At the time when the Earl of Oxford and the Lord Bolingbroke used to drink healths to the Tories,the Church of England considered those noblemen as the defenders of its holy privileges.The lower House of Convocation (a kind of House of Commons)composed wholly of the clergy,was in some credit at that time;at least the members of it had the liberty to meet,to dispute on ecclesiastical matters,to sentence impious books from time to time to the flames,that is,books written against themselves.The Ministry which is now composed of Whigs does not so much as allow those gentlemen to assemble,so that they are at this time reduced (in the obscurity of their respective parishes)to the melancholy occupation of praying for the prosperity of the Government whose tranquillity they would willingly disturb.With regard to the bishops,who are twenty-six in all,they still have seats in the House of Lords in spite of the Whigs,because the ancient abuse of considering them as barons subsists to this day.There is a clause,however,in the oath which the Government requires from these gentlemen,that puts their Christian patience to a very great trial,viz.,that they shall be of the Church of England as by law established.There are few bishops,deans,or other dignitaries,but imagine they are so jure divino;it is consequently a great mortification to them to be obliged to confess that they owe their dignity to a pitiful law enacted by a set of profane laymen.A learned monk (Father Courayer)wrote a book lately to prove the validity and succession of English ordinations.This book was forbid in France,but do you believe that the English Ministry were pleased with it?Far from it.Those wicked Whigs don't care a straw whether the episcopal succession among them hath been interrupted or not,or whether Bishop Parker was consecrated (as it is pretended)in a tavern or a church;for these Whigs are much better pleased that the Bishops should derive their authority from the Parliament than from the Apostles.The Lord Bolingbroke observed that this notion of divine right would only make so many tyrants in lawn sleeves,but that the laws made so many citizens.
With regard to the morals of the English clergy,they are more regular than those of France,and for this reason.All the clergy (a very few excepted)are educated in the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge,far from the depravity and corruption which reign in the capital.They are not called to dignities till very late,at a time of life when men are sensible of no other passion but avarice,that is,when their ambition craves a supply.Employments are here bestowed both in the Church and the army,as a reward for long services;and we never see youngsters made bishops or colonels immediately upon their laying aside the academical gown;and besides most of the clergy are married.The stiff and awkward air contracted by them at the University,and the little familiarity the men of this country have with the ladies,commonly oblige a bishop to confine himself to,and rest contented with,his own.Clergymen sometimes take a glass at the tavern,custom giving them a sanction on this occasion;and if they fuddle themselves it is in a very serious manner,and without giving the least scandal.
That fable-mixed kind of mortal (not to be defined),who is neither of the clergy nor of the laity;in a word,the thing called Abbe in France;is a species quite unknown in England.All the clergy here are very much upon the reserve,and most of them pedants.When these are told that in France young fellows famous for their dissoluteness,and raised to the highest dignities of the Church by female intrigues,address the fair publicly in an amorous way,amuse themselves in writing tender love songs,entertain their friends very splendidly every night at their own houses,and after the banquet is ended withdraw to invoke the assistance of the Holy Ghost,and call themselves boldly the successors of the Apostles,they bless God for their being Protestants.But these are shameless heretics,who deserve to be blown hence through the flames to old Nick,as Rabelais says,and for this reason I do not trouble myself about them.
