68 PAPERS, ETC. 
sacred than aught beside, in religious communion and 
Christian brotherhood. 
Time went on. The aspect of society changed ; and the 
hour and power of darkness at length arrived. It does 
not fall, Iam aware, within the bounds of my province to 
detail the successive steps of that aggression whereby a 
period was at length put to an Institution, wondrously 
adapted to the necessities of the ages in which it did its 
work, and meriting, even for the sake of ancient service, to 
say nothing of its sacred origin, very different treatment 
from that which it received. T'he peculiarities of the times, 
however, were inimical to it. The basest passions which 
can tyrannize over our nature were then in their full 
career of cruelty and crime; and the accompanying pre- 
tence of religious obligation only served to make the 
eruelty more heartless, and the crime more nauseous and 
abominable. It must not be supposed for a single mo- 
ment that religion and morality had anything whatever 
to do with the suppression of Cleeve Abbey. The brutal 
tyrant who sanctioned, the greedy courtiers who encour- 
aged, and the base tools who perpetrated that atrocious 
work, preclude any such a fancy.. Not piety, but pelf, 
was the motive; and the master principle was not the 
glory of God, but the gratification of the most loathsome 
lusts which can degrade mankind. Commissioners came 
down, having prejudged the cause which they pretended 
to try‚„—the willing agents of unscrupulous villany. Re- 
turns were made, wherein we know not which to detest 
the most, the fawning adulation, the hypoecritical affec- 
tation of regret, or the real and true spirit of wrong and 
robbery, which all the studied duplicity of the actors did 
not avail to conceal. Differ from the religious opinions 
DA nn 
