to contagion or uselessness,--transferred from what had
become public evils to their original and inherent purpose of public
benefits, instead of being sacrilegiously alienated by a transfer to
private proprietors. That this was impracticable, is historically true;
but no less true is it philosophically, that this impracticability,
arising wholly from moral causes, (namely, the loose manners and corrupt
principles of a great majority in all classes during the dynasty of the
Tudors,) does not prevent this wholesale sacrilege, from deserving the
character of the "first and deadliest wound inflicted on the
Constitution of the kingdom; which term, in the body politic, as in
bodies natural, expresses not only what is and has been evolved, but
likewise whatever is potentially contained in the seminal principle of
the particular body, and which would in its due time have appeared but
for emasculation in its infancy. This, however, is the first sense of
the words, Church of England. [4]

The second is the Church of England as now by law established, and by
practice of the law actually existing. That in the first sense it is the
object of my admiration and the earthly 'ne plus ultra' of my religious
aspirations, it were superfluous to say: but I may be allowed to express
my conviction, that on our recurring to the same ends and objects, (the
restoration of a national and circulating property in counterpoise of
individual possession, disposable and heritable) though in other forms
and by other means perhaps, the decline or progress of this country
depends. In the second sense of the words I can sincerely profess, that
I love and honour the Church of England, comparatively, beyond any other
Church established or unestablished now existing in Christendom; and it
is wholly in consequence of this deliberate and most affectionate filial
preference, that I have read this work, and Calamy's historical
writings, with so deep and so melancholy an interest. And I dare avow
that I cannot but regard as an ignorant bigot every man who (especially
since the publicity and authentication of the contents of the Stuart
Papers, Memoirs and Life of James II. &c.) can place the far later
furious High Church compilations and stories of Walker and others in
competition with the veracity and general verity of Baxter and Calamy;
or can forget that the great body of Non-conformists to whom these great
and good men belonged, were not dissenters from the est