Curate

“ If there be any man wicked because his curate teacheth him not, his blood shall be required at the curate’s hands.—Latimer, Sermons, p. 525.
Henry the Second of England commanded all prelates and curates to reside upon their dioceses and charges.—Bishop Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, b. iii. c. 1.
Curate, a parson or vicar, one that serves a cure, or has the charge of souls in a parish.—Phillips, New World of Words. ”

“ Hoping humbly that you will be pleased to dismiss our curate, who, we are credibly informed, and particularly by three exemplary and virtuous ladies, they having been cautioned against him by one who knows him well, and is a friend likewise to said ladies, and doing all the good kindness he can. We learn with sorrow, that our curate has confessed to unbecomingly behaviour, and that he has been seen even kissing. ”

“ A presentation to a church need not be in writing, but may be by parol; if so, I do not see why a nomination to a perpetual curacy may not be by parol.”
A perpetual curate has an interest for life in his curacy, in the same manner and as fully as a rector or vicar; that is to say, he can only be deprived by the ordinary, and that in proper course of law; and, as Lord Hardwicke observes, it would be a contradiction in terms to say that a perpetual curate is removable at will and pleasure. ”

“ The story runs that in the parish where he served his first curacy there was an old farmer on whom had fallen all the troubles of Job—loss of stock, loss of capital, eviction from his holding, the death of his wife, and the failure of his own health. The well-meaning young curate, though full of compassion, could find no more novel topic of consolation than to say that all these trials were the dispensations of Providence. ”

“ Every beneficed man licensed by the laws of this realm, upon urgent occasions of other service, not to reside upon his benefice, shall cause his cure to be supplied by a curate that is a sufficient and licensed preacher, if the worth of the benefice will bear it. ”

“ The Pious-Parochial Lady.—She will devote all her time to the distribution of tracts, the inspection of cottages, the collection of gossip, and interviews with the curate. Each curate will be a more "blessed" man than his predecessor, especially if he have the shifty eyes, aggressive teeth, narrow forehead, and shambling knees which modern curatism has developed. ”

“ He invited the landlord to partake of his beverage; who, being a communicative sort of person, and one who had a considerable share of humanity interwoven in his composition, readily complied with Trueman's request, to relate the misfortunes of the worthy pastor.
"I will tell you, sir," said he, "the story of Parson Benley. You must know, sir, that he is the curate of our parish. The living, which is the gift of my Lord Belfont, belongs to a clergyman, who lives in the west; and, though it brings him in a good three hundred pounds a-year, he gives his curate only forty pounds out of it. ”

“ Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish—read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine.” ”

“ For by thee does our Saviour say to him who is discouraged under the sense of his sins, “Thy sins are forgiven thee: thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.” [68] But this peace and haven of tranquillity is the Church of Christ, into which do thou, when thou hast loosed them from their sins, restore them, as being now sound and unblameable, of good hope, diligent, laborious in good works. As a skilful and compassionate physician, heal all such as have wandered in the ways of sin; for “they that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. ”

“ Is rather shine than shade.”
The doctor’s hand is on his pulse, sustaining stimulants are steadily given, and once more a fitful gleam of life appears; he rallies for the moment. We hear the low voice of the chaplain, kneeling at his side, “You would not object to a prayer?” The wandering eyes say more than the languid lips, which can but frame, in a tone of surprise, the word, “object?” The same bright smile, the same far-off gaze as the words of prayer ascend. ”

“ O Physician! who, when thou knowest it to be for the sours benefit, curest with a word all diseases no less of the body than of the soul; heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed in my soul: save me, and I shall be saved also in my body. In thee do I trust, not in physicians, nor in any remedies of theirs. ”

“ Curative medicine would therefore be more adapted to them than surgery. And herbs, those beautiful healing herbs which stand on the hill-tops, and amid the fields, like beneficent angels beckoning in the summer winds, may be borne by the hands of the female physician into the dwellings of the sufferers, and, by means of miraculous powers called forth by love and art, may promulgate the Evangile of health more and more over the earth, and change, as much as is possible, even the so frequently terrible work of death into a peaceful transition state. ”

“ I labour under such a complication of diseases that no human aid can avail me. Heal me, therefore, I beseech thee, in order to display, thy power, and show forth the glory of thy name. If the touch of thy garments, O my Saviour! whilst thou wert upon earth, cured all sorts of diseases, shall not thy most precious body and blood, which thou hast given me as food, produce the same wonderful effects?
But thou, my soul, who hast recourse to thy divine Physician for health, art thou sincerely desirous of being cured? ”

“ Out of mysticism, superstition and religious ritual the Greek went directly to nature and was the first to grasp the conception of medicine as an art based on accurate observation, and an integral part of the science of man. ”

“ Our ethical text-books in the plainest terms teach the possibility of curing diseases by prayer and mystic ceremonies. "If any man is sick among you, let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." "And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up." "And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out and to heal all manner of disease." ”

“ In the early days of the Church, religious were called by a name which signifies healers. Oh! my daughter, be truly your own healer, and pay no heed to what self-love may whisper to the contrary. Say to yourself, since I do not wish to die spiritually, I will be healed, and in order to be healed I will submit to treatment and correction, and I will entreat the doctors to spare me nothing which may be required to effect my cure. ”

“ Do you believe, then, that your soul is receiving healing at Christ’s hand from the eternal wounds which with men are incurable, the wounds of the passions of sin, for the sake of which healing the Lord also came hither, that He might now cure the souls of the faithful of those incurable wounds, and cleanse them from the foulness of the leprosy of evil,—He, the only true physician and healer? ”

“ It shall come to life, and gradually mend and be cured, and grow from strength to strength, as a sick man mends day by day after a deadly illness, slowly it may be, but surely:—for how can you fail of being cured if your physician is none other than Jesus Christ your Lord and your God? ”

“ In the sacred book of the Parsis it is said: “If several healers offer themselves together, namely, one who heals with the knife, one who heals with herbs, and one who heals with the Holy Word, it is this one who will best drive away sickness from the body of the faithful.” [405] In another place the “Holy Word” is pronounced “the best healing of all remedies.” [406] Evidently, one might resort to other means, if he chose. And here I may remark, that in the practices of Æsculapius there was precisely the same threefold means of cure, as will be seen by referring to the chapter on the god. ”

“ Case II. “At the urgent request of friends, and with no faith and hardly any hope (possibly owing to a previous unsuccessful experience with a Christian Scientist) , our little daughter was placed under the care of a healer, and cured of a trouble about which the physician had been very discouraging in his diagnosis. This interested me, and I began studying earnestly the method and philosophy of this method of healing. Gradually an inner peace and tranquillity came to me in so positive a way that my manner changed greatly. ”

“ There being many Instances to be given of Cures performed by frivolous Applications, Charms, and Spells, which are unaccountable any other Way, than by the Imagination of the Patient. Against the Reason and Judgment [Pg 15] of a Physician, sometimes the diseased will take his own Medicines and Benefit. And I don't doubt, but Stories may be told of Cures wrought, the Imagination of the Patient helping, by as mean a Trifle, as the Touch of Christ's Garments, and no Miracle talk'd on for it. ”

“ Therefore let us pray that high physician, our blessed Saviour Christ, whose holy manhood God ordained for our necessity, to cure our deadly wounds with the medicine made of the most wholesome blood of his own blessed body. ”

“ While the clergy maintain that a cure is only effected by God's will, the physician knows otherwise. The physician accomplishes his cures alone, and definitely cures and saves the lives of human beings by his own skill, intelligence, and application of methods which have been developed by the exercise of secular knowledge, not theological nonsense. ”

“ And so the doctor who lives at Lourdes, and who is commissioned to register the cures and to tabulate the miracles, has a very careless time of it. A person comes, and gets cured. He has but to get three doctors together to examine the case. They will disagree as to what was the disease from which the patient suffered, and the only explanation left which will be acceptable to the public, with its hankering after the lie, is that a miracle has been vouchsafed. ”

“ It has been my fortune to see something of the practice of the art of healing under widely different conditions, and I know none who better represents the most humane and most exacting of all professions than yourself. The good doctor of this story—the born surgeon and healer, the ever young and alert, the self-forgetful, the faithful friend, gifted with "that exquisite charity which can forgive all things"—is studied from you. ”

“ For doctors, of all men, should be the last to deny, as an abstract proposition, the efficacy of prayer in disease, knowing, as they do, how great is the curative influence of prayer when addressed to themselves. ”

“ The more conservative and honest workers felt the bad effects of these extreme methods, and in the Journal of June, 1892, one healer writes:
All healers have some instantaneous cures, but if we mention only these, does it not imply that we have no lingering cases? I call to mind a lady Scientist who wanted to make an impression in a new field where she hoped to get business. After talking of the many wonderful cures which she had effected, she added that she herself was cured in three treatments of a lifelong malady. ”

“ The heads of the church were now called together, and a day of general fasting, humiliation and prayer was appointed, and after that, the best medical men of the whole country were consulted, the pious and the gifted, the interpreters of dreams, the soothsayers, and the prophets of the Lord, every man of power, and every woman of power,—but no relief was had, no cure, no hope of cure. ”

“ Some have not been regular healers but healed only incidentally, as, e. g., the revivalists; some have followed James 5:14 f. in anointing with oil and praying—of these and others, some have had institutions for housing the patients; some have been peripatetic healers; some have simply used prayer; some have established their systems on metaphysical bases and been the founders of sects; some have combined the results of scientific investigations in an endeavor to help mankind. ”

“ That anyone should prefer to this the services of some unqualified, inexperienced ‘healer,’ who bids his patient trust in prayer, unction, or whatever his method is, telling him that if his faith is sufficient the largest sinus will be cleared up and the most distressing ankylosis broken down, simply strikes me with amazement. If the ‘healers’ really wish us to believe their claims, let them produce a properly codified list of cases which can be thoroughly investigated. ”

“ I remember once to have seen an admirable Cure done in a moment by the help of humane dung, in a certain, long, and tedious Disease, which it plainly and swiftly removed, drawing those into admiration who were ignorant of the reason of so swift a Cure. ”

“ Such negligence of the means of healing, by the remedies which are sent by the immediate hand of Providence, and rendered most abundant and common, and the substitution of others of a more doubtful, and often highly injurious, character, evinces a love of change, not simply to promote a greater benefit, but to render the art of healing more complicated and obscure. ”

“ The published sermons of the Curé’s are priceless evidence of what he thought appropriate for the people of his parish in the early years of the nineteenth century. If they show us nothing else they are, we can be certain, the choice that he made, and even this small indication reveals to us something of the man. ”