often
referred to or too widely made known, that among all classes of
Spaniards, and even among the clergy themselves, are to be found men
eminently pious; men who, although outwardly submitting to the exigencies
of the worship which they are bound by their present laws to profess, are
not ignorant of the true spirit and doctrines of Christianity, and who,
perhaps, only need a more intimate acquaintance with scriptural truth in
all its purity to be transformed into a visible part of the faithful and
chosen flock of Christ, and enabled to adopt, in all its latitude, the
true gospel as the rule and standard of their faith and conduct.

The publication of this work, at the present juncture, has no other
object than to accelerate that desired transition, the influence of which
may give fecundity to the noble qualities of a nation under all aspects
interesting, worthy, and capable of figuring in the foremost rank of the
polished and regenerate.

CHAPTER I.

THE SPANISH CLERGY--Their primitive state--Their subsequent
organization--_Barraganas_--Immoral practices of the clergy--Their
wealth, and its sources--Their territorial possessions--Their influence
and incomes--Their opposition to the sciences--Their ultramontane
principles--The "pass" of the Spanish sovereign necessary to the validity
of the Pope's bulls--Doctrine of the Jansenists favoured by the ministers
of Charles III.--Port-Royal and San Isidro--Parish priests--Sources of
their income--Many of them good men, but deficient in scriptural
knowledge and teaching--Their preaching--Abolition of tithes by the
minister, Mendizabal--Effects of that measure--Poverty and present state
of the clergy--Their degraded character and unpopularity--Their timidity
in recent times of tumult--Ecclesiastical writers of the Peninsula--Power
of the Inquisition curtailed by Charles III.

Among the northern nations which invaded Europe, on the fall of the Roman
Empire, the Goths were those who most distinguished themselves by the
promptitude with which they embraced Christianity, and by the sincerity
and constancy with which they observed its precepts and adhered to its
dogmas.

When they founded the Spanish monarchy, they were in a complete state of
ignorance and barbarism; and as the clergy were at that time the sole
depositaries of the little that was known of the dead languages, science,
and literature, they were the counsellors of the sovereigns, the
directors and prime