make one P fat. Priests have lean livings, People lean souls, to make Patrons have fat purses."

Adams's Heaven and Earth reconciled, p. 17. Thomas Adams had as honest a love of quips, quirks, puns, punnets, and pundigrions as Fuller the Worthy himself. As the old ballad says,

I like him the better therefore:

he resembles Fuller also in the felicity of his language, and the lively feeling with which he frequently starts, as it were, upon the reader. Upon this subject he often gives vent to his indignation.

As for the ministers that have livings, he says "they are scarce liveons, or enough to keep themselves and their families living; and for those that have none, they may make themselves merry with their learning if they have no money, for they that bought the patronages must needs sell the presentations; vendere jure potest, emerat ille prius: and then, if Balaam's ass hath but an audible voice, and a soluble purse, he shall be preferred before his master, were he ten prophets. If this weather hold, Julian need not send learning into exile, for no parent will be so irreligious as with great expences to bring up his child at once to misery and sin. Oh think of this if your impudence have left any blood of shame in your faces : cannot you spare out of all your riot some crumme of liberality to the poor needy and neglected gospel? Shall the Papists so outbid us, and in the view of their prodigality laugh our miserableness to scorn? Shall they twit us that our Our Father hath taken from the Church what their Pater Noster bestowed on it? Shall they bid us bate of our faith, and better our charity?"

Adams's Heaven and Earth reconciled, p. 22. In another of his works he says, "They have raised church livings to four and five years' purchase; and it is to

be feared they will shortly rack up presentative livings to as high a rate as they did their impropriations, when they would sell them. For they say few will give above sixteen years' purchase for an impropriate parsonage; and I have heard some rate the donation of a benefice they must give at ten years: what with the present money they must have, and with reservation of tythes, and such unconscionable tricks; as if there was no God in Heaven to see or punish it! Perhaps some will not take so much: but most will take some: enough to impoverish the Church: to enrich their own purses, to damn their souls.

"One would think it was sacrilege enough to rob God of his main tythes; must they also trimme away the shreds? Must they needs shrink the old cloth (enough to apparel the Church) as the cheating taylor did to a dozen of buttons? Having full gorged themselves with the parsonages, must they pick the bones of the vicarages too? Well saith St. Augustine multi in hac vitâ manducant, quod postea apud inferos digerunt: many devour that in this life, which they shall digest in Hell.

"These are the church-briars, which (let alone) will at last bring as famous a church as any Christendom hath to beggary. Politic men begin apace already to withhold their children from schools and universities. Any profession else better likes them, as knowing they may live well in whatsoever calling save in the ministry. The time was that Christ threw the buyers and sellers out of the Temple: but now the buyers and sellers have thrown him out of the Temple. Yea, they will throw the Church out of the Church, if they be not stayed."

Adams's Divine Herball, p. 135. "The Rob-Altar is a huge drinker. He loves, like Belshazzar, to drink only in the goblets of the Temple. Woe unto him; he carouses the wine he never sweat for, and keeps the poor minister thirsty. The tenth sheep is his diet: the tenth fleece (O'tis a golden fleece, he thinks,) is his drink but the wool shall choke him. Some drink

down whole churches and steeples; but the bells shall ring in their bellies."-Adams's Divine Herball, p. 27.

"What an unreasonable Devil is this!" says Latimer. "He provides a great while before-hand for the time that is to come; he hath brought up now of late the most monstrous kind of covetousness that ever was heard of; he hath invented a fee-farming of benefices, and all to delay the office of preaching; insomuch that when any man hereafter shall have a benefice, he may go where he will for any house he shall have to dwell upon, or any glebe land to keep hospitality withall; but he must take up a chamber in an alehouse, and there sit and play at the tables all day."-Latimer.

NOTE XXIX. P. 314.

Cures given to any Person who could be found miserable enough to accept them.

"I will not speak now of them, that being not content with lands and rents, do catch into their hands spiritual livings, as parsonages and such like, and that under the pretence to make provision for their houses. What hurt and damage this realm of England doth sustain by that devilish kind of provision for gentlemen's houses, knights' and lords' houses, they can tell best, that do travel in the countries, and see with their eyes great parishes and market-towns, with innumerable others, to be utterly destitute of God's word, and that because that these greedy men have spoiled the livings, and gotten them into their hands : and instead of a faithful and painful teacher, they hire a Sir John, who hath better skill at playing at tables, or in keeping of a garden, than in God's word; and he for a trifle doth serve the cure, and so help to bring the people of God in danger of their souls. And all those serve to accomplish the abominable pride of such gentlemen, which consume the goods of the people (which ought to have been bestowed upon a learned minister) in costly apparel,

belly cheer, or in building of gorgeous houses."- Augustin Bernher's Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to Latimer's Sermons.

"It is a great charge," says Latimer, "a great burthen before God to be a patron. For every patron, when he doth not diligently endeavour himself to place a good and godly man in his benefice which is in his hands, but is slothful, and careth not what manner of man he taketh, or else is covetous and will have it himself, and hire a Sir John Lack-Latin, which shall say service so that the people shall be nothing edified; no doubt that patron shall make answer before God for not doing of his duty." Latimer.

The poets, too, of that and the succeeding age touched frequently upon this evil.

"The pedant minister and serving clarke,

The ten-pound, base, frize-jerkin hireling,
The farmer's chaplain with his quarter-marke,
The twenty-noble curate, and the thing
Call'd elder; all these gallants needs will bring
All reverend titles into deadly hate,

Their godly calling, and my high estate."

Storer's Wolsey, p. 63.

Thus also George Wither in his prosing strains:

"We rob the church.

Men seek not to impropriate a part

Unto themselves, but they can find in heart
To engross up all; which vile presumption

Hath brought church livings to a strange consumption.
And if this strong disease do not abate,

'Twill be the poorest member in the state.

"No marvel, though, instead of learned preachers,
We have been pestered with such simple teachers,
Such poor, mute, tongue-tied readers, as scarce know
Whether that God made Adam first or no:
Thence it proceeds, and there's the cause that place
And office at this time incurrs disgrace;

For men of judgements or good dispositions
Scorn to be tied to any base conditions,
Like to our hungry pedants, who'll engage
Their souls for any curtailed vicarage.

I say there's none of knowledge, wit, or merit,
But such as are of a most servile spirit,
That will so wrong the Church as to presume
Some poor half-demi-parsonage to assume
In name of all; - no, they had rather quite
Be put beside the same than wrong God's right.

"Well, they must entertain such pedants then,
Fitter to feed swine than the souls of men;
But patrons think such best; for there's no fear
They will speak any thing they loath to hear;
They may run foolishly to their damnation
Without reproof or any disturbation;

To let them see their vice they may be bold,
And yet not stand in doubt to be controll'd.
Those in their houses may keep private schools,
And either serve for jesters or for fools:
And will suppose that they are highly graced
Be they but at their patron's table placed;
And there if they be call'd but priests in scoff,
Straight they duck down, and all their caps come off."
Wither's Presumption.

NOTE XXX. P. 316.

Means for assisting poor Scholars diminished.

"It would pity a man's heart to hear that I hear of the state of Cambridge; what it is in Oxford I cannot tell. There be few that study divinity, but so many as of necessity must furnish the Colleges; for their livings be so small, and victuals so dear, that they tarry not there, but go every where to seek livings, and so they go about. Now there be a few gentlemen, and they study a little divinity.