Читать книгу The Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century: with a supplemental chapter on the revival in America онлайн

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If we desire to obtain some knowledge of what the Church of England was, as represented by her clergy when George III. was king, we should go to her own records; and for the later years of his reign, notably to the life of that learned, active, and amiable man, Dr. Blomfield, Bishop of London, whose memory was a wonderful repository of anecdotes, not tending to elevate the clergy of those times in popular estimation. Intoxication was a vice very characteristic of the cloth: on one occasion the bishop reproved one of his Chester clergy for drunkenness: he replied, “But, my lord, I never was drunk on duty.” “On duty!” exclaimed the bishop; “and pray, sir, when is a clergyman not on duty?” “True,” said the other; “my lord, I never thought of that.” The bishop went into a poor man’s cottage in one of the valleys in the Lake district, and asked whether his clergyman ever visited him. The poor man replied that he did very frequently. The bishop was delighted, and expressed his gratification at this pastoral oversight; and this led to the discovery that there were a good many foxes on the hills behind the house, which gave the occasion for the frequency of calls which could scarcely be considered pastoral. The chaplain and son-in-law of Bishop North examined candidates for orders in a tent on a cricket-field, he being engaged as one of the players; the chaplain of Bishop Douglas examined whilst shaving; Bishop Watson never resided in his diocese during an episcopate of thirty-four years.