A nobleman once advising a French bishop to add to his house a new wing in modern style, received this answer:—"The difference, my Lord, between your advice and that which the devil gave to our Saviour is, that Satan advised Jesus to change the stones into bread, that the poor might be fed—and you desire me to turn the bread of the poor into stones!"
Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester in the time of King Edgar, sold the sacred gold and silver vessels belonging to the Church, to relieve the poor during a famine,—saying that there was no reason that the senseless temples of God should abound in riches, while his living temples were perishing of hunger.
Butler, Bishop of Durham, being asked for a charitable subscription, asked his steward what money he had in the house. The steward informed him that there were five hundred pounds. "Five hundred pounds!" cried the bishop; "it is a shame for a bishop to have so much in his possession!" and he ordered the whole sum to be immediately given to the poor.
BISHOP BURNET AGAINST PLURALITIES.
Bishop Burnet, in his charges to the clergy of his diocese, used to be extremely vehement in his exclamations against pluralities. In his first visitation to Salisbury, he urged the authority of St. Bernard; who, being consulted by one of his followers whether he might accept of two benefices, replied, "And how will you be able to serve them both?" "I intend," answered the priest, "to officiate in one of them by a deputy." "Will your deputy suffer eternal punishment for you too?" asked the saint. "Believe me, you may serve your cure by proxy, but you must suffer the penalty in person." This anecdote made such an impression on Mr. Kelsey, a pious and worthy clergyman then present, that he immediately resigned the rectory of Bemerton, in Berkshire, worth £200 a year, which he then held with one of greater value.
ABERNETHY CONQUERED BY CURRAN.
To curb his tongue, out of respect to Abernethy's humour, was an impossibility to John Philpot Curran. Eight times Curran (who was personally unknown to Abernethy) had called on the great surgeon; and eight times Abernethy had looked at the orator's tongue (telling him that it was the most unclean and utterly abominable tongue in the world); had curtly advised him to drink less, and not abuse his stomach with gormandizing; had taken a guinea, and had bowed him out of the room. On the ninth visit, just as he was about to be dismissed in the same summary fashion, Curran said, "Mr. Abernethy, I have been here on eight different days, and I have paid you eight different guineas, but you have never yet listened to the symptoms of my complaint. I am resolved, sir, not to leave the room till you satisfy me by doing so." With a good-natured laugh, Abernethy leaned back in his chair and said, "Oh! very well, sir; I am ready to hear you out. Go on, give me the whole—your birth, parentage, and education. I wait your pleasure. Pray be as minute and tedious as you can." Curran gravely began:—"Sir, my name is John Philpot Curran. My parents were poor, but, I believe, honest people, of the province of Munster, where also I was born, at Newmarket, in the county of Cork, in the year one thousand seven hundred and fifty. My father being employed to collect the rents of a Protestant gentleman of small fortune, in that neighbourhood, procured my admission into one of the Protestant free schools, where I obtained the first rudiments of my education. I was next enabled to enter Trinity College, Dublin, in the humble sphere of a sizar—." And so he went steadily on, till he had thrown Abernethy into convulsions of laughter.
WITTICISMS OF ARCHBISHOP WHATELY.
"What is the difference," asked Archbishop Whately of a young clergyman he was examining, "between a form and a ceremony? The meaning seems nearly the same; yet there is a very nice distinction." Various answers were given. "Well," he said, "it lies in this: you sit upon a form, but you stand upon ceremony."