They Generally Abuse These Dispensations With A
View Of Appeasing Those Enmities Which So Often Subsist Between
Them, Because "Their
Feet are swift to shed blood;" and from their
love of high descent, which they so ardently affect and covet,
They
unite themselves to their own people, refusing to intermarry with
strangers, and arrogantly presuming on their own superiority of
blood and family. They do not engage in marriage, until they have
tried, by previous cohabitation, the disposition, and particularly
the fecundity, of the person with whom they are engaged. An
ancient custom also prevails of hiring girls from their parents at
a certain price, and a stipulated penalty, in case of relinquishing
their connection.
Their churches have almost as many parsons and sharers as there are
principal men in the parish. The sons, after the decease of their
fathers, succeed to the ecclesiastical benefices, not by election,
but by hereditary right possessing and polluting the sanctuary of
God. And if a prelate should by chance presume to appoint or
institute any other person, the people would certainly revenge the
injury upon the institutor and the instituted. With respect to
these two excesses of incest and succession, which took root
formerly in Armorica, and are not yet eradicated, Ildebert, bishop
of Le Mans, in one of his epistles, says, "that he was present with
a British priest at a council summoned with a view of putting an
end to the enormities of this nation:" hence it appears that these
vices have for a long time prevailed both in Britany and Britain.
The words of the Psalmist may not inaptly be applied to them; "They
are corrupt and become abominable in their doings, there is none
that doeth good, no, not one:
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