The clergy of the Established Church! What of them? Bishop Burnet, in 1713, wrote: “Our ember weeks are the burden and grief of my life. The much greater part of those who come to be ordained are ignorant to a degree not to be apprehended by those who are not obliged to know it. The easiest part of knowledge is that to which they are the greatest strangers; I mean the plainest parts of the Scriptures. They can give no account, or at least a very imperfect one, of the contents even of the gospels, or of the catechism itself.” This is a doleful picture, but there was more than this. The dissensions in the Church of England then were quite as violent as dissensions now. The high church clergy were moral, and many of them talented and learned, but they were as intolerant as intolerance could make them. Of course, they held that none were ministers of Christ except those who had been _episcopally_ ordained; and hence they held that all sacraments administered by Dissenters were invalid, and all Dissenting churches in a state of sin and damnation. They boldly preached the doctrine of a proper sacrifice being made in the Christian eucharist, and most furiously contended for the Divine right of kings, and the kindred dogma of passive obedience. Many of them, in heart at least, were Jacobites, and, while promising allegiance, regarded King George as a usurper, and branded those of their brethren who differed from them with opprobrium. Endless were the pamphlets published, and fierce were the feuds of those who ought to have dwelt together in unity. The foulest sins were made sinless by intemperate zeal for the Pretender, and the fairest virtues were besmeared in those who showed a friendly feeling for Dissenters. A man might be drunken and quarrelsome all the week, but if on Sunday he bowed to the altar and cursed King William he was esteemed a saint. He might cheat everybody, and pay nobody, but if he drank health to the royal orphan, hated King George, and abhorred the Whigs, his want of probity was a peccadillo scarce worth noticing. On the other hand, a man might be learned, diligent, devout, and useful, but if he opposed the Pretender and Popery, or if he thought the Dissenters should not be damned, he was at once set down as heterodox, and, according to his importance, became a target for the poisoned shafts of high church malice.