As no prince had ever better dispositions than her present Majesty, for the advancement of true religion, so there was never any age that produced greater occasions to employ them on.  It is an unspeakable misfortune, that any designs of so excellent a Queen, should be checked by the necessities of a long and ruinous war, which the folly or corruption of modern politicians have involved us in, against all the maxims whereby our country flourished so many hundred years:  else her Majesty’s care of religion would certainly have reached even to her American plantations.  Those noble countries, stocked by numbers from hence, whereof too many are in no very great reputation for faith or morals, will be a perpetual reproach to us, till some better care is taken for cultivating Christianity among them.  If the governors of those several colonies were obliged, at certain times, to transmit an exact representation of the state of religion, in their several districts; and the legislature here would, in a time of leisure, take that affair under their consideration, it might be perfected with little difficulty, and be a great addition to the glories of her Majesty’s reign.

But to waive further speculations upon so remote a scene, while we have subjects enough to employ them on at home; it is to be hoped, the clergy will not let slip any proper opportunity of improving the pious dispositions of the Queen and kingdom, for the advantage of the Church; when by the example of times past, they consider how rarely such conjunctures are like to happen.  What if some method were thought on towards repairing of churches? for which there is like to be too frequent occasions, those ancient Gothic structures, throughout this kingdom, going every year to decay.  That expedient of repairing or rebuilding them by charitable collections, seems in my opinion not very suitable, either to the dignity and usefulness of the work, or to the honour of our country; since it might be so easily done, with very little charge to the public, in a much more decent and honourable manner, while Parliaments are so frequently called.  But these and other regulations must be left to a time of peace, which I shall humbly presume to wish may soon be our share, however offensive it may be to any, either abroad or at home, who are gainers by the war.

[Footnote 1:  No. 42 in the reprint. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2:  Horace, “Odes,” III. vi. 1-3.

  “Those ills your ancestors have done,
   Romans, are now become your own;
   And they will cost you dear,
   Unless you soon repair
   The falling temples which the gods provoke.”

  EARL OF ROSCOMMON (1672). [T.S.]]