The English people are satisfied, that to the great the consolations of
religion are as necessary as its instructions. They too are among the
unhappy. They feel personal pain, and domestic sorrow. In these they
have no privilege, but are subject to pay their full contingent to the
contributions levied on mortality. They want this sovereign balm under
their gnawing cares and anxieties, which, being less conversant
about the limited wants of animal life, range without limit, and are
diversified by infinite combinations in the wild and unbounded regions
of imagination. Some charitable dole is wanting to these, our often very
unhappy brethren, to fill the gloomy void that reigns in minds which
have nothing on earth to hope or fear; something to relieve in the
killing languor and over-laboured lassitude of those who have nothing to
do; something to excite an appetite to existence in the palled satiety
which attends on all pleasures which may be bought, where nature is not
left to her own process, where even desire is anticipated, and therefore
fruition defeated by meditated schemes and contrivances of delight;
and no interval, no obstacle, is interposed between the wish and the
accomplishment.
The people of England know how little influence the teachers of religion
are likely to have with the wealthy and powerful of long standing, and
how much less with the newly fortunate, if they appear in a manner no
way assorted to those with whom they must associate, and over whom they
must even exercise, in some cases, something like an authority. What
must they think of that body of teachers, if they see it in no part
above the establishment of their domestic servants? If the poverty
were voluntary, there might be some difference. Strong instances of
self-denial operate powerfully on our minds; and a man who has no wants
has obtained great freedom, and firmness, and even dignity. But as the
mass of any description of men are but men, and their poverty cannot be
voluntary, that disrespect, which attends upon all lay property, will
not depart from the ecclesiastical. Our provident constitution has
therefore taken care that those who are to instruct presumptuous
ignorance, those who are to be censors over insolent vice, should
neither incur their contempt, nor live upon their alms; nor will it
tempt the rich to a neglect of the true medicine of their minds. For
these reasons, whilst we provide first for the poor, and with a parental
solicitude, we have not relegated religion (like something we were
ashamed to show) to obscure municipalities, or rustic villages. No! We
will have her to exalt her mitred front in courts and parliaments. We
will have her mixed throughout the whole mass of life, and blended
with all the classes of society. The people of England will show to the
haughty potentates of the world, and to their talking sophisters, that a
free, a generous, an informed nation honours the high magistrates of its
church; that it will not suffer the insolence of wealth and titles, or
any other species of proud pretension, to look down with scorn upon what
they look up to with reverence; nor presume to trample on that acquired
personal nobility, which they intend always to be, and which often is,
the fruit, not the reward (for what can be the reward), of learning,
piety, and virtue. They can see, without pain or grudging, an archbishop
precede a duke. They can see a bishop of Durham, or a bishop of
Winchester, in possession of ten thousand pounds a year; and cannot
conceive why it is in worse hands than estates to the like amount in
the hands of this earl, or that squire; although it may be true, that
so many dogs and horses are not kept by the former, and fed with the
victuals which ought to nourish the children of the people. It is true,
the whole church revenue is not always employed, and to every shilling,
in charity; nor perhaps ought it; but something is generally so
employed. It is better to cherish virtue and humanity by leaving much
to free will, even with some loss to the object, than to attempt to make
men mere machines and instruments of a political benevolence. The world
on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.
When once the commonwealth has established the estates of the church as
property, it can, consistently, hear nothing of the more or the less.
Too much and too little are treason against property. What evil can
arise from the quantity in any hand, whilst the supreme authority has
the full, sovereign superintendence over this, as over any property, to
prevent every species of abuse; and, whenever it notably deviates, to
give to it a direction agreeable to the purposes of its institution. In
England most of us conceive that it is envy and malignity towards those
who are often the beginners of their own fortune, and not a love of the
self-denial and mortification of the ancient church, that makes some
look askance at the distinctions, and honours, and revenues, which,
taken from no person, are set apart for virtue. The ears of the people
of England are distinguishing. They hear these men speak broad. Their
tongue betrays them. Their language is in the patois of fraud; in the
cant and gibberish of hypocrisy. The people of England must think so,
when these praters affect to carry back the clergy to that primitive,
evangelic poverty, which, in the spirit, ought always to exist in
them (and in us too, however we may like it), but in the thing must be
varied, when the relation of that body to the state is altered; when
manners, when modes of life, when indeed the whole order of human
affairs, has undergone a total revolution. We shall believe those
reformers then to be honest enthusiasts, not, as now we think them,
cheats and deceivers, when we see them throwing their own goods into
common, and submitting their own persons to the austere discipline of
the early church.