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'I don't know whether you are aware, my lady proceeded, 'that we have a presentation to a living? I say WE have; but, in point of fact, I have. I gave my lady to understand that I had not been aware of this. Said my lady, 'So it is: indeed I have two presentations, one to two hundred a year, one to six. Both livings are in our county, North Devonshire, as you probably know.
All livings are connected with the seminary, but they are all transferable. The prelate here puts clearly and categorically the question of the transfer of livings. In his measures there is neither hesitation nor circumlocution. He does not seek to deceive the sovereign to whom he is about to submit his regulation.
It furnished the country with "able, serious preachers," Baxter tells us, "who lived a godly life, of what tolerable opinion soever they were"; and, as both Presbyterian and Congregationalist ministers were presented to livings at the will of their patrons, it solved so far as practical working was concerned the problem of a religious union among Protestants on the base of a wide variety of Christian opinion.
The founder of the seminary had wished the livings to be transferable; later the government decided to the contrary, and the edict of 1679 decreed that the tithes should be payable only to the permanent priests; nevertheless the majority of them remained of their own free will attached to the seminary.
Both doctor and parson meet and mix in the best society of the town, but the slums of the poor are also equally well known to them; neither is a member of the Town Council, but the same institutions have their common support. Livings in Holland are not over-luxurious; and the consequence is that many 'Dominees' go out lecturing, or make an additional income by translating or writing books.
It is simply making a job for itself and is an added item to the record of non-production. Charity becomes unnecessary as those who seem to be unable to earn livings are taken out of the non-productive class and put into the productive.
Church livings were not filled with men remarkable for learning and piety, but awarded to political prostitution, and often to young rakes of known and unblushing profligacy, connected with families of rank. The consequence was, that a gross secular spirit, replete with political hatred and religious rancor, was the only principle which existed in the place of true religion.
"In the year 1731 a Bill was brought into the House of Lords by a great majority of the Right Reverend the Bishops, for enabling them to divide the livings of the inferior Clergy; which Bill was approved of in the Privy-Council of Ireland, and passed by the Lords in Parliament. It was afterwards sent to the House of Commons for their approbation; but was rejected by them with a great majority.
And the person who helps him to all this, to say nothing of his own individual deserts, is his beloved patron the excellent Excellency O . Through his influence two important landed-proprietors in the parish of Great T. have been induced to give their votes to Jacobi, who, though yet young, has been proposed; and thus he will receive one of the largest and most beautiful livings in the bishopric, and Louise will become a greatly honoured pastor's wife 'provost's wife' she herself says prophetically.
It should be added that, owing mainly to the thoroughly bad system of bundling three or four poor livings together, in order to provide respectable maintenance for a clergyman, it was very common in country places to have only one service on the Sunday. Nothing could be more likely than this to promote laxity of attendance at divine worship.
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