Apprentices.
All the legacies that are given to the men’s or women’s meetings let them be kept as a public stock for the setting forth of apprentices and setting them up.
(Works, VII., p. 343.)
The Children of the Poor.
Now all you that do murmur against people that have many children and do complain and say that they do fill your towns, cities and countries with children; and many times you that do so complain have few or no children, and you are afraid that they should come to want and then you must be fain to relieve their necessities. And what then? What you do give to the poor you lend to the Lord, and he will repay it to you again, if they cannot. And this wanting mind is for want of faith in God who gives the increase of all and is rich unto all that call upon him. And the Lord would have you to take notice that children are the heritage of the Lord. The Lord that doth increase the children of his heritage he will take care for his heritage whether that murmuring, complaining mind against poor people of having so many children, you relieving them or no, he will take care for his heritage.
Blessed be his name for ever.
And that will be a happy day when they come to nurse Christ’s chickens, doves, lambs, babes and little children.
(Works, VI., p. 204, et seq., condensed.)
Homeless Women.
Friends to have and provide a house or houses where a hundred may have rooms to work in and shops of all sorts of things to sell, and where widows and young women might work and live.