CONSIDERATIONS ON THE LIKELIEST MEANS TO REMOVE HIRELINGS OUT OF
THE CHURCH.
Tins cheap reprint of MivroN's tract is timely.; for it will enable those who are curious about the matter easily to compare the opinions of the author of Paradise Lost, upon Church government, discipline, and wealth, with those of Sir ROBERT PEEL and his fellow Commissioners. The treatise, however, wanted not this adventitious recommendation. . The importance of removing hire- lings (a word of "evil signification," as meaning " either the ex- cess of the hire or the undue manner of giving and taking it ") out of the Church, gives a permanent interest to the subject, as long as any are suspected of remaining there; and the genius of MILTON has endowed his essay with vitality. There is not, in- deed, so much of quaint richness, such a personification of imagery and argument, or so much of the essence of poetry, as in some of his other prose works. But the English is strong and nervous, the reasoning close, the argument strictly logical; and the sacred nature of the topic somewhat subduing his powers of sarcasm, it affords a good specimen of his "controversial merritnent." But perhaps the distinguishing characteristic cf the tract is the learn- ing it displays. Within the compass of forty-five short pages, the author selects from the Scriptures, the Fathers, the Councils, the laws of England, and the history both of England and the Roman Empire, all that is necessary for his purpose ; introduces it so easily and so fitly, mingles it so naturally with his arguments, and makes it so entirely his own, that this little treatise illustrates as well as Paradise Lost the truth of JOHNSON'S observation, that "(lie heat of Milton's mind may be said to sublimate his learning, to throw off the spirit of science unmingled with its grosser parts."
The general purpose of the author is told by the title; the im- mediate end he had in view was . . . . to deliver us, the only people of all l'rotestants left still undelivered, from the oppreasions of a sittionions, decimating clergy, who shame not, against the
judgment and practice of all other churches reformed, to maintain, though very weakly, their Popish and oft-refuted positions; not in a point of conscience, wherein they might be blameless, but in a point of covetousness and unjust claim tc other men's goods; a contention foul and odious in any man, but most of all in ministers of the gospel, in whom contention, though for their own right, scarce is allowable.
In accomplishing his intentions, the author considers the right of the Clergy to tithes, to church-dues, or to a public maintenance from the State; deciding each point in the negative, on the authority of Scripture, the practice of the primitive Churches, and the general spirit of the Christian religion. In dealing with tithes, he had to establish much that we take for granted, and to destroy the claim of the Clergy through a divine command. The practical inexpedience of this impost he deduces from history ; showing how riches and corruption went hand in hand—how, in the words of" the ancient observation, religion brought forth wealth, and the daughter destroyed the mother." The legal claim, he maintains, is un- tenable, as originally founded on a " mistaken opinion of their divine right;" and even admitting it to be sound, the produce should be distributed according to the original directions—one third to the poor, one thin l for the support of ecclesiastical build- ings, one third only to the priest. What he thought of the liti- gations they gave rise to, he shall tell himself. If an action or a distraint could thus excite his indignation, what would he have said of Protestant Ascendancy, and of its fruits the Rathcormac slaughter ?
I omit also their violent and irreligious exactions, related no less credibly; their seizing of pots and pans from the poor, who have as good right to tithes as they ; from sonic the very beds; their suing and imprisoning, worse than when the canon law was in-force ; worse than when those wicked sons of Eli were priests, whose manner was thus to seize their pretended priestly due by force. I Sam. ii. 12, &e. " Whereby men abhorred the offering of the Lord." Anil it may be feared that many will as inin•li abhor the gospel, if such vio- lence as this be suffered in her ministers, and in that which they also pretend to be the offering of the Lord. For those sons of Belial within some limits made seizure of what they knew was their own by an undoubted law ; but these, from whom these is no sanctuary, seize out of Lien's grounds, omit of vneu's houses, tlwir other goods of double, sometimes of treble value, for that which,. ilid not covetousness and rapine blind them, they hinny. to be not their own by the plod which they preach. Of some more tolei able than these, thus severely GM bath spohen. Isa. xlvi. 10, " They are gieedy dogs; they all look to their onal way, every one for his gain, from his platter." With what anger then will lie judge them who stand not looking, but untli•r colour of a divine sight, fetch hy 1..,rce that which is not their own, taking his name not in vain, but in violeace ? Nor content as Oelrizi siam, to make a cunning, but a constt airwil advantage of what their master billa them give freely, how can they but return smitten, worse than that sharking minister. with a spi- ritual leprosy? And yet they cry out sactileg,e, that men tvill not be gulled and baffled the tenth of tlieir estates, by giving credit to fi•kolous ptetences of divine right. Where did Coil ever declare to all nations, or in all lands (and none but fools part with their estates without clearest evidence, 011 bare siip. posals and presumptions of them who are the gainers thereby), that he required • the tenth as due to him or his Son perpetually and in all places ?
Upon Church-dues, be recurs to first principles; and, as thg. passage is not long, we will take the whole. Let us see a little what bath been thought of that other maintenance besides tithes, which of all Protestants our English divines either only or most appa- rently both require and take. Those are fees for christenings, marriages, and burials; %Odell, though whoso will may give freely, yet being not of right, is of free gift, if they be exacted or established, they become monst to them who are otherwise maintained • and of such evil note that even the Council of Trent, I. p. 240, makes them 'liable to the laws against simony, who take or demand fees for the administering of any sacrainent—" Che la sinodo videndo levare gli abusi introdotti," Sze: And in the next page, with like severity, condemns the giving or taking for a benefice, and the celebrating of marriages, christenings, and burials, for fees exacted or demanded : nor counts it less simony to sell the ground or place of burial. Anil in a State Assembly at Orleans, lb61, it was decreed—" Che non si potesse eSSigeT elNlaletina,&e. p. 429. that nothing should be exacted for the administerites of sacraments, bin ials, or any other spiritual function." Thus much that Council, of all others the most Popish, and this assembly of Papists, though, by their own principles, in bondage to the clergy, were induced, either by their own reason and shaine, or by the light of reforma- tion then slatting in upon them or rather by the known canons of many Councils and Synods long before, to cot:demo of simony spit itual fees demanded. For if the minister be maintained for his whole ministry, why should lie be twice paid for any part thereof? Why should he, like a servant, seek rails over and above his wages? As for christenings, either they theanselves call 11112/1 to baptistn, or men of themselves come : if ministers invite, how ill had it become John the Baptist to demand fees for his baptizing, or Christ for his christenings ? Far less it becomes these now, with a greediness lower than that of tradesmen calling passewsers to their shop, and yet paid beforehand, to ask again for doing that which their founders did freely. If men of themselves collie to be baptized, they are either btought by such as already pay the minister, or came to be one of his disciples and maintainers ;of whom to ask a fee, as it were for entranee, is a piece of paltry craft or caution, befitting none but beggarly artists. Burials and mar- riages are so little to he any part of their gain, that they who consider well may find them to be no part of' theit function. At burials, their attendance they allege on the corpse; all the guests do as much unbited. But their prayers at the grave I—superstitiously required ; vet it' retptired, their last petformasce to the deceased of their own flock. But the funeral sermon !—at their choice; or if not, an occasion offered them to preach out of season, which is one part of their office. But something must be spoken in praise; if due, their duty ; if undue, their corruption,—a peculiar simony of our divines in England only. But the ground is broken, and especially their unrighteous possession, time chancel. To sell that, will not only raise up in judgment the Council of Trent against them, but will lose them the best champion of tithes, their zealous antiquary, Sir henry Spelman ; who in a book written to that purpose, by many cited canons, and some even of times corruptest in the Church, proves that fees exacted or de- manded for sacraments, marriages, burials, and especially for interring, are wicked, accursed, simoniacal, and abominable ; yet thus is the Church, for all this noise of reformation, left still unreformed—by the censure of their own sentals, their own favourers, a den of thieves and robbeis. As for marriages, that ministers should meddle with them, as not sanctified or legitimate, without their celebration, I find no ground in Scripture, either of precept or example. Likeliest it is (which our Selden bath well observed, I. 2, c. 28, Pt. Eb.), that in imitation of Heathen priests, who were wont at nuptials to use many rites and ceremonies, and especially, judging it would be profitable, and the increase of their authority, not to be spectators only io business of such concernment to the life of man, they insinuated that marriage was not holy without their benedic- tion, and for the better colour, made it a sacrament ; being of itself a civil ordi- nance, a household contract, a thing indifferent and free to the whole race of
mankind, not as religious, but as men ; best, indeed, undertaken to religiuus ends, and as the apostle saith, 1 (or. vii. "in the Lord." Yet not therefore
invalid or unholy without a minister and his pretended necessary hallowing, more than any other act, enterptise, or contract of civil life, which ought all to be done also in the Lord and to his glary ; all which, TIO less than marriage, were by the cunning of priests heietofore, as matetial to their profit, transacted at the altar. Our divines deny it to be a sacrament, yet retained the celebration.
Having thus dismissed the two modes of paying the clergy as by law established, lie conies to the question of how are they to be maintained ? and decides in favour of what is now called the Voluntary principle. His views upon this part of time question deserve consideration apart from the question itself. They show how little weight mere authority or established forms had with MILTON, unless supported by reason • and how completely the great vindicator of " the ways of God to man" was what the slang of the Tories now nicknames a Destructive. They are curious, too, as containing the idea of the far-famed Prussian system of education, not only in form, but in spirit—that spirit which Mrs. AUSTIN has so beautifully described at length.* They are also dashed—or it may be raised—by a primitive or • Preface to her translation of the Report en the State of Prblie fastractios is Proses.
eveo an apostolic tone, and a love of learning and religion for their own sakes, which contrast strangely with the calculating and worldly way in which Christianity is now talked of by its ministers.
In calling attention to this tract, we would not be understood as entirely recommending the practice it enforces in the closing section. The fervent and exulted piety of MILTON, and the ex- perienoe he drew from the religious fermentation of his age, might incline him to attribute to much strength to the spirit, too little weakness to the flesh, and impel him to advocate a religion too purely Scriptural for our present social state. But though not clearly seeing our way as to the effects of the Voluntary prin- ciple, we would claim respect for the motives and courtesy for the persons of those who advocate it. The doctrine is entirely Scrip- tural: the mind which approaches the nearest to inspiration has adopted it in the fullest extent as essential to the purity of religion : the founder of political science recommends it as best calculated to advance the intelligence and wealth and secure the quiet of the .community : one of the most philosophic and best-instructed minds of our age—Professor 'VAUGHAN—advocates it as an es- sential " part and parcel" of Christianity : a large body of fellow- citizens, who are neither the poorest nor the most slothful nor the least religious class amongst us, practise it. Considering these things, it would be but polite in men who claim for their sect an exclusive possesson of the courtesies, proper in the professed ad- vocates of decorum, and charitable in the followers of a Church which maintains that it best represents the faith whose profession without charity is but as " sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal," to cease representing their opponents as wretches who wish to destroy all religion, because they would free it from an attendant who, they think, " either overlays or chokes it in the nursing," or as necessitous miscreants, who would overthrow all establish- ments to profit by their chances in a general scramble.
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