, not by any means to the system of a National Church.
Yet those who disapproved of that system found no illustration more
practically effective to illustrate their argument.

Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, almost all writers who
had occasion to speak of the general condition of society joined in one
wail of lament over the irreligion and immorality that they saw around
them. This complaint was far too universal to mean little more than a
general, and somewhat conventional tirade upon the widespread corruption
of human nature. The only doubt is whether it might not in some measure
have arisen out of a keener perception, on the part of the more
cultivated and thoughtful portion of society, of brutal habits which in
coarser ages had been passed over with far less comment. Perhaps also
greater liberty of thought and speech caused irreligion to take a more
avowed and visible form. Yet even if the severe judgment passed by
contemporary writers upon the spiritual and moral condition of their age
may be fairly qualified by some such considerations, it must certainly
be allowed that religion and morality were, generally speaking, at a
lower ebb than they have been at many other periods. For this the
National Church must take a full share, but not more than a full share,
of responsibility. The causes which elevate or depress the general tone
of society have a corresponding influence, in kind if not in degree,
upon the whole body of the clergy. Church history, throughout its whole
course, shows very clearly that although the average level of their
spiritual and moral life has always been, except, possibly, in certain
very exceptional times, higher in some degree than that of the people
over which they are set as pastors, yet that this level ordinarily rises
or sinks with the general condition of Christianity in the Church and
country at large. If, for instance, a corrupt state of politics have
lowered the standard of public virtue, and have widely introduced into
society the unblushing avowal of self-seeking motives, which in better
times would be everywhere reprobated, the edge of principle is likely to
become somewhat blunted even where it might be least expected. In the
last century unworthy acts were sometimes done by men who were
universally held in high honour and esteem, which would most certainly
not have been thought of by those same persons if they had lived in our
own day. The national clergy, taken as