I am sometimes hoping, that we are not naturally so bad a people, as we have appeared for some years past.  Faction, in order to support itself, is generally forced to make use of such abominable instruments, that as long as it prevails, the genius of a nation is overpressed, and cannot appear to exert itself:  but when that is broke and suppressed, when things return to the old course, mankind will naturally fall to act from principles of reason and religion.  The Romans, upon a great victory, or escape from public danger, frequently built a temple in honour of some god, to whose peculiar favour they imputed their success or delivery:  and sometimes the general did the like, at his own expense, to acquit himself of some pious vow he had made.  How little of any thing resembling this hath been done by us after all our victories! and perhaps for that reason, among others, they have turned to so little account.  But what could we expect?  We acted all along as if we believed nothing of a God or His providence; and therefore it was consistent to offer up our edifices only to those, whom we looked upon as givers of all victory, in His stead.

I have computed, that fifty churches may be built by a medium, at six thousand pound for a church; which is somewhat under the price of a subject’s palace:  yet perhaps the care of above two hundred thousand souls, with the benefit of their prayers for the prosperity of their Queen and country, may be almost put in the balance with the domestic convenience, or even magnificence of any subject whatsoever.

Sir William Petty, who under the name of Captain Graunt, published some observations upon bills of mortality about five years after the Restoration;[5] tells us, the parishes in London, were even then so unequally divided, that some were two hundred times larger than others.  Since that time, the increase of trade, the frequency of Parliaments, the desire of living in the metropolis, together with that genius for building, which began after the fire, and hath ever since continued, have prodigiously enlarged this town on all sides, where it was capable of increase; and those tracts of land built into streets, have generally continued of the same parish they belonged to, while they lay in fields; so that the care of above thirty thousand souls, hath been sometimes committed to one minister, whose church would hardly contain the twentieth part of his flock:  neither, I think, was any family in those parishes obliged to pay above a groat a year to their spiritual pastor.  Some few of those parishes have been since divided; in others were erected chapels of ease, where a preacher is maintained by general contribution.  Such poor shifts and expedients, to the infinite shame and scandal, of so vast and flourishing a city, have been thought sufficient for the service of God and religion; as if they were circumstances wholly indifferent.