What is your Occupation?] A meet question for a Magistrate to aske, to which they that cannot give a reasonable answer are to be suspected to be idle, and ill conditioned persons; for he that hath no lawfull calling to follow, is loose and at leisure to be taken into the Devils service; the ground that is not tilled will bring forth noysome weeds, and the standing Poole (not the running River) will soone stinke; and if the Sea did not work, and were not in continuall motion to purge it self, it would corrupt the ayre; and the ayre (but that winds do fan and purifie it by moving it to and fro) would be infectious: So it is with those that are idle, they are most commonly vicious in themselves, and the causes of corruption unto others; therefore have the wisest States made the strictest Lawes against idle persons, whose severity is vertually approved by the Apostle, condemning idlenesse as a capitall crime, to the pain of death, yea, to one of the worst of deaths, famine; enacting, as the fundamentall law of a Bride-well, He that will not labour let him not eat, 2 Thess. 3. 10.
shepherds] Hebr. A shepherd in the singular number, that is, every one of us is a shepherd; the like Enallage, or joyning the singular number with the plurall, see Genesis 27:29.