The Council of Trent has wisely introduced the discipline of seminaries,
by which priests are not trusted for a clerical institution even to the
severe discipline of their colleges, but, after they pass through them,
are frequently, if not for the greater part, obliged to pass through
peculiar methods, having their particular ritual function in view. It is
in a great measure to this, and to similar methods used in foreign
education, that the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland, miserably provided
for, living among low and ill-regulated people, without any discipline
of sufficient force to secure good manners, have been prevented from
becoming an intolerable nuisance to the country, instead of being, as I
conceive they generally are, a very great service to it.
The ministers of Protestant churches require a different mode of
education, more liberal, and more fit for the ordinary intercourse of
life. That religion having little hold on the minds of people by
external ceremonies and extraordinary observances, or separate habits of
living, the clergy make up the deficiency by cultivating their minds
with all kinds of ornamental learning, which the liberal provision made
in England and Ireland for the parochial clergy, (to say nothing of the
ample Church preferments, with little or no duties annexed,) and the
comparative lightness of parochial duties, enables the greater part of
them in some considerable degree to accomplish.
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