is else great danger.' In
1753 he repeats his injunctions, but in a still more desponding tone.
'Offences,' he says, 'against religion and morals churchwardens are
bound by oath to present; and incumbents or curates are empowered and
charged by the 113th and following canons to join with them in
presenting, if need be, or to present alone if they refuse. This implies
what the 26th canon expresses, that the minister is to urge
churchwardens to perform that part of their office. Try first by public
and private rebukes to amend them; but if these are ineffectual, get
them corrected by authority. I am perfectly sensible that immorality and
irreligion are grown almost beyond the reach of ecclesiastical power,
which, having in former times been very unwarrantably extended, hath
since been very unjustly and imprudently cramped and weakened many
ways.' After having given directions about excommunications and penance,
he urges them, as a last resort, 'to remind the people that, however the
censures of the Church may be relaxed or evaded, yet God's judgment
cannot.' Yet even so late as 1766 he explains to candidates for orders
the text addressed to them at their ordination, 'Whose sins thou dost
retain, they are retained,' as conferring 'a right of inflicting
ecclesiastical censures for a shorter or longer time, and of taking them
off, which is, in regard to external communion, retaining or forgiving
offences.' 'Our acts,' he adds, 'as those of temporal judges, are to be
respected as done by competent authority. Nor will other proofs of
repentance be sufficient if submission to the discipline of the Church
of Christ, when it hath been offended and requires due satisfaction, be
obstinately refused.'[704] This is not the place to discuss the
possibility or the advisability under altered circumstances of enforcing
ecclesiastical discipline, but in common fairness to the clergy, who
were accused of doing little or nothing to oppose the general depravity,
it should be borne in mind that they were practically debarred from
using a formidable weapon which in earlier times had been wielded with
great effect.[705]

Nor should we forget that if the clergy were inactive and unsuccessful
in one direction, many of them at least were singularly active and
successful in another. There was within the pale of the Church at the
period of which we are speaking a degree of intellect and learning which
has rarely been surpassed in its palmiest days.