disqualifying the mind to seek truth aright, by resisting and
embarrassing its free development, by ensnaring conscience and
destroying charity; I have shown their failure in their proposed
objects, and their instrumentality in producing all the evils they
pretend to avert, and I proceed in the remaining observations, to
establish the second charge. It is one, however, which does not need
much elaborate argumentation. It will be easy to discover their
tendency, if we consider who are commonly the framers of Creeds, in what
periods they are formed, and in what temper they are usually imposed.
They are framed by Ecclesiastics, and for the main purpose of supporting
Ecclesiastical supremacy. If we take a few names connected with
Creed-making, or with furnishing the materials out of which Creeds are
made, we can easily see the spirit in which they are conceived, and of
which they are the expression. We have then an Athanasius, an intriguing
and ambitious Ecclesiastic, not only the fomenter of spiritual strife in
the Church, but by political intermedling, the fomenter of civil strife
in the Empire: a Cyril, the opponent of Nestorius, and the hater of
Origen; the composer of mighty tomes of divinity, which with much the
same kind since, were equally massive, and equally oblivious; a popular
preacher at first, and afterwards a most orthodox patriarch; at once the
persecutor of the philosophic Pagans, and the heretical Christians: a
Tertullian, that exulted in the prospective damnation of heretics, with
a zeal that almost rivals some modern Calvinistic writers: a Dominic,
that has left the memory of a sanguinary monk, and the name of a saint;
who has been often commemorated in the flames of many an auto-de-fe, and
has had a durable monument to his glory in the dark piles of the
inquisition: a Calvin, the stern Theological tyrant of Geneva, and the
slayer of Servetus: a Knox, who pleaded for the extermination of the
heretical after the manner of the Canaanites: a Cranmer, who caused so
many, both of Catholics and Protestants, to be led to the stake by laws
which changed with the fickleness of a tyrant’s will, who at last
himself blenched before the fate that had been so often prepared for
others: a Laud, the pillar of a star-chamber, and the downfall of a
throne. Such are some of the men concerned in the formation of
Creeds—men of stern natures, of haughty minds, and of boundless
spiritual ambition. And as to the periods in which Creeds are commonly
made, we know they are in times of religious strife, when different
parties are labouring for the ascendancy, when no pains are spared to
gain it, when no acts however shameful or dishonest are thought too bad
to use, if they assist to humble an opponent, or secure a victory; when
passion is heated and malignant, and the judgment totally unfit for
impartiality. The history of Councils and Theological cabal is the shame
of Christianity. Yet, formularies thus fabricated are to be made the
everlasting standards of truth, and men are to be punished here and
hereafter because they do not receive as Divine Truth these shapeless
abortions of Churchmen’s folly. And the temper in which they are imposed
is quite in conformity with that in which they are conceived—oppressive,
exclusive, unjust. With what a vindictive and grasping spirit have not
the Clergy of the English Church laid hold on all they could monopolize
of privilege and power; with what resistance to the last they have
endeavoured to shut out Dissenters from all the rights of Christians and
of citizens. To this hour, had it been in the power of Ecclesiastics,
the Test and Corporation Acts had never been repealed, or the Catholic
disabilities removed. That which is their power gives sufficient
evidence how they would act if they had exclusive possession of more. I
mean the Universities, which they keep closed against Dissenters with
such an obstinate and gothic bigotry. Nor does the injustice end here:
there is a silent, social injustice, which Dissenters suffer; every one
feels it, though it is not easily defined. The Churchman, on the
strength of signing a Creed which he does not always believe, assumes to
be of a higher religious caste than the Dissenter. It is not sufficient
that Dissenters contribute from their worldly good to support a system
which has no alliance with their conscience, but they must still further
undergo the humiliation of being regarded as spiritual and social
inferiors. Creeds are the allies of worldly policy, and ever have been
since Christianity had the misfortune to become a state religion, for
they are the main ties of that unnatural union of Christ’s religion to
human governments—a union injurious to both, making the government
unjust and partial, and religion selfish and secular. They are worldly
in their objects, and they are worldly in their instruments and means.
They are made the stepping stones to wealth, rank, and power; for if the
Establishment did not give wealth, rank, and power, numbers of
expectants would be moderate enough as to the Articles and Creeds. It
would seem anomalous if universal history did not make it evident, that
a body of men in all ages, pledged to denounce covetousness and earthly
passions, pledged to preach humility after the example of a crucified
master, pledged to curb by heavenly motives the abuse of power, should
be of all men themselves the most insatiate in their desires after gain,
the most haughty in their elevation to station, the severest and the
most grinding in the exercise of prerogative, the least willing to
mitigate it, and the most determined not to share it. In every period of
the Church, the worldliness of Ecclesiastics, their ambition, and their
love of lucre, have been proverbial, the scandal of Christians, and the
scorn of unbelievers. The covetousness of the Priest, has, in all
periods, been outstripped by his pride alone; and under every change in
society, the Priesthood have taken care to secure themselves so that
their lines should fall in the most pleasant places. The struggle is a
worldly one from beginning to end, it is all of the world and the things
of the world; if the prize were not of earth, we should hear far less
noise amongst the combatants. The struggle is a worldly one, the policy
is a worldly one, the means and ends are worldly. For are there any
means so evil, that Creeds, if there is a purpose to be gained, will not
tempt to, or assist with force, if there be the power to use it; with
fraud, if there is a necessity that demands it? Creeds and doctrines
have been maintained by frauds the most barefaced, by every artifice and
by every falsehood. But Creeds are indirectly the cause of dire
immorality; of immorality the worst in its kind, and the most evil in
its effects: they corrupt motive in its very source, they weaken that
sense of inward sincerity necessary to all that is true and noble in
human character, they punish honesty, and they bribe to hypocrisy. How
many minds have been robbed of their truthfulness, how many consciences
have been despoiled of their integrity, how many hearts sacrificed their
purity on the altar of interest and expediency, it would be a long and
dark catalogue to enumerate. And it is truly painful to think, that this
result is prepared for in the brightest and the best period of life.
What must be the effect on a young man who, at the very threshold of his
College studies, must profess to believe dogmas that he has scarcely
read, that he has never examined; how much worse if he has examined and
disbelieves them: if he be honest, he is excluded; the fear of his
family starts before him; if he spares them, he ruins his soul; if he
speaks the truth, he wrecks, perhaps, all his worldly fortunes beyond
redemption. When he sees then the most solemn interests made mere
matters of form, religious declarations the tests of honours and of
office, the confessions of grave Ecclesiastics but a pompous and solemn
hypocrisy, the zeal for worldly gain killing the ardour of religion, the
zeal for religion itself only a means to get wealth and power; when, I
say, he beholds all this, he can have no other feeling than that of
unmitigated contempt for the hollow show of orthodoxy; he must observe
that it is only an instrument, a mere make believe, theatrical acting;
and the chances are many, that, disgusted with the whole affair, he
transfers his disgust to religion in general, and makes shipwreck both
of faith and virtue. Creeds are the support of Priestly intolerance;
these are the statutes of the Priest. He does not, it is true, require
you to believe them, but he requires you to say you believe them; say
but that and your peace is made. These are his statutes on which he
condemns, or on which he acquits; by which he tries your allegiance to
sacerdotal authority, and by which, if he can, he will enforce it.
Creeds are instruments of worldly and of spiritual despotism. The
relation of the Priesthood to the civil power, is changeful and
capricious; one time its slave, another time its tyrant. Cunning Kings
have always had the sagacity to see that the safest course was to
flatter and enrich the Priesthood, giving them the shield of the
temporal power, and receiving in return the support of the whole
spiritual armoury either from heaven or hell; and both, thus agreed and
united, have been enabled to enslave the people with a most hopeless
bondage. Let the Prince but heap good things on the Church, hate her
enemies, curse her opponents, patronise her friends, the Church
gratefully in return submits to him with most obsequious obedience. But
reverse the case, and suppose the Prince not only ventures to do without
the Priests, but attempts to curtail some of their good things, then no
epithet is too strong to mark his iniquity; he is then profane,
heretical, infidel: and if the superstition of the people give them the
power, they compel him to bend before spiritual prowess, and from being
their master, reduce him to their slave. The spirit of a Creed-enforcing
Clergy is also seen in this fact, that they dislike the civil power more
and more as that power becomes liberal and enlightened; they oppose it,
and abuse it in exact proportion as it deserves to be admired and
praised: if there be but a symptom that their monopoly is likely to be
broken, and that others are about to share blessings which they had so
long kept to themselves as to think only their own, immediately the
Monarch must be prepared to meet the fierceness of their enmity. It is a
combat to which many a Monarch has been unequal, and to which many a one
has fallen a victim. Tyranny on their side, and slavery on that of
others, is the congenial element in which most established Priesthoods
move, breathe, and have their being; the men themselves are the victims
of their circumstances, circumstances which the influence of Creeds have
made; for Creeds are the parents of Priestcraft, and Priestcraft is
identical with religious despotism.
Creeds are the allies of worldly policy; Creeds are the creatures of the
Church, and the Church is the creature of the state. A national Church
with Creeds for its tests, and legal support and legal penalties, can be
nothing else. And the English Establishment is peculiarly in this
condition; are not her Bishops appointed by the government? Are we not
all aware that every Prelate is virtually the selected of the minister
for the time being? Are we not aware that her canons and constitution,
her catechisms and articles, her rubrics and her ceremonies, are
enforced and established by acts of parliament? Are we not especially
aware that her wealthy revenues are derived from compulsory exaction,
and that payment is wrenched from Dissenters by the strong arm of the
law?—Whence, but from this source, can the Clergy claim their wealth? By
what other power could they enforce it? Every one, who is not a
simpleton, knows that the vast possessions in which the Church rejoices,
are not free will offerings, and that they have stronger security in the
Courts of Exchequer and Chancery, than in the consciences of those who
pay them. They were at first endowments to the Church of Rome; it is by
act of parliament that they enrich those who maintain the Thirty-nine
Articles, instead of praying for souls in Purgatory. The Monarch, in
this country, is acknowledged the supreme head of the Church on earth;
and though that Monarch may be a girl of eighteen, a boy of eleven, an
infant, or an idiot, it is exclusion from the established ministry to
deny it, and was once high treason. To be persuaded of this fact, we
have only to recollect that the law of the land deposed the Romish
Priesthood, and that the Act of Uniformity excluded from the service of
the altar two thousand non-conforming Ministers. “The second Canon
excommunicates every one who shall endeavour to limit or extenuate the
King’s authority in Ecclesiastical cases, as it is settled by the laws
of the kingdom; and declares he shall not be restored until he has
recanted such impious errors.” “The thirty-seventh Canon obliges all
persons, to their utmost, to keep and observe all and every one of the
statutes and laws made for restoring to the crown the ancient
jurisdiction it had over the Ecclesiastical state.” “The twelfth of King
James’s Canons declares, that whoever shall affirm that it is lawful for
the order either of Ministers or Laics, to make canons, decrees, or
constitutions, in Ecclesiastical matters, without the King’s authority,
and submits himself to be governed by them, is, _ipso facto_,
excommunicated, and is not to be absolved before he has publicly
repented and renounced these Anabaptistical errors.” Queen Anne, in an
angry letter to the Archbishop, made the convocation aware that “she was
resolved to maintain her supremacy as a fundamental part of the
constitution of the Church of England.” “Archbishop Bancroft, when at
the head of all the Clergy of England, delivered articles to King James
for increasing the Ecclesiastical courts, and for annexing all
Ecclesiastical as well as Civil power to the Crown. This may be seen at
large in Lord Coke’s third institute.” On such grounds as these, men
claim authority to impose Creeds on their fellow-citizens, to proclaim
themselves the commissioned messengers of heaven, to assert religious
supremacy and to arrogate a divine right; to bind and loose, to condemn
and to forgive. I heard a person lately well remark, that if you gave
him the incomes of the Clergy, he would give you the social status of
those from whom they were taken, and _vice versa_. At ordination, they
solemnly affirm that they are moved by the Holy Ghost; but if the
extreme stipend were two or three hundred a year, this inspiration would
seldom be found to fall on the son of a Duke, or the brother of an Earl.
But, whatever be the abuses which Creeds occasion, or whatever be the
evils they inflict, it may still be said the Church has authority to
decree them; and what she has authority to decree, she has authority to
enforce. To one of the strongest arguments on this point lately renewed,
and more strenuously urged than it had ever been before, I shall here
devote a few general observations.
The claim to dictate and enforce Creeds by the Clergy of our
Establishment, is founded on another claim which, by a party of divines,
is recently asserted with a zeal not inferior to that of the Romish
Priesthood; I allude to the doctrine of Apostolic succession. It is
pretended that the national Clergy by deriving a mission from the
immediate disciples of Christ, have authority, by a mystical
communication of divine energy transmitted to them from age to age, an
authority to decide what is, and what is not, the true faith. On this
ground the high Churchmen consistently deny to all other Ministers the
power to teach or to preach, and with one fell stroke, cut off the whole
of the Dissenters from the spiritual body of Christ. On this ground we
may ask several questions which must receive very unsatisfactory, or
very contradictory answers. First—where, in the gospel history, is it
proposed, as an essential qualification of a religious teacher, that he
shall have an uninterrupted succession from the Apostles? Paul, in his
letters to Timothy and Titus, enumerates many qualities which should
distinguish the Christian Minister; but Apostolical succession is not
once mentioned amongst the number. In the early age of Christianity, we
have abundant evidence, both from Evangelical and Ecclesiastical
history, that many preached the gospel who had no such authority as
Churchmen call Ordination or Holy orders. Secondly—is it possible that
the Apostles could have any successors? The Apostles had powers to which
no Priest in his highest pride, will dare to lay claim; the Apostles
healed the sick, cast out demons, raised the dead; they proved their
mission by miracles, and this gave a peculiarity to their office which,
it will be admitted, was not transferable. Besides, between the office
of an Apostle and that of a Bishop, there is no identity, and few
analogies. An Apostle was a missionary, a Bishop is a temporal and
spiritual peer: there is no more resemblance of one to the other, than
of his grace of Canterbury amidst the sumptuous luxury of his palace, to
a Moravian preacher in the snows of Lapland; than of the Bishop of
Exeter declaiming politics in the senate, to Felix Neff proclaiming
Christ amidst the Alps. An Apostle was a poor man, a Bishop is a rich
one; an Apostle was a pilgrim and wanderer, a Bishop is a mitred prince;
an Apostle was the object of contumely and scorn to a world which was
not worthy of him, a Bishop is the praised and the applauded by a world
of which he is worthy; an Apostle was the servant of the humble and the
lowly, a Bishop is the companion of the exalted and the great; an
Apostle was the object of state persecution, a Bishop is the favourite
of state patronage: by what paradoxical mistake, therefore, one office
came to be derived from the other, it is a puzzle to conjecture.
Thirdly—by what sort of evidence is the succession to be proved; what
are the conditions which render it true and genuine? By what signs am I
to know that the Ecclesiastical concatenation is one whole unbroken
chain, without a single heretical flaw? By what signs am I to know that
the sacerdotal mystery is rightly given, that there is no spuriousness,
no falsehood, and no forgery? Is every peasant, who hears a sermon from
his Parson, to be in possession of that historic lore, which shall
enable him to determine, by erudite tracing of age to age, that orthodox
hands have been laid on orthodox heads, and that he to whom he commits
the salvation of his soul has all the conditions of a true priesthood?
Fourthly—Whence does the Church of England derive her succession?—That
she derives it from the Church of Rome, all authentic ecclesiastical
history confirms. The establishment of the English Church can be clearly
traced no further than the mission of Austin the Romish Monk; and it is
well known, indeed, there is no attempt at denial, that all which have
since been called papal errors, were then proclaimed and adopted. The
preacher came with the pope’s sanction, the English received the pope’s
religion, and acknowledged the pope’s authority. It is vain beyond all
vanities to argue for succession in the English Establishment, and
assert its independence on the Church of Rome. Its origin is from a
Roman Missionary; it admits the validity of Roman ordination; its
liturgies and rituals are but garbled or abridged translations from
Roman formularies. Whence then is the independence? If unbroken
succession be the absolute condition of ecclesiastical authority, then
the English establishment must either admit the jurisdiction of the
Church of Rome, or acknowledge itself guilty of rebellion, and confess
that it is wanting in one of the prime essentials of a Christian Church.
But our Establishment accuses the Romish system of all manner of errors
and of evils, of idolatry, of tyranny, of persecution, of doing
dishonour to the supremacy of God, and of undermining the merits of
Christ,—of being an awful and fatal apostacy: surely then the purity of
that descent may well be doubted, which comes from so corrupt a source.
The Church of Rome is called by all our declamatory divines the “mother
of harlots,”—if that of England be one of her daughters, it is a hard
task for a controversialist to defend the legitimacy of her birth or the
purity of her character. Moreover, that is a queer kind of unbroken
succession, which could in a few years reflect so many hues of doctrine,
which turned from reign to reign like the weathercock before the wind,
as royal caprice determined, from the bigoted half popery of the Eighth
Henry to the whole Protestantism of the Sixth Edward; from the violent
Catholic Mary, to the equally violent reformed Elizabeth; from a Cranmer
to a Gardiner, and from a Gardiner to a Laud. It is not, therefore,
grateful or graceful in our Establishment to heap odium on her mother,
her from whom she must date her existence, to whom she traces her
clergy, and from whom she has received her creed.
III. In disputing against creeds, and churches which are the creatures
of creeds, I do not deny that religion most genuine and pure, may exist
in many forms—and may be as fervent amongst the adherents of
Establishments as amongst the most zealous of dissenting churches.
Religion, I consider, a necessity of the human heart; it may grovel in
the dust or aspire to the skies—it may appeal to our fears or to our
hopes—it may create hideous images or rejoice in beautiful picturings;
it may decorate the altar with flowers, or bathe it in blood; but still
it belongs to us, is of us, and that of which we cannot, if we would,
divest ourselves. While man has within his soul admiration of greatness
and power, unsatisfied desires and perishing pleasures; while he has
many griefs and many tears; while there are those living whom he loves,
and those departed whom he mourns; while his existence is thus bound to
the past and to the future; while he has speculations that seek but find
no limit, musings on his own and universal destiny,—he must have
religion to destroy these, and you destroy religion, but you also
destroy humanity. If the strongest excitements and the deepest contrasts
could fill and satisfy the human soul, our age and country supply them;
whatever would fix us to the material and the present we have in all
possible varieties, both in their glory and their grossness. If the
spirit is to be seen anxious with poverty we have but a few steps to
walk from rejoicing splendour to pining misery. Civilization is amongst
us with all its luxuries and with all its woes. Thousands toil for daily
bread, and thousands more languish for daily pleasures. Yet nobler
things have we than these. Our science, our philosophy, and our
literature, are rich beyond expression. Our mechanism is akin to magic,
and our industry is like the regularity of nature; the stir of many
interests is abroad, and the struggle of many principles. The power of
fresh life is in the social heart, and the courage of free speech upon
the lips. The tide of thought and liberty moves onward with majestic
swell, and no one can say “Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, and
here shall thy proud waves be staid.” Whatever there be in wealth, in
power, in glory, in ambition, that desires triumphant sway and secures
all it desires; whatever there be in speculation of boundless enterprize
or capacity of gigantic achievement, our times may boast, yet they
remove not the need of religion, but the religion which the heart
demands is not what creeds or churches can give either to a nation or an
individual.
Creeds are the allies of establishments, and establishments are the
friends of the world. Their whole history and tendency are evidence of
this. But, far be it from me to say that this has no qualification. All
old institutions more or less knit themselves into popular veneration,
the religious as well as others. We cannot look back upon the church of
our country, even in its Romish form, without some of the reverence with
which our nature compels us to gaze on fallen greatness; and now that
the mitre is worn by other heads, and the crosier passed into other
hands, now that its good deeds reveal themselves in the calm of the
past, we can regard its evil ones more in sorrow than in anger. Zealots,
who would eternalize the darkest creeds that superstition ever shaped,
who would build up the throne of proudest priesthood, declaim against
Popery in the most popish spirit: but while national feelings have any
power, while a single venerable structure stands upon our soil in which
we hear the voices of our ancestors, and from which a thousand years
look down upon us, the Roman church, with all its errors, is linked by
sacred memories to our history. It laid the foundation of our civilized
existence; it grew with our growth and it strengthened with our
strength. When our country was yet divided amongst barbarian kings, the
monk of Rome lifted up the cross of Christ, and the heart of the savage
was subdued to the Prince of Peace. It accompanied our national
independence, it trained our fathers’ spirits when living, and now they
are dead it shelters their bones. Through all historic changes, and
through most sanguinary struggles, it preserved alive the spirit of our
common Christianity.
Within it arose many of our greatest men; it nurtured many of our purest
and holiest characters; it reared the altar at which an Anselm
ministered and before which an Alfred prayed. But wealth commonly brings
worldliness, and as it is with laymen, so is it with ecclesiastics. The
church was fed and fostered by Saxon piety, and when the conquest gave
the island new masters it suffered nothing by the change. The progress
of aggrandizement went forward with a quicker pace and a more grasping
hand. Spiritual authority allied itself more firmly to temporal majesty;
celestial vocation would have feudal titles; the coil would be
transformed to the coronet; the humble robe to the princely purple; the
voice of humility swelled into absolute command, monks took their places
above barons, and the primate sat only below the throne.
But under that pomp and ostentation, we say not that all was hollow—that
there was not much of genuine piety far beyond the reach of history. In
the cells of these gorgeous abbeys there were many who did in reality
leave the world and its wickedness behind them. There were some who wept
and prayed in no feigned prostration, who worshipped, it may be with
superstition, but still with sensibility and an upright conscience. In
that stream of melody which pealed at solemn midnight through many a
dome that now lies mouldering, there were some hallelujahs which reached
the throne of God and mingled with the hymn of angels. The pavements
over which we tread in many a secluded ruin may have been worn by
kneeling martyrs that now sleep in peace beneath them: within these
massive buildings so grey and time-wrecked, how often might be found at
the evening hour, when the dim religious light melted through the
painted windows, and the vesper song softened through the lofty vaults,
scattered worshippers who were feeding their immortal life: how
frequently within those temples may the serf in faith and prayer have
forgotten his bonds, and only remembered that he was the brother of
Jesus, and the son of God. And amongst that priesthood so often
stigmatized unjustly by indiscriminate bigotry, many were worthy of
their office; they were the poor man’s friends when poverty was
hopeless; they were his brethren when to the worldly powers poverty was
slavery; they were his supporters and consolers when he had many to
oppress and few to cheer him; they were with him in joy and sorrow, in
sickness and death, when his joy and sorrow, his sickness and death,
were to the mass of his worldly superiors, a matter of contemptible
indifference. In the times to which I refer, the Church was a most
excellent antagonist against political assumption, a barrier against
despotism, a shield for the people against the crown; but now it is an
ally of the crown only when the crown is against the people: in either,
the Crown and the Church struggle may have been only for supremacy, but
whatever were their respective motives, the people were the gainers; the
clergy might make them slaves for another world, but they saved them
from being slaves in this. The power of the priest could curb the
ambition of the ruler; and, in the ruler himself, the will of the
monarch was held in check by the conscience of the devotee.
Ecclesiastical institutions were then not wholly ineffective, but now
the religious and social interests of man are better secured than by any
struggle between the superstitious fears of the Prince, and the
spiritual threatenings of the Priest. From these social changes, Church
Establishments outliving the slaveries which they meliorated, become
inflictors of slavery in return, and hang as millstones and dead weights
on every effort for freedom and advancement. But if we are to have
authority on conscience at all in the form of institutions, I would
rather it should be absolute and unchangeable, uniform, solemn, and
imposing; and if there is to be submission, I prefer it should be to
that which is believed to be stedfast and infallible; for then, if we
had not the freedom of thought, we might at least have the peace of
piety; if we had not the independence of men, we might hope for the
meekness of children.
We cannot say that the English Church in its Protestant state has lost
all claims to traditional veneration. We may, however, safely assert,
that in becoming protestant, it has not become less earthly, and that if
transformed in anything, it is not from the Spirit of the world. We see
very clearly, that it is not in any way distinguished for free or
progressive amendment; and among the Reformed of European churches it is
most the creature of the world, most the lover of the world, most
dependent on the world, both in its origin and its continuance.
On the continent it commenced with the ecclesiastical powers; in ours it
commenced with the civil; and the church in this country adopted the new
doctrine rather as a matter of command than as a matter of conscience.
Whatever have been the theological vibrations of the Establishment, or
whatever its theological inconsistencies, we deny not that it has had
within it right noble spirits, and that it has them still, and while we
condemn such systems, we do not so much condemn, as lament the fine
natures which they have misdirected. Numbers we are aware are now in its
ranks, which are the ornaments of life and to whom the world is in many
ways indebted; and if it were not so, there are those gone by who would
fully dignify her. Amongst her members we recognise many of the great
lights both of our nation and our nature; a Jeremy Taylor of rich
eloquence and rare sweetness of spirit; a Barrow with a mind as lofty as
it was simple and an oratory as prodigal in thought as it was massive in
logic; a Chillingworth, the prince of reasoners, who never allowed his
polemics to ruffle his meekness, to warp his candour, or to deaden his
charity; a Berkeley, whose genius was only inferior to his sanctity, and
whose subtle philosophy never disturbed the simplicity of his truly
child-like nature; a Bedel, who was humble and generous when it was the
fashion to oppress, who though the bishop of a foreign faith in the
midst of a people whom his nation had aggrieved, made his way to their
hearts, and was the object of their blessings; and in our own day there
has been the good and sainted Heber, who combined piety with humanity,
and who adorned practical virtue with all the beauty of the poet and the
Christian.