rally, and by name the Bishop of
Manchester, to say whether usury was, or was not, according to the will
of God, I have received no answer from any one of them.[162]

_13th August._

237. I have allowed myself, in the beginning of this letter, to dwell on
the equivocal use of the word "Priest" in the English Church (see
Christopher Harvey, Grosart's edition, p. 38), because the assumption of
the mediatorial, in defect of the pastoral, office by the clergy fulfill
itself, naturally and always, in their pretending to absolve the sinner
from his punishment, instead of purging him from his sin; and
practically, in their general patronage and encouragement of all the
iniquity of the world, by steadily preaching away the penalties of it.
So that the great cities of the earth, which ought to be the places set
on its hills, with the temple of the Lord in the midst of them, to which
the tribes should go up,[163]--centers to the Kingdoms and Provinces of
Honor, Virtue, and the Knowledge of the law of God,--have become,
instead, loathsome centers of fornication and covetousness--the smoke of
their sin going up into the face of Heaven like the furnace of Sodom,
and the pollution of it rotting and raging through the bones and the
souls of the peasant people round them, as if they were each a volcano
whose ashes broke out in blains upon man and upon beast.[164]

And in the midst of them, their freshly-set-tip steeples ring the crowd
to a weekly prayer that the rest of their lives may be pure and holy,
while they have not the slightest intention of purifying, sanctifying,
or changing their lives in any the smallest particular; and their clergy
gather, each into himself, the curious dual power, and Janus-faced
majesty in mischief, of the prophet that prophesies falsely, and the
priest that bears rule by his means.

And the people love to have it so.

BRANTWOOD, _12th August._

I am very glad of your little note from Brighton. I thought it needless
to send the two letters there, which you will find at home; and they
pretty nearly end all _I_ want to say; for the remaining clauses of the
prayer touch on things too high for me. But I will send you one
concluding letter about them.

IX.

[Greek: ton arton emon ton epiousion dos hemin semeron.]

_Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie._

BRANTWOOD, _19th August._

238. I retained the foregoing letter by me till now, lest you should
think it written in any haste