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Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
page 63 of 710 (08%)
certain extent forced to speak of sacred things. I trust, however,
that I shall not be thought to scoff at the pulpit, though some may
imagine that I do not feel all the reverence that is due to the
cloth. I may question the infallibility of the teachers, but I hope
that I shall not therefore be accused of doubt as to the thing to be
taught.

Mr. Slope, in commencing his sermon, showed no slight tact in his
ambiguous manner of hinting that, humble as he was himself, he stood
there as the mouth-piece of the illustrious divine who sat opposite
to him; and having premised so much, he gave forth a very accurate
definition of the conduct which that prelate would rejoice to see
in the clergymen now brought under his jurisdiction. It is only
necessary to say that the peculiar points insisted upon were exactly
those which were most distasteful to the clergy of the diocese,
and most averse to their practice and opinions, and that all those
peculiar habits and privileges which have always been dear to High
Church priests, to that party which is now scandalously called the
"high and dry church," were ridiculed, abused, and anathematized.
Now, the clergymen of the diocese of Barchester are all of the high
and dry church.

Having thus, according to his own opinion, explained how a clergyman
should show himself approved unto God, as a workman that needeth not
to be ashamed, he went on to explain how the word of truth should
be divided; and here he took a rather narrow view of the question
and fetched his arguments from afar. His object was to express his
abomination of all ceremonious modes of utterance, to cry down any
religious feeling which might be excited, not by the sense, but by
the sound of words, and in fact to insult cathedral practices. Had
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