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a stricter never was in any age, must confess,) of a scandalous insufficiency in learning, or of a more scandalous condition of life; but, on the contrary, most of them of confessed eminent parts in knowledge, and of virtuous and unblemished lives." And then, when the indiscretion or folly of some sermon preached at Whitehall was bruited abroad or commented on, despite the wisdom, sobriety, and devotion of a hundred, his words are not to be forgotten. "But it is as true (as was once said by a man fitter to be believed on that point than I, and one not suspected of flattering the clergy) that, if the sermons of those times preached in court were collected together and published, the world would receive the best bulk of orthodox, divinity, profound learning, convincing reason, natural powerful eloquence, and admirable devotion, that hath been communicated in any age since the Apostles' time."

This testimony of Clarendon, "the most authentic," as Southey calls him, "the most candid, the most instructive of English historians "," is of very great value, and when judgment begins at the house of God, is one to afford comfort. The same fact has been noted by other writers, and some there were who bore it in mind when bishops were recommended to set their house in order, and the clergy could scarce appear abroad on parochial ministrations without insult. Happily the sons of violence did us no hurt; but, on the contrary, bestired us, and bade us look to where our great strength lay. Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, righteous and efficacious measures were decided on, enlarged was the place of our tent, and the curtains of our habitation were stretched forth. Good men spared not themselves to lengthen the cords and strengthen the stakes of our ecclesiastical polity. And, as is ever almost the case, those that helped themselves were holpen. Environed we are at present with all sorts of difficulties; there is much to harass and distress, and much to perplex us; but in the midst of so many and great anxieties, it must be confessed, that our

4 See History of the Rebellion, b. i. vol. i. pp. 134-137. Lord Clarendon specially mentions Abp. Laud's and Mr. Chillingworth's "two books” on advancement and defence of the Protestant religion. Below he probably alludes to Selden. (See his "Table Talk," in v. Clergy.)

5 Life of Cromwell. Quart. Rev. vol. xxv. p. 347.

Malachi iii. 16.

estate is better than it was. The laity are alive at length to the fact that the Church is not the clergy alone, but that it appertaineth to them also, and the overshadowing of her wings is for the good of their souls and their children's.

To find the laity taking the part they are now doing is a healthy symptom. To be awake to privileges is a cause for thankfulness. Already we see good effects. The clergy are better supported; their efforts are heartily seconded; their voice is heard and listened to with attention; sacred subjects are not treated lightly; the cause of the poor destitute is advocated; charity is once more considered the end of the commandment, and it begins at home without ending there, which were a sin to be repented of. And then again, the fitness of the ministry is carefully and warily scanned, and this is for their good. They cannot sleep at their posts; they must up and be doing. The Christian soldier has taken an oath for active service, and he must be on his watch. But this is not all; for a greater benefit still accrues. The laity, watchful over the ministrations of the Church and her teachers, become watchful over themselves and over the talents committed to their trust. They employ the preferment in their hands to better use. To advance one unfit to be advanced becomes a scandal and a reproach. What has hitherto been rather acknowledged than practised, is acted up to with sincerity. And then observe the blessing, even in a worldly point of view. Those that were robbed of the Church's endowments by thoughtless politicians find conscience siding with right, and individuals doing all they can to restore that patrimony one way which a body politic voted away in another. It avails not for the enemy to say, that what was abused in inefficient hands should be taken out of those hands and distributed afresh. Parliament has rather the power than the right to acquiesce in such sentiments, which, after all, are merely agrarian. The same weapons which have been turned against the possessions of the Church may, sooner or later, be turned against the landed interest by some Jack Cade or other, and then, how will they defend house added to house, and field to field? Away, burn all the records of the land; my mouth shall be the parliament of England'!" Such things have been, such things may be again!

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7 Second Part Henry VI. Act. iv. Sc. vii.

If ever they should, their consciences will be the more at rest who have come to the help of a wronged and a robbed Church. Pity 'tis that

"Wrong hath more clients than sincerity!"

The pressure from without has certainly turned to our good. "At the crowing of the cock of their consciences," (it is the quaint but expressive phrase of old Fuller in the Life and Death of Berengarius,) many great landholders have come forward nobly, impressed with the truth that the detention of property usurped unjustly could not be defended, though the guilt of such an impropriation lay not on their shoulders. It is their desire rather to advance the inheritance of the Church than to rob it. And it is to be remarked, that this desire for restoration followed upon one of the most glaring acts of spoliation which modern days have witnessed. Esau has met his brother, and fallen on his neck and kissed him ".

But let it not be supposed, that all blame attaches to the laity. There was a time-not so long passed-when the clergy forgot that they held the Church's property but in trust, and they ought never to have received any thing less than what was set apart from common use, and restricted to the support of the ministry. Once received, they might dispense at will; and the more abundant the distribution the better, and the more befitting their office. It was the receiving a part for the whole, and acquiescing in wrong, that, in numberless instances, curtailed our benefices. And by this means the consciences both of patrons and beneficed clergy were entrapped, though the sin of covetousness lay rather at the door of the latter,—

"For men of judgment, or good dispositions,
Scorn to be tied to any base conditions,
Like to our hungry pedants, who'll engage

Their souls for any curtail'd vicarage.

I

say, there's none of knowledge, wit, or merit,

But such as are of a most servile spirit,

That will so wrong the Church as to presume
Some poor, half-demi parsonage to assume,

8 See this point referred to by Gauden in his Hieraspistes, p. 493. 4to. 1653. I had forgotten it when I wrote what is in the above paragraphs.

In name of all: no, they had rather quite

Be put aside the same, than wrong God's right!"

These lines are from the "Abuses Whipt and Stript" of George Wither, one of his earliest productions, published in 1613, when he was but twenty-five years of age, and it would have been well if this remarkable man, and no mean poet, had acted up in after life to what he said so well on the present occasion. But self-interest induces moral blindness, and it will scarcely be credited that a good and a conscientious man in the main, plain spoken continually to his own disadvantage, should in after years have dealt so largely in prelate and Church land, and in delinquents' estates. But such is the not unnatural result of rebellion and anarchy, and one that much loved his poems said well, that "the civil war did not leave him so uncorrupt as it had found him." So little is Wither read or known, that the lengthened extract which follows-connected with the subject-may not be unacceptable, and it may be well to hint that it was written in the reign of James I. Can it be credited, that one who wrote thus, should, thirty years later, have held so hard a grip on the patrimony of the Church!

"You to whom deeds of former times are known,
Mark to what pass this age of ours is grown;
Even with us that strictest seem to be

In the professing of Christianity;

You know men have been careful to augment
The Church's portion, and have been content
To add unto it out of their estate;

And sacrilege all nations did so hate

That the mere Irish', that seemed not to care

9 Presumption, Satire iv. Reprint, vol. i. 303.

1 Such was the common epithet applied to the Irish at that time, and it is strange that it should have continued till now. Clarendon says, (anno 1661) that the state of Ireland was 66 so intricate, that nobody had a mind to meddle with it," and the Duke of Ormond declared that he "could not see any light in so much darkness, that might lead him to any beginning" of improvement.-Life, vol. i. p. 441. Previously however to the Long Parliament, he says that "Ireland, which had been a sponge to draw and a gulph to swallow all that could be spared, and all that could be got from England, merely to keep the reputation of a kingdom, was reduced to that good degree of husbandry and government, that it not only subsisted of itself, but gave this kingdom all that it might have expected from it."-Hist. of the Rev. vol. i. p. 134. Alas that the Irish question is a problem still!

For God nor man, had the respect to spare
The Church's profits; yea, their heed was such
That in the time of need they would not touch
The known provisions, they daily saw

Stor❜d up
in churches; in such fear and awe
The places held them, though that they did know
The things therein belonged to their foe:

But now the world, and man's good nature's chang'd,
From this opinion most men are estrang'd;

We rob the Church, and what we can attain

By sacrilege and theft, is our best gain.

In paying dues, the refuse of our stock,

The barrenest and leanest of our flock

Shall serve our pastor; whom for to deceive
We think no sin. Nay, further (by your leave),
Men seek not to impropriate a part

Unto themselves, but they can find in heart
T'engross up all; which vile presumption

Hath brought church-livings to a grand consumption.
And if this strong disease doth not abate,

'Twill be the poorest member of the state!"

Matters have come to this; but there is something cheering in that old saying, "when things have reached the worst, they'll mend." The tide has turned, and it is to be hoped we shall take advantage of it and redeem the time. To do so, we must be diligent, availing ourselves of every opportunity, and disabusing all around us of their wrong and contracted notions respecting the Church and Church membership. It has often been remarked, that one half the world is governed by words, and that a plausible insignificant word, in the mouth of an expert demagogue, is a dangerous and dreadful weapon"." This fallacy we must obviate.

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Let any one consider what was the result, in the late disturbed state of things, of a want of knowledge on these points. In the first place, there was a loud and continued cry, like that of Edom's children, at the very mention of the Church, and the burden of it was, "Down with it, down with it, even to the ground!" So ignorant and misinformed were the bulk of the

2 South's Sermons, vol. ii. p. 123.

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