CHARACTER OF THE CLERGY.
The character of the Clergy at that time has been drawn by different hands. Samuel Wesley, in the Athenian Oracle, said, that out of fifty or threescore parishes with which he was acquainted, he could not think of above three or four clergymen who disgraced their office.
The Nonjurors represented their brethren in the Establishment as newsmongers and busy-bodies, guilty of non-residence, faulty in their morals, and negligent of their duties. Some were often seen frequenting ale-houses and taverns, where they behaved disorderly. The communion in the London parish churches, before largely attended, was, according to the same authority, unfrequented; and in cathedral churches things were worse, so that the alms collected did little more than pay for the bread and wine.[411]
Nonjurors looked through a prejudiced medium at those who took the oaths. They regarded most of them as indifferent to a matter of immense importance, and not a few as deliberately dishonest, swearing to that which they did not believe. The amount of false swearing at that period must have been prodigious; and the fact could not fail to produce mischievous results—it demoralized such as indulged in it, and impressed people with an idea of the falseness of their instructors. Men looking at the subject from another point of the compass, also came to an unfavourable conclusion. Whiston declared how well he remembered that by far the greater part of University members and clergymen took the oaths with a doubtful, if not an accusing, conscience. Considering the doctrines of passive obedience and non-resistance in which they had been educated, he thought it could not be otherwise; and he scarcely knew who were the worst, some who imposed or some who submitted to the new law of allegiance.[412]
As the Nonjurors judged of ministers through the medium of the oath question, so Whiston, who rejected the Athanasian Creed, judged of ministers through the medium of that formulary. No doubt he was prejudiced, and his conclusions were exaggerated; but it is hard to understand how men of latitudinarian views could, with thorough honesty, repeat an intensely orthodox formulary imbued with an intensely exclusive spirit. What Whiston says of a rather later period, may be applied here. Conversing with Lord Chief Justice King, about signing articles not believed, in order to secure preferment, he heard his Lordship observe, “We must not lose our usefulness for scruples.” “In your Courts do they allow of such prevarication?” asked the Presbyter. “Certainly not,” rejoined the lawyer. “Suppose then,” returned Whiston, “God Almighty should be as just in the next world as my Lord Chief Justice is in this, where are we then?”[413] Whiston’s estimate of some of the Clergy is corroborated by Burnet, who mourns over the inconsistency of men described as practically contradicting the oaths they had taken and the prayers they preferred.[414]
CHARACTER OF THE CLERGY.
De Foe acknowledged that there were in England a great many religious persons, both among the gentry and Clergy; but he remarked upon the inconsistency of many in both classes. “The parson preaches a thundering sermon against drunkenness, and the justice of peace sets my poor neighbour in the stocks; and I am like to be much the better for either, when I know, perhaps, that this same parson and this same justice were both drunk together but the night before. A vicious parson that preaches well, but lives ill, may be likened to an unskilful horseman, who opens a gate on the wrong side, and lets other folks through, but shuts himself out.”[415] In judging of the Clergy of those days, we must take into account indirect evidence. The Convocation controversy, degenerating into a contemptible feud between class and class, or into a despicable squabble between clergyman and clergyman, proved the extensive existence of prejudice, obstinacy, and resentment, and must have drawn off the minds of many from the discharge of their proper duties. Neither was the method of conducting controversy on more important points—the doctrine of the Trinity, for example—at all calculated to preserve ministers of religion from injurious habits; for the temper shown in books and tracts on this subject is most irreverent, most conceited, most uncharitable, most unchristian.
It should also be noticed, that after religious freedom to some extent had been legalized by the Toleration Act, a clerical reaction violently set in. Low Churchmen had been the principal advocates for granting liberty of worship to their Nonconforming brethren; but beyond their circle were some who, during appearances of Popery under James II., had looked with sympathy upon fellow Protestants outside their own pale, and had afterwards hailed them with a kindly welcome to the enjoyment of their rights. When the no-Popery tempest subsided, and when political fears, raised by Royal despotism, passed away, some of these persons relapsed into their previous state, and together with those who had been bigoted throughout, looked at Nonconformists with bitterness and hatred.[416] A wide current of intolerant feeling returned, of which the result became visible enough after the accession of Queen Anne.
CONDITION OF THE CLERGY.
Turning from the character of the Clergy to notice their circumstances, we meet with an interesting picture of domestic life in the case of the father of the Wesleys. He was a rector upon £50 a year at South Ormsby, a little village in Lincolnshire, skirting the parks and woodlands of a goodly mansion. We find the same clergyman shortly afterwards established in the same county at the Rectory of Epworth, described, in a survey of the period, as consisting of “five bays built all of timber and plaister, and covered with straw thatch, the whole building being contrived into three stories, and disposed into seven chief rooms, namely—a kitchen, a hall, a parlour, a buttery, and three large upper rooms, besides some others of common use, and also a little garden impaled between the stone wall and the south.”[417] This minute description brings before us a humble, but pleasant parsonage of the end of the seventeenth century; and it is added that to the dwelling stood attached one barn of six bays, likewise built of clay and thatch; also one dovecote of timber and plaister, and one hempkiln. The glebe was stocked. Cows fed in the meadows, and pigs in the stye. A nag and two fillies occupied the stable, and flax and barley waved in the fields. The parishioners were, according to Wesley’s daughter, “unpolished wights,” “dull as asses,” and with heads “impervious as stones.” The clerical dress, the rustic manner, and the lowly employments of the Rector, are portrayed by another member of the gifted family: