So our able Lecturer led us through our own history; and then he proceeded to instruct us in some main elements of our legal qualifications, and duties, and rights: how to get into a Curacy, and how to get out of it; what are the Bishop's rights over the Curate, and how the Archbishop may interpose if the Curate pleads a grievance against the Bishop. But I trust that this and other Lectures of the same course may see the light some day in a better form than a rough and passing report of mine. My purpose in referring to them now is that I may call attention to one point on which the Lecturer laid no little stress. It was, that it is the wisdom of the Curate, when he has once deliberately accepted a Curacy, to be thoroughly loyal all along; to consider himself as "at the Vicar's beck and call"; to serve him heartily and unreservedly. If tempted to do otherwise, particularly if tempted to complain of the Vicar to the Bishop, let him resist that temptation to the utmost of his power. "There may be sad exceptions, and necessity knows no law; but _as a rule_," said my honoured friend, "I may assure you, from a large experience, that the Curate who complains of his Incumbent to his Bishop injures not the Incumbent but himself."
Our Lecturer avowedly spoke not as a spiritual but as a legal counsellor. I would now take up his words, and from the point of view of the friend and Brother in the Lord say a little to my younger Brethren, engaged or about to be engaged in assistant Curacies, concerning the Christian rightness and Christian wisdom of taking the sort of line which the diocesan Chancellor recommended.