Note 106 — DIALOGUE IV. ON THE AGE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
Reading edition
This was a common topick of complaint against the queen; or at least her ministers, and gave occasion to that reproof of the poet Spenser, which the persons concerned could hardly look upon as very decent,
“Scarce can a bishoprick forepass them bye But that it must be gelt in privity.” Mother Hubbard’s Tale.
But a bishop of that time carries the charge still further. In one of his sermons at court before the queen, “Parsonages and vicarages, says he, seldom pass now-a-days from the patron, but either for the lease, or the present money. Such merchants are broken into the church of God, a great deal more intolerable than were they whom Christ whipped out of the temple.”—This language is very harsh, and surely not deserved by the Protestant patrons of those days, who were only, as we may suppose, for reducing the church of Christ to its pure and primitive state of indigence and suffering. How edifying is it to hear St. Paul speak of his being—In hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness! And how perfectly reformed would our church be, if its ministers were but once more in this blessed apostolical condition!