depravity may be as rare amongst them as those of tranfcendant goodness. Examples of avarice and of licentiousness may be picked out, I do not question it, by those who delight in the investigation which leads to fuch discoveries. A man, as old as I am, will not be astonished that several, in every description, do not lead that perfect life of felf-denial, with regard to wealth or to pleasure, which is wished for by all, by some expected, but by none exacted with more rigour, than by those who are the most attentive to their own interests, or the most indulgent to their own passions. When I was in France, I am certain that the number of vicious prelates was not great. Certain individuals among them, not diftinguishable for the regularity of their lives, made fome amends for their want of the fevere virtues, in their poffeffion of the liberal; and were endowed with qualities which made them useful in the church and state. I am told, that with few exceptions, Louis the Sixteenth had been more attentive to character, in his promotions to that rank, than his immediate predeceffor; and I believe (as fome spirit of reform has prevailed through the whole reign) that it may be true. But the present ruling power has shewn a disposition only to plunder the church. It has punished all prelates; which is to favour the vicious, at least in point of reputation. It has made a degrading pensionary establishment, to

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which no man of liberal ideas or liberal condition will destine his children. It must settle into the lowest classes of the people. As with you the inferiour clergy are not numerous enough for their duties; as these duties are, beyond measure, minute and toilfome; as you have left no middle classes of clergy at their ease, in future nothing of science or erudition can exist in the Gallican church. To complete the project, without the leaft attention to the rights of patrons, the affembly has provided in future an elective clergy; an arrangement which will drive out of the clerical profeffion all men of fobriety; all who can pretend to independence in their function or their conduct; and which will throw the whole direction of the publick mind into the hands of a fet of licentious, bold, crafty, factious, flattering wretches, of fuch condition and fuch habits of life as will make their contemptible pensions (in comparifon of which the stipend of an excifeman is lucrative and honourable) an object of low and illiberal intrigue. Those officers, whom they still call bishops, are to be elected to a provision comparatively mean, through the fame arts, (that is, electioneering arts) by men of all religious tenets that are known or can be invented. The new lawgivers have not afcertained any thing whatsoever concerning their qualifications, relative either to doctrine or to morals; no more than they have done with

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with regard to the fubordinate clergy; nor does it appear but that both the higher and the lower may, at their difcretion, practise or preach any mode of religion or irreligion that they please. I do not yet fee what the jurisdiction of bishops over their fubordinates is to be; or whether they are to have any jurifdiction at all.

In short, Sir, it feems to me, that this new ecclesiastical establishment is intended only to be temporary, and preparatory to the utter abolition, under any of its forms, of the christian religion, whenever the minds of men are prepared for this last stroke against it, by the accomplishment of the plan for bringing its minifters into universal contempt. They who will not believe, that the philofophical fanaticks who guide in these matters, have long entertained fuch a design, are utterly ignorant of their character and proceedings. These enthusiasts do not fcruple to avow their opinion, that a state can subsist without any religion better than with one; and that they are able to fupply the place of any good which may be in it, by a project of their own-namely, by a fort of education they have imagined, founded in a knowledge of the phyfical wants of men; progressively carried to an enlightened self-interest, which, when well understood, they tell us, will identify with an intereft more enlarged and publick. The scheme of this education has been long known. Of late they they diftinguish it (as they have got an intire new nomenclature of technical terms) by the name of a Civick Education.

I hope their partisans in England (to whom I rather attribute very inconsiderate conduct than the ultimate object in this detestable design) will fucceed neither in the pillage of the ecclefiafticks, nor in the introduction of a principle of popular election to our bishopricks and parochial cures. This, in the present condition of the world, would be the last corruption of the church; the utter ruin of the clerical character; the most dangerous shock that the state ever received through a mif understood arrangement of religion. I know well enough that the bishopricks and cures, under kingly and seignoral patronage, as now they are in England, and as they have been lately in France, are sometimes acquired by unworthy methods; but the other mode of ecclesiastical canvass subjects them infinitely more furely and more generally to all the evil arts of low ambition, which, operating on and through greater numbers, will produce mischief in proportion.

Those of you who have robbed the clergy, think that they shall easily reconcile their conduct to all proteftant nations; because the clergy, whom they have thus plundered, degraded, and given over to mockery and scorn, are of the Roman Catholick, that is, of their own pretended perfua

fion. I have no doubt that fome miferable bigots will be found here as well as elsewhere, who hate sects and parties different from their own, more than they love the substance of religion; and who are more angry with those who differ from them in their particular plans and systems, than dif pleased with those who attack the foundation of our common hope. These men will write and speak on the fubject in the manner that is to be expected from their temper and character. Burnet says, that when he was in France, in the year 1683, "the method which carried over the men " of the finest parts to popery was this they " brought themselves to doubt of the whole chrif"tian religion. When that was once done, it "seemed a more indifferent thing of what side or "form they continued outwardly." If this was then the ecclefiaftick policy of France, it is what they have since but too much reason to repent of. They preferred atheism to a form of religion not agreeable to their ideas. They succeeded in de stroying that form; and atheism has fucceeded in destroying them. I can readily give credit to Burnet's story; because I have observed too much of a similar spirit (for a little of it is "much too " much") amongst ourselves. The humour, how ever, is not general.

The teachers who reformed our religion in Eng. land bore no fort of resemblance to your present reforming