far from advancing others that they obstruct them altogether, knowing very well the arts by which they themselves arrived there.