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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

upon the civil magistrate to persecute the protestants; andthe church of England , to persecute the dissenters; and thatin general every religious sect, when it has once enjoyed fora century or two the security of a legal establishment, hasfound itself incapable of making any vigorous defence againstany new sect which chose to attack its doctrine or discipline.Upon such occasions the advantage in point of learning andgood writing may sometimes be on the side of the establishedchurch. But the arts of popularity, all the arts of gainingproselytes, are constantly on the side of its adversaries. InEngland those arts have been long neglected by the well-endowed clergy of the established church, and are at presentchiefly cultivated by the dissenters and by the methodists.The independent provisions, however, which in many placeshave been made for dissenting teachers, by means of volun-tary subscriptions, of trust rights, and other evasions of thelaw, seem very much to have abated the zeal and activity ofthose teachers. They have many of them become very learned,ingenious, and respectable men; but they have in generalceased to be very popular preachers. The methodists, with-out half the learning of the dissenters, are much more invogue.

In the church of Rome , the industry and zeal of the infe-rior clergy are kept more alive by the powerful motive of self-interest, than perhaps in any established protestant church.The parochial clergy derive, many of them, a very conside-rable part of tlieir subsistence from the voluntary oblations ofthe people ; a source of revenue which confession gives themmany opportunities of improving. The mendicant orders de-rive their whole subsistence from such oblations. It is withthem, as with the hussars and light infantry of some armies ;no plunder, no pay. The parochial clergy are like thoseteachers whose reward depends partly upon their salary, andpartly upon the fees or honoraries which they get from theirpupils ; and these must always depend more or less upon theirindustry and reputation. The mendicant orders are like thoseteachers whose subsistence depends altogether upon their in-dustry. They are obliged, therefore, to use every art whichcan animate the devotion of the common people. The esta-blishment of the two great mendicant orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis, it is observed by Machiavel , revived, in thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the languishing faith anddevotion of the catholic church. In Roman catholic countries