Secondly, I said that men of the world, judging by the event, and not
recognizing the secret causes of the success, viz. a higher order of
natural laws--natural, though their source and action were
supernatural, (for "the meek inherit the earth," by means of a
meekness which comes from above)--these men, I say, concluded, that
the success which they witnessed must arise from some evil secret
which the world had not mastered--by means of magic, as they said in
the first ages, by cunning as they say now. And accordingly they
thought that the humility and inoffensiveness of Christians, or of
Churchmen, was a mere pretence and blind to cover the real causes of
that success, which Christians could explain and would not; and that
they were simply hypocrites.

Thirdly, I suggested that shrewd ecclesiastics, who knew very well
that there was neither magic nor craft in the matter, and, from their
intimate acquaintance with what actually went on within the Church,
discerned what were the real causes of its success, were of course
under the temptation of substituting reason for conscience, and,
instead of simply obeying the command, were led to do good that good
might come, that is, to act _in order_ to their success, and not from
a motive of faith. Some, I said, did yield to the temptation more or
less, and their motives became mixed; and in this way the world in a
more subtle shape has got into the Church; and hence it has come to
pass, that, looking at its history from first to last, we cannot
possibly draw the line between good and evil there, and say either
that everything is to be defended, or some things to be condemned. I
expressed the difficulty, which I supposed to be inherent in the
Church, in the following words. I said, "_Priestcraft has ever been
considered the badge_, and its imputation is a kind of Note of the
Church; and _in part indeed truly_, because the presence of powerful
enemies, and the sense of their own weakness, _has sometimes tempted
Christians to the abuse, instead of the use of Christian wisdom, to
be wise without being harmless_; but partly, nay, for the most part,
not truly, but slanderously, and merely because the world called
their wisdom craft, when it was found to be a match for its own
numbers and power." This passage he has partly garbled, partly
omitted. Blot _eleven_.

Such is the substance of the sermon: and as to the main drift of it,
it was this; that I was, there and elsewhere, scru