Where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can be very great, and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may no doubt be carried, too far, has, however, some very agreeable effects.Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.The vices of levity and vanity necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides, almost as ruinous to him as they are to the common people.In his own conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals which the common people respect the most.He gains their esteem and affection by that plan of life which his own interest and situation would lead him to follow.The common people look upon him with that kindness with which we naturally regard one who approaches somewhat to our own condition, but who, we think, ought to be in a higher.Their kindness naturally provokes his kindness.He becomes careful to instruct them, and attentive to assist and relieve them.He does not even despise the prejudices of people who are disposed to be so favourable to him, and never treats them with those contemptuous and arrogant airs which we so often meet with in the proud dignitaries of opulent and well-endowed churches.The Presbyterian clergy, accordingly, have more influence over the minds of the common people than perhaps the clergy of any other established church.It is accordingly in Presbyterian countries only that we ever find the common people converted, without persecution, completely, and almost to a man, to the established church.
In countries where church benefices are the greater part of them very moderate, a chair in a university is generally a better establishment than a church benefice.The universities have, in this case, the picking and choosing of their members from all the churchmen of the country, who, in every country, constitute by far the most numerous class of men of letters.Where church benefices, on the contrary, are many of them very considerable, the church naturally draws from the universities the greater part of their eminent men of letters, who generally find some patron who does himself honour by procuring them church preferment.In the former situation we are likely to find the universities filled with the most eminent men of letters that are to be found in the country.In the latter we are likely to find few eminent men among them, and those few among the youngest members of the society, who are likely, too, to be drained away from it before they can have acquired experience and knowledge enough to be of much use to it.It is observed by Mr.de Voltaire, that Father Porrie, a Jesuit of no great eminence in the republic of letters, was the only professor they had ever had in France whose works were worth the reading.In a country which has produced so many eminent men of letters, it must appear somewhat singular that scarce one of them should have been a professor in a university.
The famous Gassendi was, in the beginning of his life, a professor in the University of Aix.Upon the first dawning of his genius, it was represented to him that by going into the church he could easily find a much more quiet and comfortable subsistence, as well as a better situation for pursuing his studies; and he immediately followed the advice.The observation of Mr.de Voltaire may be applied, I believe, not only to France, but to all other Roman Catholic countries.We very rarely find, in any of them, an eminent man of letters who is a professor in a university, except, perhaps, in the professions of law and physic; professions from which the church is not so likely to draw them.After the Church of Rome, that of England is by far the richest and best endowed church in Christendom.In England, accordingly, the church is continually draining the universities of all their best and ablest members; and an old college tutor, who is known and distinguished in Europe as an eminent man of letters, is as rarely to be found there as in any Roman Catholic country.In Geneva, on the contrary, in the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, in the Protestant countries of Germany, in Holland, in Scotland, in Sweden, and Denmark, the most eminent men of letters whom those countries have produced, have, not all indeed, but the far greater part of them, been professors in universities.In those countries the universities are continually draining the church of all its most eminent men of letters.