Another clause should be, that none of these twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty pounders may be suffered to marry, under the penalty of immediate deprivation, their marriages declared null, and their children bastards; for some desponding people, take the kingdom to be not in a condition of encouraging so numerous a breed of beggars.
A third clause will be necessary, that these humble gentry should be absolutely disqualified from giving votes in elections for parliament men.
Others add a fourth, which is a clause of indulgence, that these reduced divines may be permitted to follow any lawful ways of living, that will not call them too often or too far from their spiritual offices (for unless I misapprehend, they are supposed to have episcopal ordination). For example, they may be lappers of linen, bailiffs of the manor, they may let blood, or apply plasters, for three miles round; they may get a dispensation to hold the clerkship and sextonship of their own parish _in commendam_. Their wives and daughters may make shirts for the neighbourhood, or if a barrack be near, for the soldiers. In linen countries, they may card and spin, and keep a few looms in the house: they may let lodgings, and sell a pot of ale without doors, but not at home, unless to sober company, and at regular hours. It is by some thought a little hard, that in an affair of the last consequence, to the very being of the Clergy, in the points of liberty and property, as well as in their abilities to perform their duty; this whole reverend body, who are the established instructors of the nation in Christianity and moral virtues, and are the only persons concerned, should be the sole persons not consulted. Let any scholar shew the like precedent in Christendom for twelve hundred years past. An act of parliament for settling or selling an estate in a private family, is never passed till all parties give consent. But in the present case the whole body of the Clergy is, as themselves apprehend, determined to utter ruin, without once expecting or asking their opinion, and this by a scheme contrived only by one part of the convocation, while the other part which hath been chosen in the usual forms, wants only the regal permission to assemble, and consult about the affairs of the Church, as their predecessors have always done in former ages; where it is presumed, the Lower House hath a power of proposing canons, and a negative voice, as well as the Upper. And God forbid (say these objectors) that there should be a real separate interest between the bishops and Clergy, any more than there is between a man and his wife, a king and his people, or Christ and his Church.