A CENSURE OF SIMONY.

Here first I may seem to usurp the mathematician’s privilege, in begging a supposition — that such a thing exists as simony. For in the opinion of many, simony has lost its existence in the nature of things, having long ago been antiquated and gone out of date, dead and buried with Simon himself. And if (as Chrysostom says) the gift of conferring the Holy Ghost was peculiar to the Apostles alone — so that not even Philip, when baptizing, also conferred the Holy Ghost, for that gift was proper only to the twelve — and if simony takes its name from Simon the originator, and Simon’s sin concerned the buying of the Holy Ghost: then, that gift having ceased and Simon being deceased, where is there so much as left the name of simony, to lend a title to our intended treatise? The Germans have very good laws to punish drunkenness, but they find it very hard to define what drunkenness is. So in England, we have good laws to punish adultery, but we find great difficulty in convicting anyone of committing the act of adultery. So it may be said of simony. First, therefore, let us see what simony is.

CHAP. I.

Wherein simony is defined, first generally and broadly, then more strictly and exactly.

For the definition of simony, briefly, we may refer it to the authority and testimony of two sources especially: to wit, the canonists and scholastics, who have been the most exact observers and compilers of what has been delivered by the most learned doctors of the Church from time to time touching the nature of this matter.

For the canonists, let Gratian speak, who says: Simonia est studiosa cupiditas, vel voluntas emendi vel vendendi aliquid Spirituale — simony is an intentional desire or purpose to buy or sell some spiritual thing. And in another place he adds: Simonia est, emere vel vendere res Corporales Ecclesiae — it is simony to buy or sell the corporeal goods of the Church. For the scholastics, let Thomas Aquinas speak, who came about one hundred years after Gratian; he says in effect the same: Simonia est studiosa voluntas emendi vel vendendi aliquid Spirituale vel Spirituali annexum — simony is an earnest desire of buying or selling any spiritual thing, or that which is annexed to what is spiritual. Upon these two definitions (in effect one) depends the whole law of simony, having the testimony of the whole Church from its primitive age to the present. Zanchius, using the very same definition, concludes: Sic definierunt Theologi — all divines and doctors have so defined it. And not without good reason: for in these two definitions is contained whatever may be said of simony, whether we regard its object or its subject — in the object, whether we understand the spiritual gifts or the corporeal goods of the Church; in the subject (I mean not the subject of predication, as logicians speak, but of inherence), whether we understand the affection only or also the action, be it actual or only intentional. All is simony. As Gratian also says: Simonia committitur & circa ordinem, & circa Beneficium — simony is committed both in respect of orders and in respect of the benefice itself. The Council of Constance has decreed the same, that simony is as well committed in the title as in the order. But hereto Gratian raises an objection: Non videntur Spiritus Sancti donum emere, qui non pro consecratione, sed pro electione munera largiuntur: cum nullius spiritualis gratia aliquos faciat electio participes — that is, they do not seem to be buying the gift of the Holy Ghost, who bestow their rewards not for the consecration but for the election, since election does not make anyone a partaker of any spiritual grace. But he adds the answer: Sed sicut Ecclesiasticarum rerum emptores simoniaci iudicantur, quia Ecclesiasticis officijs ita adiuncti sunt, ut alterum sine alte-

ra alieni non proueniat: ita quia per electionem peruenitur ad consecrationem, perinde simoniacus habetur, qui pro Electione premia largitur, ac si pro consecratione munera dedisset — But (says he) as buyers of ecclesiastical things are judged simoniacal, because those things are so annexed to ecclesiastical duties that one cannot have the one without the other: so because by election a man comes to his consecration, he is accounted no less a simoniac who bestows gifts for the election than if he had given his money for the consecration.

Now if the former definitions seem too broad — especially to those who would gladly pack up all simony in the same bundle as the gifts of the Holy Ghost, as commodities of one and the same kind — to gratify these, we might reduce everything to the same terms and say: simony is a desire or act of buying or selling the gifts of the Holy Ghost. So Master Calvin (on Acts 8) approves this as the most proper definition of simony. The only question is, what kinds of gifts of the Holy Ghost may be implied here, the trafficking and trading in which either is, or may well be called, either simony or at least a branch of it. Lyra (on Acts 8) says: Simon volebat emere potestatem dandi Spiritum Sanctum, intentione Lucri inde recipiendi: propter quod ab ipso nominatur vitium Simonia, quo aliquis vendit aut emit Spiritualia — Simon wished to buy the power of conferring the Holy Ghost, with the intention of gaining thereby; as Saint Augustine says: Quod venderet, emere volebat — he wished to buy what he intended to sell again.

For which reason, from him is named the sin of simony, when any man buys or sells spiritual things. Now we may reduce all those gifts of the Holy Ghost concerning his ministers — for these only are pertinent to our present purpose — to these two heads: either those gifts given by imposition of hands in ordination, whereby ministers receive a ministerial power to preach the Word, to administer the sacraments, to remit and retain sins, which is the dispensation of the keys; or else those whereby a minister receives a particular charge over this or that flock,

which charge, being received by canonical and orderly calling, is a gift no less ascribed to the Holy Ghost than that other of ordination. So the Apostle expresses in his charge to the clergy of Ephesus (Acts 20:28): “Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock of God, whereof the Holy Ghost has made you episcopos, or overseers.” See here — to be an overseer, whether episcopus by a mark of excellence as the superior overseer or superintendent over all particular flocks and pastors in his peculiar diocese, or else every inferior and subordinate minister in his several parish, placed as an overseer or watchman over his flock, as Lyra also understands — this is the gift of the Holy Ghost. Now then, to buy this gift — to be made a bishop over such a see, or a pastor or rector of such a flock — does it not accord precisely with this definition of simony? For simony is a trafficking in the gifts of the Holy Ghost; but such an overseership is a gift of the Holy Ghost; therefore to buy this gift is simony.

CHAP. II.

Wherein the former definitions are cleared from certain objections and subtle distinctions.

But in answer to our former argument, the sophistical simoniac, or simoniacal sophist, distinguishes inter Beneficium & beneficium — between the benefice and the benefit — or more precisely: Beneficium emit, non officium — he buys the profit, not the office; Non Curam, Sed curam — not the cure of others’ souls, but the care and provision for his own body. Paschal answers this objection: Si quis obiecerit non consecrationes emi, Sed res que ex consecratione proueniunt, penitus desipere probatur; Nam cum corporalis Ecclesia, aut Episcopus, &c. — if anyone shall object that he buys not the consecrations but those things which follow and attend the consecration, he is a manifest dotard. For seeing that a body

The body of a church, or a bishop, or such, cannot subsist or be maintained without material things, any more than the soul can live corporally without the body; and therefore whoever sells the one, without which the other cannot stand alone, leaves neither unsold. Whereupon Gratian says, Quando quis promouendus est ad Ecclesiam vel ordinem, fructus proueniunt iure ordinis; & ideo non licite emit [When a man is to be promoted to a church or bishopric, or to its order and office, the revenues follow by right of order, and therefore the purchase is not lawful]. Both Paschal’s comparison and Gratian’s reasoning are apt and sound. For there is such a mutual and immediate relation — indeed combination and union — between the ministry and its maintenance that one cannot subsist without the support of the other, any more than the soul can exercise its various faculties (especially those sensitive functions) without the instrument of the body, or the body can perform its duty without its ordinary nourishment. And as Boaz tendered to his kinsman the purchase of Elimelech’s lands, which at first offer the man was willing to buy, but told him withal that he must purchase them from Naomi by marrying Ruth — both must go together — so he who will buy the lands or inheritance of the church and of the ministry must reckon on buying Ruth with it. The maintenance and the compassionate [ruthful], careful office of the ministry go hand in hand together; buy the one, and you buy the other too. Therefore anciently ordination customarily carried the title with it, as the Council of Chalcedon, canon 6, shows. So that he who would buy the maintenance must buy also the ordinance. And is not the maintenance of the ministry, as much as its ordinance, a gift of the Holy Spirit? Does not the Lord say, “I have given the tithes to the Levites”? And are not these tithes holy? And who can give a holy gift, or make a gift holy, but the Holy Spirit? From this I draw the following conclusion: simony is the desire or act of buying or selling the gifts of the Holy Spirit; but tithes — holy tithes — are a gift of the Holy Spirit; therefore the desire or act of buying or selling holy tithes (by which I understand all church revenues) is simony.

So the simoniac’s earlier distinction serves only to distinguish between sound reason and his own foolish imagination, which are utterly incompatible and must inevitably make him, ut cum ratione insaniat [rave with a show of reason]. And truly I very easily believe that he speaks as he thinks. For few such merchants would be at that cost to purchase such a cure were it not for the profit — as Chrysostom says, “I suppose no man, however thirsty for glory, would ever be made a bishop unless necessity called him to it; for who is sufficient for these things?” And Cardinal Pole, being charged by a cardinal of the opposing faction with ambition in too eagerly seeking the papacy, answered that he did not think the burden of that great office so light, but that he was of the mind it was rather to be feared than desired. But later times are so fertile, producing such sky-soaring spirits, that now who is not sufficient for these things? And what reason has any man of reason to think that these sufficient men should have such leaden heads as ever to condescend to reach out their golden hands in order to purchase and pull upon themselves the burden of such a cure? No more than one would think that such men would ever be content (were it possible) to become joint-purchasers with Christ, whose bishopric cost him the shedding of his most precious blood — nor ever imitate Saint Paul’s example (Philippians 2:17) or obey Saint John’s precept (1 John 3:16).

CHAP. III.

Wherein other shifts and evasions are met with.

But what has become of my simoniac? I thought I had caught him fast even now with my syllogism. But Quo teneam vultum mutantem Protea nodo? [With what knot shall I hold Proteus, who changes his shape?] How shall I hold this shifting Proteus? With what cords or withies shall I bind this Samson-like Simon! He buys, he does not buy; it is a benefice, it is not a

not a benefice; a cure, not a cure. But in the end he must confess (and in this he does not jest) that he has certain locks on which a razor has never come — that is, certain flocks or fleeces never yet shorn from the church, or not touched (at least in his own drowsy sense and apprehension) with the razor of conviction under the name of simony. The temporal benefit he has indeed bought — namely the glebe, the tithe, and the like: prove this to be simony, and then I shall be as other men. And in this conceit of his he is as strong as Samson — indeed so confident that he dares say that tithes are mere temporalities, lay fees. But as Samson, after his locks were shaved, never thought his strength was gone until by woeful proof he found it: so our Simon here thinks all is well with him as long as he firmly imagines that his tithes are but temporalities — and on that ground, no simoniac, not as other men.

But now, Samson, the Philistines are upon you — yea, stronger than the Philistines: a troop of truths besets you. What? Tithes temporal? In what grammar have you learned to join this substantive and adjective together? I am certain not in God’s book. There is no such incongruity, no solecism, no false construction there. There he deserves the ferula, the rod — a woe upon him — who incongruously calls sour sweet and sweet sour, good evil and evil good; and shall he escape who calls sacred secular? Tithes, temporalities? Or he who says, “Give to Caesar the things that are God’s”? Let me but shake Aaron’s rod and Christ’s many-corded whip a little at our undisciplined Simon, to make him at least attentive to what the Scripture says. Tithes, I am certain, were once sacred; and what God has once made sacred, call not you common. But when were they sacred? Why, was it not when Adam was first created — when he was endued with the ten moral [precepts] of the law? And is it not more than probable that among the ten the Lord allotted a tithe for the maintenance of his service, seeing that among the ten he appointed a time for his

service — even the Sabbath day — upon the sanctification of which tithes were properly to attend? Tithes, then, were doubtless sacred from the beginning of Adam’s creation. For otherwise, when did Abraham learn to pay tithes of all things to Melchizedek, the priest of the most high God? Or what moved Jacob to vow the paying of tithes? Was it only from the example of his grandfather? Or were his tithes only voluntary and discretionary until made necessary by a vow? Why not, then, his other service, which he vowed at the same time, and which he was bound to perform even had he not vowed it at all? His vow was only a stronger bond to hold and help him to the better performance of a duty that was nonetheless owed without any vow — just as our solemn vow in baptism is only a stronger bond to bind us to that obedience to God which we ought most carefully to perform, no less than if we had not vowed it at all.

But if you still deny that tithes are consecrated and sacred by divine instinct or institution, for want of an explicit precept, yet at the very least you yourself cannot but confess that they began then to be sacred when God said (Leviticus 27:30), “All the tithe of the land, both of the seed of the ground and the fruit of the trees, is the Lord’s; it is holy to the Lord.” Yea, so holy, so sacred that (as in the next verse) “if any man shall redeem any of his tithe, he shall add a fifth part thereto.” And “every tithe of bullock and of sheep, and of all that goes under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the Lord” (v. 32). Yea, so holy that at v. 33, “he shall not look whether it be good or bad, neither shall he change it; else if he change it, both it and that with which it was changed shall be holy, and it shall not be redeemed.” See then how sacred tithes are ratified by a double tense — “they are holy” and “they shall be holy to the Lord” — as Jacob confirmed his son’s blessing: “I have blessed him, and he shall be blessed.” And where it is said that the tenth is holy to the Lord, *a learned and reverend prelate of our church in his book on tithes has drawn from the present tense

drawn this observation: that the tenth did not begin now to be sacred or consecrated, but only to be appropriated for a time to the Levites, concluding the Ordinance to be morally perpetual from the Creation.

CHAP. IV.

Tithes in the New Testament proved to be equally sacred as those in the Old, against the simoniacs’ objection: and consequently the definition of simony, concluded according to the former definitions of it, by the Schoolmen and Canons.

“Yes,” says our Simon, “I do not deny that the tenth was holy and sacred during the time of the Old Testament, but it ceases to be so now in the New.” O Heresy, worthy of Simon himself! O Folly, well befitting the Arameans! who, having already been overcome in the mountains, promised themselves victory in the valley, saying, “The Lord is the God of the mountains, and not God of the valleys.” And is the Lord the God of the Old Testament, and not God of the New? Yes, even of the New also. For mark this: the tithes were not said to be holy to the Levites, but to the Lord; nor that they were the Levites’, but the Lord’s. “The tithe is the Lord’s; it is holy to the Lord” (Leviticus 27:30). Therefore, the Lord rebuking the Jews for neglecting the payment of their tithes, he takes the wrong as done to himself, saying, “You have robbed Me” (Malachi 3:8). He does not say, “You have despoiled the Levite and the Priest,” but, “You have despoiled Me.” If then the Lord himself, and not the Levite, is entitled and vested in the proper right of tithes, then certainly they are as sacred now in the New Testament as ever they were in the Old. “The tithes are holy to the Lord” (Leviticus 27:28), “and they shall be holy to the Lord” (v. 32). They are holy (it was then said) to the Lord of the Old Testament, and they shall be holy

holy to the Lord of the New Testament: and to us there is but one Lord.

And tell me, foolish self-deceiving simoniac, whoever you are — tell me when and where tithes ceased to be sacred; and if you cannot tell, how dare you call them temporalities? But let me tell you by the Word of the Lord that tithes are perpetually sacred. Search the Scriptures. Go learn what that means: “Abraham gave Melchizedek tithe of all.” If you do not understand it, ask the Apostle; and it is worth the consideration. “For consider,” he says, “how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave tithe of the spoils.” Abraham, the father of all the faithful — not of the Jews only, but of us Gentiles also — paid tithe of all. To whom? To Melchizedek. And what was this Melchizedek? Priest of the most high God, King of Righteousness, King of Salem: in all, a perfect type of Christ our eternal high Priest, the Lord our righteousness, Prince of Peace. Did Abraham then, the father of the faithful — yes, the type of God’s faithful Church, in the loins of whose faith (as I may say) were all the faithful — give the tithe of all to Melchizedek, the true type of Christ our eternal high Priest and the minister of a better Testament? And shall we doubt to tread in the steps of faithful Abraham, unless we will be bastards and not sons? And if the Apostle uses it as an argument to prove Christ’s Priesthood more excellent than Aaron’s, inasmuch as even Levi in the loins of Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek — how do we then uphold and maintain this prerogative of Christ’s Priesthood while we either deny or diminish his right of tithes in the ministry of the New Testament? Since Aaron, who was far inferior, received tithes in the Old; yes, rather, if the Levitical Priesthood, being inferior, received tithes, then the Evangelical, being superior, much more. And why is Levi said in the loins of Abraham to have paid tithes to Melchizedek? But plainly to give us to understand that this payment implied an acknowledgment of Christ their Sovereign Lord and true high Priest,

as in whose title and right alone they also received tithes. Hence it is that all the Levites paid the tenth of their tenths to Aaron the high Priest and to his successors — he being also a type of Christ. Let even the spirit of contradiction itself but note how frequently and how effectually the Apostle presses the right of tithes resident in Christ, as a notable proof of the eternity of his Priesthood. For in the seventh chapter to the Hebrews, the Apostle mentions this argument of tithes no fewer than six or seven times: as at verses 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9. He therefore who denies tithes to be due to Christ in the ministry of the New Testament — what does he do but deny the eternity of Christ’s Priesthood, the ministration of which must continue until time shall be no more? Yes, he must also deny that Melchizedek was a true type of Christ, by virtue of receiving tithes — if now tithes are not really due to Christ in the New Testament, as they were typically prefigured in the Old.

Again, when did tithes first begin to be paid? Was it not so long before the Law was given, or the Levites born? Could the Levitical Law then annul the nature of tithes, so that they should not forever continue sacred, being before the Law consecrated in act by our father Abraham, the type of Christ’s Church, unto Melchizedek the type of our eternal high Priest Christ Jesus? Decimas Deo, & Sacerdotibus Dei dandas Abraham factis, & Iacob promissis insinuat; & omnes Sancti Doctores commemorant — “That tithes are to be given to God and to the Priests of God, both Abraham by fact and Jacob by vow doth insinuate; and all holy Doctors do avouch it.” Admonemus vel præcipimus, vt Decima de omnibus Dari non negligatur quia Deus ipse sibi Dari constituit — “We admonish and command that the tenth of all things be not neglected to be paid, because God himself has ordained it to be given to himself.” And the perpetuity of Christ’s Priesthood is proved by the paying of tithes, as Hebrews 7:8: “There he receives tithes, of whom it is witnessed that he lives.” Or let the simoniac go learn what that means: “Even so has

the Lord ordained that they who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.” Who does not see that the Apostle there draws a parallel between the Levitical maintenance and the Lord’s Ordinance, the Altar and the Gospel together? And does not the Apostle there claim for himself a power in such maintenance as well as others? Mark: power. And whence, but from the Lord’s Ordinance? And where does the general practice of this Ordinance appear, but in the Levitical maintenance? And where has this maintenance its first foundation and institution (besides the Creation) but in Christ, figured in Melchizedek, who received tithes of Abraham, the father and figure of all the faithful, the Church of God? And shall not tithes then be forever sacred? And if sacred, is not he a profane simoniac who offers to buy them? Yes, moreover, are not the ministers of the Gospel called the sons of Levi? (Malachi 3:3). The text is pregnant and plain, and interpreters subscribe to the truth of it. Christ was to refine the sons of Levi, that they might offer to the Lord in righteousness — that is, his Apostles and Disciples of the Gospel. These are called the sons of Levi because they succeed Levi in the Ministry. And if we are Levi’s sons, who shall deny us Levi’s inheritance, seeing we are Levites to the same Lord, the perpetuity of whose Priesthood the payment of tithes to his Levites is a pregnant argument of? And if you deny him tithes, you must of necessity deny him the Priesthood too, and so conspire with the Jews to kill him, that the inheritance may be yours. Yes, we are Levi’s sons refined and purged from the refuse of legal types and ceremonies — and shall our tithes be less sacred! Objection. But some will say: we have no express Precept in the Gospel for the paying of tithes. I answer: there are demonstrations enough, and those most strong. But what need is there of any express Precept? The Precept is express enough in the Law. He who is better versed in the Law than in the Gospel, and sets more store by antiquities than verities — if the God of this world had not blinded his eyes, he might acknowledge the antiquity of this Precept in the Law to be

be so plain as to need no further explication or reestablishment in the Gospel. “The tithe is the Lord’s,” says the Law. And does not the Gospel ratify the same, saying, “Give to God those things that are God’s”? Is this not an express precept? Indeed, Christ and his apostles, being busy in founding a new Church, suspended the practice of receiving tithes until the decrepit Synagogue of the Levitical Ordinance expired and its final obsequies were fully ended. But they left abundant evidence in their Gospels to establish the right of tithes to Christ’s ministers in the succeeding ages of the Church.

To conclude this point: that tithes and all church maintenance — call it what you will, benefit or benefice, profits or corporeal goods — are holy and of a spiritual nature, because they are consecrated to a holy use. I do not say that res decimarum, the things of which tithes consist, are in their own nature spiritual; but qua decima [as tithes], consecrated to a holy end and use, they take on a spiritual nature. For even as the bread in the Sacrament, before it is consecrated and sanctified by the word, is common — but after consecration it becomes sacramental and spiritual bread (which is that change the ancient Fathers so commonly speak of, not that bastard substantial change which the Pontificians would falsely father upon them) — in which respect the Apostle calls the manna and the water of the rock, in regard of their typological signification, “spiritual meat” and “spiritual drink”: so those things of which tithes and all church maintenance consist, in their own nature are temporal and common, but being dedicated to God for a holy use and end, they are no longer to be held temporal, but spiritual — I say, in regard of their spiritual end and use, for which they are consecrated. And what is the end and use of such consecrated things? Is it not for the maintenance of Christ’s ministers? And are not they, in their persons and their profession, by calling spiritual? And of what nature then can their maintenance be, but spiritual? For omne nutritur a simili [everything is nourished by its like]: spiritual

men and spiritual meat: both of a like nature, both alike consecrated to God. So then tithes or church livings, coming within the scope of the definition of simony — being not only annexed to spiritual things, but spiritual things themselves — it follows necessarily that to buy or sell such spiritual things is simony. The definition then of the Schoolmen and Canonists formerly cited stands firm and sound, having all the terms and parts of a perfect definition according to the rules of logic; which in brief may be reduced to a syllogism thus: emptio vel venditio rei spiritualis est simonia; sed decimæ sunt res spirituales; ergo emptio vel venditio decimarum est simonia [the purchase or sale of a spiritual thing is simony; but tithes are spiritual things; therefore the purchase or sale of tithes is simony]. Emptio et venditio [purchase and sale] is the genus; simonia is the species; and res spiritualis [spiritual thing] is the differentia. As homo est animal rationale [a human being is a rational animal] is a perfect definition, having the genus, species, and differentia. Therefore, according to the definition of simony, to buy or sell any spiritual thing is simony. In this respect Judas, in selling Christ, is said to commit simony: non solum plagium commisit, quod liberum hominem; sed et simoniam, in eo quod rem sacram vendidit [he committed not only the crime of man-stealing, by selling a free man, but also simony, in selling a sacred or spiritual thing].

CHAP. V.

Other evasions or loopholes stopped. Objections answered.

But the simoniac has yet another usual loophole into which he creeps when pursued with the hue and cry of simony: he confesses indeed — because he cannot deny it — that tithes are perpetually consecrated and therefore spiritual, and that to buy or sell them is simony; but he says he is not buying the tithes, but either the glebe, or the temporalities annexed to his benefice or bishopric. Well, to answer this, we will not take the benefit and advantage of

of the definition of simony, which includes as well those things annexed to spiritual things as the spiritual things themselves; but we say that such glebe and such temporalities are now spirituals, just as tithes are. For as well the freewill offerings and oblations as the tithes were called holy. “If a man dedicate to the Lord any ground of his inheritance, the field shall be holy to the Lord when it goes out in the Jubilee, as a field set apart from common uses; the possession thereof shall be the priest’s.” Such glebe lands therefore, and lands commonly called temporalities, are in truth not temporal, having once been freely and solemnly given by vow of our noble predecessors unto the Lord for the more honorable maintenance of his Church; but they are now spiritual, sanctified and set apart from common use, as tithes are — they are holy to the Lord. Therefore, as it is a snare to devour that which is thus sanctified and after such vows to make inquiry [about reclaiming it]: so the simoniac only entangles himself in a snare, as the rabbit in her own burrow, when he makes this his loophole — that so long as he buys only the temporal lands of the Church he commits no simony. Sed cominus res agatur. Simoniace, quid emisti? Glebam inquis, aut (te arbitro) Temporalia. Quanti emisti? Tantis. Agedum. Permittatur iam arbitrio calculorum, quantum inde sis lucratus, et num te negotiatorem satis prudentem cautumque præstiteris. Annui gleba tua reditus æstimantur forte 20 li. aut supra; ducentis vero, aut trecentis, aut quadringentis libris emisti. Na tu, hæreditatem tibi ac posteris, tantidem emere potuisses. Summa igitur, si computetur, huc recidit, quod hoc tuo mercimonio teipsum prodideris aut puerilem mercatorem, aut (quod magis suspicor) egregium veteratorem. Excute vero tuam tanta causa nimium indormientem conscientiam, et fatebere tandem, non te glebam tanti, nisi decimarum maior fuisset ratio, emisse. Vel sicut siquis domicilium charius emit, bonæ viciniæ gratia. Eadem prorsus ratio latifundiorum Episcopalium, vulgo Temporalium, habenda est. Emit quis, non Episcopatum, sed Temporalia, non quod sacrum est, sed quod seculare. Ista autem Temporalia partim ex latifundii utilitate, partim ex domini dignitate æstimantur. Quanti autem constet [But let the matter be brought closer to home. Simoniac, what did you buy? The glebe, you say, or — as you judge it — the temporalities. How much did you pay? Such and such. Come now. Let the arithmetic be left to reckon how much profit you have made from it, and whether you have shown yourself a sufficiently prudent and careful merchant. The annual revenues of your glebe are reckoned perhaps at £20 or more; yet you paid two hundred, or three hundred, or four hundred pounds for it. Why, you could have bought an inheritance for yourself and your heirs for the same sum. The sum total, then, if it be reckoned up, comes to this: that by this your bargaining you have shown yourself either a childish merchant, or — which I more suspect — a thoroughgoing swindler. Rouse then your conscience, which sleeps far too soundly in a matter of such weight, and you will confess at last that you would not have paid so much for the glebe, had not the tithes been the greater part of the calculation. It is just as if someone buys a house at a higher price for the sake of a good neighborhood. The same reasoning applies entirely to episcopal estates, commonly called temporalities. A man buys not the bishopric but the temporalities — not what is sacred, but what is secular. These temporalities, however, are valued partly by the profitability of the estate, partly by the dignity of the lord. But what the ecclesiastical honor amounts to]

constet Ecclesiasticus honor, mihi non constat. Nec quenquam arbitror φιλοδοξίαν seu φιλοτιμίαν præ se tantum laturum, ut dicas se honorem Ecclesiasticum emere. Si vero quod reliquum est Temporalium emat, viderit Emptor, ne quantum rem emptam pretium superat, tantum ipsum se honorem non neglexisse videatur. Nec quemquam existimo eo processurum audacia, ut dicat, tantundem esse, honorem Ecclesiasticum et civilem emere. Nihil addo amplius. Satis est quod hic noster mercator ex sua ipsius conscientia arguatur. Nec sibi cavere poterit, quin in istorum Scopulorum alterum, Directe, vel Indirecte, misere impingat. [I cannot say. Nor do I think anyone will put forward such love of glory or ambition as to say that he is buying ecclesiastical honor. But if he buys what remains of the temporalities, let the buyer take care lest, to the extent that the price exceeds the value of the thing purchased, he appear not to have neglected the honor. Nor do I think anyone will go so far in boldness as to say it is the same thing to buy ecclesiastical and civil honor. I add nothing more. It is enough that our merchant here is convicted by his own conscience. Nor will he be able to protect himself from wretched shipwreck on one or the other of these reefs, directly or indirectly.] But let this suffice to have shown — both by evidence of Holy Scripture and by testimonies of ecclesiastical doctors and learned divines — that all buying and selling of any church preferments, on whatever pretext, is gross simony, however finely and artfully conveyed.

CHAP. VI.

Simoniacs convicted by the universal voice of common fame.

If God’s Word were altogether silent in the law of tithes, leaving them as a thing indifferent to be paid or not according to men’s fancies and wills, and if the Scriptures consequently had no show of arguments to convict simoniacs, as we have heard: yet even the general voice of common fame — it seems to me — should be sufficient to cry down simony, and to present it in the Spiritual Court, or to procure a decree against it in the high Court of Conscience. And here before the bar of this impartial Court, let me by writ summon the simoniac to appear. You have bought some benefice or other ecclesiastical preferment in the Church, but have so managed and conveyed the matter that the world cannot witness how much you have given; yet you have given so much and in such a way that by some circumstance or other, general notice is taken of it — for such corruption

corruption will soon cast abroad a savor) — whereupon a common fame is raised against you, that you are a simoniac. So that if you will be tried by God and the country, you are sure to be condemned as a simoniac. For vox populi, vox Dei — everyone says you are a simoniac; therefore you are one. Just as an intemperate or incontinent person in a parish: the one is commonly drunk, the other follows harlots; every boy in the street points at them — “There goes a drunkard,” “There goes a whoremonger.” But for all this, neither will the one confess himself a drunkard, because he keeps his feet, wallows not in the gutter, can use his tongue, and the like; nor will the other admit to being an adulterer, because he thanks God he meddles not with other men’s wives, but uses it only for recreation to meet with merry company — though in suspected places — to observe their fashions, and to learn to hate women rather than to love them. And if he enters into greater familiarity with them, it is but simple fornication at the worst, and (according to Roman Catholic doctrine) a venial sin, which his nature is now and then compelled to, for his health’s sake. Just so is our common simoniac. He has devoured pluralities of preferments like so many full cups; he has deflowered so many once-virgin churches, the patron perhaps — or some agent acting for him — serving as the procurer; so that everyone can point with a finger: “There goes one who paid so much for such a benefice, such a [deanery], such a [bishopric].” Yet for all this he will be no simoniac, because, forsooth, he has not bought the Holy Ghost; nor has he entered upon another’s living by way of lapse — as it were, another man’s wife — which some flaw in this wife, not fault in the incumbent, has brought into lapse, and so now free for anyone to sue out a divorce and marry her, though in so doing he commits adultery with her.

But you will say: it is one thing to be called [a simoniac], and another thing to be one. Though the ignorant common people call me so, it does not therefore follow that I am so. Things are to be measured not by report but by reason; and the common people can

give no other reason for calling me a simoniac but only that Simon bought the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and I only buy the bodily commodities of the Church. Well, yet if there were no other consideration but this, how ought every minister especially to be careful of preserving the credit of his holy calling and profession. As Saint Jerome, writing De vita Clericorum et Sacerdotum, says: Caueto omnes suspitiones, et quicquid probabiliter fingi potest, ne fingatur, ante deuita — Avoid all suspicions, and whatever may be plausibly fabricated, prevent it first, that it may not be fabricated. For as every good Christian ought not only to abhor adultery and all unclean acts, but also to direct his conduct so as to preserve his good name from the least suspicion of looseness and dishonesty: so every good minister of Christ should so greatly detest the sin of Simon himself as to shun whatever has any resemblance or affinity to it. “Abstain,” says the Apostle, “from all appearance of evil.”

And if there were no other reason to ground common fame upon but this — that the trafficking in church livings is called simony, because Simon’s sin in offering to buy the gifts of the Holy Ghost is rightly called simony — it were proof enough. As Theopompus called a drunken murder Cilicismus, from the barbarous manners of the Cilicians, and lascivious lust Canobismus, from the filthy Canobites.

So Judas is called a devil, for being like one. Herod, a fox, for his cunning. The Church of Antichrist, a whore, for her whorish character. And many a man is called a simoniac for resembling Simon. As Augustinus ranks Simon and all ecclesiastical merchants in the same class together: Simon erat de talibus, qui in Templum intrant ad emendum et vendendum — Simon is one of those that enter into the Temple to buy and sell. (In Ps. 130.) And see what a resemblance there is between Simon and the simoniac. Simon would have bought the gifts of the Holy Ghost; this man buys the goods of the Holy Ghost, which are the gifts of God

to his ministers. Simon offered money, not so much for the gift as for the gain; this man not only offers but gives his money — not perhaps for his ordination, not for that most careful cure of souls, not for that most watchful and weighty (Angelorum humeris tremendum onus [a burden at which angels’ shoulders tremble]) office of a bishop: I dare say — what then? If for neither of these, then to make himself the richer and more honorable in the world, and consequently the more capable of greater preferments — all probable conjecture being at a standstill. Do not blame then even the common people for calling you a simoniac after the name of Simon, whom you so closely resemble in your conduct, and which [resemblance] you have so dearly purchased with your money.

Again, those who have attained even a moderate grasp of the grounds of their Catechism (of whom there are enough to make up a common report) are able to reason thus against common simony. The Commandment says, “You shall not kill.” Is therefore only the act of murder forbidden here? Is not also the envious person, the slanderer, the hater of his brother, a murderer? “He that hates his brother is a manslayer.” The Commandment says, “You shall not commit adultery.” Is only the act forbidden? Is not also the affection? The lust? The look? “He that looks on a woman and lusts after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Even so: you shall not commit simony. Is therefore only the buying and selling of the most properly so-called gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost so heinous as to deserve that odious name of simony? And shall not the buying and selling of church preferments — being also the Holy Ghost’s gifts, though of an inferior nature (that which Simon himself had most regard to when he offered his money) — deserve also the name of simony? And why should not the buying and selling of church livings be called simony, just as a lustful look is called adultery? For he that uses lustful looks and wanton gestures is not only an adulterer in his heart, but the likelier and nearer to commit it in the act. So he that will not scruple to buy a benefice — be it but an advowson,

an advowson, before he has taken any orders — is he not the likelier to buy his orders too, especially being some rustic pedant, so that he may enjoy his former bargain? For everyone who buys a preferment of this kind undoubtedly prizes it above the honor of his calling (for he that truly honors this holy calling is of that holy mind as to despise all base means of advancing himself in it), and consequently will make little conscience of buying holy orders, which he accounts but as accessories, having already made shipwreck of conscience in purchasing the profits, which he regards as the principal. And upon these reasons is grounded not only the common report of this our Church and of the present time, but of the whole Catholic Church from age to age. So that the very fame of it being so universal, if there were no other reason, one would think it should make any ordinary Christian both ashamed and afraid to set either his private opinion or practice against such a stream and cloud of witnesses.

CHAP. VII.

Simony demonstrated by our positive laws and by ecclesiastical canons: and finally, by the conviction and confession of the simoniac himself.

Besides all the former convictions — yea, even without them all — the same laws which have appointed and imposed the oath against simony may serve as sufficient and competent judges in the case of simony. And it stands to good reason that the same law which forbids and punishes simony should be its own interpreter as to what it means by simony. And so, that is justly censured as simony which the law understands to be simony. Now the words of the statute showing what simony is are these: “And for the avoiding of simony and corruptions in presentations,

tations, collations, and donations of and to benefices, dignities, prebends, and other livings and ecclesiastical promotions, and in admissions, institutions, and inductions to the same: Be it further enacted, etc. See here what our statutes call simony. And according to the interpretation of this statute, the oath takes effect. For upon this impregnable bulwark of positive law is mounted the cannon of the Church, fully charged upon simoniacs with powder and shot, to batter down this high-towering conceit of all those who stand out in defiance of all opposition and in defence of their ungodly merchandise. The charge of this cannon is heavier than lead and harder than iron, and so planted against the simoniac that he must of necessity receive it into his very mouth — I mean that most fearful oath of simony. But the simoniac’s motto is, Iuravi lingua, mentem iniuratam gero [“I have sworn with my tongue, but keep my mind unsworn”]: the oath may well touch the tip of his tongue, but it shall not come near his heart; he has some evasion, some reservation, or trick to elude the oath, either by giving it a false gloss, or by looking at the face of his conscience in a false glass — unless by way of commutation he declines it, as other offenders do the wearing of the white sheet; but no one, by commuting — call it what you will — is able to shift off his winding-sheet. Many may avoid the mouth of the cannon, but when it comes once to the riding of the cannon, that will be sure to pay its rider. For to bring it home to the conscience, let me borrow an example of a simoniacal bishop from Rome, of which that now step-mother Church is fruitful and may spare enough to serve as sea-marks for our better direction. Imagine you see him entering the chancel of Saint Peter’s in Rome, to receive his consecration in all his pontificals, standing in the midst of such a congregation as at the very least accounts itself most sacred. To this man let that dreadful and direful oath — which our Church has religiously provided as a wholesome remedy and preservative against this dangerous disease of simony — be administered. And before he takes it, let some powerful voice (such

(such as came to Balaam, to forbid him to go to Balak for the wages of iniquity, or as came to Abimelech, to forbid him to touch Abraham’s wife) summon and rouse his conscience, in this manner. Come now, O Roman Prelate, who has purchased a bishopric as the centurion did his citizenship, for a great sum: I dispute not now about the manner — it makes no matter, a purchase it is. But now you have come to the place of your consecration (take heed it does not prove your execration): now you stand in the midst of an assembly of prelates and priests, on a day, in a place, all sacred; the service sacred — praying, praising, preaching, communicating — expecting also the presence of the Holy Ghost, with his manifold gifts to be conferred upon you by imposition of hands. Now you are set in the presence of men and angels, who stand about you as so many eye- and ear-witnesses of this day’s deed. All these weighty circumstances considered might be of force to give you pause; and because I have known that a desperate fellow coming before a judge in open court, armed with a strong and obstinate resolution to take a solemn oath in maintenance of a wrong cause — which the judge having smelled out, first wisely admonished him to be well advised what he would do, laying before him the fearfulness of an oath wrongfully taken — he thereupon, feeling the remorse of conscience, openly confessed the whole truth of the business: therefore be advised before you come to take your oath; first read the oath, that weighing the tenor of it, you may rather timely prevent the danger, than afterwards repent when it is too late.

The words of the Canon prefixed stand thus: To avoid the detestable sin of simony, because buying and selling of spiritual and ecclesiastical functions, offices, promotions, dignities, and livings is execrable before God: Therefore the Archbishop, and all and every bishop or bishops, or any other person or persons having authority to admit, institute, collate, install, or to confirm the election of any Archbishop, Bishop, or any other person or persons to any spiritual or ecclesiastical function, dignity

ty, promotion, title, office, jurisdiction, place, or benefice, with cure or without cure, or to any ecclesiastical living whatsoever, shall before every such admission, institution, collation, installation, or confirmation of election respectively administer to every person hereafter to be admitted, instituted, collated, installed, or confirmed in or to any archbishopric, bishopric, or other spiritual or ecclesiastical function, dignity, promotion, title, office, jurisdiction, place, or benefice, with cure or without cure, or in any ecclesiastical living whatsoever: this oath in manner and form following, the same to be taken by every one whom it concerns in his own person, and not by a proctor:

The words of the Oath. I, N.N., do swear, that I have made no simoniacal payment, contract, or promise, directly or indirectly, by myself, or by any other to my knowledge, or with my consent, to any person or persons whatsoever, for or concerning the procuring and obtaining of this ecclesiastical dignity (to wit, the bishopric of, etc.); nor will at any time hereafter perform or satisfy any such kind of payment, contract, or promise made by any other, without my knowledge or consent. So help me God, through Jesus Christ.

Have you now duly and seriously weighed the substance and circumstances of this most solemn oath? Then let it summon and assemble your gravest thoughts in council together, all moving you thus to argue with yourself: I am now in a sacred place, in the open view of men and angels, all spectators, all expecters of what I am to do. Here I come to be consecrated a bishop — a great honor, but a greater burden — which taking upon me, I must surpass many here present, and many more absent, all deserving this honor far before me; so that I draw upon myself, and that justly, the most insupportable burden of envy. Yea more: if this bishopric had fallen to me by lot, as that fell upon Matthias, or had been cast or forced upon me, as bishoprics were once wont to be upon good men in the time of the Church’s innocence, I might better bear and brook it — yea, it would diminish all the envy. But my conscience tells me — yea, and others also can too well witness (for ambition is not hid in a corner) — how eagerly, how ambitiously,

how unbecoming the gravity and modesty of a priest — yea, the candor of any honest man — by cap and knee, by soothing and flattery, by frequent visiting and long attendance at court, when I should have been at my sheepfold, have I at length attained to this reverend dignity. Nay more: though the world perhaps does not know it (as yet), my conscience fails not to charge me — what a sum of money I have paid and am yet to pay for it (which my kindred and friends may one day rue, if the lease of my momentary borrowed life be not all the longer) besides the fair and goodly livings I have parted with into the bargain. Yet if this were all, it would be more tolerable. But alas, here is an oath — a direful, a dreadful oath (alas!) — which I must take. I must; there is no evasion, no redemption, no avoiding it. I can no more escape it than a dead man his winding-sheet, and taking it upon me, it will be worse than Deianira’s enchanted shirt, sitting close to my conscience and tormenting it with the fire of hell. This will be worse to me than the riding of the cannon, for it will shake and shatter my soul and conscience all to pieces. How then should I take this fearful oath, and so sin against God, the Judge; sin against this sacred assembly, the grand jury passing upon me; sin against the Church; against my profession, which is sacred; against the dignity of a bishop, which is venerable; and lastly against my own soul, the subject of all this sin and the object of all those inevitable judgments of that just God hanging over my head? And what shall it advantage me to win a bishopric and lose my own soul? What advantage? Nay, what disadvantage will it bring to me? For what joy or enjoyment can I have in my bishopric, when my conscience shall be still dogging me at the heels — yea, biting me at the heart — and upbraiding me with simony and perjury? What honor shall the title of lord be to me, when my simony and perjury (too manifest to the world) shall make me a table-talk, a byword, a scornful parable in every man’s mouth, a contemptible object in every man’s eyes? The rochet, being an emblem of the pure linen righteousness and innocence of saints, so often as I shall put it on, what does it but put me in mind to apply that saying to myself — being one of those false apostles who transform myself

into the Apostle of Christ, as Satan is transformed into an Angel of Light? And what benefit shall my bishopric be to me, being so dearly bought, that I must lay the burden of my simony upon my poor clergy, rack my rents, sell my presentations, keep a miserable house, and all, and more than all these, to patch up a poor bargain, and to heap more burdens upon my conscience, enduring more already than I am able to bear? Would it not be much better for me rather to forgo the bishopric and all, and to prevent all those matchless mischiefs that depend and attend upon the conditions of accepting it, than by going on to plunge my soul into infinite calamities, and wrap myself in endless and irremediable miseries? For that Oath, that Oath — O that fearful Oath — admitting no evasion, no mental reservation, no equivocation; that Oath, being once taken, becomes a great gulf set forever between my conscience and comfort, between my soul and salvation, between me and bliss. And what can I expect, but that my tongue, for being but an instrument in pronouncing this Oath, shall be tormented in a greater flame than that of poor Dives in hellfire? And then, and there, what shall it profit me to disclaim the name of simony, when I now suffer for it? or to say, I bought the benefit and dignity, not the office of a bishop, when now my false and foolish equivocation is found out? when my conscious agents, and all that confederate crew — the usurer, the scrivener, the solicitor, and the like — shall upbraid and accuse me for being an accessory, yea, a principal occasion of their sin? For had I not been so forward to give, they had not participated with me in my sin, and so not in my punishment; my own conscience never ceasing her hideous and hellish clamors upon me, tormenting me for my desperate perjury, for my deep hypocrisy, for playing the chop-church [a buyer and seller of church livings], which my punishment shall then tell me is either simony, or some other crime worse than it, if worse can be imagined.

Now shall not these considerations move such a man — yea, even a Romish simoniac — to a timely prevention of simoniacal perjury, or of becoming a perjured simoniac? And rather than desperately proceed to take the direful Oath, be content to remain stripped of all his other

promotions, and bidding adieu to bishopric and all, go vow himself to a perpetual monastic life, there to do penance, if only for making such a bold attempt.

CHAP. VIII.

Of the six evasions of the simoniac, whereby he thinks to elude the Oath.

But there is a new-found Well, which may well be called after that ancient river Orcus [the underworld] (yet far unlike that ancient Beersheba) — the Well of that Oath between Abraham and Abimelech — having six porches; which at a certain time, being stirred by an Angel called Legion, whatever diseased ecclesiastical person steps in first, and in place of washing, takes a draught of this Well (it springing from the river Styx, by which, as the poets feign, the gods drinking thereof were wont to swear), he passes forth at any of these ports or porches a whole and sound man. The moral is this: this Orcus is the Oath of Simony; the Angel called Legion is easily known by his name, what metal he is of; he that first steps in upon the Angel’s motion is the corrupt and diseased simoniac; this sick and ill-affected person taking a draught of this black Stygian water — the Oath of Simony — passes out at six porches, by six evasions of his own invention, perfectly cured (as he conceives) of two most desperate diseases: simony and perjury, and all other symptoms of the same. Now all these six porches tend to make a clear passage for one word in the Simoniacal Oath, wherein consists the whole power of the Oath.

First, therefore, they plead not guilty of simony, and so consequently not of perjury, because they buy only the temporalities [the secular revenues of the see]. This I touched before; but now I retort it upon themselves. They buy the temporal benefit — therefore it is simoniacal. For even Simon had a respect that way:

way: Mercari vult, quod pluris revendat — “He would buy, to sell the dearer,” says Erasmus. So Augustine: Emere volebat, quod vendere disponebat — “He wished to buy what he intended to sell.” Calvin also confesses the same temporal regard to be simoniacal. For to imitate Simon in any such respect is sufficient to prove the act simoniacal.

Secondly, not simoniacal (say they) because they bargain not with the patron. Why? No more did Simon: for Peter was not the patron of the Holy Ghost, but God; Peter prayed, and God gave. But this shift is all one, as if the buyer should deny that he bought a merchant’s wares, because he dealt only with his factor, and therefore no lawful bargain. Your solicitor in your name and stead procures it of the patron; you pay your money to your solicitor. And will you swear your purchase had no relation to your patron? Though I could cut off all your arguments at one blow with Phocion’s axe — to wit, “Directly or Indirectly.”

Thirdly, not simoniacal (say they) because what they gave was but in respect of their solicitors’ pains employed therein. But is not his labor valued according to the preferment, as it is more or less worth? As clients fee their lawyers according to the value of their suit in hand — if so, is it not simoniacal? But attendants must live, either by their service or by suits. So it has been the custom of the Court of Rome, that simony should go under the name of a subsidiary or alms-pension, either for the Pope’s courtiers or coffers; but far be it from the Court of England. What befell Gehazi? Call simony a gratuity, or by whatever plausible name you will, yet it alters not its nature — no more than the calling and ranking Father Garnet among the saints and martyrs of the Church of Rome will alter him from a traitor, or the painting of him among the saints in heaven free him from the fire of hell. And does not such a gratuity or alms reflect upon the patron as an implicit compact of simony, when the patron in turn pleasures his servant and your solicitor with the collation

of such a living, by means whereof he holds his servant well paid and recompensed for his service?

Fourthly, not simoniacal: for the preferment came not by purchase, but by wager, as it were casually, or by buying a horse, to pay for him so much on the day of marriage. But who does not see this horse to interfere between “Directly” and “Indirectly”? Who does not see that this merchant laid purposely to lose? But enough of such horse-play.

Fifthly, not simoniacal, since he had the favor to obtain under an implicit faith, without explicit or express conditions — to save his oath and honesty; quippe qui non adeo sit plumbei tardique cerebri, ut foro uti nesciat [for he is not of so leaden and slow a wit as not to know how to work the courts], and as we say, “Do reason.” Verbum enim sapienti [a word to the wise]. O, for a Phocion, refusing Alexander’s presents (though sent him because he was an honest man) and saying, εἰάσατω με τοῦτον — “Let him suffer me to be an honest man still.” Pauper Fabricius quartam a Pyrrho regni partem sibi oblatam recusavit, ne fidem suam Romanam temeraret — “Poor Fabricius refused the fourth part of Pyrrhus’s kingdom offered him, lest he should dishonor his Roman fidelity.” But this Roman fidelity was in diebus illis [those days], when Rome was heathen. And Damianus says, Simoniaci sunt, non solum qui paciscuntur, sed etiam qui pecuniam non pactam postulant: more Gibezi — “Simoniacs are they, not only who bargain, but also who require money not of compact, after the manner of Gehazi.” For the condition, be it implicit or explicit, simoniacal it is, directly or indirectly. Yea, this is met with in the conclusion of the Oath, which forbids one to perform any contract made by another, though without your knowledge — how much more should a man renounce all purpose to perform an implicit contract or condition, which his own heart is conscious of and privy to?

Sixthly, not simoniacal, because this was obtained before it fell, as it were in the nature of an advowson, by promise — which differs from an advowson only as a word of mouth differs from writing. And an advowson is no simony. For answer: first, promise and advowson in common estimate and practice differ much; for promise is ex-

expressly excepted against in the Oath; otherwise, what need would there be for any simony, when a promise might prevent it? As for advowsons, I refer that to a more proper place; yet I will say by way of anticipation that if buying an advowson (it passing under hand and seal) is no simony, what reason is there why a contract made only by word of mouth should be accounted simoniacal? Thus we have hunted the simoniac out of his six meshes; and if he has or finds any more, we will set for him Directly or Indirectly, which will be sure to catch this fox and all his cubs.

CHAP. IX.

Of the kinds of simoniacs in general.

We have seen what a simoniac is; now let us see who they are, and how many sorts there be. It was a wicked and impious decree of Pope Hildebrand, Gregory the Seventh, to draw all kings and princes and laypeople into the rank of simoniacs, merely for presenting to bishoprics and benefices, though they did it most freely and honestly. But the main drift of this grand founder of Antichristian usurpation over Christian princes was both to enrich his coffers and to fortify his papal see, by obliging the whole prelacy and clergy to his pontifical chair. But all simoniacs are either buyers or sellers. The common report indeed runs only upon the buyers, as if they alone were the simoniacs; but if the buyer is one, the seller must needs be another, by the law of relatives. Of sellers, Esau is reckoned the first, who sold his birthright, and with it the priesthood. For the birthright had annexed to it dominion, a double portion, and the priesthood. So that by selling his birthright — and with it the priesthood, that most sacred prerogative — he is justly called profane Esau.

Objection. Some may here object that reciprocally Jacob also, in buying the birthright, committed simony. But Lyra answers well: not so; for the birthright belonging to Jacob by God’s own appointment and donation (Genesis 25:23), Esau having forfeited his right to it by selling it committed simony, whereas Jacob, by buying what was already his own by the best title, intended non emere rem sacram, sed redimere vexationem suam [not to buy a sacred thing, but to buy his own peace].

Objection. If Jacob in so buying committed no simony because he bought but his own, then why may not a minister buy and yet commit no simony, since tithes appertain to the minister as fully as the birthright did to Jacob, both by God’s donation? But the cases are not alike. For although tithes are by God’s own entitling tied and entailed to his ministry, yet this or that minister has no title to this or that tithe until he is lawfully possessed and invested in them. And when he is so, if he meets with a crafty or cruel patron — a profane Esau — who either fraudulently usurps or forcibly withholds any part of the tithes, then he may lawfully and commendably imitate Jacob’s wise example: non emere rem sacram, iam suam, sed redimere vexationem suam [not to buy a sacred thing that is already his, but to buy his own peace]. Yet if there were any such well-minded Jacobs, God’s ministers, who could and would redeem church goods to their true heir, they would draw upon themselves a blessing, and not a curse. Although I confess the Council of Mainz says: Decimas, quas populus dare non vult, nisi quolibet munere ab eo redimantur, ab Episcopis prohibendum est, ne fiat [Those tithes which the people — or any patron — will not pay unless they are redeemed by some reward, the bishops ought to forbid such dealing].

But some say it is not lawful for a man to redeem his spiritual right, because it is simony. But I think few will be so eager to redeem it as to need the bishop’s prohibition. Or if they were, the mischief is that the market is so raised that a mess of broth will not serve the turn to satisfy hungry Esau. It is a pot not of red broth but of precious

red earth, which all Edomites hunger after so greatly. Auri sacra fames! [Accursed hunger for gold!] There was indeed a time once when our great Jacob [King James I] made a noble and gracious offer to the Church, to have redeemed her patrimony at easy and honorable conditions, if she would — which would have been a most happy purchase.

Another simoniacal seller was Gehazi, by some taken for the first simoniac in the Old Testament. Gehezi primo in veteri Testamento Simoniam invenit [Gehazi was the first to devise simony in the Old Testament]. Hence all such sellers were accustomed to be called Gehazites, as buyers were called simoniacs. But Simon has obtained to bear the bell, and carries the name away for both; since the money so given and taken becomes sin-money, bearing the image and superscription of Simon. Sin cleaves as closely between these two — the buyer and the seller — as a nail between the joints of stones. And as Chrysostom says: Qui emit & vendit, sine periurio esse non potest [He that buys and sells cannot be without perjury]. Which might well be applied indifferently to both the merchant and the chapman in simony, if they both indifferently took the oath. Therefore our Lord whipped all out of the Temple, sellers as well as buyers; which Gregory, applying to simony, says: Columbas vendere, est de Spiritu Sancto commodum temporale percipere [To sell doves is to reap a temporal benefit from the Holy Ghost]. Sellers therefore are as deep in simony as buyers.

It is the common error of many patrons to account the benefices within their presentative power as their goods and chattels, as a part and parcel of their patrimony — whether devolved upon them by inheritance or purchased with their money — whereupon they resolve that, being their own, they may do with them as they please: Vendere sure potest, emerat ille prius [He may surely sell what he himself first bought]. Hence it is that so many hunt after the purchase of patronages, as being in their estimation none of the worst markets. But herein such men miserably misjudge the matter — at least if all is true that the canonists and schoolmen, yea and the ancient fathers, have delivered touching these

things. For Aquinas says that the right of patronage cannot be sold, nor given in fee, but passes with the village when it is sold or conveyed. Gratian gives the reason: because the right of patronage is neither simply temporal nor spiritual. A layman may have it — that is, the ius patronatus — and leave it to his heirs; yet not temporal, because it cannot be sold. Saint Jerome, writing to Damasus on a point bordering upon our present purpose, says: Quia Beatitudo tua quaesivit, utrum usus Decimarum & oblationum secularibus provenire possit: novit vestra sanctitas omnino non licere: Protestantibus hoc Divinis Authoritatibus Paternorum Canonum [Because your Blessedness inquired whether the use of tithes and oblations might be derived to laymen: your Holiness may know it is altogether unlawful, the divine authorities of the ancient councils attesting the same]. Gratian adds the reason: Non licere: Hoc est certum, quod Ius Decimarum Laicus possidere non potest, cum sit Spirituale [It is unlawful: this is certain, that a layman may not possess the right of tithes, seeing it is spiritual] — distinguishing between the right of the patronage and the right of the personage. And for this cause, de sola gratia [of favor alone], not of mere lay-right or claim, the ius patronatus, or right of patronage, was conferred upon the lay founders, endowers, or builders; according to that verse:

Patronum faciunt Dos, Aedificatio, Fundus. [A patron is made by endowment, construction, and land.]

Gratian says moreover: Sunt autem tria, &c. [There are three things] which the patron attains — Honor, Charge, and Profit: honor in presenting; charge or burden in defending the church from dilapidations; profit, because if he falls into poverty the church shall provide for him, and in a more ample manner and measure than for other poor.

As also the Fourth Council of Toledo, canon 37, has so provided. Further, the Ninth Council of Toledo decreed: Ut quamdiu, &c. [That so long as the founders of churches (as the patrons) shall live, they should have a solicitous care of those places], so that rectores idoneos in eisdem basilicis iidem ipsi episcopo efferant ordinandos [they themselves present fit rectors to the bishop for ordination in those same churches].

therefore let them present fit rectors or parsons to the bishop for those churches. Patrons, then, having a power conferred on them by the Church to present and commend a person — not simply to bestow and collate the benefice, this being a distinct thing from the right of presentation; indeed, though presentation is sometimes called a collation, yet this collation is not a donation, because donation is an act of free liberality without compulsion, whereas collation is joined with compulsion, in that the collator must present within six months or else his power is lost — patrons therefore have no power to sell that which, strictly speaking, they have no power to give. Hereupon Aquinas says: any act is naturally evil when it falls upon an unsuitable subject. Now a spiritual thing, he says, is an unsuitable subject for buying and selling, and for three reasons. First, because a spiritual thing cannot be made equal to or equivalent with any earthly price: “Your money perish with you, because you thought the gift of God could be obtained with money” (Acts 8:20), as was said to Simon. Second, because that cannot be a proper matter for sale over which the seller is not master or owner; for a prelate of the Church is not lord of spiritual things, but only a steward and dispenser: 2 Corinthians 4. Third, because selling is contrary to the original nature of spiritual things, which proceed from the free and pure gift of God: “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). Talia ergo emere vel vendere est peccatum irreligiositatis: therefore to buy or sell such things is a sin of irreligion. So he. Whereupon Zanchi [Hieronymus Zanchius] adds: His rationibus Luce claris efficitur, Simoniam admitti non posse, sine maxima in spiritum Sanctum, ejusque dona, adeoque, in res omnes spirituales iniuria, & irreuerentia; eoque, Simoniam ad ἀσεβείαν pertinere: By these reasons, he says, it is made clearer than daylight that simony cannot be committed without the greatest injury and irreverence toward the Holy Spirit and his gifts, and therefore toward all spiritual things — and thus that simony belongs to the category of impiety. So devout Bernard writes to Pope Eugenius concerning the placement of priests in benefices: Sunt quædam, etc. There are some things which either the importunity of petitioners extorts, or necessity necessarily demands

of us; but these must be things that are our own. But where it is not lawful for me to do as I would, what place is left for the petitioner? — unless perhaps the petitioner would entreat this of me: that what he himself desires, it may be lawful for me to be all the more willing not to do. Espencaeus [César Espence] says: Sunt adulatores potius, quam Doctores, qui, etc. They are flatterers rather than teachers who teach that the Pope is lord of all benefices — and therefore, since as lord he sells by right what is his own, it necessarily follows that simony cannot be imputed to him. As though the Holy Spirit with his gifts were also his own! Were they not equally Peter’s [i.e., possessed by Peter]? Yet had he sold them, he would have been a simoniac. Sed nemo potest retinere, quod vendidit; ut Judas Christum: But no one can retain what he has sold — as Judas, by selling Christ, lost Christ. Gregory Nazianzen; Gratian. We will conclude this point with the words of Saint Ambrose: Sunt quidem Decimæ Depositum seruorum Dei in Ecclesia seruatæ: Tithes are kept in the Church as a deposit held in trust for God’s servants. Now for a man to take it upon himself to dispose of that for his own benefit which has been committed to him as a pledge in trust, to be delivered to the true owner when required — what this amounts to, let any reasonable person judge.

In the canon law, all advowsons, being contained under ius patronatus [the right of patronage], were forbidden to be bought and sold; as Gregory says (Decret. lib. 3, De Iure Patronatus, tit. 38, cap. 6), calling advowsons Adnocatias, ius patronatus, advocationes, vice-dominatum, custodias, or guardias: Quia Clerici quidam Adnocatias Ecclesiarum comparant, vel quocunque modo possunt, acquirunt, ut postmodum eorum filii, vel nepotes, ad easdem Ecclesias præsententur, præcipimus ut id arctius inhibeatur; eosdem advocationibus taliter acquisitis, appellatione postposita, spoliando: Because certain clergy purchase church advowsons [adnocatias], or acquire them by whatever means they can, so that afterwards their sons or grandsons may be presented to those same churches, we command that this be more strictly prohibited, stripping them of advowsons so acquired, with no right of appeal. So the canon law forbids the trafficking of advowsons.

Now let us see in brief upon what reasoning the conclusions delivered by the canonists, the schoolmen, and learned divines on this point are grounded:

The right of patronage, they say, may not be sold. Why? Not only in regard of the nature and condition of such dedicated things, which are spiritual and therefore an improper subject for sale, but also in regard of the necessary effects and inconveniences that must inevitably follow from such a sale. For grant that it is lawful to sell a patronage: it then follows that it will be equally lawful to sell a presentation, and then an advowson. And then I would fain know why it should not be equally lawful to sell the benefice when it falls vacant. But because men raise little question about the lawfulness of selling, either during a vacancy or still less before it, let us consider the lawfulness or unlawfulness of buying. To buy an advowson passes current as lawful; and yet to buy the vacancy [i.e., to purchase the right to fill a benefice while it is vacant] is judged simony both by our statute laws and by the canons of the Church. Well, I thus reason and conclude: if it is simoniacal to buy a benefice when it is vacant, why should it not be equally simoniacal to buy the advowson? and so with the presentation? and so with the patronage? Or if it is lawful to buy the advowson, why should it not be equally lawful to buy the benefice outright? Indeed, of the two, I should think it rather more lawful to buy during the vacancy than before it. For it seems an injurious thing — as much as to take over another man’s lease — to take another man’s living over his head; and it is unlawful to contract for another man’s wife before her husband is dead. But there is an infallible rule: Quod est secundum se malum ex genere, nullo modo potest esse bonum et licitum. This is Aquinas’s dictum, which he applies to disprove the lawfulness of lying for any end: that which is evil in its own nature and kind can by no means be good and lawful; or, that which is substantially evil cannot be made good by any circumstance. To buy things of a spiritual nature is naturally evil, as was said before: any act is naturally evil when it falls upon an unsuitable subject. If therefore it is evil to buy a benefice in the vacancy, then it is evil to buy the same whether in the advowson, or in the presentation, or in the patronage. And if it is evil

to buy, then by the law of correlation it is evil to sell in all these respects. And if the buyer is simoniacal, the seller must be so too. Again, as it is unlawful to buy and sell in this way in regard to the nature of such things as being spiritual, so also in regard of the common effects and fruits of such trafficking. For tell me: when you buy an advowson or patronage of an ecclesiastical living, to what end? To bestow it freely and faithfully upon some worthy and able minister, for the good of God’s Church, without any temporal consideration? It were to be wished that this were your purpose. But do you not intend to profit by such a bargain — either by placing some of your own kin, or by selling it during the vacancy to whoever will be your best customer? Is this not the general practice? Nor do I hereby condemn our law for allowing such things as advowsons and patronages to be bought and sold, seeing it also disallows simoniacal dealings, or those conducted by [self-interested] considerations — which being removed, either few or none would deal in such merchandise, or else they would not so justly incur the censure of simony as so commonly they do.

Yet here I draw a distinction between the purchase of an advowson and of the entire patronage. And again, I draw a distinction between the purchase of a patronage by a private individual and by a college at the university. For the purchase of a single advowson does too commonly aim at some temporal or carnal respect or advantage; whereas some may perhaps purchase a perpetual patronage to leave it as an honor to his house and posterity, while he and his heirs, according to his intention and will, become instruments of God’s glory in the judicious and generous bestowing of the benefice freely and without condition at every vacancy. But this being very rare, although I neither deny nor begrudge the right of patronage residing in private persons, so it be rightly used — yet I confess I could wish (for the avoiding of that general corruption and abuse in the collation of benefices) that the colleges of each university were possessed of as many patronages in this land as possibly

possibly they could procure or purchase, redeeming them out of many hucksters’ hands — which would be an excellent means to increase learned divines, to repress simoniacal pedants, to refresh the colleges by continual interchange of students, to provide for many able men to be exercised in the Church, whose gifts, for want of such means, often lie buried in a college life. Yet I do not deny that corruption may sometimes creep in at the college gates; but the strict laws of colleges, well executed, may, like a careful porter, either whip it out or keep it out. This would be (in my opinion) the likeliest way to prevent simony and to provide a good ministry. And some colleges (I know) are careful in this regard, both in Cambridge and Oxford, whose example I could wish all the rest would be as careful to follow. But enough of purchasing.

Chapter X.

Of the sundry ways and wiles of committing simony.

As all simoniacs are either buyers or sellers: so, from these we may observe the sundry sorts of simoniacal contracts. For simony has grown such a trade, in which so many great merchants traffic, that it may claim as good a charter for a hall to make it a corporation or society in the Church as the Worshipful Company of Cutpurses is said to usurp in the City. Many, well advanced in the trade, openly professing that were it not for the oath, they hold it as lawful to buy a benefice as a horse in Smithfield. But let us see this pedlar’s pack opened.

The most beaten highway of simoniacs is by silver cross — money, or money’s worth, at two or three years’ purchase, or by reservation of some tithes, whether by express contract, or by long concealment, or by strong hand. Whereupon Aquinas says: Si Patronus, etc. If the patron requires

of him on whom he confers the benefice any of the fruits thereof, it is the same as if he exacted some bribe; and this is simoniacal. Sometimes he deals by his factor, or gives such a benefice to his servant as a reward and salary for his service, to make the best market of it. To this purpose the said author says: Si aliquis, etc. If any person gives an ecclesiastical benefice to someone with the condition or intention that thereby he may provide for his kindred, it is manifest simony — as for a patron to bestow his benefice upon his kinsman for kinship’s sake is simony. Nam potest, etc. For there may be simony in the intention, if not the worthiness of the person but human favor be respected; says Aquinas. So many parents buy a presentation or advowson, that in time to come it may fall to be a portion for one of their children, whether he prove fit or unfit, good or bad, scholar or man, at all adventure. Quanquam, etc. Though according to the decrees of ancient canons, children who through the covetousness of their parents have obtained churches by money are bound to relinquish them again — yea, and to lose their money too. Pecunia tua, etc. Your money perish with you; as Aquinas also says: Simoniacus nullum ius habet, pecuniam suam turpiter collatam iniuste detentam, repetendi: A simoniac has no right to plead the restitution of his money corruptly disbursed and unjustly detained.

Some other pedant will needs ride at a gallop to the devil, by buying a horse from the patron, and so he will come as freely by the benefice as he who was invited at free cost to a fat goose, paying only for the sauce. Others, vili obsequio aut corporali servitio simoniam perpetrant — commit simony by base service or bodily attendance, which is not the cheapest rate. Manifestum est autem, quod obsequium hominis ad aliquam utilitatem ordinatur qua potest precio pecunia estimari — It is manifest that the service of a man is directed toward some benefit that can be valued at a money price. Ecclesiastical doctors set out three kinds of simony: first, manuum [of the hand]; secondly, obsequii [of service]; thirdly, linguae [of the tongue] — that of the hand they account inferior to the other two. Damianus says: Oportet Pontificem esse boni operis sectatorem. Nam bonum opus desiderat. Excute manus ab omni dono. At nunc excutit, sed implicasse convincitur, qui nanciscende dignitatis ambitu; Potestatum sublimium castra sectant. Nam dum — A bishop ought to be a follower of good works. For good works he desires. Shake your hands free of every gift. But now he shakes them free, yet is proved to have been entangled, when in pursuit of dignity to be obtained he haunts the courts of the highest powers. For while

while no small sum is lavished on the acquisition of carriages, the furnishing of lodgings, and various other expenses, this man is without doubt found liable to have given money. And there is likewise no doubt that he renders service to the one at whose court he sweats under such a heavy burden of toil and travel. Finally, while he strives to flatter his lord and conform to his will in all things, he often panders to him with certain fawning favors. Moreover, whoever, in the giving or receiving of ecclesiastical dignities, is corrupted by even one only of the plagues aforesaid — namely, of hand, of service, or of tongue — is adjudged guilty of the crime of the simoniacal heresy. Yet they boast and glory that they are innocent, because they have covenanted to pay no sum of talent for the assumption of honors. But tell me, O cleric, whoever you are: if, having redeemed any golden vessel or estate, the dealer required that, in lieu of its price retained by you, you should render him a return of such diligence, would you not afterward steadfastly assert that you had obtained what was received at a just price? Not because you paid money, but because you rendered service. For you would say — and perhaps not too shamelessly — that you bought it more dearly when you wearied yourself with such great labor, when you so often expended the resources of your means, than if you had once counted out money of a fixed amount. By no means, therefore, should they promise themselves innocence, or be confident they are clean from the stains of simoniacal heresy, who, though they do not weigh out gleaming metal, yet pay a price for the assumption of honors through a kind of talent of subjection and service. And in his third epistle of the same book he adduces a strange example of a curial bishop of Bologna, who, having obtained much preferment by his courtly obsequiousness, straightway fell dumb and for seven years’ space — so long as he lived — continued a paralytic and speechless. A fearful example, yet nowadays not found so rare, especially in Transmarine courts such as the Court of Rome, where preferments and prelacies purchased by obsequiousness, or otherwise by indirect means, deprive the parties promoted of the right use of their tongue in the prime execution of their episcopal function.

But far be it from anyone to reproach worthy scholars and preachers

preachers, entertained as chaplains in honorable houses — which place, together with any ensuing preferment, their own modesty and good merits rather found than sought, rather accepted than sued for; they being humble passives rather than ambitious actives in their preferment. Si quis directe habeat animum ad Beneficium, cum servit, est Simoniacus — If anyone, while serving, has his mind set directly upon the benefice, he is a simoniac.

But all ambitious soliciting is judged and condemned as simoniacal by the ancient learned divines. Devout Bernard gives this advice to Eugenius: Pro quo rogaris, sit suspectus; qui ipse rogat pro se, iam indicatus est. Clericum curiam frequentantem, qui non sit de Curia, ad idem noris pertinere ambientium genus. Adulantem et ad placitum cuiusque loquentem, unum de rogantibus puta, etiamsi nihil rogaverit. Non volentes, neque currentes assumito, sed cunctantes et renuentes. Isti sunt tui socii et collaterales. Ne te dixeris sanum, dolentem latera; ne te dixeris bonum, malis innitentem — Let the man on whose behalf you are petitioned be held suspect; he who himself petitions on his own behalf is already judged. A cleric who haunts the court, not being of the court, you should know belongs to the same class of the ambitious. One who flatters and speaks to please everyone, reckon as one of the petitioners, even if he has petitioned for nothing. Take up those who are unwilling and do not run forward, but those who hesitate and refuse. These are your companions and associates. Do not call yourself well when your sides ache; do not call yourself good when you lean upon evils. Gregory thus: Sicut is qui invitatus renuit, quesitus refugit, sacris est altaribus admouendus: sic qui ultro ambit, vel importune se ingerit, est procul dubio repellendus, etc. — Just as he who when invited refuses, when sought out withdraws, is to be brought to the holy altars: so he who courts office of his own accord, or thrusts himself in importunately, is without doubt to be repelled. Nemo sibi honorem sumit, etc. — By this judgment are struck those who desire to seize ecclesiastical honors to which they are not divinely called. For he who thrusts himself forward and seeks his own glory does not receive honor when made a prelate: but making a robbery of the grace of God, he usurps another’s right. And therefore he does not receive a blessing but a curse. But he who is rightly and canonically called is called by God. Korah wished to take honor upon himself, and therefore he feels the divine sentence. I conclude this with that of Chrysostom:

What does it matter if you give no outright money, but instead flatter, suborn, and make a stir? “Your money perish with you” was said to Simon; and to these it shall be said, “Your ambition perish with you, because you have thought the gift of God may be obtained by man’s ambition.” It was one of the heavy curses upon Eli’s posterity that they should crouch and say, “Put me, I pray, into one of the priests’ offices, that I may eat a piece of bread.” 1 Samuel 2:36.

Some commit simony by selling their faith and religion for preferment, when with discontent they fly out beyond

beyond the seas, expecting to be lured home again with some high preferment. Of such persons Cyprian speaks copiously and very aptly in his seventy-second Epistle, where he advises that after their return from their heresies they should not at once be admitted to places of preferment in the Church, but should first be proved by long humiliation. He gives the reason: because they often prove dangerous, since they cannot easily cast up the poison of heresy which they have once drunk in; so that they should be content only to be pardoned and received into the peace of the Church, and so remain until they have given sufficient trial and testimony of their sound repentance and reformation. The Council of Elvira, canon 22, says of such persons: Placuit huic pænitentiam non esse denegandam, eo quod cognouerit peccatum suum, qui etiam decem annis agat pænitentiam: nisi Infantes fuissent transducti — We are pleased not to deny penance to such a one, since he has acknowledged his sin; let him also do ten years’ penance — unless they had been carried away in their infancy. (Though such are most incurable, as the poet says: Quo semel est imbuta recens seruabit odorem Testa diu — the vessel will long retain the scent with which it was once freshly soaked. When they cum lacte nutricis errorem surgere — suck error from the nurse’s milk — it sticks with them. As we see the Jesuitical milk does, whereby men coming to some growth find their nursery has become a second nature.) Otherwise, as Boniface said well, Nullum precio est inuitandus ad conuersionem — none is to be invited to conversion by a reward. For, as Seneca says, Precio parata, soluitur pretio fides — faith that is purchased is easily sold again.

Others are said to commit simony when by mutual stipulation or covenant they make an exchange of benefices or prebends, arranging their transaction according to the value of the things. And if this is simony — as the ancients have defined it to be — it were to be wished that the exchange, at the very least, were free from stipulation, and that the main end of such permutations aimed principally at the common good of the Church. Indeed, I have heard of a strange kind of simony in fashion beyond the seas, which they call sacrum aucupium — in English, sermon-simony. When

when the fratres prædicantes [preaching friars], being about to make a purchase, have in readiness some exquisite masterpiece, the merit of which, claiming no mean advancement, serves only to cover and color over — or, as a purse, to carry and convey more closely — the set price of the preferment; or at least to take away the smell of simony, so that the patron may be as free from suspicion of simony as the adulterous woman who, when she has wiped her lips, says, “I have not committed iniquity.” So says the patron: “I have bestowed it upon a worthy and rare preacher” — so rare, that it is thought he spent more sweat on that one sermon in the getting of it than he ever means to spend again in all the sermons he makes while he keeps his preferment. Now, what should move this preaching friar thus to color and gild over his simony with such a sacred gold is hard to say, unless some false gloss upon the Proverbs has made him believe that such preaching to such ends is to speak a word in season, which is, “Like apples of gold in pictures of silver,” as Solomon says. But the gloss is ill turned into a glose. The Apostle forbids such merchandising of the Word for filthy lucre’s sake. [2 Corinthians 2:17; 1 Peter 5:2.]

What should I speak of that more than common custom of matrimonial simony, no less odious than the rest, when a benefice or other ecclesiastical dignity must become the portion of some daughter or kinswoman — or at the least, an honest woman? And so if that gloss be true, that a bishop must be the husband of one wife — that is, of one benefice (as the Roman Church expounds it, not out of any zeal they bear toward singularity of benefices, but out of the hatred they have against the universality of priests’ marriages) — then it may also be equally true that a man making such a match for a benefice should be marrying two wives at once.

I have also heard of another base kind of simony in practice: that the patron admits his incumbent only under a strong obligation or bond, to tie the incumbent to quit the benefice at three months’ warning, whenever the

the patron shall require, or hold up his finger — as masters are accustomed to give their servants a quarter’s warning when they are weary of them. By this device the patron holds the incumbent in a miserable servitude, as his tenant at will; while in the meantime the patron may lord it as he pleases without restraint, for the incumbent is bound not to reprove anything his good master does or says, but must say amen to everything — or else farewell to everything. The patron has also another motive in this: that, lacking for the present a good buyer, he puts in his bondman to gain time and a better thing, until he is provided to his liking.

All non-preaching ministers who possess any good benefice are, by strong presumption, deep simoniacs. For let them tell me for what qualities or good gifts they were so preferred — unless it be that they and all their good gifts shook hands and parted the very moment they and their fat benefice met.

Some commit simony by mental reservation, when both the patron expects to receive and the presentee purposes to give some gratuity afterward, without any express promise or prior contract, relying only on trust — so that he may save his oath. This is a mock-simony and a mock-oath. For is this not Gehazi’s sin? Of which the Gloss says: Hoc exemplum est argumentum contra eos, qui non exigunt, seu accipiunt, ante Collationem Beneficii — this example is an argument against those who neither exact nor receive before the collation of a benefice. Gehazi asked but a gratuity after the healing — or call it his fee, for servants must live. But he had his gratuity with a vengeance: “Is this a time to receive silver and gold? The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall cleave to you, and to your seed forever.” Away with such gratuity. Indeed, if a benefice were a temporal benefit, it might call for a temporal recompense; but being of a spiritual nature, what gratuity or thankfulness should the patron expect, or the incumbent perform, but a painful and faithful discharge of that cure of souls committed to his trust? This is to give spiritual thanks for a spiritual gift. As Gratian says: Semper premium aliquid debet interuenire, spirituale scilicet meritum hominis — there ought always to intervene some

some gift to intervene — namely, a man’s spiritual merit. Such is the spiritual gift the Apostle longed to bestow upon his Romans (Romans 1:11). But as for any other gift, the very expectation of it is in danger of simony. I have heard of temporal men who have refused after-gifts from their servants whom they had freely preferred to some temporal office, taking the very offer very indignantly. How much more, then, should this purity be preserved in spiritual preferments?

But here some may object.

Objection. But having received a temporal benefit, shall I not — or may I not — in some measure recompense it with some temporal token of thankfulness? I answer that this benefit is not of a temporal nature but of a spiritual one, as we said before. Or, granting that it may be so far temporal as to call for some temporal recompense, yet it must be with certain limitations. Alexander III, writing to the Archbishop of Strigonia [Esztergom] concerning a horse which his brother, without his knowledge, gave to P., the Pope’s legate, for his election after it had been completed — which was nonetheless a scruple in the Archbishop’s conscience — resolves the matter thus: In giving or receiving, three things are to be observed: first, the quality of the persons by whom and to whom it is given, whether poor or rich; second, the quantity of the gift; third, the time of the giving, whether in time of necessity or otherwise. If therefore, he says, we consider the conditions of the aforesaid parties, the Cardinal and your brother, it was no great matter for the one to send the other a horse — which perhaps such a rich man as that would give to a jester without being asked. But if we consider the necessity of the occasion, it appears it was done with no other intention than to supply the Cardinal’s want at that time, when in an unfamiliar place he was without a horse. And inasmuch, he says, as it is written, Beatus qui excutit manus ab omni munere — blessed is he who shakes his hands from every bribe — this is spoken of those gifts which are wont to allure and pervert the mind of the receiver. But such gifts as, without any compact, the elected gives to his patron; or given in such measure that the quantity of them is not of force to incline or move

the will of the Receiver; Non interpretari consuevit Eccl. Ro. accipientem, in his Delinquere, vel donantem [in these matters the Roman Church does not customarily interpret either the receiver or the giver as having offended]. So he. Note here the tenderness of this Archbishop’s conscience: his brother gave but a horse, unknown to him, with no prior compact, and that after the election and in the Cardinal’s need at the time. And yet I do not read that this horse was of any extraordinary price — not worth five hundred or a thousand pounds, as patrons’ horses are estimated elsewhere.

Not very unlike this is a kind of simony not infrequent in the world, yet so refined that it disclaims and disdains all kinship with simony. A man has fairly and incorruptly (at least so far as any monetary transaction is concerned) obtained from the patron a free grant of some ecclesiastical preferment. But after the grant, before it passes the seals, the suitor must run the gauntlet of great difficulty — yes, and danger too — lest through some neglect or delay, some other person get between him and his goal. Like a spider that has entangled a sturdy fly in its subtle net and bestirs its nimble joints to secure the weakest places where there is any danger of escape. But the scholar, being of an ingenuous disposition — one who cannot dance attendance at every door, who blushes to appear an importunate suitor, and that in such places where all scholars, being not in ordinary attendance, are suspected — in order to cut off all impatience of delay and fear of dangers, chooses rather Redimere vexationem suam quàm queat minimo; si nequeat paululo, at quantuli queat [to buy off his trouble as cheaply as he can; if not for a trifle, then for as little as possible]. Say it be so, etc. This case was put to me by a learned man, to know what I thought of it. I told him frankly that for my part I could be content to redeem the credit of a minister’s modesty in such attendance with any reasonable ransom. But to give such a substantial sum — not only to purchase relief from impatience, but to forestall the peril of losing the preferment for want of provident, indeed importunate, pursuit — was in my judgment like the secundine, or afterbirth, of simony. A moderate and modest diligence,

gence and sober vigilance (especially ubi vivitur ex rapto, non hospes ab hospite tutus [where men live by plunder and no guest is safe from his host], etc.) is not disallowed for such dispatch, performed either by himself or, better, by his honest friend or servant. But to come off so roundly — say it be to some courtier — what does it imply but either that the grand patron’s grant is of little validity unless seconded by the favour of some special servant about him (whose favour must be purchased), or that the suitor had a purpose rather to pay than to go without, or at least that some implied condition must be fulfilled? For I would ask this suitor — or rather at this point, this expediter — whether, before the obtaining of the benefice, this sum, whatever it may be (certainly not nothing), was not implied, if not expressed, to be bestowed in this way (so as to shift off the charge of simony): without which, why should not the suitor have fallen just as short of his preferment before the grant, as now, for want of extending his arm with a silver hand that cannot reach the seal, be in danger of being overreached by a longer arm? For so, Multa cadunt inter calicem, supremaque labra [much falls between the cup and the lips].

Another has found a neat way of simony: the patron and he are agreed concerning a vacant benefice that it shall come freely — but with a promise that he shall buy the next presentation, which pays for everything.

I might here speak of many other branches of this accursed tree: as if there should be any buying or selling, bartering and exchanging for college fellowships (wherein simony lays her first foundation and hatches her first egg, for who is fitter to traffic in the Church than one who has begun in a college?) — yes, even trucking for a porter’s or bell-ringer’s place in college or church. For Simoniacum est emere officium ostiarii, seu pulsandi campanam [it is simony to buy a doorkeeper’s or bell-ringer’s office]. But because every branch bearing the same fruit is known to belong to the same tree, it will be as superfluous to speak of more as it would be endless and impossible for an inexperienced simplicity to dive into the mystery

stery of this iniquity and sound all its depths.

As for impropriations, though they were originally major branches of the Levitical stock, and the merchandising of them might accordingly claim kinship with simony — yet because these are slips broken off and transplanted out of the garden and paradise of God, the learned treatise of that godly Scottish knight Sir James Semple, as also that other of Sir Henry Spelman, an English knight, both of the lay tribe, two noble and weighty witnesses, does more justly lay claim to this argument. Only, I would to God that these two worthy treatises were thoroughly studied and conscientiously applied, and printed in the hearts and consciences of all impropriators to their eternal salvation — by being conscientiously persuaded to shake their hands free of such sacred things, restoring them to Christ the only true Proprietor, the wronging of whom in this kind will one day prove fearful sacrilege, whatever men may think of it now.

Chap. XI. Of the highest degree of simony, committed in ordination.

Concerning simony committed in ordination: although perhaps the money given for a simple ordination is but small (unless it be for some egregious dunce, to which, as Solomon says of a dull-edged instrument, a man must apply the more force — and, as it were, the more weight to the lighter scale) — yet of all other kinds of simony, this is the most pernicious and damnable. Indeed, the less a man gives or receives in this respect, it is an argument of the less esteem he makes of so holy and excellent a calling. As the Lord says concerning Judas’s selling of Christ for thirty pieces of silver: “A goodly price at which I was prized by them”

them. Now this is so properly simony that it is the very sin of Simon himself — which is to buy the gifts of the Holy Ghost. A sin so detestable that the Church of Rome itself (though now the mother and nurse of abominations) has cried out against it. For we must draw a great distinction between the present Church of Rome and what it was formerly, even within the last three or four hundred years. In former times, though that Church hatched and fostered many enormities both of doctrine and practice, which crept in by degrees until Antichrist should come to his full stature, yet there was still room for reproof: devout and learned men might speak and write freely of its abuses. But now, within less than the last hundred years since the Council of Trent, this Church has grown to such superciliousness and height of pride that no man may so much as mention the least speck or blemish of that foolish virgin — or rather, filthy whore. Indeed, those who have already in their writings left any record or monuments of Rome’s sin, and in particular of this of simony, it must pass through the fire of their Index Expurgatorius. Take one example among others. Claude Espencaeus, in his commentaries upon the Epistle to Titus, where he touches on the corruptions of the Church of Rome in the matter of simony — there he must be purged. For the purpose: in that impression at Paris by Michael Sonnius in quarto, Pag. 65. Deleatur ab illis verbis, sed annon αἰσχροκερδία, usque ad, Idque, adeo in confesso est [Page 65: delete from the words “but is it not αἰσχροκερδία [shameful greed]” to “and that, indeed, is so openly acknowledged”]. And Pag. 74. Circa medium deleantur illa verba, Adeo Romanam Curiam repurgare sibi non permisit [Page 74: around the middle delete those words, “it has by no means permitted itself to purge the Roman Curia”]. And Pag. 76. Deleatur ab illis verbis, Vivere qui capitis, usque ad, Sacra sunt venalia Romae [Page 76: delete from the words “you who seek to live” to “sacred things are for sale at Rome”]. Et pag. 78. lin. 8. Deleatur ab illis verbis, Et cum alia vendant alij, usque ad, Caelum est venale, Deusque [And page 78, line 8: delete from the words “and while others sell other things” to “heaven is for sale, and God himself”]. Which passages, because they are not obvious to every reader, and that it may appear how their Index cannot so obscure the truth or blear men’s eyes but that the whore’s filthiness will be discovered, I have thought good to set down the aforesaid passages at length — saving

saving where whole pages are expurgated, too long here to be inserted. In the first place, those verses from Mantuan are to be cast out:

Si quid Roma dabit, nugas dabit, accipit aurum,Verba dat, heu Rome nunc sola pecunia regnat.Hoc est Roma viris, avibus quod noctua.

If Rome gives anything, it gives trifles; gold she takes, gives words — at Rome (alas) now money alone rules the market. Rome is to men what the owl is to the birds.

Where also other most beastly matter, such as my author says breeds horror in the very mention — all contained in the Roman Taxa Camera [the official tariff of the Roman Chancery], where all sorts of most horrible sins are dispensed with at such a rate: Presbytericide, or priest-killing; Parricide; Matricide, or the killing of one’s parents, even willingly; also simony, as deserving to be ranked among such sins — all of which, and much more, are not only dispensed with for so much money, but the offenders are made capable of any honor or preferment in the Church. All that rabble must be expurgated from the author; notwithstanding the Taxa Camera remains still in force, and none of all these things reformed — as the author says, which must also be expurgated: Adeo Romanam Curiam repurgare sibi non permisit, etc. — no reformation will be endured. Again, these verses must come out — so famous in many authors:

Vivere qui capitis sancte, discedite Rome:Omnia cum liceat, non licet esse bonum.

All you who would live holy, hence from Rome: where all things else, but goodness, find a room.

And these also, cited by my author, must come out:

Quisquis opes sacras nummo reperire profanoQuerit, eat Romam, sacra sunt venalia Rome.

Whoever seeks sacred wealth with unhallowed gold: let him go to Rome, where sacred things are sold.

And

And this which follows: Et cum alia vendant alij — and whereas others sell other things:

Et cum alia vendant alii,Templa, Sacerdotes, Altaria, Sacra, Corona,Ignes, Thura, Preces, Caelum est venale, Deusque.

We [at Rome] sell temples, priests, altars, sacrifices, crowns, fires, incense, prayers — heaven itself is for sale, and God.

But it is labor in vain for Rome to go about thus to purge from men’s writings the memory of her inbred corruptions — out of which source, whatever simony is now found in any part of the Church has issued. Enough to stigmatize and brand this sin with the greater mark of infamy, if it should be found as well in Judah, where religion is maintained in her integrity, as in that idolatrous, revolted Israel, where that grand Jeroboam of Rome, for base bribes, admits into the priesthood the basest of the people.

I do not love to be a fingernail in this ulcer [i.e., to scratch at the wound]; yet being to speak of this sin as it is committed in the highest degree — to wit, in ordination — leaving it to Ham to divulge his own father’s nakedness, if any such nakedness there be, it shall suffice to do herein as Lycurgus of old: who, to deter the Lacedaemonian lads from that more than beastly vice of drunkenness, caused their drunken slaves to be made a spectacle to them, by whose example they might take the deeper impression of dislike and hatred against that sin. So let us take, though a brief, view of the Church of Rome’s sin in this kind — omitting particular instances and contenting ourselves with generalities, their good laws being occasioned by their evil manners.

Pope Leo says: Gratia si non gratis datur, vel accipitur, gratia non est. Simoniaci autem non gratis accipiunt. Quid ergo dant? Profecto quod habent. Quid habent? Spiritum utique mendacii. Quomodo hoc probamus? Quia si spiritus veritatis (testante ipsa veritate, de qua procedit) gratis accipitur: procul dubio spiritus mendacii esse convincitur; qui non gratis accipitur, vel datur. — If grace (says he, speaking of the grace conferred by imposition of hands in ordination) be not gi-

ven or received freely, it is no grace. But simoniacs do not receive freely. What do they give, then? Surely that which they have. What do they have? Verily the spirit of lies. How do we prove this? Because the Spirit of truth — Truth itself being witness, from whom it proceeds — is received freely; then doubtless it is proved to be the spirit of lies which is not received or given freely. And Gregory, in the same place: Quicunque studet per pretii donationem sacrum ordinem accipere, Sacerdos non est: sed nomen tantummodo dici concupiscit. — Whoever is eager to receive holy orders by the gift of money is no priest, but covets only to be called by an empty title. And a little after: Quisquis per pecuniam ordinatur, ad hoc, ut fiat haereticus, promovetur. — Whoever is ordained by money is thereby promoted to become a heretic. And Pope Gelasius: Quoscunque stiterit, etc. — If it shall appear that any unworthy person has bought the sacred dignity with money, being convicted, let him be deprived. But what if some worthy man buy it with his money? I answer: that cannot be, if he is worthy. But let him be who he will — if he buys, it argues unworthiness.

Also Saint Ambrose is alleged: Reperiuntur quamplurimi, negotiatione muneris mercari velle gratiam Spiritus Sancti, dum illi pretium donant, ut Pontificalis Ordinis sublimitatem accipiant, etc. — There are found many who by the merchandise of money would buy the grace of the Holy Ghost, while they give money to receive the dignity of the pontifical order. Whereupon a fearful anathema is decreed against such as so give or take. Likewise it is cited out of the Council of Chalcedon: Si quis Episcopum per pecuniam Ordinationem fecerit, etc. — If any bishop shall ordain for money, and shall purchase the grace of the Holy Ghost at a price — which indeed cannot be sold — and shall for money ordain a priest or deacon, or shall promote any degree or order within the verge of the clergy for filthy lucre, he that shall attempt this, let him upon conviction be deprived of all. Si quis vero mediator, etc. — And if any shall be a mediator or agent for such foul and nefarious corruption in giving and receiving: if a cleric, let him be degraded; and if a layman, accursed. And out of the eighth Synod [the Fourth Council of Constantinople, 869–870]: Qui per pecuniam, etc. — He who shall

consecrate any for money, or is consecrated by another [for money], let him be cashiered from the priesthood. And many other authorities are there alleged to this purpose. And Ambrose says: Inexpiabilis est culpa venditi Ministerii, et vindicta gratiae caelestis transit in Posteros. — The sin of selling the ministry is unpardonable, and the vengeance of divine grace passes along to posterity, like Gehazi’s leprosy.

But as it is objected, in the same place: Ventum est. Simoniaci, etc. — Simoniacs, though they think the grace of the Holy Ghost is vendible, yet they profess the faith and true religion, and consequently are no heretics. It is answered: Simoniaci, etc. — Simoniacs, although they seem to hold the faith, yet are enthralled to the perdition of infidelity: as Gregory says, Cum omnis avaritia, etc. — Since all avarice is idolatry, whoever does not carefully avoid it — and especially in the bestowal of ecclesiastical dignities — is subject to the perdition of infidelity, though he seems to hold the faith in words, which in deeds he denies. And after: Cum omnis avaritia — Those who ordain for money are accounted more intolerable heretics than the Macedonians [who denied the full divinity of the Holy Spirit], who, denying the deity of the Holy Ghost, grossly affirmed him to be only the servant of the Father and the Son; but these make him to be their own servant. And also worse than those Jews who blasphemed the Holy Ghost by ascribing Christ’s miracles to the power of Beelzebub. And to speak truly: Iudae comparantur Proditori qui Iudaeis occisoribus Christum vendidit — they are compared to Judas the traitor, who sold Christ to the murderous Jews. And therefore, Ex Concilio Bracharensi: Placuit — it seems good to us that for the ordination of clerics, bishops take no rewards, and that the grace of God by imposition of hands be not sold for money, but given freely, as the Lord has commanded. For it is an ancient decree of the fathers: Anathema sit danti et accipienti — Cursed be the giver and the receiver.

Ob. But some object: it was customary in times past to bring the reward of soothsaying to the prophet — as Balak sent to Balaam, and Saul came to Samuel with a gift in his hand. Now prophecy is a gift of the Holy Ghost.

But [the objection is] that in the Old Testament it was customary to sell [such gifts]. Answer: We never read that the good prophets accepted any reward from those who brought it. Elisha flatly refused any share of the riches that Naaman would have presented to him. It was enough for Balaam and such wicked prophets to prophesy for hire, as the Lord complains of them, saying, “The prophets divine for money” — but we do not read that the good prophets received any such rewards. Indeed, far from receiving anything, Samuel feasted Saul and his company. Sed fac eum accepisse — say he did receive something. What was it? The fourth part of a shekel, a matter of twenty halfpennies; so the reward Saul brought to Samuel came to only five halfpennies. Yet even if Samuel did receive this at all, Supes magis sunt estimande tabernaculi, quam munera Prophetae — these are rather to be reckoned as maintenance for the Tabernacle than as rewards for the Prophet. Et hec magis in sumptum Prophetae, quam muneri Prophetiae reputanda sunt: licet potuerunt hi, qui ariolos, &c. — And these are to be counted more as provision for the Prophet’s expenses than as payment for prophecy; although those who were accustomed to go to soothsayers, and so on, might out of an evil habit suppose the prophets would do the same, namely, accept gifts. But Gratian concludes upon that fourth part of a shekel — containing five halfpennies — which Saul brought to Samuel: Nostri ergo Sacerdotes si volunt vendere prophetiam, & columbam in Cathedris suis proponere, quas Dominus flagello subvertit: quinque tantum obolorum sint mercede contenti: qui utinam non pretium villarum, sed quinque obolos acciperent — Therefore our priests (he says), if they will sell the gift of prophecy and set the Dove [that is, the Holy Ghost] for sale in their cathedrals or seats which the Lord overthrew with his whip, let them be content with the reward of five halfpennies only; would that they would not receive the worth of whole villages, but only five halfpennies. In a word, Gregory, speaking against simoniacal ordination reigning in France — our nearest neighbor — and exhorting Theodoric and Theobert, then reigning there, to convene a Synod for the reformation of such simoniacal heresy and corruption, writes: In Sacerdotibus fides sit eligenda, cum vita. Quae autem opera esse valeant Sacerdotis, qui

honorem tanti Sacramenti convincitur obtinere per praemium. Ex qua re agitur, ut ipsi quod, qui sacros Ordines appetunt, non vitam corrigere non mores componere studeant sed divitias, quibus honor sacer emitur, satagant congregare. Hinc fit etiam ut innocentes pauperes a Sacris ordinibus prohibiti, despectique, resiliant. Et dum innocentia displicet, dubium non est, quod praemium illic delicta commendet; quia ubi aurum placet, ibi & vitium. Hinc igitur non solum in Ordinatoris & Ordinati animam letale vulnus infligitur, verum etiam excellentiae vestrae regnum Episcoporum culpa, quorum magis intercessionibus munari debuerat, pregranatur. Si enim dignus is Sacerdotio creditur, cui non actionis merita, sed praemiorum copia suffragatur, restat ut nihil sibi in honores Ecclesiasticos gravitas, nil defendat industria, sed totum auri profanae amor obtineat. Et dum vitia remunerantur honore, hinc Sacerdotes non proficere, sed perire potius indicantur. — Let faith together with a good life be the criterion in choosing priests. But what works can a priest perform who is convicted of obtaining the honor of so great a Sacrament by bribes? By this means it comes to pass that even those who aspire to holy Orders take no care to correct their life or amend their conduct, but labor tooth and nail to amass riches, with which the sacred honor is purchased. And hence it also comes about that innocent and poor men, being excluded and despised, shrink back from holy Orders. And while innocence counts for nothing, there is no doubt that a bribe advances vice in its place, for where gold is welcome, there vice is welcomed too. And thereby not only is a deadly wound inflicted upon the soul of the ordainer and the ordained, but the kingdom of your Excellency is also burdened and oppressed through the fault of bishops, whose intercessions ought rather to have relieved it. For if one is deemed worthy of the priesthood not on the merit of his conduct but on the abundance of his payments, it follows that neither dignity nor diligence can secure any claim to ecclesiastical honors, and that the profane love of gold wins everything. And while vices are rewarded with honor, priests may well be judged not to prosper but to perish. And he concludes with an exhortation to the two kings: Proinde Paterno salutantes affectu petimus excellentissimi Filii, ut hoc tam detestabile malum

de regni vestri studeatis finibus prohibere, & nulla apud vos excusatio, nulla contra animam vestram suggestio locum inveniat: quia facientis proculdubio culpam habet, qui quod potest corrigere, negligit emendare. — Wherefore (he says), greeting you with a fatherly affection, we pray you, most excellent sons, that you endeavor to banish this detestable evil from the borders of your kingdom, and let no excuse or pretext, let no suggestion, find place with you against your own soul; for he is without doubt guilty of the deed itself who, having the power to correct it, neglects to reform it.

Well, to conclude this point: whether this morbus Gallicus [the French disease, i.e., simony] was so purged and banished from the coasts of France that no remnants remain, I cannot say. But if it was, I pray God that, given the closeness of our neighborhood, it has not sailed over — as so many other French fashions have done — and set foot on Albion’s shore to spread the infection there. I trust that the Cinque Ports are so well fortified that they will not suffer such base wares to be entered at the Customs-house and so pass freely on sale here — where religion is purely planted, faith truly professed, the practice of piety so frequently professed, and well-charged Canons [punning on both church canons and cannon artillery] mounted. The Cinque Ports are the five senses, which religion so guards that no such simoniacal corruption can enter at any one of them. Would it enter at the port of sight, the Eye? That has learned to turn away from such vanity, or not to look with delight, or not to be dazzled — much less blinded — by such glittering objects, or to be enamored with the beauty of fair white-and-red earth. Or at the port of touch, the Hand? That has learned — not in superstition, “Touch not,” but in sincerity, “Touch no unclean thing” — yea, though a gift should leap up and fasten itself upon the hand, yet to shake it off into the fire as Paul did the viper, without any hurt or swelling whatsoever. Or at the port of hearing, the Ear? A religious ear does not love male audire [to hear ill things], so as to be charmed by any such silver-sounding music, however complete it may be in time, number, and measure. Or at the port of Smell? It takes

the incense of any such sacrifice with scorn and deep disdain. Or at the port of Taste? It cannot relish such γλυκοπικρά [bittersweets], sweet in the mouth yet bitter in the belly, which the stomach of Conscience can never digest or be done with. As the Apostle said concerning the incest committed by one among the Corinthians, that they had altogether proved themselves clear in that business: so, can any man say that the Church of England is altogether free from this kind of simony? How many may say truthfully what Saul said only in pretense, “I have kept the Lord’s Commandment,” in this point. But some will say, as Samuel said, “What means then the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” There goes a rumor of I know not what. Some false report. How? Simony committed in giving and taking holy Orders? Far be it. In France indeed, our neighboring nation — but the sea lies between us, enough to drown such simony and never suffer it to reach us. When Saint Ambrose spoke of this sin, saying of a simoniacal bishop: Ab Archiepiscopo sum nuper Episcopus ordinatus, centumque ei solidos dedi, ut Episcopalem gratiam consequi meruissem; quos si minime dedissem, hodie Episcopus non essem; unde mihi melius est aurum de saccello subtrahere, quam tantum Sacerdotium perdere; aurum dedi, & Episcopum comparavi; quos tamen solidos si vivo, recepturum me illico non diffido; Ordino Presbyteros, consecro Diaconos, & accipio aurum: nam de aliis nihilominus Ordinibus pecunia quaestum profligare confido, &c. [“I was recently ordained a bishop by the Archbishop, and I gave him a hundred solidi that I might merit to obtain episcopal grace; for had I not given them, I would not be a bishop today; wherefore it is better for me to subtract gold from my purse than to lose so great a priesthood; I gave gold and bought my bishopric; yet if I live, I am confident I will shortly recover those solidi; I ordain priests, I consecrate deacons, and I receive gold; for in the other Orders likewise I am confident of turning a profit from money”] — does any man think that this holy man ever meant or thought of any such simoniacal bishop beyond any stretch of sea from Milan? — much less,

That the Britons, utterly cut off from all the world, so great a simony should convict?

Far be Saint Ambrose’s example from England, as we are distant from Milan, where he was then bishop. I trust — nay, I dare say — that there is no bishop in England, however modest his means, who counts ordination fees among his revenues. Far be it. Indeed, far be those who dream of such things. We disdain

to stoop to any such lure or base lucre. Let no man take us for such crude practitioners that, while we teach others the way to heaven with our tongues, we should commit such a solecism as to point to the earth with our hand. Or [take us for] such shallow divines that, as if we had never been trained up in university studies, we should make such a gloss upon the holy text — “Let not your left hand know what your right hand does” — that a man may therefore practice piety with one hand and simony with the other. But if there should chance to be any who dare sell the Holy Ghost, as there was even among the twelve one Judas who did sell his Lord and Master Christ: what then? What success had Judas? After restitution, suspension. Ecclesiastical suspension would be too good for such. When Esau had sold his birthright, in which the priesthood was included, he was so desperately cut off from the blessing that he found no place for repentance to obtain so much as one blessing, though he sought it with tears: “Have you not one blessing, my father?” Not one. The blessing remained with Jacob, to whom God had promised and given it with the priesthood. Yet profane Esau lived and enjoyed the fatness of the earth and the dew of heaven. True. But how? He must live by his bow, by killing and destroying — the very life of simoniacal ordainers and the ordained: like the thief who, climbing up into the sheepfold by another way, comes not but to steal, to kill, and to destroy. While Jacob — he who is called by God to the priesthood and to be a shepherd — keeps and feeds the flock but kills none; insomuch that Laban missed none of all his sheep while they were in Jacob’s keeping. Gehazi, for his after-the-fact selling, purchased Naaman’s leprosy for himself and his posterity forever. All selling ordainers are Gehazites, and therefore lepers, and thus shut out by God’s law from his holy congregation — even the communion of saints — as unhallowed and unclean persons. Simon’s doom was: “Your money perish with you; you have no part nor lot in this business; your heart is not right; you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.” Here is a hard choice

of a choice for all simoniacs, especially simoniacal ordainers who sell — quantum in se est, Spiritus Sancti, quod certe nihil est [insofar as it is in their power, the Holy Spirit, which is certainly nothing [that can be sold]] — the Holy Ghost. They may choose whether they will have Esau’s curse, or Naaman’s leprosy, or Judas’s suspension, or Simon’s perdition — or rather all of these together, since such simoniacs are of Edom’s line, Gehazi’s posterity, successors of Judas, and Simon’s own sons. But how can so fair a body, of so sound a constitution as is this noble Church of England, ever hatch or harbour tales vomicas, such festering abscesses, and not vomit them out of her mouth? It is impossible that such weeds should grow in this garden, the very paradise of God. But if they should, may the Lord root them out, and ever preserve this his Eden with the flaming sword of the fiery cherubim, so that no simoniacal ordainer or ordained may dare to set his filthy foot on this holy ground, or thrust in his foul hand to take of the tree of life — to purchase for himself that power of Christ of which he said to his disciples, “Freely you have received, freely give.” I will conclude with that of Cyprian: Dominus Gibezi mercenarium lepra condemnat, & Ieroboam vendentem Sacerdotia cum Apostatis locat. Hic Simonem gratia Dei nundinatorem a Sanctorum consortio exhaeredat, cuius detestabiles ausus ultrix ruina confundit & quassat. Hic Balaam ad maledicendum conducto silentium imponit; & per Asinam redargutum, colliso ad parietem pede vacuum pecunia, oneratum contumelia, claudicantem ad propria remisit confusum. [The Lord condemns mercenary Gehazi with leprosy, and ranks Jeroboam, who sold the priesthood, with apostates. He disinherits Simon from the communion of saints for trafficking in the grace of God, whose detestable audacities a vengeful ruin confounds and shatters. He imposes silence upon Balaam who was hired to curse, and, having been reproved by his ass, his foot dashed against the wall, sent him back confounded, empty of money, laden with infamy, and limping home.]

Chapter XII.

Reasons showing the unreasonableness of simony. Objections answered.

As every sin is in its own nature unreasonable, being repugnant even to the dictate of natural reason, so simony, for this reason, may claim a place and rank among other sins.

First, simony is unreasonable because it is sacrilege — it robs God of his right. “Will a man rob his gods?” To usurp upon tithes by buying and selling (for buying and selling tithes is a usurpation upon tithes) is to rob God. For to buy from the patron is to subscribe that the right of tithes is vested in him and not in God, and so to ascribe the power and property of tithes to the patron who sells them, not to God, who gave them, still retaining the ownership of them in himself. Whence we may conclude all those to be either simoniacs or favorers of them who deny tithes to be due iure divino [by divine right]. For why do they deny this, but flattering themselves that thus they may the more licentiously buy and sell them, and so hold the poor ministers’ nose to the grindstone — whereas even if tithes had been dedicated only by man, yet they ought not to be so profaned.

Secondly, simony is unreasonable because it debases and vilifies that which is honorable, as is the gift of God. And tithes are the gift of God, and therefore to be held in honor. Peter said to Simon, “Your money perish with you, because you think the gift of God may be obtained with money.” He vilified God’s gift, and therefore he was held in contempt by the apostle. Wherefore, and what was Belshazzar’s punishment? He set light by the holy vessels of God’s temple when profanely he presumed to drink from them — he and his concubines. And was he not well requited, when, while he was drinking, he saw that handwriting upon the wall: “You are weighed in the balance and found

too light?” He set light by God’s consecrated things, and God set light by him — he finds him too light. Let all spiritual merchants, both patrons and parsons, be struck with terror at this example, as Belshazzar was by the handwriting. And he must needs be culpable of this sin who sets any earthly price upon a spiritual thing.

A third reason why simony is unreasonable is that it makes the simoniac beside himself. For he comes as a minister to buy; but in buying, he professes and proves himself to be no minister of God. For as God gave the tithes anciently to the Levites — he gave them freely, and a free gift ought not to be bought — so he has given the same to his ministers of the New Testament as freely. Whatever minister therefore shall offer to buy these tithes must either confess that they are not the free gift of God, or that he himself has no interest in them as the minister of God, and so is no minister of God. If therefore holy tithes belong properly and of right to ministers, why do they buy them? And if they buy them, what right had they unto them?

Fourthly, it is against reason to commit treason; but simony is treason. For as Judas, conspiring with the Jews through buying and selling, betrayed the person of Christ, so simoniacs, conspiring together through buying and selling, betray the Church of Christ — yea, betray the body of Christ, the members of Christ — as shall appear more at large when we come to show the effects of simony.

But the simoniac objects: I am compelled to buy, because all, or most, are set to buying — so that if I do not buy I am likely to have nothing. This is as good a reason as if he said: I must sin, because it is the fashion of all, or most, to do so. This man will go to the devil for company. But let me tell you: if it were not for such as you, we should shortly have no simoniacs at all. For you buy because others buy. Well — do but you, and all such as you who thus sin by others’ example, hold your hand a while, and in short time desinet amnis [the stream will cease] — the brook at last of such

such examples will be quite dried up, when it ceases to be fed and supplied with such headlong currents. For otherwise, by following such examples, you and those like you become examples to draw others after you, and so each for his part both maintains and increases that wicked trade, each striving who can run fastest to the Devil. Another says he buys of necessity, so that he may have a place in the Church to exercise those gifts God has bestowed upon him for the good of his Church. And if he does not buy, those gifts will lie buried in the earth. That would be a great pity. But what gifts? I doubt whether any sanctified and true priestly gifts would so easily be corrupted by simony. But as the king of Gath said to David, who was counterfeiting madness: “Have we need of madmen?” — so, have we need of simoniacs in the Church? Or as Philip king of Macedon, seeing his son Alexander by lavish gifts wooing the goodwill of the Macedonians, wrote to him in a letter: Qua te malum ratio in istam spem induxit, ut eos tibi fideles putares fore, quos pecunia corrupisses? An id agis, ut Macedones non te Regem suum, sed Ministrum & præbitorem putent, quo quid Sordidius Regi? [What evil reasoning led you into this hope, that you thought those men would prove faithful to you whom you had corrupted with money? Is your aim that the Macedonians should regard you not as their king, but as a servant and paymaster — than which what could be more base in a king?] — so we may turn it upon our simoniac thus: Qua te malum ratio in istam spem induxit, ut populo te fidelem putares fore Pastorem, cum tuam ipse conscientiam pecunia tua corrupisses? An id agis, ut populus Dei non te Pastorem suum, sed Depastorem, non Concionatorem sed Corruptorem putent, quo quid Sordidius Rectori? [What evil reasoning led you into this hope, that you thought yourself a faithful pastor to the people, when you had corrupted your own conscience with your money? Is your aim that the people of God should regard you not as their pastor but as a despoiler, not as a preacher but as a corrupter — than which what could be more base in a rector?] But if you have such a desire to exercise your gifts, audiamus disertum [let us hear the eloquent man]: bestow them where they are most needed, where the people perish for want of preaching, and preaching fails there because the tithes are impropriated. Sed nullus ad amissas, ibit Amicus opes [But no friend will come to one whose wealth is gone]. But you will say: Dignus est operarius Mercede sua — the laborer is worthy of his wages. True: but either do not betray your hypocrisy by seeking the richest and most eminent places and preferments in the Church (for scarcely any others please you) in which to exercise your gifts — or else give proof of your sincerity by desiring to employ your gifts in God’s Church in such a manner that, to that end, you will rather content yourself with a modest living honestly attained, than

to aspire to a greater by corrupt means. For it is a question which is the worse of the two: for the Church to lack a minister, or to be served by a simoniac.

Another objects: I see the Church of God in great danger; the chief places are intruded into by those who will make no conscience of their duty, as is plain from those lesser charges and positions in which they have been most negligent and unfaithful; and so the ship of the Church shall be in danger of shipwreck, being governed by careless pilots. Therefore, for the love and care I bear to the Church, being conscious of my good conscience and that I aim chiefly at its good — why may I not ransom its danger with my money? A plausible reason, I confess; for our very lives are not too dear, much less our livings, to be spent and sacrificed for the Church of God. It was the Apostle’s joy and rejoicing to be offered up upon the sacrifice and service of the Philippians’ faith. And this ought to be the joy of every faithful minister of Christ, lawfully called and canonically placed in this or that position in the Church. But in this case the situation is otherwise. A man is not yet lawfully and orderly called to this or that charge in the Church. Well: the Church lacks a good pastor; wolves seek to enter. Shall I, to prevent them, climb up into the sheepfold by another way, and not by the door? What benefit will this be to the flock, when the thief and the robber comes to forestall the wolf? Why was Uzzah, being no priest, struck down? Was it not for laying his hand upon the ark, contrary to God’s commandment — Numbers 4:15: “They shall not touch any holy thing, lest they die”? But the ark was shaken by the oxen, and he only steadied it; yet he received his payment for his officiousness. So you see (at least in your own apprehension) that instead of the true Levites, the ark is drawn by oxen, the Church is swayed by those who ought not to sway it, and its state is shaken and in jeopardy. Yet take heed that you do not put forth your hand — your simoniacal hand — to save the Church from ruin. So, to touch holy

holy things is death; your money perish with you. If simony is unlawful, and so condemned by all; if it is a sin, do not commit it — no, not even if you could thereby procure the safety of the whole Church of God. For men to say “Let us do evil, that good may come” — their damnation is just. Shall I destroy my own soul (for every sin slays the soul) in order to save the souls of others? Indeed, says Job: “Will you speak wickedly for God’s defense, and talk deceitfully for his cause?” Whereupon Mercerus notes, saying: Deus hac vestra Defensione non indiget, neque ita se defendi postulat cum alterius Detrimento, ut interim proximo fiat Iniuria [God does not need this defense of yours, nor does he require to be defended at another’s loss, in such a way that injury is meanwhile done to one’s neighbor]. If God then will not have his cause defended to any man’s wrong, neither will he have his Church saved by any man’s destruction. It is against the order of charity to lose my own soul for the saving of others. Let such a man rather resolve thus: if God will have me help to preserve his Church, he will offer lawful means for me to attain this charge. Indeed, in such a case the means for us to use is: pray the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.

And whereas a man may pretend — and indeed promise himself — that if he were promoted to such a position he would become a profitable member in the Church: let such a one examine himself by what Gregorius says: Perhaps (says he) he who desires prelacy in the Church has a purpose to do good. Sed cum percepti Principatus officio perfrui feculariter coepit, libenter obliuiscitur, quicquid religiose cogitauit. Quia nequaquam valet in culmine humilitatem discere, qui in imis positus non desinit superbire. Nam plerunque in occupatione regiminis, ipse quoque boni operis vsus perditur, qui in tranquillitate tenebatur: quia quieto mari recte nauem & imperitus se nauta dirigit: turbato autem tempestatis fluctibus, etiam peritum se nautam confundit. Quid namque est potestas culminis, nisi tempestas mentis? Inter haec itaque, quid sequendum est, quid tenendum, nisi vt virtutibus pollens, coactus ad regimen veniat, virtutibus vacuus ne coactus accedat? But when he has begun, worldly to enjoy the office of his received principality, he willingly forgets, whatso-

ever he had religiously purposed. Because he cannot learn humility when he is aloft, who while he was below did not cease to be proud. For commonly in the conduct of government, the very practice of good works is also lost, which in the tranquility of a private life was preserved. Since in a calm sea even an inexpert mariner can direct and guide his ship and himself, but in a tempestuous sea even a skillful pilot loses himself. For what else is the power of rule but the tempest of the mind? Therefore in these cases, what is to be followed, what is to be observed, but that he who excels in virtues should come to the place of government under compulsion, while he who is devoid of virtues should under no terms — not even under compulsion — be drawn to it. And he concludes: Considerandum est ei, qui curam populi electus Praesul suscipit, quia quasi ad agrum medicus accedit. Si ergo in eius opere passiones viuunt, qua presumptione percussum mederi properat, qui in facie vulnus portat? Therefore (says he) the elect prelate who takes upon him the care of the people must consider that he comes as a physician to a sick patient. If therefore passions do yet live in his practice, with what presumption does he hasten to heal the diseased, when he carries his wound in his own face?

But will some say: Qui Episcopatum desiderat, bonum opus desiderat. Ergo licet mihi Episcopatum desiderare — He that desires a bishopric desires a worthy work; therefore it is lawful for me to desire a bishopric. Let the same Gregorius make answer, upon the very same words, in his eighth chapter of the aforesaid book, which he entitles thus: De iis, qui praeesse concupiscunt, & ad vsum suae libidinis instrumentum Apostolici sermonis arripiunt [Concerning those who covet to preside over others, and seize upon the instrument of the Apostle’s words for the use of their own ambition] — 1 Timothy 3:1. Notandum (says he) quod illo in tempore hec dicitur, qua quisquis praeerat, primus ad martyrij tormenta ducebatur. Tunc ergo laudabile fuit Episcopatum querere, quando per hunc, quemquam dubium non erat ad supplicia grauiora peruenisse. Vnde ipsum quoque Episcopatus Officium boni operis expressione definitur, cum dicitur, si quis Episcopatum desiderat, bonum opus desiderat. Ipse ergo sibi testis est, quia Episcopatum non appetit, qui non per hunc, boni operis Ministerium, sed honoris gloriam qua-

rit. Quin repente subiungit Apostolus: Oportet autem Episcopum irreprehensibilem esse. Et sanet ergo ex desiderio, & terret ex precepto, ac si aperte dicat, laudo quod quaeritis, sed prius discite, quid queratis: ne dum vosmet ipsos metiri negligitis, tanto foedior vestra reprehensibilitas appareat quanto, & a cunctis conspici in honoris arce aestimatis. Sacrum quippe Officium non solum non diligit omnino, sed nescit, qui ad culmen regiminis anhelans in occulta meditatione cogitationis caeterorum subiectione pascitur: laude propria laetatur: ad honorem cor eleuat: rerum affluentium abundantia exultat. Mundi ergo lucrum quaeritur sub eius honoris specie, quo mundi destrui lucra debuerant. Cumque mens humilitatis culmen arripere ad elationem cogitat: quod foris appetit, intus immutat. It is to be noted (says he) that this was spoken at that time when every prelate was the first to be led to the torments of martyrdom. Then it was commendable to desire a bishopric, when by it a man was certain to come to more grievous torments, etc. But that man not only does not love, but does not at all understand the sacred function, who, thirsting to climb to the top of governance, in his private thoughts feeds upon the subjection of others, flatters himself with his own praise, exalts his heart to honor, and exults in the abundance of his wealth. Therefore the gain of the world is sought under the guise of that honor by which the emoluments and gains of the world ought to have been destroyed.

Another objection here crosses my way on the patron’s behalf: “Sir, you need not be so strict against giving and receiving for a spiritual preferment — for my part, I have good intent to convert such money to some charitable use, as to bestow it in alms,” etc. Indeed this has been an old subterfuge in the Court of Rome. But Gratian says: Non potest fieri Eleemosyna ex pecunia Simoniacae acquisita — alms may not be given of money simoniacally gotten. And Gregory, Epistle 110, to certain bishops, condemns this sin thus: Nimis declinandum est, dilectissimi fratres, sub obtentu Eleemosynae peccata Simoniacae haeresos perpetrare. Nam aliud est propter peccata Eleemosynas facere, aliud propter Eleemosynas peccata committere — We must take the greatest care, beloved

beloved brethren, not to commit the sins of simoniacal heresy under pretense of alms. For it is one thing to give alms on account of [past] sins, another thing to commit sin for the sake of [future] alms. This is like Saul’s sacrifice, reproved and rejected by Samuel, 1 Samuel 15. Or like the high priests’ charity, who with Judas’s betrayal-money — called simony by some — bought, forsooth, a field to bury strangers in. But for all this charitable work, by divine ordination (as Lyra says) the field acquired such a name as could never be washed off. For it is called the Field of Blood to this day. Matthew 27:8. And would that such charitable works, as they are done by simony, might so forever bear the brand of simony. As a famous courtesan in Rome, having built a fair house, caused this motto to be set over the front of the gate — well befitting her own shameless front: Edificaverunt Peccatrices — Courtesans built this house.

Chapter XIII.

Of the unreasonableness of simony, particularly with regard to the office and function of a bishop or minister of the Gospel.

The Apostle, 1 Timothy 3:1, says: “This is a true saying: if a man desires the office of a bishop (or minister of the Gospel), he desires a good work.” Now such is the office of a bishop and minister of Christ that, if it be well weighed, a man will be well advised how he seeks or sues for such an office, much less be at the cost to purchase it at any price. For the office of the sacred order of bishops is not altogether so easy as the world takes it to be. Origen says: he who desires the office of a bishop to purchase glory

glory and esteem among men, or to be called by men Rabbi, or to gain profit from those who come to the Word and give for piety’s sake — such a bishop does not desire a good work, nor can he be without fault: neither vigilant nor sober, being drunk with glory in which he has intemperately steeped himself. And in his twenty-fourth tract upon Matthew: some attempt many ways to be called by men bishops — that is, Rabbi — when in the meantime they should understand that a bishop must be above reproach, and so forth as follows in the Apostle’s description, so that although men do not call him a bishop, yet with God he is a bishop. And Cyrillus says, speaking of the office of ministers: if we execute this office rightly, we shall receive a reward, yes and praise too; but if otherwise, or perversely, what flames shall be sufficient to punish us? We shall hear that voice: “You have destroyed my heritage, you have slain my people.” As for laymen, they shall indeed render each a particular account for his own life; but we who bear the burden of sacerdotal offices shall answer not only for ourselves but also for all believers in Christ. And Saint Augustinus, writing to Valerius, whom he calls his loving father, says: Ante omnia peto, ut cogitet religiosa prudentia tua, nihil esse in hac vita, et maxime hoc tempore, facilius, et laetius, et hominibus acceptabilius, Episcopi, aut Presbyteri, aut Diaconi officio, si perfunctorie atque adulatorie res agatur: sed nihil apud Deum miserius, et tristius, et damnabilius. Item nihil esse in hac vita et maxime hoc tempore difficilius, laboriosius, periculosius Episcopi, aut Presbyteri, aut Diaconi officio: sed apud Deum nihil beatius, si eo modo militetur, quo noster Imperator iubet. Et hinc erant lachrymae illae, quas me fundere in civitate Ordinationis meae tempore nonnulli fratres animadverterunt, nescientes causam doloris mei. — Above all things I desire (says he) that your religious prudence would consider that there is nothing in this life, and most of all at this time, more easy, more pleasant, and

and more acceptable to men, than the office of a bishop, or a priest, or deacon, if the office be carelessly or men-pleasingly performed; but with God nothing more miserable, woeful, and damnable. Also that there is nothing in this life, and most of all at this time, more difficult, painful, and perilous, than the office of a bishop, priest, or deacon; but with God nothing more blessed, if the combat be so managed as our Captain commands. And hence were those many tears which certain brethren, not knowing the cause, saw me shed in the city at the time of my ordination. And the same father says elsewhere, upon the words of the Apostle, Qui Episcopatum desiderat, bonum opus desiderat [“He who desires the episcopate desires a good work”]: Exponere voluit, quid sit Episcopatus; quia nomen est operis, non honoris: ut intelligat non se esse Episcopum qui praeesse dilexerit, non prodesse — he wished to explain what the episcopate is, because it is a name of work, not of honor, so that one may understand that he is not a bishop who has loved to preside, not to benefit. And a little after he says: Locus superior, sine quo regi populus non potest, etsi ita teneatur atque administretur ut decet, tamen indecenter appetitur — the superior place [of the bishop], without which the people cannot be governed, although it be maintained and managed as is fitting, yet it is unseemly for a man to hunt after it. So that (says he): Otium sanctum quaerit charitas veritatis; negotium iustum suscipit necessitas charitatis. Quam sarcinam si nullus imponit, percipienda atque intuenda vacandum est veritati: si autem imponitur, suscipienda est propter charitatis necessitatem — the love of truth seeks a holy retirement, and it is the necessity of charity that undertakes a just employment. Which burden, if no man imposes it, then one is the more free to devote one’s private life to the study of truth; but if it be imposed, it must be taken up for the very necessity of charity. Saint Chrysostomus says: I suppose no man, however thirsting for glory, would ever be made a bishop unless necessity impose it upon him. For who is sufficient for these things? For as that holy man further says: if you knew (says he) that a bishop ought to bear the burden of all; that if others are angry they are pardoned, but not he; that others sinning may have excuse, but not he — you would not hasten so, you would not run so to the prelacy. For he [the bishop] is exposed to all tongues, subject to all censures, both of the wise and the unwise; he

perplexed with perpetual cares, night and day. He is envied by many, he is watched by many. Do not tell me of those who are ambitious for favor, who love to sleep, who come to their episcopal office as to a bed of rest. I speak not of these: but of those who watch for your souls, who prefer the salvation of their people before their own safety. Tell me, if a man has but ten children under his governance, living continually with him, he is forced without intermission to take care of them: what then shall not he suffer, who has so many — not members of his own household, but such as have others also under their authority? But he is in great honor, they say. What honor? Three-halfpenny wretches rail upon him in the market place. Why does he not then stop their mouths? A proper reason! For now you are far wide of the office of a Bishop. Moreover, unless he gives himself to please all — both those who live idly and those who follow their business — he bears a thousand accusations on every side. None is afraid to accuse and traduce him. For they are afraid to speak evil of princes, but not of bishops, because the fear of God carries no weight with them. Who can express their solicitous care in preaching and teaching? Who can tell what difficulties they are put to in their elections? His mind is no different from a ship tossed by waves. He is pressed on every side by his friends and by his foes, by his own kindred and by strangers. If he is vehement and zealous, they say he is cruel; if not vehement, they say he is cold. But these two contraries must be reconciled, so that he may be neither despised nor hated. How is he thwarted, how pressed with business? How many is he forced to offend, volens nolens [willing or unwilling]? How many must he rebuke, will he or no? I speak not unadvisedly, but as I am affected, and as I think. I do not think that among priests there are many who shall be saved, but far more who shall perish. The reason is, because this office requires a high and excellent spirit. For there are many occasions to drive him from his own disposition, and he has need of many eyes. Do you not see how many things are needful for a bishop to have — that he be apt to teach, that he be patient in the bearing of evils, that he be constant and faithful in the doctrine of the Word? What a difficulty is this? And when others sin, it is imputed to him. I need say

no more (he says) if but one departs this life uninitiated or unbaptized — is he not altogether condemned? For the destruction of one only soul is such a loss as it cannot possibly be estimated. For if the salvation of one soul was so precious that for its sake the Son of God became man and suffered so great things: consider then what punishment the destruction of one soul will bring. Do not tell me therefore, the priest has sinned, or the deacon: all their sins redound upon the head of those who chose them. Therefore if any shall approach the chief priesthood (that is, a bishopric) as to a function full of care and trouble, no man will easily undertake it. But now we desire this dignity no differently than civil magistracies — namely, that we may be magnified and honored before men, while we are cast out of favor with God. What gain does this honor bring? How does it appear to be nothing? When you shall desire the priesthood, set before you on the one side those accusations which it must necessarily suffer; on the other side a life free from public employment, and compare the measure of the punishment. For if you sin the sin of a private man, you shall not suffer so great a punishment in comparison: but if you sin in the priesthood, you are undone. A bishop cannot sin in private. For it goes well with him if, not offending, he can be free from slanders — much less if he does offend can he escape. If he is angry, or laughs, or desires a little sleep to refresh him, there are many ready to taunt him, many that will be offended, many that will censure him and prescribe laws to him, many that will revive the memory of former bishops and despise the present — and they do it not to praise them, but to sting him. War is sweet to the inexperienced. For we fight not against those who by might oppress the poor, nor have we the courage to stand in defense of the flock: but after the example of those shepherds whom Ezekiel mentions, we kill and devour. Which of us is so careful and solicitous for the sheep of Christ as Jacob was for Laban’s flock? Who can express what cold he suffered by night? And do not tell me of any night-watchings or any such care taken. It is altogether contrary. Princes and rulers do not enjoy so great honor as he who is a prelate of the Church. If he goes into the king’s court, who has precedence over him? There is

a universal decay and corruption. These things I speak, not to press shame upon you, but to restrain your eager desires. But perhaps there is none such: God grant it, that so our words may vanish into the air and prove but words; and so may prove as potions which, the patient’s instant recovery being achieved, are thrown away. For considering the weight of a bishop’s office, and the weakness of many advanced to high places, I cannot imagine (he says) that any man, however ambitious, unless sheer necessity constrain him, would ever be consecrated a bishop. Thus far this holy and good bishop, Saint Chrysostom.

The same Father in another place says: Not only civil magistrates, but also prelates of the churches must render an account of their administration — and that a more strict and severe account than any other. For to those to whom the ministry of the Word is committed, there shall be a rigorous examination: whether he has, neither through slothfulness nor envy, omitted to speak anything which he ought to have spoken, and has declared by his deeds that he has taught all good duties, and has concealed nothing from his hearers which might be profitable for them. Again, he who has obtained a bishopric — the more highly he is exalted to the summit of honor, the more strict a reckoning shall be required of him: not only of his doctrine and care for the poor, but also of his examination of those to be ordained ministers, and of innumerable other duties. And in his Commentary on Titus: The higher the dignity is, the greater are the dangers of a minister. To omit other things which arise daily — if at any time it happens that either a friend or some other occasion is a means to promote an unworthy person to the dignity of a bishopric and commit to him the weighty governance of a city, into what tormenting fires does he throw himself? For he who in his more private manner of life has not been religious will certainly be much worse when he comes to undertake the governance of the Church. Therefore it is by all means to be wished that he who has formerly been endowed with piety may remain so still, having taken upon himself such a ministerial function. For now both vainglory does more eagerly haunt him, together with the love of

money, and supercilious pride: inasmuch as dominion itself breeds a licentiousness of giving offense, of being contumelious, of speaking ill, and innumerable other [vices]. And if he who offends one soul had better have a millstone hung about his neck and be drowned in the bottom of the sea: then he who shall scandalize so many souls — whole cities and peoples, men, women, children, citizens, countrymen, his neighbors, and others further off who are under his charge — what shall he suffer? Therefore such a man has more need of the grace and peace of God; for unless these be the prop of his governance, all must perish and fall to the ground. For although you are ever so expert in governing, unless in your governance you have that grace and peace which is of God, the storm will engulf and drown in the deep both your ship and those who sail with you. For which cause, I am seized with great admiration of those men who so eagerly desire such burdens. You most unhappy and miserable of all men — do you not see what it is that you so desire? If a man diligently weighs the truth of the matter, such a one is not advanced to a lordship, but rather he is a servant to innumerable lords who continually covet and speak contrary things. So he, and much more to this purpose. And upon the Epistle to the Colossians: We execute an ambassage. But we desire not this honor for ourselves — God forbid: for we know the vileness of it — but for your sakes, that those things which are uttered by us you may the more diligently attend to, that you may receive profit thereby, lest you hear slothfully and negligently the things which are delivered. Let no man attend to me, but to the dignity of my ambassage. So this holy bishop.

In a word, Erasmus, in his Dedicatory Epistle before Saint Chrysostom’s Commentary upon the Epistle to the Galatians, says that a bishop sustains three persons: one, of a father, in his sacerdotal authority; another, of a mother, in the desire of bringing forth and bringing up her children; a third, of a nurse, in feeding the soul with wholesome doctrine. And as Aaron might not enter into the tabernacle and sanctuary except with his golden bells, or else he must die: so the minister of the

the Gospel must have the golden Bells of the Gospel always sounding in his mouth, by which the sheep of Christ may be fed.

Seeing then that the office of a Bishop is attended with so many cares, exercised with so many duties, involved in so many dangers, exposed to so many storms, subject to such heavy judgments, liable to such sharp censures: who can blame Saint Chrysostom for wondering how any man should ambitiously seek and pursue such places, much less be at the cost to purchase them? Indeed, how many, weighing with themselves the insupportable burden of this Office — which would make the shoulders of Angels stoop under it — have not only refused it when offered (and that not with a formal Nolo, nolo [I am unwilling, I am unwilling]), but have hidden themselves and run from it as far as they could. How often did Nilus, a holy man of God, seriously and truly refuse a bishopric so often pressed upon him? — who at length, in the midst of his fervent prayer offered up to God, yielded up his spirit to him who gave it. Besides, sundry of the Fathers — those whom Claudius Espencaeus mentions de fuga Episcopatus [on fleeing the episcopate] — shunned those high places, measuring them rather by their weight than by their height. We could produce examples at home: that learned Dean Nowell, of reverend memory, and that learned and godly Gilpin, who both lived within the memory of the present age, when both there was so much grace in the world as freely to offer, and in them as constantly as modestly to refuse.

Gaspar Contarenus, a learned Cardinal who lived and participated in the Council of Trent, but who was much more honest than many of his fellows, writing of the office of a Bishop, has these words: Episcopus medius est inter diuinos spiritus, & humanum genus. Ex quo perspicuum est, Oportere Episcopum tum Angelica, tum humana naturae quadam ratione participem esse: quod cum de se nullus, quanquam virtutibus ornatissimus, polliceri possit: idcirco Episcopatum optare, absque arrogantiae crimine, aut auaritia, aut ambitionis, nequit illas. A Bishop (says he) is a middle person between the divine

divine Spirits and humankind. From which it is plain that a Bishop ought in some respect to partake both of the Angelic and the human nature: which thing, since no man, however richly adorned with virtues, can promise of himself, therefore no one can desire a bishopric without suspicion of arrogance, or of avarice, or of ambition. But the failure to give due consideration to the weightiness of a Bishop’s office — having opened a wide window in the Church for such arrogant, avaricious, and ambitious climbing spirits to enter at, those who do not come in by the door — gave the same author occasion, a little after in the same book, to utter this lamentation over the present state of the Church of Rome: Non possum hoc in loco non magnopere miserari nostrae tempestatis calamitatem, cum paucos admodum Christiani populi moderatores comperias, qui degant in ciuitatibus fidei eorum commissis. Verum satis officio suo fecisse putant, si procuratori regendam urbem tradiderint, ipsi vero reditibus potiantur; ac magni quidem cuiusdam in Romana Curia pompam comitantur, regnorumque tractant, ac bellorum negotia; de populo vero, cui praesunt, an in Christiana Religione proficiat, an deficiat, ne nuncium quidem accipiunt, egenoso, gregis sui omnino negligunt & ignorant: Hoccine est Episcopum gerere? Hoccine Discipulos Christi imitari, praeceptaque Euangelica seruare? Probus ergo Episcopus operam dabit, ne alteri tradat gregem suum curandum, sed quam breuissimo tempore ab ouili aberit, nisi aliqua ratione a Pontifice euocatus alicui officio inseruiat, quod ad emolumentum Christianae Reipublicae spectet. Verum non hanc dari sibi occasionem optet, neque tale quid ambiat; sed aegre ac fere inuitus huiusmodi onus suscipiat; quo expedito non aliud procuret, sed quam citissime ad gregem redeat. I cannot here (says he) but greatly pity the calamity of our time, when you will find very few Governors of the Christian people who reside in the cities committed to their charge; but who think they have performed their duty sufficiently if they commit the government of the city to a Proctor, while they themselves enjoy the revenues, and they accompany the pomp and retinue of some great personage in the Court of Rome, and manage the affairs of States and of Wars — but of the people over whom they bear rule,

rule, whether they go forward or backward in Christian Religion, they do not so much as receive one message; and of the poor of their flock, they are altogether negligent and ignorant. Is this to be a Bishop? Is this to imitate the Disciples of Christ and to observe the Evangelical precepts? Therefore a good Bishop shall labour not to commit his flock to another’s Cure, but to be absent from the Fold as short a time as possible, unless for some reason he is called away by the Pope for some special service for the good of the Christian commonwealth. But let him not wish or desire this occasion to be given him, nor let him seek any such thing; but let him very reluctantly, and in a manner unwillingly, undertake this task; which being dispatched, let him not procure another, but with all speed let him return to his flock: so he. As Cardinal Pole, being entreated by a Bishop for one month’s absence from his flock — notwithstanding he had formerly admonished him not to leave his flock — answered (giving him leave, but for no longer time): I shall take this comfort from your departure, that you will be beaten the less. This Cardinal also, being in election and nomination for the Papacy and being charged with ambition in too hastily aspiring to that dignity, answered that he thought the burden of that great office by no means so light, but that he was of the mind that it was rather to be feared than desired. As for those who did not understand, and thought more meanly of so great a place, he lamented their case and was sorry for them.

Devout Bernard, complaining also of the course of his times, says among many other things in his sermon Ad Clerum [To the Clergy]: Quem dabis mihi de numero Episcoporum, qui non plus inuigilet Subditorum euacuandis marsupiis, quam vitiis extirpandis? Vbi est, qui flectat iram? Vbi est, qui praedicet annum placabilem Domino? Propterea relinquamus istos, quia non sunt Pastores, sed traditores, & imitemur illos, qui uiuentes in carne, plantauerunt Ecclesiam sanguine suo. Et quidem isti sortiti sunt Ministerii locum, sed non zelum. Successores omnes cupiunt esse, imitatores pauci. Vtinam tam uigiles reperirentur ad curam, quam alacres currunt ad Cathedram, &c. Whom will you show me from among all the row of Bishops, who is not more vigilant in emptying his

people’s purses than in rooting out their vices? Where is one who pacifies wrath? Where is he who preaches the acceptable year of the Lord? Therefore let us abandon these, because they are no Pastors but Traitors, and let us imitate those who, while they lived in the flesh, planted the Church with their blood. These indeed have chosen the place of the Ministry, but not the zeal. All desire to be Successors, few Imitators. Would to God they were found as watchful over their Cure as they are quick to run to the Chair, etc. And again in the same Sermon he says: Quatuor his qui praesunt in Ecclesia Dei, necessaria esse prae omnibus reor: videlicet, vt per ostium intrent, vt in humilitate se contineant, auaritiam declinent, munditiam tam corde, quam corpore seruare studeant. Sed quid prodest, si Canonice eligantur (quod est per ostium intrare) & non Canonice viuant? Dixit Dominus ad duodecim, Nonne ego vos duodecim elegi, & vnus ex vobis diabolus est? Domine Iesu, cum esset electio illa in manu tua, & non haberes aliquem contradicentem & reclamantem tibi, quare elegisti diabolum Episcopum? Cur bone Iesu non elegisti bonum, & iustum, & sanctum, sicut Petrus bonus, & iustus, & sanctus fuit? Vel si elegisti diabolum, cur te iactas elegisse? Fratres, sic facit Iesus hodie, eligens sibi multos diabolos Episcopos. Vbi (proh dolor!) reperiemus Episcopos, qui post adeptam dignitatem, in humilitate se contineant? Nempe superbia eis occasio est, vt ad tantam dignitatem aspirent, vt in Ouile Christi impudenter irrumpant, cum tamen per Psalmistam Dominum dicat, Non habitabit in medio domus meae, qui facit superbiam. Vae mihi Domine Iesu, si tecum ero in domo tua, & non in medio domus tuae; nam tu semper in medio es. At isti non sic. Sunt quidem cum Iesu, sed non in medio domus eius, quia amant, & faciunt superbiam, parentes suos extollentes, pauperes autem negligentes, deprimentes. Male viuunt, & subiectos male viuere volunt. Et idcirco comparantur Apostatae Angelo, qui dixit in corde suo, Ponam sedem meam ad Aquilonem &c. Quid est Diabolum ad Aquilonem sedem velle ponere, nisi superbum quempiam & impium, super suos similes, a charitatis calore, vel sapientia, luce alienos principatum appetere, vel adeptum tenere? &c. For those (says he) that bear rule in the Church, four things are prin-

principally necessary: namely, that they enter by the door; that they contain themselves in humility; that they shun avarice; that they study to keep purity as well in heart as in body. But what does it avail to be canonically chosen (which is to enter by the door) and not to live canonically? The Lord said to the twelve, “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” Lord Jesus, seeing that the election was in your own power, and you had none to contradict or control you, why did you choose a devil? Why, good Jesus, did you not choose a good, just, and holy man, such as Peter was? Or if you chose a devil, why do you boast of it? Brethren, so does Jesus now, choosing many devil-bishops. Where (alas!) shall we find bishops who, after they have obtained the dignity, contain themselves in humility? For pride provokes them to aspire to so great a dignity, to make an impudent irruption into Christ’s sheepfold — though notwithstanding the Lord says by the Psalmist, “The proud man shall not dwell in the midst of my house.” Woe is me, O Lord Jesus, if I shall be in your house and not in the midst of your house: for you are always in the midst. But these [bishops] are not so. They are with Jesus, but not in the midst of his house, because they love and live in pride, extolling their parents who promoted them, but despising and oppressing the poor. They live a wicked life and would have their people live so too. And therefore they are compared to the apostate angel, who said in his heart, “I will plant my seat upon the North Pole.” What does it mean that the devil will pitch his seat upon the North? Only that every proud and impious man either aspires to or usurps dominion over those who are like him — those who are remote from the warmth of charity and from the light of wisdom. This and much more this devout man.

Now to draw all that has been said in this chapter by those holy and ancient men of the Church to a corollary or conclusion: If such is the office of a bishop; if (as Origen says) it makes the ambitious drunk with vainglory; if (as Saint Cyril) [it is] to be punished with fearful flames; if he must render a strict account for himself and for all under his jurisdiction; if (as Saint Augustine) nothing

thing be more easy, pleasant, and satisfying to men if performed perfunctorily and carelessly, but nothing more unhappy, miserable, and damnable before God — for which that holy man wept at his ordination; if a bishop is a name of labor rather than honor, and of duty rather than dominion; if it is not to be sought nor undertaken except for pure charity’s sake when necessity compels; if (as Saint Chrysostome) he bears the burden of all, is most inexcusable, exposed to all tongues, distracted with daily and nightly cares, subject to all censures, liable to all judgments; if others’ sins are imputed to his misgovernment; if the loss of each soul, so precious, shall be required of him; if to desire it is to cast oneself out of God’s favor; if a private life is much more sweet, more secure and safe; if it is not a bed of rest but of broken sleep; if their preaching is most solicitous and most assiduous; if he is like a ship continually tossed with waves and driven by contrary winds; if not many ministers are saved but far more do perish; if he is subject even against his will to being diverted and driven from his own disposition; if pride alone in such a man is enough to cause a universal decay and corruption; if their account is most severe — both for their doctrine (what [they taught], and how, with what diligence, with what devotion it was performed) and for their life (how answerable to their doctrine, how holy, how religious, how in every way exemplary to their flock; how careful in relieving the poor, how circumspect in electing good ministers and rejecting the unworthy); if this office makes men rather greater than better, hoisting up the sails of every passion to all winds of temptation — especially when it finds pride, avarice, ambition, and the like; if (as Erasmus) a bishop puts on the person of a father, a mother, a nurse, all importing manifold offices; if, as Aaron with his bells, he must be ever sounding forth the word of truth; if, for the multiplicity and difficulty of the duties of this calling — chained one within another — many wise and grave men of God have shrunk their shoulders from it; if (as Contarenus) a bishop must be

above a man, of an angelical spirit; if the very desire and seeking of it implies arrogance, avarice, and ambition; if it is not enough to serve his cure by a deputy; if it gives him no dispensation to be a courtier and a negotiator; if in this way he is unlike Christ and his apostles; if (as Poole) it is so dangerous to be non-resident; if a bishopric is rather to be feared than desired; if (as Bernard) it is usually made rather a secular merchandise than a spiritual means to gain souls unto God; if such [bishops] are to be abandoned as betrayers, not shepherds — having the seat but not the zeal, being successors but not imitators; if any ambitious bishop is a Judas, a devil, an apostate angel who would have all like himself to domineer over; if in this way he is excluded from the enjoyment of Christ; if this office is a ministration and not a domination — then, to say no more than what so many holy, grave, learned fathers have already said: what reason can any reasonable man allege to excuse not only the purchase but the least pursuit of such a preferment from the charge of extreme unreasonableness?

CHAP. XIV.

Of the Censures and Penalties of Simony and Simoniacs.

Let us now come to observe the censures and penalties that have been generally imposed upon simony and simoniacs. Aquinas, following his ancients, calls simony haeresis quaedam [a kind of heresy]. Gregory calls it the prime heresy in the primitive Church. Altare vel Decimas, vel Spiritum Sanctum emere vel vendere, Simoniacam Haresin esse nullus fidelium ignorat: To buy or sell the Altar (as the sacrificer does his Mass), or tithes, or the Holy Ghost — there is none among all the faithful who does not know this to be simoniacal heresy. Irenaeus

Irenaeus calls Simon Magus the father of all heretics. Yea, says Aquinas, the impious heresy of the Macedonians and of those of his sect — impugners of the deity of the Holy Ghost — is more tolerable than that of the simoniacs. For those, in their dotage, yet confessed that the Holy Ghost was a creature and servant of the Father and the Son; but these make the same Holy Ghost to be their own servant. For whoever takes upon himself to buy or sell anything, takes upon himself also to be the master and proprietor of what he so buys or sells.

Yea, so odious is the sin of simony that Pope Deodate said that no Catholic is to be turned away but, for avouching the truth and making known the madness of simony, is to be exhorted with most earnest entreaty. For, says he, there is none so vile or infamous who may not be admitted as a competent witness against a simoniac, since the simoniac is the most vile and infamous of all men. Therefore even a bondservant, a whore, a criminal person may accuse a simoniac — yea, even a servant his master. And every sinful man may sing a Mass, but a simoniac may not. So he.

But some will say, this is but the brutum fulmen [empty thunderbolt] of a Pope. Yea, it ought so much the more to make us — whom the condition of so many popes has made to abominate the very name of Pope — to be afraid and to start at the very name of simony more than at a crack of thunder. If the heathen Abimelech so highly honors marriage and the sacred laws thereof that he sharply reproves Abraham for hazarding his fair wife, how shall not faithful Abraham and Sarah blush the more at such a man’s rebuke?

Gregory says: Specialiter, etc. — let both the clergy and people, the electors, specially and absolutely know that that man is not only unworthy of the priesthood but will be found also liable and culpable of other crimes, whosoever he be that presumes to buy the gift of God with money. So that the like punishment and penalty is equally due both to the elected and to the

the Electors, if they shall attempt to violate the purity of the Priesthood with a sacrilegious intent. So he.

From which we may learn that the sin of simony never goes alone, whether in the Buyer or in the Seller: but like the master bee, it is attended by a swarm of other enormities. In the Canons of the Apostles (so called): Si quis Episcopus, &c. [If any Bishop or Priest or Deacon shall obtain this dignity by money, let both him and his Ordainers be degraded and wholly cut off from the communion of Saints, as Simon Magus was by Peter.] Aquinas says: No man, on any account, ought to receive Ordination from a Bishop whom he knows to have been simoniacally promoted. And if he is ordained by him, he does not thereby receive the exercise of his Order, even if he did not know the Bishop to be a simoniac, but requires a dispensation. Indeed, says another: He who is a simoniac in Order, even if he be a Bishop, none can dispense with him — not even our Lord the Pope (as they say) — because such a one has a flawed Character, which, being nonetheless indelible, he cannot renounce, and so the sin cannot be purged. (Although Gratian says that the Pope may as well dispense with it as with a thief, though he restore not the theft.) So that the case of simony in Ordination may seem not much unlike the Popish Transubstantiation, which stands upon such slippery points, Ifs and Ands: as if the * intention of the Priest, at the very word of their consecration, is absent or wandering elsewhere, as Baal’s ghost was while his Prophets prayed to him; or if the Bishop who gave that Priest Ordination did not at that time have a right intention; or if the Bishop who consecrated that Bishop lacked a right intention in the very act; and so on upward. If (as they say) any of these have failed, there is likely to be no Creator created of the Creature, no Transubstantiation. So too in simony: if a man obtains a Bishopric by simony, he does not receive the power of exercising his Order, and consequently he can confer no power upon any whom he shall ordain, because Nemo dat quod non habet [No one gives what he does not have]. This being so, it should follow that all the Ministry ordained by him, and so successively downward, be.

becomes a mere nullity. Whereupon Gregory in the Gloss says: Can a man receive Orders from one whom he knows to have been simoniacally promoted to his Bishopric? Dico, quod non [I say, that he cannot]. Indeed, even if he did not know it: and by receiving Orders from him, he does not thereby receive the exercise [of the Order], since the Ordinator has none himself. And a man (says he) ought rather to suffer Excommunication than receive Ordination from such a one. If this is so, what a flaw and breach does simony make in a Ministry? Yet Pope Urban does somewhat mitigate the matter: Si qui, &c. [If any are ordained by simoniacs, not simoniacally, and can prove that when they were ordained they did not know their Ordainers to be simoniacs in Order, and that at that time the ordinations of such persons were held in the Church as canonical, we mercifully bear with them, provided they live worthily.] But those who knowingly allow themselves to be consecrated (or rather execrated) by simoniacs, we adjudge their Consecration to be altogether void. So he. Also Nicholas II and Alexander II: De cetero statuimus, &c. [We do further enact, that if any henceforth shall allow himself to be consecrated by one whom he does not doubt to be a simoniac in Order, both the Consecrator and the Consecrated shall undergo like condemnation, and both of them, being deposed, let them repent and do penance, and so remain deprived of their proper dignity.] And again: Erga Simoniacos, &c. [Towards simoniacs we have decreed that no mercy be extended for the retaining of their Dignity, but according to canonical sanctions and decrees of the Holy Fathers, we do by Apostolic Authority adjudge them to be altogether condemned and deposed.] What terrible thunderclaps are these. Now if the case be so, as the Disciples said about Divorce, then it is not good to Marry: so some man might say, then it is not good to be a Minister. But as our Lord said upon another occasion in that same chapter (Matthew 19), when his Disciples said, “Who then can be saved?” he answered, “With men it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” But every one shall bear his own burden. I will conclude with the Conclusion of the second Canon of the Council of Chalcedon: Si quis

quis, &c. [If any should act as intermediary through any filthy and wicked giving or receiving: if he be a cleric, let him be degraded; if a layman, let him be anathematized.] Also the second Council of Orléans, Canon 4: Si quis Sacerdotium, &c. [If any shall, through execrable ambition, seek the Priesthood by money, let him be a reprobate and castaway; because the sentence of the Apostle teaches that the gift of God ought not to be obtained by the weight of money.] There is scarcely a Council that does not have a thunderbolt against this sin. Mediatores etiam Simoniae eadem censura ligantur; qui a solo Papa absolventur [The mediators also of simony are liable to the same censure, and they cannot be absolved except by the Pope alone]. A most inexpiable and heinous sin indeed, which only the Pope can absolve. We will close this with what is attributed to Saint Augustine, Sermon 37, Ad Fratres in Eremo (though those Sermons are acknowledged to be none of his): Qui Sacramentum emit vel Ecclesiam, vel Prebendas, vel Ecclesiarum introitus, vel seculari potentia hoc pro se procuraverit, sciat quod cum Gehezi et Iuda iam condemnatus est, iam Leprosus factus, iam de Templo Domini expellendus est [He who buys the Sacrament, or a Church, or a Prebend, or his admission into the Church, or has procured this for himself by secular power: let him know that with Gehazi and Judas he is already condemned, now become a leper, and now to be expelled from the Lord’s Temple.]

And if we were to set about collecting the exemplary punishments inflicted by the divine hand upon simoniacal offenders, it would fill an entire volume; indeed, if we could only observe the many judgments of God that have remarkably fallen upon sacrilegious usurpers and simoniacal traffickers even in this our Church — how not only tithes improperly withheld, but patronages purchased, are passed from man to man like God’s Ark among the Philistines (for what can rest out of its proper place?), from city to city, bringing a plague with it wherever it came; how many Patrons have been driven to sell away their own inheritance for abusing God’s inheritance, and taking to themselves the houses of God in possession; how many

many ecclesiastical chapmen of every degree live and die as beggars, leaving their beggarly families and friends behind them, themselves cut off by untimely death before they could recover their simoniacal debts — to consider those many examples, it is no wonder if some have been minded to take the trouble of making a collection of them throughout the land and compiling them into one book, which would be a worthy work. And as the plague did not cease among the Philistines until the Lord’s Ark was sent back (and that not empty — even by the advice of their own Priests and Soothsayers — but with a sin-offering) to Beth-shemesh: so let no simoniacal or sacrilegious withholding Patron ever expect immunity and freedom from plagues and punishments, until the Lord’s tithes belonging to the Lord’s Ark his Church are, without any simoniacal contract, freely and faithfully rendered to the Church, and — with a sin-offering of repentance and restitution — brought home to Beth-shemesh, to the house of the Sun of Righteousness, to the Church of Jesus Christ.

But to leave the common examples of divine vengeance in this kind to the diligent collection of others, and in the meantime to the sad consideration of those who feel them, and to the rest, who may as justly fear them (for God is no respecter of persons); and it is the Apostle’s admonition immediately appended to his exhortation on the paying of tithes, Galatians 6:7, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sows, that shall he reap” — suffice it to keep within the verge of Scripture examples. Wherein, when I shall name sacrilege for simony, let no man wonder, or impute irrelevance to this Discourse, since all * simony is a kind of sacrilege, and they are so intertwined with each other that they may easily be taken one for the other — yet without any great mistake, at least in those examples which I shall allege. And so it shall not be improper to begin with the example of Cain (whom Saint Ambrose ranks among such sacrilegious persons), who, because he offered sparingly, de fructu [of the fruit], not fruits in the plural,

in general, as Abel offered de primogenitis, of the firstlings: secondly, contemptuously, of the meanest, opposite to Abel’s fatlings; thirdly, with an averse or impious mind — for Cain brought, not Cain ipse, as it is said of Abel, Abel ipse, Abel himself brought, that is, with all his heart; for animus cuiusque is est quisque [a man’s soul is himself]: fourthly, proudly, as if scorning to carry his offering himself, and therefore Cain ipse is not expressed (as the learned note) as Abel ipse attulit. For this, I say — for offering sparingly, contemptuously, impiously, proudly — Cain was rejected; the Lord had no respect for him and his offering. So that this impious mind of his toward God, begetting other sins, did utterly cast him out from the presence of God’s grace and favor, the greatest punishment in the world, as he himself confessed and complained of. Gehazi and his whole posterity — how fearfully were they branded with a hereditary leprosy for the father’s single sin of selling his master’s gift of healing! A stupendous example, and the more so if we but weigh the circumstances. For Gehazi received his two talents from Naaman only after the cure, and not by any prior contract or precondition; also he was not so covetous as to take or demand all that Naaman had brought to present to his master; yea, more was pressed upon him than he required. Again, Naaman was a Syrian, a foreigner, one whom perhaps he would never see again, and one rich enough to spare such a small reward, as Gehazi thought he might just as well take rather than let him go away free. “Behold,” says he to himself, “my master has spared this Aramean Naaman: as the Lord lives, I will run after him and take something from him.” But indeed he lied to Naaman, and returning, lied again to his master — and perhaps he would most courageously have taken the oath of simony upon it: for the sin of simony never goes alone. Yet it was his taking that was expressly charged against him, and for which he was smitten with an inexpiable leprosy that struck and smote his whole race. Now, if so dire was his doom merely for such an act: what shall become of all those patrons who stand

not upon a bare promise or hint of gratuity, but make their bargain firm upon the nail or upon the scale — as Judas would not sell and betray Christ before he saw and felt the money — who take all that comes, and more too if they can compass it, and allow their servants also to make the best advantage, so long as it is not to their own hindrance? Who have no regard for whether the buyer is rich or poor, Syrian or Christian, good or bad — all is fish that comes to their net? Or this example of Gehazi may terrify all such servants of the Prophet, or of any patron, who, however their master makes a conscience of receiving anything from the hands of ministers, yet he, forsooth, must have a share in the business, or else it will go but slowly forward. To omit Achan’s example — being only sacrilegious, not simoniacal, though his punishment was fearful — what a general judgment of dearth was upon all the land of the Jews for only defrauding God of his tithes? And is not selling a benefice or ecclesiastical preferment equivalent to the sacrilegious withholding of tithes, and so a defrauding of God? For it is a snare to devour that which is sanctified, and after vows to make inquiry. “You are cursed with a curse, even this whole nation. Why? You have robbed me, says the Lord. Wherein? In tithes and offerings: therefore I have cursed your blessings.” O fearful curse! “But bring all the tithes into the storehouse” — mark, all the tithes; abate none, either by way of fine or of rent, either by manual payment in gross or by annual deduction. Else the curse will not depart. “Yea, I will curse your blessings,” says God. What is this to us? Surely when I consider how, like Tantalus, we are perplexed amid prosperity; how pinched in the midst of plenty; how our farmers — the staffs of state — never complained more of want and penury than now, when their barns are most full and their fields most fruitful; yea more, when in such abundance of that celestial bread, that bread of life, the blessed Word of God, yet the souls of men in general are so hunger-starved, so ill-thriven, like Pharaoh’s lean kine; when in such plenty of preaching and teach-

ing I see so little — little or no — practice: may we not see, and may we not say, that this curse has befallen us — “I have cursed your blessings”? What might be the cause? Is there any other cause but one? No other cause but one can we read of for which the Lord says, “I have cursed your blessings,” or “I have cursed you with a curse.” If sacrilege and simony on all sides may be the cause, has not God cause enough to deal thus with us? The Lord amend us, that so he may both lighten his heavy hand upon us — which we cannot but feel at present — and stay his raised hand, which we cannot but see threatening us with greater judgments (if greater judgments can be than the cursing of our blessings), except we repent. And repent we do not, unless we obey the Lord’s voice, who says there, “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and prove me now herewith, says the Lord, if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing without measure.” A blessing without a cursing. This the good King Hezekiah and his whole kingdom proved, when upon the faithful bringing in of all their tithes and offerings they found such abundance that Hezekiah marveled at the heaps; and Azariah the priest answered him that since the people brought their tithes and offerings, the Lord has blessed his people, and this abundance is left. What should I here insert Belshazzar’s profane drinking from the sacred bowls, who in the midst of his revelry saw that fearful handwriting upon the wall? Daniel 5. And shall our sacrilegists or simoniacs so securely carouse not only from sacred bowls, but even the blood of men’s souls — by either their sacrilegious withholding in gross, or their simoniacal pilfering piece by piece of the maintenance of the ministry, which God has ordained for the salvation of the souls of his people?

Come we to the examples of the New Testament. With what divine zeal and fiery indignation was that meek Lamb of God inflamed when he whipped those buyers and sellers out of the Temple, calling them thieves, and cutting

cutting them off from partaking in his Temple? For as Nazianzen says: Quos Christus eiecit de Templo, nunquam Spiritus Christi sibi faciet Templum [Those whom Christ cast out of the Temple, the Spirit of Christ will never make his Temple]; as being destitute and void of the grace of the Holy Ghost. As Saint Jerome says: In Simoniacis nulla spiritualis gratia operatur [In simoniacs no spiritual grace has any operation]. Non enim operatur Spiritus Sanctus spiritualiter in perfidis mercimoniis avaritiae [For the Holy Spirit does not work spiritually in the treacherous merchandise of covetousness]. And Innocentius has a sentence no less fearful: Simoniaci etsi fidem tenere videantur, infidelitatis tamen perditioni subiciuntur [Simoniacs, although they seem to hold the true faith, are nonetheless subjected to the perdition of infidelity]. And Saint Ambrose: Simoniaci integritatem, et conscientiam puram fidei non habent [Simoniacs do not have the integrity and pure conscience of faith].

What shall I speak of Ananias and Sapphira? How fearfully and dreadfully were they struck for withholding part of that which they had dedicated and devoted to God and to his congregation, yea to the maintenance of the Apostles? And what should I speak of Simon’s curse — exemplary indeed, but such as the conscience rather than the senses apprehends, being spiritual rather than temporal, and yet both: for such ecclesiastical traffickers draw upon themselves a universal curse — upon their souls, by a deprivation even of common grace and ministerial abilities; upon their bodies and goods, by a diminution of strength and sustenance, health and wealth, life and livelihood; nothing thrives with them — all contained in this: “Thy money perish with thee; you have neither μερὶς [part] nor κλῆρον [lot] in this matter.” A simoniac is no minister, by Saint Peter’s doctrine.

And if we add to this the example of Heliodorus in the third chapter of the second book of Maccabees, let none blame it because it is Apocryphal. For as Saint Jerome, instructing the lady Leta concerning the education of her daughter Paula, says: Caveat omnia Apocrypha, quae non ad dogma-

Let her beware of all apocryphal books — which yet she may read, not for the truth of their doctrines, but for the reverence due to the examples in the story. So let no one doubt the truth of this example. Saint Ambrose also mentions it on a similar occasion. This Heliodorus, having been sent by King Seleucus to plunder the Temple, when no humble entreaties from the priests and people could dissuade him from his impious enterprise, was miraculously set upon by a man on horseback in gilded armor; and moreover was fiercely attacked, whipped, and scourged by two men who appeared to be young men — so that with great difficulty recovering from a deadly swoon, and escaping with his life through the priests’ prayers, he returned home with this answer to his king: that if the king had any enemies or traitors whom he wished well punished, he should simply send them to the place where he himself had been. Josephus reports how Marcus Crassus, having despoiled the Temple at Jerusalem of all that mass of treasure which the pious Pompey had refrained from touching, was therefore — he and his whole army — utterly overthrown at the crossing of the Euphrates. And in the sixth book of the same work, in the sixteenth chapter, Josephus shows by the example of John, one of the seditious men, that the sacrilege he committed in robbing the Temple of the priests’ maintenance was one of those forerunning sins that hastened the final and fatal ruin of the holy city. I might add to these many examples from secular histories, scrupulously noted by the pagans themselves, of divine vengeance inflicted upon their sacrilegious persons. But Aesop may serve to sum them all up in his apologue of the Eagle, which, snatching the sacrifice from off the altar, caught up with it a coal that, carried with the sacrifice to her nest, set both nest and herself on fire. The moral applies itself. And I pray God all sacrilegious simoniacs may so apply it, and lay it to their hearts, that they may prevent the hellfire prepared for the Devil and his angels, for Simon and all his angels.

Now all these exemplary punishments and judgments that

that we may prevent in ourselves, let us hearken to what Saint Augustine says: Decimae tributa sunt egentium animarum. Quod si Decimam dederis (he says not, Si vendideris) non solum abundantiam fructuum recipies, sed etiam sanitatem corporis et animae consequeris. Non igitur Dominus Deus praemium postulat, sed honorem. Deus enim noster, qui dignatus est totum dare, Decimam a nobis dignatus est recipere, non sibi, sed nobis sine dubio profuturam. Sed si tardius dare peccatum est, quanto magis peius est peccatum non dedisse? De militia, de negotio, et de artificio redde Decimas. Cum enim Decimas dando, et terrena, et caelestia possis praemia promereri: quare pro avaritia duplici benedictione fraudaris? Haec est enim Dei iustissima consuetudo, ut si tu illi Decimam non dederis, tu ad Decimam revoceris: dabis impio militi, quod non vis dare Sacerdoti. Benefacere Deus semper paratus est, sed hominum malitia prohibetur. Decimae enim ex debito requiruntur, et qui eas dare noluerint, res alienas invadunt. Et quot pauperes in locis suis, ubi ipse habitat, illo Decimas non dante, fame mortui fuerint, tot homicidiorum reus ante aeternum Iudicis Tribunal apparebit, quia rem a Deo pauperibus delegatam suis usibus reservavit. Qui igitur sibi, aut praemium comparare, aut peccatorum desiderat indulgentiam promereri, reddat Decimam; etiam de novem partibus studeat eleemozynam dare pauperibus. Tithes (says he) are the tributes of poor souls: if you give your tithe (he says not, if you sell it) you shall not only receive abundance of fruits, but shall also obtain health of body and soul. Nor does the Lord God require a reward, but honor. For our God, who has vouchsafed to give us the whole, has also vouchsafed to receive from us a tenth, not for his own profit, but without question for ours. But if it is a sin to give slowly, how much more grievous a sin is it not to give at all — or not to pay all the tithes of your warfare, of your trade, of your craft? For when you may obtain both earthly and heavenly rewards by paying your tithes, why are you defrauded of this double blessing through your covetousness? For this is a most just and common law with God, that if you do not bring your tenths, you yourself shall be brought to a tenth; you shall give to the impious soldier

that which you will not give to the priest. God is always ready to bless, but he is hindered by the malice of men. For tithes are required as a debt, and those who will not pay them invade the goods of others. And however many poor souls in that parish where he lives who pays not his tithes shall perish of hunger, of so many murders shall he stand guilty before the tribunal of the eternal Judge — because that which God has allotted for the poor, he has reserved for his own uses. He therefore who desires either to obtain a reward for himself, or to procure the pardon of his sins, let him pay his tithes; and let him also not be negligent in giving alms of the nine parts to the poor. Thus this holy Father.

Now for a corollary or conclusion of this point touching the censures of sacrilegious simoniacs, I will give a brief account of those observations which Rebuffus has collected in his last question of his Tract on Tithes. I omit to set down his authorities as cited by him, referring that to the reader at his pleasure or leisure. He who does not pay his tithes but either sells them or withholds any part of them fights against God. Secondly, he shall be always poor. In former times when four kinds of tithes were duly paid, men grew rich; now when even one is not well paid, men are reduced to a tenth, and the Lord does not remove their plagues. Thirdly, they are cursed by God with penury, with pestilence, with sudden death, and with a perishing name. Fourthly, they shall lack necessaries who deny God their duties. Fifthly, they are the heirs of eternal death. Sixthly, they shall be subject to bodily infirmities and diseases. Seventhly, they shall be associated with the devils, who (as some say) are the tenth part of the angels. Eighthly, he who will not give what is due to God shall give to the profane soldier that which he will not give to the priest. Ninthly, such a one is a thief and a person of ill repute. Tenthly, such shall be guilty before God’s tribunal of murdering so many poor souls as have perished for want of the minister’s maintenance not being paid. Eleventhly, such are sacrilegious persons, and consequently liable to eternal damnation, and ought every Lord’s day to be denounced by the minister as excommunicate. Twelfthly, defrauders of tithes ought

to be denied Christian burial. Thirteenthly, if such persons cannot be compelled by ecclesiastical censures, the secular sword is to be invoked. Fourteenthly, he who owes his tithes cannot deny them on the pretext of any debt owed to him, because tithes admit no such compensation, nor any appeal. In a word, all withholders or defrauders of tithes, in whatever manner — whether it be sacrilegious or simoniacal — are the sons of perdition, notwithstanding any custom, usurpation, or forcible occupation; they are in a state of damnation, and all who take part with them, whether by counsel, aid, consent, or defense, directly or indirectly; they are all of them thieves and robbers of God’s goods, pillagers and despoilers of the saints, church-robbers, and excommunicate persons, excluded from the benefit of prayer, remission of sins, and all benefit of the Church; and without restitution before death, no receiving of the sacrament, no confession of sins, no absolution of the priest will do them any good — but with Judas they are traitors and robbers of God’s treasure. They are infidels and ungracious, ungrateful persons, and shall be eternally damned in hell. And as the Philistines were punished with mice and locusts, with hemorrhoids and manifold miseries, so long as they detained the Lord’s Ark — so shall defrauders of tithes be continually exercised with punishments and grow old in miseries, until they make full restitution. For such are well worthy to be smitten with divine vengeance, to be punished by God’s own judging hands — whether with wicked children, or to die a sudden death, or to be slain, or to have their house and goods consumed with fire from heaven. Such is the reward of sacrilegious simony, or simoniacal sacrilege. But he who uses no fraud or deceit in his tithes shall be rewarded by God with eternal life, which the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost vouchsafe to grant to us. Amen. So he. From which we may observe how detestable the sin of sacrilege and simony is — although I do not otherwise approve of every particular passage cited by my author, as some of them smack of the Romish cask. But let it suffice to make such sins the more odious to all lovers of the truth.

CHAP. XV.

Of the miserable fruits and effects of simony.

The effects and fruits of simony are no less miserable than the censures are grievous and the punishments thereof intolerable. For as Simon is the father of all simoniacs, so simony is the mother of all mischiefs in the Church. For simony does usually poison and corrupt two wellheads from which the streams of good life generally flow to all the people — that is, the parson and the patron. These are, as it were, the two great lights in the firmament of the Church, from whom the sublunary and subordinate people receive the direction and conduct of their life.

Now for the parson or minister, he is the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the guide of the simple — but whom simony makes unsavory, darkens, and blinds. Therefore, as Saint Chrysostom says, When the candle is extinguished, when the pilot is drowned, when the captain is taken captive, what remains for the rest? “Let no man despise your youth,” said the Apostle to Timothy. Why? Because nothing does more impede and disadvantage a minister’s labors, and frustrate all the fruit of his calling, than contempt justly brought upon his person. And nothing makes him more contemptible than simony. And what so captivates their spiritual captains, what makes them so mute in God’s cause, what does so emasculate their manly profession, that they dare not do their duty when necessity commands it — if not simony? For as Saint Cyril says, A good pastor, entering into the fold by the authority of the Holy Ghost — as of the porter — the sheep hear his voice and willingly obey him, knowing and acknowledging the goodness and integrity of their shepherd: but when they find that their pastor came not in by the door but climbed up another way, neither do they so much esteem his exhortations

to virtue, nor so readily obey his precepts, because his violent intrusion into the sheepfold diminishes much of his reverence and dignity, and causes them to love him less and to esteem him more lightly. So he. And Gregory, Epistle 113, To Brunhild: “Therefore it comes about that the dignity of the priesthood is brought into contempt, and sacred honor is made into a crime. Reverence perishes and discipline is taken away, because he who ought to have corrected faults commits them; and the honorable censure of the priesthood is led into corruption by wicked ambition. For who will henceforth venerate what is sold? Or who will not think that cheap which is bought?” So that simony is as the dead fly corrupting the box of ointment: it mars not only the good nature but the good name of a minister, which should be as a precious ointment poured forth, perfuming the whole house of God and causing others to run after the sweet smell of it. Saint Ambrose compares the minister to the head, saying: “Just as when the head is diseased, the rest of the body must needs be lethally flooded by the overflow of the superior sickness — so also those who appear to be the head of the Church, being infected with a pestilential disease, corrupt the fraternal body, so that nothing from the whole frame of the body can escape uncontaminated by the deadly poison of the corruption of negligent priests. Thus you see in the Church everywhere those whom not merit but money has advanced to the order of the episcopate: a trifling and ignorant people who have brought such a priest upon themselves. If you would faithfully inquire of them who set them over the people as priests, they answer at once and say: ‘I was recently ordained bishop by the Archbishop; I gave him a hundred shillings so that I might merit to obtain episcopal grace. If I had not given them, I would not be a bishop today. Therefore it is better for me to spend gold from my purse than to lose so great a priesthood. I gave gold and purchased the episcopate. These shillings, however, I do not doubt I shall recover from wine straight away. I ordain priests, I consecrate deacons, and I receive gold. For from other orders likewise I am confident I can realize a profit from money. Behold, the gold I gave I have received back into my purse, and the episcopate I have received for nothing.’ And ignorant and unlearned people at their ordinations cry out and say, ‘You are worthy, you are just’; while the wretched conscience says, ‘You are unworthy, and unjust.’ For the bishop of this kind pronounces to the people

saying: ‘Peace be with you.’ To carnal eyes he appears as a great bishop, but to the divine gaze he is seen as a great leper. Through money he acquired an undeserved order, and he has lost God in the inner man. The flesh has received dignity and the soul has lost its honor. The flesh, formerly the handmaid, has become mistress of the soul; and the soul, which was mistress, has become servant to the flesh. The flesh rules over peoples, and the soul serves the devil. He has purchased the priesthood for the flesh and prepared ruin for the soul. What he gave when he was ordained was gold; what he lost was his soul. When he ordained another, what he received was money, and what he gave was leprosy. These are the traffickings of the wicked, to their own destruction.” And the same holy father, in his sixth chapter of the same book, pursues this argument thus: “Behold, to what evils is the godly order dragged down! Behold, to what shameful depths have priests fallen, who deserved to hear from the Judge of the world, ‘You are the salt of the earth.’ If therefore the bishop ordained by the Lord is the light of the Church — such that his eloquence, shining forth, illuminates the dark recesses of consciences with the light of his preaching amid the shadows of ignorance — why is he himself held fast and bound in palpable darkness? And not only does he himself perish deservedly by acting wickedly, but he also undeservedly destroys others along with himself. For if you merited to possess the savor of salt, so that you might be able to season the fields of the unwise — why, being made insipid by such a vice, have you offered yourself to be trampled under the unclean feet of swine, so that you can season neither others nor yourself? You also voluntarily sought the office of the eyes in the body — that is, in the Church — so that through you the rest of the body might have the guidance of light: and now, darkened by a kind of bleary-eyedness and blindness of vices, you neither offer yourself as fit for the light, nor do you refrain from taking away the light from others. Concerning these eyes, it is said in the Gospel: ‘If your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light’ — that is, if the bishop, who has merited to preside as light in the body, is adorned with holy simplicity and innocence, the whole Church is bathed in the splendor of light. ‘But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness’ — that is, if the bishop, who appeared to provide light to the subject body, is obscured by the blindness of wickedness, what shall the other members do, from whom the light of the eyes has been taken? That is: what will the mass of the secular people do, when by illicit pleasures and forbidden deeds the bishop has provoked the multitude of the people to a like whirlpool of crimes, so that nothing will now seem unlawful

which appears, as it were, lawfully perpetrated by the bishop. Rather, men believe that whatever a bishop finds pleasing is all the more praiseworthy. And no one says that he hesitates to do what the bishop does not scruple to do. For you are called bishop by all without hesitation — especially since you are known by that very name — provided that your conduct agrees with the name and the name joins itself to the conduct. For what else does ‘bishop’ mean but ‘overseer’? Especially since he sits on a loftier throne in the Church and so looks upon all, that the eyes of all look upon him. Since this is so, then, why do you display yourself as a foul mirror to the eyes of all, so that they cannot adorn themselves more fittingly in the reflection of your example?” So this holy bishop. Why should I cite more? “If King Jeroboam, having excluded the true Levites, consecrates as priest for himself anyone from the lowest of the people who brings with him a heifer and seven rams — what wonder if he alone made the entire nation of Israel to sin? But who are these lowborn men of the dregs of the people, co-opted into the sacred order? Namely those whom David calls vile — that is, devoid of the fear of the Lord. In such a priesthood of Israel, therefore, if no holy and upright person is to be found, if among so many kings not one was free from the most foul idolatry and the stain of every vice — who would rightly wonder? For just as the whole world is shaped by the example of the king, so such as the shepherd, such is the flock. In a priesthood corrupted by the taint of simony, you seek in vain for a pious and upright people. And if a simoniac can be holy, then the name of holiness would apply equally to a thief. For he who does not enter by the door but climbs up another way into the sheepfold is a thief and a robber, says that great Shepherd.” Hence Lyra: “And this is what all unbelievers do, and also wicked believers” — that is, those who profess the faith — “who attain to the state of prelacy without due right.” But (says he) he that enters in by the door — that is, by the faith and humility of Christ, and by his other virtues — to him the porter opens, that is, the Holy Ghost reveals his truth, that he may feed his sheep: but the thief comes not but to kill. So Lyra. Damianus tells of a certain simoniacal bishop who by no means could name the Holy Ghost, though he could name the Father and the Son; but when he came to name the Holy Ghost, his tongue would stammer and become stiff. “Deservedly indeed — for he who bought [the Spirit] by that very act lost it: so that the Spirit, being shut out from his soul, should consequently be far also from his tongue.” This bishop, convicted by this impediment,

dum emit, amisit: Ut qui exclusus erat ab anima, procul etiam esse consequenter a lingua. Hac igitur difficultate convictus, Episcopale decarceravit Officium, qui per Simoniacam haeresim ad Episcopatus culmen irrepserat. For in buying the Holy Ghost he deservedly lost it, so that it, being shut out of his soul, should also be far from his tongue. So that being convicted by this impediment, he abandoned his episcopal function, having crept to that summit of his bishopric by simoniacal heresy. So he.

Gratian also records a saying of Gregory to this purpose: Vulnerato Pastore, quis curandis ovibus adhibet medicinam? Aut quomodo populum orationis clypeo tueatur, qui iaculis hostium sese feriendum exponit? aut qualem fructum de se producturus est, cui grani pesteradix infesta est? Maior ergo metuenda est locis illis calamitas, ubi tales intercessores ad locum regiminis adducuntur, qui Dei magis in se iracundiam provocant, quam per semetipsos placare debuerant. [That is: “When the shepherd is wounded, who applies the medicine to heal the flock? Or how shall he protect the people with the shield of prayer, who exposes himself to be struck by the darts of the enemy? Or what fruit will he bring forth, whose very root is infected with the blight of grain? Therefore a greater calamity is to be feared in those places where such intercessors are brought to positions of governance, who provoke God’s wrath against themselves more than they ought to appease it through their own intercession.”] To this purpose Bernard says to such men: Soli non potestis perire, qui praire debetis docendo et operando. Multi sunt Catholici praedicando, qui Haeretici sunt operando. Quod Haeretici faciunt per prava dogmata, hoc faciunt plures hodie per mala exempla: Et tanto graviores sunt Haereticis, quanto praevalent opera verbis. [That is: “You alone cannot perish, you who ought to go before others by teaching and working. Many are Catholics in their preaching who are heretics in their practice. What heretics do by corrupt doctrines, many today do by evil examples; and they are so much more dangerous than heretics, as deeds prevail over words.”] So Bernard. Simoniaci autem haeretici sunt, in quibus quid impedit, quo minus omne genus peccati dominetur. But simoniacs are heretics, in whom nothing prevents every kind of sin from holding dominion. For as Senectus est omnis Morbus [old age is every disease], so simony is every evil. It is the Dead Sea in which are buried — indeed, bred — more than all the sins of Sodom and her confederate cities. From whence come all those sins of bribery in the commonwealth, if not from this stinking lake? From whence comes all that lay-simony in buying and selling every sort of office, great and small, of public justice and private service, if not from the authentic precedent — indeed, the spawn and seed of simony? Thus the virgin Dinah, the Virgin Church being ravished, what follows but that these two, Simeon and Levi, the simoniacal patron and parson, brothers in evil, will be the instruments of cruelty to destroy the whole city or parish where they dwell, and so make the whole profession of true religion to stink in the nostrils even of the enemies of

of the truth. These two being like the two main pillars upon which the whole house rests: if simony, like Samson, shakes these down, tell me how the whole parish can fail to perish with them? We have a memorable and much-lamented example of this in Herod and Caiaphas, the one the patron selling, the other the priest purchasing. For it is well observed by Ferus that Annas and Caiaphas purchased for themselves the yearly alternation of succession in the office of the High Priest, which is noted by the Evangelist in saying that Caiaphas was the High Priest for that year. So that Annas and Caiaphas, the father-in-law and son-in-law, had their yearly turns in the High Priest’s office, rendering to Herod a yearly return for the same, to keep his fingers in constant use and practice. Unde facile conjici potest quam nihil pietatis habuerint, multum autem arrogantiae et vana gloria — whence it may easily be conjectured how little or no piety they had, and how much pride and vain-glory; so says Ferus. And who so fit as these grand simoniacs to be the betrayers and murderers of the Lord Jesus Christ? From which followed the fatal ruin of that most ancient and renowned Church and nation of the Jews. So when the Lord had pronounced that fatal and final destruction upon Jerusalem and that Church, does he not immediately thereafter go into the Temple and purge it of those profane merchants? Indicating that such profanation of the Church by buyers and sellers should be one principal cause of its ruin (Luke 19:44–45). Saint Augustine reported that the holy fire of the sacrifice, which during the seventy years of captivity in Babylon had lived preserved under water, was extinguished when Antiochus sold the Priesthood to Jason. And what wonder then if the fire of godly zeal, and the very life and light of religion, is in danger of being wholly extinguished in that Church where simony is predominant? In Pope Gregory IX’s time, a Greek Archbishop-elect, coming to Rome to be confirmed and failing to obtain confirmation without a large sum of money, thereupon returned re infecta [his business undone], which gave the first occasion to the Greek Church to revolt and tear itself from

from the Latin, as Matthew Paris says. But this is by the way, to show how odious and how pernicious simony is.

Cyprian de Lapsis says: Non in Sacerdotibus religio devota, non in Ministris fides integra, non in operibus misericordia, non in moribus disciplina. Episcopi plurimi, quos et hortamento esse oportet caeteris et exemplo, divina procuratione contempta, Procuratores rerum secularium fieri, derelicta Cathedra, plebe deserta, negotiationis quaestuosae nundinas aucupari; esurientibus in Ecclesia fratribus non subvenire, habere argentum largiter velle, etc. Quid non perpeti tales pro peccatis eiusmodi mereremur! Adeo traditam nobis divinitus Disciplinam pax longa corrupit, etc. [That is: “Among the priests there is no devout religion; among the ministers, no sound faith; in [their] works, no mercy; in morals, no discipline. Very many bishops, who ought to be both an exhortation and an example to others, despising the management of divine things, have become managers of secular affairs; forsaking their cathedra and abandoning their people, they haunt the markets of gainful trade; they will not relieve their hungry brothers in the Church, but they desire to have money in abundance, etc. What suffering would we not deserve for such sins! So greatly has a long peace corrupted the discipline divinely delivered to us, etc.”] And de ieiunio et tent. 6: Simon Apostolorum temporibus vanalem putans Spiritum Sanctum, Petrum donis aggreditur, et tentat emere potestatem, per quam plura lucretur. Haec sacrilegi forma per omnia Officia, gradusque, discurrit, et nihil intentatum ambitio praetermittit. Nec dubitet quisquam Diaboli esse negotia, et nundinatores eius, quicunque, haec exercent commercia, nec quicquam huiusmodi ab eo, nisi praemissa Apostasia, donari. [That is: “Simon, in the time of the Apostles, thinking the Holy Spirit could be bought for money, approaches Peter with gifts and attempts to purchase a power by which he might gain more. This pattern of sacrilege runs through all offices and ranks, and ambition leaves nothing unattempted. Let no one doubt that these are the Devil’s business, and that those who practice such commerce are his merchants, and that nothing of this kind is granted by him without apostasy first being rendered.”] So that simony and apostasy go together.

What should I speak here of the infinite and insupportable discouragements that both learning and honesty jointly suffer by reason of simony? — when an honest scholar sees before his eyes the impossibility of attaining any place in the Church, his honesty being in this respect so lame that it cannot stir either hand or foot to climb or scramble to any such place by by-paths.

That reverend and learned Bishop Jewel, in one of his sermons before the late Queen Elizabeth of famous memory, among many other excellent observations to the like purpose, says thus: Loath I am to speak, says he, yet the case so requires. Maintenance of Learning, whereby an able and sufficient Ministry may grow and be established in all the Churches of this Realm, is to be wished for. The good estate of this noble Kingdom, the comfort of posterity, the stay of religion, the continuing of the Gospel, the removing of darkness, hang-

s upon it. One asked sometimes how it was, that in Athens, so goodly and great a City, there were no Physicians. To whom the answer was made, because there are no rewards appointed for them that practice physic. The same answer may be made for our times; the cause why the Church of God is so forsaken, is the want of zeal toward those who should either for their generosity, or for their ability, be fosterers of learning, and increase the livings, where occasion is, and give hope and comfort to learned men. What said I? Increase? Nay the livings and provision, which heretofore were given to this use, are taken away. Have patience, if any such be here (as I well know there are) whom these things touch. Suffer me to speak the truth, it is God’s cause. The livings of such, as are in the Ministry, are not in their hands, to whom they are due. All other Laborers and Artificers have their hire increased double as much, as it was wont to be: only the poor man that labors and sweats in the Vineyard of the Lord of hosts, has his hire abridged and abated. I speak not of the Curates, but of the Parsonages and Vicarages, that is of the places, which are the Castles and Towers of defense for the Lord’s Temple. They seldom pass now-a-days from the Patron, if he be no better than a Gentleman, but either for the Lease, or for ready money. Such Merchants are broken into the Church of God, a great deal more intolerable, than were they, whom Christ whipped and chased out of the Temple. Thus they that should be careful for God’s Church, that should be Patrons to provide for the consciences of the people, and to place among them a learned Minister, who might be able to preach the Word unto them out of season and in season, and to fulfill his Ministry, seek their own, and not that which is Jesus Christ’s. They serve not Jesus Christ, but their belly. And this is done not in one place, or in one Country, but throughout England. A Gentleman cannot keep his house, unless he has a Parsonage or two in farm for his provision.

O merciful God, to what will this grow at last? If the misery that this plague works would reach but to one age, it were the more tolerable. But it will be a plague to posterity; it will be the decay and desolation of God’s Church. Young men, which are

are forward and learned, see this. They see that he who feeds the flock has the least share of the milk; he who goes to war does not receive half his wages. Therefore they grow weary and discouraged; they change their studies — some become apprentices, some turn to medicine, some to law: all shun and flee the ministry. And besides the hindrance that thus grows from the wicked dealing of patrons, by reason of the impropriation [the appropriation of church revenues by laymen], the vicarages in many places, and in the most prominent market towns, are so meager that no man can live upon them, and therefore no man will accept them. They used to say, Beneficia sine Cura — benefices without charge; but now it might be said, Cura sine Beneficio — charge or cure without benefice. Thus, and much more to this purpose, said that peerless Jewel. And he concludes with a grave exhortation to her Majesty, as follows: Oh, that your Grace might behold the miserable disorder of God’s Church, or that you might foresee the calamities that will follow. It is a part of your kingdom — and such a part as is the principal prop and stay of the rest. I will say to your Majesty what Cyrillus once said to the godly emperors Theodosius and Valentinian: “Ab ea, quae erga Deum est, pietate, reipub. vestrae status pendet” — the good estate and welfare of your commonwealth hangs upon true godliness. You are our Governor; you are the Nurse of God’s Church. We must lay this grief before you. God knows whether it can be redressed, it has run so far. But if it can be redressed, there is none besides your Highness who can redress it. I hope I speak truly, and without flattery, that God has endued your Grace with such a measure of learning and knowledge as no other Christian prince. He has given you peace, happiness, the love and the hearts of your subjects. Oh, turn and employ these to the glory of God, that God may confirm in your Grace the thing he has begun. To this end has God placed kings and princes in their estate, as David says: that they serve the Lord; that they may see, and cause others to see to the furnishing of the Church. The good emperor Justinian cared for this as much as for his life. Constantine, Theodosius, and Valentinian, and other godly princes, called themselves Vassallos — the sub-

subjects and bondservants of God. They remembered that God furnished them in their houses, and were not unmindful to furnish his house.

To this purpose also, a grave and learned, now a prelate of this church, in his sermon at Paul’s Cross, spoke thus: We who are bred up in learning and destined by our parents to this end — we suffer our childhood in the grammar school, which Augustine calls “Magnam tyrannidem, et grave malum” [a great tyranny and a grave evil], comparing it to the torments of martyrdom; when we come to the university, if we live on the college allowance, as Phalaris objected to the Leontines, παντων ενδεῖς, πλην λιμοῦ καὶ φόβου, needy of all things but hunger and fear; or if we are maintained but partly by our parents’ cost, we expend in university maintenance, books, and degrees, before we come to any perfection, five hundred pounds or a thousand marks — if by this price of the expenditure of our time, our bodies and spirits, our substance and patrimonies, we cannot purchase those small rewards which are ours by law and right of inheritance, a poor parsonage or a vicarage of fifty pounds per annum, but we must pay the patron for the lease of a life (a spent and outworn life) either in annual pension or above the rate of a copyhold, and that with the hazard and loss of our souls through simony and perjury, and the forfeiture of all our spiritual preferment in esse and posse [in present possession and in future expectation], both present and to come: what father, after a while, will be so improvident as to bring up his son, at great cost, to this necessary beggary? What Christian will be so irreligious as to bring up his son in that course of life which, by all probability and necessity, “Cogit ad turpia” [forces him to shameful things], will entangle him in simony and perjury? whereas the poet says, Invitatus ad haec aliquis de ponte negabit — a beggar’s brat taken from the bridge where he sits begging, if he knew the inconvenience, would have cause to refuse it. So he. Let me conclude it with the words of our Democritus [Robert Burton]: This being thus, says he, have we not fished fairly all this while, we who are initiated divines, to find no better fruits of our labor? “Hoc est cur palles? cur quis non prandeat, hoc est?” [Is this why you grow pale? Is this why a man goes without dinner?] Do we macerate ourselves for this? If this is all the respect, reward, and honor we shall have, “Frange leves calamos, et scinde Thalia libel-

libellos — let us give over our books and betake ourselves to some other course of life. To what end shall we study? “Quid me literulas stulti docuere parentes?” [What did my foolish parents mean by making me a scholar?] — to be as far from advancement, after twenty years of study, as we were at first? Why do we take such pains? “Quid tantum insanis iuvat impallescere chartis?” [What pleasure is there in growing pale over mad pages?] So he. Honos alit Artes — honor and reward is the maintainer of arts. But the ministry is the art of arts. And shall we call that which God and man have appointed for the maintenance of the ministry a reward for a minister? Alas — God help us, if this were our reward, which at the most bears no proportion to the work of a minister. For if we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we reap your carnal things? Indeed — Non magnum, sed minimum, says Anselm — a very small matter. But shall the work of our ministry so infinitely exceed that which in no proportion can be reckoned a reward — and yet can we not have this poor recompense of our labor (though not of our function) to sustain our poor bodies and studies, but we must pay as dearly for it as he who never saw a school may pay for this or any temporal commodity? If so, then frange leves calamos, et scinde Thalia libellos — away with learning, and consequently away with the ministry; yes, farewell to all good ministers. For every minister should be an honest man, and no honest man will be a corrupt minister; and consequently, no honest minister will be a simoniac. Does not simony then tend to the utter abolition of the ministry? And what other ministry can be expected in a church where simony reigns, than such as existed under Jeroboam? To whom Abijah king of Judah said: Have you not driven away the priests of the Lord, the sons of Aaron and the Levites, and have made for yourselves priests like the people of other countries? Whosoever comes to consecrate with a young bullock and seven rams, the same may be a priest. So simony drives away all good men, and admits into the church those who are corrupt — the basest of the people. Master Perkins, that reverend man of God, cites this as

one of the main reasons for the rarity and scarcity of good ministers — namely, the want of maintenance and preferment for men who labor in this calling. And what difference is there, I pray you, between want of maintenance or preferment, and the buying and purchasing of them? For so, preferment becomes a recompense for my money, not for my ministry. I will set out the words of that good man. Men, says he, are flesh and blood, and in that respect must be allured and won to embrace this vocation by some arguments that may persuade flesh and blood. The world has in all ages been negligent in this matter, and therefore God in his Law took such strict order for the maintenance of the Levites. But especially now under the Gospel, this calling is unprovided for, when it deserves most of all to be rewarded. Certainly — if God’s law did not bind us — it were a worthy Christian policy to propose good preferments to this calling, that thereby men of the worthiest gifts might be won to it. The want thereof is the cause why so many young men of special parts and greatest hope turn to other vocations, and especially to the law, wherein at this day the greatest part of the finest wits of our kingdom are employed. And why? But because they have all the means to rise, whereas the ministry for the most part yields nothing but a plain way to beggary. This is a great blemish in our church; and surely I wish the papists — those children of this world — were not wiser in their kind in this point than the church of God. The reformation of this is a work worthy the labor of a prince and people, and special care is to be had in it, else it will not be reformed. For doubtless, had not God himself in the Old Testament taken such strict orders for the livings of the Levites, they would have been put to no less extremities than is the ministry of this age. And this reason, added to the other, makes them perfect; and all put together makes a reason infallible. For who will undergo so vile a contempt, and so great a charge, for no reward? And where there is so great contempt and so mean a reward, what marvel if a good minister is one of a thousand? So this holy man. By all which we may both see the misery of the ministry of a church where not only the one half of church mainte-

maintenance is impropriate. But the other [i.e., the other half of church maintenance] is for the most part in the hands of hucksters, its proper character as a preferment and reward for a faithful minister having been altered by simony — made, as it were, impropriate too — and consequently we cannot but feel, and still more fear, the grievous effects thereof, both in Church and Commonwealth.

Again, inasmuch as simoniacs are the most formidable non-residents — making use of their benefices as fishers do of their lesser fish, as bait to catch the greater, and so leaving the sweet fresh rivers at home to go fish abroad in the open sea (for there is no fishing like the sea, nor service like a king’s) — whereas they might wisely, like the vine and fig-tree and olive-tree, enjoy their sweet private life in God’s vineyard, feeding their harmless flock, and not, like the bramble Abimelech, aspire to become, as Saint Peter says, κυριεύοντες ἐπὶ κλήρων [“lording it over the flock”]: not examples to the flock. Doing so, what else can come of it but pitiful ruin, both to themselves and to the flock of God? For simony necessarily implies non-residence. For first, a simoniac, after the payment of his initial purchase, is commonly forced to live privately, to let out his parsonage on lease, defrauding the poor of their hospitality relief, and to go skulk in some corner of the city or other, and there thrust himself into some lectureship: there he gathers up his crumbs again. And after some miserable difficulty in recovering himself, does he then retire home to feed his flock? Far from it. But like Issachar, he is like a strong donkey crouching between two burdens; he sees that rest is good and the land pleasant, and now begins he tooth and nail to gather another stock, to purchase another preferment — and that done, after a while another — and so the tide at last comes in so fast upon him that it bears up his bark, now ready-rigged for any port of preferment or prelacy, like some traveling adventurers who for gain will hazard their lives in some far and dangerous voyage — but herein unlike them: those go with a mind and hope to return home; these sel-

seldom or never so much as once look back toward their more humble home on the plain, fearing, as it were, the punishment of Lot’s wife — so eager are they, on the wings of ambition, to fly to the highest summit of preferment, as if there were no safety but there. Those again lay out one [coin] to receive three or four at their return; these will give three for one if they never return. Whence, what mischief to the Church? What decay of religion? What coldness of devotion? What contempt of the sacred calling? What scandal to the Gospel? What ignorance — the mother of popish devotion, indeed of all impiety and profaneness, of all heresy and superstition? — all threatening imminent and inevitable danger (if it be not the sooner prevented by a happy reformation) both to Church and Commonwealth. It would be endless to muster up all the mischiefs that follow from this one general [sin], simony. A worthy minister once of this Church said: A simoniac is a perpetual care-worn bond-slave to his patron. He has no warrant to teach the people, and commonly less success. Whereas if a man be sent of God to govern a people, however ignorant and fierce, God will put his hand between and tame them. According to the word of the prophet, Jeremiah 23:32: I sent not those prophets, nor commanded them; therefore they shall not profit this people at all, says the Lord.

I will conclude therefore with two or three zealous and pithy admonitions of Gregory to this purpose. In his 64th Epistle to Queen Brunichilda he earnestly exhorts her to root out from her kingdom this heresy of simony, saying: Providete animae vestrae, etc. — Have a care of your soul; have a care of your posterity, to whom you wish a happy reign; have a care of your provinces; and before our Creator puts forth his hand to smite, bethink yourself most carefully of the correction of this sin. And in his 51st Epistle to Virgilius, Bishop of Arles: Constat etc. — It is reported that in the provinces of France and Germany none is admitted to holy orders without giving a bribe; if it be so — I speak it with tears, I denounce it with grief — that the priestly order being decayed inwardly, the outward

ward state of it cannot stand. And in Epistle 54 he exhorts Theodoric the French King to assemble a synod: Misse etc. — That all evil conduct of the priests, and the simoniacal heresy, which first arose in the Church through impious ambition, may by the definitive sentence of the council, backed with the censure of your authority, be taken away and torn up by the roots: lest, if gold be held in more esteem than God, he whose gentleness is now despised in his precepts may afterwards cause his wrath to be felt in revenge. And Epistle 57 to Queen Brunichilda: Synodum etc. — Call a synod, and among other things carefully cause the heresy of simony to be banished from your kingdom. For believe me, as we have learned by manifold experience, that is to be reckoned among our losses, whatsoever is gained by sin. If therefore you would be defrauded of nothing unjustly, be careful to possess nothing unjustly. For in earthly things the cause of damage always originates from sin. If therefore you would outstrip your adversary nations, if by God’s assistance you desire the conquest of them, receive with reverence the commandments of the same Almighty Lord, that he may vouchsafe to fight for you against your foes, who has in his holy oracle promised, saying: The Lord shall fight for you, and you shall hold your peace. So this last good Bishop of Rome. Now may the Almighty Lord God give grace to this Church and Commonwealth, that for the still-flourishing of his glorious Gospel among us, the good of our souls, the welfare of our estates, the settling of our peace, the securing of our posterity, and the subduing of all our enemies, there may be stirred up in us all a godly care and conscience, to join hearts and hands together for the utter extirpation (if possible) of this mother-sin of simony.

Chapter XVI.

Of the cutting off, or curing of simony.

Although, when the article of simony (among other enormities) came to be considered at the

Council of Trent for reformation, it was cautiously proposed that the abuse occurring in the collation of benefices should not be mentioned, as being an infirmity not to be cured by any remedy but death — yet since this Morbus Romano-Catholicus [“Roman Catholic disease”] has not yet grown so epidemic or inveterate in the main branches of the true Catholic Church but that there is some hope left of arresting its further spread and allaying its fury: my conclusion shall be a humble supplication to the Almighty (to whom nothing is impossible), through the mediation of the great Shepherd, to persuade and move his vicegerent, our gracious King, and the most honourable and high Court of Parliament now assembled: that inasmuch as simony is the very mass of all mischief and misdemeanor both in Church and Commonwealth, it would therefore please his Royal Majesty and this noble assembly to add some more cords to the whip of former laws, and to make and take order that it be more surely and severely inflicted upon the transgressors in this kind.

True it is that we ministers, for our parts, need not desire any other laws for the restraint of simony than the oath itself, which alone is sufficient — if there were no other reason — to make us decline all the ways of simony. For how many thousands does this oath alone prevail with? We are loath, in the most opposite sense, to become a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men [1 Corinthians 4:9]. We will rather choose, with the apostles of Christ, to become spectacles for our poverty and contempt, which our very calling suffers at the hands of an ungrateful world. Therefore, as Ezra the priest was ashamed to require of the king a guard for his safe conduct, having professed to the king and promised to himself that God would guard and defend those who seek him in goodness — so I confess (and that in the name of all my reverend brethren) I cannot but be ashamed to request of my sovereign any other stronger guard to keep off this dangerous way-laying enemy from assaulting

faulting God’s Ezras, his priests and ministers, as they are going toward Jerusalem, to the repairing of the Temple, to the rebuilding of the ruins of God’s Church, in these last and loosest times — seeing we, of all others, profess ourselves precedents of virtue, patterns and patrons of the practice of piety, of faith toward God, of pure conscience among men, and whom not dreadful oaths invented by man’s wit should constrain, but the living oracles of God’s Word should sweetly and graciously move, to come with pure hearts and clean hands to bear — yea, to be the holy vessels of the Lord in his sanctuary. But inasmuch as many take their first degree in simony before their commencement at the university, and perhaps before they have taken orders in the church — as some clever and promising scholar, who has learned to distinguish per se, aut per alium [by himself or through another], to contract by precontract, but ignorant of the nature of such bargains, falls unwittingly into the snare — and seeing also that if there were no sellers, there would be no buyers at all: therefore, for the prevention of much simony, whether between the patron and his schoolmaster, or between the patron and his neighbor, too provident for his son’s preferment, it were to be wished that the oath of simony might be administered to the presenting patron, so that the wicket being stopped up, the path would in time become so overgrown that men would be diverted from ever seeking to enter at the broad gate. Though if some wily dealer can, with his logic — or rather self-deceiving sophistry — find out evasions even beyond the pillars of Hercules, directly and indirectly, beyond which there can be no plus ultra [further beyond]: will not the merchant, do you think, by some trick or quibble in law, just as easily ferry himself out of that narrow-mouthed strait? Nevertheless, I say, it were to be wished that as well the presenter as the presentee might take the oath. However, would to God that a severe penalty might be impartially imposed upon both the simoniacal parties, and that the offending patron might not only be dispossessed of all present title of presentation, but

but forever after deprived and disabled from being capable of any presentative power. And this stands with good reason and equity, seeing the sin of the seller — except that the condition of his person may somewhat extenuate it, in comparison with the buyer, if the buyer be a sacred person — is not inferior to that of the buyer. For as Gelasius says, Dantes pariter & accipientem damnatio Simonis involuit: the giver, together with the receiver, is involved in the same damnation of Simon. And the buyer — we know — the relative peccant [the counterpart offender], is by ancient canons deprived and dispossessed of all spiritual promotion and ministerial function, both for the present and the future. And if either shall be found perjured, let them undergo the penalty of perjury. Paulus Venetus, in part 2, to restrain the sin of simony, says: Cum detestabile Scelus Simoniaca pravitatis tam Divinorum, quam Sacrorum Canonum authoritas, abhorreat atque damnet: nos considerantes, quod plures pœnarum gravitas, quam Dei Timor arcere solet a voluntate peccandi, ac summis desideriis affectantes, ut horum pestiferum vitium non ex usu solum, sed etiam mentibus hominum, saltem propter pœnarum metum penitus evellatur, &c. — that is: seeing the authority as well of divine as of sacred canons does abhor and condemn the detestable sin of simoniacal depravity, we considering that the greatness of punishments is commonly of more force to restrain most men from proneness to sin than the fear of God; and earnestly desiring that the pestiferous vice of these men may be altogether rooted out, at least for the fear of penalties, not only from practice but also from the minds of men, etc. He includes and involves all, of whatever degree or dignity, whether civil or ecclesiastical, givers or receivers, principals or accessories, in the same penalty of simony — and that is, suspension from the execution of their place and function, and excommunication, not to be absolved except by the Pope himself, save in the very point of death. Extrav. cons. lib. 3. de Simonia.

And here let me crave leave to relate a passage in the Council of Trent concerning this purpose: which, whether it may be thought a good rule and law for us for the better

better prevention of simony, I refer to graver judgments. The Church of Rome being desperately and deadly sick with infinite enormous diseases, especially in her clergy — in whom that of simony might claim precedence — this Council, pretending but never intending (as the sequel proves) a reformation, after much ado and long debate about the cure of so inveterate and epidemic a disease, at length the Romish doctors, having beaten their brains about it, set down their prescription as an antidote against simony. At length, I say, after great travail and posting back and forth to Rome, this Catholic Mother brings forth a fair and well-featured child to look upon, which, had it not proved abortive at birth, might have lived to work wonders in the conjuring down of the spirit of simony which Simon the Sorcerer first conjured up. Wherefore, finding this infant lying stretched out dead and exposed in the eighteenth chapter of the twenty-fourth session of that Council, let me — not with Gehazi’s staff, but with Elisha’s spirit — try if any life may be fetched again out of it. Thus it lies: Expedit maxime animarum saluti a dignis atque idoneis Parochis gubernari: id ut diligentius, ac rectius perficiatur, statuit Sancta Synodus, &c. — (Lo, what a fair and well-favored face is here:) It is most behooving for the salvation of souls to be governed by worthy and fit pastors: which, that it may the more diligently and duly be effected, the holy Synod decrees that upon the vacation of any benefice, the bishop should presently, upon notice of it, take order for a fit incumbent rector; for which purpose the bishop and the patron, within ten days or such a time as limited by the bishop, shall nominate some fit clerks to govern the church before the examiners who are to be deputed and appointed. Yea, let it also be free for others who know any to be fit for that function to bring in their names, that a diligent inquiry may thereupon be made of every one’s age, manners, and sufficiency. And if it seem good to the bishop or provincial synod, let them also be called by public edict, as many as are willing to be examined. And to the end that a fit choice may be made, let there

there be appointed at every year’s diocesan synod of the bishop, or his deputy at the visitation, six examiners approved by the whole synod: that at the vacancy of any church in the diocese, the bishop may choose three of those examiners, as he will, to join with him in the examination of a fit succeeding incumbent. And these examiners, being men of quality, shall swear by the holy Evangelist that, setting aside all human affection, they shall faithfully execute their office. And let them take heed that upon the occasion of their examination, neither before nor after, they finger any fee: lest otherwise, as well they the receivers as their givers incur the sin of simony, from which they cannot be absolved unless they forgo all their benefices, upon whatever condition formerly obtained, and become incapable of any afterwards. And at every provincial synod they may be called to account, and if they be found faulty, to be punished as the synod shall appoint. Now upon every such aforesaid examination, those whom the examiners approve of most for their sufficiency shall be commended to the bishop; and of those, let the bishop choose him whom he shall judge most fit, and upon him and none else shall the patron confer the benefice. All other forms of institution, let them be held surreptitious, notwithstanding any exemption or privilege heretofore granted to the contrary, to whomsoever.

Thus this Council. And although I confess that this chapter — as also the whole Council, containing the whole mystery of iniquity — is very perplexedly compiled, as if the Council meant no such matter, though so speciously pretended (as the judicious reader may easily discern when he reads the chapter itself, being full of reservations and equivocations), yet the reading of this riddle may open a way to stop and stay this fretting gangrene. The pearls gathered out of this mud may serve to hold our simoniacal merchant from dealing in other merchandise; a sword framed out of this forge may cut off the head of simony; and a line drawn from the windings of this circle may regulate and confine all irregular and simoniacal persons.

Yet

Yet after all these ways — which may perhaps prove either burdensome to one who has not gone through them before (as for the patron to be put to the oath) or laborious to make them practicable — there is a shorter route (I confess) to a speedier reformation, though it is very hard to hit upon. It cannot be better described than by setting down an example or two of those who have gone this way. And here we have a noble precedent in the Emperor Henry IV. It is recorded by the late reverend Bishop of Winchester, in his book on Christian subjection and Antichristian rebellion, the third part, and taken from Lamberti Scafnaburgensis, in the year 1075: that this Henry IV, during the vacancy of the Abbey of Fulda, being solicited very ambitiously by sundry monks and friars — competitors for the place — on the sudden, as though led by a divine spirit, chose one Ruozelin, a good honest poor monk who had no thought of any such thing. The like also this emperor did upon the vacancy of the Abbey of Lorsch.

For conclusion, it is to be wished that, for the more careful cure of this accursed and cancerous sin, all — not only professed recusants, but church-papists, such as will come to church but once a month at most — may by act be both actually and potentially deprived and dispossessed of all presentative power whatsoever in disposing of any church living. And that for the better discovery [of such persons], every patron presenting shall promptly take oath, not only of allegiance but of supremacy, this being the Lidius Lapis [Lydian stone], or touchstone, to discern a true Christian from a counterfeit Catholic, and a good patron from a crafty Romish thief. For can the flock be in safety when the shepherd-dog is of the wolf’s providing? And will not such a wolf be sure to provide such a dog as the Holy Ghost speaks of by his prophet (Isaiah 56:10–11) — either some dumb dog, or a lazy and sleepy mongrel, or a ranging spaniel, or a ravening hound? Such as are muzzled: either ignorant and cannot, or can and will not, or would but dare not bark at sin and sinners? Or whose mangy manners are enough to infect

his whole flock? Or whose ranging non-residence gives the wolf leave to prey all the more securely? Or whose rapacious and ravening avarice devours no less than does the wolf? Or, in one word, all of these: of necessity some grand simoniac, so deeply drenched and bemired with simony that he is for ever after (so indelible is this pitchy sin) both a laughing-stock to the wolf and a stumbling-block to his own flock. For a simoniac he must needs be — and that some unlettered blockhead whom popish patrons among us prefer to their benefices, accounting as money well spent what they bestow in tam pios usus [on such pious uses] as the maintenance of their mass-priests. So that by this means the wolf must be maintained by the simoniacal pastor.

The Corollary: directed especially to all lay patrons and lay purchasers of the sacred portion.

Now before I close my little treatise, I entreat all lay persons — especially patrons of benefices, and also all such fathers as make no distinction between the purchase of a benefice and of a farm to leave as a portion for their children — that they would patiently peruse and wisely weigh these few lines. These lines proceed from a heart inflamed with the zeal of God’s glory, of the propagation of his Church, and of the soul’s salvation of all those whom it especially concerns; and I desire that they may be affectionately embraced and effectually followed by all. For since I speak to wise men, let me speak the more freely in few words. But they are the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: What shall it profit a man, if he wins the whole world and loses his own soul? Hereby the Lord implies that a man’s soul is infinitely of more value than the whole world. Now if it be so in the whole, what is it in every small part? What shall it profit a man, if

if he wins a little piece of the world and loses his own soul? What did Esau gain by selling his birthright — and figuratively his soul — for a mess of broth? Or Achan, for a wedge of gold? Or Judas, for selling both his soul and his Savior for thirty pence? Or Gehazi, for selling his master’s gift for two talents? Or Ananias and Sapphira, for withholding what was vowed and consecrated? Now God is the same jealous God still that he was from the beginning. And the Apostle says concerning sacrilegious persons: Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man sows, the same shall he also reap. But why all this? First, this concerns all patrons to look to it — such as account it no less lawful to sell a benefice, or to usurp by force or cunning either the whole or a part for their own proper yet improper use, than to sell their horse or house.

Now to all patrons is my speech chiefly addressed. The benefices in your patronage are but a pledge committed to you in trust, and it is no small trust — the souls of God’s people are engaged in it. Your first and chief care should be to make choice of a worthy minister; next, to collate it upon him freely, without either exacting or expecting of him anything more or less. Much less should you set a price upon it, or make a public sale of it to the one who will give most; or reserve your own tithes, or the glebe, or some such portion to maintain your household with grain for bread, or grain for drink, or some other commodities. The eagle snatching the sacrifice from the altar carried with it a coal that clung to it, which proved enough to set her nest and herself on fire. O look to it, if ever you look for God’s blessing upon you and your posterity. Gehazi’s curse was fearful — it clung also to his posterity. How many such merchants have been stripped of all, if we would but observe the examples? Nor is it sufficient that you shake your own hands of simony; see also that your family, your wife, your son, your daughter, or your servant, be free from it. In vain did Pilate wash his hands of the guilt of that innocent blood of the Lamb of God, while he suffered himself to be

overcome by the malicious importunities of those murderous Jews, himself passing the sentence — though it was perhaps as much against his will as against his conscience. When you bestow a benefice at the earnest suit of any of your household, when you cannot be ignorant of some base corruption, you give your consent to the betraying of the lambs of Christ into the wolf’s power. And where does simony begin but at this source? At this gate is let in some alphabetical homebred pedant [one who knows only his ABC’s] — the very spawn of simony. Such a one will be content to exchange his schoolmaster’s rod for a broken, shortened shepherd’s crook, and to accept not what the Church may claim, but what the patron will leave; and perhaps will cite authority out of the grammar school for it, if he has so much Greek: πλέον ἥμισυ παντός — Dimidium plus toto — half a loaf is better than no bread, nay than a whole loaf which he cannot obtain. For it cannot be that a man of ingenuous and liberal education will ever seek to enter Christ’s fold on any base and unworthy terms. If there are any simoniacal ministers in the Church (as I charitably hope there may be none) who go about to purchase dignities, it is most probable they first learned to traffic in this market. O shut your gates against such peddling merchants. The way to keep the coasts clear is for you to be no less careful in providing a worthy incumbent beforehand than the illiterate pedant is watchful to catch the preferment before it falls. But your giving way to such persons opens a wide gate to every farmer, teaching him by this means to provide a sufficient maintenance — perhaps for the most untowardly and most deformed of all his sons — by laying out his money for the next vacancy, which lay in your power to prevent. Perhaps you will say: you bought the perpetual presentation or patronage at a great price; or, if not you yourself, your father or predecessors. If your predecessors bought it and left it freely to you, you may the more freely bestow it. If you bought it with your money, and not with a purpose to bestow it freely for the glory of God and the good of his Church — but to make a gain of it — your sin is so much the greater, and not to be

be pardoned without speedy and heartfelt repentance, nor can that repentance ever be true or pleasing to God, unless you bestow freely and worthily even that which you dearly bought. You sinned in the buying of it, with an eye to gain; but your sin is doubled and sealed up in a bag if you sell it again. Therefore, in the fear of God, take heed to yourselves. The living is God’s, not yours. You hold it only in trust. Discharge your trust faithfully. So God will reward it. Otherwise, he will require it.

And you fathers, let me offer you a word of advice. You desire to leave your children portions for this life. I commend it. For he that does not provide for his family has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. But let your provision (as I say) be honest. Provide honest things beforehand, says the Apostle, and that honestly. First, let your money be lawfully gotten. Next, if you will lay out a sum of money for the settling of your son’s patrimony, bestow it where you may lawfully do so. Take heed of purchasing what is God’s own patrimony — God’s tithes, or a benefice. Much less do so for one of your most unlikely sons, for him whom you do not know, or rather may suspect whether he will prove a scholar or not; or if scholar enough, whether an honest man; or if both, whether he may be fit for that holy calling, apt to teach, wise and faithful to go in and out before God’s people, family, and flock. Who is a faithful and wise steward, whom his master may set over his household to give them their portion in due season? For who is sufficient for these things, says the Apostle? Take heed, lest while you seek to purchase your son a father’s blessing, you procure for him an inevitable, an inheritable curse. Besides, though you are the principal simoniac in the purchase, yet he is the accessory in one degree or another — either he knows, or at least strongly suspects, that he comes in by purchase, and so by an implicit [unquestioning] faith he becomes a perjured simoniac. But if you will needs make your son a minister, let him be one of the best and most promising; and if you will needs purchase for him, let it be of

such things as are common merchandise, not God’s inheritance. Tithes are sacred, not to be bought and sold, any more than the cure of souls or the calling of the ministry, upon which tithes attend as their ordinary maintenance. Meddle not you with that, for fear of Christ’s whip. He cannot endure buyers and sellers in his Temple. And does it not stand with good reason why laymen should not meddle with purchasing benefices, given that you have provided by strict law that ministers shall not meddle in purchasing your farms? And shall not God’s law be as powerful to restrain you from laying profane hands upon what is sanctified, as man’s laws are to prohibit ministers from purchasing a poor lease of a farm or tenement? Nay, rather let God’s law stand for ever inviolable; and consider with yourselves how reasonable your own law is, that upon any terms, without any express limitation, prohibits a minister from laying out a little money (if perhaps he has it) upon a poor lease that may be at least some stay for his poor wife and children when he is gone. Perhaps the first occasion of this law was some abuse. If so, as Saint Jerome said upon a like matter, I am not so sorry for the law as for the occasion of it. Yet if some men abuse wine, you do not at once make a law to forbid all men to drink any wine at all. But the way is to make a law against drunkenness — if we could as readily define what drunkenness is as we are sharp-sighted to condemn a minister for base covetousness, in case he had a farm in his possession. Indeed, if a minister should turn farmer and trader, relinquishing or neglecting his calling, let the law forbid that in any case. For as Saint Jerome says, Flee the merchant-cleric, grown rich from poverty, grown renowned from obscurity, as you would some pestilence. This would be for ministers to turn impropriators — the worst of all — to impropriate their sacred calling by muddying their hands, and more, their minds, by leaving off being the Lord’s husbandmen to become the world’s drudges. But however that may be, remove the abuse by law, and that even of the

the Medes and Persians, which alters not. In the meantime be pleased to take into your consideration what equality there is (and consequently what equity) between your restraining ministers from the lawful purchase of your farms, and your unlimited purchasing of our proper freeholds — the purchase of which, however human law makes it current, yet divine law has proclaimed the contrary. Besides, if God’s law were silent or of no force, yet herein human and carnal reason might sway you. For consider, I pray you, and consult but with flesh and blood: in restraining ministers from that liberty, what do you but bring an old house upon your own heads? For do not ministers come out of your loins? Do you not make interchangeable and reciprocal marriages with them — except where any of the lay tribe (as too many there be) disdain to match with a priest, as they term us? Are not their children your grandchildren? Do not their sons match with your daughters, and their daughters with your sons? We are not, as once the Levites were, a tribe so select and so separate from the rest of our brethren, but that in all natural respects we hold in common with you. We who are now ministers were once (if you remember) your sons. And your sons may be (if you consider) ministers as we are. To whom, then, do you deny this liberty? Is it not to your own sons and daughters and grandchildren — even to your own flesh and blood? Say a minister, your son-in-law, dies poor, leaving a poor widow and so many small helpless orphans behind him: is she not still your daughter, and are not her babes your grandchildren, flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone? Well; you who cannot be content to give ministers liberty so much as to purchase a farm if they are able in their lifetime — and perhaps they were able, had money, but for want of such occasion to lay it out, spent it; now it is gone, and no sign of it, save perhaps a few books which at the bookbinder’s rate will not purchase the fourth part of a farm — yet no doubt (such are the bowels of natural love, yea

yea and compassion in you) that you will not deny your daughter and grandchildren harbor and maintenance in this their distressed calamity. But now, if you find a yearning in your bowels upon better reason to repeal this law than perhaps that on which it was first grounded, yet for all that you must not think to claim the like liberty in purchasing God’s own patrimony, which is holy. Your doing God’s ministers right and reason gives you no warrant or privilege to wrong God. Do God right, and deny his ministers — your own bowels — no reason. But this by the way, to show that in no case are sacred tithes to be bought and sold.

No? In no case? Yes, in some case. There is a way of purchasing sacred tithes which would be both acceptable to God, profitable to his Church, and comfortable to the soul and conscience of the purchaser himself. How is that? But alas, where shall we find one purchaser? Yet we are not altogether hopeless. There are very many charitable and well-disposed Christian men and women in this our Church whom God has enabled as well with a generous hand as a gracious heart to leave goodly legacies to charitable uses — hospitals and the like — and no doubt more would do so if they could find executors or feoffees in trust who could but live to see the will of the testator duly executed. Now to all such well-disposed Christians who desire to make themselves friends of the unrighteous mammon and to lay up in store for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may inherit eternal life — to such let me address my speech. How many have money to lay out upon land or so, and cannot find a suitable purchase? I will be your intelligencer to discover to you a fair purchase, so fair that I cannot but marvel that none has ever yet traded in it. Shall I tell you? The purchase of tithes. Why, that is no news. They are bought and sold everywhere. But I mean here the purchase of impropriate tithes. These also are commonly bought and sold. But I mean the purchasing of them, and the redeeming of them, to

restore them to God again, for the maintenance of his Ministry. O noble purchase! So rare as to be unheard of. A worthy object, indeed, for every rich and good man to fix the eye of his charity upon — a worthy subject to deal in. Would you erect a new Hospital? Save your labor. You have already at your hand in an impropriated Parsonage both house and demesnes. Plant your hospital there. A hospital not only for poor bodies, but for poor souls too — poor, starved souls. For a Parsonage, being rightly used, is truly a hospital for the poor in both these kinds. O, lay out your money here. Christ made one invaluable and incomparable purchase, redeeming our souls with his most precious blood. That is indeed without parallel. All the merits of Saint Francis or Saint Dominic, with which the Golden Legend is stuffed, or the virtue of Our Lady’s Milk, as they call it, are not to be compared to That. But if any purchase may be named after That, in any relation, surely this purchase, of all others, is nearest of kin to it — not by way of merit, in no sense that; for it cost more to redeem their souls — but by way of means to save men’s souls. To purchase an impropriation and to restore it to the Church, to which it belongs and where it ought to be, is to purchase the means of saving so many souls, who for lack of that means do perish. For where the maintenance fails, the Ministry fails (for Ministers are men and cannot live on air), and consequently the people perish, for whom Christ died. O then, you Christian-hearted ones, whom the Lord has blessed with abundance, make your purchase here. O, how happy are you, that you may thus be the instruments of saving so many poor souls, by pulling them out of the fire, as Jude speaks! But you will say: how shall this be done? I will tell you — only entertain

a certain such purpose in your heart, and God, who put it in your heart to will it, will also direct and enable you to do it, of his good pleasure. The ready way is, as one says: Sapere aude, Incipe, etc. — dare to be wise; begin. He who delays the time of doing good is like one who watches the river while it all runs out. Men are accustomed to put off their doing of good until their death. A dangerous adventure. For either they may be prevented by untimely and unexpected death, or after death their will may either be neglected by, or fall between, the executors, or be made frustrate by some little flaw in the conveyance — if it be no bigger than that some nimble attorney may put in his little finger, or but look through a narrow crack of it, be it no wider than the space of one word or one small letter. But this commonly happens with such legacies as extend no further than to temporal ends, such as bodily relief. Although I could wish men would see it done in their lifetime. But this, which concerns men’s souls, ought to be done now while we live. We need not distrust God’s providence, fearing we shall lack it ourselves before we die — no, we may rather expect a greater blessing from God even in this life. For as our Savior says: he who forsakes house or land for my sake and for the Gospel’s shall receive a hundredfold now in this life. Now the money we part with for such a purchase is for Christ’s sake and for the Gospel’s. But if you cannot come to see it performed in your lifetime, then consider upon what assurance you may best trust it to be done after your death. If I were either able or worthy to give advice in this matter, I should think that the legacy, so to be bestowed, were best put into the hands of some College in Cambridge or Oxford, and they both to lay out the money upon the purchase,

and so to have the perpetual Patronage, for the placing of some worthy member of their house in the pastoral charge so redeemed. But those who are so well disposed and inclined to so worthy a work cannot want for the best advice, for the wise and well managing of such a business. May the Lord God strengthen the hands and stir up the hearts of all true Christians to put their helping hands to this great work. No doubt many impropriators themselves, well considering and weighing the nature of such a business, will be content to meet the purchaser halfway, or at least be content to stoop and condescend to some reasonable composition.

TO THE HIGH AND HONORABLE COURT OF PARLIAMENT, now assembled.

The humble Supplication of the Author, on behalf of many poor souls who perish for want of food.

Humbly showing to the wisdom of you, the most noble Senate of this State, that whereas in many places of this Land where impropriations [appropriations of church revenues by laymen] exist, the allowance for the Vicar and Curate is so pitifully small, and the charge or cure itself so exceeding great (as impropriate livings commonly are, being large

parishes) that no minister of any ability can easily be induced to take it upon himself, but it is necessarily devolved upon some poor ten-pound-man at most — indeed in many places of even lower value, and that by more than half, to my own knowledge — to the inevitable peril of so many poor souls whose mouths should be fed with the bread of life. Yes, I myself know from my own sorrowful experience that in a poor town in Yorkshire, where I first drew breath and was brought up, long before I was born and ever since, now more than forty years, there has not been a preacher, but only a poor reader of the cheapest sort — one who lives two long miles away, in another town where he also has another cure, posting between them (though now a poor emeritus octogenarian Levite) to serve both, hired at so

small a rate that I think he himself, poor as he is, would blush to name it — although the parsonage itself is worth at least two hundred and forty pounds a year, there being also a poor vicarage house, which by long custom has likewise been made impropriate, being let out as a layman’s tenement; so that there is neither minister nor schoolmaster to instruct old or young. This single precedent, without any further knowledge, may justly give rise to a fear that many other impropriate places in this Kingdom suffer a like calamity.

May it please your wisdom, therefore, out of tender compassion for the many dispersed flocks of Jesus Christ in this Kingdom, who are as sheep without a shepherd, suffering Egyptian darkness even in the midst of Goshen, to appoint and allot by Act

a certain proportion (according to your grave judgments) of all impropriations within this Kingdom, toward the better maintenance of a worthy minister, especially where there are no vicarages endowed at all, or where those that exist are very poor and insufficient to maintain the Lord’s laborers liberally. So shall you bring a blessing upon yourselves and yours — yes, upon this whole Land and Church — extending even to posterity, whose generations shall (we trust) sing of the memorable acts of this Parliament, in every way (as we pray) most prosperous and happy. And your humble suppliant shall daily pray to God so to bless this your happy Assembly, that thereby God’s glory may be advanced, religion propagated, the commonwealth established, Antichristian heresy extirpated, and yourselves blessed in your deed. Amen.

The

The Author’s Conclusion, Containing His Candid Protestation and Zealous Congratulation.

As it is in the natural body, so also in the body politic. The fairest and best-constituted body may have some bad inbred humors, or abscesses, or ulcers, which, as they have grown to greater height, require the more bitter pills and potions, the sharper lancets, the hotter cerate plasters, and more caustic corrosives. Now although the remedy is applied only to the ill-affected part or member, yet such is the mutual sympathy of all the parts that they all jointly suffer as one; all complain alike of the bitterness, sharpness, and smarting of the medicine, impatient of it, as if each part were the patient. Weighing this with myself, I might justly suspect that this Censure of Simony (consisting of so many ingredients, composed as it were into one plaster or pill according to the judgment and prescription of so many doctors, proportioned to the quality and quantity of the disease) — being found to be so bitter and sharp as it is, although it is applied only to some ill-affected members in this fair and

beautiful body politic — yet the most intact, uncorrupt, and most noble parts, out of some tender sympathy, might complain, as if without discretion I had applied it to the whole. But I know there is no one member of the natural body better able to distinguish between its own integrity and its neighbor’s infirmity than those of the politic body can. So that for me — being, as it were, but the simple apothecary of so many doctors — to go about protesting that this Censure is not general, as applied to the whole: what would that be but to argue as if any incapacity of sinister conception (where no just cause has been given) could take hold in such noble and generous breasts, the intact members of this beautiful body? Or as if I could be guilty of my own innocence. But here my protestation must break forth — nay, rather let it be turned into a joyful congratulation. How many are there, how many (I say) — not a few — both of the truly generous nobility and of the truly noble gentry, even all the truly virtuous of both, whose patronages are not tainted with the least touch of simoniacal corruption? Indeed, how many — and some within my own knowledge (whom I should not hesitate to name for their honor’s sake, but that the rarity of them within my own knowledge might seem to breed envy, and therefore I will reserve their names until I can gather a greater number and shall perhaps have occasion to touch upon this argument again) — many, I say, who in the vacancy of benefices within their presentation are not patients waiting to be sought out and solicited (a thing which commonly

has no good odor), but are themselves agents and solicitors, sending to the universities and inquiring after the worthiest men for such a place and charge of souls — upon whom, thus carefully sought and judiciously found, they freely confer the benefice, sending the worthy scholar (perhaps now poring over his books in his private cell, dreaming of no such thing) the presentation sealed up in a box. So far are they from expecting that any scholar’s modesty should be made to blush by being a suitor, still less his honesty blamed for presenting his suit sealed up in a bag. In this I think I see a noble emulation between the laity and the clergy of England, and (let me say it in the Apostle’s sense) between the children and the fathers. You are the gracious sons; the sacred persons, the patrons, are your spiritual fathers, who have begotten you through the word of truth. O blessed emulation, free from the least envy — save that it may well be the envy of other nations! Emulate still, you sacred fathers of the Church, and you noble heaven-bred sons of such fathers and such a mother. Contend in God’s name as to who shall be able to lift up the whitest and purest hands, freest from simoniacal bribery, when you shall all stand together at the great bar — that as you were careful to call worthy persons to the pastoral cures within your patronage, bidding them “Come,” not waiting until they should come without a calling, so it may be said to you on that day, being of the number of God’s elect and called to the great assembly of the great

Great Shepherd, gathered by his angels from the four winds: “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world.” O blessed recompense! As you freely called the blessed ministers of Christ, inviting them to come to their ecclesiastical or Levitical inheritance here in the kingdom of God’s grace — prepared for them by God’s special appointment, and under God by your special care, as God’s feoffees in trust — so then on that day, you who have been faithful in a little shall be made rulers over much, and shall enter into your Master’s joy. What shall I say more? Your virtues have almost carried me away with you into that third heaven, where I also see other of your works following you and giving full testimony to what I have said. And here I have a new occasion to break forth into a second congratulation, where I must begin with you the worthy knights and gentlemen of the Lower House of Commons. For I hear that now of late you have by one unanimous vote, for your parts, passed a bill in your House that patrons also shall take the oath of simony in as large and ample a manner as the presentee does. Here let me also congratulate my own happiness, that my main petition and desire is granted before I could come to make it known to you. Blessed be God, who has put into your hearts this godly care. You have begun it, and it is already more than half done — nay, as good as altogether done. For you have commended it to the honorable lords, both spiritual

both Spiritual and Temporal of the Upper House. And is it not then as good as done? For coming to the Temporal Lords, their pure un-simoned hands will easily subscribe; and doubt not then of the sacred hands of the Lords Spiritual — whom, if the matter labored under some difficulty, you would find like the triarii [the veteran reserve troops of a Roman legion], to restore all. And what is wanting then, but — which is never wanting to you, and to the Church of God — the King’s Royal Assent, which shall crown this noble Act. From the influence of whose Spirit (no doubt, next under God), as from a most careful Nursing Father of God’s Church, this motion first came to be inspired in you, as the will and affections receive their prime direction from the Sovereign Dictate of the intellectual Power. And to make this good, I think I see the very footsteps of his Majesty’s Spirit and genius leading you along upon the ground of reason and equity. For, with what reason and equity shall he who purchases [a living] be both punished in purse and pinched in conscience by taking the Oath, while he who sells shall enjoy his buyer’s monetary fine as a reward for his own equal, if not superior, sin, with his conscience called to no account for it? As if a law were made to punish him who is robbed, and not the thief; or to punish him who is oppressed by usury, and not the oppressor. If any Recusant, though he professes to be the King’s liege subject, yet refuses to take the Oath of Allegiance, who will swear for him that he is and will be a loyal subject?

so that the patron who shall be unwilling either that a law be made requiring him to take the Oath of Simony, or, being made, will be loath to take it — who will swear for him that he neither is nor means to be a simoniac?