DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES. 189 



— by her revenues being so secularized — surely, surely it is the 

 duty of every lay impropriator to do his utmost to remedy the sub- 

 stantial evil here complained of, by a cordial co-operation with 

 those of their class who are promoting the public weal in the erec- 

 tion of district churches* on their estates ; and thus trying to erase 

 the foul and ugly spot which tarnishes the family escutcheon, cha- 

 racterized by the name of church spoliation. Let them remove, 

 then, as far as lies in their power, what is so grievously injurious 

 to the cause of true religion, and a future age will forget, in their 

 christian virtues and charities, the sacrilegious purloinings of their 

 forefathers. Let them, we say, give ear to their king's letter, and 

 multiply, according to their respective means, churches and chapels, 

 which are the glory of the land — the greatest instruments of inter- 

 nal tranquillity — the firmest and cheapest defences against the out- 

 breakings of an unchristian population — the most sure and certain 

 antidote to a country's ruin. Let them so signalize themselves, and 

 they will render these accusatory complaints, now apposite and co- 

 gent, not only ill-timed and ill-judged, but positively uncharitable. 

 " The lay impropriators are indeed the principal cause of the strait- 

 ened circumstances in which so many of the English clergy pass 



to do somewhat for the church, to reduce the patrimony thereof to a compe- 

 tence. For since they have debarred Christ's wife of a great part of her 

 dowry, it were reason they made her a competent jointure." It is a consti- 

 tution of the divine law, from which human laws cannot derogate, that those 

 which feed the flock should live of the flock — that those which serve at the 

 altar should live 'of the altar — that those which dispense spiritual things 

 should reap spiritual things ; of which it is also an appendix, that the pro- 

 portion of the maintenance be not small or necessitous, but plentiful and li- 

 beral." 



* At the bare mention of District Churches, what mortal being is there, 

 who longs for the christian education of the people and the promotion of 

 Christ's kingdom, that does not feel his pulse quicken with tumultuous 

 throbs of admiration at the glorious manner in which so many among the opu- 

 lent of the clergy have responded to the public appeal of the Bishop of Lon- 

 don to aid his design of erecting fifty new district churches in the Metropolis, 

 to stop the moral pestilence which infects its countless bye-streets and alleys, 

 by bringing their densely crowded population to the true knowledge of the 

 true God. It would be singular then, indeed, if this eagerness on the part 

 of the clergy to honour the Lord with a portion of their substance, should 

 not find many imitators among the noble and wealthy of the laity. And 

 when this high and holy enterprise shall be accomplished, where is the man, 

 whose heart is in its right place, that will not say with us, that this great 

 Bishop of our church has not only served his own generation, by calling these 

 religious fabrics into existence, but levied a tax of admiration and gratitude 

 upon a future one. 



