CH. XIV. IMMORALITY OF THE CLERGY. 31 went to the root of civil liberty, was, therefore, roughly assailed; and not only the establishment, but religion itself, suffered injury in the conflict which ensued. The Church of England, for nearly two centuries after the Reformation, instead of attending to the spiritual nurture of the people, was engaged in polemical and political controversy. The doctrine taught from the pulpits of the establishment after the Great Rebellion was, for the most part, a dry and cold morality, which bore only a distant allusion to the beautiful and affecting record of the Atonement. The lives and characters of the clergy were ill-fitted to compensate for the poverty of their creed. The spoliation of the Church by Henry the Eighth; the abolition of masses and other offices which yielded considerable emoluments to the secular as well as the regular clergy, left the clerical profession without the means of decent support. We learn from writers during the reign of Inconsistent Elizabeth and her successor, that people lives of the no longer sent their children to schools and universities, knowing that they might gain a livelihood in any calling better than in the Ministry. The consequence was that the lower ranks of the Church were recruited from an inferior class, who degraded the order to their own level, and brought religion into contempt. The curate of the seventeenth, and the first half at least of the eighteenth century, in point of education, was little above his flock; and, in social position, he was certainly below the yeomen and tradesmen of the parish. He was often obliged to eke out a subsistence for his ragged and half-starved family by the labour of his hands; and his children were brought up to earn their bread by servile labour. The vices and foibles incident to a position theoretically one of dignity and authority, but in which it was really difficult to maintain selfrespect, were the constant theme of ridicule to the clergy. 32 QUEEN ANNE'S BOUNTY. CH. XIV. satirists of the age. The higher ranks of the clergy, though free from the degrading influences of abject poverty, seldom fulfilled the duties, or ever regarded much the outward decencies of their calling. The rector or vicar was often a pluralist, and, therefore, an absentee; or, if he lived upon his glebe, he was a kind of ecclesiastical squire, differing only from other country gentlemen in the discharge of the formal duties of his office. He joined in carouses and fieldsports; and his presence rarely imposed any restraint on the conversation or indulgence of the festive board. On Sunday the service was hurried over, terminating, perhaps, in a sermon affectedly learned and abstruse. The daily attendance on his parishioners, which is now considered by every conscientious clergyman the most important part of his duties, was wholly neglected by the incumbents who flourished in the early years of the Hanover succession; and, even down to a much later period, the jovial rector, if called upon to perform a duty on a week-day, might be seen hurrying over the office of matrimony or burial in a surplice carelessly thrown over a hunting-frock or other equipment for the field. The statutes known by the name of Queen Anne's Bounty, and other acts of Parliament re Queen Anne's Bounty and other acts. laxing the law of mortmain in favour of the parochial clergy, relieved, to some extent, the sordid poverty by which they were oppressed; but the institution of lay patronage, still more than pauperism, had the effect of bringing the clergy into contempt. A living* was considered merely as a provision for a younger member of the patron's * The number of livings under 80%. per annum was over 5000. The revenues arising from firstfruits and tenths appropriated by Queen Anne's Bounty to the augmentation of poor livings, having been anticipated by va rious grants for lives and years, were not available until many years after this appropriation. Only 300 livings had benefited by it in 1720.-CHAMBERLAYNE'S Present State of Great Britain, p. 202. CH. XIV. DISTRIBUTION OF PATRONAGE. the Church. 33 family; or, in the absence of such a claimant, was more likely to be conferred upon some dis- Abuses of reputable dependant than upon a person patronage in of any merit or qualification for his sacred office. The family living still exists; but the incumbent of the present day is, on the average, as good a parish priest as the selected nominee of an ecclesiastical corporation; and the instances are rare indeed in which the most thoughtless or dissolute patron wilfully bestows Church preferment upon an unworthy candidate. The contrary was the case in former times. The son, or brother, or nephew of the patron was, probably; a clown or a spendthrift; ⚫ and, in the failure of the patron's kinsmen, the son of a jobbing attorney or scrivener, the brother of his mistress, a boon companion, a low flatterer, or pimp, would probably be deemed a fit person for the cure of souls. The greater proportion of the livings were thus filled. The more refined and educated class of clergymen, though their lives and characters were not, The educated like some of those who have been named, clergy. positively disgraceful to the order, contributed little. to its utility. If the parson had the manners of a gentleman, he had likewise the tastes and habits of polite society. Instead of passing his time in fieldsports and drinking bouts, he was to be seen at fashionable assemblies, or sauntering at watering places, or in attendance at the levees of great men. The aim of a clergyman, who frequented good society, was to obtain some preferment which would at once flatter his pride and enable him to live in luxury. With this object, he was not nice as to the services he rendered his patron. Sometimes he accompanied the young heir on the grand tour, nominally as a preceptor, really as a servile companion. If he had a ready pen, he would, perhaps, be engaged to write pamphlets or newspaper paragraphs in the interest 34 POPULAR CONTEMPT FOR RELIGION. CH. XIV. of his employer. More frequently he was used as an agent for electioneering purposes; and, in that capacity, was required to employ the local influence derived from his position as rector or curate; nor did he scorn to be the channel through which the vile wages of corruption were dispensed. Too often, indeed, he was charged with rendering his patron still more scandalous services. The high places in the Church-bishoprics, deaneries, and stalls-were filled chiefly from this class of clergymen; and it is easy, therefore, to believe that the imputations which were lavishly cast upon the morals and principles of the dignitaries of the establishment were not wholly false and calumnious. General disrespect for religion. These are some of the causes to which the inefficiency of the Church, and the decay of religion are to be attributed. From the Revolution to an advanced period of the reign of George the Third, every writer who refers to the subject bears testimony to the prevalent infidelity of the age. It was to little purpose that the champions of the Church defended revelation against the attacks of sceptical writers; for it was not so much a spirit of rationalism, as of indifference and contempt which pervaded society. Religious observances were openly derided; and no man who dreaded ridicule would venture, in polite company, to show any respect for sacred things. It was the evangelical movement which revived the fainting spirit of the Ministry, and infused new vigour and vitality into all its members. Whether the constitution of the Church has been impaired by the vigour and vitality thus communicated to her is a question, the solution of which seems to be now in progress; but it is undeniable, I apprehend, that the interest of religion, the end and object of every ecclesiastical establishment, has been signally served by the remarkable moveTimes, published in 1758. Montesquieu. * Brown's Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the CH. XIV. ABSENCE OF CIVIC VIRTUE. 35 ment which commenced about the middle of the eighteenth century. The age of infidelity was also infamous for the relaxation of every moral tie which binds Venality of society together. Public virtue was al- statesmen. most extinct. The statesmen of the Restoration were as void of civil wisdom as of virtue. Their financial measures were open robbery and swindling; their domestic government was the spoliation of chartered rights; their foreign policy was venal subserviency to France. Of the men who took part in public. affairs during the reign of Charles, Temple alone appears to have had any pretension to common honesty; and Temple, consequently, soon found that it was not for such as he to take part in the administration of the King's government. Among the statesmen who framed the settlement of 1688, Somers was the only one in whose breast a regard for the public welfare predominated over fear and self-interest. He was one of those divine men who, 'like a chapel in a palace,' according to the sublime image in which he is described, 'remain unprofaned, while all the rest is tyranny, corruption, and folly.' * The instability of the settlement of 1688, for a series of years suspended public spirit al- Settlement of together; politicians were merely time- 1688. servers and waiters upon Providence; and, when the Revolution at length terminated in the ascendancy of the democratic branch of the legislature, a new school of corruption was inaugurated. The Act of Settlement, the Bill of Rights, the annual Mutiny Act, the annual Appropriation Act, the Act for securing the Independence of the Judges, completely Power of the destroyed the whole fabric of arbitrary power. The taxing prerogative, the dispensing prerogative, which had so long been the great questions * Walpole's Works, vol. i. p. 430. Commons. |