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clergy to see all the nobility and gentry in their churches; hence the unceasing sermons on the virtue of going to church; hence the steady churchgoing of mayors and aldermen; hence their decorous taking of the sacrament; hence the solemnity of chaplains and religious services in the court, and in the houses of the nobility. "If you go to church you will Heaven," is not said in the pulpit in so many words, but is very broadly hinted in many a sermon and many a tract; and the complacency with which all steady church-goers view their own conduct, is a proof how they have interpreted the spurious divinity of their pastors. According to common opinion, church-going and religion are synonymous! so that he who is religious must be a church-goer, and he who frequently goes to church must be religious. It is an ancient heresy as old as the time of the Jewish prophets, who have loudly complained of it in vehement and indignant language--"To what purpose is the calling of your assemblies," exclaims Isaiah to the orthodox church-going Jews, "I cannot away with them, it is iniquity even your solemn meetings-when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you, yea when ye make many prayers I will not hear."-These words are often read in the lessons, but they make no impression on the hearers; when the ball of reproof is flying about, every man carries his own racket with him and strikes off the ball to his neighbour: so that this text, and fifty other texts like it, are supposed to apply to the Jews-to the Gentiles-to the any-bodies, rather than to our church, our corruptions, and our corrupt selves! My Lord A., or Mr. whoremonger B., or jobbing placeman C., think the passage very fine and poetical, and perfectly proper for those rascals the Jews; but to themselves it has no application whatever, for they continue to attend the solemn meetings with most decorous regularity, they spread forth their hands to the cathedral litanies and anthems with most picturesque effect, they make many prayers twice every Sunday, they take the sacrament occasionally to keep up appearances, but they will not give up one tittle of their evil practices, in whatever department of immorality they are most conspicuous. All this is well known to the clergy, but no reproof is ever heard, even in a whisper, against such villainous hypocrisy; for as long as their flock answer to the muster-rolls of deception in the church, what matters it to them what they do out of the church? In the whole course of my life I never heard of a clergyman refusing the sacrament to an immoral christian, and if your Grace can point out to me any one of the clergy in your diocese who ever ventured the experiment of this obsolete honesty, I should like to see the black swan, and to praise him as he well deserves to be praised. But how often have I seen immoral, scandalously immoral christians, pressing to the sacrament! and of their immorality there could be no question, it was open, flagrant, violent, and unconcealed-neither could it be suggested that they had repented, for their vice was of long continuance, and though it had been of many years' standing, yet they hesitated not to eat and drink their own damnation repeatedly; neither did the clergy hesitate to administer the sacrament, though he knew all the circumstances of the case as well as any of the congregation. And this, I say, is so common a case, that there is no large town in England where you could not find an example of it every time that the sacrament is administered; and, I moreover assert, that your Grace knows this fact perfectly well, as well as all the other Right Reverends on the bench.'-pp. 18, 19.

Mr. Beverley is equally eloquent and correct in his description of the sort of preparation for the mission, which the Ecclesiastical students in Oxford and Cambridge generally undergo. Upon this subject we may appeal to the evidence of Mr. Montgomery, from whose recent poem a Bacchanalian scene has been cited in a preceding article. When placed in the world, the utmost that can be said in favour of the unmarried clergymen of the Establishment is, that their immorality is not ostentatiously displayed. They certainly pay in general so much deference to society, as to conceal their evil deeds as much as possible-the usual homage which hypocrisy pays to virtue. But they would admit, if the question were put to them by a fellow collegian, that, under the rose, they deny themselves none of the indulgences to which other men are prone; and in addition to these, as Mr. Beverley testifies,' they hunt, they shoot, they go to parties, they play at cards, they dance the gallopade, they flirt, they frolic, and act the merry fellow, with great applause !' Can it be doubted by any person, who, like Mr. Beverley, has been able to peep behind the curtain of life, and to see men as they really are, divested of their theatrical costume, that the following sketch is literally accurate in all its parts?

From persons, such as the 'young gentlemen of fashion and education, whom it is the pride of the church to reckon amongst her priests, and who give themselves up to all the pleasures of the age, what can be expected, in the way of instruction in the pulpit? What, in the way of example, to the parishioners? The world expects much, and, according to the fashionable notions of most church-goers, a handsome young gentleman, with a good voice, who has lately taken his degree at the University, and who comes to his parish with some literary eclat, is considered as a rare and valuable gift, likely to be of inestimable value to his flock. In this way the frogs croaked for joy, when King Log descended amongst them from the cloud-compelling Jove; and well will it be for the silly parishioners, if he contents himself with the character of Log, and does not assume that of the stork. I have known, and do know, scores of these young priestlings, who come warm from the hot-beds of the Universities. A mighty sensation they make amongst the good Christians in some country town or village; but no one inquires what they have done hitherto in their zeal for Christ, nor what they are likely to do for the time to come. But let me tell these good Christians what they have done, up to the moment that they entered into holy orders. The led the life of jovial debauchees at the University, they hunted, poached, frequented the stews, got drunk, broke lamps and windows, gave the proctors a run, contracted enormous debts, drove tandems to London, slanged, swore, smoked, fought, roared and rioted all the time that they were preparing themselves for the ministry of Christ's religion. But your Grace will demand of me how could they commit all these excesses, and yet pay sufficient attention to their academical and divinity studies. Allow me to assure your Grace, that the most distinguished scholars are frequently men of profligate habits,—but that, for all ordinary purposes of academical examination, sobriety of conduct is not in the slightest degree requisite, unless a man is a perfect

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dunce. Your Grace has, doubtless, heard of the process of CRAM: and it is by this process that they prepare the young wolves who are intended to devour the flock of Christ. Paley's Evidences of Christianity, some works of Beausobre, Grotius, Tomline's Theology, the Greek of the Greek Testament, the dates and geography of the Old Testament, a Latin theme, and a little more of such religious dainties, are easily crammed down the throats of future priests, to be inwardly digested till they are brought to light again by the stomach-pump of your Grace's chaplain.

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Having received the mission of an Apostle, and a convenient veil having been thrown over his University and London excesses, the new curate comes to receive the applause of his admiring parishioners! Peradventure he has a sonorous and musical voice; peradventure he reads the dismal truisms of his stupid sermons with an air of importance; he has a comely person; a profusion of black hair; neat black gloves, and a lily-white French cambric pocket-handkerchief; he delivers the blessing with a sweet pastoral tone, or his pauses and his cadences are perfectly ravishing! All this captivates his ignorant and irreligious auditors; they do not hunger and thirst after righteousness, and therefore care not if they be not filled; they are smitten with a love of forms and ceremonies, and such trumpery they get in abundance from their curate-that satisfies them, with that they are content, "for they know not that they are miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: so that whilst their shepherd grates his lean and flashy song on his wretched pipes of scrannel straw, they mistake it for most melodious music and exquisite harmony.

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When, therefore, I hear the deplorable stuff usually doled out in the pulpit by the average sort of clergy; when I see the lifeless and unfeeling manner of the reader, (orator he cannot be styled); when I reflect on his general conduct, and think of the immense importance of his office, if duly administered; when I see the cold and ceremonious religion of the congregation; when I make the regular mechanical division of his flat discourse, the tiresome "thirdly," and the foolish "lastly," the stolen sentences, the windy periods, the sesquipedalian phraseology, the hackneyed admonition, and the hypocritical regret-I sigh to myself, and repeat the words of Job, in the vulgate translation.

"Audivi frequenter talia, consolatores onerari omnes vos estis !

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Nunquid habebunt finem verba ventosa ? Poteram et ego similia vestri loqui. Consolarer et ego vos SERMONIBUS, et moverem caput meum super vos. Usquequó affligitis animam meam et atteritis me Sermonibus ?"

'But all this we get from "gentlemen of education," whom, according to the slang of the day, it is highly important to encourage with fat livings and ample pluralities. Where, however are these scholars whom we hypocritically pretend to foster and encourage by a judicious dispensation of ecclesiastical emoluments? Who are the clerical scholars of your Grace's diocese? I know but two worthy of that name, and one of them* has been as completely neglected and overlooked as if he had been a priest

* 'The Reverend James Tate, master of Richmond School; and Mr. Archdeacon Wrangham. If learning should be encouraged according to the old fashion, who, in all Great Britain, has a better claim to rewards than Mr. Tate?'

of the Antipodes. Here, however, we touch upon a sore subject, at which I shall but glance at present, hoping, on a future occasion, to pay it more attention. Let me, however, in passing, observe, that though learning, as far as bribing can go, is more encouraged in the English Universities than in any country in the world; and that though the education of England is exclusively in the hands of the clergy, yet never was learning at so low an ebb, and never was our state of scholarship so contemptible as at present. I do not, therefore, merely deny that the clergy are learned men, but I deny that learning exists any where in England at present. We have many a gentleman who is called learned; many a stripling" of prodigious talents" at both the Universities; but when their erudition is more closely examined, it sinks into insignificance, compared with the real genuine learning to be found on the continent, where there are no bribes, no pluralities, no fellowships, no deaneries, and no bishopricks. In England we are dying of plethory; we are crammed up to the throat with good things; the morsels meant to reward scholarship are so rich and heavy, that they kill, but do not nourish, and, unless the church is soon bled to syncope, we shall return to a state of middle-age darkness and ignorance, merely for want of some vigorous hand to remove superfluities.

I therefore deny that the clergy are scholars; and if they were so, we might be positively certain they would not be rewarded for their scholarship. Neither is it fitting that they should be; the Apostles were not chosen to the ministry. for their knowledge of Greek, their skill in metres, and their acquaintance with the lexicographers, but because it pleased God to call them "to suffer great things for his name's-sake”—not to reward them with prebends and stalls, but to make them "suffer" for a witness to the gospel. Livings, however, are not given as a reward for learning; but for political jobbing, for the accident of birth, by family influence, by ministerial favour, and by episcopal patronage. Livings are bought and sold, regularly valued, lives insured, great and little tithes, glebe, and agistment, all calculated and estimated by dexterous attorneys. The farce of "rewarding merit" is a most evident imposture, nobody can believe it, and nobody does. Nevertheless, it serves to round a period, and is frequently mentioned by the advocates of the church, when pushed hard for an argument. The church, in reality, is recruited by speculators who have purchased the next presentation, by idle persons who want a nominal profession, by reprobate younger sons designed for a family benefice, by the sons, nephews, and cousins of the prelates, and by doubtful characters who wish to be considered gentlemen. I do not reckon, in this class, the true pastors of the English church, the evangelical curates: they are generally silenced, slighted, persecuted, and despised by their more powerful clerical coadjutors, who have received the government benefices for no good purpose.'-pp. 28-31.

All these deplorable evils the author justly traces to the connexion, which from its origin has subsisted between the church and the state. From this monstrous and adulterous union have sprung all the vices, which at this moment render England the most immoral country upon the face of the earth. We say so advisedly and with the utmost freedom from passion, for we have no interest in the question, beyond a most sincere desire to see religion again

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revived amongst us in its native purity and simplicity. We have nothing in a worldly sense to gain, and as little to lose, by the preservation or destruction of the established church. But we cannot shut our eyes to the evidence, flashing upon them from every quarter of the country, of the awful and irreparable injury which that church has inflicted, and is inflicting, and will inflict as long as it shall exist, upon the real spirit of Christianity. We have no desire to see one farthing of the property possessed by that church transferred to any other, or to have any other system of worship erected in its place. We know of no system of Christianity, which could remain useful and uncorrupted for fifty years, if it were allied with the state, and endowed as the church of this country is. The uniform sentiments of this journal will sufficiently vindicate us from the charge of atheism, or even of apathy towards religion, should any of the persons, whom this article will offend, make such accusations against our character. No, we are far from being indifferent upon that subject, which we have always considered and treated as the most momentous of all others. We look around and tremble for our fellow beings, who have no anchor to hold by, save the delusive one which they imagine to be safe in the bosom of a church, itself on the verge of ruin. Such we firmly believe, with Mr. Beverley, is the fate that already awaits it.

'It is my belief that all church property will, ere long, be confiscated. A general feeling pervades society, that the sun of the establishment has passed its summer solstice, and is rapidly descending into the wintry signs. Already does this full-grown tree shed its leaves; the axe is laid to its root, and, because it brings not forth good fruit, it will be hewn down and cast into the fire. It is in vain to conceal the truth any longer, that the church is in imminent danger. A multitude of circumstances have occurred of late, to accelerate its great day of reckoning, which will probably arrive before the expiration of ten years. Events unfavourable to sacerdotal power advance now full gallop; they hitherto have approached slowly, uncertainly, and with long delays: but now, circumstances so unexpected take place, that no man can say what may not happen before the year is ended. The extortion of Catholic emancipation from the reluctant hands of government-the repeal of the test and corporation acts-the French revolution, with the abolition of the established church of Franceand the all but certainty of the speedy fall of the Irish church establishment, would be sufficient, of themselves, to shew the dangerous predicament of the English church. To these causes, however, may be added the great increase of dissenters, their wealth, vigilance, zeal, and activity; their virtuous dislike of the church-the general education of the poorthe increased knowledge, and the thirst for reform, amongst the multitudethe monstrous abuses of the church itself—the worldly, secular, avaricious, and pompous lives of the prelates--the general grasping for wealth amongst the inferior clergy-the hateful system of tithes-the unpopular and aristocratic feeling of the priesthood in general--and the close and intimate union of the church with all men and measures that are arbitrary and overbearing.

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