

THE 



: MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



OP 

 POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES. 



VOL. XIII.] APRIL, 1832. [No. 76. 



THE CHURCH PUT IN THE TRUE LIGHT. 



UNLESS -we are deceived, much of the outcry that has been made 

 against the clergy may be traced to a popular misconception as to the 

 true use and design of the church. How common is it to hear it 

 alleged that the establishment is a national institution, intended to 

 maintain and promote the Christian religion ! Now, that this theory is 

 not the true one, we have the best possible proof its inadequacy to 

 explain the phenomena : it is irreconcileable with all we know of 

 churchmen either from history or experience. Such, however, is the 

 tenacity with which, in sacred as well as in profane matters, men stick to 

 a favourite hypothesis, that those who hold this erroneous opinion as to 

 the object of the church, instead of abandoning it, (as by the rules of 

 just philosophizing they are bound to do,) the moment it is j^iewn to be 

 repugnant to facts, not only persist in maintaining it, but, aggravating 

 bad logic by bad feeling, convert it into an instrument of attack upon 

 the clergy, whom they brand with hypocrisy, because, forsooth ! their 

 conduct does not quadrate with a system which is nothing but the fabric 

 of their own fancies. 



No marvel, indeed, that the public press that unwearied archer 

 daily empties its quiver upon bishops, priests, and deacons, when the 

 notion has been so busily propagated that their principles bind them to 

 despise riches, renounce the world, and preach with their lives as well 

 as their lips the doctrines of the New Testament. Were such the case, 

 the defence of the clerical order would, truly, be no easy matter. 

 Their enemies would only have to prove their enormous wealth to 

 obtain a verdict against them. An establishment, in the annual receipt 

 of some seven or eight millions sterling, designed to shew forth the 

 evangelical charms of a life of penury and self-denial, were an odd 

 adaptation of means to ends. It is not the gospel that is described as 



" A gay religion, full of pomp and gold." 



A hierarchy, " lifting its mitred head in courts and parliament ;" a 

 priesthood which might take for its motto " quorum pars magnafiti," so 

 much more conspicuous are their labours on the magisterial bench than 

 in the Christian vineyard : these things savour more of this world than 

 the next. The pluralist, the non-resident, the fox-hunter, are characters 

 which it would puzzle the best advocate in the Common Pleas to tor- 



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