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Seeing the great difficulties that lie in the way of increasing charities so as to meet the increase of population, or even so as to follow it, and the manifold desirableness of parish Churches, with the material dignity that in a right state of Christian order would attach to them, as compared with meeting-houses, chapels, and the like all more or less 'privati juris', I have often felt disposed to wish that the large majestic Church, central to each given parish, might have been appropriated to Public Prayer, to the mysteries of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, and to the 'quasi sacramenta', Marriage, Penance, Confirmation, Ordination, and to the continued reading aloud, or occasional chanting, of the Scriptures during the intervals of the different Services, which ought to be so often performed as to suffice successively for the whole population; and that on the other hand the chapels and the like should be entirely devoted to teaching and expounding.
"Horum quos enumeravimus omnium defectuum remedia," says the Bacon of the seventeenth century, "...opera sunt vere basilica; erga quae privati alicujus conatus et industria fere sic se habent ut Mercurius in bivio, qui digito potest in viam intendere, pedem inferre non potest." De Aug. Scient. Lib. II. Ad Regem Suum. A still more remarkable parallelism is to be found in the following passages.
Id sibi maxime formidolosum, privati hominis nomen supra principis attolli: frustra studia fori et civilium artium decus in silentium acta, si militarem gloriam alius occuparet: et cetera utcumque facilius dissimulari: ducis boni imperatoriam virtutem esse.
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