Page:Lettersconcerni01conggoog.djvu/63

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
38
Letters concerning

learned monk (father Courayer) writ a book lately to prove the validity and succession of English ordinations. This book was forbid in France; but do you believe that the English ministry were pleas'd with it? Far from it. Those damn'd Whigs don't value a straw, whether the episcopal succession among them hath been interrupted or not, or whether bishop Parker was consecrated (as 'tis pretended) in a tavern, or a church; for these Whigs are much better pleas'd that the bishops should derive their authority from the parliament, than from the apostles. The lord B—— observ'd, that this notion of divine right would only make so many tyrants in lawn-sleeves, but that the laws made so many citizens.

With regard to the morals of the English clergy, they are more regular than those of France, and for this reason. All the clergy (a very few excepted) are educated in the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, far from the depravity and corruption which reign in the capital. They are not call'd to

dignities