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Updated: July 23, 2025
No longer can this be borne, and we pray Zurich to maintain the old treaties and customs, and then we will cheerfully aid in rooting out real abuses, the shameful trade in benefices, the selling of indulgences and the scandalous lives of the clergy. Things important and unimportant, true and false, were mingled in this report. A written answer was required.
I will not put myself in the power of the King of France by encumbering myself with a host of needy relatives. He had the moral fortitude to incur unpopularity with the clergy by persisting in his slow, cautious, and regular distribution of benefices; with the monks by his rigid reforms. He hated the monks, and even the Mendicant Orders.
The general tenets of the organization, as given by Bullinger, may be summarized as follows: They regard themselves as the true Church of Christ well pleasing to God; they believe that by rebaptism a man is received into the Church; they refuse to hold intercourse with other Churches or to recognize their ministers; they say that the preachings of these are different from their works, that no man is the better for their preaching, that their ministers follow not the teaching of Paul, that they take payment from their benefices, but do not work by their hands; that the Sacraments are improperly served, and that every man, who feels the call, has the right to preach; they maintain that the literal text of the Scriptures shall be accepted without comment or the additions of theologians; they protest against the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone; they maintain that true Christian love makes it inconsistent for any Christian to be rich, but that among the Brethren all things should be in common, or, at least, all available for the assistance of needy Brethren and for the common cause; that the attitude of the Christian towards authority should be that of submission and endurance only; that no Christian ought to take office of any kind, or to take part in any form of military service; that secular authority has no concern with religious belief; that the Christian resists no evil and therefore needs no law courts nor should ever make use of their tribunals; that Christians do not kill or punish with imprisonment or the sword, but only with exclusion from the body of believers; that no man should be compelled by force to believe, nor should any be slain on account of his faith; that infant baptism is sinful and that adult baptism is the only Christian baptism baptism being a sacrament which should be reserved for the elect alone.
The bishopric of Mainz alone, within the memory of men now living, has bought eight pallia in Rome, every one costing about 30,000 gulden not to mention the innumerable other bishoprics, prelacies and benefices. Thus are we German fools to be led by the nose and then they say: It is a divine command to have no bishop without Roman confirmation.
These dignities were of great value; not only did they bring in a princely income, but they practically extended the estates and patronage of the crown by all the broad lands, cities, and villages, the offices, honors, and benefices with which the piety and chivalry of three centuries had endowed the orders.
There was no one in the room to suggest to Sir Morton that it is a pity some law is not in progress to prevent the purchase of historic houses by vulgar and illiterate persons of no family; which would be far more a benefit to the land at large than the suppression of privately purchased benefices.
This proposal, though not pleasing, could not be rejected, both because it was regular and because it made him in some measure believe that I would not fail to keep my benefices, since I was willing to take care of them. I treated with a Nantes merchant, whose name was Jucatieres, who took advantage of my eagerness, and for 4,000 crowns ready money got a bargain that made his fortune.
Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore, whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world, without giving some equivalent for it, ought to be treated as a common enemy: but, when this language comes from a churchman, who enjoys large benefices and dignities from that very Church he openly despises, it is an object of horror for which I want a name, and can only be excused by madness, which I think the Dean was strongly touched with.
Another instance of Erastianism practiced by both church and state, is, that when the king and parliament did bind down episcopal curates upon congregations, forbidding church judicatories the exercise of discipline upon the impenitent, and enjoining the Assembly to admit such, without any evidence of grief or sorrow for their former apostasy, upon their swearing the oath of allegiance, and subscribing a formula, homologating the Revolution settlement, substituted in the room of the covenants; the church approved of this settlement, and protection granted by the civil powers to such curates all their lifetime in their churches and benefices, who yet were not brought under any obligation to subject themselves to the government and discipline of the church.
Barre withdrew to Chinon, the senior canons rejoined their chapters, and the nuns, happily rescued for the time, resumed their life of retirement and tranquillity. The archbishop nevertheless urged on Grandier the prudence of effecting an exchange of benefices, but he replied that he would not at that moment change his simple living of Loudun for a bishopric.
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