simony🔊

To his eyes it had no attraction; it savoured of simony, and was likely to bring down upon him harder and more deserved strictures than any he had yet received: he positively declined to become vicar of Puddingdale under any circumstances.

‘There are those two,’ he then said, ‘who were recently arraigned on a charge of high simony. Fancying a monstrance and stealing it and proposing to sell it. They pleaded the usual pagan ignorance.’

For Simonie doth usually poyson and corrupt two Well-heads, whence the streames of good life doe generally flow unto all the people; that is, the Parson, and the Patron. These be, as the two great Lights in the Firmament of the Church, from whom the sublunary and subordinate people receive the direction and conduct of their life.