But this invisible consistory shall be confusedly diffused over all the kingdom, that many of the subjects shall, to the intolerable exhausting of the wealth of the realm, pay double tithes, double offerings, double fees, in regard of their double consistory. And if Ireland be so poor as it is suggested, I hold, under correction, that this invisible consistory is the principal cause of the exhausting thereof.
A memorable remark on the evil of the double priesthood in Ireland.
Ib.
Dr. Bishop, the new Bishop of Chalcedon, is to come to London privately, and I am much troubled at it, not knowing what to advise his majesty as things stand at this present. If you were shipped with the Infanta, the only counsel were to let the judges proceed with him presently; hang him out of the way, and the King to blame my lord of Canterbury or myself for it.
Striking instance and illustration of the tricksy policy which in the seventeenth century passed for state wisdom even with the comparatively wise. But there must be a Ulysses before there can be an Aristides and Phocion.
Poor King James's main errors arose out of his superstitious notions of a sovereignty inherent in the person of the king. Hence he would be a sacred person, though in all other respects he might be a very devil. Hence his yearning for the Spanish match; and the ill effects of his toleration became rightly attributed by his subjects to foreign influence, as being against his own acknowledged principle, not on a principle.
Ib.
s. 107.
I have at times played with the thought, that our bishoprics, like most of our college fellowships, might advantageously be confined to single men, if only it were openly declared to be on ground of public expediency, and on no supposed moral superiority of the single state.
Ib.