oral wound may be inflicted upon the heart of the
English people, for which a remedy cannot be speedily provided by the
utmost efforts which the members of the Church will themselves be able
to make.

But let the friends of the Church be of good courage. Powers are at work
by which, under Divine Providence, she may be strengthened and the
sphere of her usefulness extended; not by alterations in her Liturgy,
accommodated to this or that demand of finical taste, nor by cutting off
this or that from her articles or Canons, to which the scrupulous or the
overweening may object. Covert schism, and open nonconformity, would
survive after alterations, however promising in the eyes of those whose
subtilty had been exercised in making them. Latitudinarianism is the
parhelion of liberty of conscience, and will ever successfully lay claim
to a divided worship. Among Presbyterians, Socinians, Baptists, and
Independents, there will always be found numbers who will tire of their
several creeds, and some will come over to the Church. Conventicles may
disappear, congregations in each denomination may fall into decay or be
broken up, but the conquests which the National Church ought chiefly to
aim at, lie among the thousands and tens of thousands of the unhappy
outcasts who grow up with no religion at all. The wants of these cannot
but be feelingly remembered. Whatever may be the disposition of the new
constituencies under the Reformed Parliament, and the course which the
men of their choice may be inclined or compelled to follow, it may be
confidently hoped that individuals, acting in their private capacities,
will endeavour to make up for the deficiencies of the Legislature. Is it
too much to expect that proprietors of large estates, where the
inhabitants are without religious instruction, or where it is sparingly
supplied, will deem it their duty to take part in this good work; and
that thriving manufacturers and merchants will, in their several
neighbourhoods, be sensible of the like obligation, and act upon it with
generous rivalry?

Moreover, the force of public opinion is rapidly increasing: and some
may bend to it, who are not so happy as to be swayed by a higher motive:
especially they who derive large incomes from lay-impropriations, in
tracts of country where ministers are few and meagerly provided for. A
claim still stronger may be acknowledged by those who, round their
superb habitations, or elsewhere, walk over vast estat