Ignorance may perhaps be the mother of superstition, but experience has not proved it to be so of devotion; for christianity always made the most easy and quickest progress in civilized countries. I mention this, because it is affirmed, that the clergy are in most credit where ignorance prevails, (and surely this kingdom would be called the paradise of clergymen, if that opinion were true) for which they instance England in the times of popery. But, whoever knows any thing of three or four centuries before the reformation, will find the little learning then stirring was more equally divided between the English clergy and laity, than it is at present. There were several famous lawyers in that period, whose writings are still in the highest repute, and some historians and poets, who were not of the church. Whereas now a days our education is so corrupted, that you will hardly find a young person of quality with the least tincture of knowledge, at the same time that many of the clergy were never more learned, or so scurvily treated. Here among us at least, a man of letters, out of the three professions, is almost a prodigy. And those few, who have preserved any rudiments of learning, are (except perhaps one or two smatterers) the clergy's friends to a man: and I dare appeal to any clergyman in this kingdom, whether the greatest dunce in the parish, be not always the most proud, wicked, fraudulent, and intractable of his flock.
I think the clergy have ahnost given over perplexing themselves and their hearers, with abstruse points of predestination, election, and the like; at least, it is time they should; and therefore I shall not trouble you farther upon this head.
I have
