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    is improbable ; yet why weirt thou ignorant , except because thou wert careless ? But thy alleged ignorance Wesley took away . He displayed to thee the actual state of the people ; he solemnly admonished thee ; and how didst thou act ? No effort didst thou spare to decry the man , to traverse his plans , to keep from the people the good he was ready to communicate . And

    as no effort was spared to put him down , so none was made to atone for thy past neglects—to meet actual wants—to dissipate the darkness in which thou knewest the minds of the people to be enveloped . And , therefore , in spite of all opposition , he went through the kingdom in a proud and . rapid triumph , giving present and future happiness to thousands , whom thou hadst left in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity . To

    him and others , not to thee , the labouring classes of this land owe most of the religious good which they now possess . It is painful , however , to think how small a portion of these classes that good embraces . No ; thou hast not been eyes to the blind ; for the bulk of the people , of those who before all others need , in consequence of their bodily toil and many privations , need and claim the aid of religion , are devoid of the rudiments of

    religious knowledge and the elements of a religious characterbeing as foul and boisterous in their bosoms as they were dark in their minds . Go into the streets and lanes of my cities , traverse the districts of the agricultural population , enter the hovel , once a cottage , notice the disorder and filth , the ragged and half-starved children , the wife in tears , the husband in despair ,- ^ -muttering his

    discontent upon all about him , upon those very beings that nature meant to be the joy of his heart , —and perhaps his curses on . that Church which I meant to be his instructor—guide of his mind—but which he knows of almost only as luxuriating in the tenth of the land ' s produce , and greedy to exact the fee for every trivial service . Go—see—hear these things—they exist on all sides in wretched abundance—go and lay them to heart i

    • If the poor are ignorant and vicious , are the rich instructed ? The theological education of the instructed part of the community is , as far as thy influence extends , insignificant in the extreme , whether its nature or extent be regarded . There was a time when theology , as a science , flourished out of the church , — -when a Newton and a Locke deemed the study worthy of the highest efforts Qf their highest powers ; but since churchmen have , with

    a few exceptions , discontinued to study theology , —since but too many proofs have made it apparent , that divinity is in practice degraded to a trade , in which he was most prosperous , not who enlarged the boundaries of knowledge , not who threw light on ; what was obscure , not who , by the free and vigorous , exercise of his own powers , encouraged and fostered ! . the mental energy of others , —but who be ^ st defended existing institutions ,- ^ -wiio most plausibly extenuated existing abuses , who rooat effectively drowned

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    104 Question between the Nation and the Church .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 104, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/32/