of Providence. The privations, the sufferings, the bereavements which come from God, are borne humbly, and patiently, and religiously-it even seems as if the heart were like those fruits which ripen the more readily when they are wounded. But if affliction soften the heart, adversity, too often, tends to harden it: the injuries of fortune affect men with a sense of injustice, and are resented like wrongs; and when they proceed from misconduct, any feeling is more tolerable than that of self-condemnation. Men seek to justify themselves against the inward accuser, and set up the standard of their own morality against the law. Guilt is a skilful sophist: the veriest wretch who subsists by pilfering, or closes a course of more audacious crimes at the gallows, forms for himself a system which is, in its origin and end, the same as that of Buonaparte, and the other philosophers of the Satanic school.

It is among the lower classes that those miseries, as well as those diseases are found, which become infectious to the community. The vices to which they are prone are idleness, drunkenness, gambling, and cruelty: gambling is the least frequent, and might almost wholly be prevented, were the magistrates to exert themselves, and the parish officers to do their duty. Cruelty is less within the cognizance of human laws, and yet we trust those abominable sports, which tend to foster it, will be prohibited; this indeed is a bestial principle which no moral and religious alchemy can transmute into any thing good: the others are only perversions of the great springs of human action; which, when they have their proper direction assigned them, operate immediately to the benefit of the individual and the public. They proceed from self-indulgence, or that love of excitement which man retains as a distinguishing characteristic from inferior animals, when, in all other respects, he has, as far as possible, degraded himself to their level. Where this is the case it is not always the fault of the individual, even in civilized and Christian countries-even in our own. Animals go rightly, according to the ends of their creation, when they are left to themselves; they follow their instinct, and are safe: but it is otherwise with man; the ways of life are a labyrinth for him; his infancy does not stand more in need of a mother's care, than his moral and intellectual faculties require to be nursed and fostered; and when these are left to starve for want of nutriment, how infinitely more deplorable is his condition than that of the beasts who perish!

Herein it is that our Reformation was left imperfect. No blame for this is imputable to those good and admirable men by whose learning and labour it was effected, by whose martyrdom it was sealed. They felt and urged the necessity of providing good education for the people; and that most excellent prince, Edward VI., reckoned it first among the medicines which must cure the sores of

the

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the commonweal: he reckoned it first in order, as first in dignity and degree.' Men,' said he, keep longest the savour of their first bringing up; wherefore, seeing that it seemeth so necessary a thing, we will show our device herein.' Every thing* indeed which a good and judicious mind could desire as tending most surely to the improvement of his country and his kind, seems to have been contemplated by this extraordinary youth- 1. Good education. 2. Devising of good laws. 3. Executing the laws justly without respect of persons. 4. Example of rulers. 5. Punishing of vagabonds and idle persons. 6. Encouraging the good. 7. Ordering well the Customers. 8. Engendering friendship in all parts of the commonwealth. These be the chief points that tend to order well the whole commonwealth.'- Nevertheless,' he says, when all these laws be made, established, and enacted, they serve to no purpose except they be fully and duly executed. By whom? By those that have authority to execute; that is to say, the noblemen and the justices of peace. Wherefore I would wish that after this Parliament were ended, those noblemen, except a few that should be with me, went to their counties, and there should see the statutes fully and duly executed'; and that those men should be put from being justices of the peace that be touched or blotted with those vices that be against these new laws to be established: for no man that is in fault himself can punish another for the same offence.' With due allowance for the little which is not applicable to our present state of society, every thing is here noted which is required for a thorough reformation of the people,-sound instruction for all, wholesome chastisement for the dissolute, wholesome encouragement for the well-disposed, and the watchful execution of those minor laws, upon the proper observance of which the general weal is not less dependent than domestic comfort and happiness are upon the minor morals. Time passes on, manners and customs change, institutions are modified; some ripen in the course of age, and others fall to decay; but the great principles of politics and ethics, of public and private morality, are fixed and immutable,-fixed as the order of the universe, immutable as its Creator.

The platform of general instruction was not laid (as it should have been) when we passed from popery to protestantism. Funds wrested iniquitously from the church, and which, if justly applied, would have provided for this most important object with a munificence of which no age or country has ever yet seen an example,

I could wish,' says King Edward, that when time shall serve, the superfluous and tedious statutes were brought into one sum together, and made more plain and short, to the intent that men might the better understand them; which thing shall much help to advance the profit of the commonwealth.'-If this were to be desired in his days, how infinitely more needful must it be now!

were dilapidated by the profuse expenditure of Henry VIII., and the rapacity of his favourites: and perhaps if his saintly son had attained to longer life, he might have found his best intentions frustrated by the opposition which they would have experienced from selfishness, cupidity, and contending parties. But unhappily while little was done, the easier work of undoing had proceeded with its natural rapidity. Such as the instruction of the Romish church is, it was amply provided by the Romish establishment: its outward and visible forms were always before the eyes of the people; the ceremonials were dexterously interwoven with the whole habits of their usual life; the practice of confession, baleful as it is, and liable to such perilous abuses, had yet the effect of bringing every individual under the knowledge of his spiritual teacher, while a faith, blind indeed, and grossly erroneous, was kept alive in the most ignorant of the populace by superstitious observances, the scaffolding and the trappings, the tools and the trinkets of popery. In addition to all these means, the country was filled with itinerant preachers, actively employed in co-operating with the secular clergy to one general end, (however opposed to them in individual interest,) and in supporting and strengthening the influence of the church establishment. Under that state of things, every person in the kingdom was instructed in as much of Christianity as his teacher, erring himself and ignorant of its true nature, thought necessary for salvation. He was well taught in certain legends, and knew perfectly the romance of his patron saint, and the fable of his favourite idol: he had a lively faith in purgatory, and had learnt when to kneel and when to cross himself at a mysterious and unintelligible service; and he could repeat certain prayers, with a full persuasion of their devoutness and of the utility of repeating them, though he did not understand the meaning of one syllable. Great superstition was inculcated, and implicit faith, and it has been wisely and charitably observed by John Wesley, that God makes allowance for invincible ignorance, and blesses the faith notwithstanding the superstition!"

This was the religious state of our common people before the Reformation; the point of instruction was reached at which their teachers aimed, and which their rulers thought necessary. And this is the condition of the common people in Catholic countries at this day, where they have not been infected by the pestilence of revolutionary impiety. Its effect in attaching them invincibly to the old institutions of their native land has been nobly exemplified in La Vendée, in Portugal, and in Spain. It is accompanied every where with a lamentable ignorance of the real nature of Christianity, and with a most adulterated system of morals as well as of faith: but if the same diligence had been used in these kingdoms for in

structing

structing every person in the pure faith and pure morals of the English church, can we doubt that it would have been equally successful?

We shall not surely be suspected of any disposition to favour the abuses of the Romish church; and therefore, without apprehending censure, we may express our regret, that, when those abuses were shaken off, it was either not found possible, or not thought convenient, to reform the regular clergy, instead of abolishing them altogether. Every person who has seen these orders in countries where they yet exist, must know with what scandal they are attended in their unreformed state, though the crimes imputed to them in England, as a pretext for the violent and iniquitous measure of their dissolution, were beyond all doubt grossly exaggerated. But here we have felt, and still feel, and perhaps shall one day feel yet more severely, the evil consequences of having disbanded the whole auxiliary force of the church; who did for it what the Methodists and other proselyting sectaries are now doing against it; and performed duties which the parochial clergy have never been numerous enough to discharge in all places, had the zeal in every case existed, and which, however zealous, it is not possible that they should discharge in populous places. Their institution, by rendering poverty a part of their religious profession, effected in their behalf the difficult point of making it perfectly compatible with general respect. These preachers were taken away, and at the same time the parochial clergy, who till then had lived in a certain and proper degree of affluence, were impoverished, the necessary effect of making them poor being to expose them to contempt.

The evil consequences to the clergy and to the church are frequently noticed by the writers of Elizabeth's and the succeeding reign: Politic men,' says one, begin apace already to withhold their children from schools and universities; any profession else better likes them, as knowing they may live well in whatsoever calling, save in the ministry.'-' They have taken away the unction and left us nothing but the alabaster box, the shreds, the sheards, the scrapings of our own.' As for the ministers that have livings,' says Thomas Adams, (and his marginal note says leavings not livings, Thomas Adams being addicted to the sin of punning,) they are scarce live-ons, or enough to keep themselves and their families living; and for those that have none, they may make themselves merry with their learning, if they have no money, for they that bought the patronages must needs sell the presentations.

Vendere jure potest, emerat ille prius.

"And then, if Balaam's ass hath but an audible voice and a soluble purse, he shall be preferred before his master, were he ten prophets. If this weather hold, Julian need not send learning into

exile, for no parent will be so irreligious as, with great expenses, to bring up his child at once to misery and sin.'

The condition of the inferior clergy, though it still requires improvement, has been greatly improved during the last century; but the effects of this long continued evil are still felt. For while the means of religious instruction were thought insufficient, the population has doubled upon those means, and the consequence has been that the populace in England are more ignorant of their religious duties than they are in any other Christian country. 'It would make any true Christian's heart bleed to think,' says Bishop Croft, how many thousand poor souls there are in this land that have no more knowledge of God than heathens; thousands of the mendicant condition never come to church, and are never looked after by any; likewise thousands of mean husbandry-men that do come to church, understand no more of the sermon than brutes. Perchance in their infancy some of them learnt a little of their Catechism, that is, they could, like parrots, say some broken pieces, but never understand the meaning of one line; but afterwards, as they grow up to be men, grow more babes in religion, so ignorant as scarce to know their Heavenly Father; and are admitted to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, before they are able to give account of the sacrament of baptism. Thus it is generally in the country, and in the city as bad; partly for the reason before specified, and partly by reason the number in many parishes is far greater than any one pastor can have a due care of; he cannot know half the names or faces of them, much less their faults and behaviour, which is requisite that he may both instruct and reprove when there is need.' At this day the case is worse than when the good Bishop of Hereford thus represented it; the increase of popula tion, were there no other cause, would unavoidably have made it worse. But we must also regard the growth of large towns during the last threescore years; the progress of manufactures, and the vices which unhappily both the one and the other generate, feed, and foster. Thus, even in the natural course of things, darkness has in this respect been gaining upon light, just as weeds and brambles spread themselves, where cultivation is neglected. And what is to be looked for, if, while we have been remiss in sowing good seed, the enemy has continued to sow tares, with that pestilent activity by which mischievous and malignant natures are distinguished, -what indeed but such an increase of pauperism, profligacy, and crimes of every kind, as that to which the poor-rates and the courts of law at this time bear frightful and formidable testimony!

It has been well argued by Stillingfleet, that God exercises a particular providence with respect to the condition of kingdoms and nations, making it better or worse according to the moral and

religious