in ecclesiastical law, the crime of buying or selling spiritual gifts or preferments. In the ancient Christian church, this crime was always thought to be committed when men either offered or received money for ordinations. The apostolical canons lay a double punishment both of deposition and excommunication on such of the clergy as were found guilty of it. This was the first sort of simony, and that which was most properly so called; and to this the ancients reduced the exacting of any reward for administering the eucharist or baptism, or for any spiritual offices. A second sort of simony consisted in buying the spiritual preferments of the church: this was punished with deposition in any bishop, who promoted any church-officer for the sake of lucre; and the persons so promoted were to be degraded from their office. By the laws of Justinian, every elector was to de- pose upon oath, that he did not chuse the person elected for any gift or promise, or friendship, or any other cause, but only because he knew him to be a man of the true catholic faith, of unblameable life, and good learning. This last sort of simony was, when men, by ambitious arts and undue practices, got themselves invested in an office or preferment to which they had no regular call, or when they intruded themselves into other men's places which were legally filled before. The canons for the church of Rome maintain, that all compacts or bargains in which benefices are concerned, are limonical, when it is done without the pope's concurrence; but that, once obtained, gives a sanction to the thing; which they found upon this universal proposition, that the pope cannot commit simony in beneficiary matters, since he hath a power so absolute over all the ecclesiastical goods and benefices, that he can unite, divide, and bestow them in whatever manner he pleases.

Against the corruption of simony, there have been many canons made in our own church, which punishes the offender with deprivation, disfability, &c. and by a statute of the 31 Eliz. it is enacted, that if any person, for any sum of money, reward, gift, profit, or benefit, or by reason of any promise, agreement, grant, bond, covenant, or other assurance, shall present, or collate any person to any benefice with cure, dignity, or living ecclesiastical, every such presentation, or collation, and every admission or induction thereupon, shall be utterly void, and the crown shall present for that turn; and the person that shall give or take any sum of money, &c. shall forfeit double the value of one year's profit of any such benefice; and the person so corruptly taking any such benefice, shall from thenceforth be disabled to have and enjoy the same.