Whereas, now-a-days, our education is so corrupted, that you will hardly find a young person of quality with the least tincture of knowledge, at the same time that many of the clergy were never more learned, or so scurvily treated. Here, among us at least, a man of letters, out of the three professions, is almost a prodigy. And those few, who have preserved any rudiments of learning, are, (except perhaps one or two smatterers,) the clergy's friends, to a man; and I dare appeal to any clergyman in this kingdom, whether the greatest dunce in the parish be not always the most proud, wicked, fraudulent, and intractable, of his flock.

I think the clergy have almost given over perplexing themselves and their hearers with abstruse points of predestination, election, and the like; at least, it is time they should; and therefore I shall not trouble you farther upon this head.

I have now said all I could think convenient with relation to your conduct in the pulpit : your behaviour in the world is another scene, upon which I shall readily offer you my thoughts, if you appear to desire them from me by your approbation of what I have here written; if not, I have already troubled you too much.

I am, Sir,

Your affectionate friend and servant.

AN ESSAY

ON THE

FATES OF CLERGYMEN.

THERE is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence. Courts are seldom unprovided of persons under this character, on whom, if they happen to be of great quality, most employments, even the greatest, naturally fall, when competitors will not agree; and in such promotions, nobody rejoices or grieves. The truth of this I could prove by several instances within my own memory; for I say nothing of present times.

And, indeed, as regularity and forms are of great use in carrying on the business of the world, so it is very convenient, that persons endued with this kind of discretion, should have that share which is proper to their

AN ESSAY ON THE FATES OF CLERGYMEN. 229

talents, in the conduct of affairs, but by no means meddle in matters which require genius, learning, strong comprehension, quickness of conception, magnanimity, generosity, sagacity, or any other superior gift of human minds. Because this sort of discretion is usually attended with a strong desire of money, and few scruples about the way of obtaining it; with servile flattery and submission; with a want of all public spirit or principle; with a perpetual wrong judgment, when the owners come into power and high place, how to dispose of favour and preferment; having no measures for merit and virtue in others, but those very steps by which themselves ascended; nor the least intention of doing good or hurt to the public, farther than either one or t'other is likely to be subservient to their own security or interest. Thus, being void of all friendship and enmity, they never complain or find fault with the times, and indeed never have reason to do so.

Men of eminent parts and abilities, as well as virtues, do sometimes rise in the court, sometimes in the law, and sometimes even in the church. Such were the Lord Bacon, the Earl of Strafford, Archbishop Laud, in the reign of King Charles I., and others in our own times, whom I shall not name; but these, and many more, under different princes, and in different kingdoms, were disgraced or banished, or suffered death, merely in envy to their virtues and superior genius, which emboldened them in great exigencies and distresses of state, (wanting a reasonable infusion of this aldermanly discretion,) to attempt the service of their prince and country, out of the common forms.

This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has

been imputed to divers causes that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world, the dunces are all in confederacy against him. And if this be his fate when he employs his talents wholly in his closet, without interfering with any man's ambition or avarice, what must he expect, when he ventures out to seek for preferment in a court, but universal opposition when he is mounting the ladder, and every hand ready to turn him off when he is at the top? and in this point, fortune generally acts directly contrary to nature; for in nature we find, that bodies full of life and spirits mount easily, and are hard to fall, whereas heavy bodies are hard to rise, and come down with greater velocity, in proportion to their weight; but we find fortune every day acting just the reverse of this.

This talent of discretion, as I have described it in its several adjuncts and circumstances, is nowhere so serviceable as to the clergy, to whose preferment nothing is so fatal as the character of wit, politeness in reading or manners, or that kind of behaviour which we contract by having too much conversation with persons of high station and eminency; these qualifications being reckoned, by the vulgar of all ranks, to be marks of levity, which is the last crime the world will pardon in a clergyman; to this I may add a free manner of speaking in mixed company, and too frequent an appearance in places of much resort, which are equally noxious to spiritual promotion.

I have known, indeed, a few exceptions to some parts of these observations. I have seen some of the dullest men alive aiming at wit, and others, with as little pre

tensions, affecting politeness in manners and discourse: but never being able to persuade the world of their guilt, they grew into considerable stations, upon the firm assurance which all people had of their discretion, because they were of a size too low to deceive the world to their own disadvantage. But this, I confess, is a trial too dangerous often to engage in.

There is a known story of a clergyman, who was recommended for a preferment by some great men at court, to an archbishop.* His grace said, "he had heard that the clergyman used to play at whist and swobbers; that as to playing now and then a sober game at whist for pastime, it might be pardoned, but he could not digest those wicked swobbers ;" and it was with some pains that my Lord Somers could undeceive him. I ask, by what talents we may suppose that great prelate ascended so high, or what sort of qualifications he would expect in those whom he took into his patronage, or would probably recommend to court for the government of distant churches?

Two clergymen, in my memory, stood candidates for a small free school in Yorkshire, where a gentleman of quality and interest in the county, who happened to have a better understanding than his neighbours, procured the place for him who was the better scholar, and more gentlemanly person, of the two, very much to the regret of all the parish: the other, being disappointed, came up to London, where he became the greatest pattern of this lower discretion that I have known, and

*

Archbishop Tenison, who, by all contemporary accounts, was a very dull man. There was a bitter sarcasm upon him usually ascribed to Swift," That he was as hot and heavy as a tailor's goose."