hey are very far from being ready to
acquiesce in any attempt to restore the dominion which their fathers
discarded.

In one respect, indeed, sacerdotalism in the Anglican Church is a worse
thing than in the Roman Church, for it is undisciplined and unregulated.
The history of the Church abundantly shows the dangers that have sprung
from the Confessional, though the Roman Catholic will maintain that its
habitually restraining and moralising influence greatly outweighs these
occasional abuses. But in the Roman Church the practice of confession is
carried on under the most severe ecclesiastical supervision and
discipline. Confession can only be made to a celibate priest of mature
age, who is bound to secrecy by the most solemn oath; who, except in
cases of grave illness, confesses only in an open church; and who has
gone through a long course of careful education specially and skilfully
designed to fit him for the duty. None of these conditions are observed
in Anglican Confession.

In other respects, indeed, the sacerdotal spirit is never likely to be
quite the same as in the Roman Church. A married clergy, who have mixed
in all the lay influences of an English university, and who still take
part in the pursuits, studies, social intercourse and amusements of
laymen, are not likely to form a separate caste or to constitute a very
formidable priesthood. It is perhaps a little difficult to treat their
pretensions with becoming gravity, and the atmosphere of unlimited
discussion which envelops Englishmen through their whole lives has
effectually destroyed the danger of coercive and restrictive laws
directed against opinion. Moral coercion and the tendency to interfere
by law on moral grounds with the habits of men, even when those habits
in no degree interfere with others, have increased. It is one of the
marked tendencies of Anglo-Saxon democracy, and it is very far from
being peculiar to, or even specially prominent in, any one Church. But
the desire to repress the expression of opinions by force, which for so
many centuries marked with blood and fire the power of mediaeval
sacerdotalism, is wholly alien to modern English nature. Amid all the
fanaticisms, exaggerations, and superstitions of belief, this kind of
coercion, at least, is never likely to be formidable, nor do I believe
that in the most extreme section of the sacerdotal clergy there is any
desire for it. There has been one significant contrast between the
histo