docility to their doctrines, beyond those who fcorn and deride them. I allow all this, because I am a man who have to deal with men, and who would not, through a violence of toleration, run into the greatest of all intolerance. I muft bear with infirmities until they fefter into crimes.

Undoubtedly, the natural progrefs of the paffions from frailty to vice ought to be prevented by a watchful eye and a firm hand. But is it true that the body of your clergy had paft thofe limits of a juft allowance? From the general ftyle of your late publications of all forts, one would be led to believe that your clergy in France were a fort of monsters; an horrible compofition of superftition, ignorance, floth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But is this true? Is it true, that the lapfe of time, the ceffation of conflicting interefts, the woeful experience of the evils refulting from party rage, has had no fort of influence gradually to meliorate their minds? Is it true, that they were daily renewing invafions on the civil power, troubling the domeftic quiet of their country, and rendering the operations of its government feeble and precarious? Is it true, that the clergy of our times have preffed down the laity with an iron hand, and were, in all places, lighting up the fires of a favage perfecution? Did they by every fraud endeavour to encrease their eftates? Did they use to exceed the due demands on estates that were their own? Or, rigidly screwing up right into wrong, did they convert a legal claim into a vexatious extortion? When not poffeffed of power, were they filled with the vices of those who envy it? Were they enflamed with a violent litigious fpirit of controverfy? Goaded on with the ambition of intellectual fovereignty, were they ready to fly in the face of all magiftracy, to fire churches, to massacre the priests of other defcriptions, to pull down altars, and to make their way over the ruins of fubverted governments to an empire of doctrine, fometimes flattering, fometimes forcing the confciences of men from the jurifdiction of public inftitutions into a fubmiffion to their personal authority, beginning with a claim of liberty and ending with an abuse of power?

Thefe, or fome of thefe, were the vices objected, and

not

not wholly without foundation, to feveral of the churchmen of former times, who belonged to the two great parties which then divided and distracted Europe.

If there was in France, as in other countries there vifibly is, a great abatement, rather than any increase of these vices, inftead of loading the prefent clergy with the crimes of other men, and the odious character of other times, in common equity they ought to be praised, encouraged, and fupported, in their departure from a fpirit which difgraced their predeceffors, and for having affumed a temper of mind and manners more fuitable to their facred function.

When my occafions took me into France, towards the close of the late reign, the clergy, under all their forms, engaged a confiderable part of my curiofity. So far from finding (except from one fet of men, not then very numerous though very active) the complaints and difcontents against that body, which fome publications had given me reason to expect, I perceived little or no public or private uneafinefs on their account. On further examination, I found the clergy in general, persons of moderate minds and decorous manners; I include the feculars, and the regulars of both fexes. I had not the good fortune to know a great many of the parochial clergy; but in general I received a perfectly good account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties. With some of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaintance; and of the reft in that clafs, very good means of information. They were, almost all of them, perfons of noble birth. They resembled others of their own rank; and where there was any difference, it was in their favour. They were more fully educated than the military nobleffe; fo as by no means to difgrace their profeffion by ignorance, or by want of fitness for the exercise of their authority. They seemed to me, beyond the clerical character, liberal and open; with the hearts of gentlemen, and men of honour; neither infolent nor fervile in their manners and conduct. They seemed to me rather a fuperior clafs; a fet of men, amongst whom you would not be furprised to find a Fenelon. I faw among the clergy in Paris (many of the defcription are

not

not to be met with any where) men of great learning and candour; and I had reafon to believe, that this de fcription was not confined to Paris. What I found in other places, I know was accidental; and therefore to be prefumed a fair fample. I fpent a few days in a provin cial town, where, in the abfence of the bishop, I paffed my evenings with three clergymen, his vicars general, perfons who would have done honour to any church. They were all well informed; two of them of deep, general and extenfive erudition, ancient and modern, oriental and western; particularly in their own profeffion. They had a more extenfive knowledge of our English divines than I expected; and they entered into the genius of those writers with a critical accuracy. One of these gentlemen is fince dead, the Abbé Morangis. I pay this tribute, without reluctance, to the memory of that noble, reverend, learned, and excellent perfon; and I should do the fame, with equal cheerfulness, to the merits of the others, who I believe are still living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am unable to serve.

Some of thefe ecclefiaftics of rank, are, by all titles, persons deserving of general respect. They are deferving of gratitude from me, and from many English. If this letter fhould ever come into their hands, I hope they will believe there are those of our nation who feel for their unmerited fall, and for the cruel confifcation of their fortunes, with no common fenfibility. What I fay of them is a teftimony, as far as one feeble voice can go, which I owe to truth. Whenever the question of this unnatural persecution is concerned, I will pay it. No one fhall prevent me from being juft and grateful. The time is fitted for the duty; and it is particularly becoming to fhew our juftice and gratitude, when those who have deferved well of us and of mankind are labouring under popular obloquy and the perfecutions of oppreffive power.

You had before your revolution about an hundred and twenty bishops. A few of them were men of eminent fanctity, and charity without limit. When we talk of the heroic, of course we talk of rare virtue. inftances of eminent depravity may be as them as thofe of tranfcendent goodnefs.

I believe the

rare amongst Examples of

avarice

avarice and licentioufnefs may be picked out, I do not question it, by those who delight in the investigation which leads to fuch discoveries. A man, as old as I am, will not be astonished that feveral, in every defcription, do not lead that perfect life of self-denial, with regard to wealth or to pleasure, which is wished for by all, by fome expected, but by none exacted with more rigour, than by those who are the most attentive to their own interests, or the most indulgent to their own paffions. When I was in France, I am certain that the number of vicious prelates was not great. Certain individuals among them, not distinguishable for the regularity of their lives, made fome amends for their want of the fevere virtues, in their poffeffion of the liberal; and were endowed with qualities which made them ufeful in the church and state. I am told, that with few exceptions, Louis the Sixteenth had been more attentive to character, in his promotions to that rank, than his immediate predeceffor; and I believe, (as fome fpirit of reform has prevailed through the whole reign) that it may be true. But the prefent ruling power has fhewn a difpofition only to plunder the church. It has punished all prelates; which is to favour the vicious, at leaft in point of reputation. It has made a degrading penfionary establishment, to which no man of liberal ideas or liberal condition will deftine his children. It must fettle into the lowest claffes of the people. As with you the inferior clergy are not numerous enough for their duties; as these duties are, beyond measure, minute and toilfome; as you have left no middle claffes of clergy at their ease, in future nothing of fcience or erudition can exift in the Gallican church. To complete the project, without the leaft attention to the rights of patrons, the affembly has provided in future an elective clergy; an arrangement which will drive out of the clerical profeffion all men of fobriety; all who can pretend to independence in their function or their conduct; and which will throw the whole direction of the public mind into the hands of a fet of licentious, bold, crafty, factious, flattering wretches, of fuch condition and fuch habits of life as will make their contemptible penfions (in comparison of which the stipend of an excifeman is lucrative and honour

able) ·

able) an object of low and illiberal intrigue. Thofe officers, whom they still call bishops, are to be elected to a provifion comparatively mean, through the fame arts, (that is, electioneering arts) by men of all religious tenets that are known or can be invented. The new lawgivers have not ascertained any thing whatsoever concerning their qualifications, relative either to doctrine or to morals; no more than they have done with regard to the fubordinate clergy; nor does it appear but that both the higher and the lower, may, at their difcretion, practife or preach any mode of religion or irreligion that they pleafe. I do not yet fee what the jurisdiction of bishops over their fubordinates is to be; or whether they are to have any jurifdiction at all.

In fhort, Sir, it seems to me, that this new ecclefiaftical establishment is intended only to be temporary, and preparatory to the utter abolition, under any of its forms, of the Chriftian religion, whenever the minds of men are prepared for this last stroke against it, by the accomplishment of the plan for bringing its ministers into universal contempt. They who will not believe, that the philosophical fanatics who guide in these matters, have long entertained fuch a defign, are utterly ignorant of their character and proceedings. These enthufiafts do not fcruple to avow their opinion, that a state can fubfift without any religion better than with one; and that they are able to fupply the place of any good which may be in it, by a project of their own namely, by a fort of education they have imagined, founded in a knowledge of the phyfical wants of men; progreffively carried to an enlightened felf-intereft, which, when well understood, they tell us will identify with an intereft more enlarged and public. The scheme of this education has been long known. Of late they distinguish it (as they have got an entire new nomenclature of technical terms) by the name of a Civic Education.

I hope their partizans in England, (to whom I rather attribute very inconfiderate conduct than the ultimate object in this deteftable defign) will fucceed neither in the pillage of the ecclefiaftics, nor in the introduction of a principle of popular election to our bishopricks and paro

U

chial