304 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



impartially into the change effected by the Refor- 

 mation, it amounts only to a lessening or setting 

 aside a portion of the bigotry and superstition by 

 which the old doctrines were enforced. Although 

 one may lament that a more rational view of 

 religion, and its very important concerns, had not 

 been fully contemplated upon, yet even under its 

 guidance, and with all its defects before the mighty 

 change of the Reformation was effected, it would 

 appear that the moral conduct of the common 

 people was generally good, and they were in some 

 respects happier and better off than they have ever 

 been since. The Romish clergy, or priests, in those 

 times, though they took the tithes (according to an 

 old Jewish custom), yet these were more usefully 

 and justly divided than they are in the present time; 

 for they in their day took only a third part of these 

 to themselves, and the other two-thirds were ex- 

 pended in building and repairing their churches 

 and supporting all the poor. There were then no 

 church cesses, nor poor laws, nor the sickening, 

 harassing, and continual gathering of the enormous 

 sums of the poor-rate. 



The established clergy are also bound, in a 

 similar way, by old laws and oaths w^hich have 

 been imposed upon them, to swear to their belief 

 in a certain string of creeds before they are 

 allowed to enter upon the clerical office; and all 

 this, backed and encouraged by the lures of 

 enormous stipends or livings attached to their 

 church, which is furthermore made sure of by 

 these livings being, as it were, held out as a pro- 

 vision for the unprovided part of the younger 

 branches of the families of all the poor gentry 

 of the land. Thus situated, any alteration or 



