Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/400

392 left destitute, or very meanly provided, of any maintenance for a pastor. So that in many places the whole ecclesiastical dues, even to mortuaries, Easter-offerings, and the like, are in lay hands, and the incumbent lies wholly at the mercy of his patron for his daily bread. By these means, there are several hundred parishes in England under twenty pounds a year, and many under ten. I take his lordship's bishoprick to be worth near 2500l. annual income; and I will engage, at half a year's warning, to find him above a hundred beneficed clergymen, who have not so much among them all to support themselves and their families: most of them orthodox, of good life and conversation; as loth to see the fires kindled in Smithheld as his lordship; and at least as ready to face them under a popish persecution. But nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want. How can the neighbouring vicar feel cold or hunger, while my lord is seated by a good fire, in the warmest room of his palace, with a dozen dishes before him? I remember one other prelate much of the same stamp, who, when his clergy would mention their wishes that some act of parliament might be thought of for the good of the church, would say, "Gentlemen, we are very well as we are; if they would let us alone, we should ask no more."

Sacrilege, (says my lord) in the church of Rome, is a mortal sin; and is it only so in the church of Rome? or is it but a venial sin in the church of England? Our litany calls fornication a deadly sin; and I would appeal to his lordship for fifty years past, whether he thought that or sacrilege the deadliest? To make light of such a sin, at the same moment that