The Character of Liberal Politicians.

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If you say, that your being on the Liberal side of politics prevents you from keeping up the dignity of the Church, remember that all right-minded Liberals are well-doers. These, having charity, are "not easily provoked, and they think no evil” (1 Cor. xiii. 5). It is only bad Liberals who make big men of themselves, at the expense of others, by finding out the faults or defects of a poor vicar; or by imagining or inventing that he has them. He is a bad man who criticises another before he tries to put him right, and, yet, this is the character of most Liberals, for they are faultfinders. If the Bishops wanted Church dignity they would not let vicars starve. A Bishop holding Liberal politics makes it his business to degrade the clergy under laymen, in order to secure homage for himself, and to undermine the Church to please his Liberal party. He will neither wind the clock, nor repair the works, nor protect the case from the weather, and, yet, he blames the works for stopping, and the case for rotting. I want no Church dignity at all; but Christianity; good citizenship; loyalty to the Queen; and a wholesome respect for Her laws and their intention; and love for the Bible, especially the part of it which tells you to feed a minister of the gospel. Bad Tories and false Liberals, on account of their greatness, are exhorted "not to mind high things, but to condescend to men of low estate" (Rom. xii. 16). Politics form the religion of most men; their Bible is the peerage book; and their sense of duty is fashion. Right Liberals are Church Reformers. These would give sufficient food even to Judas Iscariot, before they would beat the devil out of him, to enable his stomach

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Worldly people avoiding poor Vicars.

to bear the thrashing. Oh! Liberals, no Vicar with a stipend of £200, or even £300 a year, in these times, can hurt your politics, or humble your position; but on £80 he must injure every body and every thing. My politics are to love Christ, and to practise the Bible; and I say God speed! all good men, whether Tory or Radical. Until you become liberal either to the chapel-which is humbling big churchmen—or to the church which is civilising the people; and until you prove that you fear God, or regard man, by paying this tribute, it is but hardening your hearts for me to say more.

In conclusion, give God your sins, for they are the most acceptable things to Him. This is the way to show Him the fear and honour which He appreciates. Christ's blood wants something bad and black in order to give it a different colour. I will not take away your memory by preaching more than you will practise. So I stop here.

The big people of this parish, before I came to it, went occasionally to every church in the neighbourhood to prevent the Vicars from making too free with them, and from asking them for a maintenance. By this they got many spiritual advisers; for they thought that two or more richly endowed heads were wiser than that of their own poor Vicar. They attended many churches to save paying anything at any church or to any Vicar, to form new friends, to get the best music. or the best value for nothing, and, above all, to contract good marriages. These people grew worse under other Rectors, who, feeling themselves flattered by their presence in church, represented their faults to

The religious sincerity of poor people.

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be so many virtues. They never exhorted them to pay their pastor, or to repair the house of the Lord in their own parish, or to find even a surplice for the minister to enable him to officiate. The present Rector of an adjoining parish, (who is all that could be desired,) is a happy exception; for he took pity on the poor Flitcham Church, by sending a surplice to the good Vicar, who had been here several years before my appointment, to enable him to give the food of the Church, in this garment, to those poor people who wished to worship God in this old church. In religion, unlike worldly affairs or morals, we are condemned by God for leaving good undone. The poor plain people of Flitcham believed this. So they came to this Church with a guileless heart, uncorrupted by art, or craft, saying to their heavenly Father: "We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep; and we have left undone the things which we ought to have done."

CHAPTER III.

The treatment of the Christian Church of England by Bishops Felix and St. Augustine—The political character of their work—The effects of the Popish teaching upon the Irish-Augustine the founder of setting up Churchwardens to be local lay-Bishops over Vicars→→ England's love for foreign novelty in religion-Misfortunes attend those who hold Church plunder.

U

NDER the pretext of converting the English Druids to Christianity, the Pope of Rome sent over Augustine to turn Englishmen into Italians. Felix arrived from Burgundy, and landed at the mouth of the Flitcham River, (at the extremity of the parish), about the year 630, to try his luck at helping the Pope's business; and he managed to become the first Bishop of the East Angles for joining Augustine. One of the Norfolk Historians writes, "Flitcham, or Felix-ham, imports as much as the village or dwellingplace of Felix.”

I wish that both Felix and St. Augustine had remained in their own Country, for they put this place under the Pope's control, and, therefore, they brought upon it the wrath and destruction of Henry VIII. Three English Bishops were at a foreign Church council, very many years before this pair troubled the English Church with the Pope's tyranny, or the Queen of Kent's politics. Long before Augustine arrived

Political Church Mission work.

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there were Irish missionaries in England, who, with the pious English clergy, would convert the people without the Pope's officer, whom he sent here to extend his kingdom under the cloak of religion. The work of the English Clergy and of the Irish missionaries was purely religious and lasting; but the politics of Augustine and Felix broke down suddenly, for very many relapsed into Heathenism, of those who joined the worldly business of the Queen of Kent. Most of our professing Christians, even now, are merely political weeds" encumbering the ground," and filling the garden of the visible Church, to hide up the converted sweet flowers. Augustine's system of making political converts was to ignore the English Church altogether, and to treat it as the heathenism of the Druids. He then set up in the Queen of Kent's palace to induce people, through her power, influence, and favour, to follow him. Other English chiefs followed suit, and, therefore, their dependents and followers joined Augustine and the Pope. Constantine the Great, the Queen of Kent, and other rulers used clergymen as worldly officers, to tame their subjects. The Irish are now worked through the Pope's priests since Dis-establishment, which was brought about by pretended English Christians for politics. As the Popish teaching is bad, Ireland has all its people slow and lazy, poor and miserable, and the Country makes no progress. It has abounded, under the new arrangement, in murders and treason. Famine, as God's curse, fills the land in consequence, and even England is already visited with bad seasons as her punishment. Mahomet in Arabia, and Augustine