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The Dissenters, being from their circumstances (for no other kind of merit is pretended) the friends of civil liberty, and of a limited monarchy, will always be favoured by those who are called Whigs in the Established Church, and their chief opposers will be those who are called Tories, or the friends of arbitrary power.

Still the Unitarians were left exposed to all the rigour of the former statutes, and none could enjoy the benefit of the toleration, but upon condition of subscribing all the doctrinal Articles of the Church of England; or teach a school without a licence from a bishop. More liberty has lately been procured in these respects. But Unitarians, whose numbers are allowed by all to be greatly increasing, were not only exposed to the former laws, but a new one was enacted against them, which makes it eventually confiscation of goods, and imprisonment for life, to profess that doctrine. This was a law made in the time of William himself, and which, you see, Mr. Madan would not have repealed.

Notwithstanding all these discouragements, the number of Dissenters is probably increasing, and those who adopt our principles in the church, but who cannot persuade themselves to abandon it, are increasing in a still greater proportion; so that the inconveniences of the present establishment are every day more apparent. And as the minds of men cannot fail to be more and more enlightened, the evil must in time appear to be so great, that some redress will be found; and the longer it is delayed. the more complete it may be expected to be. Sensible of this, we are not very solicitous about any reformation at present. Let the evil grow more conspicuous, and the remedy will be more certain and effectual.

LETTER XX.

I am, &c.

Of the Situation of the Clergy of the Established Church. MY FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS,

Ir it be of consequence to all men to have some knowledge of their neighbours, with whom they have frequent intercourse, it must be much more so to know themselves, the society to which they belong, and the government under which they put themselves, with all its defects, as well as its excellencies; and since nothing in this world is perfect, we

should be continually endeavouring to put things into a state of improvement. Having therefore endeavoured to give you some idea of the rise and principles of the Dissenters, I shall now point out to you some things that it behoves you to attend to in the constitution of your Established Church. And as your clergy are continually displaying its excellencies, (which I am far from denying, but on the contrary, endeavouring to adopt,) you will naturally expect from me some account of its defects. In this I am not unwilling that you should make what allowance you think proper for my prejudices, as well as theirs; and all that I wish is, that you would inquire, and judge impartially for yourselves. It is a business that much more nearly concerns you, than it does me.

I shall not enlarge upon all the particulars that, in my opinion, require to be reformed in the system of your Established Church, for that would require a volume; but in this Letter I shall mention a few circumstances in the situation of the clergy unfavourable to them, and to religion, because of these you will be better judges than of many other things in the constitution of the church, and by these you may judge of the rest of the system. And it is the system to which they are subject that makes the clergy to be what they are, and they must be more than men to withstand the fatal influence of it. No other set of men whatever could be expected to be, or to do, more than they are, or than they do, in their situation. This general acknowledgment, in the making of which I am perfectly sincere, will, I hope, excuse any seeming breach of candour in what I shall have occasion to say on this subject.

1. The first thing that I shall observe unfavourable to your clergy, and consequently to religion, and to yourselves, is, that the persons whom their services respect have no power of appointing or dismissing them. Should this be the case with your clerks, and agents, what could you expect of them? Would they not soon behave more like masters than servants? And, accordingly, with you the very idea of the clergy being your servants, men who are paid for doing a certain duty, is in a manner lost, though that is the very meaning of the word minister. It is this one circumstance that contributes most to make the striking difference that there actually is between the character and behaviour of Dissenting Ministers and those of your clergy. A drunken, a swearing, or debauched minister among us, I will venture to say, you never heard of, though such characters are not

uncommon among you. This is not because we are naturally better than they, but because our circumstances oblige us to be so. Take away the restraint that we are now under, and in time, when the effect of good habits, which now prevail among us, should be over, and when the new circumstances should be able to operate, there would be no difference between us and them.

In general, also, no person with us ever thinks of educating a son for the ministry if he be not thought to be a youth both of a pretty good capacity, and of a serious turn of mind; because his respectability and his success in his profession depend upon them. But this, you well know, is not the case with you; because a man who has good connexions, though very slender qualifications, and no extraordinary character, may be introduced into very high, if not the highest, dignities in your church. Many of them are constantly filled with the younger sons of good families, merely because they furnish a reputable maintenance for them; and this is one circumstance that interests the great families in this country in the support of the establishment; and the same is the case with respect to the establishment of Popery abroad.*

In the late glorious Revolution in France this great abuse has not been overlooked. All the bishops and officiating clergy in general, have been made elective by those whom their services respect, and neither the Pope nor the King has so much as a negative on the choice of the people. Nay, Protestants and Jews have equal votes with Catholics.

2. Another circumstance unfavourable to your clergy is, that their education does not tend to prepare them for the proper duties of their profession, since they are not of a theological nature. As the clergy are a body of men whose business it is to teach others religion, you would expect that they should first be taught it themselves. But this is not the case. No provision is made for it in the Universities.

* As there is no system so bad as to be without its admirers, (and indeed there is no evil without some good attending it,) many think it much better that their parishioners should not have the choice of their ministers, since that would endanger the peace of the parish. But for the same reason, it would also be better for the people of this country to have no votes in the election of members of parliament, or any controul, direct or indirect, over any part of the civil government. One absolute master would much better preserve the peace, and prevent dissension and cabal. Every power that man has requires prudence in the use of it. But must such a creature as man, whose distinguishing faculty is reason, be debarred from the use of it, and abandon all his natural powers, because, if any thing be left to his discretion, it is of course left to his indiscretion also? It would, then, be much better to be a brute animal, under the absolute direction of another. (P.) VOL. XIX.

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There nothing is necessarily taught but the classics, and other branches of what is generally called profane literature, and even in this respect the great body of your clergy are but indifferently furnished; for, as I am informed, great numbers of them have no university education at all. In the northern counties this is said to be a very common case indeed. It is also much too easy a thing for persons of other professions, the law, the army, or navy, or even from common trades, to get orders, provided they can procure titles to livings.

Well did our Saviour say, [Luke xvi. 8,]" The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." Would any of you take a clerk into a countinghouse who had not been taught arithmetic, or who, in any other respect, had not been trained to the business in which you wanted to employ him? Would Would you, instead of having recourse to a regular attorney, get important writings drawn by a person who had not been properly instructed in the nature of them, and who had had no practice in things of that kind? Or would you trust any man with the conduct of a manufactory merely because some great man, or some particular friend, wanted to find a decent provision for him? If you did, you well know there would soon be an end of the business of your counting-houses, your manufactories, and all your affairs; and, that you would want some provision for yourselves.

I do not boast of the situation of things among the Dissenters; but it would be very extraordinary indeed if we were not better qualified for the performance of what is required of us, than your clergy are for what is required of them; because the duties of our profession are the great objects of our education. Classics, mathematics and philosophy are not neglected; but with us every thing is made subservient to the study of theology, the knowledge of the Scriptures, the composition of sermons, and the discharge of other parts of ministerial duty.

It is obviously necessary that every Christian minister should understand the languages in which the Bible was written; and in our places of liberal education we are always taught Hebrew as well as Greek. But with your clergy this is a voluntary thing. They may learn Hebrew as they may Chinese, or any other language, but they are under no obligation to do it. Their getting orders does not depend upon it. Do you inquire among the clergy in this town and neighbourhood, and I will venture to say,

without knowing any thing particular of the matter, that you will not find one clergyman in a hundred who can so much as read a Hebrew word, and not one minister, educated at any of our academies, who cannot read and construe it, Greek, your clergy learn because it is an article of classical education, and not because it is the language of the New Testament.

In consequence also of our mode of education, a habit of composition is universal among Dissenting Ministers, but it is by no means so among yours. It is generally thought that, though there are ten Clergymen for one Dissenting Minister in this country, we compose more sermons than they do, and our publications of other kinds are far more numerous than theirs in proportion to our numbers; which is a proof that, in general, we are of a much more studious turn than they are. The sermons the most admired for their composition of any that your church has boasted of in the present age, were those that were published by Dr. White, "professor of Arabic," [as preached] at the Bampton Lecture. But a great part of them now appears to have been written by a Dissenter, a person educated at the very meanest of our academies, and formerly my most humble admirer, though afterwards my opponent, Mr. Badcock.*

The deficiency of the clergy in that kind of learning which most becomes their profession, is evident from my controversy relating to the person of Christ. Bishop Horsley's Tracts you will hear cried up by Mr. Madan, and others. But the probability is, that they have not read even them, and much less what I have written on the other side of the question, especially my "History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ." Let Mr. Madan himself, who speaks of my "smarting under this bishop's lash," say upon his honour whether he has or not. I have too good an opinion both of his judgment, and of his integrity, to think that he will say thus much; though, without much reading on the subject, he may think himself warranted to join in the general plaudits of his order on the side of their champion. A bishop lately deceased, and who was acknowledged to be one of the best scholars not only on the bench, but of his age, told me about the time of the opening of this controversy, that so low was the state of this kind of learning, viz. an acquaintance with the fathers and Christian antiquity, that he did not know that there was a single • See supra, p. 4; Appendix No. VI.; Vol. XVIII. pp. 127, 187, 276, Note ↑. + See supra, p. 223.

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