The second manner of killing is silence.  By silence also is a great number of christian men slain; which is on this fashion:  although that the father and mother, master and dame, of themselves be well disposed to live according to the law of God, yet they may kill their children and servants in suffering them to do evil before their own faces, and do not use due correction according unto their offences.  The master seeth his servant or apprentice take more of his neighbour than the king’s laws, or the order of his faculty, doth admit him; or that he suffereth him to take more of his neighbour than he himself would be content to pay, if he were in like condition:  thus doing, I say, such men kill willingly their children and servants, and shall go to hell for so doing; but also their fathers and mothers, masters and dames, shall bear them company for so suffering them.

Wherefore I exhort all true christian men and women to give good example unto your children and servants, and suffer not them by silence to offend.  Every man must be in his own house, according to St. Augustine’s mind, a bishop, not alonely giving good ensample, but teaching according to it, rebuking and punishing vice; not suffering your children and servants to forget the laws of God.  You ought to see them have their belief, to know the commandments of God, to keep their holy-days, not to lose their time in idleness:  if they do so, you shall all suffer pain for it, if God be true of his saying, as there is no doubt thereof.  And so you may perceive that there be many a one that breaketh this card, “Thou shalt not kill,” and playeth therewith oftentime at the blind trump, whereby they be no winners, but great losers.  But who be those now-a-days that can clear themselves of these manifest murders used to their children and servants?  I think not the contrary, but that many have these two ways slain their own children unto their damnation; unless the great mercy of God were ready to help them when they repent there-for.

Wherefore, considering that we be so prone and ready to continue in sin, let us cast down ourselves with Mary Magdalene; and the more we bow down with her toward Christ’s feet, the more we shall be afraid to rise again in sin; and the more we know and submit ourselves, the more we shall be forgiven; and the less we know and submit ourselves, the less we shall be forgiven; as appeareth by this example following: 

Christ, when he was in this world, amongst the Jews and Pharisees, there was a great Pharisee whose name was Simon:  this Pharisee desired Christ on a time to dine with him, thinking in himself that he was able and worthy to give Christ a dinner.  Christ refused not his dinner, but came unto him.  In time of their dinner it chanced there came into the house a great and a common sinner named Mary Magdalene.  As soon as she perceived Christ, she cast herself down, and called unto her remembrance what she was