by Consalvi, Secretary of the Conclave-the more remarkable because the Papacy was at that time separated from its temporal monarchy, and both Pius VII. and Consalvi were eminently respectable men. No characters and no stratagems can be more entirely worldly than those exhibited in the picture, of which the faithfulness is not questioned, of the schemes of Dr. Packthread, in Mrs. Stowe's novel of ' 'Dred,' in the Free Churches on the other side of the Atlantic. A certain exclusive ardour and purity of discipline may be kept alive by breaking up the religious community into small fragments. But this principle, to be consistently carried out, must divide and subdivide infinitesimally. The answer of Constantine to the first Puritan-the first Liberationist, the Novatian Acesius-is still true: 'Take a ladder, and climb up 'to heaven by yourself.' I quite concede the advantages which even a solitary hermit like Acesius confers on the Christian world by his independence and austerity of life. It is one of the large debts which we owe to Nonconformists, that they have vindicated in England the sacredness of the individual conscience, the ideal of Christian purity, the noble impetuosity of Christian enthusiasm. All honour to them for it! But, on the other hand, they themselves, I believe, would testify to the jealousies and narrowness engendered by the machinations of small religious circles.3 'Dissenting Churches, as a whole, "fail to be "in the world, yet not of it." They are not "churches in the world," far less The Church-the Body of Christ in the world-but "cliques apart from "the world;" very pious and earnest, doubtless, but of a piety that locks itself up in the Chapel and the Sunday, and never escapes into the market and the weekday. 'Objection is taken to Hooker's posi tion, that every member of the Commonwealth is also of the Church of England, because, therefore, "no discipline can be ""maintained over laity and clergy." I have no space or time now to argue ' whether the whole position of Dissenting Churches is not unsound; but, taking the facts as they are, what greater bond• age can be imagined on ministers and · 'people than the frequent terms of trust'deeds?-what more notorious than the 'inconsistency between the opinions of many members, and even ministers, and 6 'As to Church discipline over the 'clergy, who that knows how ministers are got for congregations, the influence ' of Heads of Colleges, the jealousy of 'Deacons, the suspicious inquiries regu'larly instituted, will not say that (imper'fect, from laxness or from martinet 'rigidity, as may be the examination of Bishops' Chaplains, and the usual routine ' of Ordination, yet) the satisfaction of 'being beyond the worry of sectarian 'suspicion, when once the Creeds and Articles are signed, and a recognised 'legal protection spread over one, is infinitely to be preferred by any noble independent mind? If any one wants to know this, let him read the pages of the ""Christian Spectator" and "Salem 6 those laid down in trust-deeds? And as to Church membership, who knows not I would add also that some of the points of contact with the world in the Established Church, which cause most offence, have a side which its assailants perhaps have not sufficiently considered. The seats of Bishops in the House of Lords are important not so much as giving them additional dignity, but as bringing them into free and equal intercourse with the laity, and under the direct control of public opinion and public questioning. Nor will the ecclesiastics of the State Church be found, on the whole, to have been more servile towards the State, whilst they have probably been less servile towards the people, than the unendowed and unestablished ministers. If Bishop Horsley was swept away by the anti-revolutionary panic of 1793, so was Robert Hall. Bishop Ken was bolder in his rebukes to Charles II. than the Quaker Penn to his brother James; and in that great struggle for English liberty, it was not the Nonconformists, but the Seven Bishops of the State Church, who by their independence saved both Church and State. 3. Choice of Creed. 3. Another objection is, that it is unfair of the State to choose one creed, and set it up above the others. Doubtless this is a serious difficulty, which can only be truly met by making this creed as wide as possible, and by maintaining that which is the creed of the large majority of the nation. At the present moment, however, the only test, in fact, of membership in the English Church is the Apostles' Creed. The subscription to the XXXIX. Articles, imposed on the Clergy ""Chapel." Dissenting pulpits are either ་ In London, I am informed, it is much 'given up; and I know of young ministers who are breaking down the practice, from the intolerable intrusion on private conscience it has become. And as to the 'inconvenience lately felt in the legal limits of parishes, and the authority of 'clergy within them against intruders, I can only say there is plenty of jealousy among Dissenters of one another; and at the worst it reminds me of a Scotch say. 'ing in regard to abuses grown with years in long-established institutions compared 'with new ones; "When your lum (chim""ney) has reeked as long as ours, we'll see whilk will be the mirkiest ”—(i... the dirtiest)!'-From a Letter to the English Churchman, by 'A Dissenter ' against his Will.' This may contain exaggerations, but still it gives one side of the picture that ought not to be overlooked. and the University of Oxford, was a later and extrinsic addition, which the most eager advocates of the union of Church and State have severally endeavoured to mitigate or remove-an endeavour which has, in recent times, been to a great extent successful. But, in point of fact, the State has never, strictly speaking, made a choice at all. The Church of England, meaning thereby the ecclesiastical system of England, has grown up, historically, like all the other elements of the English Commonwealth. It is not a single institution, but a group of institutions not a corporation, but a group of corporations; and the State can be said to have chosen these only as it has chosen Monarchy, and the House of Lords, and the Universities, and the House of Commons, and the Three Denominations, each in their several ways. 4 This is the true reason of the retention of much that might else have better not existed, and also the ground for believing in the possibility of the peaceable modification of that which needs alteration. So far as there is an exclusive creed, a narrow choice, so far the Established Church is no doubt an evil; because, so far, it descends to the level of a sect. And, therefore, the more barriers it can wisely throw down, the more open it can render its Ministry and its Universities, so much the more has it fulfilled its true mission; so much the more nearly does it rise to the true nobleness of a National Church, which is the nearest approach that, in the present condition of the world, can be made to a Catholic Church. It 4. Lastly, there is the objection that the State recognition, be it great or small, involves an unfair and injurious amount Social dis- of social disparagement. I am not sure how much paragement. this exists; but, as far as it does exist, we ought all to grant that it is an unmixed evil, which ought to be recognised as such by none so keenly as the Clergy of the Established Church, or with so earnest a desire for its disappearance. proceeds, however, not so much from the national position of the clergy, as from an ill-understood view of the claims of the Episcopal succession. Accordingly, it is a fact that the language of American and Scottish Episcopalians is often far more contemptuous towards their Presbyterian brethren than that which is heard from the majority of English Churchmen. Let us hope that this estrangement, which has doubtless of late years already diminished, may altogether cease, and that we may more and more learn to treat our Dissenting brethren as Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, vid. Hunt's Religious Thought in England, iii. 222. 4 U our friends, our equals, our allies-in one word, as Noncon'forming members and ministers of the National Church.' And I would here venture to suggest one particular remedy which would be at once practicable and efficient. Reunion, absorption, intercommnuion, or the like, may be desirable or not. These must be the end, and not the beginning, of close approximation. But larger community of preaching— the permission to our Nonconforming brethren of England, and our Presbyterian brethren of the Scottish Church, to preach in our pulpits, under whatever restrictions they or we might desire would be an unmixed good. It would be but giving to Nonepiscopalians what we have, within the last few years, granted to the Episcopalian Nonconformists of America and Scotland. It would be but restoring to Presbyterians the sympathy and the rights which they enjoyed in the Church of England during the first hundred years after the Reformation. It is all but legal, if it is not altogether legal now.5 This would indeed be an endeavour to make the Church really national; to draw the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers; to atone for the injuries, to heal the bitterness, and to repair the lost opportunities, of the past. It is, at any rate, in efforts of this nature-in bringing together our own countrymen into one communion and fellowship of good words and good works, whether of outward form or not-that our energies are far better spent, than in schemes of remote unions with distant Churches which we may never see, or systems of independent and separatist organisations amongst ourselves. I have run rapidly through this great subject. The necessary imperfections of the connexion of Church and State I have freely allowed. Like every human institution, it may Conclusion. be doomed to destruction, and to be succeeded by something better than itself. It may fall, as a relic of the past, with all the other old institutions of England-the Monarchy, the Aristocracy, the mysterious Constitution' itself. It may be that we shall live to see the triumph of the triple alliance between the descendants of the Puritans, the descendants of Rousseau, and the descendants of Laud. It may be that we shall see this venerable growth of English history uprooted, the parochial system swept away, the National Church divided into fragments, the cathedral and parish churches closed, Westminster Abbey sold to the first chance purchaser for what its stones are worth; the Episcopalian clergy left to 5 See Note appended to this Address. the tender mercies of irresponsible Bishops, the Presbyterian clergy to the equally irresponsible tribunals of Presbyteries and General Assemblies; the nation at large cut off from any control over the greatest and most sacred of all its interests; the true voice of the laity and of the Church silenced in its greatest and most powerful organ; the nation ceasing to recognise the loftiest and purest of all the missions entrusted to it. This, and nothing less than this, will be a true and complete separation of Church and State. This may be, and out of this chaos our children may be called laboriously to construct a new order of things. But, till the fatal hour be come, I, for one, am prepared, as an American Bishop, impressed with the evils of his own system, recently urged us, 'to fight for our present constitution, to the moral death.' Let us reform, enlarge, ease the system as much as we can; but let us not, without a struggle, consent to see this backbone of the English Church and Commonwealth broken to pieces. Let us not rashly part with the framework which, with all its faults, has sheltered, down to this time, what has been truly called 'the learning of the most ' learned, the freedom of the freest, and the reason of the most ' rational Church in Christendom.' Let us not be ashamed of that theory of the Church of England which was proclaimed by Cranmer and Ridley, which satisfied Burke and Coleridge, which inspired Hooker and Arnold with enthusiastic love and admiration. Let us not be ashamed to be Erastian with St. Paul. Let us not, so long as Providence permits, willingly surrender the best opportunity which the world affords for an easy growth, side by side, of scientific inquiry and religious earnestness, such as will meet the natural wants of the English character, and the needs of future generations. Let us not cast away the golden chance for this age of transitionwhich enables us to wait in patience the changes and the trials and the blessings which may be in store for us- the golden chance which, when it is gone, will perhaps be vainly lamented by those who, within and without the Establishment, are labouring to cast it aside. Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Wesleyans, Unitarians, Independents, Quakers we may become, if the Establishment is overthrown; but English Churchmen, with all which that name implies of glory in the past, and of hope in the future, we shall be no more. And, therefore, for all the reasons which I have urged, in spite of all obloquy from my High Church, my Liberal, and my Nonconformist friends, I still venture to trust that the Church of England may yet continue as 'a Free Church in a Free State' |