First, a definition, taken from the link below. It's not the only definition around, but it'll do.

"simony:The deliberate intention and act of selling and/or buying spiritual goods or material things so connected with the spiritual that they cannot be separated from it. Simony is a violation of the virtue of religion, and a sacrilege, because it wrongfully puts a material price on spiritual things, which can be neither bought nor sold. The term is derived from the name Simon Magus who, in The Acts of the Apostles, tried to buy the power to confirm people in the Holy Spirit. For a lengthier discussion, see the Catholic Encyclopedia."

Simony was indeed, frowned upon. However, the selling of the living wasn't illegal, wasn't specifically directed against, and wasn't specifically designated as simony. It was a grey area, though.

.....the unquestioned, indeed unconscious assumption is that any ordained man the patron wishes to present will be installed.

Who has this unconscious assumption? Yourself, or the writers of the tracts against the system? The patron's right of advowson wasn't a priviliege, it was a responsibility. He was supposed to find the right man. Nevertheless he didn't have a free hand- he had to have the bishop's permission. Now one can assume that some patrons, and some bishops were more lax in their duties than one might like, but to assume that they were all like that isn't justifiable, is it?

The 18th century bench of bishops, moreover, were very much men of their class, appointed for patronage reasons, and well integrated into it culturally and socially......not noted in retrospect either for zeal or for sanctity.

I think that describes just about every group of bishops in every age and every strand of the Christian Church since it began, doesn't it? ;-)Is Zeal and Sanctitiy in all bishops always to be praised? Bishoprics are by their very nature political appointments. Why single out 18th century ones in particular for censure?

All appointive office in 18th century England tended to be regarded as property.

Agreed- office in the public service, in the miltary, in trade- they all had a financial value. So did marriage, houshold servitude, and the right to pannage, turbery and estover. That was the eighteenth century mindset- the Church was no different than the rest of society in this.

As for the rise of Evangelicalsim and Methodism, I'll agree that they answered a spiriutal need that the Cof E did not, although at this distance it's hard to say whether it's Wesley's and Whitfield's differing ideas on what to belive that are more important than dissatisfaction with the social and hierarchical nature of the organised church. Certainly, Wesley approved of both hierarchy and bishops, in theory.

From the viewpoint of Wilberforce or Wesley (which I do not share), there was something quite wrong with a culture where no one thought it improper or unusual for a modest, retiring young man of good family like Edward Ferrars to take orders simply because the Church was a quiet, respectable alternative to the Bar, the Army or the Navy.

Did Edward decide this "simply" because the the Church was quiet an respectable, or did Jane Austen intend him to have a real calling, but did not feel necessary to explicitly state this? Wasn't she just following the 18th century novelistic convention of NOT discussing religious ideas in the novel form? Wouldn't she, as a parson's daughter, and as a woman, who famously didn't write about anything that she didn't know well, and who specifically declined to write stories about high-flying clergymen and the abolition of tithes, deliberately decline from explicitly mentioning Edward's faith? Personally, I'd hate to speculate on what Wesley would avae thought about EF- especially since he couldn't possibly have ever read the book!

That the Evangelicals had to fight hard for a generation, against widespread opposition, to infuse their views throughout the Church tells me that the conventional picture of the 18th century Anglican Church as a compound of the official, the tolerant and the torpid has a lot of truth to it.

Personally, I can't see the Church as one three-word phrase. I can only see 5,000 livings, 6,000 clergy and a half century of time as being far more complex than that. I'm not saying it has no truth at all, but I think you are being far too sweeping in your asessment of it. However, as you can probably see, I am a hopeless case; I persist in beliving in the basic goodness of clergymen, even if they are not perfect in every way- which makes me rather eighteenth century in my thinking, I suppose !;-)