The like might be said of some other principal Bishoprics.
The great diminution of the revenues of the Clergy, and the little care of augmenting and defending the patrimony of the Church, is the great reproach and shame of the English Reformation; and will, one day, prove the ruin of Church and State.
"It is the last trick," saith St. GREGORY, "that the Devil hath in this world. When he cannot bring the Word and Sacraments into disgrace by errors and heresies; he invents this project, to bring the Clergy into contempt and low esteem."
As it is now in England, where they are accounted by many, the Dross and Refuse of the nation. Men think it a stain to their blood to place their sons in that function; and women are ashamed to marry with any of them.
It hath been observed, even by strangers, that the iniquity of the present Times in England is such, that the English Clergy are not only hated by the Romanists on the one side, and maligned by the Presbyterians on the other…; but also that, of all the Christian Clergy of Europe, whether Romish, Lutheran, or Calvinistic, none are so little respected, beloved, obeyed, or rewarded, as the present pious, learned, loyal Clergy of England; even by those who have always professed themselves of that Communion.
THE GROUNDS & OCCASIONS OF THE CONTEMPT
OF THE CLERGY AND RELIGION
Enquired into.
In a LETTER written to R.L.
LONDON, Printed by W. GODBID for N. BROOKE at the Angel in Cornhill. 1670.
This work is dated August 8, 1670. ANTHONY A. WOOD in his Life (Ath.
Oxon. I. lxx. Ed. 1813), gives the following account of our Author.
February 9 [1672] A.W. went to London, and the next day he was kindly receiv'd by Sir LIOLIN JENKYNS, in his apartment in Exeter house in the Strand, within the city of Westminster.