Institutes of the Christian Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)
CHAPTER V.04
The Ancient Form Of Government Entirely Subverted By The Papal Tyranny - Reading 04
XI. There remain the bishops and the rectors of parishes, who would afford me great pleasure if they exerted themselves to support their office. For we would readily admit to them, that they have a pious and honourable office, provided they discharged it. But when they wish to be considered as pastors, notwithstanding they desert the churches committed to them, and transfer the care of them to others, they act just as if the office of a pastor consisted in doing nothing. If a usurer, who never stirred his foot out of the city, should profess himself a ploughman or vinedresser,—if a soldier, who had spent all his time in the camp and in the field of battle, and had never seen a court of justice or books, should offer himself as a lawyer,—who could endure such gross absurdities? But these men act in a manner still more absurd, who wish to be accounted and called legitimate pastors of the Church, and yet are not willing to be so in reality. For how few of them are there, who execute the government of their Churches even in appearance! Many of them all their lifetime devour the revenues of Churches, which they never approach even to look at them. Others either go themselves, or send an agent once every year, that nothing may be lost by farming them out. When this abuse first intruded itself, they who wished to enjoy this kind of vacation from duty, exempted themselves by special privileges. Now, it is a rare case for any one to reside in his own Church; for they consider their Churches as no other than farms, over which they place their vicars, as bailiffs or stewards. But it is repugnant to common sense, that a man should be pastor of a flock, who never saw one of the sheep.
XII. It appears that some seeds of this evil had sprung up in the time of Gregory, and that the rectors of Churches began to be negligent in preaching and teaching; for he heavily complains of it in the following passages: “The world is full of priests; but yet there are few labourers found in the harvest; because we undertake the sacerdotal office, but perform not the work of the office.” Again: “Because they have no bowels of charity, they wish to be considered as lords; they do not acknowledge themselves to be fathers. They change the place of humility into an aggrandizement of dominion.” Again: “But, O ye pastors, what are we doing, who receive the wages and are not labourers? We have fallen into extraneous employments; we undertake one thing, and perform another. We relinquish the office of preaching; and it is our misfortune, I conceive, that we are called bishops, since we hold a title of honour, but not of virtue.” Since he uses such severity of language against those who were only chargeable with a want of sufficient assiduity, or diligence, in their office, what would he have said, if he had seen scarcely any, or very few of the bishops, and among the rest hardly one in a hundred, ascend a pulpit once in their lives? For things are come to such a pitch of frenzy, that it is generally esteemed beneath the dignity of a bishop to deliver a sermon to a congregation. In the time of Bernard there had been some declension; but we see how sharply he reproves and inveighs against the whole body of the clergy, who, it is probable, however, were far less corrupt in that age than they are in the present.
XIII. Now, if any one will closely observe and strictly examine this whole form of ecclesiastical government, which exists at the present day under the Papacy, he will find it a nest of the most lawless and ferocious banditti in the world. Every thing in it is clearly so dissimilar and repugnant to the institution of Christ, so degenerated from the ancient regulations and usages of the Church, so at variance with nature and reason, that no greater injury can be done to Christ, than by pleading his name in defence of such a disorderly government. We (they say) are the pillars of the Church, the prelates of religion, the vicars of Christ, the heads of the faithful, because we have succeeded to the power and authority of the apostles. They are perpetually vaunting of these fooleries, as if they were talking to blocks of wood; but whenever they repeat these boasts, I will ask them in return, what they have in common with the apostles. For the question is not respecting any hereditary honour, which may be given to men while they are asleep, but of the office of preaching, which they so carefully avoid. So, when we assert that their kingdom is the tyranny of Antichrist, they immediately reply, that it is that venerable hierarchy, which has been so often commended by great and holy men. As though the holy fathers, when they praised the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or spiritual government, as it had been delivered to them by the hands of the apostles, ever dreamed of this chaos of deformity and desolation, where the bishops for the most part are illiterate asses, unacquainted with the first and plainest rudiments of the faith, or, in some instances, are children just out of leading-strings; and if any be more learned,—which, however, is a rare case,—they consider a bishopric to be nothing but a title of splendour and magnificence; where the rectors of Churches think no more of feeding the flock, than a shoemaker does of ploughing; where all things are confounded with a dispersion worse than that of Babel, so that there can no longer be seen any clear vestige of the administration practised in the time of the fathers.
XIV. What if we proceed to inquire into their manners?
“Where is that light of the world,” which Christ requires?
where that “salt of the earth?” [857]