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LECTURE III.

ON THE STATE OF THE LAITY IN ANTI-EPISCOPALIAN COMMUNITIES.

FROM the many acts of parliament which were passed at the period of the Reformation to naturalise the children of Roman Catholic priests, particularly in Scotland; from the mass of landed property belonging to the Church which the bishops, deans, and other dignitaries made over in perpetuity to their natural children; from the chronicles and histories of the time; from the continued attacks which were made upon their immoralities, deplored by the good and ridiculed by the witty; from the repeated regulations made by the ecclesiastical rulers respecting the concubines of the clergy; and from the decrees against their bastards, particularly that of the Council of Trent expelling them from holy office, it is undeniable that a large proportion of the persons who had claimed, in centuries past, to have the exclusive right to guide

the people in religion and morality, was entirely devoid of both: and under such rule as that of Julius III., the morals of the clergy could not have been different.

Nothing is more difficult than to estimate the comparative amount of vice existing at any two periods in the same country: it is probable that its real amount in kind remains the same, whilst the grossness and nature of it varies considerably. In a country where the inhabitants are brought under obedience to laws, so that open violence is restrained, crimes of that description will be less frequent. Seductions will take the place of rapes: malice and revenge will find the means of gratification through litigation more than by the assassin's dagger: but power will still oppress the defenceless in every ramification of human society. It must be obvious to all, and every day's experience affords example, that men fear exposure before the public more than any other thing. Daily journals now publish, instantly, things which used to be only slowly bruited long after the occurrence of the event, and by so far exercise over the wicked a salutary restraint. Concealment, therefore, becomes, more than ever, a necessary concomitant of every offence; and consequently the rarity of the notoriety does not prove a real diminution of the practice of immorality from that which

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obtained four centuries ago: neither is it to be denied that the indirect influence of the spread of Christianity has been to ameliorate the outward conduct of men, and that a greater increase of this amelioration has taken place since the Reformation, than during the whole previous fifteen hundred years from the commencement of Christianity. It must be remembered, also, that the mutual hostility of rival sects has made them keep keen eyes on the faults of each other, which malevolent watchfulness has greatly tended to the preservation of outward decency.

It is easy for those who live under governments in which the rulers have no power to exercise capricious tyranny, or even for those who live under paternal, though absolute governments, to talk of and to practise the duty of submission to the powers that be but it is a far different trial to those who are daily goaded by cruelty and injustice inflicted upon themselves, or upon others before their eyes. The same remark applies to the duty of submission to ecclesiastical authority. The number of clergy who had no real occupation, regular or secular, in proportion to the rest of the community, was so great previous to the Reformation, that they infested every street and house : they gained ready access, under the garb of sanctity, to all places, and sometimes on pretext of re

ligion, and sometimes without any pretext at all, meddled in the domestic concerns of every private family.

Still the people submitted to them, and never rose against the clergy as a class apart from any other tyrannical body. It was not until the secular rulers for their own private ends, and in no wise on religious grounds, quarrelled with the rulers of the Church, that the people moved in the same direction. When the kings and nobles began to plunder and rob wholesale, the people carried on a little business of the same sort in retail: and the character which the religious reformation assumed in each country was analogous to its political condition. England was greatly advanced in civilisation beyond Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland. By the word civilisation here, is meant the supremacy of fixed laws and rules of government in opposition to the arbitrary caprice of individuals or bodies. In England, therefore, the Reformation, though conducted by the king for the gratification of his own wickedness, and by no means from any good or religious motive, was carried on with greater moderation, and with less violence, than was done either in Scotland or in Switzerland. In the former country the power of the crown was barely greater than that of individual barons, and not sufficient to enforce its authority

when two or more combined against it. All society was torn by factions; men lived, more or less, in a state of continued civil war, and of liability to sudden assaults and plunder from their neighbours, which the government was too weak to put down they looked to no redress from : any evil but such as their own arm could bring them, and every man was accustomed to avenge his own wrongs.

Hence the character which the Reformation assumed in Scotland was quite different from that which it took in England. In Scotland, it was the work of a half-savage people: in England, it was the work of a civilised government, with which the people sympathised little. In neither case did the Reformation start upon any fixed principle: it was not an idea that was to be developed as it could: it was a mere negation of, and resistance to, some present evil, which was to be rooted out. Thus it was one thing in England in the reign of Henry VIII., and another thing under Cromwell: it was one thing in Scotland under James VI., and another thing after the Union. Religion never has been separate from politics since the foundation of Christianity. The Roman Emperor held Christians to be enemies to the State; and from that period to the present, every ruling power in every State has considered all persons, who differed from the religious opinions

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