sin.] DUTY OF THE CLERGY. 315 



which tells of that God, will gradually cease to 

 be believed in. 



For the demands of Reason (as none knew better 

 than good Bishop Butler) must be and ought to be 

 satisfied. And when a popular war arises between the 

 reason of a generation and its theology, it behoves the 

 ministers of religion to inquire, with all humility and 

 godly fear, on which side lies the fault : whether 

 the theology which they expound is all that it should 

 be, or whether the reason of those who impugn it is 

 all that it should be. 



For me, as (I trust) an orthodox priest of the 

 Church of England, I believe the theology of the 

 National Church of England, as by law established, to 

 be eminently rational as well as scriptural. It is not, 

 therefore, surprising to me that the clergy of the 

 Church of England, since the foundation of the Royal 

 Society in the seventeenth century, have done more 

 for sound physical science than the clergy of any other 

 denomination ; or that the three greatest natural 

 theologians with which I, at least, am acquainted 

 Berkeley, Butler, and Paley should have belonged to 

 our Church. I am not unaware of what the Germans 

 of the eighteenth century have done. I consider 

 Goethe's claims to have advanced natural theology 

 very much over-rated : but I do recommend to young 

 clergymen Herder's " Outlines of the Philosophy of 

 the History of Man" as a book (in spite of certain 

 defects) full of sound and precious wisdom. But it 

 seems to me that English natural theology in the 

 eighteenth century stood more secure than that of 

 any other nation, on the foundation which Berkeley, 



