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He thought religion was a very excellent thing, and Aristotle a great authority, and deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and Great Britain the providential bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the unseen a great support to afflicted minds; he believed in all these things, as a Swiss hotel-keeper believes in the beauty of the scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to artistic visitors.
Her beautifully disguised search for admiration extended far and wide, and she found what she wanted sometimes in unexpected places, in sombre Oxford libraries, in time-worn deaneries, in East-End settlements, through which she flashed now and then like a bird of Paradise, darting across the murk of a strange black country on its way to golden regions, as well as in Mayfair, in the Shires, in foreign capitals, and on the moors of Scotland.
If, therefore, a woman marries a clergyman, she does so for love of the man and his work's sake; there cannot be a tinge of ambition as to the career of her husband, for there are no such things as comfortable rectories and prospective deaneries or bishoprics, with their consequent influence and power.
Philosopher, b. at Grantham, and ed. at Camb., took orders, but declined all preferment, including two deaneries and a bishopric; and also various appointments in his Univ., choosing rather a quiet life devoted to scholarship and philosophy, especially the study of writings of Plato and his followers.
Bishoprics were offered to Calamy, Baxter, and Reynolds, leaders among the Presbyterians: the last only could be prevailed on to accept. Deaneries and other preferments were refused by many.
All the positions of value bishoprics, deaneries and important parishes were conferred on Englishmen, who never resided in their cures, but left the duties either to be performed by half-starved deputies or not at all. Many of the churches were in ruins, and the glebes had fallen into decay; a union of half-a-dozen parishes would scarcely supply a meagre salary for one incumbent.
Opinions which at the time of the accession of James, no clergyman could have avowed without imminent risk of being stripped of his gown, were now the best title to preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by a simple country gentleman what the Arminians held, answered, with as much truth as wit, that they held all the best bishoprics and deaneries in England.
If they had thoughts to interpose, it might be conceived they would shew their displeasure against this Bill, which must very much lessen the value of the King's patronage upon promotion to vacant sees; in the disposal of deaneries, and other considerable preferments in the Church, which are in the donation of the Crown; whereby the viceroys will have fewer good preferments to bestow on their dependants, as well as upon the kindred of members, who may have a sufficient stock of that sort of merit, whatever it may be, which may in future times most prevail.
The third bill was for increasing the tithes and prebends of the Bishopric of Lichfield and Coventry, which was one of the richest in England; for making an increased yearly allowance to the cathedral, for augmenting the number of its canons, and for increasing its deaneries and benefices, "to the benefit of our holy religion," as the preamble set forth.
But Erasmus urged the Roman friends who were thus active in his behalf to cease their kind offices; he would accept nothing, he a man who lived from day to day in expectation of death and often hoping for it, who could hardly ever leave his room would people instigate him to hunt for deaneries and cardinals' hats! He had subsistence enough to last him. He wanted to die independent.
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