o wants
has obtained great freedom and firmness, and even dignity. But as the
mass of any description of men are but men, and their poverty cannot be
voluntary, that disrespect which attends upon all lay poverty will not
depart from the ecclesiastical. Our provident Constitution has therefore
taken care that those who are to instruct presumptuous ignorance, those
who are to be censors over insolent vice, should neither incur their
contempt nor live upon their alms; nor will it tempt the rich to a
neglect of the true medicine of their minds. For these reasons, whilst
we provide first for the poor, and with a parental solicitude, we have
not relegated religion (like something we were ashamed to show) to
obscure municipalities or rustic villages. No! we will have her to exalt
her mitred front in courts and parliaments. We will have her mixed
throughout the whole mass of life, and blended with all the classes of
society. The people of England will show to the haughty potentates of
the world, and to their talking sophisters, that a free, a generous, an
informed nation honors the high magistrates of its Church; that it will
not suffer the insolence of wealth and titles, or any other species of
proud pretension, to look down with scorn upon what they look up to with
reverence, nor presume to trample on that acquired personal nobility
which they intend always to be, and which often is, the fruit, not the
reward, (for what can be the reward?) of learning, piety, and virtue.
They can see, without pain or grudging, an archbishop precede a duke.
They can see a bishop of Durham or a bishop of Winchester in possession
of ten thousand pounds a year, and cannot conceive why it is in worse
hands than estates to the like amount in the hands of this earl or that
squire; although it may be true that so many dogs and horses are not
kept by the former, and fed with the victuals which ought to nourish the
children of the people. It is true, the whole Church revenue is not
always employed, and to every shilling, in charity; nor perhaps ought
it; but something is generally so employed. It is better to cherish
virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss
to the object, than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments
of a political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a
liberty without which virtue cannot exist.

When once the commonwealth has established the estates of the Church as
property, it ca