some degree of exemption from the arbitrary influence of his congregation, it has also a tendency to preserve the purity of doctrine. Plato deemed it scandalous and at variance with the laws of virtue, to teach for a fee. St. Paul claimed that those who ministered in the Gospel should live by their ministry:* but the vital powers given to the Church enable her to admit many popular influences, which, if she dealt with mere abstractions of philosophy, and not with a living covenant of grace, she would be obliged jealously to exclude. And yet who does not see that the Apostle himself, in writing to his converts, that he had laboured for his own support, because he would not be chargeable unto any of them,† affords an express recognition of that truth for which we here contend, namely, that when the Christian flock are placed habitually in the position of paymasters, notions of pride and self-sufficiency will infallibly associate themselves with that function, and men will claim the right to determine upon the doctrine, for whose inculcation they are continually reminded that they supply the pecuniary means? Perhaps it was also a similar principle of delicacy in the management of temporalities, which induced the Apostles to commit to the brethren the choice of the persons who were to be ordained deacons, and which led St. Paul to take with him on his journey, to distribute the funds raised for the churches of Palestine, a companion chosen, not by one particular congregation, but by the generality— 1 Thess. ii. 9; 2 Thess. iii. 8. 1 Cor. ix. 14. Acts vi. 1. οὗ ὁ ἔπαινος ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ διὰ πασῶν τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν· οὐ μόνον δὲ, ἀλλὰ καὶ χειροτονηθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἐκκλησίων, x. T. λ.* 15. From this principle, that the purveyor of the pecuniary means is ever apt, rightly or wrongly (in most cases rightly, but in all he is inclined), to become the judge of the work performed, arises the undue dictation of the State, where the clergy are supported by annual and revocable votes, or in any manner depending on the will of the existing secular administration—a dictation which it requires very stringent rules and precautions to prevent. Hence also the tyranny of the people, of the combined many or the wealthy few, where they close or open the purse at pleasure. at pleasure. Hence the blessing of a provision in fixed property, which operates as a part of the permanent law and organisation of the country, and which does not immediately depend, nor is it at all felt to depend, upon the favourable or adverse fluctuations, from time to time, of human will. As the first of these arrangements tends strongly to Erastianism, so the second is calculated to give an unbounded scope to the exercise of private judgment in religion, and to the disregard of all the restraints of authority and of the general reason and this the more, in proportion as those, who by payment control their instructors, are nu merous. 16. This is not a period in which an individual can * 2 Cor. viii. 18, 19. contend against numbers, without calling to his aid some auxiliaries, such as custom, authority, prescription. A single patron, therefore, in presenting a clergyman, does not, in general, look for an organ of his own sentiments as such, but for one who will convey the principles which are received in his particular religious communion or party; and he relies on the fact of their habitual reception as a counterpoise to any movement which a popular disapprobation at the time may seem to carry. The patron, therefore, does not claim the right of moulding the doctrine which is to be inculcated in the same manner as it is claimed and exercised where the people elect, since numbers have, according to the present sentiment, an intrinsic weight, which the individual has not. Hence patronage becomes a conservative element in religion; and popular election, on the other hand, gives great encouragement to innovation in the matter of teaching; independently of the other results, beneficial or injurious, which have been found to attend each mode of settlement respectively. 17. And indeed, more generally, it seems hardly too much to assume, that, upon the whole, religious truth, of whatever amount, is safer in the hands of teachers than in those of the taught; in those of men who devote their minds specifically to the subject, and accept it in lieu of any worldly profession, than in those of the crowd, who have other objects upon which to bestow their chief energies, and who, for the most part, bestow upon this such a residue only of their attention as fails to be absorbed by the material wants and interests of life. Not that in the hands of either it is absolutely secure; nor that it can anywhere be pure, except under the safeguards which God has appointed. But such elements or fractional parts of truth as are embodied in any system of religion, will, upon the whole, be better preserved by those most devoted to that system, than by the mass of its nominal adherents. It follows that a considerable degree of freedom in the condition of the clergy from the control of their immediate flocks is advantageous to religion. Doubtless the watchmen require to be watched, and a compound action, of the teachers and the people reciprocally, affords a better guarantee than that of each taken singly would supply: still it remains true, that the voluntary method tends to give a preponderating influence, in determining the doctrine which shall be taught, to the less qualified class; and the method of endowment, and therefore of establishment, which is so much akin to it, verges in the opposite direction. Thus by a chain of causes we find a real connection practically established between the union of Church and State, and that permanency of religious teaching, which is one of the notes and conditions of its purity. 18. If then we are to assume the principle of endowment, is it meant to be seriously alleged that there are fundamental objections to its being put in practice by the State, as introducing lethargy, extravagance, and corruption? that, while private vigilance is able for itself to secure the efficient management of pecuniary resources, all services which the Government superintends, conducts, or aids, are distinguished by a spirit of inaction, or of wasteful extravagance? On the contrary, it is notorious that the wholesome jealousy of the people, the exposure and free discussion of our public accounts, a comprehensive scale and an extended agency, and the credit that in every well-regulated State attaches to public employments, enable the Government upon the whole to realise, not perhaps everywhere a rigid economy, but a measure of it at least greater than that which the average of private agency would secure. 19. But there is another material distinction: its aid would have one obvious advantage, that it would more nearly conform to a regular and permanent standard, and would be less likely either in an age of superstition to load the priesthood with a corrupting excess of wealth, or in a selfish and worldly period to reduce it to an indecent poverty and dependence. It was the lavish profusion of private persons which, before the Reformation, had placed in the hands of the Church so large a proportion of the landed property of this and of other countries. It has been stated that it actually reached one-third of the whole in England, and one moiety in Scotland. If we admit that the tithe was given by legislative enactment, still it was not the tithe, but the bequests of estates, which caused the enormous temporal aggrandisement of the Church. In the mean time the State was endeavouring with a |