Clerical work

“ Priests of the Society are given the option of either joining other orders or remaining as secular clergy, under obedience to the ordinaries, who are empowered to grant or withhold from them licences to hear confessions. Such of the fathers as are engaged in the work of education are permitted to continue, on condition of abstaining from lax and questionable doctrines apt to cause strife and trouble. ”

“ The office of King, as head of the Church, is a clerical office—the crown both of the Church and the State; and, for the sustentation of its true splendour and dignity, the man or woman filling the office should be the first scholar and most wise and virtuous being of the Nation. Whether this is a principle to be conveyed by hereditary descent, I do not stop to enquire; but the true hereditary principle of church office is talent and moral character ”

“ To add to the impoverished appearance of the clerical profession, there existed in every capital and country town the luckless nonconforming clergy, bereft of the emoluments of their vocation, and often reduced to a condition scarcely—if at all—removed from begging. ”

“ But it is no less true as regards those of the clergy who are not genuinely and by nature as much better than the average as they are conventionally supposed to be. The other source of harm to the clerical profession is endowments. ”

“ To be a Peer of Parliament, to rule the clergy of a diocese, and wear the highest order of clerical vestment, is sweet to the clerical aspirant. A man feels that he is shelved when he ceases to sing excelsior to himself in his closet. ”

“ In the clerical order especially there are numbers, whose position has been attained by long study and weary toil—whose very means of life—not to speak of their station and their friendships—hang upon adherence to the Creed of their Church. ”

“ There are a number of officials and clerks who properly belong to no division or bureau, as, for instance, the librarian's private secretary and other clerical assistance in the Secretary's office, who are under his immediate supervision. ”

“ It is my office, reverend fathers, to administer justice, without respect to persons; to suppress the rebellious; to punish the sacrilegious; to protect the poor and weak from the hand of the oppressor. It is my business also to take care that the Church and her ministers, the holy fraternities of the religious orders, have all things necessary to their subsistence and well-being. But it is your duty to examine into the life and conversation of the clergy. ”

“ There are many endowed with teaching power whose gifts the churches, according to New Testament example, utilize in positions other than the pastoral office. They are called to various departments of work as secretaries and agents of missionary and benevolent organizations, as instructors in institutions of learning, as authors and editors engaged in creating and diffusing a Christian literature, and as laborers in other positions in which there is occasion for the exercise of ministerial functions; and they are, therefore, often ordained to preach and administer ordinances. ”

“ The Rights of the Church over the Education of Clerics.—The education of clerics—of young men, that is, who devote themselves to the ecclesiastical ministry—has always been the object of the liveliest solicitude of the church. ”

“ Beside the charter of institution stands the long record of the work wrought in virtue of it, the witness of the Church to it in councils, the obedience to it in fact. As the priesthood exists in attestation of the Real Presence, so the primacy stands beside our Lord's words, first promising and then conferring it, like the comment of eighteen hundred years, uniform and consistent. ”

“ The state has no power whatever over the education of clerics; and the church, by its divine institution, is alone competent for this work, necessary above all to its existence and the perpetuity of its action in the world.
Such are the rights of the church in this first department of education. They are absolute, exclusive, and inalienable. What have we next to say of those she possesses in the education of the laity? ”

“ In truth, in northern Europe the Church included practically all the learned professions, including the civil servants of the government, the physicians, architects, secular lawyers, diplomatists, and secretaries, who were all ecclesiastics. It is true that in order to be a "clerk" it was not really necessary to take even minor orders, but it was so easy for a king or bishop to reward his physician, his lawyer, or his secretary by a monastic office rather than by a large salary, that the average student, at least in the larger places, looked to holy orders as his eventual destination. ”

“ After this long and careful training, he enters the subordinate ranks of the clergy, not to discharge, like a modern deacon, duties as laborious, and often as responsible, as those which pertained to the priest, but such light and irresponsible tasks as were suitable to men who might be young, and were necessarily inexperienced in pastoral work. ”

“ But in everything which concerns what is called discipline—the exercise of that jurisdiction over the people with which the office-bearers of the church are conceived to be invested, he is assisted by lay-elders. They are laymen in that they have no right to teach or to dispense the sacraments, and on this account they fill an office in the Presbyterian Church inferior in rank and power to that of the pastors. ”

“ That the general influence of the clerical profession is beneficial has been denied by some narrow-minded men, who, because there have been a few instances of unworthiness obtaining distinction in the church, and of vicious propensities disgracing a professed teacher of virtue, denounce the institution that created them as unlikely to produce any real good to the community. ”

“ The three points which he enlarged upon in it were the obligations they were under to be very careful of "the doctrines which they preached from the pulpit or inculcated in conversation"; to be cautious about giving recommendations to candidates for Holy Orders, whose moral character, learning, and abilities were not only to be exactly inquired into, but their good temper, prudence, diligence, and everything by which their usefulness in the ministry might be affected. "A clergyman," said he, "who does no good always does hurt; there is no medium." ”

“ The Power of the Civil Magistrate extendeth to all men, as well Clergy as Laity, in all things temporal; but hath no authority in things purely spiritual. And we hold it to be the duty of all men who are professors of the Gospel, to pay respectful obedience to the Civil Authority, regularly and legitimately constituted. ”

“ Every clerk was an anointed of the Lord, a sacred thing for the civil judge. No one had a right to place his hand upon him, until he had been tried, condemned, and degraded by the members of his own order. The clergy thus formed a society wholly distinct from the general society. ”

“ Whereupon oftentimes the worldly princes do grant the bare use of the church, and oftentimes use power to exercise justice, which the clergy cannot; exercise by any ecclesiastical minister, or any other person of the clergy. ”

“ To see that all things under their watchcare are conducted according to the order of God, to look to the spiritual concerns first, that pertain to their stake, and to see that the high priests, the seventies, the elders, the priests, the teachers, and the deacons are all doing their respective duties, according to the requirements of the Most High; and then they act as the presiding authority and power over the bishops that may be in the several wards of their stakes, seeing also that they are in the performance of their duty, in relation to temporal matters. ”

“ Because a man is a High Priest, is he the President of a Stake, or the Counselor to the President of a Stake? No. Because he is a High Priest, is he a Bishop? No, not by any means. And so on, in all the various offices. The High Priesthood holds the authority to administer in those ordinances, offices, and places, when they are appointed by the proper authorities, and at no other time; and while they are sustained also by the people. ”

“ And also, it seems to me men should not force clerks to common men's work; for by the Levitical law, which Our Lord confirmed, clerks that are crowned [i.e. tonsured] , by a natural understanding [i.e. as nature would dictate] , should neither swink nor sweat, nor swear at inquests, nor fight in the vanward, nor harass their foe; for they are heirs of heaven, are all that are tonsured, and in quire and churches are Christ's own ministers' (C text, vi. init.) ”

“ For the work of the ministry; that men might be qualified and informed and be full of intelligence, wisdom and light, and learn to proclaim the principles of eternal truth and to bring out from the treasury of God things new and old, things calculated to promote the welfare of the people. Now, then, these offices having been placed in the Church, every man ought to be respected in his office. I know some of you think we can respect some, and some we cannot respect ”

“ The career which was thus thrown open to all classes of the people was a much larger one than appears at first sight. Not only all the offices and dignities of the Church, from that of stipendiary chaplain to that of bishop or even of Pope, were open to all comers, but also all the offices of the State which required learning as a qualification were open to every clerk. For the kings took the officials of the civil departments of the Government very largely from the ranks of the clergy ”

“ For this needful task, no fitter body of men than the Unitarian clergy exists. Who can uphold the rights of department Three of the mind with better grace than those who long since showed how they could fight and suffer for department One? As, then, you burst the bonds of a narrow ecclesiastical tradition, by insisting that no fact of sense or result of science must be left out of account in the religious synthesis, so may you still be the champions of mental completeness and all-sidedness. ”

“ Our various organizations should keep clerks, whose duty it should be to record the acts of its members, whether or not those members are living up to their requirements, and whether, instead of attending their meetings, they are engaged in fishing, hunting, freighting, gold-seeking, or anything else that is contrary to what is expected from them as laborers in the Church and kingdom of God. ”

“ XXIV. Hath one bishop power by divine right to ordain, degrade, or govern, or excommunicate, or absolve, in another's diocess or church, either by his consent, or against it? And doth a minister that officiateth in another's church, act as a pastor, and their pastor, or as a private man? And doth the ministerial office cease when a man removeth from his flock? ”

“ However, if the outward profession of religion and virtue, were once in practice and countenance at court, as well as among all men in office, or who have any hopes or dependence for preferment, a good treatment of the clergy would be the necessary consequence of such a reformation; and they would soon be wise enough to see their own duty and interest in qualifying themselves for lay-conversation, when once they were out of fear of being chocqued by ribaldry or profaneness. ”

“ On the other hand the administration of discipline, the supervision of the moral conduct of each professing Christian, the admonition of the erring, the excommunication and exclusion from the body of the Church of the unbelieving and the utterly unworthy, belong to the Consistory, the joint assembly of ministers and elders. To this discipline princes as well as common men are alike subject; princes as well as common men must take their doctrine from the ministers of the Church. ”

“ And this body of clergymen has shown, to the honor of their own country and to the astonishment of the hierarchies of the Old World, that it is practicable in free governments to raise and sustain by voluntary contributions alone a body of clergymen, which, for devotedness to their sacred calling, for purity of life and character, for learning, intelligence, piety, and that wisdom which cometh from above, is inferior to none, and superior to most others. ”

“ We take upon us willingly priesthood, but we do not fulfil and do the works and office of priesthood.' And immediately after he saith, 'We are fallen unto outward affairs and business, for we take upon us one office for honour's sake, and we do exhibit and give another to ease ourselves of labour. ”

“ And I said, "Sir, if priests were now in measurable measure and number; and lived virtuously, and taught busily and truly the Word by the example of Christ and of his Apostles, without tithes offerings and other duties that priests now challenge and take: the people would give them freely sufficient livelihood."
A Clerk. And a Clerk said to me, "How wilt thou make this good, that the people will give freely to priests their livelihood; since that now, by the law, every priest can scarcely constrain the people to give them their livelihood?" ”

“ It is too often assumed that in the choice and education of the clergy little care and discretion was exercised by the bishops and other responsible officials, and that thus those unfit for the sacred ministry by education and character often found their way into the priesthood. ”

“ It is difficult to conceive a more dishonorable position than that of a pastor who, after having accepted the sacred office of teacher and defender of the doctrine and practice of the Gospel, as understood by the church, and having subsequently undergone a change in his own convictions, shall still retain that office only to subvert the doctrines he had placed himself under solemn obligation to defend. 2. It is understood, also, that he accepts the care of the souls of that congregation as a sacred trust from Christ, to devote himself without reserve in labor and prayer for their salvation. ”