[1584/5/12]¹

²That ministers shall not be judges nor exercise any other ordinary office that may abstract them from their office

The king's majesty and his three estates assembled in this present parliament, earnestly desirous that all his loving and good subjects shall be faithfully instructed in the doctrine of their salvation and that the ministers of God's word and sacraments may the better and more diligently attend upon their own charges and vocation, therefore statutes and ordains that all the said ministers shall lawfully await thereupon, to the comfort and edification of the flocks committed to them, and that none of them presently being in that function, or that shall be admitted thereto in time coming, shall in any way accept, use or administer any place of judicature in whatsoever civil or criminal causes, not to be of the college of justice, commissioners, advocates, court clerks or notaries in any matters (the making of testaments only excepted) under the pain of deprivation from their benefices, livings and function; and if they fail herein, being called, tried and judged culpable by their ordinaries or the king's majesty's commissioners in ecclesiastical causes, they shall then lose their said benefices and livings and other qualified persons shall be presented and provided thereto, as if they were naturally dead.