Revolution, the Episcopal order (on a rough and general view) might be
described as a body of supine persons, known to the public only as a
dead weight against all change that was distasteful to the Government.
In the last century and a half, the nation was often afflicted with
sensual royalty, bloody wars, venal statesmen, corrupt constituencies,
bribery and violence at elections, flagitious drunkenness pervading
all ranks, and insinuating itself into Colleges and Rectories. The
prisons of the country had been in a most disgraceful state; the
fairs and waits were scenes of rude debauchery, and the theatres
were--still, in this nineteenth century--whispered to be haunts of the
most debasing immorality. I could not learn that any bishop had ever
taken the lead in denouncing these iniquities; nor that when any man
or class of men rose to denounce them, the Episcopal Order failed to
throw itself into the breach to defend corruption by at least passive
resistance. Neither Howard, Wesley and Whitfield, nor yet Clarkson,
Wilberforce, or Romilly, could boast of the episcopal bench as an ally
against inhuman or immoral practices. Our oppressions in India, and
our sanction to the most cruel superstitions of the natives, led to no
outcry from the Bishops. Under their patronage the two old Societies
of the Church had gone to sleep until aroused by the Church Missionary
and Bible Societies, which were opposed by the Bishops. Their policy
seemed to be, to do nothing, until somebody else was likely to do
it; upon which they at last joined the movement in order to damp its
energy, and get some credit from it. Now what were Bishops for, but to
be the originators and energetic organs of all pious and good works?
and what were they in the House of Lords for, if not to set a higher
tone of purity, justice, and truth? and if they never did this, but
weighed down those who attempted it, was not that a condemnation (not,
perhaps, of all possible Episcopacy, but) of Episcopacy as it exists
in England? If such a thing as a moral argument _for_ Christianity