t of turning their independent
clergy into ecclesiastical pensioners of state. They tremble for their
liberty, from the influence of a clergy dependent on the crown; they
tremble for the public tranquillity, from the disorders of a factious
clergy, if it were made to depend upon any other than the crown. They
therefore made their Church, like their king and their nobility,
independent.

From the united considerations of religion and constitutional policy,
from their opinion of a duty to make a sure provision for the
consolation of the feeble and the instruction of the ignorant, they have
incorporated and identified the estate of the Church with the mass of
_private property_, of which the state is not the proprietor, either for
use or dominion, but the guardian only and the regulator. They have
ordained that the provision of this establishment might be as stable as
the earth on which it stands, and should not fluctuate with the Euripus
of funds and actions.

The men of England, the men, I mean, of light and leading in England,
whose wisdom (if they have any) is open and direct, would be ashamed, as
of a silly, deceitful trick, to profess any religion in name, which by
their proceedings they appear to contemn. If by their conduct (the only
language that rarely lies) they seemed to regard the great ruling
principle of the moral and the natural world as a mere invention to keep
the vulgar in obedience, they apprehend that by such a conduct they
would defeat the politic purpose they have in view. They would find it
difficult to make others believe in a system to which they manifestly
gave no credit themselves. The Christian statesmen of this land would,
indeed, first provide for the _multitude_, because it is the
_multitude_, and is therefore, as such, the first object in the
ecclesiastical institution, and in all institutions. They have been
taught that the circumstance of the Gospel's being preached to the poor
was one of the great tests of its true mission. They think, therefore,
that those do not believe it who do not take care it should be preached
to the poor. But as they know that charity is not confined to any one
description, but ought to apply itself to all men who have wants, they
are not deprived of a due and anxious sensation of pity to the
distresses of the miserable great. They are not repelled, through a
fastidious delicacy, at the stench of their arrogance and presumption,
from a medicinal attention to th