and a disposition by no means favourable to his successor must have existed; and where men of little ability and little principle retained their benefices, they must have been despised. Thus the influence of the clergy which had been woefully shaken during the long struggle, received another shock. The clergy themselves did not manifest in their prosperity the same equal mind with which they had endured their adverse fortune. They were more desirous of retaliating upon their old persecutors than of conciliating them. Forgiveness of injuries indeed is the last lesson which men learn in the school of suffering: but he must know little of the history and the spirit of those times who should imagine that any conciliatory measures on the part of the Church could have produced uniformity in a land where old opinions had been torn up by the roots, and the seeds of schism had been scattered every where.

It is easier to justify the heads of the restored clergy upon this point, than to excuse them for appropriating to themselves the wealth which in consequence of the long protracted calamities of the nation was placed at their disposal. The leases of the church lands had almost all fallen in; there had been no renewal for twenty years, and the fines which were now raised amounted to about a million and a half. Some of this money was expended in repairing as far as was reparable that havoc in churches and cathedrals which the fanatics had made during their abominable reign; some also was disposed of in ransoming English slaves

from the Barbary pirates: but the greater part went to enrich individuals and build up families, instead of being employed as it ought to have been in improving the condition of the inferior clergy. Queen Anne applied the tenths and * first fruits to this most desirable object; but the effect of her augmentation was slow and imperceptible; they continued in a state of degrading poverty, and that poverty was another cause of the declining influence of the Church, and the increasing irreligion of the people.

A farther cause is to be found in the relaxation, or rather the total decay of ecclesiastical discipline. In the Romish days it had been grossly abused; and latterly also it had been brought into general ab horrence and contempt, by the tyrannical measures of † Laud on one side, and the absurd rigour of Puritanism on the other. The clergy had lost that authority which may always command at least the appearance of respect; and they had lost that respect also by which the place of authority may sometimes so much more worthily be supplied. For the loss

Charles II. disposed of these funds chiefly among his mistresses and his natural children. Queen Mary intended to apply them (as was afterwards done by her sister) to the augmentation of small livings: Burnet after her death represented this to William, and the measure was strongly approved by Somers and Halifax, but Sunderland obtained an assignment of 2000l. a-year upon two dioceses for two lives, SO nothing was to be hoped for after that !"

+ Something is said in the Quarterly Review (vol. xvi. pp. 518, 519.) of the temper with which it behoves us to regard this part of our history. But there are writers at this day who seem to think, in the words of the prose Hudibras, that "Pillories are more cruel than scaffolds, or perhaps Prynne's ears were larger than my Lord of Canterbury's head."

of power they were not censurable; but if they possessed little of that influence which the minister who diligently and conscientiously discharges his duty will certainly acquire, it is manifest, that, as a body, they must have been culpably remiss. From the Restoration to the accession of the house of Hanover, the English church could boast of some of its brightest ornaments and ablest defenders; men who have neither been surpassed in piety, nor in erudition, nor in industry, nor in eloquence, nor in strength and subtlety of mind: and when the design for re-establishing popery in these kingdoms was systematically pursued, to them we are indebted for that calm and steady resistance, by which our liberties, civil as well as religious, were preserved. But in the great majority of the clergy zeal was wanting. The excellent Leighton spoke of the Church as a fair carcass without a spirit: in doctrine, in worship, and in the main part of its government, he thought it the best constituted in the world, but one of the most corrupt in its administration. And Burnet observes, that in his time our clergy had less authority, and were under more contempt, than those of any other church in Europe; for they were much the most remiss in their labours, and the least severe in their lives. It was not that their lives were scandalous; he entirely acquitted them of any such imputation; but they were not exemplary as it became them to be; and in the sincerity and grief of a pious and reflecting mind, he pronounced that they would

never regain the influence which they had lost, till they lived better and laboured more.

Unfavourable as this faithful representation is, the constitution of our church tended naturally to produce such ministers. Under the Reformed, as well as under the Romish establishment, the clerical profession offered an easy and honourable provision for the younger sons of the gentry; but the Church of Rome had provided stations for them, where, if they were not qualified for active service, their sins of omission would be of a very venial kind. The monasteries had always a large proportion of such persons: they went through the ceremonies of their respective rules, which, in spite of repeated reformations, (as they were called,) always in no long time relaxed into a comfortable sort of collegiate system: their lack of ability or learning brought no disgrace to themselves, for they were not in a situation where either was required; and their inefficiency was not injurious to the great establishment, of which, though an inert, they were in no wise an inconvenient part. But when such persons, instead of entering the convents which their ancestors had endowed, were settled upon family livings as parochial clergy, then indeed serious evil was done to the character of the Church, and to the religious feelings of the nation: their want of aptitude or inclination for the important office into which they had been thrust then became a fearful thing for themselves, and a miserable calamity for the people committed to their charge.

Even when the motives for entering the Church were not thus palpably gross, the choice was far more frequently made from motives of convenience and worldly circumstances, than from a deliberate and conscientious determination of the will and the judgement. Where there was influence in an endowed school, or a fair prospect of promotion at college, boys were destined for holy orders with little reference to their talents or their disposition; sometimes, indeed, notoriously, because they were thought unfit for any thing else. And when no unfitness existed, the destination was usually regarded with ominous indifference, as if it might be entered upon with as little forethought and feeling as a secular profession or a branch of trade; as if all the heart, and all the soul, and all the strength of man were not required for the due performance of its duties, and a minister of the gospel were responsible for nothing more than what the Rubric enjoins.

The inevitable lack of zeal in a church thus constituted was not supplied, as in Catholic countries, by the frequent introduction of men * in mature or declining life, in whom disappointment, wrongs, sufferings and bereavements, the visitation of God and the grace of God, have produced the most beneficial of all changes. By such men the influence of Rome has been upheld in Europe, and its doctrines extended among savage tribes and in idolatrous kingdoms, from Paraguay to Japan; but

* Upon this subject see the Quarterly Review, vol. xv. pp. 228, 229.