siastical dress, all repugnant to the spirit of Christianity. The laity like brute beasts sit tamely under this usurpation. A man, if a priest or minister enters, is not a master of his own house; he must not thank God for the blessings of Providence at his own table; he cannot pledge his faith to a lovely woman without the interference of the priest; his offspring must be sprinkled by sacred hands, and at death he is not committed to his long home without another spiritual incantation.[1]
"That mankind should embrace the Christian or any other religion, and devote themselves to obey its dictates and cultivate its precepts from various motives, I can easily comprehend, or on the other hand, that a man after every investigation his faculties enable him to make, should sit down a perfect sceptic, I can easily comprehend; but how it is possible that the mass of mankind do not trouble their minds upon the subject, which they certainly do not, but follow each other like a herd of cattle going to a pond, is beyond all comprehension, and furnishes endless ground for reflection upon the nature of man, the purposes of his existence, and the limits of his faculties. I consider it as one of the happiest circumstances of my life, that I was able to make up my mind on this most important of all subjects, and that so decidedly, that an uneasy thought has never entered my mind after having once made it up. I consider man as placed in the midst of a beautiful garden containing fruits, flowers, plants, animals, in short everything the most lively imagination can desire, surrounded with great and inaccessible mountains. The wise part of mankind are content to remain in the garden, and quickly see that the door beyond is shut; the foolish part are continually struggling against nature, and trying to ascend. No man can observe the
- ↑ See a suppressed pamphlet by William Friend, M.A., Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. (Note by Lord Shelburne.) Compare Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xv. "The progress of the ecclesiastical authority gave birth to the memorable distinction of the laity and of the clergy, which had been unknown to the Greeks and Romans. The former of these appellations comprehended the body of the Christian people; the latter, according to the signification of the word, was appropriated to the chosen portion that had been set apart for the service of religion; a celebrated order of men which has furnished the most important, though not always the most edifying, subjects for modern history."
