[Dedication of the Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy]
Ib.
p. xxiii.
But the interest of the Bishops is conjunct with the prosperity of the King, besides the interest of their own security, by the obligation of secular advantages. For they who have their livelihood from the King, and are in expectance of their fortune from him, are more likely to pay a tribute of exacter duty, than others, whose fortunes are not in such immediate dependency on His Majesty.
The cat out of the bag! Consult the whole reigns of Charles I and II and the beginning of James II. Jeremy Taylor was at this time (blamelessly for himself and most honourably for his patrons) ambling on the high road of preferment; and to men so situated, however sagacious in other respects, it is not given to read the signs of the times. Little did Taylor foresee that to indiscreet avowals, like these, on the part of the court clergy, the exauctorations of the Bishops and the temporary overthrow of the Church itself would be in no small portion attributable. But the scanty measure and obscurity (if not rather, for so bright a luminary, the occultation) of his preferment after the Restoration is a problem, of which perhaps his virtues present the most probable solution.
Ib.
p. xxv.
A second return that episcopacy makes to royalty, is that which is the duty of all Christians, the paying tributes and impositions.
This is true; and it was an evil hour for the Church, — and led to the loss of its Convocation, the greatest and, in an enlarged state-policy, the most impolitic affront ever offered by a government to its own established Church, — in which the clergy surrendered their right of taxing themselves.
Ib.