Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/150

 ecclesiastical property a character of insecurity, which beyond all other causes checks the streams of Christian liberality. Men are not willing to deny themselves for the furtherance of an object which they deem important, only that as soon as they are laid in their graves, their bounty may be voted public property, and applied to some other purpose, however good, which may require funds. How many good deeds have already been thus prevented, it is impossible to conjecture. Before the Reformation, endowments were yearly offered for foundations of every class, both charitable and religious. How few have adorned the three hundred years which have followed it! And to what shall we attribute the change? Let it be left to Papists to trace it to the Reformation. Let us not say, that, of old, men gave from motives of superstition, that they might purchase absolution and masses, and that the fountain of liberality was dried up by the Reformation; for if we say this, we must maintain that the word of God is less powerful than the inventions of men, the love of Christ a less prevailing motive than the desire of propitiating a priest—that treasure in heaven, secured by the promise of Jehovah, is less likely to influence men's minds than the hope of masses after their death. Surely the true explanation is, not the Reformation, but the Church robbery which marred it. And accordingly the same cause has produced a like effect in