CONCERNING THAT

UNIVERSAL HATRED,

WHICH PREVAILS

AGAINST THE CLERGY.

May 24, 1736.

I have been long considering and conjecturing, what could be the causes of that great disgust, of late, against the clergy of both kingdoms, beyond what was ever known till that monster and tyrant, Henry VIII. who took away from them, against law, reason, and justice, at least two-thirds of their legal possessions; and whose successors (except Queen Mary) went on with their rapine, till the accession of King James I. That detestable tyrant Henry VIII. although he abolished the Pope’s power in England, as universal bishop, yet what he did in that article, however just it were in itself, was the mere effect of his irregular appetite, to divorce himself from a wife he was weary of, for a younger and more beautiful woman, whom he afterwards beheaded.  But, at the same time, he was an entire defender of all the Popish doctrines, even those which were the most absurd.  And, while he put people to death for denying him to be head of the Church, he burned every offender against the doctrines of the Roman faith; and cut off the head of Sir Thomas More, a person of the greatest virtue this kingdom ever produced, for not directly owning him to be head of the Church.  Among all the princes who ever reigned in the world there was never so infernal a beast as Henry VIII. in every vice of the most odious kind, without any one appearance of virtue:  But cruelty, lust, rapine, and atheism, were his peculiar talents.  He rejected the power of the Pope for no other reason, than to give his full swing to commit sacrilege, in which no tyrant, since Christianity became national, did ever equal him by many degrees.  The abbeys, endowed with lands by the mistaken notions of well-disposed men, were indeed too numerous, and hurtful to the kingdom; and, therefore, the legislature might, after the Reformation, have justly applied them to some pious or public uses.

In a very few centuries after Christianity became national in most parts of Europe, although the church of Rome had already introduced many corruptions in religion; yet the piety of early Christians, as well as new converts, was so great, and particularly of princes, as well as noblemen and other wealthy persons, that they built many religious houses, for those who were inclined to live in a recluse or solitary manner, endowing those monasteries with land.  It is true, we read of monks some ages before, who dwelt in caves and cells, in desert places.  But, when public edifices were erected and endowed, they began gradually to degenerate into idleness, ignorance, avarice, ambition, and luxury, after the usual fate of all human institutions.  The Popes, who had already aggrandized themselves, laid hold of the opportunity to subject all religious houses with their priors and abbots, to their peculiar authority; whereby these religious orders became of an interest directly different from the rest of mankind, and wholly at the Pope’s devotion.  I need say no more on this article, so generally known and so frequently treated, or of the frequent endeavours of some other princes, as well as our own, to check the growth, and wealth, and power of the regulars.