It is revolting to bear record of these villanies--to see sordid advantage taken of the most sacred feelings of mankind, and religion itself subjected to suspicion through the hypocrisy of its professors. But, however humiliating may be the confession, experience has sanctioned it as a truth, that an indigent church makes a corrupt clergy; that in order to secure a priesthood which shall wear well, a permanent provision must be set aside for their maintenance--such a provision as shall induce men duly qualified, to enter the church, for it is visionary to suppose that temporal motives will not have their weight in this temporal state of things; and it is unreasonable to expect that persons who are excluded by the rules of society from the usual inlets to wealth, the courts, the camp, or the exchange, and who cannot but know or feel, when they are honestly doing their duty, that they are as good commonwealth’s men, to put it upon no higher ground, as any others, and therefore have as good a right to its liberal regards as any others, should be content to waive this right;--such a provision as shall be enough to ensure recruits for the priesthood from all ranks, the highest as well as those below, and so to ensure their easy intercourse with all ranks; for the leaven should leaven the _whole_ lump;--such a provision as should encourage them to speak with all boldness, crouching to no man for their morsel of bread, nor tempted to lick the hand that feeds them;--such a provision as should prevent the meanness of their condition from prejudicing the force of their reasons, or give occasion to a high-minded hearer to accuse their plain speech of unmannerly presumption. Surely, until we can find such a church upon earth, in all her members, and in all the successive generations of her members, as can be true to the image of our Lord, it is a vision indeed to reject all adventitious support, such as her condition may require, and to say with the great puritan poet, that she should be content, as he was, to ride upon an ass.”[85]