A discourse of the pastoral care

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Dedication

This will most effectually be done, by obliging the clergy to be more exemplary in their lives, and more diligent and faithful in the discharge of their pastoral duty. And this work seems to be reserved for your Majesties, and designed to be the felicity and glory of your reign. To serve God by promoting this great and glorious design, which is so truly worthy of your Majesty's best care and endeavours, I have purposely written this treatise, which I do with all humility dedicate and present to your Sacred Majesty.

May that God who is the King of kings, and hath blessed us with two such excellent princes, preserve you both long to us, and make you as happy in us as we are in you ! May you reign over us till you have accomplished all those great designs for which God hath raised you up, and with which he hath filled your hearts : and may this church be made, by your means, the "perfection of beauty," and "the joy of the whole earth I"

These are the daily and most fervent prayers of,

CHAPTER X. Of Presentations to Benefices and Simony 262

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, was born at Edinburgh, Sept. 18, 1643. His father was the younger brother of an ancient family in the county of Aberdeen, and was bred to the civil law, which he studied for seven years in France : at the Restoration he was made one of the lords of the session by the title of lord Cramond. His wife, our author's mother, was very eminent for her piety and virtue, and a warm zealot for the presbyterian discipline, in which way she had been very strictly educated.

Our author received the first rudiments of his education from his father; under whose care he made so quick a progress, that, at ten years of age, he perfectly understood the Latin tongue ; at which time he was sent to the college of Aberdeen, where he acquired the Greek, and went through the usual course of Aristotelian logic and philosophy with uncommon applause. He was scarcely fourteen when he commenced master of arts, and then applied

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himself to the study of the civil law ; but, after a years diligent application to that science, he changed his resolution, and turned his thoughts wholly to the study of divinity. At eighteen years of age, he was put upon his trial as a probationer or expectant preacher; and, at the same time, was offered the presentation to a very good benefice, by his cousin-german, sir Alexander Burnet ; but thinking himself too young for the cure of souls, he modestly declined that offer. His education, thus happily begun, was finished by the conversation and advice of the most eminent Scotch divines. In 1663, about two years after his father's death, he came into England, where he first visited the two universities. At Cambridge he had an opportunity of conversing with Dr. Cud worth, Dr. Pearson, Dr. Burnet, author of the " Sacred Theory," and Dr. Henry More, one of whose sayings, in relation to rites and ceremonies, then made a great impression on him: " None of these," said he, "are bad enough to make men bad, and I am sure none of them are good enough to make men good." At Oxford our author was much caressed, on account of his knowledge of the councils and fathers, by Dr. Fell, and Dr. Pocock, that great master of Oriental learning. He was much improved there, in his mathematics and natural philosophy, by the instructions of Dr. Wallis, who likewise gave him

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. Ill

a letter of recommendation to the learned and pious Mr. Boyle, at London. Upon his arrival there, he was introduced to all the most noted divines, as Tillotson, Stillingfle.et, Patrick, Lloyd, Whichcote, and Wilkins ; and, among others of the laity, to sir Robert Murray.

In 1665 he was ordained a priest by the bishop of Edinburgh, and presented by sir Robert Fletcher to the living of Saltoun, which had been kept vacant during his absence. He soon gained the affections of his whole parish, not excepting the presbyterians, though he was the only clergyman in Scotland that made use of the prayers in the liturgy of the church of England. During the five years he remained at Saltoun, he preached twice every Sunday, and once on one of the week-days : he catechised three times a week, so as to examine every parishioner, old or young, three times in the compass of a year : he went round the parish from house to house, instructing, reproving, or comforting them, as occasion required : the sick he visited twice a day : he administered the sacrament four times a year, and personally instructed all such as gave notice of their intention to receive it. All that remained above his own necessary subsistence, (in which he was very frugal,) he gave away in charity. A particular instance of his generosity is thus related : one of his parishioners had been in execub 2

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

tion for debt, and applied to our author for some small relief, who inquired of him how much would again set him up in his trade : the man named the sum, and he as readily called to his servant to payit him : " Sir," said he, " it is all we have in the house." " Well," said Mr. Burnet, " pay it this poor man : you do not know the pleasure there is in making a man glad."

In 1669 he was made professor of divinity at Glasgow; in which station he executed the following plan of study. On Mondays he made each of the students, in their turn, explain a head of divinity in Latin, and propound such theses from it as he was to defend against the rest of the scholars ; and this exercise concluded with our professors decision of the point in a Latin oration. On Tuesdays he gave them a prelection in the same language, in which he proposed, in the course of eight years, to have gone through a complete system of divinity. On Wednesdays he read them a lecture, for above an hour, by way of a critical commentary on St. Matthew's Gospel; which he finished before he quitted the chair. On Thursdays the exercise was alternate ; one Thursday he expounded a Hebrew Psalm, comparing it with the Septuagint, the Vulgar, and the English version ; and the next Thursday he explained some portion of the ritual and constitution of the primitive church, making the

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. V

apostolical canons his text, and reducing every article of practice under the head of one or other of those canons. On Fridays he made each of his scholar, in course, preach a short sermon upon some text he assigned ; and, when it was ended, he observed upon any thing that was defective or amiss in the handling of the subject. This was the labour of the mornings : in the evenings, after prayer, he every day read some parcel of scripture, on which he made a short discourse ; and, when that was over he examined into the progress of their several studies. All this he performed during the whole time the schools were open ; and, in order to acquit himself with credit, he was obliged to study hard from four till ten in the morning ; the rest of the day being of necessity allotted, either to the care of his pupils, or to hearing the complaints of the clergy, w T ho, finding he had an interest with men of power, were not sparing in their applications to him. In this situation he continued four years and a half, exposed, through his principles of moderation, to the censure both of the episcopal and presbyterian parties. About this time he was intrusted, by the dutchess of Hamilton with the perusal and arrangement of all the papers relating to her father's and uncle's ministry, which induced him to compile " Memoirs of the dukes of Hamilton/' and occasioned his being invited to b3

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London, to receive farther information, concerning the transactions of those times, by the earl of Lauderdale ; between whom and the duke of Hamilton he brought about a reconciliation. During his stayin London he was offered a Scotch bishoprick, which he refused. Soon after his return to Glasgow he married the lady Margaret Kennedy, daughter of the earl of Cassilis. In 1673 he took another journey to London ; where, at the express nomination of the king, after hearing him preach, he was sworn one of his majesty's chaplains in ordinary. He became likewise in high favour with his majesty and the duke of York. At his return to Edinburgh, finding the animosities between the dukes of Hamilton and Lauderdale revived, he retired to his station at Glasgow ; but was obliged the next year to return to court, to justify himself against the accusations of the duke of Lauderdale, who had represented him as the cause and instrument of all the opposition the measures of the court had met with in the Scotch parliament. Thus he lost the favour of the court ; and, to avoid putting himself into the hands of his enemies, he resigned the professor's chair at Glasgow, and resolved to settle in London, being now about thirty years of age. Soon after he was offered the living of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, which he declined accepting, because he heard that it was intended for Dr. Fowler, after-

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. VU

wards bishop of Gloucester. In 1675, our author, at the recommendation of lord Holies, and notwithstanding the interposition of the court against him, was appointed preacher at the Rolls chapel, by sir Harbottle Grimstone, master of the Rolls. The same year he was examined before the house of commons in relation to the duke of Lauderdale, whose conduct the parliament was then inquiring into. He was soon after chosen lecturer of St. Clement's, and became a very popular preacher.

Although our author at this time had no parochial cure, he did not refuse his attendance to any sick person who desired it ; and was sent for, amongst others, to one who had been engaged in a criminal amour with Wilmot, earl of Rochester. The manner he treated her, during her illness, gave that lord a great curiosity of being acquainted with him ; and for a whole winter, in a conversation of at least one evening in a week, Burnet w T ent over all those topics with him, upon which sceptics, and men of loose morals, are wont to attack the Christian religion. The effect of these conferences, in convincing the earl's judgment, and leading him to a sincere repentance, became the subject of a well-known and interesting narrative, which he published in 1680, entitled, "An account of the Life and Death of the earl of Rochester." This work has lately been reprinted more than once, perhaps owing to

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the character Dr. Johnson gave of it in his ' ' Life of Rochester :" he there pronounces it a book " which the critic ought to read for its elegance, the philosopher for its arguments, and the saint for its piety."

In 1682, when the administration was wholly changed in favour of the duke of York, he continued steady in his adherence to his friends, and chose to sacrifice all his views at court, particularly a promise of the mastership of the Temple, rather than break off his correspondence with them. As he was about this time much resorted to by persons of all ranks and parties, as a pretence to avoid the returning of so many visits, he built a laboratory, and, for above a year, went through a course of chemical experiments. Upon the execution of the lord Russel, with whom he was familiarly acquainted, he was examined before the house of commons, with respect to that lord's speech upon the scaffold, in the penning of which he was suspected to have had a hand. Not long after he refused the offer of a living of three hundred pounds a year, in the gift of the earl of Halifax, who would have presented him, on condition of his residing still in London. In 1683 he went over to Paris, where he was well received by the court, and became acquainted with the most eminent persons, both popish and protestant. The year following

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the resentment of the court against our author was so great, that he was discharged from his lecture at St. Clement's by virtue of the king's mandate to Dr. Hascard, rector of that parish ; and in December the same year, by an order from the lord-keeper North to sir Harbottle Grimstone, he was forbidden preaching any more at the Rolls chapel. Upon the death of king Charles, and accession of king James, having obtained leave to go out of the kingdom, he went first to Paris, where he lived in great retirement, to avoid being involved in the conspiracies then forming in favour of the duke of Monmouth- But, having contracted an acquaintance with brigadier Stouppe, a protestant officer in the French service, he was prevailed upon to take a journey with him into Italy, and met with an agreeable reception at Rome and Geneva. After a tour through the southern parts of France, Italy, Switzerland, and many places of Germany, he came to Utrecht, and intended to have settled in some quiet retreat, within the Seven Provinces; but, being invited to the Hague by the prince and princess of Orange, he repaired thither, and had a great share in the councils then carrying on, concerning the affairs of England. The high favour shewn him at the Hague disgusting the English court, king James wrote two severe letters against him to the princess of Orange, and insisted, by his ambassador, on his being for-

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

bidden the court; which, at the king's importunity, was done ; though our author continued to be i employed and trusted as before. Soon after a pro- j secution for high treason was commenced against him, both in Scotland and England, but the States : refusing, at the demand of the English court, to deliver him up, designs were laid of seizing his person, and even destroying him, if he could be taken. About this time Dr. Burnet married Mrs. Mary Scott, a Dutch lady of large fortune and noble extraction. He had a very important share in the whole conduct of the Revolution in 1688 ; the project of which he gave early notice of to the court of Hanover, intimating that the success of this enterprise must naturally end in an entail of the Bri- ! tish crown upon that illustrious house.

King William had not been many days on the throne before Dr. Burnet was advanced to the see of Salisbury, and consecrated March 31, 1689. Our prelate had scarcely taken his seat in the house of lords, when he distinguished himself by declaring for moderate measures with regard to the clergy who scrupled to take the oaths, and for a toleration of the protestant dissenters ; and when the bill for declaring the rights and privileges of the subject, and settling the succession of the crown, was brought into parliament, he was the person appointed by king William to propose naming the

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. XI

dutchess (afterwards electress) of Brunswick, next

in succession after the princess of Denmark and

' her issue ; and when this succession afterwards

: took place, he had the honour of being chairman

' of the committee to whom the bill was referred.

This made him considered by the house of Han-

' over as one firmly attached to their interests, and

engaged him in an epistolary correspondence with

the princess Sophia, which lasted to her death.

' After the session of Parliament was over, the bishop

- went down to his diocese, where, by his pious,

: prudent, and vigilant discharge of the episcopal

functions, he gained universal esteem.

As we have before given some account of his conduct as a parish priest, and as professor of divinity, it is no less necessary to specify some particulars of his management when in this higher station.

As he had always looked upon confirmation as the likeliest means of reviving a spirit of Christianity, he wrote a short " Directory," for preparing the youth upon such occasions, and sent copies of it, some months beforehand, to the minister of every parish where he intended to confirm. Every summer he made a tour, for six weeks or two months, through some district of his bishoprick, daily preaching and confirming from church to church, so as, in the compass of three years (be-

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sides his triennial visitation), to go through all the principal livings of his diocese. In these circuit? he entertained all the clergy that attended upon him at his own expense, and held conferences with them upon the chief heads of divinity. During his residence at Salisbury he constantly preached a Thursday's lecture, founded at St. Thomas's church : he likewise preached and confirmed every Sunday morning, in some church of that city, or of the neighbourhood round about it ; and, in the evening, he had a lecture in his own chapel, wherein he explained some portion of scripture. Every week, during the season of Lent, he catechised the youth of the two great schools in the cathedral church, and instructed them in order for confirmation. He endeavoured, as much as possible, to reform the abuses of the bishops' consistorial court. No part of the episcopal office was more strictly attended to by him, than the examination of candidates for holy orders. He examined them himself as to the proofs of the Christian religion, the authority of the Scriptures, and the nature of the gospel covenant ; and, a day or two before ordination, he submitted all those whom he had accepted to the examination of the dean and prebendaries. As the qualification of clergymen for the pastoral care was always uppermost in his thoughts, he instituted at Salisbury a little nursery of students

LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. . Xlll

in divinity, being ten in number, to each of whom he allowed a salary of thirty pounds a year. Once every day he examined their progress in learning, and gave them a lecture on some speculative or practical point of divinity, or some part of the pastoral function. But this foundation being considered as reflecting upon the method of education at the universities, he was prevailed upon, after some years, to lay it wholly aside. He was a warm and constant enemy to pluralities, where non-residence was the consequence of them, and in some cases hazarded a suspension, rather than give institution. In the point of residence he was so strict, that he immediately dismissed his own chaplains, upon their preferment to a cure of souls. He exerted the principle of toleration, which was deeply rooted in him, in favour of a nonjuring meeting-house at Salisbury, which he obtained the royal permission to connive at ; and this spirit of moderation brought over several dissenting families of his diocese to the communion of the church. In 1692 he published a treatise entitled " The Pastoral Care/' in which the duties of the clergy are laid down with great strictness, and enforced with no less zeal and warmth. In 1694 our author preached the funeral sermon of archbishop Tillotson, with whom he had long kept up an intimate acquaintance and friendship, and whose

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memory he defended in " A Vindication of Abp. Tillotson," 1696. The death of queen Mary, which happened the year following, drew from our author's pen that " Essay on her Character," which her uncommon talents merited at the hands of a person who enjoyed so high a degree of her favour and confidence. After the decease of that princess, through whose hands the affairs and promotions of the church had wholly passed, our prelate was one of the ecclesiastical commission appointed by the king to recommend to all bishopricks, deaneries, and other vacant benefices in his majesty's gift.

In 1698 the bishop lost his wife by the smallpox : but the consideration of the tender age of his children, and his own avocations, soon induced him to supply that loss by a marriage with Mrs. Berkley. This year he was appointed preceptor to his highness the duke of Gloucester, and employed great care in the education of that young prince.

In 1704 the scheme for the augmentation of poor livings, first projected by bishop Burnet, took place, and passed into an act of parliament. This learned and eminent prelate died the 17th of March 1714-15, in the seventy-second year of his age, and was interred in the parish church of St. James, Clerk enwell, in London.

The events of his life shew that both at home

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and abroad he stood high in the estimation of his contemporaries ; and his errors and prejudices, of whatever kind, would not have excited so manyenemies, had not his talents given him an unusual degree of consequence both in church and state. We shall conclude this article with some particulars of his private habits, which, as well as the above account of his life, stand uncontradicted, and surely entitle him to our respect.

His time, we are told, was employed in one regular and uniform manner : he was a very early riser, seldom in bed later than five or six o'clock in the morning. Private meditation took up the two first hours, and the last half- hour of the day. His first and last appearance to his family was at the morning and evening prayers, which he always read himself, though his chaplains were present. He took the opportunity of the tea-table to instruct his children in religion, and in giving them his own comment upon some portion of scripture. He seldom spent less than six, often eight, hours a day in his study. He kept an open table, in which there was plenty, without luxury : his equipage was decent and plain ; and all his expenses generous, but not profuse. He was a most affectionate husband to his wives ; and his love to his children expressed itself, not so much in hoarding up wealth for them, as in giving them the best education. c 2

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After his sons had perfected themselves in the learned languages, under private tutors, he sent them to the university, and afterwards abroad, to finish their studies at Leyden, In his friendships he was warm, open-hearted, and constant ; and though his station and principles raised him many enemies, he always endeavoured, by the kindest good offices, to repay all their injuries, and overcome them by returning good for evil. He was a kind and bountiful master to his servants, and obliging to all in employment under him. His charities were a principal article of his expense. He gave an hundred pounds at a time for the augmentation of small livings ; he bestowed constant pensions on poor clergymen and their widows, on students for their education at the universities, and on industrious, but unfortunate families : he contributed frequent sums towards the repairs or building of churches and parsonage-houses, to all public collections, to the support of charity schools (one of which, for fifty children, at Salisbury, was w 7 holly maintained by him), and to the putting out apprentices to trades. Nor were his alms confined to one nation, sect, or party ; but want, and merit, in the object, were the only measures of his liberality. He looked upon himself, with regard to his episcopal revenue, as a mere trustee for the church, bound to expend the whole in a decent

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maintenance of his station, and in acts of hospitality and charity ; and he had so faithfully balanced this account, that, at his death, no more of the income of his bishoprick remained to his family than was barely sufficient to pay his debts.

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Preface

TO THE

FIRST EDITION, PUBLISHED IN 1692.

THIS subject, how important soever in itself, yet has been so little treated of, and will seem so severe in many parts of it, that if I had not judged this a necessary service to the church, which did more decently come from one, who, how undeserving soever he is, yet is raised to a post that may justify the writing on so tender a head ; I should never have undertaken it. But my zeal for the true interests of religion, and of this church, determined me to set about it : yet since my design is to correct things for the future rather than to reproach any for what is past, I have resolved to cast it rather into advices and rules, into plain and short directions, than into long and laboured discourses, supported by the shews of learning, and citations from fathers, and historical observations : this being the more profitable, and the less invidious way of handling the subject.

It ought to be no imputation on a church, if too many of those that are dedicated to her service have not all the characters that are here set forth, and that are to be desired in clergymen. Even in the apostles' days there were false apostles, and false teachers : as one of the twelve was a traitor, and had a devil. Some loved the pre-eminence ; others loved this present world to a scandalous degree. Some of those that preached Christ, did

XIX it 4< not sincerely, but out of contention* :" they vied with the apostles, and hoped to have carried away the esteem from them, even while they were suffering for the faith : for envying their credit, they designed to raise their own authority, by lessening the apostles, and so hoped to have " added affliction to their bonds." In the first and purest ages of the church we find great complaints of the neglects and disorders of the clergy of all ranks. Many became the stewards and bailiffs of other people's estates, and while they looked too diligently after those cares which did not belong to them, they even in those times of trial grew very remiss in the most important of all cares, which was their proper business.

As soon as the empire became Christian, the authority, the immunity, and the other advantages, which by the bounty of princes followed the sacred functions, made them to be generally much desired ; and the elections being then for the most part popular, (though in some of the greater cities the magistracy took them into their hands, and the bishops of the province w T ere the judges both of the fitness of the person and of the regularity of the election) ; these were managed with much faction and violence, which often ended in blood, and that to so great an excess, that if we had not witnesses to many instances of this among the best men in those ages, it would look like an uncharitable imputation on those times, to think them capable of such enormities. Indeed the disorders, the animosities, the going so oft backwards and forwards in the matters of faith, as the emperors happened to be of different sides, are but too ample a proof of the corruptions that had then got into the

XX PREFACE.

church. And what can we think of the breach made in the churches of Africa by Donatus and his followers, upon so inconsiderable a point, as whether Cecilian and his ordainers had denied the faith in the last persecution, or not? which grew to that height, that almost in every town of Africa there were divided assemblies, and separating bishops, upon that account. Nor was this wound healed but with the utter ruin of those churches. St. Jerome, though partial enough to his own side, as appears by his espousing Damasus' interests, notwithstanding that vast effusion of blood that had been at his election ; which was set on by him, and continued for four days with so much violence, that in one night, and at one church, a hundred and seven and thirty were killed; yet he could not hold from laying open the corruptions of the clergy in a very severe style. He grew so weary of them, and they of him, that he went and spent the rest of his days at Bethlehem.

Those corruptions were so much the more remarkable, because the eminent men of those times procured a great many canons to be made, both in provincial and general councils, for correcting abuses as soon as they observed them creeping into the church. But it is plain from St. Chrysostom's story, that though bad men did not oppose the making good rules, while they were so many dead letters in their registers, yet they could not bear the rigorous execution of them : so that those good canons do shew us indeed what were the growing abuses, of the times in which they were made, and how good men set themselves against them ; but are no sure indications of the reformation that was effected by them.

The tottering state of the Roman empire, which had then fallen under a vast dissolution of discipline and man-

PREFACE. XXI

ners, and coming into feeble hands, was then sinking with its own weight, and was become on all sides an easy prey to its invaders, who were either Pagans or Arians, ought to have awakened the governors of the church to have apprehended their approaching ruin ; to have prevented it by their prayers and endeavours ; and to have corrected those abuses which had provoked God, and weakened and distracted both church and empire. But if we may believe either Gildas here in Britain, or Salvian in France, they rather grew worse, more impenitent, and more insensible, when they saw the judgments of God coming upon the empire, province after province rent from it, and overrun by the barbarians.