Even when the motives for entering the Church. were not thus palpably gross, the choice was far more frequently made from motives of convenience and worldly circumstances, than from a deliberate and conscientious determination of the will and the judgement. Where there was influence in an endowed school, or a fair prospect of promotion at college, boys were destined for holy orders with little reference to their talents or their disposition; sometimes, indeed, notoriously, because they were thought unfit for any thing else. And when no unfitness existed, the destination was usually regarded with ominous indifference, as if it might be entered upon with as little forethought and feeling as a secular profession or a branch of trade; as if • all the heart, and all the soul, and all the strength of man were not required for the due performance of its duties, and a minister of the gospel were responsible for nothing more than what the Rubric enjoins.

The inevitable lack of zeal in a church thus constituted was not supplied, as in Catholic countries, by the frequent introduction of men in mature or declining life, in whom disappointment, wrongs, sufferings and bereavements, the visitation of God and the grace of God, have produced the most beneficial of all changes. By such men the influence of Rome has been upheld in Europe, and its doctrines extended among savage tribes and in idolatrous kingdoms, from Paraguay to Japan; but

Upon this subject see the Quarterly Review, vol. xv. pp. 228, 229.

the English establishment had provided no rooms for them, and it admitted of no supernumeraries. While there was so little zeal in the great body of the clergy, many causes combined to render the want of zeal more and more injurious. The population had doubled since the settlement of the Church under Elizabeth; yet no provision had been made for increasing proportionately the means of moral and religious instruction, which at the beginning had been insufficient. The growth of trade drew men together into towns and cities; a change in society which, however necessary in the progress of the human race, however essential to the advancement of manufactures and knowledge, ⚫ national wealth and national power, the arts, and the comforts, and the refinements of life, is assuredly, in its immediate effects, injurious to general morals. As soon as the frenzy fever of faction had spent itself, the nation had revolted against the tyrannical spirit of Puritanism, and the * unmer

"I remember," says Burnet," in one fast day there were six sermons preached without intermission. I was there myself, and not a little weary of so tedious a service." This, indeed, was in Scotland, but the service was not less tremendous in England. Philip Henry used, on such occasions, to begin at nine o'clock, and never stir out of the pulpit till about four in the afternoon," spending all that time in praying and expounding, and singing and preaching, to the admiration of all that heard him, who were generally more on such days than usual." John Howe's method of conducting these public fasts, which were frequent in those miserable days, was as follows: He began at nine o'clock with a prayer of a quarter of an hour, read and expounded Scripture for about three quarters of an hour, prayed an hour, preached another hour, then prayed half an hour: the people then sung for about a quarter of an hour, during which he retired and took a little refreshment; he then went into the pulpit again, prayed an hour more, preached another hour, and then, with a prayer of half an hour, concluded the service.

ciful forms. Unhappily, while it was in this temper, a fashion of speculative impiety was imported from France, where it had originated in a corrupt church, and in a literature more infamously licentious than that of any other country. England was but in too apt a state for receiving the poison. Some of the leading Commonwealths-men had been infidels, and hated the clergy of every denomination with a bitterness which, if the age had been ripe for it, would have produced an Anti-christian persecution; for infidelity has shown itself in its triumph to be not less intolerant than superstition. It was in this school that some of the leading statesmen, in Charles the Second's reign, had been trained; and the progress of the evil was accelerated, unintentionally indeed, but not less effectually, by a philosophy of home-growth, the shallowest that ever imposed upon the human understanding. The schools of dissent also soon became schools of unbelief: this disposition is the natural consequence of those systems which call upon every man to form his own judgement upon points of faith, without respect to the authority of other ages or of wiser minds, without reference to his own ignorance or his own incapacity; which leave humility out of the essentials of the Christian character, and when they pretend to erect their superstructure of rational belief, build upon the shifting sands of vanity and self-conceit.

See the Lay Sermons of Mr. Coleridge, and particularly the last note to the Statesman's Manual, where this subject is treated with consummate knowledge and consummate ability.

A great proportion of the Protestants in France, following too faithfully the disgraceful example of Henry the Fourth, had passed through unbelief to popery, the easy course which infidels will always take when it may suit their interest. Our Church was shaken to the foundation by the same cause: it was built upon a rock; but had the fabric fallen, the constitution would not long have remained standing. A sense of the danger from which we had escaped, and of the necessity of guarding against its recurrence, animated our clergy against the Romanists, and they exerted themselves to expose the errors and the evils of the Romish superstition. This they victoriously effected; but another, and not less essential duty, was as much neglected as ever, the duty of imbuing the people, from their youth up, with the principles of that purer faith which had been obtained for them at such cost, and preserved for them, through such afflictions, with such difficulty, and from such peril. In reality, though the temporal advantages of Christianity extended to all classes, the great majority of the populace knew nothing more of religion than its forms. They had been Papists formerly, and now they were Protestants, but they had never been Christians. The Reformation had taken away the ceremonies to which they were attached, and substituted nothing in their stead. There was the Bible, indeed, but to the great body of the labouring people the Bible was, even in the letter, a sealed book. For that system of general education which the fathers of the English church

4

desired, and which saintly King Edward designed, had never been provided.

Nevertheless, the Reformation, though thus injurious in some respects, and imperfect in others, had proved, in its general consequences, the greatest of all national blessings. It had set the intellect of the nation free. It had delivered us from spiritual bondage. It rid the land of the gross idolatry and abominable impostures of the Romish Church, and of those practices by which natural piety is debased, and national morals are degraded. It saved us from that infamous casuistry. of the confessional, the end of which was to corrupt the conscience, and destroy the broad distinction between right and wrong. All that was false, all that was burdensome, all that was absurd, had been swept away, like chaff before the wind. Whatever was retained would bear the light, for it was that pure faith which elevates the understanding and purifies the heart; which strengthens the weakness of our nature; which, instead of prescribing a system of self-tormenting, like that of the Indian Yoguees, heightens all our enjoyments, and is itself the source of the highest enjoyment to which we can attain in this imperfect state, while it prepares us for our progress in eternity.

The full effects of this blessed Reformation were felt in those ranks where its full advantages were enjoyed. The Church of England, since its separation from Rome, had never been without servants who were burning and shining lights; not for their own generations only, but for ages which are yet