those dangers, with which the malice of our enemies threatens us; we have in view the greatest prospect of a blessed and lasting settlement, that even our wishes can propose to us. Now nothing can so certainly avert the one, or prepare us to glorify God in it, if he in his justice and wisdom should call us to a fiery trial of our faith and patience; as the serious minding of our functions, of our duties and obligations, the confessing of our sins, and the correcting of our errors. We shall be very unfit to suffer for our religion, much less to die for it, and very little able to endure the hardships of persecution, if our consciences are reproaching us all the while, that we have procured these things to ourselves; and that by the ill use of our prosperity, and other advantages, we have kindled a fire to consume us. But as we have good reason from the present state of affairs, as well as from the many eminent deliverances, and happy providences, which have of late, in so signal a manner, watched over and protected us, to hope that God, according to the riches of his mercy, and for the glory of his great name, will hear the prayers that many good souls offer up, rather than the cry of those abominations that are still among us: so nothing can so certainly hasten on the fixing of our tranquillity, and the completing our happiness, as our lying often between the porch and the altar, and interceding with God for our people; and our giving ourselves wholly to the ministry of the word of God, and to prayer. These being then the surest means, both to procure and to establish to us all those great and glorious things that we pray and hope for; this seemed to me a very proper time to publish a discourse of this nature. But that which made it an act of obedience, as well as zeal, was the authority of my most reverend metropolitan; who, I have reason to believe, employs his time and thoughts chiefly to consider what may yet be wanting to give our church a greater beauty and perfection; and what are the most proper means both of purifying and uniting us. To which I thought nothing could so well prepare the way, as the offering to the public a plain and full discourse of the pastoral care, and of every thing relating to it. His grace approved of this, and desired me to set about it: upon these motives I writ it, with all the simplicity and freedom that I thought the subject required, and sent it to him: by whose particular approbation I publish it, as I writ it at his direction. There is indeed one of my motives that I have not yet mentioned, and on which I cannot enlarge so fully as I well might. But while we have such an invaluable and unexampled blessing in the persons of those princes whom God hath set over us; if all the considerations which arise out of the deliverances that God has given us by their means, of the protection we enjoy under them, and of the great hopes we have of them; if, I say, all this does not oblige us to set about the reforming of every thing that may be amiss or defective among us, to study much, and to labour hard; to lead strict and exemplary lives, and so to stop the mouths and overcome the prejudices of all that divide from us; this will make us look like a nation cast off and forsaken of God, which is nigh unto cursing, and whose end is burning. We have reason to conclude, that our present blessings are the last essays of God's goodness to us; and that, if we bring forth no fruit under these, the next sentence shall be, Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground? These things lie heavy on my thoughts continually, and have all concurred to draw this treatise from me; which I have writ with all the sincerity of heart, and purity of intention, that I should have had, if I had known that I had been to die at the conclusion of it, and to answer for it to God. To him I humbly offer it up, together with my most earnest prayers, that the design here so imperfectly offered at may become truly effectual, and have its full progress and accomplishment; which whensoever I shall see, I shall then with joy say, Nunc dimittis, &c. СНАР. Х. Of presentations to benefices, and simony. I DO not intend to treat of this matter, as it is a part of our law; but leaving that to the gentlemen of another robe, I shall content myself with offering an historical account of the progress of it, with the sense that the ancient church had of it, together with such reflections as will arise out of that. At first the whole body of the clergy, in every city, parish, or diocese, was as a family under the conduct and authority of the bishop; who assigned to every one of his presbyters their peculiar district, and gave him a proper maintenance out of the stock of the oblations of the faithful. None were ordained but by the approbation, or rather the nomination of the people, the bishop being to examine into the worth and qualifications of the persons so nominated. In the first ages, which were times of persecution, it is not to be supposed that ambition or corruption could have any great influence, while a man in holy orders was as it were put in the front, and exposed to the first fury of the persecutors. So that what Tertullian says f on this head will be easily believed, "that those who pre"sided over them were first tried; having obtained that "honour, not by paying a price for it, but by the testimony that was given of them; for the things of God were not purchased by money;" he alluding probably to the methods used by the heathens to arrive at their pontifical dignities. 66 66 But as soon as wealth and dignity was, by the bounty of Christian emperors, made an appendix to the sacred function, then we find great complaints made of disorders in elections, and of partiality in ordinations, on which we see severe reflections made by the best men both in the eastern and western churches. They not only condemned the purchasing elections and holy orders with money, but all the train of solicitations and intercessions, with all flattery and obsequious courtship in order to those things. They indeed laid the name of simony chiefly on the purchasing of orders by money, which was attempted by Simon of Samaria, commonly called Simon Magus; but they brought other precedents to shew how far they carried this matter. Balaam's hire of divination, Gehazi's going after Naaman for a present, and Jeroboam's making priests of those who filled his hands, are precedents much insisted on by them, to carry the matter beyond the case of a bargain beforehand; every thing in the way of practice to arrive at holy orders was all equally condemned. When things were reduced into methodical divisions, they reckoned a threefold simony; that of the hand when money was given, that of the mouth by flatteries, and that of service, when men by domestic attendance and other employments did, by a temporal drudgery, obtain the spiritual dignity. h Chrysostom expresses this thus: "If you do not give "money, but instead of money, if you flatter; if you set "others at work, and use other artifices, you are as guilty." { Apology. 2 Chron. xiii. 9. h Hom. in Acta Ap. Of all these he adds, that "as St. Peter said to Simon, "Thy money perish with thee, so may thy ambition perish "with thee." St. Jeromi says, "We see many reckon "orders as a benefice, and do not seek for persons who 66 may be as pillars erected in the house of God, and may "be most useful in the service of the church; but they do 66 prefer those for whom they have a particular affection, "or whose obsequiousness has gained their favour, or for "whom some of the great men have interceded; not to " mention the worst of all, those who, by the presents they "make them, purchase that dignity." A corruption began to creep into the church in the fifth century, of ordaining vagrant clerks, without any peculiar title; of whom we find St. Jerom oft complaining. This was condemned by the council of Chalcedon in a most solemn manner k. "The orders of all who were or"dained presbyters, deacons, or in the inferior degrees, "without a special title either in the city, in some village, "some chapel or monastery, are declared null and void: "and, to the reproach of those who so ordained them, they are declared incapable of performing any function." But how sacred soever the authority of this council was, it did not cure this great evil, from which many more have sprung. 66 A practice rose, not long after this, which opened a new scene. Men began to build churches on their own grounds, at their own charges, and to endow these; and they were naturally the masters, and, in the true signification of the Roman word, the patrons of them. All the churches in the first matricula were to be served by persons named to them by the bishop, and were to be maintained by him out of the revenue of the church; but these were put upon another foot, and belonged to the proprietors of the ground, to the builders, and the endowers. They were also to offer to the bishop a clerk to serve in them. It seems they began to think, that the bishop was bound to ordain all such as were named by them: but Justinian m settled this matter by a law; for he provided that the " ра"triarch should not be obliged to ordain such as were no"minated by the patron, unless he judged them fit for it:" the reason given is, that "the holy things of God might "not be profaned "." It seems he had this in his eye,. when by another law he condemns those who received i In Esai. k Can. 6. any thing for such a nomination; for so I understand the patrocinium ordinationis. The elections to most sees lay in many hands; and to keep out not only corruption, but partiality, from having a share in them, he by a special law required, "that all per"sons, seculars as well as ecclesiastics, who had a vote in "elections, should join an oath to their suffrage, that they were neither moved to it by any gift, promise, friendship, "or favour, or by any other affection, but that they gave "their vote upon their knowledge of the merits of the 66 person "." It will easily be imagined that no rule of this kind could be much regarded in corrupt ages. 66 Gregory the Great is very copious in lamenting these disorders, and puts always the threefold division of simony together, manus, oris, et ministerii P. Hincmar cites the prophet's words, He that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes 9; in the Vulgar it is, from every bribe; applying it to three sorts of simony. And in that letter to Lewis the Third, king of France, he protests, "he knew no kinsman "nor friend; and he only considered the life, learning, and "other good qualities necessary to the sacred ministry." Those ages were very corrupt; so that the great advantages that the popes had, in the disputes concerning the investitures into benefices, were taken from this, that servile obsequiousness and flatteries were the methods used in procuring them. Of which it were easy to bring a great and copious proof, but that it is needless. I shall only name two provisions made against all these sinistrous practices: one was among us in a council at Exeter, in which this charge is given; "Let all men look "into their own consciences, and examine themselves with "what design they aspire to orders; if it is, that they may "serve God more virtuously and more acceptably; or if it "is for the temporals, and that they may extort benefices "from those who ordain them; for we look on such as si"moniacs." In the council of Basils, in which they attempted the restoring the freedom of elections, as a mean to raise the reputation of the sacred function, they appointed that an oath should be taken by all electors, “That "they should not give their voice for any who had, as they were credibly informed, endeavoured to procure it "to themselves, either by promising or giving any tem"poral thing for it, or by any prayer or petition, either by 66 • Nov. 137. c. 2. * Synod. Exon. 1287. cap. 8. r Tom. 2. 195. 9 Isa. xxxiii. 15. • Sess. 12. |