What must they think of that body of teachers if they
see it in no part above the establishment of their domestic
servants? If the poverty were voluntary, there might be some
difference. Strong instances of self-denial operate powerfully on
our minds, and a man who has no wants has obtained great freedom and
firmness and even dignity. But as the mass of any description of men
are but men, and their poverty cannot be voluntary, that disrespect
which attends upon all lay poverty will not depart from the
ecclesiastical. Our provident constitution has therefore taken care
that those who are to instruct presumptuous ignorance, those who are
to be censors over insolent vice, should neither incur their
contempt nor live upon their alms, nor will it tempt the rich to a
neglect of the true medicine of their minds. For these reasons, whilst
we provide first for the poor, and with a parental solicitude, we have
not relegated religion (like something we were ashamed to show) to
obscure municipalities or rustic villages. No! we will have her to
exalt her mitred front in courts and parliaments. We will have her
mixed throughout the whole mass of life and blended with all the
classes of society. The people of England will show to the haughty
potentates of the world, and to their talking sophisters, that a free,
a generous, an informed nation honors the high magistrates of its
church; that it will not suffer the insolence of wealth and titles, or
any other species of proud pretension, to look down with scorn upon
what they looked up to with reverence; nor presume to trample on
that acquired personal nobility which they intend always to be, and
which often is, the fruit, not the reward (for what can be the
reward?) of learning, piety, and virtue.
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