1826.] On the Suppression of Monasteries in England. 283 
true one; and that exorbitant privilege by which the clergy claimed an 
exemption from civil jurisdiction, and extended the sanctuary of the church 
even to lay criminals, was well calculated, in those stormy and troubled times 
(when the vassal had no other protection against the cruelty and injustice of 
his feudal lord, and the altar alone presented a landmark amidst the, tempests 
of human passion), to make the people cherish a fond love and veneration for 
that which was their only city of refuge; within whose hallowed walls the tur- 
bulence of man dared not follow, and the arm of persecution could not reach 
them. Notwithstanding, too, the general depravity of the monastic order, it 
had, even in the worst days, its redeeming qualities. The virtues of hospi- 
‘tality and charity were extensively practised within the walls and around the 
precincts of convents; and there were many beneath that lowly garb, whose 
mild virtues and meek devotion deserved a better fate than to be included in 
the charges against the monks as a body, Chivalry was patronized by, amd in 
a manner identified with religion; and to chivalry it is clear that those ages 
were indebted for the nourishment of many splendid qualities and noble senti- 
ments, which redeemed and humanized their barbarisms. In short, the church, 
with all its errors, undoubtedly was the means of preserving many of those 
virtues which were enabled to struggle through that wide devastation, and 
which were the imperishable elements, without whose existence no moral resus- 
citation could have taken place, and upon which a purified faith and an 
improved knowledge were destined to act. 
But of all the causes which operated to render the religion of those times 
what it has been so justly characterized to be—a bridge, connecting the two 
periods of ancient and modern civilization,—none was so effective as the pre- 
servation of the Latin liturgy. Every principle of common-sense required 
that the service of the ehurch should be translated into the modern tongues; 
but such a proceeding was inconsistent with the purposes of those whose object 
it was to clothe their religion in mystery, that they might enhance the value and 
influence of their own ministration; and who, in the prosecution of that view, 
had prohibited the perusal of the word of God,—thus drying up the springs of 
truth and knowledge at their fountain-head. But from this absurdity posterity 
was to reap a noble harvest. The ignorance of the clergy, in the darker times 
of the middle ages, was so inconceivably great, that the maintenance of the 
Latin liturgy alone preserved a knowledge of that language in Europe; while 
their reputed learning and immense wealth drew into the libraries of convents 
those scattered manuscripts which survived the persecutions to which learning 
had been exposed ; and to this anomalous cause we owe it that the treasures of 
-the past have been rendered available for the use of modern science and 
literature. 
Such were the benefits which were secured to Europe by the monastic 
establishment, and by the stability and universality which it tended to give to 
the domination of the Holy See. But the time was now arrived when the 
instrument had done its work, and the moral and political evils of the system 
began to appear in that better light, which was slowly brightening into the 
perfect day. The sun had long been above the horizon, and his yet slanting rays 
served to show the deformity which the shadows of a lengthened night had 
concealed. ~ erste 
The political inconveniences which had begun to be felt in England arose 
chiefly from the large immunities, and immense wealth and power of the 
clergy; which rendered them formidable to the civil magistrate, by arming with 
too extensive authority an order of men, whose interest bound them closely 
together : and from the difficulty, expense, and delay which attended the 
execution of justice, from the circumstance of the head of the church being a 
foreign potentate. 
_,,But the grand and progressive march of the human intellect had long been 
silently going forward; and it is material to our subject, as well as highly 
Interesting in itself, to examine the drama of moral causes which had been 
acting, and to look at those SoSH aN Pr which had gradually been disposing 
s 202 
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