the ways of error.
2. As to morals, that this boasted reformation produced no change in that respect; for the people are not purer than they were in former times, and the ecclesiastics are despised and hated for the badness of their lives. The bishops sacrifice every thing to their ambition; and the clergy of the second rank have no respect for their office. They spend the whole day in public places in smoaking and drinking, and are remarkable for drunkenness, so dishonourable to ecclesiastics. Their

talk is the most dissolute, and the vice that degrades these professors, sets a bad example to sober people, and makes them the jest of libertines.
3. The only remarkable change produced by the reformation was the marriage of priests; and, exclusive of this being against the decisions of the catholic church, it is contrary to sound policy and experience. The marriage of priests diminishes the respect we should have for them. The misconduct of a woman makes the clergyman fall into contempt. The lewdness of the daughter makes the priest, her father, the object of the most indecent jests; and for the most part, the daughters of the clergy turn whores after the death of their father; who, while living, spent more of his income in maintaining himself and children in pleasure and luxury, than in works of charity. He lived profusely, and dies poor.
Beside, if the English clergy were the greatest and most excellent men, yet a great man in the eyes of the world, loses of the respect which is due to him, in proportion as he has any thing in common with the rest of mankind. A Madam Newton, and a Madam Fontenelle, would injure the illustrious men whose name they bore. Nor is this all. Those who by their disposition cannot fix that secret

inclination, which induces us to love, on one person, are more humane and charitable than others. The unmarried ecclesiastics are more animated with that charitable spirit their function requires, as they have no worldly affections to divert it. People very rarely (as Lord Bacon says) employ themselves in watering plants, when they want water themselves. —In short, the English divines are the worst of men, and there is hardly any religion in England.—Thus does this French Abbé revile the English reformation and divines. He misrepresents the whole nation, and with a falshood and outrage peculiar to popery and mass-priests, that is, to devils and the most execrable religion, screams against the pure religion of the gospel, and dishonestly blackens some of the finest characters that ever adorned human nature.