This matter is too sacred for this paper; but I can't see what injury it would do any clergyman, to have it in his eye, and believe, all that are taken from him by his want of industry, are to be demanded of him. I daresay, Favonius[177] has very few of these losses. Favonius, in the midst of a thousand impertinent assailants of the divine truths, is an undisturbed defender of them. He protects all under his care, by the clearness of his understanding, and the example of his life: he visits dying men with the air of a man who hoped for his own dissolution, and enforces in others a contempt of this life, by his own expectation of the next. His voice and behaviour are the lively images of a composed and well-governed zeal. None can leave him for the frivolous jargon uttered by the ordinary teachers among Dissenters, but such who cannot distinguish vociferation from eloquence, and argument from railing. He is so great a judge of mankind, and touches our passions with so superior a command, that he who deserts his congregation must be a stranger to the dictates of nature, as well as to those of grace.
But I must proceed to other matters, and resolve the questions of other inquirers; as in the following:
"Sir,
Heddington, Sept. 19.
"Upon reading that part of the Tatler, No. 69, where mention is made of a certain chapel-clerk, there arose a dispute, and that produced a wager, whether by the words chapel-clerk was meant a clergyman or a layman? By a clergyman, I mean one in holy orders. It was not that anybody in the company pretended to guess who the person was; but some asserted, that by Mr. Bickerstaff's words must be meant a clergyman only: others said, that those words might have been said of any clerk of a parish; and some of them more properly, of a layman. The wager is half-a-dozen bottles of wine; in which (if you please to determine it) your health, and all the family of the staffs, shall certainly be drunk; and you will singularly oblige another very considerable family. I mean that of
"Your humble Servants,
The Trencher-Caps."
It is very customary with us learned men, to find perplexities where no one else can see any. The honest gentlemen who wrote me this, are much at a loss to understand what I thought very plain; and in return, their epistle is so plain that I can't understand it. This, perhaps, is at first a little like nonsense; but I desire all persons to examine these writings with an eye to my being far gone in the occult sciences; and remember, that it is the privilege of the learned and the great to be understood when they please: for as a man of much business may be allowed to leave company when he pleases; so one of high learning may be above your capacity when he thinks fit. But without further speeches or fooling, I must inform my friends the Trencher-Caps in plain words, that I meant in the place they speak of, a drunken clerk of a church: and I will return their civility among my relations, and drink their healths as they do ours.
FOOTNOTES:
[176] Martial, "Epig.," i. 14. See Pliny, "Epist.," iii. 18.
[177] Dr. Smalridge; see Preface to the Tatler, and No. 114. Smalridge was born in 1663 at Lichfield, the son of a dyer. In 1678 he was sent to Westminster by Ashmole, and in 1682 was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, where he became a tutor, and was associated with Aldrich and Atterbury against Obadiah Walker, the Popish Master of University College. In 1692 Smalridge became minister of Tothill Fields Chapel; in 1693 he was collated to a prebend at Lichfield; in 1700 he was made D.D.; and in 1708 he was appointed Lecturer at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West. In 1710 he presented Atterbury to the Upper House of Convocation; in 1711 he became Canon of Christ Church and Dean of Carlisle; in 1713 Dean of Christ Church, and in 1714 Bishop of Bristol. He died in 1719, at Christ Church. Though a Tory, he was not a violent politician, and both Addison and Steele were his friends. Addison, writing to Swift, October 1, 1718, says, "The greatest pleasure I have met with for some months is the conversation of my old friend Dr. Smalridge, who, since the death of the excellent friend you mention, is to me the most candid and agreeable of all bishops."