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204 or vicar, or to confirm the existing one; who shall at least be a doctor, or a licentiate, of canon law, or otherwise as competent a person as can be found. If the contrary be done, such appointment shall devolve on the metropolitan. And if the church be itself the metropolitan, or exempted, and the chapter shall be, as has before been said, negligent, then the oldest of the suffragans in that metropolitan, and the nearest bishop in that [church] that is exempted, shall have power to appoint a competent steward and vicar. And the bishop, who is promoted to the said vacant church, shall require, from the said steward, vicar, and all other officers and administrators, who during the vacancy of the see, were, by the, chapter, or others, appointed in his room, even though they should belong to the chapter itself, an account of those things which concern him, touching their Auctions, jurisdiction, administration, or of any other their office soever; and shall be able to punish those who have been guilty of delinquency in their office or administration, even though the officials aforesaid, having given in their accounts, may have obtained an absolution or discharge from the chapter, or those deputed thereby. The chapter shall also be bound to render an account to the said bishop of any papers belonging to the church, if any such have come into the possession of the chapter.

CHAPTER XVII.

Limit is set to the conferring or retention of more than One Benefice.

Whereas ecclesiastical order is perverted when one clerk fills the offices of several, it has been holily provided by the sacred canons that no one ought to be enrolled in two churches. But insomuch as many, through the passion of wicked covetousness, deceiving themselves, not God, blush not to elude, by various artifices, those things which have been so excellently ordained, and to hold several benefices at the same time; the holy synod, desiring to restore the discipline required for the government of the church, doth by this present decree, which it commands to be observed in regard of all persons soever, by what title soever they be distinguished, even though it be by the dignity of the cardinalate, ordain, that, for the future, one ecclesiastical benefice