Catechismus, that is to say, a short instruction into Christian religion for the singular…Catechismus, that is to say, a shorte instruction into Christian religion for the synguler…

Likewise this commandment is to be understand of household servants, whether they be men or women prentices, journey men, or hired labourers. For all these receive wages for this intent, that they should labour and work for their masters ⟨p. lxxx⟩profit, and help their masters in true getting, and faithful keeping of their goods, to the maintenance of their household. But when such servants be untrusty, negligent or slothful in doing their duty, when they wastefully spend or consume their masters goods, when they require greater wages then they be worthy to have, when they start or run from their masters, or tarry not so long as they were bound by their covenant, then they break this commandment. Thou shalt not steal, forasmuch as they withdraw from their masters that profit, which of duty they owe unto them, and do as much as lieth in them to impoverish and undo their masters. And to be short, they that pay not to their servants or workmen ⟨image 102⟩their wages in dew time, according to their covenant. They which will not at the day appointed restore that money which they have borrowed. They which can, and will not pay their debts, for their own lucre. They that do not render things which they have found, as far as they can come to knowledge of the true owners. They that do not give again such things as be committed to their custody for a time. And generally all they that do hawk and hunt for other mens goods against the will of the owners, or do hurt them in any part of the same, or else if they seek not their neighbours profit, as they ought to do. Al these (I say) are thieves before God, although the world doth not so judge them, nor punish them for the same. ⟨p. lxxxi⟩Hereby you may perceive good children, how great misery reigneth in this wretched world, and that men swim (as it were) in a flood of sin. For the world is full of privy thieves, and there is almost no state or kind of life, from the highest to the lowest, of the which there be not many that have broken this commandment. And yet we count it a villainy, to be called a these, and not with out good cause. For thieves be punished with most shameful death, hanging on the gallows or gibbet. And although they escape hanging in this world, yet many times God punisheth them, so that they live wretchedly all their life time.