the human frame. Customers will be drawn to
each conventicle by new industry and address, in practising on the
passions and credulity of the populace. And, in the end, the civil
magistrate will find, that he has dearly paid for his pretended
frugality, in saving a fixed establishment for the priests; and that in
reality the most decent and advantageous composition which he can make
with the spiritual guides is to bribe their indolence, by assigning
stated salaries to their profession, and rendering it superfluous
for them to be further active than merely to prevent their flock from
straying in quest of new pastures. And in this manner ecclesiastical
establishments, though commonly they arose at first from religious
views, prove in the end advantageous to the political interests of
society.

But we may observe, that few ecclesiastical establishments have been
fixed upon a worse foundation than that of the church of Rome, or have
been attended with circumstances more hurtful to the peace and happiness
of mankind. The large revenues, privileges, immunities, and powers of
the clergy, rendered them formidable to the civil magistrate; and armed
with too extensive authority an order of men who always adhere
closely together, and who never want a plausible pretence for their
encroachments and usurpations. The higher dignities of the church
served, indeed, to the support of gentry and nobility; but by the
establishment of monasteries, many of the lowest vulgar were taken
from the useful arts, and maintained in those receptacles of sloth
and ignorance. The supreme head of the church was a foreign potentate,
guided by interests always different from those of the community,
sometimes contrary to them. And as the hierarchy was necessarily
solicitous to preserve a unity of faith, rites, and ceremonies, all
liberty of thought ran a manifest risk of being extinguished; and
violent persecutions, or, what was worse, a stupid and abject credulity,
took place every where.

To increase these evils, the Church, though she possessed large
revenues, was not contented with her acquisitions, but retained a power
of practising further on the ignorance of mankind. She even bestowed
on each individual priest a power of enriching himself by the voluntary
oblations of the faithful, and left him still an urgent motive for
diligence and industry in his calling. And thus that church, though
an expensive and burdensome establishment, was liable to man