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This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment o^ *he order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: DYMOND, JONATHAN TITLE: THE CHURCH AND THE CLERGY LONDON DA IE: 1835 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT DIBLIOGRAPHICMTrROrORMTARnFT Master Negative U Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record f 937,42 Z2 NNC Restrictions on Use: Dymond, Jonathan, 1796-1828, ' The church and the clergy: showing that tp- ligious establishments derive no countenance from the nature of Christianity, and that th«y are not recommended by public utility: with some observations on the church estaWj.sh.-jient ol England and Ireland, and on the system of tithes. 6th ed. London, Printed by E. Couch- man, 1835, 52 p. 23cm. Volume of pamphlets. Another copy in Special Collections (Selic- man. 1835. < \ ^ ^ TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE: ^^yi^A^ IMA^E PLACEMENT: Ia'oIA^.IB IIU DATE FILMED: ^/>s/^ -^ REDUCTION RATIO: fIV _ . INITIALS 7/~^ HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PI I DLICATIONJ.q , TNJC ^OOY^X^m^r^rT # / r Association for information and Image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 12 3 4 liiiiliiiili iimiiiiiiiiMniiiiiiiMiiiiiiiimiiiiiii I i I Inches I 1 T 5 6 iiiliiiiliiiiliin 7 8 9 iliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiili 1.0 I.I 1.25 IM 10 mini 11 12 13 2.8 156 13.2 163 3.6 4.0 ti^UU 1.4 lllllllllllllll 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.6 TTT 14 15 mm lllllllllllllll TTT V MflNUFfiCTURED TO flllM STflNDRRDS BY RPPLIED IMRGE- INC. / Ko.t. THE CHURCH AND THE CLERGY: SHOWING THAT RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS DERIVE NO COUNTENANCE FROM THE NATURE OF CHRISTIANITY, AND THAT THEY ARE NOT RECOMMENDED BY PUBLIC UTILITY: WITH SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND, AND ON THE SYSTEM OF TITHES. BY THE LATE JONATHAN DYMOND. ' What is a Church ! Let Truth and Reason speak, They would reply, * The faithful, pure, and meek From christian folds, the one selected race, Of all professions, and in every place.' " Crabbe, ** TheBoro'." LONDON : Printed by E. Coucbman, 10, Throgmorton Street. AND SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY. 1835. Sixth Edition. — Price Sixpence^ or 25^. per Hundred. PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. The author of these Remarks upon the subject of Church and Clergy died in the spring of 1828, and his works, from which the following pages are extracted by permission of the author's representatives, were first before the public in 1829, and reprinted in a second edition in 1830. They are published in three Essays. The first Essay is divided into two parts ; the first of which is entitled " Principles of Morality,'' and the second " Subordinate Means of discovering the Divine Will." The second Essay is entitled " Private Eights and Obligations ;'' and the third '* Political Rights and Obligations," the fourteenth, fifteenth, and part of the sixteenth chapters of which form the contents of this Pamphlet. These Extracts do not embrace the whole of the author's views on the subject of a provision for the support of Christian Minis- ters; for a fuller explanation of which, the reader is referred to the remainder of the sixteenth chapter. The cordial reception which this Pamphlet has met with at the hands of that large and influential class of society, who may be called thinking men, induces the editor to prefix a few lines written by the author in his introductory notice to the work on the " Principles of Morality," to assist the reader in forming a correct judgment of his views upon subjects at once so deeply important and interesting. " Of the third Essay, in which some of the great questions of Political Rectitude have been examined, the subjects are in themselves sufficiently important. The application of sound and pure Moral Principles to questions of Government, of Legislation, of the Admin- istration of Justice, or of Religious Establishments, is manifestly of great interest ; and the interest is so much the greater, because these subjects have usually been examined, as the writer conceives, by other and very different standards. *' The reader will probably find, in each of these Essays, some principles or some conclusions respecting human duties to which he has not been accustomed ; some opinions called in question which he has habitually regarded as being indisputably true ; and some actions exhibited as forbidden by Morality, which he has supposed to be lawful and right. In such cases, I must hope for his candid investiga- tion of the truth ; and that he will not reject conclusions but by the detection of inaccuracy in the reasonings from which they are deduced. I hope he will not find himself invited to alter his opinions or his conduct without being shown why; and if he is conclusively shown this, that he will not reject truth, because it is new or unwelcome. " With respect to the present influence of the principles which these Essays illustrate, the autlior will feel no disappointment if it is not great. It is not upon the expectation of such influence that his motive is founded, or his hope rests. His motive is to advocate Truth, without reference to its popularity, and his hope is, to promote, by these feeble exertions, an approximation to that state of purity which he believes it is the design of God shall eventually beautify and dignify the condition of mankind." SECTION I. RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS. A large number of persons embark from Europe and colonize an uninhabited territory in the South Sea. They erect a govern- ment, — suppose a republic, — and make all persons of whatever creed, eligible to the legislature. The community prospers and increases. In process of time a member of the legislature, who is a disciple of John Wesley, persuades himself that it will tend to the promotion of religion that the preachers of methodism should be supported by a national tax; that their stipends should be sufficiently ample to prevent them from necessary attention to any business but that of religion ; and that accordingly they shall be precluded from the usual pursuits of commerce and from the pro- fessions. He proposes the measure. It is contended against by the episcopalian members, and the independents, and the cathoHcs, and the unitarians, — by all but the adherents to liis own creed. They insist upon the equality of civil and religious rights, but in vain. The majority prove to be methodists ; they support the measure : the law is enacted ; and methodism becomes thenceforth the religion of the state. This is a Religious Establishment, But it is a religious establishment in its best form; and perhaps none ever existed of which the constitution was so simple and so pure. During one portion of the papal history, the Romish church was indeed not so much an " establishment" of the state as a separate and independent constitution. For though some species of alUance subsisted, yet the Romanists did not acknowledge, as protestants now do, that the power of establishing a religion resides in the state. In the present day other immunities are possessed by ecclesi- astical establishments than those which are necessary to constitute the institution, — such for example, as that of exclusive eligibility to the legislature : and other aUiances with the civil power exist than that which necessarily results from any preference of a par- ticular faith, — such as that of placing ecclesiastical patronage in the hands of a government, or of those who are under its influence. From these circumstances it happens, that in inquiring into the propriety of religious establishments, we cannot confine ourselves to the inquiry whether they would be proper in their simplest 5 form, but whether they are proper as they usually exist. And this is so much the more needful, because there is little reason to expect that when once an ecclesiastical establishment has been erected,— when once a particular church has been selected for the preference and patronage of the civil power,— that preference and patronage will be confined to those circumstances which are neces- sary to the subsistence of an establishment at all. It is sufficiently obvious that it matters nothing to the existence of an established church, what the faith of that church is or what is the form of its government. It is not the creed which consti- tutes the estabhshment, but the preference of the civil power; and accordingly the reader will be pleased to bear m mind that neither in this diapter nor in the next have we any concern with religious opinions. Our business is not with churches but with church estahlishments. . , • • The actual history of religious establishments m christian coun- tries does not differ in essence from that which we have supposed in the South Sea. They have been erected by the influence or the assistance of the civil power. In one country a religion may have owed its political supremacy to the superstitions of a prince ; and in another to his policy or ambition ; but the effect has been similar. Whether superstition or policy, the contrivances oi a priesthood, or the fortuitous predominance of a party, have given rise to the established church, is of comparatively little conse- quence to the fundamental principles of the institution. Of the divine right of a particular church to supremacy I say nothing ; because none with whom I am at present concerned to argue imagine that it exists. The only ground upon which it appears that religious establish- ments can be advocated are, first, that of example or approbation in the primitive churches ; and, secondly, that of public utility. I. The primitive church was not a religious establishment in anv sense or in any degree. No establishment existed until the church had lost much of its purity. Nor is there any expression in the New Testament, direct or indirect, which would lead a reader to suppose that Christ or his apostles regarded an establish- ment as an eligible institution. '' We find in his religion, no scheme of building up a hierarchy or of ministering to the views of human governments r—'' Our religion, as it came out of the hands of its Founder and his apostles, exhibited a complete ab- straction from all views either of ecclesiastical or civil policy ^^ The evidence which these facts supply respecting the moral cha- racter of religious establishments, whatever be its weight, tends manifestly to show that that character is not good. I do not say because Christianity exhibited this " complete abstraction," that it therefore necessarily condemned establishments ; but I say that the bearing and the tendency of this negative testimony is against them. • Palev : Evidences of Christianity, p. 2, c. 2. In the discourses and writings of the first teachers of our religion we find such absolute disinterestedness, so little disposition to assume political superiority, that to have become the members of an established church would certainly have been inconsistent in them. It is indeed almost inconceivable that they could ever have desired the patronage of the state for themselves or for their con- verts. No man conceives that Paul or John could have partici- pated in the exclusion of any portion of the christian church from advantages which they themselves enjoyed. Every man per- ceives that to have done this, would have beer to assume a new character, a character which they had never exhibited before, and which was incongruous with their former principles and motives of action. But why is this incongruous with the apostolic cha- racter unless it is incongruous Avith Christianity] Upon this single ground therefore, there is reason for the sentiment of " many well informed persons, that it seems extremely question- able whether the religion of Jesus Christ admits of any civil establishment at all." ^ I lay stress upon these considerations. We all know that much may be learnt respecting human duty by a contemplation of the spirit and temper of Christianity as it \\as exhibited by its first teachers. When the spirit and temper is compared with the essen- tial character of religious establishments, they are found to be in- congruous, — foreign to one another, — having no natural relation- ship or similarity. I should regard such facts, in reference to any question of rectitude, as of great importance; but upon a subject so intimately connected with religion itself, the importance is peculiarly great. II. The question of the utility of religious establishments is to be decided by a comparison of their advantages and their evils. Of their advantages, the first and greatest appears to be that they provide, or are assumed to provide, religious instruction for the whole community. If this instruction be left by the state to be cared for by each christian cliurch as it possesses the zeal or the means, it may be supposed that many districts will be des- titute of any public religious instruction. At least the state cannot be assured before hand that every district will be supplied. And when it is considered how great is the importance of regular public worship to the virtue of a people, it is not to be denied that a scheme, which by destroying an establishment, would make that instruction inadequate or uncertain, is so far to be regarded as of questionable expediency. But the effect which would be produced by dispensing with establishments is to be estimated, so far as is in our power, by facts. Now^ dissenters are in the situation of separate unestablished churches. If they do not provide for the public officers of religion voluntarily, they will not be provided for. Yet where is any considerable body of dis- senters to be found who do not provide themselves with a chapel • Simpson's Plea for Religion and the Sacred Writings. B iind a preacher ] And if those churches which are not estahlished, do in fact provide pubHc instruction, liow is it shown that it Avould not be provided although tliere were no established reU- gion in a state] Besides, the dissenters from an established church provide this under pecuhar disadvantages; for after paying, in common with others, their quota to the state religion, they have to pay in addition to their own. But perhaps it will be said that dissenters from a state religion are actuated by a zeal with which the professors of that religion are not ; and that the legal provision supplies the deficiency of zeal. If this be said, the inquiry imposes itself, — How does this disproportion of zeal arise ? Why should dissenters be more zealous than churchmen ] "What account can be given of the matter, but that there is some- thing in the patronage of the state which induces apathy upon the church that it prefers ? One other account may indeed be offered, — that to be a dissenter is to be a positive religionist, whilst to be a churchman is frequently only to be nothing else; that an establishment embraces all who are not embraced by others; and that if those whom other churches do not include were not cared for by the state religion, they would not be cared for at all. This is an argument of apparent weight, but the effect of reasoning is to diminish that weight. P'or what is meant by " hicluding," by "caring for," the indifferent and irreligious] An established church only offers them instruction : it does not '' compel them to come in ;" and we have just seen that this offer is made by uncstablished churches also. Who doubts wdiether in a district that is suflicient to fill a temple of the state religion, there would be found persons to offer a temple of public worship though the state did not compel it ] W^ho doubts whether this would be the case if the district were inhabited by dissenters ] and if it would not be done supposing the inhabitants to belong to the state religion, the conclusion is inevitable, that there is a tendency to indifference resulting from the patronage of the state. Let us listen to the testimony of Archbishop Newcome. He speaks of Ireland, and says " Great numbers of country parishes are without churches, notwithstanding the largeness and fre- quency of parliamentary grants for building them;" but " meet- ing houses and Romish chapels which are built and repaired icith greater zeal, are in sufficient numbers about the country." ^ This .is remarkable testimony indeed. That church which is patro- nised and largely assisted by the state, does not provide places j for public worship : those churches which are not patronised and / I not assisted by the state, do provide them, and provide them fin " sufficient numbers" and '' with greater zeal." What then becomes of the argument, that a church establishment is neces- 1 sary in order to provide instruction which would not otherwise be \provided ] Yet here one point must be conceded. It does not follow be- ' See Gisborno's Duties of Men. cause one particular state religion is thus deficient that none would be more exemplary. The fault may not be so much in re- ligious establishments as such, as in that particular establishment which obtains in the instance before us. Kindred to the testimony of the Irish primate is the more cautious language of the archdeacon of Carlisle : — " I do not know," says he, " that it is in any degree true that the influence of religion is the greatest where there are the fewest dissenters." ^ This I suppose may lawfully be interpreted into positive lan- guage, — that the influence of religion is the greatest where there are numerous dissenters. But if numerous adherents to unes- tablished churches be favourable to religion, it would appear that although there were none but uncstablished churches in a country, the influence of religion would be kept up. If established churches are practically useful to religion, what more reasonable than to expect that where they possessed the more exclusive operation, their utility would be "the greatest ] Yet the contrary it appears is the fact. It may indeed be urged that it is tl)*e existence of a state religion which animates the zeal of the other churches, and that in this manner the state religion does good. ^ To which it is a suflicient answer, that the benefit, if it is thus occasioned, is collateral and accidental, and offers no testimony in favour of establishments as such ; — and this is our concern. Be- sides, there are many sects to animate the zeal of one another, even though none were patronised by the state. To estimate the relative influence of religion in two countries is no easy task. Yet I believe if we compare its influence in the United States with that which it possesses in most of the Euro- pean countries which possess state religions, it will be found that the balance is in favour of the community in which there is no established church : at any rate, the balance is not so much against it as to afford any evidence in favour of a state religion. A traveller in America has remarked, " There is more religion in the United States than in England, and more in England than in [ Italy. The closer the monopoly, the less abundant the supply."- Another traveller writes almost as if he had anticipated the present disquisition—" It has been often said, that the disinclina- tion of the heart to religious truth renders a state establishment absolutely necessary for the purpose of christianizing the country. Ireland and America can furnish abundant evidence of the fallacy of such an hypothesis. In the one coimtry wx see an ecclesias- tical establishment of the most costly description utterly unopera- tive in dispelling ignorance or refuting error; in the other no establishment of any kind, and yet religion making daily and hourly progress, promoting inquiry, diffusing knowledge, strength- ening the weak, and mollifying i\\e hardened.""^ In immediate connection with this subject is the argument that ' Paley: Evidences of Clnistianil v. - Hall. 3 Duncan's Travels in America. 8 Dr Palev places at the head of those which he advances in favour of reUffious establishments,— that the knowledge and 'profession of Christianity cannot he upholden without a clergy supported by legal provision, and belonging to one sect of christians} The justness of this proposition is founded upon the necessity of research. It is said that " Christianity is an historical religion/' and that the truth of its history must be investigated; that m order to vmdi- cate its authority, and to ascertain its truths, leisure and education and learning are indispensable,— so that such " an order of clergy is necessarv to perpetuate the evidences of revelation and to interpret the obscurity of those ancient writings in which the religion is contained.'' To all this there is one plain objection, that when once the evidences of religion are adduced and made public, when once the obscurity of the ancient writings is inter- preted, the work, so far as discovery is concerned, is done ; and it can hardly be imagined that an established clergy is necessary in perpetuity to do that which in its own nature can be done but once. Whatever may have been the validity of this argument in other times, when few but the clergy possessed any learning, or when the evidences of rehgion had not been sought out, it possesses little validity now. These evidences are brought before the world in a form so clear and accessible to literary and good men, that in the present state of society there is little reason to fear they will be lost for want of an established church. Nor is it to be forgotten, that with respect to our own country, the best defences of christianitv which exist in the language, have not been the work either of the established clergy or of members of the established church. The expression that such " an order of clergy is necessarv to perpetuate the evidences of revelation," appears to contain ''an illusion. Evidences can in no other sense be perpetuated than by being again and again brought before the public. If this be the meaning, it belongs rather to the teaching of religious truths than to their discovery ; but it is upon the discovery, it is upon the opportunity of research, that the argu- ment is founded : and it is particularly to be noticed, that this is the primary argument which Paley adduces in deciding " the first and most fundamental question upon the subject." It pleases Providence to employ human agency in the vindica- tion and diffusion of his truth \ but to employ the expression " the knowledge and profession of Christianity," cannot be up- holden without an established clergy, approaches to irreverence. Even a rejector of Christianity says, " If public worship be conformable to reason, reason without doubt will prove adequate to its vindication and support. If it be from God it is profanation to imagine that it stands in need of the alliance of the state."^ And it is clearlv untrue in fact ; because, without such a clergy, it is actually upheld ; and because, during the three first centuries, > See Moral and Political Philosopliy, b. 6, c. 10. 2 Godwin's Pol. Just. 2, 608. the religion subsisted and spread and prospered without any en- couragement from the state. And it is remarkable too that the diffusion of Christianity in our own times in pagan nations, is ef- fected less by the clergy of established churches than by others.^ Such are amongst the principal of the direct advantages of religious establishments as they are urged by those who advocate them. Some others will be noticed in inquiring into the opposite question of their disadvantages. These disadvantages respect either the institution itself, — or religion generally, — or the civil welfare of a people. I. The institution itself. " The single end we ought to pro- pose by religious establishments is, the preservation and commu- nication of religious knowledge. Every other idea, and every other end, that have been mixed with this, as the making of the church an engine, or even an ally, of the state ; converting it into the means of strengthening or diffusing influence ; or regard- ing it as a support of regal, in opposition to popular forms of government ; have served only to debase the institution, and to introduce into it numerous corruptions and abuses.''^ This is undoubtedly true. Now we affirm that this " debasement of the institution," this " introduction of numerous corruptions and abuses," is absolutely inseparable from religious establishments as they ordinarily exist: that wherever and whenever a state so prefers and patronises a particular church, these debasements and abuses and corruptions will inevitably arise. " An engine or ally of the state." How will you frame — I will not say any religious establishment, but — any reUgious establishment that approaches to the ordinary character, without making it an engine or ally of the state ] Alliance is involved in the very idea of the institution. The state selects, and prefers, and grants privileges to, a particular church. The continuance of these privileges depends upon the continuance of the state in its present principles. If the state is altered, the privileges are endangered or may be swept away. The privileged church there- fore is interested in supporting the state, in standing by it against opposition ; or which is the same thing, that church becomes an ally of the state. You cannot separate the effect from the cause. Wherever the state prefers and patronises one church there will be an alliance between the state and that church. There may be variations in the strength of this alliance. The less the patronage of the state, the less strong the aUiance will be. Or there may be emergencies in which the alliance is suspended by the influence of stronger interests ; but still the alliance, as a general consequence of the preference of the state, will inevitably subsist. When therefore Dr. Paley says that to make an establishment an ally of the state is to introduce into it numerous corruptions and abuses, » In the preceding discassien I have left out all reference to the proper qualification or appointment of christian ministers, and have assumed (but without concediDg) that the magistrate is at liberty to adjust those matters if he pleases. » Paley : Mor. and Pol." Phil. b. 6, c. 10. 10 11 he in fact savs that to make an cstablislinient at all is to introduce into a church numerous corruptions and abuses. It matters nothing what the doctrines or constitution of the church may be. The only point is, the alliance, and its degree. It may be episcopal, or presbyterian, or independent; but wherever the degree of alliance, — that is of preference and patron- age is great, — there the abuses and corruptions will be great. In this country during a part of the seventeenth century inde- pendency became, in eifect, the established church. It became of course an ally of the state ; and fought from its pulpits the battles of the state. Nor will any one I suppose deny that this alliance made independency worse than it was before ; — that it " intro- duced into it '^ corruptions and abuses." The less strict the alliance, the fewer the corruptions that spring from an alliance. One state may impose a test to distinguish the ministers of the preferred church, and leave the selection to the church itself: another may actually appoint some or all of the ministers. These differences in the closeness of the alliance will produce differences in the degree of corruption ; but alliance and corruption in both cases there will be. He who receives a legal provision from the minister of the day, will lend his support to the minister of the day. He who receives it by the operation of a general law, will lend his support to that political system which is likely to perpetuate that law. " The means of strengthening or diffusing influence." This abuse of religious establishments is presupposed in the question of alliance. It is by the means of influence that the alliance is produced. There may be and there are gradations in the direct- ness or flagrancy of the exercise of influence, but influence of some kind is inseparable from the selection and preference of a particular church. " A support of regal in opposition to popular forms of govern- ment." This attendant upon religious establishments is acci- dental. An establishment will support that form, whatever it be, by which it is itself supported. In one country it mav be the allv of republicanism, in another of aristocracy, and in another of monarchy ; but in all it will be the ally of its own patron. The establishment of France supported the despotism of the Louises. The establishment of Spain supports at this hour (1830) the pitiable policy of Ferdinand. So accurately is alliance maintained, that in a mixed government it will be found that an establishment adheres to that branch of the government by which its own pre- eminence is most supported. In England the strictest alliance is between the church and the executive ; and accordingly, in rup- tures between the executive and legislative powers, the establish- ment has adhered to the former. There was an exception in the reign of James II. : but it was an exception which confirms the rule; for the establishment then found or feared that its alhance with the regal power was about to he broken. Seeing then that the debasement of a christian church, — that the introduction into it of corruptions and abuses is inseparable from religious establishments, what is this debasement and what are these abuses and corruptions ] Now, without entering into minute inquiry, many evils arise obviously from the nature of the case. Here is an introduction, into the office of the christian ministry, of motives, and interests, and aims, foreign to the proper business of the office ; and not only foreign but incongruous and discordant with it. Here are secular interests mixed up with the motives of religion. Here are temptations to assume the ministerial function in the church that is established, for the sake of its secular advantages. Here are inducements, when the function is assumed, to accommodate the manner of its exercise to the inclinations of the state ; to suppress, for example, some rehgious principles which the civil power does not wish to see inculcated ; to insist for the same reason with undue emphasis upon others ; in a word, to adjust the religious conduct so as to strengthen or perpetuate the alliance with the state. It is very easy to perceive that these temptations will and must frequently prevail ; and wherever they do prevail, there the excellence and dignity of the christian ministry are diminished, are depressed : there Christianity is not exemplified in its purity ; there it is shorn of a portion of its beams. The extent of the evil will depend of course upon the vigour of the cause ; that is to say, the evil will be proportionate to the alUance. If a religious establishment were erected in which the executive power of the country appointed all its ministers, there would, I doubt not, ensue an almost universal corruption of the ministry. As an es- tablishment recedes in its constitution from this closeness of alli- ance, a corresponding increase of purity may be expected. During the reformation and in Queen Elizabeth's time, '' of nine thousand four hundred beneficed clergy," (adherents to Pa- pacy) " only one hundred and seventy-seven resigned their pre- ferment rather than acknowledge the queen's supremacy,"^ yet the pope to them was head of the church. One particular manner in which the establishment of a church injures the character of the church itself is, by the temptation which it holds out to equi- vocation or hypocrisy. It is necessary to the preference of the teachers of a'^particiilar sect, that there should be some means of discovering Avho belong to that sect :— there must be some test. Before the man who is desirous of undertaking the ministerial office, there are placed two roads, one of which conducts to those privileges which a state religion enjoys, and the other does not. The latter may be entered by all who will : the former by those only who affirm their belief of the rectitude of some church forms or of some points of theology. It requires no argument to prove that this is to teinpi men to affirm that which they do not believe ; that it is to say to the man who does not believe the stipulated » Sonthey ; Book of the Churcli, Sir Thomas More. 12 points, Here is money for you if you will violate your conscience. By some the invitation will be accepted ;^ and what is the result] Why that, just as they are going publicly to insist upon the purity and sanctity of the moral law, they violate that law them- selves. The injury which is thus done to a christian church by estahUshiiig it, is negative as well as positive. You not only tempt some men to equivocation or hypocrisy, but exclude from the office others of sounder integrity, two persons, both of whom do not assent to the prescribed points, are desirous of entering the church. One is upright and conscientious, the other subservient and unscrupulous. An establishment excludes the good man and admits the bad. '' Though some purposes of order and tranquil- lity may be answered by the establishment of creeds and confes- sions, yet they are at all times attended with serious inconve- niences : they check inquiry ; they violate liberty ; they ensnare the consciences of the clergy, by holding out temptations to pre- varication."- And with respect to the habitual accommodation of the exer- cise of the ministry to the desires of the state, it is manifest that an enlightened and faithful minister may frequently find himself restrained by a species of political leading strings. He has not the full command of his intellectual and religious attainments. He may not perhaps communicate the whole counsel of God.^ It was formerly concpded to the English clergy that they might preach against the horrors and impolicy of war, provided they were not chaplains to regiments or in the navy. Conceded! Then if the state had pleased, it might have withheld the conces- sion; and accordingly from some the state did withhold it. They were prohibited to preach against that against which apostles wrote ! What would these apostles have said if a state had bidden them keep silence respecting the most unchristian custom in the world ] They would have said. Whether we ought to obey God rather than man, judge ye. What would they have done 1 They would have gone away and preached against it as before. One question more should be asked, — What would they have said to an alliance which thus brought the christian ministry under bondage to the state ] / The next point of view in which a religious establishment is I injurious to the church itself is, that it perpetuates any evils i \ which happen to exist in it. The reason is this : the preference ^ which a state gives to a particular church is given to it as it is. If the church makes alterations in its constitution, its discipline, or its forms, it cannot tell whether the state would continue to prefer and to patronise it. Besides, if alterations are begun, its * ** Chillinsfworth declared in a letter to Dr. Sheldon, that if he subscribed he sub- scribed his own damnation, and yet in no long space of time, he actually did subscribe to the articles of the church, again and again." Simpson's Plea. « Palej : Moral and Political Philosophy, b. 6, c. 10. ^ " Honest and disinterested boldness in the path of duty is one of the first requisites of a minister of the gospel." Gisborne. But how shall they be thus disinterested? Mem. in the MS. 13 members do not know whether the alacrity of some other church might not take advantage of the loosening aUiance with the state, to supplant it. In short, they do not know what would be the consequences of amendments nor where they would end. Con- scious that the church as it is possesses the supremacy, they think it more prudent to retain that supremacy with existing evils than to endanger it by attempting to reform them. Thus it is that whilst unestahlished churches alter their discipline or con- stitution as need appears to require, established churches remain century after century the same.^ Not to be free to alter, can only then be right when the church is at present as perfect as it can be ; and no one perhaps will gravely say that there is any established church on the globe which needs no amendment. Dr. Hartley devoted a portion of his celebrated work to a discussion of the probability that all the existing church establishments in the world would be dissolved ; and he founds this probability ex- pressly upon the ground that they need so much reformation. " In all exclusive establishments, where temporal emoluments are annexed to the profession of a certain system of doctrines, and the usage of a certain routine of forms, and appropriated to an order of men so and so qualified, that order of men will naturally think themselves interested that things should continue as they are. A reformation might endanger their emoluments."- This is the testimony of a dignitary of one of these establishments. And the fact being admitted, what is the amount of the evil which it involves ] Let another dignitary reply : " He who, by a diligent and faithful examination of the original records, dis- misses from the system one article which contradicts the appre- hension, the experience, or the reasoning of mankind, does more towards recommending the belief, and with the belief the influence of Christianity, to the understandings and consciences of serious inquirers, and through them to universal reception and authority, than can be effected by a thousand contenders for creeds and ordinances of human establishments." If the benefits of dismiss- ing such an article are so great, what must be the evil of con- tinuing it] If the benefit of dismissing one such article be so great, what must be the evil of an established system which tends habitually and constantly to retain many of them] Yet these " articles,^ which thus contradict the reasoning of mankind," are actually retained by established churches. " Creeds and con- fessions," says Dr. Paley, *' however they may express the per- suasion or be accommodated to the controversies or to the fears of the age in which they are composed, in process of time, and by reason of the changes which are wont to take place in the judg- ment of mankind upon rehgious subjects, they come at length to contradict the actual opinions of the church whose doctrines they ' It was not to religious establishments that Protestants were indebted for the first eftorts of reformation. They have uniformly resisted reformation. Mem. in the MS. ^ Archdeacon Blackburn's Confessional : Pref. 14 profess to contain."^ It is then confessed by the members of an established church that religious estal)lishments powerfully ob- struct the belief, the influence, the universal reception and autho- rity of Christianity. Great, indeed, must be the counter advan- tages of these establishments if they counterbalance this portion of its evils. II. This last paragi'aph anticipates the second class of disad- vantages attendant upon religious establishments: Iheir ill effects ^ipon religion rjencralhj. It is indisputable, that much of the irre- li^ion of the world has resulted from those things which have been niixed up with Christianity and placed before mankind as parts of religion. In some countries, the mixture has been so flagrant that the majority of the thinking part of the population have almost rejected religion altogether. So it was, and so it may be feared it still is, in France. The intellectual part of her people rejected religion, not because they had examined Christianity and were convinced that it was a fiction, but because they had examined what was proposed to them as Christianity and found it was absurd or false. So numerous were " the articles that contra- dicted the experience and judgment of mankind," that they con- cluded the whole was a fiible, and rejected the whole. Now that which the French church establishment did in an extreme degTee, others do in a less degree. If the French church retained a hundred articles that contradicted the judgment of mankind, and thus made a nation of unbelievers, the church which retains ten or five such articles, weakens the general in- fluence of religion although it may not destroy it. Nor is it merely by unauthorized doctrinal articles or forms that the influence of religion is impaired, but by the general evils which affect the church itself. It is sufficiently manifest, that whatever tends to diminish the virtue or to impeach the cha- racter of the ministers of religion, must tend to diminish the in- fluence of religion upon mankind. If the teacher is not good, we are not to expect goodness in the taught. If a man enters the church with impure or unworthy motives, he cannot do his duty when he is there. If he makes religion subservient to interest in his own practice, he cannot elfectually teach others to make reli- gion paramount to all. Men associate (they ought to do it less) the idea of religion with that of its teachers; and their respect for the one is firequently measured by their respect for the other. Now that the effect of religious establishments has been to depress their teachers in the estimation of mankind, cannot be disputed. The effect is, in truth, inevitable. And it is manifest, that whatever convevs disrespectful ideas of religion, diminishes its influence upon the human mind. — In brief, we have seen that to establish a refio-ion is morally pernicious to its ministers ; and whatever is injurious to them, diminishes the power of religion in the world. Christianitv is a religion of good-will and kind affections. Its > Paley. iMoral and Foliticnl Philosopliv, li. (>, c, 10. 15 essence, so far as the intercourse of society is concerned, is Love. Whatever diminishes good-will and kind affections amongst christians, attacks the essence of Christianity. Now religious es- tablishments do this. They generate ill-will, heart-burnings, ani- mosities, — those very things which our religion deprecates more almost than any other. It is obvious that if a fourth or a third of a community think they are unreasonably excluded from privileges which the other parts enjoy, feelings of jealousy or envy are likely to be generated.^ If the minority are obliged to pay to the support of a religion they disapprove, these feelings are likely to be exacerbated. They soon become reciprocal : attacks are made by one party and repelled by another, till there arises an habitual sense of unkindness or ill-will. I once met with rather a gro- tesque definition of religious dissent, but it illustrates our propo- sition : — ^' Dissenterism, — that is, systematic opposition to the established religion." — Tlie deduction from the practical influence of rehgion upon the minds of men which this effect of religious establishments occasions, is great. — The evil I trust is diminish- ing in the world ; but then the diminution results, not from religi- ous establishments, but from that power of Christianity which prevails against these evils. From these and from other evidences of the injurious effects of religious establishments upon the religious condition of mankind, we shall perhaps be prepared to assent to the observations which follow : '' The history of the last eighteen centuries does, indeed, afford, in various Avays, a strong presumptive evidence, that the cause of true Christianity has very materially suffered in the world, in consequence of the connexion between the church and the state. It is probably in great measure the consequence of such an union that the church has assumed, in almost all christian Cv^untries, so secular a character — that Christianity has become so lamentably mixed up with the spirit, maxims, motives, and poli- tics, of a vain and evil world. Had the union in question never been attempted, pure religion might probably have found a freer course ; the practical effects of Christianity might have been more unmixed, and more extensive ; and it might have spread its influ- ence in a much more efficient manner than is now the case, even over the laws and politics of kings and nations. Before its union with the state, our holy religion flourished with comparative in- corruptness ; afterwards it gradually declined in its purity and its ' " The placing all the religious sects (in America") upon an equal footing with re- spect to the government of the country, has efiectually secured the peace of the com- mnnity, at the same time that it has essentially promoted the interests of truth and virtue." Mem. Dr. Priestly,. page 175. Mem. "in the MS. Pennsylvania, "Although there are so many sects and such a difference of religi- ous opinions in this province, it is surprising the harmony which subsists among them, they consider themselves as children of the same father, and live like brethren, be- cause they have the liberty of thinking like men ; to this pleasing harmony in a great measure is to be attributed the* rapid and nourishing state of Pennsylvania above all the other provinces." Travels through the Interior Parts of North America, by an Officer. 1791. Lond. The Oflicer was Thomas Auburey, who was taken prisoner by the Americans. Mem. in the MS. 16 17 power, until all was nearly lost in darkness, superstition, and spi- ritual tyranny." ^ " Religion should remain distinct from the political constitution of a state. Intermingled with it what pur- pose can it serve, except the baneful purpose of communicating and of receiving contamination." " III. Then as to the effect of religious establishments upon the civil welfare of the state, — we know that the connexion l)etween religious and civil welfare is intimate and great. Whatever therefore diminishes the influence of religion upon a people, dimi- nishes their general welfare. In addition however to this general consideration, there are some particular modes, of the injurious effect of religious establishments, which it may be proper to notice. And first, religious establishments are incompatible with com- plete religious liberty. This consideration we requested the reader to bear in mind when the question of religious liberty was discussed.'^ '' If an establishment be right, rehgious liberty is not; and if religious liberty be right, an establishment is not." Whatever arguments therefore exist to prove the rectitude of complete religious liberty, they prove at the same time the wrong- ness of rehgious establishments. Nor is this all : for it is the manifest tendency of these establishments to withhold an in- crease of rehgious liberty, even when on other grounds it would be granted. The seculaV interests of the state rehgion are set in array against an increase of liberty. If the established church allows other churches to approach more nearly to an equality with itself, its own relative eminence is diminished ; and if by any means the state religion adds to its own privileges, it is by deduct- ing from the privileges of the rest. The state religion is besides afraid to dismiss any part even of its confessedly useless privileges, lest when an alteration is begun, it should not easily be stopped. And there is no reason to doubt that it is temporal rather than re- ligious considerations, — interest rather than Christianity, which now occasions restrictions and disabilities and tests. In conformity with these views, persecution has generally been the work of religious establishments. Indeed some alliance or some countenance at least from the state is necessary to a syste- matic persecution. Popular outrage may persecute men on account of their rehgion, as it often has done ; but fixed stated persecutions, have perhaps always been the work of the religion of the state. It was the state rehgion of Rome that persecuted the first christians. — " Who was it that crucified the Saviour of the world for attempting to reform the religion of his country ] The Jewish priesthood. — Who was it that drowned the altars of their idols with the blood of christians for attempting to abolish pagan- ism I The Pagan priesthood. — Who was it that persecuted to flames and death those who in the time of Wickliffe and his fol- lowers laboured to reform the errors of Popery? The Popish » J. J. Gurney : Peculiarities, c. 7. ' Charles James Fox : Fell's Life. 3 See Essays on the Principles of Morality, &c. vol. 2. c. 4. priesthood. — Who was it and who is it that both in England and in Ireland since the reformation — but I check my hand, being unwilling to reflect upon the dead or to exasperate the living."^ We also are unwilling to reflect upon or to exasperate, but our business is with plain truth. Who then was it that since he reformation has persecuted dissentients from its creed, and who is it that at this hour thinks and speaks of them, with unchristian antipathy 1 The English Priesthood, Not to mention that it was the state religion of Judea that put our Saviour himself to death. It was and it is the state religion in some European countries that now persecutes dissenters from its creed. It was the state religion in this country that persecuted the protestants ; and since protestantism has been established, it is the state religion which has persecuted protestant dissenters. Is this the fault principally of the faith of these churches or of their alliance with the state ] No man can be in doubt for an answer. We are accustomed to attribute too much to bigotry. Bigotry has been very great and very operative ; but bigotry alone would not have produced the disgraceful and dreadful transactions which fill the records of ecclesiastical history. No. Men have often been actuated by the love of supremacy or of money, whilst they were talking loudly of the sacredness of their faith. They have been less afraid for religion than for the dominance of a church. When the creed of that church was impugned, those who shared in its advantages were zealous to suppress the rising inquiry ; be- cause the discredit of the creed might endanger the loss of the advantages. The zeal of a pope for the real presence, was often quite a fiction. He and his cardinals cared perhaps nothing for the real presence, as they sometimes cared nothing for morality. But men might be immoral without encroaching upon the papal power : — they could not deny the doctrine, without endangering its overthrow. Happily, persecution for religion is greatly diminished: yet whilst we rejoice in the fact we cannot conceal from ourselves the consideration, that the diminution of persecution has resulted rather from the general diffusion of better principles, than from the operation of religious establishments as such. In most or in all ages, a great portion of the flagitious transac- tions which furnish materials for the ecclesiastical historian, have resulted from the political connections or interests of a church. It was not the interest of Christianity but of an estabhshment, which made Becket embroil his king and other sovereigns in dis- tractions. It was not the interests of Christianity but of an establishment which occasioned the monstrous impositions and usurpations of the papal see. And I do not know whether there has ever been a religious war of which religion was the only or the principal cause. Besides all this, there has been an inextricable succession of intrigues and cabals, — of conflicting interests,— and ' Mihcellaueoiis Tracts, by Richard Watson, D. D. Bishop of LandaflT, v. 2. 18 clamour and distraction, which the world would have been spared if secular interests had not been brought into connection with religion. Another mode in which religious establishments are injurious to the civil welfare of a people, is by their tendency to resist political improvements. That same cause which induces state religions to maintain themselves as iliey are, induces them to maintain the patron state as it is. It is the state in its present condition that secures to the church its advantages; and the church does not know whether, if it were to encourage political reformation, the new state of things might not endanger its own supremacy. There are indeed so many other interests and powers concerned in political reformations, that the state religion cannot always prevent alterations from being effected. Nor would I affirm that they always endeavour to prevent it. And yet we may appeal to the general experience of all ages, whether established churches have not resisted reformation in those political institutions upon which their own privileges depended. Now these are serious things. For after all that can be said and justly said of the mischiefs of political changes and the extrava- gancies of political empiricism, it is sufficiently certain that almost every government that has been established in the world, has needed from time to time important reformations in its constitu- tion or its practice. And it is equally certain, that if there be ;iny influence or power which habitually and with little discrimi- nalion supports political institutions as they are, that influence or power must be very pernicious to the world. We have seen that one of the requisites of a religious esta- blishment is a " legal provision" for its ministers, — that is to say, the members of all the churches which exist in a state must be obliged to pay to the support of one whether they approve of that one or not. Now in endeavourinsj to estimate the effects of this svstem, with a view to ascertain the preponderance of public advantages, we are presented at the outset with the inquiry, — Is this compul- sory maintenance right 1 Is il compatible with Christianity ] If it is not, there is an end of the controversy ; for it is nothing to christians whether a system be politic or impolitic, if once they have discovered that it is wrong. But I wave for the present the question of rectitude. The reader is at liberty to assume that Christianity allows governments to make this compulsory provision if they think fit. I wave too the question whether a christian minister ought to receive payment for his labours, whether that pavment be voluntary or not. / The single point before us is then, the balance of advantages. I Is it more advantageous that ministers should be paid by a legal ' ' provision or by voluntary subscription ] That advantage of a legal provision which consists in the supply of a teacher to every district has already been noticed ; so 19 that our inquiry is reduced to a narrow limit. Supposing that a minister would be appointed in every district although the state did not pay him, is it more desirable that he should be paid by the state or voluntarily by the people ] Of the legal provision some of the advantages are these : it holds out no inducement to the irreligious or indifferent to absent themselves from public worship lest they should be expected to pay the preacher. Public worship is conducted, — the preacher delivers his discourse, whether such persons go or not. They pay no more for going, and no less for staying away ; and it is pro- bable, in the present religious state of mankind, that some go to places for worship since it costs them nothing, who otherwise would stay away. But it is manifestly better that men should attend even in such a state of indifference than that they should not attend at all. Upon the voluntary system of payment, this good effect is not so fully secured ; for though the doors of chapels he open to all, yet few persons of competent means woidd attend them constantly without feehng that they might be expected to contribute to the expenses. I do not believe that the non-attend- ance of indifferent persons would be greatly increased by the adoption of the voluntary system, especially if the payments were as moderate as they easily might be ; — but it is a question rather of speculation than of experience, and the reader is to give upon this account to the system of legal provision, such an amount of advantage as he shall think fit. Again. — Preaching where there is a legal provision is not "a mode of begging." If you adopt voluntary payment, that pay- ment depends upon the good pleasure of the hearers, and there is manifestly a temptation upon the preacher to accommodate his discourses, or the manner of them, to the wishes of his hearers rather than to the dictates of his own judgment. But the man who receives his stipend whether his hearers be pleased or not, is under no such temptation. He is at liberty to conform the exercise of his functions to his judgment without the diminution of a subscription. This I think is an undeniable advantage. Another consideration is this : — That where there is a religious establishment with a legal provision, it is usual, not to say indis- pensable, to fill the pulpits only with persons who entertain a certain set of religious opinions. It would be obviously idle to assume that these opinions are true, but they are, or are in a considerable degree, uniform. Assuming then that one set of opinions is as sound as another, is it better that a district should always hear one set, or that the teachers of twenty different sets should successively gain possession of the pulpit, as the choice of the people might direct 1 I presume not to determine such a question ; but it may be observed that in point of fact those churches Avhich do proceed upon the voluntary system, are not often subjected to such fluctuations of doctrine. There does not appear much difficulty in constituting churches upon the voluntary 20 21 plan, which shall in practice secure considerable uniformity in the sentiments of the teachers. And as to the bitter animosities and distractions which have been predicted if a choice of new teachers were to be left to the people,— they do not I believe ordinarily follow. Not that I apprehend the ministers, for instance, of an independent church, are always elected with that unanimity and freedom from heart-burnings which ought to subsist, but that animosities do not subsist to any great extent. Besides, the pre- diction appears to be founded on the supposition, that a certain stipend was to be appropriated to one teacher or to another according as he might obtain the greater number of votes,— whereas every man is at liberty if he pleases to withdraw his contribution from him whom he disapproves, and to give it to another. And after all, there may be voluntary support of ministers without an election by those who contribute, as is instanced by the Methodists in the present day. On the other hand there are some advantages attendant on the voluntary system which that of a legal provision does not possess. And first it appears to be of importance that there should be an union, an harmony, a cordiality between the minister and the people. It is in truth an indispensable requisite. Christianity which is a religion of love, cannot flourish where unkindly feehngs prevail. Now I think it is manifest that harmony and cordiality are likely to prevail more where tlie minister is chosen and vo- luntarily remunerated by his hearers, than where they are not consulted in the choice ; where they are obliged to take him ^v hom others please to appoint, and where they are compelled to pa)/ him whether they like him or not. The tendency of this last system is evidently opposed to perfect kindUness and cordiality. There is likely to be a sort of natural connection, a communication of good offices induced between hearers and the man whom they them- selves choose and voluntarily remunerate, which is less likely in the other case. If love be of so much consequence generally to the christian character, it is especially of consequence that it should subsist between him who assumes to be a dispenser and them who are in the relation of hearers of the gospel of Christ. Indeed the very circumstance that a man is compelled to pay a preacher, tends to the introduction of unkind and unfriendly feel- ings. It is not to be expected that men will pay him more gra- ciously or with a better^ will than they pay a tax-gatherer ; and we all know that the tax-gatherer is one of the last persons whom men wish to see. He who desires to extend the infuence of Christianity would be very cautious of establishing a system of which so ungracious a regulation formed a part. There is truth worthy of grave attention in the ludicrous verse of Cowper's — A rarer man tlinn vou In pulpit none shall hear ; But yet, methinks, to tell jou true, Vou sell it plaguj dear. .'i * 1 It is easy to perceive that the influence of that man's exhortations must be diminished, whose hearers listen with the reflection that his advice is " plaguy dear." The reflection too is perfectly na- tural, and cannot be helped. And when superadded to this is the consideration, that it is not only sold " dear" but that payment is enforced, — material injury must be sustained by the cause of reli- gion. In this view it may be remarked, that the support of an establishment by a general tax would be preferable to the pay- ment of each pastor by his own hearers. Nor is it unworthy of notice that some persons Avill always think (whether with reason or without it) that compulsory maintenance is not right ; and in whatever degree they do this, there is an increased cause of dis- satisfaction or estrangement. Again. — The teacher who is independent of the congregation, — who will enjoy all his emoluments Avhether they are satisfied with him or not, — is under manifest temptation to remissness in his duty, — not perhaps to remissness in those particulars on which his superiors would animadvert, but in those which respect the unstipulated and undefinable but very important duties of private care and of private labours. To mention this is sufficient. No man who reflects upon the human constitution, or who looks around him, will need arguments to prove, that they are likely to labour negligently whose profits are not increased by assiduity and zeal. I know that the power of religion can, and that it often does, counteract this ; but that is no argument for putting temptation in the way. So powerful indeed is this temptation that with a very great number it is acknowledged to prevail. Even if we do not assert with a clergyman that a great propor- tion of his brethren labour only so much for the religious benefit of their parishioners as will screen them from the arm of the law, there is other evidence which is unhappily conclusive. The desperate extent to Avhich non-residence is practised, is infallible proof that a large proportion of the clergy are remiss in the dis- charge of the duties of a christian pastor. They do not discharge them con amore. And how should they? It was not the wish to do this which prompted them to become clergymen at first. They were influenced by another object, and that they have obtained — they possess an income : and it is not to be expected that when this is obtained the mental desires should suddenly become ele- vated and purified, and that they who entered the church for the sake of its emoluments should commonly labour in it for the sake of religion. Although to many the motive for entering the church is the same as that for engaging in other professions, it is an unhappi- ness peculiar to the clerical profession that it does not offer the same stimulus to subsequent exertion, — that advancement does not usually depend upon desert. The man who seeks for an in- come from surgery or the bar is continually prompted to pay ex- emplary attention to its duties. Unless the surgeon is skilful 22 23 and attentive, he knows that practice is not to be expected: unless the pleader devotes himself to statutes and reports, he knows that he is not to expect cases and briefs. But the clergy- man, whether he study the bible or not, whether he be diligent and zealous or not, still possesses his living. Nor would it be rational to expect, that where the ordinary stimulus to human exertion is wanting, the exertion itself should generally be found. So naturally does exertion follow from stimulus, that we believe it is an observation frequently made, that curates are more exem- plary than beneficed clergymen. And if beneficed clergymen were more solicitous than they are to make the diligence of their curates the principal consideration in employing them, this difference be- tween curates and their employers would be much greater than it is. Let beneficed clergymen employ and reward curates upon as simple principles as those are on which a merchant employs and rewards a clerk, and it is probable that nine^enths of the parishes in England would wish for a curate rather than a rector. But this very consideration affords a powerful argument against the present system. If much good would result from making clerical reward the price of desert, much evil results from making it independent of desert. This effect of the Enghsh es- tablishment is not like some others, inseparable from the institu- tion. It would doubtless be possible even with compulsory main- tenance so to appropriate it that it should form a constant motive to assiduity and exertion. Clergymen might be elevated in their profession according to their fidelity to their office ; and if this were done, if as opportunity offered, all were likely to be promoted who deserved it ; and if all\\ho did not deserve it were sure to be passed by, a new face would soon be put upon the affairs of the church. " The complaints of neglect of duty would quickly be di- minished, and non-residence would soon cease to be the reproach of three thousand out of ten. We cannot however amuse our- selves with the hope that this will be done ;— because in reference to the civil constitution of the church, there is too near an ap- proach to that condition in which the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. If then it be asserted that it is one great advantage of the es- tablishment, that it provides a teacher for every parish, it is one great disadvantage that it makes a large proportion of those teachers negligent of their duty. There may perhaps be a religious establishment in which the ministers shall be selected for their deserts, though I know not whether in anv it is actuallv and suflficientlv done. That it is one of the first requisites in the appointment of religious teachers is plain; and this point is manifestly better consulted by a system in which the people voluntarily pay and choose their pastors, than when they do not. Men love goodness in others, though they may be bad themselves ; and they especially like it in their religious teachers : so that when they come to select a person to fill that M I office, they are likely to select one of whom they think at least that he is a good man. The same observation holds of non-residence. Non-residence is not necessary to a state religion. By the system of volun- tary payment it is impossible. It has sometimes been said (with whatever truth) that in times of public discontent these persons have been disposed to disaf- fection. If this be true, compulsory support is in this respect a political evil, in as much as it is the cause of the alienation of a part of the community. We will not suppose so strong a case as that this alienation might lead to physical opposition ; but, sup- posing the dissatisfaction only to exist affords no inconsiderable topic of the statemaii's inquiry. Happiness is the object of civil government, and this object is frustrated in part in respect of those who think themselves aggrieved by its policy. And when it is considered how numerous the dissenters are, and that they in- crease in number, the political impropriety and impolicy of keep- ing them in a state of dissatisfaction becomes increased. The best security of a government is in the satisfaction and affection of the people ; which satisfaction is always diminished and which affection is always endangered, in respect of those who, disapproving a certain church, are compelled to pay to its support. This is a consequence of a ''legal provision" that demands much attention from the legislator. Every legislator knows that it is an evil. It is a point that no man disputes, and that every man knows should be prevented, unless its cause effects a counterbalance of advantages. Lastly. — Upon the question of the comparative advantages of a legal provision and a voluntary remuneration in securing the due discharge of the ministerial function, what is the evidence of facts ] Are the ministers of established or of unestablished churches the more zealous, the more exemplary, the more labo- rious, the more devoted] Whether of the two are the more beloved by their hearers ] Whether of the two lead the more exemplary and religious lives ? Whether of the two are the more active in works of philanthropy ? It is a question of fact, and facts are before the world. The discussions of the present chapter conduct the mind of the TOter to these short conclusions : — That of the two grounds upon which the propriety of Religious Establishments is capable of examination, neither affords evidence in their favour : That Religious Establishments derive no coun- v tenance from the nature of Christianity or from the example of the ■, primitive churches : and, That they are not recommended by practical UtiUty. ' 25 SECTION II. THE RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENT OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND. If the conclusions of the last chapter be just, it will nmv become our business to inquire how far the disadvantages which are inci- dental to religious establishments actually operate in our own, and whether there subsist any additional disadvantages resulting from the peculiar constitution or circumstances of the English church. r 1, I, We have no concern with religious opinions or iorms ot churcn government, but ivifh the church as connected with the state It is not with an episcopalian church but with an established church that we are concerned. If there must exist a religious establish- ment, let it by all means remain in its present hands. The expe- rience which England has had of the elevation of another sect to the supremacy, is not such as to make us wish to see another ele- vated again.i ]S[or would any sect which takes a just view ot its own religious interests desire the supremacy for itself. The origin of the English establishment is papal. The political alliance of the church is similar now to what it was in the first years -of Henry YIII. When Henry countenanced the preachers of the reformed opinions, when he presented some of them with the benefices which had hitherto been possessed by the Romish clergy, and when at length these benefices and the other privileges of the state reUgion were bestowed upon the ''reformed'' only,— no essential change was effected in the political constitution ot the church. In one point indeed the alliance with the state was made more strict, because the supremacy was transferred from the pope to the monarch. So that the same or a kindred political character was put in connexion with other men and new opinions. The church was altered but the establishment remained nearly the » The religioas sect who are now commonly called Puritans, " prohibited the use of the Common l*ra>er, not mer3l> in churches chapels, and places of public worship, but in any private place or family as well, under a penalty of five pounds for the first ""«"^e. ten pounds for the second, and for the third a year's imprisonment." * These men did not understand or did not practise the fundamental duties of toleration. For religious liberty they had still less re.rard. " They passed an ordinance by which eight lieresies were made punishable with death upon the first otVence, unless the offender abjured his errors, and irreuii»sil)lv if he relapsed Sixteen other opinions were to be punished with imprisonment till the oHender should find sureties that he would maintain them no inore."t And they quite abolished the Episcopal rank and order. As if each church mit^ht not decide for itself by what form its discipline should be conducted ! To have seifarated the civil privileges from the episcopal order was within the province of the legislature,— and to have abolished those privileges would we think have been wise. • Southey's Book of the Church. t Ibid. 1 i i i same : or the difference that did obtain made the establishment more of a state religion than before. The origin therefore of the English establishment is papal. It was planted by papal policy, and nurtured by pervading superstition : and as to the transfer of the supremacy, but little credit is due to its origin or its motives. No reverence is due to our establishment on account of its pa- rentage. The church is the offspring of the reformation, — the church establishment is not. It is not a daughter of protestantism but of the papacy, — brought into unnatural alliance with a better faith. Unhappily, but little anxiety was shown by some of the reformers to purify the political character of the church when its privileges came into their own hands. They declaimed against the corruptions of the former church, but were more than suffici- ently willing to retain its profits and its power. The alliance with the state of which we have spoken, as the inseparable attendant of religious establishments, is in this coun- try peculiarly close. " Church and State" is a phrase that is continually employed, and indicates the intimacy of the connexion between them. The question then arises, whether those disad- vantages which result generally from the alliance, result in this country, and whether the peculiar intimacy is attended with pecu- liar evils. Bishops are virtually appointed by the prince ; and it is mani- fest that in the present principles of political affairs, regard will be had, in their selection, to the interests of the state. The ques- tion will not always be, when a bishoprick becomes vacant. Who is the fittest man to take the oversight of the church 1 but some- times, — What appointment will most effectually strengthen the administration of the day ] — Bishops are temporal peers, and as such they have an efficient ability to promote the views of the government by their votes in parliament. Bishops in their turn are patrons; and it becomes also manifest that these appoint- ments will sometimes be regulated by kindred views. He who was selected by the cabinet because he would promote their mea- sures, and who cannot hope for advancement if he opposes those measures, is not likely to select clergymen who oppose them. Many ecclesiastical appointments, again, are in the hands of the individual officers of government, — of the prime mmister for example, or the lord chancellor. That these officers will fre- quently regard political purposes, or purposes foreign to the ivorth of men in making these appointments, is plain. Now when we reflect that the highest dignities of the church are in the patronage of the king, and that the influence of their dignitaries upon the inferior clergy is necessarily great, it becomes obvious, that there will be diffused through the general whole of the hierarchy, a systematic alliance with the ruling power. Nor is it assuming any thing unreasonable to add, that whilst the ordinary principles 26 27 that actuate mankind operate, the hierarchy will sometimes post- pone the interests of religion to their own. Upon the practical authority of cabinets over the church Bishop Warburton makes himself somewhat mirthful :---" The rabbins make the giant Gog or Magog contemporary with JSoah, and convinced by his preacliing. So that he was disposed to take the benefit of the ark. But here lay the distress— it by no means suited his dimensions. Therefore, as he could not enter in, he contented himself to ride upon it astride. Image now to your- self this illustrious cavalier mounted on his hackney, and see it he does not bring before you the church, bestrid by some lumpish minister of state, who turns and winds it at his pleasure. The only difference is, that Gog believed the preacher of righteousness and religion." ^ If then, to convert a rehgious establishment into " a means ot strengthening or diffusing influence, serves only to debase it, and to introduce into it numerous corruptions and abuses," these de- basements, corruptions, and abuses must necessarily subsist m the establishment of England. And first as to the church itself.— It is not too much to believe that the honourable earnestness of many of the reformers to purify religion from the corruptions of the papacy, was cooled, and eventually almost destroved by the acquisition of temporal immu- nities. When thev had acquired them the unhappy reasoning began to operate,— Xeif iis lei well alone : if ice encourage further changes our advantages will perhaps pass into other hands. We are safe as tee are ; and we will not endanger the loss of present hene/ts bij further reformation.'— Wh^i has been the result]— That the church has never been fully reformed to the present hour. If any reader is disposed to deny this, I place the proposition not upon my feeble authoritv but upon that of the members of the church and of the reformers themselves. The reader will be pleased to notice that there are few quotations in the present chapter except from members of the church of England. '' If any person will seriously consider the low and superstitious state of the minds of men in general in the time of James I. much more in the reigns of his predecessors, he will not be sur- prised to find that there are various matters in our ecclesiastical constitution ichich require some alteration. Our forefathers did great things, and we cannot be suflBciently thankful for their la- bours, but much more remains to be done."" Hartley says of the ecclesiastical powers of the christian world — " They have all left the true, pure, simple religion, and teach for doctrines the com- mandments of men. They are all merchants of the earth, and have set up a kingdom of this world, abounding in riches, tem- poral power, and external pomp."^ Dr. Henry More (he was zealous for the honour of the church) says of the reformed » Bisliop Warburton's Letters to Bishop Hard, LeUer 47. - Simpson's Plea, p. 137. 3 Essay on Man, 1749, v. 2, p. 370. churches, they have " separated from the great Babylon, to build those that are lesser and more tolerable, but yet not to be tolerated for ever."^ " It pleased God in his unsearchable wisdom to suffer the pro- gress of this great work, the reformation, to be stopped in the midway, and the effects of it to be greatly weakened by many unhappy divisions among the reformed." ^ " The innovations introduced into our religious establisliment at the reformation, were great and glorious for those times : but some further innovations are yet wanting (would to God they may be quietly made !) to bring it to perfection."^ *' I have always had a true zeal for the church of England, — yet I must say — there are many things in it that have been very uneasy to rne.'''^ " Cranmer, Bucer, Jewel, and others never considered the re- formation which took place in their own times as complete."^ Long after Cranmer' s days, some of the brightest ornaments of the church still thought a reformation was needed. Tillotson, Patrick, Tennison, Kidder, Stillingfleet, Burnet, and others,^ endeavoured a further reformation, though in vain. " We have been contented to suffer our religious constitution, our doctrines, and ceremonies, and forms of public worship, to remain nearly in the same unpurged, adulterated^ and superstitious state in which the original reformers left them."^ I attribute this want of reformation primarily to the political alliance of the church. Why should those who have the power refuse to effect it unless they feared some ill result ] And what ill result could arise from religious reformation if it were not the endangering of temporal advantages ] " I would only ask," said Lord Bacon, two hundred years ago, " why the civil state should be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws, made every third or fourth year in parliament assembled, devising remedies as fast as time breedeth mischief; and contrariwise, the ecclesiastical state should still continue upon the dregs of time, and receive no alteration now for these five and forty years and more. — If St. John were to indite an epistle to the church of England as he did to them of Asia, it would sure have the clause habeo adversus te pauca.''^ What would Lord Bacon have said if he had lived to our day, Avhen two hundred years more have passed, and the establishment still continues " upon the dregs of time !" — But Lord Bacon's question should be an- swered ; and though no reason can be given for refusing to reform, a cause can be assigned. t ' Myst. of Iniquity, p. 553. This poor man fonnd that bis language laboured under the imputation of being unclerical, unguarded and impolitic ; and be afterwards showed solicitude to retract it. See p. 476, &c. of the same work. ^ Dr. Lowth, afterwards Bishop of London : Visitation Sermon, 1758. ^ Dr. Watson, Bishop of Landaff: Misc. Tracts, v. 2, p. 17, &c. * Bishop Burnet : Hist. Own Times, v. 2, p. 634. « Simpson's Plea. « Ibid. ' Ibid « Works : Edit. 1803, v. 2, p. 527. S 28 29 " Wliatever truth there may be in the proposition which asserts that the multitude is fond of innovation, I think that the proposition Avhich asserts that the priesthood is averse frora reformation, is far more generalhj irue.''^ This is the cause. They who have' the power of reforming, are afraid to touch the fabric. They are afraid to remove one stone however decayed, lest another and another should be loosened, until the fabric, as a political institution, should fall. Let us hear again episcopal evidence. Bishop Porteus informs us that himself with some other clergymen, (amongst whom were Dr. Percy and Dr. Yorke, both subsequently bishops), attempted to induce the bishops to alter some things " which all reasonable persons agreed stood in need of amendment." The answer given by Archbishop Corn- wallis was exactlv to the purpose—" I have consulted, severally, my brethren the ^bishops ; and it is the opinion of the bench in general that nothing can in prudence be done in the matter." - Here is no attempt to deny the existence of the evils, — no at- tempt to show that thev ought not to be amended, but only that it would not " be prudent" to amend them. What were these considerations of prudence ] Did they respect religion 1 Is it imprudent to purity religious offices]' Or did they respect the temporal privileges of the church ] — No man surely can doubt, that if the church had been a religious institution only, its heads would have thought it both prudent and right to amend it. The matters to which Bishop Porteus called the attention of the bench were " the liturgy, but especially the articles." These Articles afford an extraordinary illustration of that tendency to resist improvement of which we speak. " The requiring subscription to the thirty-nine articles is a great imposition."^ " Do the articles of the church of England want a revisal ?— Undoubtedly."*— In 1772 a clerical petition was presented to the house of commons for relief upon the sub- ject of subscription : and what were the sentiments of the house respecting the articles. One member said, " I am persuaded they are not warranted by scripture, and I am sure they cannot be reconciled to common sense." ^ Another, — " They are con- tradictory, absurd, several of them damnable, not only in a reli- gious and speculative light, but also in a moral and practical view."^ Another, — *' The articles, I am sure, want a revisal ; because several of them are heterodox and absurd, warranted neither by reason nor by scripture. Many of them seem calcu- lated for' keeping out of the church all but those who will sub- scribe any thing, and sacrifice every consideration to the mammon of unrighteousness."^ And a fourth said, " Some of them are in my opinion unfounded in, some of them inconsistent with, reason ^ Eishop Watson : Misc. Tracts, v. 2. ^ Works of Bishop Porteus, vol. 1. 3 Bishop Burnet : Hist. Own Times, v. 2, p. C34. * Bishop Watson : Miscel. Tracts, v. 2, p. 17. '^ Lord George Germain. « Sir William Meredith. ' Lord John Cavendish. i I I m and scripture ; and some of them subversive of the very genius and design of the gospel."^ The articles found, it appears, in the house of commons one, and one only defender ; and that one was Sir Roger Newdigate, the member for Oxford." — And thus a " Church of Christ" retains in its bosom that which is confessedly irrational, inconsistent with scripture, contradictory, absurd, sub- versive of the very genius and design of the gospel : — for what ? Because the church is allied to the state : — because it is a Reli- o-ious Establishment. There is such an interest, an importance, an awfulness in these things, resulting both from their effects and the responsibility which they entail, that I would accumulate upon the general ne- cessity for reformation some additional testimonies. In 1716 was presented to the convocation, " Free and Candid Disquisitions by dutiful Sons of the Church," in \^'hich they say, '' Our duty seems as clear as our obligations to it are cogent; and is, in one word, to reform.'' Of this book Arch- deacon Blackburn tells us that it was treated with much '' con- tempt and scorn by those who ought to have paid the greatest regard to the subject of it;" and that " it caused the forms of the church to be weighed in the balance of the sanctuary where they have been found greatly wanting.''^ " Our confirmations, and I may add even our ordinations for the sacred ministry, are dwindled into painful and disgusting ceremonies, as they are usually administered."^ Another Archdeacon, who was not only a friend of the church but a public advocate of religious establishments says, " Re- flection, we hope, in some, and time we are sure in all, will recon- cile men to alterations estabUshed in reason. If there be any danger it is from some of the clergy, who would rather suffer the vineyard to be overgrown icith weeds than stir the ground ; or what is worse, call these weeds the fairest flowers in the garden." This is strong language : that which succeeds is stronger still. " If we are to wait for improvement till the cool, the calm, the discreet part of mankind begin it ; till church governors solicit, or ministers of state propose it, I will ymitiire to pronounce that (without His interposition with whom nothing is impossible) we may remain as we are till the renovation of all things."^ Why " church governors" and '' ministers of state" should be so pe- culiarly backward to improve, is easily known. Ministers of state are more anxious for the consolidation of their power than for the amendment of churches ; and church governors are more anxious to benefit themselves by consolidating that power, than to " Sir Georfje Saville. ^ Par. Hist. v. 17. The petition, after all this was rejected by two hundred and seventeen votes against seventy-one. Can any thing more clearly indicate the fear of reforming ? — a fear that extends itself to the state, because the state thinks (with reason or wi hout it) that to endanger the stability of the church were to endanger its own. ^The Confessional. * Simpson's Plea. * A Defence of the Considerations on the propriety of requiring a subscription to Articles of Faith. By Dr. Paley, p. 35. / 30 reform the system of which they are the heads. But let no man anticipate that we shall indeed remain as we are till the reno- vation of all things. The work will be done though these may refuse to do it. " If," says a statesman, '' the friends of the church, instead of taking the lead in a mild reform of abuses, con- tend obstinately for their protection, and treat every man as an enemy who aims at reform, they will certainly he overpowered at last, and the correction applied by those who will apply it with no sparing handr^^ If these declarations be true (and w^ho will even question their truth]) we may be allowed, without any preten- sions to extraordinary sagacity, to add another : that to these un- sparing correctors the work will assuredly be assigned. How infatuated then the policy of refusing reformation even if policy only were concerned ! The next point in which the effect of the state alliance is inju- rious to the church itself, is by its effects upon the ministry. It is manifest that where there are such powerful motives of interest to assume the ministerial office, and where there are such facilities for the admission of unfit men, — unfit men will often be admitted. Human nature is very stationary ; and kindred results arose very many centuries ago. '' The attainments of the clergy in the first ages of the Anglo-Saxon church were very consider- able. But a great and total degeneracy took place during the latter years of the Heptarchy, and for two generations after the union of its kingdoms." And why ] Because '' mere worldly views operated upon a great proportion of them ; no other way of life offered so f[iir a prospect of power to the ambitious, of security to the prudent, of tranquillity and ease to the easy-minded.'"- Such views still operate, and they still produce kindred effects. It is manifest, that if men undertake the office of christian teachers not from earnestness in the cause but from the desire of profit or power, or ease, the office will frequently be ill discharged. Persons who possess little of the christian minister but the name, will undertake to guide the flock ; and hence it is inevitable that the ministry, as a body, will become reduced in the scale of reli- gious excellence. So habitual is the system of undertaking the office for the sake of its emoluments, that men have begun to avow the motive and to defend it. '' It is no reproach to the church to say that it is supplied with ministers by the emolu- ments it affords." 2 Would it not have been a reproach to the first christian churches, or could it have been said of them at all ? Does he who enters the church for the sake of its advantages, enter it " of a ready mind ]" — But the more lucrative offices of the church are talked of with much familiarity as '' prizes," much > Letters on the subject of the British and Foreign Bible Society, by the present Lord Bexley. « Southey : Book of the Church, c. fi. ' Knox's Essays, No. 18. N 31 in the same manner as we talk of prizes in a lottery. " The same fund produces more effect — when distributed into prizes of different value than when divided into equal shares."^ This " effect" is described as being '' both an allurement to men of talents to enter into the church, and as a stimulus to the industry of those who are already in it." But every man knows that talent and industry are not the only nor the chief things which obtain for a person the prizes of the church. There is more of accuracy in the parallel passage of another moralist. " The me- dical profession does not possess so many splendid prizes as the church and the bar, and on that account, perhaps, is rarely if ever pursued by young men of noble families." =^ Here is the point: it is rather to noble families than to talent and industry, that the prizes are awarded. " There are indeed rich preferments, but these, it is observed, do not usually fall to merit as the reward of it, but are lavished where interest and family connexion put in their irresistible claim." ^ That plain speaking man Bishop War- burton writes to his friend Hurd, " Reckon upon it, that Durham goes to some nohle ecclesiastic. 'Tis a morsel only for them.""* It is manifest that when this language can be appropriate, the office of the ministry must be dishonoured and abused. Respect- ing the priesthood it is acknowledged that " the characters of men are formed much more by the temptations than the duties of their profession."^ Since then the temptations are worldly, what is to be expected but that the character should be worldly too ] — Nor would any thing be gained by the dexterous distinction that I have somewhere met with, that although the motive for " taking the oversight of the flock" be indeed '' lucre," yet it does not come under the apostolical definition of " filthy." Of the eventual consequences of thus introducing unqualified and perhaps irreligious nobles into the government of the church, Bishop Warburton speaks in strong language. " Our grandees have at last found their way back into the church. I only wonder they have been so long about it. But be assured, that nothing but a new religious revolution, to sweep away the fragments that Harry the VIII. left, after banqueting his courtiers, will drive them out again." ^ When that revolution shall come which will sweep away these prizes, it will prove not only to these but to other things to be a besom of destruction. If the fountain be bitter, the current cannot be sweet. The principles which too commonly operate upon the dignitaries of the church, descend in some degree to the inferior ranks. I say m some degree ; for I do not believe that the degree is the same or so great. Nor is it to be expected. The temptation which forms the character, is diminished in its power, and the character therefore may rise. ' Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 6, c. 10. ^Knox's Essays, No. 53. ^ Mor. and Pol. Phil. p. 266. 2 Gisbome's Duties of Men. ^ "VVarburfon's Letters to Hurd, No. 47. 6 Warburton's Letters to Hurd, No. 47. 32 I believe that (reverently be it spoken) through the goodness of God, there has been produced since the age of Hartley, a consi- derable improvement in the general character (at least of the infe- rior orders) of the English clergy. In observing the character which he exhibited, let it be remembered that that character was the legitimate offspring of the slate religion. The subsequent amendment is the offspring of another and a very different and a purer parentage. " The superior clergy are in general ambitious and eager in the pursuit of riches ; flatterers of the great, and subservient to party interest ; negligent of their own immediate charo:es, and also of the inferior clergv and their immediate charges. The inferior clergy imitate their superiors, and in ge- neral take little more care of their parishes than barely what is necessary to avoid the censures of the law. — I say this is the general case ; that is, far the greater part of the clergy of all ranks in this kingdom are of this kind." i— These miserable effects upon the character of the clergy are the effects of a Religious Establishment. If any man is unwilling to admit the truth, let him adduce the instance of an unestablished church, in the past eighteen hundred years, in which such a state of things has existed. Of the times of Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop Burnet says, — " The best men of that age, instead of pressing into orders or' aspiring *o them, fled from them, excused themselves, and judging themselves unworthy of so holy a character and so high a trust, were not without difficulty prevailed upon to submit to that which, in degenerate ages, men run to as a subsistence or the means of procuring it."- It might almost be imagined that the ughi oi private patronage was allowed for the express purpose of deteriorating the character of the ministers of religion, — because it can hardly be supposed that any church would allow such a system without a perfect consciousness of its effects. To allow any man or woman, good or bad, who has money to spend, to purchase the power of assign- ing a christian minister to a christian flock, is one of those despe- rate follies and enormities which should never be spoken of but in the language of detestation and horror.^ A man buys an advow- son as he buys an estate, and for the same motives. He cares perhaps nothing for the religious consequences of his purchase, or for the religious assiduity of the person to whom he presents it. Nay, the case is worse than that of buying as you buy an estate ; for land will not repay the occupier unless he cultivates it, — but the living is just as profitable whether he exerts himself zealously ' Hartley: Observati'^cs on Man. 2 Disc, of the Pastoral Care, l'2th ed. p. 77. '* Under Lanfranc's primacy no pro- motion in the church was to be obtained by purchase, neither was any unfit person raised to the episcopal rank."* 3 Upon such persons " rests the awful re<»ponsibility (I misfht almost call it the divine prerogative) of assifjiiintj a Hock to the shepherd, and of selecting a shepherd for the flock." Gurney's Peculiarities, 3d ed. p. i(>4. • Soathey : Book of the Church, chap. 7. 33 or not. He wlio is unfit for the estate by want of industry or of talent, is nevertheless fit for the living ! These are dreadful and detestable abuses. Christianity is not to be brought into juxta position with such things. It were almost a shame to allow a comparison. " Who is not aware that in consequence of the pre- valence of such a system, the holy things of God are often mise- rably profaned?"^ — " It is our firm persuasion, that the present system of bestowing church patronage, is hastening the decay of morals, the progress of insubordination, and the downfal of the establishment itself." Morality and subordination have happily other supports : — the fate of the establishment is sealed. I say sealed. It cannot perpetually stand without thorough reformation ; and it cannot be reformed while it remains an establishment. Another mode in which the state religion of England is inju- rious to the character of its ministers, is by its allowance and practical encouragement of non-residence and pluralities. These are the natural effects of the principles of the system. It is very possible that there should be a state religion without them, but if the alliance with the state is close, — if a principal motive in the dispensation of benefices is the promotion of political purposes, — if the prizes of the church are given where interest and family connexions put in their claim, — it becomes extremely natural that several preferments should be bestowed upon one person. And when once this is countenanced or done by the state itself, inferior patrons will as naturally follow the example. The prelate who receives from the state three oi^ four preferments, naturally gives to his son or his nephew three or four if he can. Pluralities and non-residence, whatever may be said in their favour by politicians or divines, will always shock the common sense and the virtue of mankind. Unhappily, they are evils wliich seem to have increased. " Theodore, the seventh arch- bishop of Canterbury, restricted the bishops and secular clergy to their own dioceses; " and no longer ago than the reign of James I., " when pluralities were allowed, which was to be as seldom as possible, the livings were to be near each other." ^ gut now we hear of one dignitary who possesses ten different preferments, and of another who, with an annual ecclesiastical revenue of fifteen thousand pounds, did not see his diocese for many years together.^ And as to that proximity of livings which was directed in James's time, they are now held in plurality not only at a dis- tance from each other, but so as that the duties cannot be per- formed by one person. Of the moral character of this deplorable custom, it is not ne- cessary that we should speak. '' I do not enter," says an eminent prelate, '' into the scandalous practices of non-residence and plu- rahties. This is so shameful a profanation of holy things that it ' Christian Observer, v. 20, p. 11. = Southey : Book of the Church, c. 6. ' For these examples see Simpson's Plea, I say nothing oi present examples. I- 34 ought to be treated with detestation and horror." ^ Another friend of the church says, " He who grasps at the revenue of a benefice, and studies to evade the personal discharge of the various func- tions which that revenue is intended to reward, and the perform- ance of those momentous duties to God and man, which, by accepting the living, he has undertaken, evinces either a most reprehensible neglect of proper consideration, or a callous depra- vity of heart." 2 It may be believed that all are not thus depraved who accept pluralities without residence. Custom, although it does not alter the nature of actions, affects the character of the agent ; and although I hold no man innocent in the sight of God who supports, in his example, this vicious practice, yet some may do it now with a less measure of guilt than that which would have attached to him who first, for the sake of money, introduced the scandal into the church. The public has now the means of knowing, by the returns to parliament, the extent in which these scandalous customs exist— an extent which, when it was first communicated to the Earl of Harrowby, " struck me," says he, " with surprise, I could almost say with 'horror." Alas ! when temporal peers are horror-struck by the scandals that are tolerated and practised by their spiritual teachers ! By one of these returns it appears that the whole number of places^ is ten thousand two hundred and sixty-one. Of the pos- sessors of these livings, inore than one half were non-resident. The number of residents was only four thousand four hundred and twenty-one. — But the reader will perhaps say. What matters the residence of him who receives the money, so that a curate resides ! Unfortunately, the proportion of absentee curates is still greater than that of incumbents. Out of three thousand six hundred and ninety-four who are employed, only one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven live in the parishes they serve ; so that two thousand one hundred and seven parishes are left without even the residence of a curate. Besides this, there are nine hundred and seventy incumbents who neither live in their parishes themselves nor employ any curate at all ! What is the result ] That above one-half of those who receive the stipends of the church, live away from their flocks ; and that there are in this country three thousand and seventy-seven flocks amongst whom no shepherd is to be found! — When it is considered that all this '\s 2l gratidtom addition to the necessary evils of state religions, that there may be established churches without it, it speaks aloud of those mis- chiefs of our establishment which are peculiarly its own. One other consideration upon this subject remains. An internal discipline in a church, both over its ministers and its members, » Burnet : Hist. Own Times, v. 2, p. (>4G. ^ Gisborne : Duties of Men. 3 The diocese of St. David's is not includec^, and the return includes some dignities, sinecures, and dilapidated churches. It cites that of 1810. I do not know but that the details are substantially the same at the present time. ! 35 appears essential to the proper exercise of christian duty. From what cause does it happen that there is little exercise of discipline, or none, in the church of England? The reader will perhaps answer the question to himself : " The exercise of efficient dis- cipline in the church is impossible ;" and he would answer truly. It is impossible. Who shall exercise it ] The first Lord of the Treasury ? He will not, and he cannot. The Bench of Bishops] Alas ! there is the origin of a great portion of the delinquency. If they were to establish a discipline, the first persons upon whom they must exercise it would be themselves. Who ever heard of persons, so situated, instituting or re-establishing a discipline in the church] Who then shall exercise it] The subordinate clergy ] If they have the will, they have not the power ; and if they had the power, who can hope that they would use it ] Who can hope that whilst above half of these clergy are non-residents they will erect a discipline by which residence shall be enforced ] ^ — I say, discipline, efficient discipline is impossible ; and I sub- mit it to the reader whether ani/ Establishment in which Christian Discipline is impossible, is not essentially bad. From the contemplation of these effects of the English esta- blishment upon its formularies, its ministers and its discipline, we must turn to its effects generally upon the religious welfare of the people. This welfare is so involved with the general character of the establishment and its ministers, that to exhibit an evil in one is to illustrate an injury to the other. If the operation of the state religion prevents ministers from inculcating some portions of divine truth, its operation must indeed be bad. And how stands the fact ] " Aspiring clergymen, wishing to avoid every doctrine which would retard their advancement, were very little inclined to preach the reality or necessity of divine influence."^ The evil which this indicates is twofold: first, the vicious state of the heads of the church; for why else should " advancement" be refused to those who preached the doctrine of the gospel ; and next, the injury to religion; for religion must needs be injured if a portion of its truths are concealed. Another quotation gives a similar account : " Regular divines of great virtue, learning, and apparent piety, feared to preach the Holy Ghost and his opera- tions, the main doctrines of the gospel, lest they should counte- nance the puritan, the quaker, or the methodist, and lose the esteem of their own order or of the higher powers."^ Did Paid or Barnabas ever " fear to preach the main doctrines of the gospel" from considerations like these or from any considerations whatever ? Did our Lord approve or tolerate such fear when he ' Here it may be observed how imperfect is the argument (see Paley) that a religious establishment does good by keeping au enlightened man in each parish. Mem. in the MS. ' Vicessimus Knox : Christian Philosophy, third edition, p. 24. > Ibid, p. 23. 3G threatened with punishment any man who should take away from the words of his book 1 But why again should the clerical order or the higher powers disesteem the man who preached the mam doctrines of the gospel, unless it were from motives of interest founded in the establishment] , . , .i v And thus it is, that thev who are assumed to be the religious leaders of the people, who ought, so far as is in their power, to guide the people into all truth, conceal a portion of that truth from motives of interest ! If this concealment is practised by men of great virtue, learning, and apparent piety, what are we to expect in the indifferent or the bad ! A\ e are to expect that not one but many doctrines of the gospel will be concealed. W e are to expect that discourses not very diflerent from those which Socrates might have delivered will be dispensed instead of the whole counsel of God. What has been the fact] Of" moral preaching," Bishop Lavington says, -We have long been at- tempting the reformation of the nation by discourses ot this kind. With what success ? None at all. On the contrary we have dexterously preached the people into downright infidelity. V\ HI any man affirm that this has not been the consequence of the state religion 1 Will any man, knowing this, affirm that a state rehgion is right or usefufto Christianity ] • ^ . ,. But as to the tendency of the system to diffuse infidelity, we are not possessed of the*^ testimony of Bishop Lavington alone. *' It is evident that the worldly-mindedness and neglect ot duty in the clercrv, is a great scandal to religion, and cause of infidehty."^ Again T"' Who is to blame for the spread of infidelity] The bishops and clergy of the land more than any other people in it. We, as a body of men, are almost solely and exclusively culpa^ ble '"- Ostervald in his '' Treatise concerning the Causes of the present corruption of Christians," makes the same remark of the clercry of other churches ;— " The cause of the corruption ol chri'^tians is chiefly to be found in the clergy." Now supposing this to be the language of exaggeration,— supposing that they corrupt christians only as much as men who make no peculiar pretensions to religion, — how can such a fact be accounted for, but by the conclusion that there is something corrupting in the clerical system ] The refusal to amend the constitution or formularies of the church is another powerful cause of injury to religion. Of one particular article, the Athanasian creed, a friend of the church, and one who mixed with the world, says, '' I really believe that creed has made more deists than all the wTitings of all the op- pugners of Christianity since it was first unfortunately adopted m our liturgy."^ Would this deist-making document have been re- tained till now if the church were not allied to the state ]— Bishop Watson uses language so unsparing, that, just and true as it is, I » Hartley : Observations on Man. ^ Simpson's Plea, 3d edit. p. 76. » Observations on the Liturgy, by an Under Secretary of State. 37 know not whether I would cite it from any other pen than a bishop's, — " A motley monster of bigotry and superstition, a scarecrow of shreds and patches, dressed up of old by philosophers and popes, to amuse the speculative and to affright the ignorant :" — do I quote this because it is the unsparing language of truth ] No, but because of that which succeeds it, — " now;' says the bishop, " a butt of scorn, against which every unfledged witling of the age essays his wanton efforts, and, before he has learned his catechism, is fixed an infidel for life ! This I am persuaded is too frequently the case, for I have had too frequent opportunities to observe it."i If by the church as it subsists, many are fixed infidels for life, how diflfusively must be spread that minor but yet practical disrespect for religion, which, though it amounts not to infidelity, makes religion an unoperative thing, — unoperative upon the conduct and the heart, — unoperative in animating the love and hope of the christian, — unoperative in supporting under affliction, and in smoothing and brightening the pathway to the grave ! To these minor consequences also we have unambiguous testi- mony.—'^ Where there is not this open and shameless disavowal of religion, few traces of it are to be found. Improving in every other branch of knowledge, we have become less and less ac- quainted with christianity."2_^^ Two-thirds of the lower order of people in London," says Sir Thomas Bernard, 'Mive as utterly ignorant of the doctrines and duties of Christianity, and are as errant and unconverted pagans, as if they had existed in the wild- ' est part of Africa." — " The case," continues the Quarterly Review, " is the same in Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, and in all our large towns ; the greatest part of the manufacturing populace, of the miners, and colliers are in the same condition ; and if they are not universally so, it is more owing to the zeal of the methodists than to any other cause."^ How is it accounted for that in a country in which a teacher is appointed to diffiise Christianity in every parish, a considerable part of the population are confessed to be absolute pagans 1 How, especially is it accounted for that the few who are reclaimed from paganism, are reclaimed not by the established, but by an unestablished church ] It is not diffi- cult to account for all this, if the condition of the established church is such as to make what follows the flippant language of a clergyman who afterwards was a bishop : " The person I engaged in the sununer," as a curate, "is run away; as you will think natural enough when I tell you he was let but of jail to be pro- moted to this service."-* The ill effect of non-residence upon the general interests of re- ligion is necessarily great. A conscientious clergyman finds that the offices of his pulpit are not the half of his business : he finds that he can often do more in promoting the religious welfare of his ' Misc. Tracts by Watson, Bishop of Landaff, v. 2, p. 49. Wilberforce : Practical View, 6th edit. p. 389. ^^ Quarterly Review, April 1816, p. 233. Letters between Bishop Warburton and Bishop Hurd. D 38 parishianers, out of his pulpit tban m it. It is out ofhis putpit that he evinces and exercises the most unequivocal affection ior his charge • that he encourages or warns as tndividmls have need; that he animates by the presence of his constant example ; that he consoles them in their troubles ; that he adjusts their disagree- ments: that he assists them by his advice. It is by living amongst them, and by that alone, that he can be ^' instant in season and out of season," or that he can fulfil the duties which his station involves. How prodigious then must be the sum of mischief which the non-residence of three thousand clergymen inflicts upon religion! How yet more prodigious must be the sum ot mischief which results from that negligence of duty of which non-re^dence is but one effect! Yet all this is occasioned by our religious establishment. - The total absence of nm-restdence and plurah ties in the church of Scotland, and the annual examination ot all the inhabitants of the parish by its minister, are cvrcumstances hiqhlu advantageous to religion.'' ^ i- t i The minister in the English church is under peculiar disadvan- tages in enforcing tlie truths or the duties of religion upon irreh- gious or sceptical men. Many of the topics which such men urg> are directed not against Christianity but against that exhibition ot Christianity which is afforded by the church. It has been seei: that this is the cause of infidehty. How then shall the estabhsheu clergyman efficiently defend our religion ] He may indeed con- fine himself to the vindication of Christianity without reference to a church : but then he does not defend that exhibition of Christ- ianity which his own church affords. The sceptic presses hini with those things which it is confessed are wrong. He must either defend them or give them up as indefensible. If he defends them he confirms the sceptic in his unbelief: if he gives them up, h declares not only that the church is in the wrong, but that himsell is in the wrong too : and in either case, his fitness lor ati advoca' of our religion is impaired. n .- . i Hitherto, I have enforced the observations of this chapter by the authority of others. Now I have to appeal for confirmation to the experience of the reader himself. That peculiar mode ot injury to the cause of virtue of which I speak, has received its most extensive illustrations during the present century ; and it ha^ hitherto perhaps been the subject rather of private remark than oi public disquisition. I refer to a sort of instinctive recoil from* ne^v measures that are designed to promote the intellectual, the mora! or the religious improvement of the pubUc. I appeal to the ex- perience of those philanthropic men who spend their time either in their own neighbourhoods, or in " going about, doing good, whether they do not meet with a greater degree of this recoil froin works of philanthropy, amongst the teachers and members of the state religion than amongst other men,— and whether this recoiU not the strongest amongst that portion who are reputed to be tlit^ > Gisborne : Dalies of Men. 39 most zealous friends of the church. Has not this been your ex- perience with respect to the Slave Trade and to Slavery, with respect to the education of the people, — with respect to scientific or literary institutions for the labouring ranks, — with respect to sending preachers to pagan countries, — with respect to the Bible Society ] Is it not familiar to you to be in doubt and apprehen- sion respecting the assistance of these members of the establish- ment, when you have no fear and no doubt of the assistance of other christians ? Do you not call upon others and invite their co-operation with confidence ? Do you not call upon these with distrust, and is not that distrust the result of your previous expe- rience ] Take, for example, that very simple institution the Bible So- ciety,— simple, because its only object is to distribute the authorized records of the dispensations of God. It is an institution upon which it may be almost said that but one opinion is entertained, — that of its great utility ; but one desire is felt, — that of co-opera- tion, except by the members of established churches. From this institution the most zealous advocates of the English church stand aloof. Whilst christians of other names are friendly almost to a man, the proportion is very large of those churchmen who show no friendliness. It were to no purpose to say that they have claims peculiarly upon themselves, for so have other christians, claims which generally are complied with to a greater extent. Besides, it is obvious that these claims are not the grounds of the conduct that we deplore. If they were, we should still possess the cordial approbation of these persons, — their personal, if not their pecuniary support. From such persons silence and absence are positive discouragement. How then are we to account for the phenomenon 1 By the operation of a state rehgion. For when our philanthropist applies to the members of another church, their only question perhaps is, Will the projected institution be useful to mankind ] But when he applies to such a member of the state religion, he considers,— How will it affect the establishment ] Will it increase the influence of dissenters ] May it not endanger the immunities of the church ] Is it countenanced by our supe- riors? Is it agreeable to the administration] And when all these considerations have been pursued, he very commonly finds something that persuades him that it is most "prudent" not to encourage the proposition. It should be remarked too, as an ad- ditional indication of the cause of this recoil from works of good- ness, that where the genius of the state religion is most influential, there is commonly the greatest backwardness in works of mental and religious philanthropy. . The places of pecuUar frigidity are the places in which there are the greatest number of the dignita- ries of the church. Thus it is that the melioration of mankind is continually and greatly impeded, by the workings of an institution of which the express design is to extend the influence of religion and morality. 1 40 Greatly impeded : for England is one of the principal sources of the current of human improvcm.ent, and in England the influence of this institution is great. These are fruits which are not home by good and healthy trees. How can the tree be good of which these are the fruits ] Are these fruits the result of episcopacy] No, but of episcopacy icedded to the state. Were this union dis- solved, (and the parties are not of that number whom God hath joined!) not only would hmnan reformation go forward with an ac- celerated pace,' but episcopalianism itself would in some degree arise and shake herself as from the dust of the earth. She would find that her political alliance has bound around her glittering but yet enslaving chains,— chains which hugged and cherished as they are, have ever fixed her, and ever will fix her, to the earth, and make her earthly. The mode in which the legal provision for the ministry is made in this country, contains, like many other parts of the institution, evils superadded to those which are necessarily incidental to a state religion. If there be any one thing which, more than another, ought to prevail between a christian minister and those whom he teaches, it is harmony and kindliness of feeUng : and this kindhness and harmony is peculiarly diminished by the sys- tem of tithes. There is no circumstance which so often " disturbs the harmony that should ever subsist between a clergyman and his parishioners as contentions respecting tithes." ^ Vicessimus Knox goes further : " One great cause of the clergy's losing their influ- ence is, that the laity in this age of scepticism grudge them their tithes. The decay of religion and the contempt of the clergy arise in a great ineasure from this source." ^ What advantages can compensate for the contempt of christian ministers and the decay of religion ] Or who does not perceive that a legal provi- sion might be made which would be productive, so far as the new system of itself was concerned, of fewer evils ] Of the political ill consequences of the Tithe system I say nothing here. If they were much less than they are, or if they did not exist at all, there is sufficient evidence against the system in its moral effects. It is well known, and the fact is very creditable, that the clergy exact tithes with much less rigour and consequently occasion far fewer heart-burnings than lay claimants. The want of cordiality . often results too from the cupidity of the payers, who invent vexatious excuses to avoid payment of the whole claim, and are I on the alert to take disreputable advantages. But to the conclusions of the christian moralist it matters little by what agency a bad system operates. The principal point of his attention is the system itself. If it be bad, it will be sure to find agents by whom its pernicious principles will be elicited and brought into practical operation. It is therefore no extenuation of the system, that the clergy frequently do not disagree with their parishioners : whilst it is a part of the system that tithes are solA 41 and sold to him, of whatever character, who will give most for them — he will endeavour to make the most of them again. So that the evils which result from the Tithe system, although they are not chargeable upon religious estabUshments, are chargeable upon our own, and are an evidence against it. The animosities which Tithe farmers occasion are attributable to the Tithe system. Ordinary men do not make nice discriminations. He who is angry with the Tithe farmer is angry with the rector who puts the power of vexation into his hands, and he who is out of temper with the teacher of rehgion loses some of his complacency in religion itself. You cannot then prevent the loss of harmony between the shep- herd and his flock, the loss of his influence over their affections, the contempt of the clergy, and the decay of religion, from tithes. You must amend the civil institution or you cannot prevent the religious mischief. » Gisborne : Duties of Men. ' Essays, No. 10. Reviewing then the propositions and arguments which have been deUvered in the present chapter — propositions which rest upon the authority of the parties concerned, what is the general conclusion ? If Religious Establishments are constitutionally in- jurious to Christianity, is not our establishment productive of superadded and accumulated injury] — Let not the writer of these pages be charged with enmity to religion because he thus speaks. Ah ! they are the best friends of the church who endeavour its amendment. I may be one of those who, in the language of Lord Bexley, shall be regarded as an enemy because, in the exhibition of its evils, I have used great plainness of speech. But I cannot help it. I have other motives than those which are affected by these censures of men ; and shall be content to bear my portion, if I can promote that purification of a christian church, of which none but the prejudiced or the interested deny the need. — ^They who endeavour to conceal the need may be the advocates but they are not the friends of the church. The wound of the daughter of my people may not be slightly healed. It is vain to cry Peace, Peace, when there is no peace. What then will the reader who has noticed the testimonies which have been offered in this chap- ter think of the propriety of such statements as these 1 The '' establishment is the firmest support and noblest ornament of Christianity."! It "presents the best security under heaven for the preservation of the true apostolical faith in this country."? " Manifold as are the blessings for which Englishmen are be- holden to the institutions of their country, there is no part of those institutions from which they derive more important advantages than from its church establishment." ^ — Especially what Avill the reader think of the language of Hannah More ] — Hannah More says of the established church, " Here Christianity presents her- J Dr. Howley, Bishop of London : Charge, 1814, p. 2o. On the Nature of Schism, bv C. Daubeny, Archdeacon of Saram, p. 153. First words of Southey's Book of the Church. ( 42 self neither dishonoured, degraded, nor disfigured;" Bishop Wat- son says of its creed, that it is '' a motley monster of bigotry and superstition." Hannah More says, " Here Christianity is set be- fore us in all her original purity;" Archdeacon Blackburn says that "the forms of the church having been weighed in the balance of the sanctuary are found greatly wanting." Hannah More says, " She has been completely rescued from that encumbering load under which she had so long groaned, and delivered from her heavy bon- dage by the labours of our blessed reformers ;"i Dr. Lowth says that the reformation from popery "stopped in the midway." Hannah More says, " We here see Christianity in her whole consistent character, in all her fair and just proportions, as she came from the hands of her divine author ;" Dr. Watson calls her creed " a scarecrow, dressed up of old by philosophers and popes." To say that the language of this good woman is impru- dent and improper, is to say very little. Yet I would say no more. Her own language is her severest censurer. When will it be sufficiently remembered that the evils of a system can neither be veiled nor defended by praise ? ^\Tien will it be re- membered that if we "contend for abuses" the hour will arrive ^\'hen " correction will be applied with no sparing hand?" It has frequently been said that " the church is in danger.' What is meant by the church ] Or what is it that is endan- gered ] Is it meant that the episcopal form of church govern- ment is endangered — that some religious revolution is likely to take place, by which a christian community shall be precluded from adopting that internal constitution which it thinks best! This surely cannot be feared. The day is gone by, in England at least, when the abolition of prelacy could become a measure of state. One conununity has its conference, and another its annual assembly, and another its independency, without any molesta- tion. Who then would molest the English church because it pre- fers the government of bishops and deacons to any other ? Is it meant that the doctrines of the church are endangered, or that its liturgy will be prohibited? Surely no. Whilst every other church is allowed to preach what doctrines it pleases, and to use what formularies it pleases, the liberty will not surely be denied to the episcopal church. If the doctrines and government of that church be christian and true, there is no reason to fear for their stability. Its members have superabundant ability to defend the truth. What then is it that is endangered? Of what are those who complain of danger afraid? Is it meant that its civil immunities are endangered— that its revenues are endan- gered ? Is it meant that its members will hereafter have to sup- port their ministers without assistance from other churches ? h ' Moral Sketches, 3d edit. p. 90. fjj 43 it feared Uiat there will cea$e to be such things as rich deaneries and bishopricks ? Is it feared that the members of other churches will become eligible to the legislature, and that the heads of this church will not be temporal peers ? In brief, is it feared that this church will become merely one amongst the many, with no privileges but such as are common to good citizens and good cliristians ?— These surely are the things of which they are afraid. It is not for religious truth, but for civil immunities : it is not for forms of church government, but for political pre-eminence : it is not for the church but for the church establishment. Let a maa then, when he joins in the exclamation, the church is in danger, present to his mind distinct ideas of his meaning and of the object of his fears. If his alarm and his sorrow are occasioned not for religion but for politics — not for the purity and usefulness of the church but for its immunities — not for the offices of its ministers but for their splendours — let him be at peace. There is nothing in all this for which the christian needs to be in sorrow or in fear. And why ? Because all that constitutes, a church, as a christian community, may remain when these things are swept away., There may be prelates without nobility ; there may be deans and archdeacons without benefices and patronage ; there may be pastors without a legal provision ; there may be a liturgy without a test. In the sense in which it is manifest that the phrase, "the church is in danger/' is ordinarily to be understood, that is — : " the establishment is in danger" — the fears are undoubtedly; well founded: the danger is real and imminent. It may not, be immediate perhaps; perhaps it may not be near at hand;; but it is real, imminent, inevitable. The estabhshment is in-r deed in danger; and I believe that no advocacy however zeal-, ous, that no support however determined, that no power however great, will preserve it from destruction. If the declarations which have been cited in this chapter be true — if the reasonings which have been offered in this and in the last be just, who is the: man that, as a christian, regrets its danger or would delay its- Ikll ? He may wish to delay it as a politician; he may regret it as an expectant of temporal advantages, but as a christian he will rejoice. _ uij..:-; .iw Supposing the doctrines and government of the church to be; sound, it is prol)able that its stability would be increased by what is called its destruction. It would then only be detached frpnOj that alliance with the state wliich encumbers it, and weighs it- down, and despoils its beauty, and obscures its brightness. Goiu- tention for tlus alliance will eventually be fpund to illustrate the- proposition, that a man's grea-test enemies are tho^!e of his own v household. He is the practical enemy of the church yfho ea-, (leavours the continuance of its connexion with the state • except ifldjB^4 t,ha,t the vfxpxe zealous the endeavour ,the more quickly, i|t, ^ probable, thq cQ|ii}exipn will be dis^olvjed; a]^4 therefpre thought 44 45 such persons " mean not so, neither do their hearts think so," yet they may thus be the agents in the hand of God of hastening the day in which she shall be purified from every evil thing ; in which she shall arise and shine, because her light is come, and because the glory of the Lord is risen upon her. Let him, then, who can discriminate between the church and its alliances, consider these things. Let him purify and exalt his attachment. If his love to the church be the love of a christian, let him avert his eye from every thing that is political ; let his hopes and fears be excited only by religion ; and let his exertions be directed to that which alone ought to concern a christian church, its purity and its usefulness. In concluding a discussion in which it has been needful to utter, with plainness, unwelcome truths, and to adduce testimo- nies which some readers may wish to be concealed, I am solicit- ous to add the conviction, with respect to the ministers of the English church, that there is happily a diminished ground of com- plaint and reprehension — the conviction that whilst the liturgy is unamended and unrevised, the number of ministers is increased to whom temporal things are secondary motives, and who en- deavour to be faithful ministers of one common Lord : the convic- tion too, with respect to other members of the church, that they are collectively advancing in the christian path, and that there is an ''evident extension of religion within her borders." Many of these, both of the teachers and of the taught, are persons with whom the -vvTiter of these pages makes no pretensions of christian equality — ^^-et even to these he would offer one monitory sugges- tion — They are critically situated with reference to the political alliance of the church. Let them beware that they mingle not, with their good works and faith unfeigned, any confederacy with that alliance which Avill assuredly be laid in the dust. That con- federacy has ever had one invariable effect — to diminish the christian brightness of those who are its partisans. It will have the same effect upon them. If they are desirous of superadding to their Christianity, the privileges and emoluments of a state re- ligion — if they endeavour to retain in the church the interest of both worlds — if, together with their desire to serve God with a pure heart, they still cling to the advantages which this unholy alliance brings, — and, contending for the faith contend also for the establishment — the effect will be bad as the endeavour will be vain ; bad, for it will obstruct their own progress and the progress of others in the christian path ; and vain, for the fate of that establishment is sealed. In making these joyful acknowledgments of the increase of Christianity within the 'borders of the church, one truth however must be added; and it is a solemn truth— The increase is not I attributable to the state religion, but has taken place notwith^ standing it is a state religion. I appeal to the experience of good men : has the amendment been the effect of the estabUshment as such ? Has the political connexion of the church occasioned the amendment or promoted it] Nay — Has the amendment been encouraged by those on whom the political connexion had the greatest influence ] No : the reader, if he be an observer of re- Hgious affairs, knows that the state alliance is so far from having effected a reformation, that it does not even regard the instru- ments of that reformation with complacency. <#^ #S^«># #'^^#'«S» «^ «v# #S#4«^^^ «S# ««« «Nr #sr «>^«S» SECTION ni. OF LEGAL PROVISION FOR CHRISTIAN TEACHERS. By one of those instances which happily are not unfrequent in the progress of human opinion from error to truth, the notion of a divine rigid on the part of any christian teachers to a stated por- tion of the products of other men's labours, is now nearly given up.i There was a time when the advocate of the claim would have disdained to refer for its foundation to questions of expe- diency or the law of the land. And he probably as little thought that the divine right would ever have been given up by its advo- cates, as his successors now think that they have fallacious grounds in reasoning upon public utility. Thus it is that the labours of our predecessors in the cause of christian purity have taken a large portion of labour out of our hands. They carried the outworks of the citadel ; and whilst its defenders have retired to some inner strong hold, it becomes the business of our day to essay the firmness of its walls. The writer of these pages may ' Yet let it not be forgotten that it is upon this exploded notion of the Divine right, *> that the legal right is founded. The law did not give Tithes to the Clergj because the : provision was expedient, but because it was their Divine right. It is upon this as- f; •; sumption that the law is founded. See Statutes at Large : 29 Hen. VIII. c. 20. Mem^^U in the MS. * i " The whole was received into a common fund, for the fourfold purpose of supporting the clergy, repairing the church, relieving the poor, and entertaining the pilgrim and the stranger." — "The payment ofTithes had at first been voluntary, though it was con- sidered as a religious obligation. King Ethelwolf, the father of Alfred, subjected the whole kingdom to it by a legislative act." Southey's Book of the Church, c. 6. Mem. «n the MS. Wickliffe's followers asserted <* that Tithes were purely eleemosynary, and might be Withheld by the people upon a delinquency in the pastor, and transferred to another at pleasure." Brodie's History of the British Empire. Introduction. Mem. in the MS^ 46 essay them in vain ; but he doubts not that before some power their defenders, as thev have hitherto retired, will continue to re- tire, until the whole fortress is abandoned. Abandoned to the enemy ] Oh no — He is the frieitd of a christian community, who induces christian principles into its practice. In considering the evidence which Christianity affords respect- ing the lawfulness of making a legal provision for one christian church, I would not refer to those passages of scripture which appear to bear upon the question whether christian ministrations should be absolutely free : partly, because I can add nothing to the often-urged tendency of those passages, and partly, because they do not all concern the question of legal provision. The man who thinks Christianity requires that those who labour in the gospel should live of the gospel, does not therefore think that a legal provision should be made for the ministers of one exclusive church. One thing seems perfectly eleai: — ^that to receive from their hearers and from those who hear them not, a compulsory pay- ment for their preaching, is totally alien to all the practices of the apostles and to the whole tenor of the principles by which they were actuated. Their one single and simple motive in preaching Christianity, was to obey God, to do good to man ; nor do I believe that any man imagines it possible that they would have accepted of a compulsory remuneration from their own hearers, and espe- cially from those who heard them not. We are therefore entitled to repeat the observation, that this consideration affords evidence against the moral lawfulness of instituting such compulsory pay- ment. Wliy would not, and could not, the apostles have accepted such payment, except for the reason that it ou(/ht not to be enforced 1 No account, so far as I perceive, can be given of the matter, but that the system is contrary to the purity of christian practice. "An English prelate writes thus : *' It is a question which might admit of serious discussion, whether the majority of the members of any civil community have a right to compel all the members of it to pay towards the maintenance of a set of teachers appointed by the majority to preach a particular system of doc- trines.*'^* No discussion could be entertained respecting- this right, except on the ground of its christian unlawfulness. A le- gislature has a right to impose a general tax to support a govern- ment, whether a minority approve the tax or not ; and the bishop here rightly assumes that there is an antecedent question,-?— whe- ' See Quarterly ReviefV, Np, 58. ...f. '.' Tli«re waa a party iw the natian who concaved that ^very man should uot only be allowed to chpoije his owu religion, but contribute us he hipiself thpught proper to- iKajrds the support of the pa^tojr.whQs,^ pafty however does do^ appear to have been great. Yet let ns not despise the opinion, but remember ttiat it \jA^ been tajteo up by Pr- -/^dam Smith himseif a« a sound one, ^nd been ac^ed i^pon guccessfully in a vast ei^ipire, the United States of America." Brodie's History of \\^6 QitUah Empire, v. 1, p. Siiid. l^Iem. in the MS. 47 ther it is morally lawful to obhge men to pay teachers whom they disapprove ? It is from the want of taking this question into the account that inquirers have involved themselves in fallacious rea- sonings. It is not a question of the right of taxation, but of the right of the magistrate to oblige men to violate their consciences. Of those who have regarded it simply as a question of taxation,' and who therefore have proceeded upon fallacious grounds, the author of '' The Duties of Men in Society" is one. He says, " If a state thinks that national piety and virtue will be best pro- moted by consigning the whole sum raised bylaw to teachers of a particular description,— it has the same right to adopt this mea- sure, as it would have to impose a general tax foF the support of a board of physicians, should it deem that step conducive to national health." Far other— No man's christian liberty is in- vaded, no man's conscience is violated, by paying a tax to a board of physicians ; but many a man's religious liberty may be in- vaded, and many a man's conscience may be violated, by paying for the promulgation of doctrines which he thinks Christianity condemns. Whither will the argument lead us? If a papal state thinks it will promote piety to demand contributions for the splendid celebration of an auto defe, would protestant citizens act rightly m contributing ? Or would the state act rightly in de- manding the contribution ? Or has a Bramin state a right to impose a tax upon christian residents to pay for the faggots of Hindoo immolations ? The antecedent question in all these cases is,— Whether the immolation, and the auto de fe, and the system of doctrines, are consistent with Christianity. If they are «ot, the citizen ought not to contribute to their practice or diffusion ; 'and by consequence, the state ought not to compel him to contribute. Now, for the purposes of the present argument, the consistency of any set of doctrines with Christianity cannot be proved. It is to no purpose for the unitarian to say — My system is true ; nor for Uie calyinist or arminian or episcopalian to say, My system is true. The unitarian has no christian right to compel me to pay him for preaching unitarianism, nor has any rehgious community a right to compel the members of another to pay him for promulgating lus own opinions. ^; ,,„u If by any revolution in the religious affairs of this country, another sect were elevated to the pre-eminence, and its ministers supported by a legal provision, I believe that the ministers of the present church would think it an unreasonable and unchristian act, to compel them to pay the preachers of the new state religion. Would not a clergyman think himself aggrieved, if he were obliged to pay a Priestley, and to aid in disseminating the opi- nions of Priestley ]— That same grievance is now inflicted upon other men., The rule is disregarded, to do as wo would be done by. l^et us turn to the example of America. In America the go- 48 49 vernment does not ohlige its citizens to pay for the support of preachers. Those who join tlieinselves to any particular religious community commonly contribute towards the support of its teachers, but there is no law of the state which compels it. This is as it should be. The government which obliged its citizens to pay, even if it were left to the individual to say to what class of preachers his money should be given, would act upon unsound principles. It may be that the citizen does not approve of pay- ing ministers at all ; or there may be no sect in a country with which he thinks it right to hold communion. How would the reader himself be situated in Spain perhaps, or in Turkey, or in Hindostan 1 Would he think it right to be obliged to encourage Juggernaut, or Mahomet, or the Pope ? But, passing from this consideration : it is after all said, that in our own country the individual citizen does not pay the minis- ters of the state religion. I am glad that this seeming paradox is advanced, because it indicates that those who advance it confess that to make them pay would be wrong. Why else should they deny it ] It is said, then, that persons who pay tithes do not pay the established clergy ; that tithes are property held as a person holds an estate ; that if tithes were taken off, rents would ad- vance to the same amount ; that the buyer of an estate pays so much the less for it because it is subject to tithes, — and therefore that neither owner nor occupier pays any thing. This is specious, but only specious. The landholder ''pays" the clergyman just as he pays the tax-gatherer. If taxes were taken off rents would advance just as much as if tithes were taken off; and a person may as well say that he does not pay taxes as that he does not pay tithes. — The simple fact is that an order of clergy are, in this respect, in the same situation as the body of stockholders who live upon their dividends. They are supported by the country. The people pay the stockholder in the form of taxes, and the clergyman in the form of tithes. Suppose every clergyman in England were to leave the country to-morrow, and to cease to derive any income from it, it is manifest that the income which they now derive would be divided amongst those who remain, — • that is, that those who now pay would cease to pay. Rent, and Taxes, and Tithes, are in these respects upon one footing. With- out now inquiring whether they are right, they are all payments, — something by which a man does not receive the whole of the product of his labour. The argument, therefore, which affirms that dissenters from the state religion do not pay to that religion, appears to be wholly fallacious ; and being such, we are at liberty to assume, that to make them pay is indefensible and unchristian. For wt repeat the observation, that he who is anxious to prove they do not pay, evinces his opinion that to compel them to pay would be wrong. There is some injustice in the legal provision for one church. The episcopalian when he has paid his teacher, or rather when he has contributed that portion towards the maintenance of his teacher which by the present system becomes his share, has no more to pay. The adherent to other churches has to pay his own preacher and his neighbour's. This does not appear to be just. The operation of a legal provision is, in effect, to impose a double tax upon one portion of the community without any fault on their part. Nor is it to any purpose to say that the dissenter from the episcopalian church imposes the tax on himself : so he does ; but it is just in the same sense as a man imposes a penalty upon him- self when he conforms to some prohibited point of christian duty. A papist, two or three centuries ago, might almost as well have said that a protestant imposed the stake on himself, because he might have avoided it if he chose. It is a voluntary tax in no other way than as all other taxes are voluntary. It is a tax im- posed by the state as truly as the window tax is imposed, because a man may, if he please, live in darkness ; or as a capitation tax is imposed, because a man may, if he please, lose his head. But what is he who conscientiously disapproves of a state reli- gion to do] Is he, notwithstanding his judgment, to aid in sup- porting that religion, because the law requires it ] No : for then, as it respects him, the obligation of the law is taken away. He is not to do what he believes Christianity forbids, because the state commands it. If public practice be a criterion of the public judgment, it may be concluded that the number of those who do thus believe respecting our state rehgion, is very small ; for very few decline actively to support it. Yet when it is considered how numerous the dissenters from the English establishment are, and how emphatically some of them disapprove the forms or doc- trines of that establishment, it might be imagined that the number who decline thus to support it would, in consistency, be great. How are we to account for the fact as it is ? Are we to suppose that the objections of these persons to the establishment are such as do not make it a case of conscience whether they shall support it or not? Or are we to conclude that they sacrifice their con- sciences to the terrors of a distraint ? If no case of conscience is involved, the dissenter, though he may think the state religion inexpedient, can hardly think it wrong. And if he do not think it wrong, why should he be so zealous in opposing it, or why should he expect the church to make concessions in his favour ? If on the other hand he sacrifice his conscience to his fears, it is obvious that, before he reprehends the establishment, he should rectify himself. He should leave the mote, till he has taken out the beam. Perhaps there are some who, seriously disapproving of the state religion, suspect that in- christian integrity they ought not to pay to its support, — and yet are not so fully convinced of this, or do 50 not so fully act upon the conviction, as really to decline to pay. If they are convinced, let them remember their responsibility, and not know their master's will in vain. If these are not faithful, where shall fidelity be found 1 How shall the christian churches be purified from their defilements, if those who see and deplore their defilements contribute to their continuance ] Let them show that their principles are worthy a little sacrifice. Fidelity on their part, and a christian submission to the consequences, might open the eyes and invigorate the religious principle of many more : and at length the objection to comply with these unchristian demands might be so widely extended, that the legislature would be induced to withdraw its legal provision ; and thus one main constituent of an ecclesiastical system which has grievously obstructed, and still grievously obstructs, the christian cause, might be taken away. As an objection to this fidelity of practice it has been said, that since a man rents or buys an estate for so much less because it is subject to tithes, it is an act of dishonesty, afterwards, to refuse to pay them. The answer is this — that no dishonesty can be com- mitted whilst the law exacts payment by distraint ; and if the law were altered, there is no place for dishonesty. Besides, the desire of saving money does not enter into the refuser's motives. He does not decline to pay from motives of interest but from motives of duty, It is however argued that the legislature has no ripht to take away tithes any more than it has a right to deprive citizens of their lands and houses; and that a man's property in tithes is upon a footing with his property in an estate. Now we answer that this is not true in fact ; and that if it were it would not serve the argument. It is not true in fact. — If tithes were a property, just as an estate is a property, why do men complain of the scandal of pluralities ? Who ever hears of the scandal of possessing three or four estates ] — Why again does the law punish simoniacal con- tracts ] Who ever hears of simoniacal contracts for lands and houses ? The truth is, that tithes are regarded as religious pro- perty — The property is legally recognized not for the sake of the individual who may possess it but for the sake of religion. The law cares nothing for the men, except so far as they are minis- ters. — Besides, tithes are a portion of the produce only of the land. The tithe owner cannot walk over an estate and say, of every tenth acre, this is mine. In truth he has not, except by consent of the landholder, any property in it at all ; for the land- holder may if he please, refuse to cultivate it, — occasion it to produce nothing ; and then the tithe owner has no interest or pro- perty in it whatever. And in what sense can that be said to be property, the possession of which is at the absolute discretion of another man ? I n I 51 ■But grant, for a moment, that tithes are property. Is* it affin^ed that whatever property a man possesses, cannot be taken from him by the legislature ] Suppose I go to Jamaica and pur- chase a slave and bring him to England, has the law. no right to take this property away ] Assuredlyit has the right,^ and it exi- ercises it too. Nowj so far as the argument is concerned, the cases of the slave»-holder and of the tithe-owner are parallel. Compulsory maintenance of christian ministers, and compulsory retention of men in bondage, are both inconsistent with clwisticm- iiy ; and as such, the property which consists in slaves, and in tithes, may rightly be taken away. — Unless indeed any man will affirm that any property, however acquired, cannot lawfully be taken from the possessor. But when we speak of taking away the property in tithes, we do not refer to the consideration that it has been under the sanction of the law itself that that property has been purchased or obtained. The law has, in reality, been accessary to the offence, and it would not be decent or right to take away the possession which has resulted from that offence, without offering an equivalent. I would not advise a legislature to say to those persons who, under its own sanction, have pur- chased slaves, to turn upon them and say, I am persuaded that slavery is immoral, and therefore I command you to set your slaves at Hberty ; — and because you have no moral right to hold them, I shall not grant you a compensation. Nor, for the same reasons, would I advise a legislature to say so to the possessor of tithes. But what sort of a compensation is to be offered ? Not surely an amount equivalent to the principal money, computing tithes as interest. The compensation is- for life interest only. The legisla- ture would have to buy off, not a freehold but an annuity. The tithe owner is not like the slave holder, who can bequeath his property to another. When the present incumbent dies, the tithes, as property, cease to exist, — until it is again appropriated to an incumbent by the patron of the living. This is true except in the instances of those deplorable practiceSj the purchase of ad- vowsons, or of any other by which individuals or bodies acquire a pecuniary interest in the right of disposal. ' The notion that tithes are a *' property of the church," is quit,e a fiction. In this sense, wliat is the churph? If. no individual man has his property taken away by a legislative abolition of tithes, it is unmeaning to talk of '• the church" having lost it. It is perhaps a vain thing to talk of how the legislature might do a thing which perhaps it may not resolve, for ages, to do at all. But if it were to take away the right to tithes as the pre- sent incumbents died, or as the interests of the present owners ceased, there would be no reason to complain of injustice, what- ever there might be of procrastinating the fulfihnent of a christian duty. 52 Whether a good man, knowing the inconsistency of forced maintenance with the christian law, ought to accept a proffered equivalent for that maintenance, is another consideration. If it is wrong to retain it, it is not obvious how it can be right, or how at least it can avoid the appearance of evil, to accept money for giving it up. It is upon these principles that the religious community who decline to pay tithes, decline also to receive them. By legacy or otherwise, the legal right is sometimes possessed by these persons, but their moral discipline requires alike a refusal to receive or to pay. END. WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. ESSAYS on the PRINCIPLES of MORALITY, and on the PRIVATE and POLITICAL RIGHTS and OBLIGATIONS of MANKIND, &c. Published by Hamilton, Adams, and Co., Pater- noster Row. Second Edition. In 2 vols. 8vo., 18*. An INQUIRY into the ACCORDANCY of WAR with the PRINCIPLES of CHRISTIANITY, &c. Published by Longman and Co., Paternoster Row. Third Edition. I2mo., 3*. Printed by E. Couchman, 10, Throgtnorton Street, London.