against them on this head.
Speaking of the shortcomings of the clergy in the early part of the
century, Bishop Burnet, who does not spare his order, carefully guards
against the supposition that he accuses them of leading immoral lives.
'When,' he writes, 'I say live better, I mean not only to live without
scandal, which I have found the greatest part of them to do, but to lead
exemplary lives.'[692] Some years later, Bentley could boldly assert of
'the whole clergy of England' that they were 'the light and glory of
Christianity,'[693] an assertion which he would scarcely have dared to
make had they been sunk into such a slough of iniquity as they are
sometimes represented to have been. Writing to Courayer in 1726,
Archbishop Wake laments the infidelity and iniquity which abounded, but
is of opinion that 'no care is wanting in our clergy to defend the
Christian faith.'[694] John Wesley, while decrying the notion that the
unworthiness of the minister vitiates the worth of his ministry, admits
that 'in the present century the behaviour of the clergy in general is
greatly altered for the better,' although he thinks them deficient both
in piety and knowledge. Or if clerical testimony be suspected of
partiality, we have abundance of lay evidence all tending to the same
conclusion. Smollett, a contemporary, declares that in the reign of
George II. 'the clergy were generally pious and exemplary.'[695] When a
Presbyterian clergyman talked before Dr. Johnson of fat bishops and
drowsy deans, he replied, 'Sir, you know no more of our Church than a
Hottentot.'[696] One of the most impartial historians of our own day and
country, in dwelling upon the immoralities of the age and upon the
clerical shortcomings, adds that 'the lives of the clergy were, as a
rule, pure.'[697]

It is necessary to bring into prominence such testimony as this because
there has been a tendency to insinuate what has never been proved--that
the clergy were, as a body, living immoral lives. At the same time it is
not desired to palliate their real defects. It is admitted that a more
active and earnest performance of their proper duties might have done
much more than was done by the clergy to stem the torrent of iniquity.

Yet after all it is doubtful whether the clergy, even if they had been
far more energetic and spiritually-minded than they were, could have
effected such a reformation as was needed.[698] For there was a long
train of causes at work dating b