For men of judgements or good dispositions I say there's none of knowledge, wit, or merit, That will so wrong the Church as to presume "Well, they must entertain such pedants then, To let them see their vice they may be bold, NOTE XXX. P. 316. Means for assisting poor Scholars diminished. "It would pity a man's heart to hear that I hear of the state of Cambridge; what it is in Oxford I cannot tell. There be few that study divinity, but so many as of necessity must furnish the Colleges; for their livings be so small, and victuals so dear, that they tarry not there, but go every where to seek livings, and so they go about. Now there be a few gentlemen, and they study a little divinity. Alas, what is that? It will come to pass that we shall have nothing but a little English divinity, that will bring the realm into a very barbarousness, and utter decay of learn ing. It is not that, I wis, that will keep out the supremacy of the Pope at Rome. There be none now but great men's sons in Colleges, and their fathers look not to have them preachers; so every way this office of preaching is pinched at."- Latimer. "The Devil hath caused also, through this monstrous kind of covetousness, patrons to sell their benefices; yea more, he gets him to the University, and causeth great men and esquires to send their sons thither, and put out 'poor scholars that should be divines; for their parents intend not that they should be preachers, but that they may have a shew of learning."-Latimer. NOTE XXXI. P. 316. Conforming Clergy at the Reformation. "Here were a goodly place to speak against our clergymen which go so gallant now-a-days. I hear say that some of them wear velvet shoes and slippers; such fellows are more meet to dance the morris-dance than to be admitted to preach. I pray God mend such worldly fellows; for else they be not meet to be preachers.” — Latimer. Sir William Barlowe has a remarkable passage upon this subject in his “Dialoge describing the originall Ground of these Lutheran Faccions and many of their Abuses;" perhaps the most sensible treatise which was written on that side of the question, and certainly one of the most curious. I "Among a thousand freers none go better appareled then an other. But now unto the other syde, these that runne away from them unto these Lutherans, they go, say, dysguysed strangelye from that they were before, in gaye jagged cotes, and cut and scotched hosen, verye syghtly forsothe, but yet not very semelye for such folke as they were and shoulde be: and thys apparell change they -- dayly, from fashion to fashion, every day worse then other, their new-fangled foly and theyr wanton pryde never content nor satisfyed. — I demaunded ones of a certayn companion of these sectes which had bene of a strayt religion before, why his garmentes were nowe so sumptuouse, all to pounced with gardes and jagges lyke a rutter of the launce knyghtes. He answered to me that he dyd it in contempt of hypocrisy. Why,' quoth I, 'doth not God hate pryde, the mother of hypocrisy, as well as hypocrysye it selfe ?" Wherto he made no dyrect answer agayne: but in excusynge hys faut he sayde that God pryncypally accepted the mekeness of the hart, and inward Christen maners, which I beleve were so inward in hym that seldome he shewed any of them outwardly." NOTE XXXII. P. 317. Ignorance of the Country Clergy. "Sad the times in the beginning of Q. Elizabeth," says Fuller, "when the clergy were commanded to read the chapters over once or twice by themselves, that so they might be the better enabled to read them distinctly in the congregation."- Fuller's Triple Reconciler, p. 82. NOTE XXXIII. P. 319. Clergy of Charles the First's Age. "Let me say," (says Mossom, in his Apology on the Behalf of the Sequestered Clergy,) — " and 'tis beyond any man's gainsaying, the learnedst clergy that ever England had was that sequestred; their works do witness it to the whole world. And as for their godliness, if the tree may be known by its fruits, these here pleaded for have given testimony beyond exception." There were men of great piety and great learning among the Puritan clergy also. But it is not less certain that in the necessary consequences of such a revolution, some of the men who rose into notice and power were such as are thus, with his wonted felicity, described by South: "Amongst those of the late reforming age, all learning was utterly cried down. So that with them the best preachers were such as could not read, and the ablest divines such as could not write. In all their preachments they so highly pretended to the spirit, that they could hardly so much as spell the letter. To be blind was with them the proper qualification of a spiritual guide; and to be book-learned, as they called it, and to be irreligious, were almost terms convertible. None were thought fit for the ministry but tradesmen and mechanics, because none else were allowed to have the spirit. Those only were accounted like St. Paul, who could work with their hands, and in a literal sense drive the nail home, and be able to make a pulpit before they preached in it."-South's Sermons, Vol. iii. p. 449. NOTE XXXIV. P. 319. The sequestered Clergy. "In these times,” says Lilly, "many worthy ministers lost their livings, or benefices, for not complying with the Directory. Had you seen (O noble Esquire) what pitiful idiots were preferred into sequestrated church-benefices, you would have been grieved in your soul; but when they came before the classes of divines, could those simpletons but only say they were converted by hearing such a ser mon of that godly man Hugh Peters, Stephen Marshall, or any of that gang, he was presently admitted."-History of his own Life, quoted in Mr. Gifford's notes to Ben Jonson. "The rector of Fittleworth in Sussex was dispossessed of his living for Sabbath breaking; — the fact which was proved against him being, that as he was stepping stile one Sunday, the button of his breeches came off, and over & he got a tailor in the neighbourhood presently to sew it on again." Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, part ii. p. 275. NOTE XXXV. Page 322. Many who sacrificed their Scruples to their Convenience. "Let me," says South, "utter a great, but sad truth ; a truth not so fit to be spoke, as to be sighed out by every true son and lover of the church, viz. that the wounds, which the church of England now bleeds by, she received in the house of her friends, (if they may be called so,) viz. her treacherous undermining friends, and that most of the nonconformity to her, and separation from her, together with a contempt of her excellent constitutions, have proceeded from nothing more, than from the false, partial, half-conformity of too many of her ministers. The surplice sometimes worn, and oftener laid aside; the liturgy so read, and mangled in the reading, as if they were ashamed of it; the divine service so curtailed, as if the people were to have but the tenths of it from the priest, for the tenths he had received from them. The clerical habit neglected by such in orders as frequently travel the road clothed like farmers or graziers, to the unspeakable shame and scandal of their profession; the holy sacrament indecently and slovenly administered; the furniture of the altar abused and embezzelled; and the Table of the Lord profaned. These, and the like vile passages, have made some schismaticks, and confirmed others; and in a word, have made so many nonconformists to the church, by their conforming to their minister. "It was an observation and saying of a judicious prelate, that of all the sorts of enemies which our church had, there was none so deadly, so pernicious, and likely to prove so fatal to it, as the conforming Puritan. It was a great truth, and not very many years after ratified by direful experience. For if you would have the conforming Puritan described to you, as to what he is, |