The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
Philosophy
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 04 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
One would think, that, after an honest and necessary revolution, (if
they had a mind that theirs should pass for such,) your masters would
have imitated the virtuous policy of those who have been at the head of
revolutions of that glorious character. Burnet tells us, that nothing
tended to reconcile the English nation to the government of King William
so much as the care he took to fill the vacant bishoprics with men who
had attracted the public esteem by their learning, eloquence, and piety,
and above all, by their known moderation in the state. With you, in your
purifying revolution, whom have you chosen to regulate the Church? M.
Mirabeau is a fine speaker, and a fine writer, and a fine--a very fine
man; but, really, nothing gave more surprise to everybody here than to
find him the supreme head of your ecclesiastical affairs. The rest is of
course. Your Assembly addresses a manifesto to France, in which they
tell the people, with an insulting irony, that they have brought the
Church to its primitive condition. In one respect their declaration is
undoubtedly true: for they have brought it to a state of poverty and
persecution. What can be hoped for after this? Have not men, (if they
deserve the name,) under this new hope and head of the Church, been made
bishops for no other merit than having acted as instruments of atheists?
for no other merit than having thrown the children's bread to dogs? and,
in order to gorge the whole gang of usurers, peddlers, and itinerant
Jew discounters at the corners of streets, starved the poor of their
Christian flocks, and their own brother pastors? Have not such men been
made bishops to administer in temples in which (if the patriotic
donations have not already stripped them of their vessels) the
church-wardens ought to take security for the altar plate, and not so
much as to trust the chalice in their sacrilegious hands, so long as
Jews have assignats on ecclesiastic plunder, to exchange for the silver
stolen from churches?
I am told that the very sons of such Jew jobbers have been made bishops:
persons not to be suspected of any sort of _Christian_ superstition, fit
colleagues to the holy prelate of Autun, and bred at the feet of that
Gamaliel. We know who it was that drove the money-changers out of the
temple. We see, too, who it is that brings them in again. We have in
London very respectable persons of the Jewish nation, whom we will keep;
but we have of the same tribe others of a very different
description,--housebreakers, and receivers of stolen goods, and forgers
of paper currency, more than we can conveniently hang. These we can
spare to France, to fill the new episcopal thrones: men well versed in
swearing; and who will scruple no oath which the fertile genius of any
of your reformers can devise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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