To this idea, the Reformed Church of England
with its marriable and married Clergy would have approximated, if the
revenues of the Church, as they existed at the death of Henry VII., had
been rightly transferred by his successor;--transferred, I mean, from
reservoirs, which had by degeneracy on the one hand, and progressive
improvement on the other, fallen into ruin, and in which those revenues
had stagnated into contagion or uselessness,--transferred from what had
become public evils to their original and inherent purpose of public
benefits, instead of being sacrilegiously alienated by a transfer to
private proprietors. That this was impracticable, is historically true;
but no less true is it philosophically, that this impracticability,
arising wholly from moral causes, (namely, the loose manners and corrupt
principles of a great majority in all classes during the dynasty of the
Tudors,) does not prevent this wholesale sacrilege, from deserving the
character of the "first and deadliest wound inflicted on the
Constitution of the kingdom; which term, in the body politic, as in
bodies natural, expresses not only what is and has been evolved, but
likewise whatever is potentially contained in the seminal principle of
the particular body, and which would in its due time have appeared but
for emasculation in its infancy. This, however, is the first sense of
the words, Church of England. [4]
The second is the Church of England as now by law established, and by
practice of the law actually existing.
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