more than their own match, have owed their ownselves. But whilst these controversies were going on amongst scholars, respecting the reasonableness of Christianity, (we are the last persons to underrate their importance,) the million, who, in the simplicity of their hearts, never doubted about its reasonableness, and regarded such disputes among doctors merely as questions of their law,' in which themselves had no interest, and concerning which they felt no curiosity,

"These hungry sheep looked up, and were not fed.'

They and their teachers did not understand one another; the latter too often addressed them as Sadducees, who wanted con viction, which is seldom the case with the multitude in any nation. They felt themselves to be sinners who wanted relief, which is the case with the multitude in every nation, for it is the dictate of nature. They were asking for fish, and a serpent was given them; it might be the subtlest beast of the field, but it was not to the purpose: they were crying for bread, and a stone was offered them; it might be, indeed, a philosopher's stone, but it was not what they sought. We are aware that many there are to whose opinion the utmost respect is due, who do not take this view of the theology of the early and middle part of the last century. We state, therefore, our own impressions with much submission; but an author of those times, no fanatic either, but, on the contrary, one who dealt some of the heaviest blows at fanaticism that it has ever felt, takes the same view. And whatever extravagancies the prolific genius of Warburton led him into, amidst all his refinements, and discoveries, and paradoxes, the great principles of the Gospel, as they were held and taught by the reformers, he never lost sight of, (however he might not be true to some of inferior importance,) and any departure from those great principles no man was more quick to observe, or more anxious to reprobate. At the same time, it is not to be concealed that the theology of his day was not the more likely to find favour in his eyes, from the circumstance that his own most elaborate work had been received by his own order with suspicion, if not with alarm; and that in any sketch from his hand, even though drawn at a moment when no evil spirit was upon him, some allowance must be made for the native strength and boldness of his style:---

The church,' says he, with his characteristic force, the church, like a fair and vigorous tree, once teemed with the richest and noblest burthen; and though, together with its best fruits, it pushed out some hurtful suckers, receding every way from the mother plant, crooked and misshapen, if you will, and obscuring and eclipsing the beauty of its stem, yet still there was something in their height and verdure which bespoke the generosity of the stock they rose from. She is now

seen

seen under all the marks of a total decay; her top scorched and blasted, her chief branches bare and barren, and nothing remaining of that comeliness which once invited the whole continent to her shade, The chief sign of life she now gives is the exuding from her sickly, trunk a number of deformed funguses, which call themselves of her because they stick upon her surface, and suck out the little remains of her sap and spirits.'

Meanwhile, population was increasing, and not increasing only, but shifting its relative position; mines, manufactories, and the like, distributing it in very different masses through the country, For this new order of things no religious provision was made. It has been computed that a body of nine hundred and fifty-three thousand persons, a number at that time actually exceeding the population of nine entire counties, had gradually accumulated within eight miles of St. Paul's, for whom, until recently, no church room had been provided. The progress of the evil had been observed, and an attempt made to meet it, in the reign of Queen Anne; some teu places of worship were voted by parliament, or rather built, for we believe fifty were voted, but that the funds proved inadequate to realize the vote. What need, then, have we to call in the conjurers to account for the increasing profligacy of the metropolis? The supineness of the last generation sowed the wind, and it is according to the natural order of things that we should reap the whirlwind. Our fathers have eaten the sour grapes, and our teeth are set on edge. We trust that the exertions which have been made of late, and which are still making, for the more adequate supply of the religious wants of the people, will tend to remove the charge which Sir T. More brings against us in Mr. Southey's dialogue, not, we fear, without

reason.

6

Your age, says he, has not advanced more in chemical and mechanical science, and in promoting the comforts and luxuries of life for the classes to whose lot comforts and luxuries fall, than it has gone backward in some of the most essential points of polity.

As there is no error' (it is added) more prevalent, so is there none more dangerous, than the doctrine which is so sedulously inculcated, that the state ought not to concern itself with the religion of the subjects; whereas religion is the only foundation of society, and governments which have not this basis are built upon sand.'-p. 284.

Surely, if there be one fact established above another by the annals of the world it is this, that the state of religion cannot be safely disregarded by any government-that however jesters may deride, and philosophers despise, and politicians forget it, it will eventually assert its claims to attention, and prove them. Nothing

• Introduction to Julian.

could

could be more amusing to the courtiers of Charles I. and Charles II. than the grotesque portrait of the Puritan-his straight hairhis sorrowful countenance-his affected vocabulary-his whimsical names-his visions-his raptures-his scruples about plum-porridge and black-puddings,―all might furnish ample merriment to the gay and gallant cavaliers. But the joke did not turn out to be on their side in the end; Cromwell knew the force of religious. principle, and availed himself of it; he knew that nothing could stand against it when sincerely (however erroneously) entertained —and that loyalty and relationship, and the chivalry of birth, and whatever else may serve to raise the spirit of a man to high exploits, are as nothing when opposed to it ;-and so it came to pass. We are not defending the extravagances of the puritans; we are merely showing that a principle thus powerful cannot be safely neglected in a nation's counsels-a principle which, under the guidance of a Luther, obscure as he was, insignificant but from the weapon which he wielded, wrought a change in the affairs of men infinitely greater in character, in duration, and in extent, than all which was achieved by the mere force of arms and vulgar conquests of a Francis or a Charles. But to return

Thus did the word of the Lord become precious in those days, for the church establishment continued stationary while the people were multiplying exceedingly. But man is a religious animal, and if those whose duty it is to minister to his natural instinct, fail in that duty, he will minister for himself. Surely the Bristol colliers, down whose sable cheeks the tears worked a visible channel, at the field-preaching of Whitefield, had hearts to be opened before him; but how could they hear without a preacher, and how could any preach except he was sent? Accordingly, Wesley now blew his trumpet (says Mr. Southey), and awakened those who slept. Since that time, sad divisions have been amongst us, both in the church and out of it, for a plentiful crop of tares sprung up with what wheat he sowed, or, we would rather say, caused others to sow; and these divisions have been thrown in our teeth by the declaimers upon Roman Catholic unity, and the croakers over our own want of it; but, after all, we know not whether these divisions are really more various or more virulent than existed in this same infallible church, in spite of its boasted unity. Of the Scotists and Thomists, of the factions for and against the original sin of the Blessed Virgin, of the divers opinions held as to the divine or human appointment of auricular confession, and many other points of difference enumerated by Bishop Jewel, we say nothing; for these, after all, were not, perhaps, questions calculated to divide the church against itself, so as to endanger its safety: neither shall we speak of the Jesuits and Jansenists of later times, though

the

the existence of two such parties shows that even Rome herself had not the power to muzzle mankind upon a subject which, of all others, has been the most fruitful mother of religious discord: -but this we do say, that the schism between the secular and regular clergy, before the reformation, was of a nature to shake the stability of the Roman Catholic church more perilously, than any which has existed since, can endanger our own. Either party was throwing stones at the other at a time when the houses of both parties were made of glass. The indecent contest between the two popes could not have been more prejudicial to the Popedom at large, than was this to the interest of that power in England. The arena of such disputes was usually the tavern, where the clergy of those times very freely resorted in an evening, a practice against which Latimer lifts up his voice, alleging, by way of contrast and example, the shepherds who kept watch over their flocks by night; and the witnesses of such disputes were the pot-politicians of the place, who desired no better diversion than to laugh at the wranglers on either side. Symptoms of the jealousy and ill-blood thus occasioned, among their respective followers, abound in the writers of those times; or if not jealousy of either, mockery of both. In the Sompnowre's tale of Chaucer, the crafty friar apologizes to the wife for speaking (as he pretends) a little plain truth to the good man of the house on the ground of the curate's negligence concerning such matters. These curates,' says this worthy Pharisee,

"These curates ben so negligent and slow,

To gropen tenderly a conscience,"

and then he adds, with the usual self-complacency of his craft, "In shrift and preaching is my diligence."'

The poet himself, however, thought otherwise of these gentry, leaning (as a courtier was likely to do) to the secular clergy; and whilst in his prologue he depicts his friar as far better acquainted with all the taverns, hostlers, and 'tapsteres' of every town in his neighbourhood, than with the lazar or beggere; and his monk as occupied in venerie, grey-hounds, and pricking and hunting of the hare,' he presents us with his beautiful picture of the Poore Parson of a town,' (a picture which Dryden has imitated, though not, perhaps, improved,)-and happy is the clergyman who can approach, even in this day, to a model so perfectly evangelical. So, again, in a very curious and characteristic dialogue of Erasmus, two Franciscans, on being refused a night's lodging by the parson of the parish, who, as usual, had no great love for such society, are represented as taking refuge with the village publican. "What kind of pastor have you here," quoth one of them to mine

host

host of the Dog and Dish," dumb, I warrant, and good for little ?" "What others find him, I know not, I find him a very worthy fellow; here he sits drinking all the day long; and for customers, no man brings me better: and now I think of it, I wonder he is not here." "He was not, however, over civil to us." "You have met with him, then?" We asked him for a night's lodging, but he bade us begone, as if we had been wolves, and recommended us to try you." "Ha, ha, now I understand; he is not here, because he is aware that you are before him." "Is he a dumb dog?" "Dumb! tut; no man makes more noise in my tap-room-nay, he is loud enough at church, too, though I never heard him preach there. But why waste my words; he has given you proof enough, I fancy, that he is not dumb. "Does he know his Bible ?" "Excellently well, he says, but his knowledge smacks of the confessional; he has it on condition of never letting it go further." "Probably he would not allow a man to preach for him?" Yes, I'll answer for it, provided you don't preach at him, as a good many of your cloth have a trick of doing.'

Many, indeed, did so; and in those fierce invectives which Dante and Petrarch so frequently launch at the corruptions of the church of Rome, they were, perhaps, only practising a lesson which they had learned from the friars. Indeed, nothing could be more disastrous than this schism, for such it may be called'; the cathedral clergy, and the cathedrals themselves, suffered exceedingly by it. For those venerable establishments being sup ported not merely out of the rent of lands attached, this being wholly inadequate, but out of obits, voluntary benefactions, and annual offerings for every household at Pentecost, thence called Pentecostals, when these latter sources of income were withdrawn, as they were, through the malignant influence of the friars, the funds were no longer equal to maintaining the usual number of canons, and scarcely to keeping the buildings in repair. Thus the reformation found the dividends restricted to a few residen tiaries, and the edifices themselves in danger of decay. Nor was' this all. Even amongst the regulars themselves, there were endless divisions and sub-divisions, calculated to waste their strength, and do injury to their common cause. For these same pestilent friars, not content with wandering about the kingdom” under their papal privilege, intruding into the labours of the parish priest, withdrawing the people from his communion, setting up altars of their own, pretending a sanctity of life and assiduity of preaching, which was after a while found false and hollow, but which, for a season, well nigh wrought the ruin of the parochial clergy; 'not content with all this, they must have their fling at the monks too, contrasting their own voluntary poverty (which lasted" just as long as they could not help it) with the luxury of the other orders, and poisoning the minds of the people by sneers against a

class