to his face, are very insufficient offsets to the general toleration which the Church extended to the vilest debauchee in Christendom. There is no occasion to suppose that the Popes or the rulers of the French hierarchy were indifferent to the scandals of Versailles and of the Œil-de-Boeuf. What influenced them in remaining apathetic—in not excommunicating the king and his mistresses—was the fear lest the Church should lose the support of royal authority; and this or a meaner motive has been equally operative with the Anglican clergy, who ought to have admonished George IV., and with the French clergy under the Second Empire. It may be said that the case taken of a sovereign and his court is exceptional. It is exceptional only in the fact that the infamy is conspicuous. How many English clergymen in the last three centuries have dared to denounce a large landowner for drunken or immoral habits? If they have done so, it has been at the risk of a civil suit for defamation of character, with a fair chance that their bishop would disapprove their zeal, and with the certainty that their parochial work would be heavily hindered, that opposition to them would be fomented, and that the alms of the richest contributor would be withdrawn. Even during the short rule of the Puritans, which was strict enough to provoke a reaction of unbridled licentiousness, there is evidence that powerful offenders—a Martyn or a Wentworth—were never meddled with.[1] In the struggle to repress irrepressible human nature, the Churches have always been worsted, and their defeats have necessarily been disgraceful.
- ↑ Clarendon goes so far as to say that Cromwell was well pleased to see Cavaliers and Presbyterians notorious for "scandalous lives," "luxury and voluptuousness."—Clarendon's Life, c. 37.
