the Vulgus Rationally concluding That those whom they made choice of for the Service of Religion were to be raised above the common condition of men and to be freed from the Cares and Incumbrances of the World And it will not be here greatly impertinent to observe that the white Vestments of the Heathen Priests attested their Separation from the Vility of the Many and That the Ring Staff and Mitre which were the Ensigns of their Office were also known Symbols of Authority and Honour And yet in further testimony of the respect the Gentiles bore their Priests there was none no not in time of War that durst offer them the least violence or abuse Insomuch that it was gone into a proverbial phrase for a barbarous and unnatural War that it spared not the Priests but violated those very persons that carried the Holy Fire before the Army Tacitus somewhere speaking of the Priests tells us that they were not molested with the sniffling Scorns of vitious and ill-bred persons but by certain Canons and Laws were secured from all outrage and disrespect And if any thing be yet needful for a further illustration of the Gentiles carriage in this matter it is summ'd up by Cicero in the Case of the Roman Augurs The right of the Augurs saith he joyn'd with Authority is the most excellent in the Commonwealth And this I say not because I my self am an Augur but because it is just and necessary so to speak For if we enquire for their Authority what can be greater than to convene and dissolve the publick Assemblies and appoint the Solemnities of Religion What more magnificent than to have power to decree when the Consuls are fit or unfit to hold the Magistracy What can be more religious than to give Institutes to the people And yet Cicero expresly affirms all these things to have been in the power of the Augurs Lib. 2. de Legib. Nor are we to look upon the Romans to have affected Singularity in this particular for we find the Persians Egyptians and the great Lights of the Gentile World the Athenians to have equall'd or rather surpass'd the Romans in the veneration of their Priests whom they made the Guides and Counsellors of their Kings and Judges and Dividers in Secular Affairs It were easie to be numerous in Examples to this purpose and by an Induction of all the Nations in the World to prove this Reverence of the Clergy whom we read in many Nations to have lived apart from other men and to have had their Adyta or Secret Places as well as their Gods the solitary Groves where they abode signalizing the separateness of their Function But if all this should be charged upon the Ignorance and Superstition of the Heathen World and therefore no more fit to be imitated than their Polytheism and Idolatry It will then import us in the next place to consider what in this case was the practice of the Jews Gods own People whom we cannot suspect of Ignorance or Imposture being herein plainly guided and instructed of God And first it is observable that among the Jews the designation of persons for the Guidance of Religion was much more ancient than a Levitical Institution being practised by them from the Beginning For when Families made Churches as well as Kingdoms to be a Priest of the Most High God or to officiate the Matters of Religion was the Hereditary Honour and Peculiar Prerogative of the First-born or Chief of the Family For the selling of which Priviledge Esau purchased the odious Title of Profane And when the Jews were blessed with a settled Priesthood they paid it all imaginable respect beginning and determining all their publick Transactions at the Word and Decree of their Priests making the Honour of that Office the Strength of their Authority and the Cause of their Arms calling it a Celestial Dignity a Heavenly and no Earthly Inheritance And the Testimonies of what I now speak are so many and known that both the number and plainness will excuse the prosecution Nor were the ancient Jews more careful in their respect than in the choice of their Priests for we read in the Sacred Story of one of their Kings that it was reckon'd in him for a great sin that he made Priests of the lowest of the people which were not of the Sons of Levi. He consecrated whosoever had a mind without bearing any respect either to Probity of Manners or Honesty of Descent and that passing by the Line of Levi he took those who had neither Right nor Title to the Priesthood And what was yet more wicked some are of opinion that he was guilty of what the Canon Law now calls Simony by selling the Offices of the Priest to those who would give most for them And having thus briefly intimated the practice of both the ancient Jew and Gentile in relation to their Choice and Reverence of their Clergy If we should now draw down the Enquiry to the modern and present State of the World we shall find no Nation so savage and uncivilized as not to have some Officers of Religion whom they treat with Civility and make considerable in the Interest of their State and Government The present Jews and Mahumedans would furnish us with Store of Matter to this purpose if it were not already in two late Treatises concerning them done to our hands Now what has been said will enforce us to one of these Conclusions Either that the Rites of Christian Religion are more cheap ordinary and common than those of the Jews and Pagans Or those Separate Persons appointed to celebrate those Rites must have our Esteem and Reverence To say that Christian Religion is not the most Divine Mystery that ever came into the World and that all the parts thereof are in themselves the most excellent and sublime and to men the most beneficial and agreeable that ever were made known upon Earth is as false as its greatest Adversary the Father of Lyes And not to render due regard unto those who are known to be the true Ministers of Christian Religion is either to think them less worthy than the Pagans thought the Ministers of their idolatrous Ceremonies or to show our selves less Civil than the greatest Barbarians CHAP. IV. A brief account of the Institution of the Levitical Clergy THere is nothing more material in the Circumstances of Religion than that men should be ascertain'd that their Spiritual Guides have their Commission and Calling from God because a doubting thereof must unavoidably prove no small prejudice to their Authority and Success And upon this Consideration it will be necessary to enquire into the first Institution of the Clergy to the end that if we find it to be no less Divine than we have found it to be Rational the Sacred Honour of its Original might be sufficient to justifie and assert it against all contempt And looking back to the first Dispensations of Religion we find the Priesthood to have
seem no small piece of Valour to be Vertuous your selves or to counsel others to be so there appears all imaginable reason that courage draws you out to assault and batter the strong holds of sin and to conflict wickedness in High Places And when your Courage is the Child of your own Innocency it will infuse a marvellous vigor and spirit into every Branch of your Office So that you may speak and exhort and rebuke with all Authority And present Circumstances being duly weighed your Case will plainly appear to resemble that of Ezekiels when God said unto him Ezek. 2.6 Son of man be not afraid of them neither be afraid of their words though Briars and Thorns be with thee and thou dost dwell among Scorpions be not afraid of their words nor be dismayed at their looks though they be Rebellious c. Behold I have made thy face strong against their faces and thy forehead strong against their foreheads c. Chap. 3.8 c. 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to keep Hounds Accipitres Falcones c. And as concerning the mind of the Ancient Church in this particular it is sufficiently apparent in those Canons which forbid the Clergy secular Sports and Recreations and all such Correspondencies Entertainments and Familiarities with the Laity as were not the Product of their Office And this was done not out of any supercilious moroseness to restrain but out of a wary foresight to revere the Clergy To whose profession they saw nothing was more contrary than a too great indifferency of conversing with the people whom they were to instruct With whom they must not hope long to enjoy that Credit and Reverence due to their Order which is founded upon the Gravity Abstinence Sobriety and Reservation of their Persons if they license themselves that secular Freedom which we now plead against I have observed a Numerous Clergy in the Roman and not a few in our own Church though of no greater Parts or Vertues than others to have secured to themselves a great share of Veneration chiefly upon the account of a cautious Retreat from the Usages and Liberties of the Many CHAP. XII A Survey of the pretences of the Contempt of the Clergy Fourthly of Covetousness THE last Pretence of the Contempt of the Clergy which we shall take notice of in this discourse is their Covetousness And this imputation usually ariseth from a prejudiced consideration of the Clergies carriage First in looking after the Incomes which are appointed for their maintenance Secondly in the frugal management of those Incomes And lastly in their seeking after Preferments And first those who Contemn the Clergy for Covetousness because they are diligent and careful to look after the things which are allotted for their subsistence may manage the same Argument with as much Justice though perhaps not so much speciousness against all those who are studious to reap the due fruits and benefits of their Places and Professions though they have not all things consider'd so great an obligation for so doing as the Clergy Whom we must needs confess to be the Stewards of Gods Patrimony as well as of his Mysteries and that in both it is required of them to be found faithful To which attribute they will have but small reason to intitle themselves unless they be exactly vigilant to preserve those dues rights and profits which the Laws of God and the Land have made accrew to the Church and not to suffer that to be cunningly embezel'd unjustly defalk'd or Alienated which the Bounty and Religion of pious Ancestors devoted to the support and maintenance of the most Holy Worship And if the Clergy shall be thought covetous because by just and amicable Methods they are diligent in the preservation of that wherewith they are intrusted and that out of a due sense that the burden of Sacriledge is already too heavy upon the Nation they labour to prevent its growing heavier by saving men from that most execrable sin from which none can be free who endeavour to defraud the Church and which not a few are ready to do if not studiously prevented Now if this be the Case of the Clergies Covetousness in the first instance thereof let it be left to him That judgeth righteous judgment Nor can they with any better colour brand As Covetous the Clergies wary and frugal management of their incomes so long as they are merciful to their power and that their Alms are cheerful and their hospitality charitable though they never meddle with those secular Entertainments and expensive Correspondencies to which the occasions of their Office and expressions of Charity do neither oblige nor invite them And if the Clergy according to the best and Ancientest Canons secure the interest of the poor in the goods of the Church reserving unto themselves only such a portion thereof as may suffice for their own sober maintenance and to make honest provision for their Families and not tenaciously to hoard them up for no better purposes than either to gratifie a covetous humour or to furnish out a Worldly pomp and parade or what is not much better to enrich a Relation that in the next Age if not sooner will Contemn their Extraction and vilify the Function by which they were raised But on the contrary if the Clergy are conscientiously careful not to dissipate the Spiritual Patrimony in any needless profusions idle curiosities unclerical splendor or any thing disagreable to that Christian Austerity and Rigor which is ever to be expected in that Calling But shall with a Religious providence and Charitable Frugality endeavour so to husband that Holypittance whereof they are not the Proprietaries but Stewards as to be just and Charitable they ought upon these terms neither to be censured nor despised as Covetous Which is an imputation never to be fasten'd upon any Who do justice and love mercy And we must think that Order of men we speak of to be wonderfully devoid of conscience and ingenuity when they are guilty of any egregious failures in the things now mention'd Especially when they shall perceive them to be so equitable in themselves so answerable to the nature of their Calling and so strictly injoyn'd by the laws of the Church and so highly recommended by all the learned and pious of their own Character and Profession As to the Goods of the Church we know they are frequently styled the Goods of the Poor and the Ancient Church was so careful to maintain them in that state that she allowed not a Bishop to bestow them upon their nearest Relations further than to help them as they were indigent lest they should be said to prey upon the Churches Incomes I must take care saith St. Augustin lest the estate of the poor which belongs to the Church of Hippo be given to the Rich. In which matter I have hitherto quit my self well For I have kindred which call themselves Noble who come to me being a Bishop one while with Menaces and another while with Flatteries to move me to confer something upon them because of our Relation and yet through Gods grace I do not remember that I ever enriched any of them Enough to this purpose is to be met with in the Canons concerning Ecclesiastical Discipline and in those Authors who have writ De Eccles Repub. I have been told that a late Bishop of this Nation in his Epistle to Trinity-Colledge in Cambridge set before his Mysteries of Christian Religion doth impute the late Sacriledge committed in this Land to the spending of Church-means in an un-church-like manner and that this was done by the Clergies converting them to their private uses or otherwise misimploying them And therefore saith he God justly takes them away and permits Sacriledge we our selves having first offended in the same kind For certainly Church-means should have relation as well to the uses as to the persons and a Church-man in mispending them commits Sacriledge And I find it likewise expressly affirm'd by a Divine of