Before we terminate this chapter, another subject requires notice. The Long Parliament, at an early period, turned its attention to the character of the clergy. So many complaints were made against them, that the committee for religion, in the month of May, divided itself into sub-committees, whose business it was to investigate clerical scandals. Their proceedings have been subjected to severe criticism. It is said by Nalson, that accusations against the best ministers, by malicious persons, were invited and encouraged, and then admitted without any proof.[202] But this statement receives contradiction from the evidence which was laid before the Committees, and is still preserved; and though some portion of it might be untrustworthy, as is the case in every kind of judicial trial, other parts of it appear of a nature not to be gainsayed. In conducting these enquiries the practice was to receive written evidence, a practice borrowed from the Court of Arches, where the method of procedure is by libel and affidavit. Englishmen prefer the _vivâ voce_ testimony of witnesses before a jury; yet there are not wanting men of judgment, in modern times, who favour a written statement of fact. At any rate, the Committees could plead precedent for the course which they pursued, and as the causes which came before them were ecclesiastical, they did but adopt the usages of ecclesiastical courts. The constitution of the tribunal, rather than the mode of trial, is open to exception. There is no vindicating the former but on the fundamental principle of all revolutions, that old authorities having become thoroughly corrupt, new ones must be constituted by the popular power--in such cases the supreme power--to meet emergencies arising out of previous derangement. [Sidenote: _Debates by the Commons._] Cases which came under the notice of White's committee were published at a later period in his "Century of Scandalous Ministers."[203] On comparing that extraordinary volume with the proceedings of the Kent and Essex Committees, we must be struck with the large proportion in the former, not merely of allegations touching immorality, but of charges respecting the foulest and most atrocious crimes. Most of the complaints before Sir Edward Dering[204] related mainly to delinquencies of a theological, ecclesiastical, or political description; and the same may be said of the accusations brought against the Essex ministers: but on turning over White's pages we are nauseated with the filthiest accusations and the most abominable stories. If only half of them be true, he assuredly was supplied with abundant proofs of the extensive and utter degradation of the clergy. But some of the narratives seem to us so absurd as almost to defy belief; yet supposing that they are truthfully related, it is evident there existed in the parishes of England, at that time, incumbents who must be regarded as no less thoroughly mad than radically immoral. [Illustration]