erms) by the name of a _Civic
Education_.

I hope their partisans in England (to whom I rather attribute very
inconsiderate conduct than the ultimate object in this detestable
design) will succeed neither in the pillage of the ecclesiastics nor in
the introduction of a principle of popular election to our bishoprics
and parochial cures. This, in the present condition of the world, would
be the last corruption of the Church, the utter ruin of the clerical
character, the most dangerous shock that the state ever received through
a misunderstood arrangement of religion. I know well enough that the
bishoprics and cures, under kingly and seigniorial patronage, as now
they are in England, and as they have been lately in France, are
sometimes acquired by unworthy methods; but the other mode of
ecclesiastical canvass subjects them infinitely more surely and more
generally to all the evil arts of low ambition, which, operating on and
through greater numbers, will produce mischief in proportion.

Those of you who have robbed the clergy think that they shall easily
reconcile their conduct to all Protestant nations, because the clergy
whom they have thus plundered, degraded, and given over to mockery and
scorn, are of the Roman Catholic, that is, of _their own_ pretended
persuasion. I have no doubt that some miserable bigots will be found
here as well as elsewhere, who hate sects and parties different from
their own more than they love the substance of religion, and who are
more angry with those who differ from them in their particular plans and
systems than displeased with those who attack the foundation of our
common hope. These men will write and speak on the subject in the manner
that is to be expected from their temper and character. Burnet says,
that, when he was in France, in the year 1683, "the method which carried
over the men of the finest parts to Popery was this: they brought
themselves to doubt of the whole Christian religion: when that was once
done, it seemed a more indifferent thing of what side or form they
continued outwardly." If this was then the ecclesiastic policy of
France, it is what they have since but too much reason to repent of.
They preferred atheism to a form of religion not agreeable to their
ideas. They succeeded in destroying that form; and atheism has succeeded
in destroying them. I can readily give credit to Burnet's story; because
I have observed too much of a similar spirit (for a little of it i