exceed measure and justice in their punishment. I can allow in clergymen, through all their divifions, some tenaciousness of their own opinion; fome overflowings of zeal for its propagation; fome predilection to their own state and office; fome attachment to the interest of their own corps; fome preference to those who listen with docility to their doctrines, beyond those who scorn 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 must bear with infirmities until they fefter into crimes. Undoubtedly, the natural progress of the pafsions, 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 past those limits of a just allowance? From the general style 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 fuperftition, ignorance, floth, fraud, avarice, and tyranny. But is this true? Is it true, that the lapse of time, the cessation of conflicting interests, the woeful experience of the evils resulting from party rage, have had no fort of influence gradually to meliorate their minds? Is it true, that they were daily renewing invasions on the civil power, troubling the domeftick quiet of their country, and rendering S4 rendering the operations of its government feeble and precarious? Is it true, that the clergy of our times have pressed down the laity with an iron hand, and were, in all places, lighting up the fires of a savage persecution? Did they by every fraud endeavour to increase 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 vex, atious extortion? When not possessed of power, were they filled with the vices of those who envy it? Were they enflamed with a violent litigious spirit of controverfy? Goaded on with the ambition of intellectual sovereignty, were they ready to fly in the face of all magistracy, to fire churches, to massacre the priests of other descriptions, to pull down altars, and to make their way over the ruins of fubverted governments to an empire of doctrine, sometimes flattering, sometimes forcing the confciences of men from the jurifdiction of publick institutions into a fubmiffion to their personal authority, beginning with a claim of liberty and ending with an abuse of power? These, or fome of these, were the vices objected, and not wholly without foundation, to several of the churchmen of former times, who belonged to the two great parties which then divided and diftracted Europe. If there was in France, as in other countries there 1 there visibly is, a great abatement, rather than any increase of these vices, instead of loading the present clergy with the crimes of other men, and the odious character of other times, in common equity they ought to be praised, encouraged, and supported, in their departure from a spirit which difgraced their predeceffors, and for having affumed a temper of mind and manners more suitable 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 curiosity. So far from finding (except from one set of men, not then very numerous though very active) the complaints and discontents against that body, which fome publications had given me reafon to expect, I perceived little or no publick or private uneasiness 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 fome of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaintance; and of the rest in that class, a very good means of information. They were, almost all of them, perfons of noble birth. They resembled others of 1 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 fuperiour class; a fet of men, amongst whom you would not be surprised to find a Fenelon. I faw among the clergy in Paris (many of the description are not to be met with any where) men of great learning and candour; and I had reason to believe, that this description was not confined to Paris. What I found in other places, I know was accidental; and therefore to be prefumed a fair sample. I spent a few days in a provincial town, where, in the abfence of the bishop, I passed my evenings with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons who would have done honour to any church. They were all well informed; two of them of deep, general, and extensive erudition, ancient and modern, oriental and western; particularly in their own profeffion. They had a more extensive 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 ferve. Some of thefe ecclefiafticks, of rank, are, by all titles, perfons deferving of general respect. They are deferving of gratitude from me, and from many English. If this letter should 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 sensibility. What I say 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 shall prevent me from being just and grateful. The time is fitted for the duty; and it is particularly becoming to fshew our justice and gratitude, when those who have deferved well of us and of mankind are la. bouring under popular obloquy and the perfecutions of oppressive power. You had before your revolution about an hundred and twenty bishops. A few of them were men of eminent sanctity, and charity without limit. When we talk of the heroick, of course we talk of rare, virtue. I believe the instances of eminent depravity |