The thought is happy, my Lord; and, if a number of these philosophers could any where be found, I might be induced to fall into the project of employing such only in the province of education. But, the condition, in which truth and reason are now left, and seem likely to continue, in this world of ours, affords little room for such flattering expectations. An unprejudiced instructor, I doubt, is a rarity not to be met with, I do not say in our Universities, but even out of them: and, prejudices for prejudices, some persons may be apt to think those of a churchman as tolerable as of any other.
But, my Lord, having no particular bias on my own mind in favour of that order, and having something perhaps to resent from several individuals of it, it will not misbecome me to hazard a word or two, in its vindication.
You will permit me then to say, that I see no peculiar unfitness in the clergy for the office, they are called to, in this country, of superintending the business of education. The leisure they enjoy; the various learning and general studies, which that leisure enables them, and their profession obliges them, to pursue; and, lastly, the strictness of life and manners, or, if you will, the very decorum, which their character imposes upon them; these circumstances seem generally to have marked them out, as the properest persons to form the manners and cultivate the minds of youth, in all countries. In our own, that propriety strikes one the more, since their prejudices, of whatever kind, are but in common to them with other speculative and studious men; and since even their interest, rightly understood, and as seen by the best and wisest of themselves, (whatever may have been warmly and passionately said by some persons) is in no degree separate from that of the great community, to which they belong.
Yes, your Lordship will say, their hopes and views of preferment—
Yet, in this respect, they are but on a level with other men of most other professions; nay, with all men out of them, that aspire to rise, by their merits or the favour of their superiors, to any distinction in the world. And though we commonly say, that the clergy should be only animated by purer motives, yet you cannot expect, nay would not seriously wish, that they should be altogether insensible to such as these.
It is true, in countries where the clergy have a dependance on some foreign power, or where they have usurped an independent power to themselves, or where, lastly, the civil constitution is so ill defined that the privileges of the subject lie at the mercy of the prince; in each of these cases, the ambition of the clergy may be, and in fact has been, productive of many public mischiefs. But our Protestant clergy, who are in no foreign subjection, claim no independency, and fill their place in a system all whose parts are, now at least, exactly regulated by known laws, cannot, by their private ambition, disturb the general interest, and have no peculiar inducements to attempt it. And though particulars may sometimes, by their follies and indiscretions, dishonour themselves, yet the effect cannot be considerable, and certainly affords no good reason for taking the province of education, for which on so many accounts they are well qualified, out of their hands.
Your Lordship’s candour and equity will then, upon the whole, permit an obvious distinction to be made between the MEN and their PROFESSION. Too many of the sacred order, I confess, and am sorry for it, seem now to have their minds perverted by those principles, and heated by those passions, which do little credit to their function, or themselves; and are equally inconsistent with the genius of that religion they profess to teach, as they are unfriendly to that legal constitution both of church and state, which they have bound themselves to support. But their profession is little concerned in all this; and in a succession or two of these men (if the present set be, many of them, incorrigible) you may surely reckon upon all those prejudices and passions being worked off, which now administer the occasion of so much dislike to it.
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
Well, but clergy-manners; will they, too, be worked off, with their other infirmities?