Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/82

Rh From the above, it appears that the clergymen (who formed the Lunar party) mustered as six to four in proportion to the lay Commissioners; and it is much to be regretted that they should have borne out Lord Chesterfield^s undesirable defence of their order, who thinks 'they are neither the better, nor the worse, for wearing a black coat.' It cannot be expected of those persons educated for the Christian ministry that they should divest themselves of 'what composes man' (in the language of Pope) but from their presumed habit of turning over the pages of the sacred volume, it is not requiring too much from them, that they should illustrate by their practice, with more promptitude than the laity, the theory of good works—that indispensable rectitude of deportment, in all the relations of society, which so often becomes the theme of their seventh day discourses. Yet the Commissioners from Oxford and Cambridge, having all of them the cure of souls (or being supposed to have so) were men of this world, in whom the selfish attribute seemed unchecked by the inward monitor: they forgot that in the same verse from which they exhorted their audience to fear God, they enjoined them to honour the King. Had all the laymen present swerved from this important obligation (which we do not know) it became the province of these Divines to have remonstrated with—to have admonished them of such a failure in their bounden duty; unless they were insensible to the reproach, that they were