Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/15

 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries improved our great national edifices in the taste of their own times. Such a spirit, shallow and unphilosophical when applied to civil and political institutions, cannot without actual profaneness intrude into the sanctuary, where of late it has been but too busy. We must not introduce new principles, but recur to old ones; to those by which the ancient Church originally leavened the whole mass of national heathenism, and afterwards provided against the gradual increase of a neglected and demoralized population in the very heart of Christendom. These things were effected by means of that system which apportioned every part of the Church to diocesan bishops and parochial priests, and in its further development accordingly we must seek a remedy for the evils of our own day.