My pleasure has been increased, by observing the happy constitution of our government. Our mixed monarchy contains all the excellencies, and provides against the evils of the three sorts of government, of which it is compounded. It is, indeed, a human composition, and therefore, like every other human production, imperfect, and liable to degenerate. Its excellence does not lie in any one of its component parts, but in a nice union of the three, which union is then perfect, when it prevents any one from preponderating, and rendering the other two subservient to itself. Whatever may be my private opinion concerning the present inclination of the balance, I have said nothing on the subject in this book.

My pleasure has risen higher still, by observing what innumerable benefits flow from both the justice and the generosity of this happy kingdom. We have a system of law universally administered, that holds the life, liberty, and property of every individual sacred, and a long train of well-contrived and effective charities, consisting of schools, hospitals, public provisions for all the wants and the maladies, to which mankind in the several stages of life are exposed. To crown all, the religion of our country is christianity, the last best gift of God to inan. All these advantages put together, afford an abundance of felicity, sufficient to satiate the most benevolent soul; and, whether it be ignorance or knowledge, virtue or vice, religion or enthusiasm, certain I am, observing these advantages of the land of my nativity

has given me inexpressible pleasure, and has made Britain appear a paradise to me. Who that loves his species can help forming the most ardent wishes for the prosperity of this country? Who can help saying, Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee!

Whoever indulges a pleasure arising from these considerations, will find it interrupted by a universal complaint of the general infidelity and profligacy of the inhabitants of this happy clime. It is not a murmur issuing from the cell of a rigid monk, or an explosion of the fierce rage of an enthusiast; it is the sad and sober remonstrance of all the wisest and best men in the kingdom, and it is supported by proofs, alas! too glaring and notorious.

After we have made as many concessions to the frailty of human nature as the tenderest parent would make to the follies of his children, and after we have given all the merit, that an excess of candour can desire, to the virtues of our countrymen, we are obliged to confess, that we abound with impiety and immorality. Atheism, deism, infidelity in a thousand forms, drunkenness, debauchery, swearing, profanation of the Lord's day, variegated frauds, and boundless luxury in ten thousand shapes, disgrace this country; and these are not confined to the low and illiterate, but they profane all ranks and degrees among us. Examine a county election, observe a city feast, or a country wake, walk through public places of business or pleasure, attend the courts of justice and listen to the causes trying there, peep into hospitals and

jails, see the navy, and the army, in a word, behold the whole body politick, and behold, in the language of a prophet, a sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers; forsaking the Lord, and provoking the holy one of Israel to anger.

Two things have here made forcible impressions. on my mind: first, it is certain, that christianity is a religion so good in itself, so admirably adapted to the wants and just wishes of mankind, so plain to the meanest capacity, and so clear and irresistible in its evidences of divinity, that it is not capable of any improvement; it is, like all the other works of God, perfect and entire, and wanting nothing, commending itself to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Yet, secondly, it is equally clear, that the precepts of this religion are not practised by the bulk of us, that its beauty is not seen, and that its evidences make few or no impressions on our minds. A question, then, naturally arises what is the cause of this universal darkness amidst such a profusion of light?

It does not proceed from a scarcity of teachers. Our schools have masters, our universities tutors, our nobility domestic chaplains, our parishes priests, our inns of court, our regiments, ships, hospitals, and jails, have preachers, chaplains, or ordinaries, all devoted from their earliest youth to the service of religion; all educated with a view to diffuse the knowledge of christianity; all freed from secular employments, and professing to teach and exemplify the principles and practices of Jesus Christ.

-It does not proceed from a scarcity of provision for our instructors; for beside the immense salaries paid to some, and the abundance of small dues to all, the whole produce of the ground, except in a few cases, is every tenth year allotted them. Jews and christians, papists and protestants, conformists and nonconformists pay their share.

It is impossible, on the one hand, to deny the wickedness of this nation; for, we are daily told, that the present calamitous war, the ruin of trade, the increase of taxes, the many, very many ills, under which we groan, are all punishments of our sins; hence general fasts, and fast sermons, and in every pulpit catalogues of crimes to be repented of, and forborn. On the other hand, it is impossible to deny, that national wickedness is the effect of a cause, and that there is a great fault somewhere.

I ventured to suppose, that this fault lay, not in the clergy, but in the constitution of that church, which they are retained to support. I examined the doctrines taught by Jesus Christ on the mount, and compared them with the thirty-nine articles of faith; I read the discourses delivered by Jesus Christ at the ordination of his twelve apostles and seventy disciples, and, having done justice to the subject by leaving out the extraordinary, and retaining only the ordinary parts, I compared this remainder with the book of consecration, and ordering of priests and deacons; and so very scrupulous was I in making this contrast, that I pro

cured of a particular friend that very edition of the book to which the clergy subscribe, and which is so extremely scarce, that few in the kingdom have seen it.* I compared the other discourses of Christ and his Apostles with the two books of homilies. I collected the Lord's prayer, and the other prayers of scripture together, and compared them with the liturgy. I compared the rules of ecclesiastical action laid down in the new testament with the canons of the church, the temper and disposition of Christ with the temper and spirit of these laws. In one word, I compared the gospel according to the four evangelists, with the gospel according to the episcopal reformers, and I found, or thought I found, an admirable fitness in the first to answer the ends of Christ's coming into the world, that is, to make men wise and good, and consequently an unfitness in the last.

My conviction increased, by comparing the history of the gospel, according to the four evangelists, as recorded in the acts of the apostles, with the history of the gospel according to Cranmer, as recorded in all our historians; and, from the whole, I could not help concluding, that were christianity proposed now to Britons as it was then to Greeks and Romans, it would produce as good effects, because we have as much good sense as they, and it would produce no commotions and allowed persecutions, because we have better no

* See the thirty-sixth article of religion, intitled, of consecration of bishops and ministers.