exercised the right of reforming her
doctrine, discipline, and ceremonies, instancing as examples the change
which she had made in the liturgy in the reign of Edward VI. and the
reduction of her articles from forty-two to thirty-nine. The act of
union, he maintained, had not rendered any further change possible.
At the same time he contended that there was no great occasion for the
change sought by the petitioners. "I will not enter," he said, "into
the abstract merits of our articles and liturgy; perhaps there are some
things in them which one would wish had not been there; and they are not
without the marks and character of human frailty. But," he added, "it
is not human frailty and imperfection, or even a considerable degree of
them, that becomes a ground for alteration; for by no alteration
will you get rid of those errors, however you may vary them." He then
adverted to the inexpediency of these alterations, and the temper of the
times. "If," said he, "you make this a season of religious alterations,
depend upon it you will soon find it a season of religious tumults and
wars.... These gentlemen complain of hardships. No considerable number
shows discontent; but in order to give satisfaction to any considerable
number of men, who come in so decent and constitutional a mode before
us, let us examine a little what that hardship is. They want to be
preferred clergymen of the church of England as by law established, but
their consciences will not suffer them to conform to the doctrines and
practices of that church; that is, they want to be teachers in a church
to which they do not belong; it is an odd sort of hardship. They want to
receive the emoluments appropriated for teaching one set of doctrines,
whilst they are teaching another. A church in any legal sense is only
a certain system of religious doctrines and practices, fixed and
ascertained by some law; by the difference of which laws different
churches, as different commonwealths, are made in various parts of
the world; and the establishment is a tax laid by the same sovereign
authority for payment of those who so teach and practise, For no
legislature was ever so absurd as to tax its people to support men, but
by some prescribed rule." Burke then warned the house against making a
new door into the church for such gentlemen, as ten times their number
might be driven out of it, and as it would be inexpedient to displease
the clergy of England as a body, for the chan