more tolerable condition, than they had been left in by the schismatical principles of some, and the unjust prepossessions of others, for many years before: for at the reformation, the popish bishops and priests seemed to conform, and did so, that keeping their bishopricks they might enrich their kindred and dilapidate the revenues of the church, which by pretended offices, false informations, fee-farms at contemptible rents, and ungodly alienations, were made low as poverty itself, and unfit to minister to the needs of them that served the altar, or the noblest purposes of religion: for hospitality decayed, and the bishops were easy to be oppressed by those that would; and they complained, but for a long time had no helper, till God raised up that glorious instrument the Earl of Strafford, who brought over with him as great affections to the church and to all public interests, and as admirable abilities, as ever before his time did invest and adorn any of the king's vicegerents; and God fitted his hand with an instrument good as his skill was great: for the first specimen of his abilities and diligence in recovery of some lost tithes, being represented to his late majesty, of blessed and glorious memory, it pleased his majesty, upon the death of bishop Downham, to advance the doctor to the bishoprick of Derry, which he not only adorned with an excellent spirit and a wise government, but did more than double the revenue, not by taking any thing from them to whom it was due, but by resuming something of the churches' patrimony, which by undue means was detained in unfitting hands. But his care was beyond his diocese, and his zeal broke out to warm all his brethren; and, though by reason of the favour and piety of king James, the escheated counties were well provided for their tithes, yet the bishopricks were not so well, till the primate, then bishop of Derry, by the favour of the Lord Lieutenant and his own incessant and assiduous labour and wise conduct, brought in divers impropriations, cancelled many unjust alienations, and did restore them to a condition much more tolerable; I say much more tolerable; for though he raised them above contempt, yet they were not near to envy; but he knew there could not in all times be wanting too many, that envied to the church every degree of prosperity: so Judas did to Christ the expense of ointment; and so Dionysius told the priest, when himself stole the golden cloak from Apollo, and gave him one of the Arcadian home-spun, that it was warmer for him in winter and cooler in summer. And for ever, since the church, by God's blessing and the favour of religious kings and princes, and pious nobility, hath been endowed with fair revenues, 'inimicus homo,' 'the enemy' hath not been wanting, by pretences of religion, to take away God's portion from the church, as if his word were intended as an instrument to rob his houses. But when the Israelites were governed by a Jeongaría, and 'God was their king,' and Moses his lieutenant, and things were of his management, he was pleased, by making great provisions for them that ministered in the service of the tabernacle, to consign this truth for ever;-that men, as they love God, at the same rate are to make provisions for his priests. For when himself did it, he not only gave the forty-eight cities, with a mile of glebe round about their city every way, and yet the whole country was but an hundred and forty miles long, or thereabouts, from Dan to Beersheba; but beside this they had the tithe of all increase, the first-fruits, offerings, vows, redemptions, and in short, they had twenty-four sorts of dues, as Buxtorf relates; and all this either brought to the barn home to them without trouble, or else, as the nature of the thing required, brought to the temple; the first to make it more profitable, and the second to declare that they received it not from the people but from God, not the people's kindness but the Lord's inheritance; insomuch that this small tribe of Levi, which was not the fortieth part of the people, as the Scripture computes them, had a revenue almost treble to any of the largest of the tribes. I will not insist on what Villalpandus observes P, it may easily be read in the 45th of Ezekiel, concerning that portion which God reserves for himself and his service; but whatsoever it be, this shall I say, that is confessedly a prophecy of the Gospel; but this I add, that they had as little to do, and much less than a christian priest; and yet in all the twenty-four courses the poorest priest among them might be esteemed a rich man. I speak not this to upbraid any man, or any thing but sacrilege and murmur, nor to any other end but to represent upon what • Numb. i. 46. iii. 39. 4 See Philo. περὶ τοῦ τινὰ γέρα ἱερέων. P Seid. Hist. of Tithes, c. 2. great and religious grounds the then bishop of Derry did, with so much care and assiduous labour, endeavour to restore the church of Ireland to that splendour and fulness; which as it is much conducing to the honour of God and of religion, God himself being the judge, so it is much more necessary for you than it is for us; and so this wise prelate rarely well understood it; and having the same advantage and blessing as we now have, a gracious king, and a lieutenant, patron of religion and the church, he improved the 'deposita pietatis,' as Origen calls them, the gages of piety,' which the religion of the ancient princes and nobles of this kingdom had bountifully given to such a comfortable competency, that though there be place left for present and future piety to large itself, yet no man hath reason to be discouraged in his duty; insomuch that as I have heard from a most worthy hand, that at his going into England he gave account to the archbishop of Canterbury of 30,0001. a year, in the recovery of which he was greatly and principally instrumental. But the goods of this world are called 'waters' by Solomon: Stolen waters are sweet, and they are too unstable to be stopped some of these waters did run back from their proper channel, and return to another course than God and the laws intended; yet his labours and pious counsels were not the less acceptable to God and good men, and therefore by a thankful and honourable recognition, the convocation of the church of Ireland has transmitted in record to posterity their deep resentment of his singular services and great abilities in this whole affair. And this honour will for ever remain to that bishop of Derry; he had a Zerubbabel who repaired the temple and restored its beauty; but he was the Joshua, the high-priest, who under him ministered this blessing to the congregations of the Lord. But his care was not determined in the exterior part only, and accessaries of religion; he was careful, and he was prosperous in it, to reduce that divine and excellent service of our church to public and constant exercise, to unity and devotion; and to cause the articles of the church of England to be accepted as the rule of public confessions and persuasions here, that they and we might be 'populus unius labii,' of one heart and one lip,' building up our hopes of Tract. 25. in St. Matthew. heaven on a most holy faith; and taking away that Shibboleth which made this church lisp too undecently, or rather, in some little degree, to speak the speech of Ashdod, and not the language of Canaan; and the excellent and wise pains he took in this particular no man can dehonestate or reproach, but he that is not willing to confess, that the church of England is the best reformed church in the world. But when the brave Roman infantry, under the conduct of Manlius, ascended up to the Capitol to defend religion and the altars from the fury of the Gauls, they all prayed to God, "Ut quemadmodum ipsi ad defendendum templum ejus concurrissent, ita ille virtutem eorum numine suo tueretur:" "That as they came to defend his temple by their arms, so he would defend their persons and that cause with his power and divinity." And this excellent man in the cause of religion found the like blessing which they prayed for; God, by the prosperity of his labours and a blessed effect, gave testimony not only of the piety and wisdom of his purposes, but that he loves to bless a wise instrument, when it is vigorously employed in a wise and religious labour. He overcame the difficulty in defiance of all such pretences, as were made even from religion itself, to obstruct the better procedure of real and material religion. These were great things and matter of great envy, and, like the fiery eruptions of Vesuvius, might, with the very ashes of consumption, have buried another man. At first indeed, as his blessed Master, the most holy Jesus, had, so he also had his annum acceptabilem.' At first the product was nothing but great admiration at his stupendous parts, and wonder at his mighty diligence and observation of his unusual zeal in so good and great things; but this quickly passed into the natural daughters of envy, suspicion, and detraction, the spirit of obloquy and slander. His zeal for recovery of the church-revenues was called oppression and rapine, covetousness and injustice; his care of reducing religion to wise and justifiable principles was called popery and Arminianism, and I know not what names, which signify what the authors are pleased to mean, and the people to construe and to hate. The intermedial prosperity of his person and fortune, which he had as an earnest of a greater reward to so well-meant labours, was supposed to be the production of illiberal arts and ways of getting; and the necessary refreshment of his wearied spirits, which did not always supply all his needs, and were sometimes less than the permissions even of prudent charity, they called intemperance: "Dederunt enim malum Metelli Nævio poetae;" their own surmises were the bills of accusation; and the splendour of his great avaboɛgyía, or doing of good works,' was the great probation of all their calamities. But if envy be the accuser, what can be the defences of innocence? Saucior invidiæ morsu, quærenda medela est; Our blessed Saviour, knowing the unsatisfiable angers of men if their money or estates were meddled with, refused to divide an inheritance amongst brethren: it was not to be imagined that this great person (invested, as all his brethren were, with the infirmities of mortality, and yet employed in dividing and recovering, and apportioning of lands) should be able to bear all that reproach, which jealousy and suspicion and malicious envy could invent against him. But ἀπ' ἐχθρῶν πολλὰ μανθάνουow of oopol, said Sophocles: and so did he; the affrightments brought to his great fame and reputation made him to walk more warily, and do justly, and act prudently, and conduct his affairs by the measures of laws, as far as he understood, and indeed that was a very great way: but there was 'aperta justitia, clausa manus,' 'justice was open, but his hand was shut;' and, though every slanderer could tell a story, yet none could prove that ever he received a bribe to blind his eyes, to the value of a pair of gloves:' it was his own expression, when he gave glory to God who had preserved him innocent. But, because every man's cause is right in his own eyes, it was hard for him so to acquit himself, that in the intrigues of law and difficult cases, some of his enemies should not seem (when they were heard alone) to speak reason against him. But see the greatness of truth and prudence, and how greatly God stood with him. When the numerous armies of vexed people, ' Turba gravis paci, placidæque inimica quieti ", heaped up catalogues of accusations, when the parliament of Ireland, imitating the violent procedures of the then dis |