ut let them give me a hearing.

Well can I understand their feelings. Who at first sight does not
dislike the thoughts of gentlemen and clergymen depending for their
maintenance and their reputation on their flocks? of their strength, as
a visible power, lying not in their birth, the patronage of the great,
and the endowment of the Church (as hitherto), but in the homage of a
multitude? I confess I have before now had a great repugnance to the
notion myself; and if I have overcome it, and turned from the Government
to the People, it has been simply because I was forced to do so. It is
not we who desert the Government, but the Government that has left us;
we are forced back upon those below us, because those above us will not
honour us; there is no help for it, I say. But, in truth, the prospect
is not so bad as it seems at first sight. The chief and obvious
objection to the clergy being thrown on the People, lies in the probable
lowering of Christian views, and the adulation of the vulgar, which
would be its consequence; and the state of Dissenters is appealed to as
an evidence of the danger. But let us recollect that we are an
apostolical body; we were not made, nor can be unmade by our flocks; and
if our influence is to depend on _them_, yet the Sacraments reside with
_us_. We have that with us, which none but ourselves possess, the mantle
of the Apostles; and this, properly understood and cherished, will ever
keep us from being the creatures of a populace.

And what may become necessary in time to come, is a more religious state
of things also. It will not be denied that, according to the Scripture
view of the Church, though all are admitted into her pale, and the rich
inclusively, yet, the poor are her members with a peculiar suitableness,
and by a special right. Scripture is ever casting slurs upon wealth, and
making much of poverty. "To the poor the Gospel is preached." "God hath
chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom."
"If thou wilt be perfect, sell all that thou hast, and give to the
poor." To this must be added the undeniable fact that the Church, when
purest and when most powerful, _has_ depended for its influence on its
consideration with the many. Becket's letters, lately published,[363]
have struck me not a little; but of course I now refer, not to such dark
ages as most Englishmen consider these, but to the primitive Church--the
Church of St. Athanasius and St. Ambrose. With