broken, nature is difobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, caft forth, and exiled, from this world of reafon, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, difcord, vice, confufion, and unavailing forrow.

Thefe, my dear Sir, are, were, and I think long will be the fentiments of not the leaft learned and reflecting part of this kingdom. They who are included in this defcription, form their opinions on fuch grounds as fuch perfons ought to form them. The lefs enquiring receive them from an authority which those whom Providence dooms to live on truft need not be ashamed to rely on. Thefe two forts of men move in the fame direction, tho' in a different place. They both move with the order of the univerfe. They all know or feel this great antient truth: "Quod illi principi et "præpotenti Deo qui omnem hunc mundum

regit, nihil eorum quæ quidem fiant in "terris acceptius quam concilia et cætus ho"minum jure faciati quæ civitates appellantur.' They take this tenet of the head and heart, not from the great name which it immediately bears, nor from the greater from whence it is derived ; but from that which alone can give true weight and fanction to any learned opinion, the common nature and common relation of men.. Persuaded that all things ought to be done with reference, and referring all to the point of reference to which all should be directed, they think them felves bound, not only as individuals in the fanctuary of the heart, or as congregated in that L perfonal

perfonal capacity, to to renew the memory of their high origin and caft; but alfo in their corporate character to perform their national homage to the inftitutor, and author and protector of civil fociety; without which civil fociety man could not by any poffibility arrive at the perfection of which his nature is capable, nor even make a remote and faint approach to it. They conceive that He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed alfo the neceffary means of its perfection He willed therefore the ftate-He willed its connexion with the fource and original archetype of all perfection. They who are convinced of this his will, which is the law of laws and the fovereign of fovereigns, cannot think it reprehenfible, that this our corporate fealty and homage, that this our recognition of a figniory paramount, I had almost faid this oblation of the state itself, as a worthy offering on the high altar of univerfal praise, fhould be performed as all publick folemn acts are performed, in buildings, in mufick, in decoration, in fpeech, in the dignity of perfons, according to the customs of mankind, taught by their nature; that is, with modest splendour, with unaffuming ftate, with mild majefty and fober pomp. For those purpofes they think fome part of the wealth of the country is as ufefully employed as it can be, in fomenting the luxury of individuals. It is the publick ornament. It is the publick, confolation. It nourishes the publick hope. The poorest man finds his own importance and dig

nity in it, whilst the wealth and pride of individuals at every moment makes the man of humble rank and fortune fenfible of his inferiority, and degrades and vilifies his condition. It is for the man in humble life, and to raife his nature, and to put him in mind of a state in which the privileges of opulence will cease, when he will be equal by nature, and may be more than equal by virtue, that this portion of the general wealth of his country is employed and fanctified.

I affure you I do not aim at fingularity. I give you opinions which have been accepted amongst us, from very early times to this moment, with a continued and general approbation, and which indeed are fo worked into my mind, that I am unable to distinguish what I have learned from others from the refults of my own meditation.

It is on fome fuch principles that the majority of the people of England, far from thinking a religious, national establishment unlawful, hardly think it lawful to be without one, In France you are wholly mistaken if you do not believe us above all other things attached to it, and beyond all other nations; and when this people has acted unwifely and unjustifiably in its favour (as in fome instances they have done most certainly) in their very errors you will at least discover their zeal.

This principle runs through the whole system of their polity. They do not confider their church establishment as convenient, but as ef fential to their ftate; not as a thing heterogeneous and feparable; fomething added for accommodation

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commodation; what they may either keep up or lay afide, according to their temporary ideas of convenience. They confider it as the foundation of their whole conftitution, with which, and with every part of which, it holds an indiffoluble union. Church and state are ideas infeparable in their minds, and scarcely is the one ever mentioned without mentioning the other.

Our education is fo formed as to confirm and fix this impreffion. Our education is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclefiaftics, and in all stages from infancy to manhood. Even when our youth, leaving fchools and universities, enter that most important period of life which begins to link experience and ftudy together, and when with that view they vifit other countries, inftead of old domeftics whom we have feen as governors to principal men from other parts, threefourths of those who go abroad with our young nobility and gentlemen are ecclefiaftics; not as auftere masters, nor as nere followers; but as friends and companions of a graver character, and not seldom perfons as well born as themselves. With them, as relations, they moft commonly keep up a clofe connexion through life. By this connexion we conceive that we attach our gentlemen to the church; and we liberalize the church by an intercourfe with the leading characters of the country.

So tenacious are we of the old ecclefiaftical modes and fashions of institution, that very little alteration has been made in them fince the fourteenth or fifteenth century; adhering in this par

ticular,

ticular, as in all things elfe, to our old fettled. maxim, never entirely nor at once to depart from antiquity. We found thefe old inftitutions, on the whole, favourable to morality and difcipline; and we thought they were fufceptible of amendment, without altering the ground. We thought that they were capable of receiving and meliorating, and above all of preferving the acceffions of science and literature, as the order of Providence fhould fucceffively produce them. And after all, with this Gothic and monkish education (for fuch it is in the ground-work) we may put in our claim to as ample and as early a fhare in all the improvements in fcience, in arts, and in literature, which have illuminated and adorned the modern world, as any other nation in Europe; we think one main cause of this improvement was our not defpifing the patrimony of knowledge which was left us by our forefathers.

It is from our attachment to a church establishment that the English nation did not think it wife to entrust that great fundamental interest of the whole to what they truft no part of their civil or military public fervice, that is to the unfteady and precarious contribution of individuals. They go further. They certainly never have fuffered and never will fuffer the fixed ef tate of the church to be converted into a penfion, to depend on the treasury, and to be delayed, withheld, or perhaps to be extinguished by fifcal difficulties; which difficulties may fometimes be pretended for political purposes, and are in fact often brought on by the extravagance, negligence,

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