Hitherto the English Church has depended on the State, _i. e._ on the ruling powers in the country--the king and the aristocracy; and this is so natural and religious a position of things when viewed in the abstract, and in its actual working has been productive of such excellent fruits in the Church, such quietness, such sobriety, such external propriety of conduct, and such freedom from doctrinal excesses, that we must ever look back upon the period of ecclesiastical history so characterized with affectionate thoughts; particularly on the reigns of our blessed martyr St. Charles, and King George the Good. But these recollections of the past must not engross our minds, or hinder us from looking at things as they are, and as they will be soon, and from inquiring what is intended by Providence to take the place of the time-honoured instrument, which He has broken (if it be yet broken), the regal and aristocratical power. I shall offend many men when I say, we must _look to the people_; but let them give me a hearing. Well can I understand their feelings. Who at first sight does not dislike the thoughts of gentlemen and clergymen depending for their maintenance and their reputation on their flocks? of their strength, as a visible power, lying not in their birth, the patronage of the great, and the endowment of the Church (as hitherto), but in the homage of a multitude? I confess I have before now had a great repugnance to the notion myself; and if I have overcome it, and turned from the Government to the People, it has been simply because I was forced to do so. It is not we who desert the Government, but the Government that has left us; we are forced back upon those below us, because those above us will not honour us; there is no help for it, I say. But, in truth, the prospect is not so bad as it seems at first sight. The chief and obvious objection to the clergy being thrown on the People, lies in the probable lowering of Christian views, and the adulation of the vulgar, which would be its consequence; and the state of Dissenters is appealed to as an evidence of the danger. But let us recollect that we are an apostolical body; we were not made, nor can be unmade by our flocks; and if our influence is to depend on _them_, yet the Sacraments reside with _us_. We have that with us, which none but ourselves possess, the mantle of the Apostles; and this, properly understood and cherished, will ever keep us from being the creatures of a populace.