BOOK II. Catholic clergy, we learn from the state sermons before the council of Trent, in which they are repeatedly alluded to.95 95 Thus, in 1545, the bishop of Bitunt exclaimed to the council, With what monstrous turpitudes, with what sordid pollution, with what a pestilence, are not both the priest and the people in the church defiled and corrupted! I put it to your judgment, fathers! and begin with the sanctuary itself, if any shame remains-any modesty-any hope or reason of living well!-If there be not libido effrenata et indomita; audacia singularis-wickedness incredible! The two leeches, cupidity and ambition, are always crying out bring, bring.' Hence piety is turned into fucum and hypocrisy; and preaching into contention and pride, into a turpissimum mercatum. Hence the sheep scatter and wander; hence religion declines into superstition, faith to infidelity; and all exclaim that there is no God.' Plat's Monum. Con. Trid. 1. p. 16. In the same year, Ant. Marinarius, the Carmelite, in his oration at the same council, described some prelates as sleeping, or acting the part of mercenaries, not to say worse; many doctors teaching piety with their mouths, and impiety by their actions; professing a perfection of life, and disturbing all things by their scandalous examples; the face of the church dishonored by the corrupt manners of the age. Ib. p. 30. In the next year the bishop of St. Mark thus harangued the council: Look at Rome, which ought to be a shining luminary in the midst of the nations; Look at Italy, France and Spain; you will find no degree, age or sex, which is not corruption; labefactum; putre. No Scythians or Africans live more impurely or flagitiously. O Prelates! cities placed on mountains, we murder the sheep of the Lord by our example. Looking at our manners and life, they plunge with us into these whirlpools. We cannot restore the edifice which has fallen by our wickedness, but by probity, humility, poverty and charity.' Ïb. p. 34. 6 In 1546 the Jesuit Alphonso Salmero urged the same topic. Proh dolor! How great and how deplorable an evil is it, when the pastor makes the Prince of Darkness his leader. To be ignorant of the Divine Scriptures to be ashamed of the office of preaching the Gospel, as a contemptible thing-to regard mercenary gains-to be devoted to luxury-to swell at praise. 99. The tempter suggests an insatiable appetite for domination when he leads to crave higher seats, fatter benefices, loftier dignities in the church.' 100. Pastors err when they convert their power into tyranny; who prefer to be, I will not say the shearers, but the devourers of their sheep. Hence those complaints of the people, (I wish they were untrue) that they are oppressed with burthens, robbed of their property, afflicted in their hearts, and tormented, from want of the divine word.' He then notices the pastors, who do not watch their flock; who indulge themselves; who seek with great diligence to dress their body, to fill their bellies, to increase their revenues, and to have splendid furniture, and the favor of princes. 101. CHAP. III. PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND THE СНАР. BOOK II. did the main subjects that were agitated in the great discussions which ensued, equally affect the interests or passions of all. A great diversity of views and motives, put different portions of the community into action; and this variety of objects and the frequent intermixture of private selfishness with public benefits, delayed the progress of the Reformation in some places, prevented it in others, and made it everywhere an angry and a combated transaction. It became in each country a political perturbation as well as a grand religious improvement. Its various branches may be thus distinguished: pos I. The diminution of the church property, and the violent transfer of it from its ecclesiastical professors to the lay nobility and gentry of the kingdom, had become the steady and rapacious object of many or most of the higher orders of the nation, from the time that the wealth of the religious bodies became prominent to the national eye. Altho their sessions, if they had been equally divided and impartially distributed, would not perhaps have excited either covetousness or envy, yet some benefices, abbacies, preferments and prelacies, were so exuberantly affluent in their revenues, and their possessors, from the natural effect of worldly abundance, became so fond of using and displaying their wealth, in imitation and emulation of the secular nobles, that the mind of the laity was provoked to inquire, if their riches were not only unnecessary to their religious duties, but also incompatible with the performance of them. See Hist. Middle Ages, v. 3. p. 106. 3 4 III. It was clear that this inconsistency had arisen. CHAP. Some foundations were as opulent as the greatest of the great. Several clergy died with accumulations of property, which proved that they had been enjoying an unneeded superfluity. Others amassed pluralities, which no favor or charity could defend; and foreigners obtained from the pope a donation of English church preferments, without the least performance of sacred duties, which took large sums of money annually out of the kingdom. That the church had become too affluent in the most conspicuous members of its establishment, for its virtues 5 * It is truly remarked in one of our antient homilies, that notwithstanding the vow of poverty of the religious orders, yet, 'in possessions, jewels, plate and riches, they were equal or above merchants, gentlemen, barons, earls and dukes: but by the subtle, sophistical term proprium in communi, they mocked the world.' Hom. on Good Works. This logical evasion was effected by their considering their wealth as the property of the whole body, and not of any individual. 3 Thus of three archdeacons mentioned by Matthew Paris, one, of Lincoln, left many thousand marcs with many silver vessels; another, of Bedford, died abundans pecunia maxima;' and the third, of Northampton, taken off suddenly, was found to have 5,000 marcs, 30 gold and silver cups, and jewels infinitis.' p. 706. The knowlege of these opulenti clerici' roused the pope's eagerness to have some of these good things. ib. And therefore he directly afterwards called on them for 6,000 marcs, ib. p. 707. which the king, for his own sake, forbad them to pay. 708. But the pope persevered, and in the next year demanded 6,000 marcs from the bishop of Lincoln, and forty from the abbot of St. Alban's, p. 722. and soon afterwards sent in his collector for more. In 1367 some were holding 20 ecclesias et dignitates by the pope's authority. Ant. Brit. p. 249. In 1343, Clement gave two cardinals benefices in England to the amount of 2,000 mares, in addition to the bishoprics and abbeys they were enjoying. Walsingh. p. 161. * Innocent IV. outdid all his predecessors in this respect. The incomes of the foreign clergy drawn from England, on the benefices he had conferred, exceeded 70,000 mares. Matt. Paris, p. 859. In 1248 the parliament complained of the Italici' being enriched by these corrupt grants, who took no care of the souls, who did not know their sheep nor were known by them, but who only acted like 'lupos rapacissimos.' ib. 667. In 1240, Gregory IX. sent his precepts to three English bishops, to provide for 300 Romans, in primis beneficiis vacantibus.' ib. 532. And afterwards demanded other exactions, 533. II. BOOK and utilities, was therefore an undeniable fact; but it was not less so, that to divest it of its superabundant possessions, in order to divide them among the craving laity, would be as complete an act of violent spoliation, as for the church to have extorted, and distributed among its members, the hereditary estates of the chief nobility. 6 Yet in no way could the pecuniary superfluity be separated from the ecclesiastical body but by force. The pope, its central, ruling and protecting head, drew too much booty from it, to its continual dissatisfaction, for him to consent to any amicable diminution. The possessing clergy were as unwilling as the other classes of society, to relinquish any part of the incomes and gratifications they were enjoying; and all the unprovided and aspiring members of the ecclesiastical body were equally hostile to the abstraction or abolition of any of the beneficiary preferments, for which they were expectantly waiting or soliciting. This branch of church reformation therefore never could be accomplished, but by the arm and compulsory exertion of the lay sword and power; and notwithstanding the long impatience of Thus in 1256, the next pope, Alexander IV. chusing to have from England 2,000 marcs, ordered the convent of Durham to send him 500, Bath 400, Thornia 400, Croyland 400, and Gisburne 300. The king also demanding money, the prelates found that they were between two grindingstones, in ambiguum rotabantur et quasi inter duas molas conterebantur.' Matt. Paris, 933. So in 1241, the pope suddenly demanded of the Peterburg convent, a church living of 100 marcs, or to appoint to it themselves, provided they sent him yearly 100 marcs. In the year before he had required all the English clergy to pay him one-fifth of their goods; and the archbishop of Canterbury was obliged to pay to the papal exacters at once 800 marcs; and the other prelates had no choice but similem ruinam.' ib. See Matt. Paris. The pope even ventured so far with his encroachments, as to claim the goods of all those who should die without a will. ib. i |