There are individuals, to whom implicit confidence in their unguarded honesty, proves but an added motive to be more tremulously sensitive, not to abuse such confidence.  There are, whom respect for their calling binds wholly to more carefulness, to prove worthy of such respect.  So always if one is thoroughly pervaded with the right spirit.  But dealing with bodies of men, as men yet are, these two rules should shape political institutions and social relations.

First, so far as men can command confidence and respect, for the sake of birth, calling, or office, so far they are relieved from the necessity of seeking the same by personal qualifications; and accordingly a body of men so protected, will perceptibly fall short of the average, in the staple elements of respectability.

Respect for station or calling so ample is here meant, as to satisfy the average desire of approbation.  The extent, to which this is satisfied by the respect paid by the child, to the parent, for the relation’s sake, is so moderate, as one of the elements tending to the formation of character, that it may be expected to operate generally as it universally would, where the right spirit fully reigns.  The remark holds good, with moderate abatement, in the relation of teacher and pupil.

In the infancy of the Christian church, the relation between pastor and flock was closely analogous to that between parents and children.  On the one side were men of a disinterested and paternal spirit, so earnestly living the new life hid with Christ in God, that hardly the possibility could be conceived of a desire to exalt and magnify self, over the ignorance and degradation of their spiritual charge.  On the other side were men, children in knowledge, incapable of estimating the ministry simply after the consciousness of benefits received.  We are not then to condemn the arrangement, which clothed the ministry with an official dignity, the office being revered independently of the claims of the man; nor to wonder, if the arrangement outlived the necessity, or passed the bounds of moderation; or if it was not fully calculated, the danger, lest men of the primitive spirit yield places to those of an inferior stamp; and how truly eternal vigilance is the cost, at which all things here must be saved from their tendencies to deterioration.  Accordingly the history of the Papacy for centuries has been, that its ministers are sure of unbounded respect from the populace, independently of their personal claims.  The consequence is, that while a few are thus moved to heroic and almost angelic devotion to the spiritual good of their flocks, the many would never command respect for what they are as men.