Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/139

 we deny that these deeds brought on their perpetrators the guilt of the foulest sacrilege. And this guilt was aggravated, not diminished, by those great abuses, of which in God's righteous judgment their crime was in many cases the just punishment. The confiscation, although a deserved vengeance on those who were abusing the gifts of pious founders, was but an increase of guilt in the King and Parliament, who, by not preventing the abuse, had made themselves partners in the sin. Their duty was to correct, not to destroy; to have restored to the parishes their endowments; to have annexed some of the richer abbeys to the new bishopricks, to which, in the preamble of the act of parliament for their suppression, they were solemnly promised; and, finally, to have introduced into all monasteries such wholesome regulations as would have made them schools of theology, nurseries of sound learning, a glory and blessing to our land. And this duty was not overlooked from inadvertence: they were solemnly reminded of it, by the same divines by the authority of whose names they defended the Reformation itself; they acknowledged it in public acts; but covetousness was