tion of the talents and energies of ministers to the duties of their ministry. Is it so? There are, we rejoice to know and say it, many zealous and devoted ministers in the Church of England. But are they not such, rather in spite of all possible discouragements, than as the result of that proper encouragement which would arise from the right and wise administration of the patronage of the Church? Let us for a moment endeavour to point and illustrate this broad and sweeping question, by branching it out into several others, and putting it in a different form. No one can question the value and importance of genuine Scriptural piety and pastoral diligence and devotedness in a clergyman. Suppose, then, that a clergyman has established a character for piety, and for activity in the discharge of his pastoral duties, can he, or can his family and friends reckon upon it, that he will assuredly be in due time promoted in the Church? that when, for fifteen or twenty years perhaps, he has perseveringly laboured in the midst of much privation, difficulty, and distress-toiling beyond his strength, and sacrificing both himself and his family to the conscientious discharge of his duties, upon an income of 150l., 100%., or even 50l. per annum-he will at length be looked upon by those who have patronage to bestow; and that he will be placed in a situation where he will have the means of providing for himself and his family the common comforts of life, and completing the education of his children in such manner that they may be prepared for decent situations? Our Protestant feeling and conviction is, that a clergyman ought, generally speaking, to be a married man; "One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of God?" (See 1 Tim. iii. 4, 5.) And, in our ordination services, we are more than once reminded that a clergyman should "be diligent to frame and fashion," both himself and his family, "according to the doctrine of Christ," so as to make both himself "and them... wholesome examples and patterns to the flock of Christ." This may be proved against all gainsayers; and the foul abominations which arise from the celibacy of the clergy in Popish countries need only to be glanced at. We suppose, then, our pious and devoted clergyman to be a married man, and to have a rising family around him. Had he a fair prospect of a decent living, all would be well. He might, and would, endure many privations for a time, and make many sacrifices; and, by enduring such privations and making such sacrifices, he might be enabled to devote his best strength and his best faculties perseveringly to the work of his ministry. He would say, "It is only for a few years, and then we shall be comfortably provided for." But if he has no such prospect, what must be the consequence? He has duties to his family as well as duties to his flock. Something must be done for the decent support of the one; and the time, the strength, the careful thought, which the wants of his growing family demand, must be taken away from the other. In addition to burthens already sufficient for his strength, he must take pupils, and he must keep a school, as the only way open to him for obtaining a decent support for those who are near and dear to him. The consequence is, that he can no longer be the faithful devoted minister, wholly given to his work, that he wished and intended to be. Many things which ought to be done for his parishioners must needs remain undone. It is expecting too much from the feebleness of man, if his personal piety does not suffer and decline. His school, on which most of his present support, and all his future prospects of provision in this world, depend, absorbs his mind and heart more and more. And at length, for want of that fair measure of encouragement which the patronage of the Church rightly administered would afford, behold this pious, devoted minister transformed into something little better than a mere drudging schoolmaster, who only can give the odds and ends of his time to the care of his flock, and the all-important duties of a Christian minister! Need we refer to yet more painful circumstances-bringing a blot upon his character and profession-which must arise, if, after all, his school should not succeed, and he is involved in debt, and reduced to all those shifts and expedients which a man is partly beguiled and partly forced into, by the pressure of actual want and continual pecuniary embarrassments? Alas! the hard, unfeeling world is but too ready to fix the blot upon him; but ought not the real stigma and reproach to be assigned to those patrons who bestow their preferments upon unfitting persons, because they were relations, rather than on him? and whose neglect has been the cause of his distress and ruin ? We have taken, in the first instance, the simple case of one who was, and still desired to be, a pious, faithful, and devoted pastor, discharging the ordinary duties of an humble sphere; and who would gladly have given himself up, for his whole life, to the quiet, unostentatious work of a parochial clergyman. This is at once the most numerous class to which we could refer ; and the class whose value and importance can be most easily understood and appreciated. Is it not also the most neglected class? and the class in which we should find, upon inquiry, the greatest number of painful and distressing instances of suffering and privation? But there are other important cases to be considered, which are seriously, and most injuriously, affected by the present system of patronage in our Church. These, however, we must reserve for another opportunity. 64 THE WORKS OF THOMAS BECON. '(He) dwelt at home and keptè well his fold But Criste's lore, and his apostles twelve He taught, but first he followed it himselve."-CHAUCER. THOMAS BECON, S. T. P. (Sanctæ Theologiæ Professor),* was chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer, and of considerable note among the writers of the Reformers, who were signalized in the establishment of the Protestant English Church. Two large volumes of his writings have been published by the PARKER SOCIETY, and they contain a mass of Antipopish sentiment, which serves as no faint-typed index to the genuine feelings of Churchmen of those days. Even for those who have not time to revel amid the tomes issued by this Association, the very existence of such a corporate Society is a "great fact." The very existence of an institute whose professed object it is to publish the writings of our Anglican fathers, supported by the subscriptions of men whose names are well known for their stanch advocacy of Protestant principles, this is one of those eloquent stubborn facts which are marvellously galling to hardrun opponents. We believe that the publications of the Parker Society have been no insignificant means in hastening the crisis of our Church polemics. They have proved at large and generally, what Mr. Goode's historical refutations, &c., have proved in particular-viz.: that to assume that Anglican divinity is favourable to the views of the Tractators is an assumption and no more; vox et præterea nihil. The thunders awaked from the old citadel, so stunning in their tempestuous concert, must make rough music in the ears of our would-be courtiers. We cannot suppose that Thomas Becon is one whom they would dare to claim as coadjutor to Romanizing essays; the rarest alchymy in Jesuitic literature would be at a loss to extract Vatican fripperies from his sturdy sentences. He is of truly forbidding aspect to all such tamperers; his face has too much of the flint to be malleable even by their artizanship. His treatise on the Acts of Christ and of Antichrist must make dyspeptics of them all. In Becon's dedication to the Duchess of Somerset he thus congratulates his country on the extirpation of Romish supremacy: "We are made free from his (the Pope's) yoke. We are cumbered no more with his trifling traditions and dirty deceits.. * Two Vols. Parker Society. The breaking of his laws disquiets our conscience no more. His ceremonies are banished; his religious monsters have no longer place amongst us. His invocation of saints, his gadding on pilgrimages, his gilding of images, his painting of tabernacles, his setting up of candles before stocks, his purgatory, his masses of scala cæli, his bulls, his pardons, his dispensations, his jubilees, his justification of works, his selling of merits, his canonizing of saints, his diriges, his trentals, his blasphemous masses, his idolatrous altars, his earish (i.e. auricular) confession, his housel (i.e. eucharist) in one kind for the laity, his holy bread, his holy water, his oil, his cream, his wax, his flax, his palms, his ashes, his idolatry, his hypocrisy, his candlesticks, his relics, his corporas, his portass, his sheep-hook, his mass-book, his crosier, his mitre, his censing, his Popish fasting, his shaving, his greasing, his sacrificing, his god-making, his transubstantiation, his excommunication, his unchaste chaste vows, his hallowed boughs, his beads, his vestments, his idols, his Romish (i.e. Latin) service, his Antichristian orders, his Peterpence, his frankincenses, his primacy, and all his pelting pedlary is utterly banished and driven out of this land." There is a headlong vehemence in all this which could not but have been taking with the Saxon plainness of mind which characterized those times. Few are the authors who cared then to round their periods; theirs was not the glide hither and thither of flower-banked streams, but the onward rush of mighty waters. If the sword of their doctrine failed to pierce the conscience, it was not because the scabbard was on. The age made notable by the reign of exaggerated "Euphonism,” was also that of out-spoken unpolished composition. Bishop Latimer and Becon are surely at antipodes to the Sir Piercie Shaftons and others "of that ilk." On the "idleness of the Popish spiritualty," he observes,"Antichrist is altogether otherwise affected. For he useth no exercise that godly and profitable is, but liveth altogether idly of the labour of other men's hands and of the sweat of other men's brows, contrary to the commandment of God, being, indeed, a very unprofitable clod of the earth."... "(He) is both delicately and tenderly fostered and brought up, without all noise and disquietness. All epicures and worldlings delight in him. They seek to pleasure him. He is free at all times from the cross..... And in token that he is lord and king over three realms, one more than God himself hath, that is to say, heaven, earth, and purgatory, he weareth a triple crown upon his pilled pate. This authority, this antichrist received of the devil for the service that he hath done him, which Christ utterly refused, when he said unto him, 'All these things, all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.' VOL. VIII.-February, 1846. New Series, No. 2. F Again"Antichrist saith, Lo, here is Christ at this altar and at that altar, in this priest's hand and that priest's hand, in this pix and that pix, in this box and that box. Come, and see thy maker. Worship him, meekly kneeling upon thy knees. Hold up thy hands unto him. This is he that killed thy father. This is the apple-maker of Kent. If thou wilt not believe that this is thy maker, thou shalt burn for it without redemption."...." What have I to do with judgment, mercy, and faith? Bring in your tithes. Pay your offerings. Give your dirige groats, your mass-pence, and your confessional-pence, with all your good and goodly devotions. Buy my pardons. Give ten shillings for a trental, forty pence to the high altar, twelve pence to the sepulchre light, six pence to the lamps. Ever be giving of somewhat, though it be but a cheese or a piece of bacon, to the holy Order of sweet St. Francis, or to any other Order of my friars, monks, canons, &c. Holy Church refuseth nothing, but gladly taketh whatsoever cometh." The unsparing rigour with which Becon attacks the errors of Rome may savour at times of coarseness and bitter expression. But the indignation is so warrantable when aroused against a corrupt system such as he saw it to be, a system illustrated in the demoralization of practice as well as seducing fallacies of doctrine which met the good chaplain on all sides, that we cannot but sorrowfully contrast its hearty ebullitions with the sing-song prettinesses of later days, when divinity of the kidglove school yawns in ennui at any voice against the Papacy, and pipes forth feeble sarcasms against hot-brained bigots who can express respect for the Reformation, and love for the glorious army of martyrs. There is an anomalous kind of Protestantism which professes sincere abhorrence of all principles akin to Methodistic Puritanism and cold-blooded Calvinism, and, at the same time, acknowledges the absolute worth of Rome in all but a few practical corruptions. They do not like some of the exaggerations of purgatory-they cannot swallow all that Tetzel and his tribe have propounded concerning indulgences-they have a qualm or two as to extreme unction, and communion-in-one-kind-they smirk indulgently rather than patronizingly at sundry specimens of legendary and scholastic lore-they will not defend the abuses in Ireland of 'his rivirince's whip,' and the bloody pathways of Lough Derg*; but their hearts warm to fraternal sympathy when they picture to themselves what Rome might be, even in her Tridentine guise, provided the outward immoralities or excesses of her Augean fold were duly purged. We speak not of out-and-out Tractarianism, such as repudiates the term Protestantism, andSpeaks gently of her sister's fall." * See "Pilgrimage to Lough Derg," January Number of P. M. 1846. |