An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

most

interesting to the peace and welfare of civil society. They

gave birth, accordingly, to the two principal parties or sects

among the followers of the reformation, the Lutheran and

Calvinistic sects, the only sects among them, of which the

doctrine and discipline have ever yet been established by law in

any part of Europe.

 

The followers of Luther, together with what is called the church

of England, preserved more or less of the episcopal government,

established subordination among the clergy, gave the sovereign

the disposal of all the bishoprics, and other consistorial

benefices within his dominions, and thereby rendered him the real

head of the church; and without depriving the bishop of the right

of collating to the smaller benefices within his diocese, they,

even to those benefices, not only admitted, but favoured the

right of presentation, both in the sovereign and in all other lay

patrons. This system of church government was, from the

beginning, favourable to peace and good order, and to submission

to the civil sovereign. It has never, accordingly, been the

occasion of any tumult or civil commotion in any country in which

it has once been established. The church of England, in

particular, has always valued herself, with great reason, upon

the unexceptionable loyalty of her principles. Under such a

government, the clergy naturally endeavour to recommend

themselves to the sovereign, to the court, and to the nobility

and gentry of the country, by whose influence they chiefly expect

to obtain preferment. They pay court to those patrons, sometimes,

no doubt, by the vilest flattery and assentation ; but

fruquently, too, by cultivating all those arts which best

deserve, and which are therefore most likely to gain them, the

esteem of people of rank and fortune; by their knowledge in all

the different branches of useful and ornamental learning, by the

decent liberality of their manners, by the social good humour of

their conversation, and by their avowed contempt of those absurd

and hypocritical austerities which fanatics inculcate and pretend

to practise, in order to draw upon themselves the veneration, and

upon the greater part of men of rank and fortune, who avow that

they do not practise them, the abhorrence of the common people.

Such a clergy, however, while they pay their court in this manner

to the higher ranks of life, are very apt to neglect altogether

the means of maintaining their influence and authority with the

lower. They are listened to, esteemed, and respected by their

superiors; but before their inferiors they are frequently

incapable of defending, effectually, and to the conviction of

such hearers, their own sober and moderate doctrines, against the

most ignorant enthusiast who chooses to attack them.

 

The followers of Zuinglius, or more properly those of Calvin, on

the contrary, bestowed upon the people of each parish, whenever

the church became vacant, the right of electing their own pastor;

and established, at the same time, the most perfect equality

among the clergy. The former part of this institution, as long as

it remained in vigour, seems to have been productive of nothing

but disorder and confusion, and to have tended equally to corrupt

the morals both of the clergy and of the people. The latter part

seems never to have had any effects but what were perfectly

agreeable.

 

As long as the people of each parish preserved the right of

electing their own pastors, they acted almost always under the

influence of the clergy, and generally of the most factious and

fanatical of the order. The clergy, in order to preserve their

influence in those popular elections, became, or affected to

become, many of them, fanatics themselves, encouraged fanaticism

among the people, and gave the preference almost always to the

most fanatical candidate. So small a matter as the appointment of

a parish priest, occasioned almost always a violent contest, not

only in one parish, but in all the neighbouring parishes who

seldom failed to take part in the quarrel. When the parish

happened to be situated in a great city, it divided all the

inhabitants into two parties; and when that city happened, either

to constitute itself a little republic, or to be the head and

capital of a little republic, as in the case with many of the

considerable cities in Switzerland and Holland, every paltry

dispute of this kind, over and above exasperating the animosity

of all their other factions, threatened to leave behind it, both

a new schism in the church, and a new faction in the state.

In those small republics, therefore, the magistrate very soon

found it necessary, for the sake of preserving the public peace,

to assume to himself the right of presenting to all vacant

benefices. In Scotland, the most extensive country in which

this presbyterian form of church government has ever been

established, the rights of patronage were in effect abolished by

the act which established presbytery in the beginning of the

reign of William III. That act, at least, put in the power of

certain classes of people in each parish to purchase, for a very

small price, the right of electing their own pastor. The

constitution which this act established, was allowed to subsist

for about two-and-twenty years, but was abolished by the 10th of

queen Anne, ch.12, on account of the confusions and disorders

which this more popular mode of election had almost everywhere

occasioned. In so extensive a country as Scotland, however, a

tumult in a remote parish was not so likely to give disturbance

to government as in a smaller state. The 10th of queen Anne

restored the rights of patronage. But though, in Scotland, the

law gives the benefice, without any exception to the person

presented by the patron; yet the church requires sometimes (for

she has not in this respect been very uniform in her decisions) a

certain concurrence of the people, before she will confer upon

the presentee what is called the cure of souls, or the

ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the parish. She sometimes, at

least, from an affected concern for the peace of the parish,

delays the settlement till this concurrence can be procured. The

private tampering of some of the neighbouring clergy, sometimes

to procure, but more frequently to prevent this concurrence, and

the popular arts which they cultivate, in order to enable them

upon such occasions to tamper more effectually, are perhaps the

causes which principally keep up whatever remains of the old

fanatical spirit, either in the clergy or in the people of

Scotland.

 

The equality which the presbyterian form of church government

establishes among the clergy, consists, first, in the equality of

authority or ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and, secondly, in the

equality of benefice. In all presbyterian churches, the equality

of authority is perfect; that of benefice is not so. The

difference, however, between one benefice and another, is seldom

so considerable, as commonly to tempt the possessor even of the

small one to pay court to his patron, by the vile arts of

flattery and assentation, in order to get a better. In all the

presbyterian churches, where the rights of patronage are

thoroughly established, it is by nobler and better arts, that the

established clergy in general endeavour to gain the favour of

their superiors; by their learning, by the irreproachable

regularity of their life, and by the faithful and diligent

discharge of their duty. Their patrons even frequently complain

of the independency of their spirit, which they are apt to

construe into ingratitude for past favours, but which, at worse,

perhaps, is seldom anymore than that indifference which naturally

arises from the consciousness that no further favours of the kind

are ever to be expected. There is scarce, perhaps, to be

found anywhere in Europe, a more learned, decent, independent,

and respectable set of men, than the greater part of the

presbyterian clergy of Holland, Geneva, Switzerland, and

Scotland.

 

Where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can

be very great; and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may be,

no doubt, carried too far, has, however, some very agreeable

effects. Nothing but exemplary morals can give dignity to a

man of small fortune. The vices of levity and vanity

necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides, almost as

ruinous to him as they are to the common people. In his own

conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals

which the common people respect the most. He gains their esteem

and affection, by that plan of life which his own interest and

situation would lead him to follow. The common people look upon

him with that kindness with which we naturally regard one who

approaches somewhat to our own condition, but who, we think,

ought to be in a higher. Their kindness naturally provokes

his kindness. He becomes careful to instruct them, and attentive

to assist and relieve them. He does not even despise the

prejudices of people who are disposed to be so favourable to him,

and never treats them with those contemptuous and arrogant airs,

which we so often meet with in the proud dignitaries of opulent

and well endowed churches. The presbyterian clergy, accordingly,

have more influence over the minds of the common people, than

perhaps the clergy of any other established church. It is,

accordingly, in presbyterian countries only, that we ever find

the common people converted, without persecution completely, and

almost to a man, to the established church.

 

In countries where church benefices are, the greater part of

them, very moderate, a chair in a university is generally a

better establishment than a church benefice. The

universities have, in this case, the picking and chusing of their

members from all the churchmen of the country, who, in every

country, constitute by far the most numerous class of men of

letters. Where church benefices, on the contrary, are many of

them very considerable, the church naturally draws from the

universities the greater part of their eminent men of letters;

who generally find some patron, who does himself honour by

procuring them church preferment. In the former situation, we

are likely to find the universities filled with the most eminent

men of letters that are to be found in the country. In the

latter, we are likely to find few eminent men among them, and

those few among the youngest members of the society, who are

likely, too, to be drained away from it, before they can have

acquired experience and knowledge enough to be of much use to it.

It is observed by Mr. de Voltaire, that father Por�e, a jesuit of

no great eminence in the republic of letters, was the only

professor they had ever had in France, whose works were worth the

reading. In a country which has produced so many eminent men of

letters, it must appear somewhat singular, that scarce one of

them should have been a professor in a university. The famous

Cassendi was, in the beginning of his life, a professor in the

university of Aix. Upon the first dawning of his genius, it was

represented to him, that by going into the church he could easily

find a much more quiet and comfortable subsistence, as well as a

better situation for pursuing his studies; and he immediately

followed the advice. The observation of Mr. de Voltaire may

be applied, I believe, not only to France, but to all other Roman

Catholic countries. We very rarely find in any of them an eminent

man of letters, who is a professor in a university, except,

perhaps, in the professions of law and physic; professions from

which the church is not so likely to draw them. After the church

of Rome, that of England is by far the richest and best endowed

church in Christendom. In England, accordingly, the church is

continually draining the universities of all their best and

ablest members; and an old college tutor who is known and