L I E, RAR.Y 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVE.RSITY 
 
 Of ILLI NOIS
 
 vS^-^'^'
 
 // 
 
 THE" 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 EEFOEI OR DISESTABLISHMENT, 
 
 WHICH? 
 
 BY 
 
 The Eev. WILLIAM GOVER, M.A., F.G.S., 
 
 (Hun. Canun of Worcester, and late Principal of the \Yorcester., Liclifield and 
 Hereford Training College.) 
 
 London : 
 ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY, W. 
 
 1874.
 
 EouKUT Hardwicke, Printek, 192, Piccadilly, W,
 
 FKEb'AOE. 
 
 Since the following pages were first issued, two of the questions 
 discussed in them have become the subjects of Parliamentary 
 notice. 
 
 The Public Worship Regulation Bill has been avowedly intro- 
 duced by the Archbishop of Canterbury in restraint of Kitnalism ; and 
 a select Committee of the House of Lords has been obtained by the 
 Bishop of Peterborough to consider how to abate the scandals of 
 conamerce in patronage. 
 
 To attain these ends, the Bill of the Archbishop and the speecli 
 with which the Bishop prefaced his motion proposed the sam.e means 
 — More power to the Bishops. 
 
 It was perhaps onl}^ natural that the measures of the Episcopal 
 Body should have taken this direction. From every quarter they had 
 had to bear blame for matters having been allowed to come to their 
 present pass : their consultations were held, not after communication 
 with the Councils of their Dioceses — between Bishops and Deans and 
 Chapters the estrangement has been long and complete — but in 
 secret conclave, apart by themselves. There their course was decided 
 on, and their measures prepared : there, where the independence of 
 the clergy and the rights of the laity were alike voiceless and without 
 advocate. No wonder that their deliberations found expression in a 
 proposition to place confidence in their absolute discretion ; in a simple 
 form of remedy, the extension of the power of their Order ; and that 
 their policy might be indicated by one word — repression. 
 
 The assertion of Archdeacon Denison, that every Incumbent is 
 Bishop in his own parish, is — like many of his statements — extra- 
 vagant in phrase ; but it embodies a truth, the recognition of which 
 has grown up both under the j)rotection of English law and the sym- 
 pathy of social opinion, the virtual independence of the Parson of 
 each parish within his own cure. 
 
 Every addition of mere power to the ofiice of the Bishop, as dis- 
 tinct from fatherly influence, strikes at this independence of the 
 parochial clergy, leads up to investing the Prayer Book with the 
 attributes of perfection and infallibility, tends to narrow (instead of 
 extending, as must needs be, if it is to exist as such) the confines of 
 the National Church, and so must prove in the long run detrimental 
 to the continuance of its establishment. It was wisely said by a 
 great mind who has passed away for some years, that in the theory of 
 the Church of England the power of the Bishop is absolute, but that 
 in real practice it is reduced within very moderate limits, and that 
 the attempt to make the practice concur with the theory w^ould be to 
 endanger the Church itself. 
 
 The Public Worship Eegulation Bill in its amended form and as 
 it stands for reading in the House of Commons has materially cur- 
 tailed the Bishop's absolute discretion by requiring him to give and 
 file his reasons for refusing to assent to any proceeding under it, and 
 has transferred the additional power sought for to a Court for the two 
 Provinces to be presided over by one judicial mind.
 
 Yet though these changes in the Bill before it left the House 
 of Lords may be a great improvement, the policy remains the same, 
 repression of all departures from the rubric, not in respect of sacer- 
 dotal ceremonial alone, bat, as is fair, in any direction whatever; the 
 mode of remedy is litigation made cheap. 
 
 Thus we are on the point of being committed to a new course of 
 2)olicy, and launched on a career of ecclesiastical legislation, of which 
 the present Bill will form only the commencement. And this at the 
 fag end of a session, in which every other measure of magnitude has 
 been suspended on the allowed plea that a new Government has not 
 had time for due consideration. 
 
 It may suit the views of an Institution combatant, like the Church 
 Association, to press for its acceptance and to get up petitions in 
 support, just because Ilitualists have petitioned against it ; but surely 
 it would be better far that during the recess the members of the 
 Church at large should have that opportunity, which the Bishop of 
 Peterborough deprecates, of fairly and at leisure weighing proposals 
 for the future of the Church of England, instead of being committed 
 to hasty legislation by the passing of an Act of very doubtful 
 ^' innocence." 
 
 Surely there is enough to give pause to those who love their 
 (Jhurch when they consider what the Bishop's discretion may 
 mean, if exercised for instance in the spirit of *' excipienda,'^ 
 which commend themselves to the mind, or call out the stren- 
 uous opposition of the Bishop of Peterborough, or what opening 
 up of harassing litigation, party against pary in turn, if in- 
 terpreting the exercise of his discretion, as the discharge of the duties 
 of a grand jury, a Bishop should give scope for every proceeding which 
 showed a probable foundation of fact. 
 
 The precedent, not an unsual one, of the Friendly Societies' Bill 
 might well be followed for the Public Worship Eegulation Bill ; that 
 in deference to its authors it siiould be read a second time and com- 
 mitted pro forma, on the understanding that it should be proceeded 
 with no further this Session. 
 
 Not to seek refuge in repression, not to reduce the Church of 
 England to the cold expression of decent and constrained uniformity, 
 but to put faith in its members, and to trust in their love and interest 
 to keep it the fitting representative of National Christianity ; to 
 believe in freedom and to give fair influence to each school of thought 
 in an age when religious questions on every side stir the souls of men 
 to their depths — this is the principle, which these pages would enforce 
 and endeavour to develope a scheme for more fullj^ attaining. They 
 have been submitted for consideration in the conviction that by thus 
 restoring the rights of the laity, the Church of England would 
 widely enlarge her borders ; even her divisions into various schools 
 would be rendered consistent with greater peace within, and her 
 warfare without carried on with united forces in her righteous crusade 
 against ignorance, falsehood and vice : ''a hope too precious to be 
 lightly abandoned." 
 
 Saltley Lodge, Dulwich Wood, S.E. oi*oa».
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 REFORM OR DISESTABLISHMENT, 
 WHICH? 
 
 The Archbishops of the Church of England have, during 
 the present year, in their reply to a memorial from 60,000 
 of the laity against Romanising practices in the Church, 
 expressed their conviction ^^of the existence of a consi- 
 derable minority, both of clergy and laity, among us, 
 desiring to subvert the principles of the Reiormation," 
 and appeal " to all reasonable persons to consider whether 
 the very existence of our national institutions for the 
 maintenance of religion is not imperilled by the evils 
 complained of." 
 
 Similar language has been reiterated by several of their 
 suffragans ; or, with perhaps a solitary exception, has been 
 received by others with a silence that can hardly betoken 
 anything but an admission of these statements. 
 
 Two dangers then — for the future — rise before the 
 Church of England ; one, that her doctrines and services 
 will be assimilated to the Church of Rome : the other, 
 that her overthrow as a National Church, will be the 
 consequence of the attempt.
 
 6 
 
 The latter, Churclimen in the main, may regard 
 with regret, or accept as the desperate expedient of ex- 
 tremity, in order to preserve the teaching of the principles 
 of the Reformation to themselves and their children ; 
 whilst Nonconformists, little conscious of the narrow sect- 
 arianism and theological illiberality which might supervene 
 as the result of that event, may look forward to it as 
 matter for rejoicing. But on the undesirableness of the 
 former, the vast majority of the Church laity, and the 
 whole body of Nonconformists are at one. 
 
 It is to the Church laity who thus think that this 
 paper appeals ; to Nonconformists also, in the hope that 
 they may recognise that the reform it proposes, would 
 lessen the distance between themselves and the National 
 Church, or even open a way for bodies of them to rejoin 
 her communion, consistently with the retention of their 
 religious freedom. 
 
 For the Established Church in its present state affords 
 to one, who desires its continuance, and who is not content 
 with superficial appearances, the most doubtful prospect 
 for the future. 
 
 With very defined outlines of doctrine, the great 
 leaders of the Reformation, in the spirit of compromise 
 and with the desire of comprehending as many as possible 
 within her communion, embodied phrases, allusions, or 
 forms in the Liturgy contrarient to their very principles. 
 
 For a moment, indeed, the policy was not unsuccessful, 
 and the whole nation might be said to be within the fold 
 of the Reformed Church. The Bull of Pius Y. sundered 
 finally all hope of unity, and Romanism became a sect in 
 England.
 
 Then, instead of passing penal statutes, was the time 
 when a counter blow might have been struck ; what 
 had thus been retained before, expunged from her services, 
 and the Church of England opposed as distinctly to sacer- 
 dotalism in doctrine, as the State was antagonistic to the 
 Papacy in politics. The opportunity passed away, then 
 and again. 
 
 Now, in a restless age, these very phrases are made 
 the justification for a party remaining within the Church, 
 whose object is to undo the work of the Reformation ; 
 and the groundwork of a scheme to bring back the 
 human mind into bondage to claims of sacerdotal power. 
 
 Step by step through thirty years this party have been 
 spreading their views, silently or more openly aggressive. 
 Bishops gave them a partial support ; for they could not 
 but regard with kindly eye men who with profusion of 
 reverence knelt before them for the blessing of an order 
 of higher sanctity than their own : they could not but 
 listen with greedier ear to their professions of submissive 
 obedience to whatever they, in the discharge of apostolic 
 functions, should pronounce ex cathedrd. 
 
 So Bishops have shown to all but the most extreme 
 amongst them countenance and favor : have apologised 
 for their excess through zeal, have praised their laborious 
 devotion, almost as though such was exclusively confined 
 to them, till, as it were with the swan-like tones of words 
 even close upon death, one has been compelled to speak 
 with hatred and abhorrence of attempts to Romanise the 
 Church of England. 
 
 Of the clergy a large body looked with a not unnatural 
 approval on their tendencies of thought to exalt the pastor's
 
 8 
 
 office, extend its power, and raise it above the level of 
 common life. Others, sympathisers, yet cautious not to 
 bring comfortable benefices into question, have encouraged 
 their curates to pronounce more dogmatically than them- 
 selves — qiiifautores utroque laudahunf pollice ludum. 
 
 Thus favored and surrounded, the party have taken 
 all such sanction, but have yielded no point in return in 
 moderating their views. They have known the value of 
 union, of force, of boldness, of forward movement. 
 
 Threats of secession, when it served their purpose, 
 have been prompt and loud. 
 
 Touch, for instance, the Athanasian Creed as a pro- 
 fession of faith of the Church : nay, give but the option of 
 use or disuse and — we secede. 
 
 Let the highest court of ecclesiastical law venture to 
 condemn the sacramental doctrines of Bennett and — we 
 secede. 
 
 Nay, to mingle lighter things with grave, a venerable 
 and impulsive Archdeacon from among them was forward 
 to declare his intention of courting with serious advances 
 that nymph, erewhile uncomely in his eyes, the Liberation 
 Society. 
 
 The world is wont (for just at the moment it saves 
 trouble) to bow to audacity ; so their policy, covert or 
 open, has succeeded. 
 
 The decision of the Privy Council in this memorable 
 Bennett judgment seemed less to emanate from the cold 
 and lofty regions of abstract law, than from a certain 
 cowering before consequences— from influences felt though 
 unseen^from the desire to steer a course of apparent 
 tranquillity.
 
 Should their decision be adverse, the gaunt spectre of 
 a great schism rose up against the council ; if it were but 
 any how, even evasively, an acquittal, there was pretty 
 good ground for confidence that the opposite party, with 
 hostages given to fortune (whatever some man more rash or 
 of more sensitive conscience than his fellows might do), 
 would never so take umbrage as to abandon preferment 
 for separation. 
 
 The Bennett judgment then, having admitted that their 
 sacramental views may be held within the pale of the 
 Church of England, has added to the Ritualistic party yet 
 greater boldness. 
 
 They have gone on openly to memorialise Convocation 
 for the recognition of sacramental confession, and of a 
 body of licensed confessors, as a need of spiritual life 
 within the church. 
 
 Openly in a measure, for this word must be used with 
 qualification. Feeble and fatuous attempts were made 
 indeed to jeer away the gravity of the document in re- 
 spect of the numbers signing ; because, forsooth, some 
 blunderer said that he mistook it for a burial petition ! 
 But the attempt only showed how men try to deceive 
 themselves rather than admit what is unpleasant, but 
 which they cannot amend. For the fact is that numbers 
 favored and assented to beyond those who signed it — in- 
 deed it has been alleged on the authority of one of the 
 signataries, that not 483, but 2,000 priests in the Church 
 of England were in concord with the views of the me- 
 morial on confession. 
 
 Indignation meetings are held throughout the country 
 against these tenets. Fervid eloquence stirs the dense
 
 10 
 
 crowds for an hour ; violent accusations of dishonesty are 
 hurled against them — of disloyalty — of treachery. 
 
 True in a wide view of the reformation work, Imt 
 evasible under the phraseology of compromise, and the 
 rule of courts of law to construe penal sanctions as strictly 
 as possible. 
 
 Nay more, the Ritualists reciprocate with not less 
 virulence these charges. 
 
 What, say they, are revisionists, but men who confess 
 that the Prayer Book does not hold the doctrines of re- 
 generation, absolution, &c., as they do ? It is they there- 
 fore that are dishonest who seek to make changes in the 
 language, instead of going outside the Church to found or 
 find a communion on their own lines for themselves. 
 Whatever fallacy underlies such allegations, it serves 
 the purpose, as of boys at school, to meet an accusation 
 with a countercharge, since it disturbs the assailant and 
 distracts the judgment of bystanders. 
 
 Meanwhile the spirit of enthusiastic meetings evapo- 
 rates, and the emotions of excited listeners die down ; 
 whilst day by day, under cover of their positions in the 
 Church, the priestly advocates of confession insinuate 
 amongst the inexperienced and the weak, the disheart- 
 ened, the sorrowing and the sick, the dread or the con- 
 solations, which they arrogantly impose or offer to the 
 unformed conscience, or the overburdened soul. 
 
 The Evangelical party on the other hand have never 
 quite stood on firm ground, for they have never fairly 
 accepted })rinciples on which the Reformation was based,
 
 11 
 
 the freedom of the human mind, the responsibility of 
 private judgment, the duty of search for truth. 
 
 Their leaders with a somewhat superficial acquaintance 
 with theology, but with a burning and fervent zeal for 
 Grod and Christ amongst a people neglected, ignorant 
 and Grodless, and without a thought of the difficulties of 
 scripture criticism, enounced their system of dogma. 
 Their followers, led away by an exaggerated but pardon- 
 able reverence for their work and zeal, spoke of all piety 
 beyond their circle, as though the scheme of Christianity 
 had lain hidden till the preaching of Simeon and Venn ; 
 and of the patient investigations of reviving criticism as 
 a profane and unholy attempt "to be wise above that 
 which was written." They reiterated the expressions of 
 their leaders and kept closely to their groove of thought. 
 Just in proportion as the enthusiasm of the movement 
 began to spend itself, and the measure of devotion in the 
 lives of the adherents of the school fell down very much 
 to the level of others within the ranks of the clergy, they 
 guarded with a more jealous watchfulness the use of their 
 peculiar terminology; from the due application of its 
 shibboleths judged whether a young clergyman was truly 
 converted, sound in the faith. Everything like origi- 
 nality of thought was discouraged, any venture of enquiry 
 frowned down, and the expression of certain views ex- 
 acted with as much assertiveness as though they spoke 
 the creed of an infallible Church. "Cribbed, cabined, 
 and confined" within the constrained limits of partial 
 views, their language became more and more the vapid 
 utterances of thoughts at second hand, stock phrases, 
 parrot-like rei)etitions of their leaders' teachings ; the like
 
 12 
 
 words dribbling in feeble platitudes from the mouths o 
 the disciples, which had fallen from the masters' lips 
 instinct with life and fire. 
 
 Mainly conducive to this result has turned out the 
 gain of a power, from which the Evangelical party hoped 
 strength, but which has tended to weakness. 
 
 The legacy which Simeon bequeathed by his will has 
 corrupted the work to which he had given his zeal and his 
 life, and lowered the morale of successors who should bear 
 on his banner. His last dying will and testament was too 
 much like a putting of trust in the power of money to 
 spread truth, and not in the power of truth itself. 
 
 It is the operation of the. Simeon and other such like 
 trusts, since founded on its precedent, which has wrought 
 this evil. With the money which he left, his trustees went 
 into the trade in patronage (the end as they thought justi- 
 fying the means) to buy up livings in populous places in 
 order to place in them those who would preach Evangelical 
 doctrine. 
 
 No doubt the words, by which Simeon expressed the 
 mode in which he wished his trust to be administered, 
 might be frank and liberal enough. Ijut to secure their 
 object such trusts were constituted of the most exclusive of 
 the party ; to continue it, provision was made that surviving 
 trustees should fill up vacancies in the body. The ten- 
 dency of such close bodies to engender narrowness and 
 to form a clique was inevitable. Thus fostered, it has 
 grown and increased. Since the trustees, remote from the 
 towns in which their livings were placed, could know but 
 little of candidates in their life and work, they had to 
 depend for information on sources they thought relialjle.
 
 13 
 
 on an external of popularity perchance, or but too often 
 on secret communications, whispered snrmisings, back- 
 stairs recommendations ; sometimes it would seem, where 
 novices were promising but doubtful, on written answers 
 to questions privately sent. The result has been that with 
 rare exceptions of unquestionable sincerity, this party have 
 repelled from sympathy thoughtful and reflective students, 
 so that their main body of recruits has been drawn from 
 a lower class of minds, whose scantilv furnished stores of 
 knowledge, prejudiced bias, and minds devoid of original, 
 and content with second-hand ideas, evidence themselves 
 in the pulpit in jejune commonplaces on the same sub- 
 jects ; discourses rambUng or skeleton-strung, but dreaiy, 
 somniculose. 
 
 But in losing their pre-eminence as preachers they 
 were losing all. To preach was their raison cVetre; 
 thev were teachers or thev were nothing. And this deca- 
 dence in their influence was accelerated not only by their 
 own failure to continue a race of preachers of power, but 
 also by the rise of the quality of what was preached 
 amongst numbers who held aloof from their party. The 
 establishment of a wide-spread system for the supply of 
 sermons throusrhout the countrv, brand-new from London 
 manufactories, whose style and ring and turn of sentences, 
 and careful medium tone, with leanings just a little high, 
 it is not hard to recocmise weU-nieh anvwhere in countrv 
 parishes, has placed many an easy-going incumbent of 
 reputable life, moderate views, and yet more moderate 
 habits of study, upon a level with the rank and file of 
 the Evangelical following even as preachers. 
 
 The depreciation too by this school of the Litui-gy, and
 
 14 
 
 the coldness, not to say the slovenly irreverence, which not 
 seldom grew out of it, in the performance of the services, has 
 reacted to their further discomfiture. An ornate ritual grew 
 attractive as a relief from dulness ; whilst in recent years 
 hymnothetists, with no concealed bias towards their op- 
 ponents, have entered into the heritage of the Wesleys 
 and their contemporaries, of the subtle influence over 
 the human soul possessed by numerous verse married 
 to melody. 
 
 So that great, and, but a few years since, most power- 
 ful party in the Church of England, losing ground con- 
 stantly, has fallen into weakness and aimlessness, stricken 
 with decrepitude. 
 
 Again, the investigations of the school of Niebuhr 
 amongst the chroniclings of the past, where the trust- 
 worthy and the legendary have been blent in narrative, 
 have dignified history with the reflectiveness and deduc- 
 tions of philosophy. 
 
 Physical science, also, in its multiform development 
 has inconceivably extended our ideas of the vastness of 
 the universe : of the infinite progression of ages through 
 which this world has "woned;" of the succession of 
 created beings, which have lived and passed away from 
 its surface ; of the races of men, some on the very soil 
 of our own land, long extinct, who reach back into a hoar 
 antiquity before undreamt of. 
 
 They, who are students of these subjects, deem with 
 St. Paul, that "the invisible things of Grod, even His 
 eternal power and Godhead, from the creation of the 
 world are clearly seen, being understood by the things
 
 16 
 
 that are made;" and seek His revelation of Himself as 
 well in His works, as in the Holy Scriptures which have 
 survived to record the voices of His Spirit, and the words 
 of His messengers. Yet they hold that these Scriptures 
 are to be examined in their language, their composition, 
 their history, by the same canons of criticism which 
 furnish in respect of all ancient records necessary guides 
 in the severe indagation of truth. For, truly, nothing 
 could be more fatal to the purity and spirituality of reli- 
 gion itself, than that the Clergy of the Church should be 
 withdrawn from the cognizance of such subjects, should 
 cease to keep abreast with the knowledge of the age, or 
 should separate belief, as something aloof and apart from 
 the revelations of science, or the agonies of the human 
 mind in its struggles after knowledge. 
 
 Justin proportion as this should take place, would religion 
 become a thing of outward ceremonies, of ritual observances, 
 of credulous superstition, to which men might bow, but in 
 which there is no trust. There has, therefore, grown up 
 within the ranks of the clergy a smaller body, who have 
 thrown themselves into the counsels of science and the 
 deliberations of history, only to be met, or ever they have 
 spoken, with a like cuckoo-cry that they ought to take out 
 of the Church their rationalism, infidelity, what not? They 
 stand confronted with accepted theories of verbal and 
 plenary inspiration, which would place on a level the 
 recordings of Chronicles, the bitter invective of Babylonish 
 Psalms, or the prophecies of Daniel with the pure and 
 lofty ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, the manna drop- 
 ping down from Heaven in the words of the evening before 
 the Crucifixion, or the glorious hopes of the resurrection
 
 16 
 
 of tlie spiritual body in " Him who brought life and im- 
 mortality to light." They stand confronted with records 
 of the creation of the world, with narratives of Eden, or 
 of the universal flood, all which they feel it is vain to 
 endeavour to reconcile as literal fact with the discoveries 
 of science. They live in an age of enquiry in every direc- 
 tion into the wonderful works of God, and they are called 
 upon to bow the neck to definitions of the interrelation- 
 ships of the Godhead, promulgated by the ecclesiastical 
 arrogance of an age when all knowledge was darkened and 
 society broken up. They are bidden by the functions 
 of their office (in language, the meaning and comprehen- 
 siveness of which, in the age in which it was framed, was 
 only too little doubtful) to launch the anathemas of perdi- 
 tion, and on those festivals especially which are more than 
 all other consecrated to the divinest manifestations of the 
 Love of God, against the souls of their fellow men. 
 
 Literally " with groanings that cannot be uttered," they 
 have to keep to themselves doubts, anxieties, the strivings 
 of the spirit within. Can they look to Bishops for 
 guidance? One, whose axiom is quieta non movere, eyes 
 them askance, and keeps them at arm's length. Another 
 is sought in conference by a distressed country parson, 
 prepared to surrender his living, and face poverty with 
 wife and children. With what comfort may be guessed, 
 when Mrs. Proudie excuses to her guest that " luncheon is 
 rather late, because the poor Bishop has been worried all the 
 morning by one of those wretched clergy about their 
 conscientious scruples." Others, who have crept up the 
 ladder of preferment, since the world can allege nothing 
 but vague doubts as to their tenets, whilst they enjoy the
 
 17 
 
 jDopularity of a sentimental liberality, opine tliat it is not 
 well that Bisliops should speak their thoughts ; for have 
 they not already discerned to their advantage, that if 
 speech is silvern, silence is golden ? 
 
 Nay, even where discussion must be admitted, in the 
 domain of critical enquiry, there is a manifest fear, lest 
 danger should lurk in following after, and finding truth. 
 
 The timidity thus generated may be witnessed in the 
 notes of " Alf or d's Greek Testament," or the articles in 
 '' Smith's Dictionary of the Bible " passim. 
 
 The arguments on the one side and the other are given 
 with a considerable measure of laudable fairness, but when 
 the conclusions have to be drawn, the scale of orthodoxy 
 is made to prevail with a certainty, which not seldon pro- 
 vokes a smile, rather than carries conviction to the reader, 
 judicially weighing the evidence. 
 
 In truth, the limits within which the Evangelical party 
 confine the expressions of their views are clearly within 
 those of the chief founders of our Eeformed Church, and 
 thus the former efforts of the High Church to oust them 
 by legal means failed egregiously. The Sacerdotal party 
 too can find expressions in the formularies, deliberately 
 retained or inserted, on which to reconstruct their 
 system within the Church's pale. Hence the laborious 
 organisation and costly proceedings of the Church 
 Association have issued in nothing more than some 
 slight ceremonial restrictions, not difficult of evasion, 
 and in a judgment concerning doctrine, which has sur- 
 rendered to sacerdotalism a vantage ground, better than 
 ever held before, for fresh advances ; or in which, if the 
 Association can find comfort, it must be in a spirit 
 
 B
 
 18 
 
 thankful for small mercies. But tliough the germs of 
 thought on subjects, to which the minds of those styled 
 the Broad Church are keenly alive, may be traced in 
 Erasmus or Luther, such indications found no recognition 
 in the formularies which theology and politics combined 
 to jDut forth as the outward expression of the tenets of 
 the Church. 
 
 For them, therefore, there are no doubtful phrases, 
 behind which they may find protection from legal con- 
 sequences, if they give public utterance to opinions which 
 free and open discussion could best refute, or modify, 
 elucidate, or establish. 
 
 Few, moreover, are disposed to seek to put on that, 
 unsatisfactory martyr's crown of sheer neglect, whose 
 chafing has to be borne daily, when after the courts of 
 law have tumbled him out of his benefice, none concern 
 themselves what may become of the cast out. 
 
 There spreads then below the surface an impacata 
 quies ; a secret doubting in the minds of many, who by 
 calling are teachers ; an avoidance of opinion on great 
 topics, stifled enquirings, a constrained silence, choked 
 utterances, a policy of speech cautious and reserved. 
 
 And what is the result of this repression of enquiry ? 
 A lowering of the standard of education and intellect 
 amongst the clergy at large, because so considerable a 
 proportion of vigorous university men no longer seek to 
 enrol themselves in the ranks. It is not only that the 
 other professions, the army, civil service in India and at 
 home, engineering, manufactures enter into competition 
 and open a more lucrative field, whilst free from mental 
 restraints : nothing is more striking than the silent yet 

 
 19 
 
 rapid way, in which a body of men of attainments, who do 
 not seek Orders as of old, have begun to constitute the 
 staff of our great schools. It is a consequence and re- 
 cognition, not a cause of the fact, that wellnigh all recent 
 schemes for the improvement of schools, withdraw the 
 limitation even of the head and second masters' posts to 
 those in Holy Orders. 
 
 Yet the need for more clergy in our populous districts 
 presses daily. What wonder then if Bishops are not only 
 content with university men of more ordinary capacity or 
 of uncertain and weakly health, but are driven to recruit 
 their supply from the unexamined students of Theological 
 Colleges, or the crude material of scripture readers ? With- 
 out wishing to disparage the value of a few young men of 
 earnest piety, intent upon their calling, from amongst 
 them, such men — destitute for the most part of the refining 
 influences of liberal education, and with no more than a 
 course of special theological cram superinduced upon a 
 mere smattering of classics, unenlightened by history or 
 science — take orders : find amongst the laity their superiors 
 in position, education, wealth, and then seek refuge and self- 
 importance in parade of vestments and the claims of power 
 for a sacerdotal office. 
 
 These are the dissensions, divisions, weaknesses of 
 the Church within. Thus it comes to pass that the two 
 parties, who are identified respectively with the doctrines 
 and the principles of the Reformation, are alike weak and 
 disorganised : the Sacerdotal party arrogant, united, 
 aggressive. 
 
 The laity listen to mutual recriminations of one 
 against the other, or both, on their dishonesty in eating 
 
 B 2
 
 20 
 
 tlie bread of the Church, or remaining to minister within 
 her communion. If they side with one, they must fain 
 believe it of the other ; or if they hokl aloof, they come 
 to consider that all alike act for lucre's sake, and 
 their estimate of the ministerial character is lowered 
 accordingly. 
 
 Without power to express a will, they are bandied 
 about from one set of teachers to another. It seems mere 
 hap-hazard, whether a congregation affectionately attached 
 to an Evangelical pastor may not on a change be disquieted 
 by the vagaries of an ultra Ritualist, puffed up with the 
 idea of his own authority, and bent on having his own 
 way. 
 
 Submission, or dissent, is their only alternative. 
 
 In health, indeed, parishioners may please themselves 
 so far, that, if they are not too much of what Hugh Miller 
 styles "cat-Christians," they can withdraw from the build- 
 ing in which they have national rights and frequent another 
 church. But in sickness the priest can, and does, thrust 
 the exercise of his sacerdotal functions on unwilling 
 recipients, or, supported by the law, refuse to allow the 
 clergyman of that other church to cross the confines of 
 his parish. 
 
 As for dissent, there is a diocese, lately administered 
 by a Prelate of remarkable power and most winning 
 courtesy, of whom it has been boasted that he never 
 promoted any but curates in it to his livings, but whose 
 influence was so used, and whose selection was so guided 
 by his High Churcli proclivities that over large areas none 
 but parish priests of that school were to be found. 
 
 For the fruit, dissent has rooted itself the deeper
 
 21 
 
 in the villages as a protest ; the strength of which his 
 clergy confessed^ if they did not appreciate, when in answer 
 to his episcopal enquiry they classed together amongst the 
 great hindrances to their work beer-shops, and dissent ! 
 
 Hence, just as Ritualism gains ground within her borders, 
 and Romanism presses her sore without, all the great 
 bodies of the Nonconformists combine with a more zealous 
 unity for her Disestablishment, and even the Wesleyans, 
 who, with no forgetful regard of their founder, have shewn 
 on the whole a friendly spirit towards her, are, because 
 of this growth of Ritualism, already joining in the league 
 against her. 
 
 The Prelates of the Romish Church, indeed, wise in 
 their generation, are too astute not to see that now is not 
 for them the time of Disestablishment. 
 
 The act might rouse such an activity of religious life 
 as should undo and scatter to the winds all the prepara- 
 tion for their communion, which a band of clergy, in heart 
 more than half, and some perhaps in secret allegiance all 
 their own, are so stealthily and steadily carrying on, 
 sapping within the very lines of the fortress. 
 
 In very sooth the Romish Church can well afford to 
 wait, whilst it proclaims its labourers ready, fields open 
 for husbandry, but sources as yet inadequate for support 
 or occupation ; boasts its yearly spread, its thousands of 
 converts, flaunts before the public gaze with unshrinking 
 effrontery the spectacle of its garish properties, its pil- 
 grimages, its dedications, its visions, its miracles, the 
 Immaculate Conception, an infallible Pope.
 
 22 
 
 But deep within her system the Church of England 
 feeds yet another weakness peculiarly her own, an evil 
 cancer and ulcerous — the sale and purchase of the cure of 
 souls. 
 
 The pang of shame for one's Church was not without 
 a cause, when a lawyer, whose high character gained for 
 him universal esteem in a large town, once said, with 
 indignant sarcasm, that the clerical conscience was a thing 
 unintelligible to him, for that it seemed to him there was 
 no oath which it could not find a way to evade. 
 
 His allusion was in direct reference to that oath, " to 
 avoid the detestable sin of simony," which is ministered 
 by the Bishop to every clergyman on institution to a 
 benefice, " I do swear that I have made no simoniacal 
 payment, contract, or promise, directly or indirectly, by 
 myself, or by any other to my knowledge, or with my 
 consent, to any person or persons whatever, for, or con- 
 cerning, the procuring or obtaining of this ecclesiastical 
 place, preferment, office, or living, nor will I at any time 
 hereafter perform or satisfy any such kind of payment, 
 contract, or promise, made by any other without my know- 
 ledge or consent : so help me God, through Jesus Christ." 
 
 And yet, what is daily the case ? 
 
 A next presentation is in the market, likely to become 
 vacant, or with immediate possession advertised. A 
 clergyman, who fancies it may be a suitable place to settle 
 down in, makes his enquiries about price, views the place, 
 judges of the commodiousness of the rectory, the pleasant- 
 ness of the grounds and prospect, what advantages it 
 possesses in local society ; in fact of all and every thing, 
 except whether he and his teaching are suited for the 
 
 I
 
 23 
 
 parishioners ; deems the position eligible, confers with his 
 friends, or directs and is consulted by his wife's trustees 
 in every step of the negotiation, is cognisant of the 
 pecuniary arrangement by which immediate possession is 
 to be insured, is presented by those trustees to the vacancy 
 in the cure of souls thus created ; and then, in order to be 
 instituted to this " holy office and administration in the 
 Church," for which it is prayed that " those who are called 
 to them may be replenished with the truth of God's 
 doctrine, and endued with innocency of life, to serve 
 faithfully before Him," he makes solemn oath before his 
 Father in Grod, that neither directly nor indirectly, either 
 by himself or any other, &c., &c. 
 
 Men's consciences may be seared and deadened by 
 interest, usage, connivance, but none the less is the blot 
 upon the soul, " is the offence rank and smells to Heaven ! " 
 
 Palliate it, excuse it, defend it, nay, justify it by what 
 chicanery men will, with what face dare, with what 
 authority of character can a man reprove immorality 
 amongst his people, whose very claim to his office rests 
 upon what in the court of conscience, in the common and 
 natural sense of language, is falsehood and false swearing ? 
 
 The ancient medal might represent Judcea capta 
 sitting mournful. For this sin against souls, a modern 
 medal might well image the Church of England in the 
 attitude of Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, rubbing her 
 hands and crying, " Out damned spot." Better all the 
 strifes and contentions which are alleged to result amongst 
 Nonconformists from popular elections, than the unclean- 
 ness of this eating sore, the secrecy of this convenient vice. 
 
 Nay, the depraving tendency of this traffic affects the 
 disposal of private patronage not sold.
 
 24 
 
 As there is no open emulation, none of the free and 
 healthy action of appointments by the voice of the Churchy 
 so that men can feel that they are placed in a post, not as 
 a personal favour conferred by a patron, but because of 
 their deservings, every vacancy, expected or sudden, 
 is the signal, whether hastily or aforethought, of indecent 
 canvassing and solicitation. 
 
 A practice how wide-spread might be gathered, when 
 at a Midland Congress, the whole body of the clergy present 
 sat with closed lips, while a noble earl spoke in con- 
 temptuous tones of the hunt for preferment, which he 
 looked upon as the common experience of every patron ! 
 
 Is the above a true picture ? Are such the divisions 
 and disorganisation, which prevail within the Church in 
 doctrine and system ? Is not every lineament drawn from 
 life, nor " aught set down in malice ? " 
 
 What wonder, then, that the buzz goes on of Dis- 
 establishment ; of the relinquishment of a National Church 
 for disjointed voluntary sects. Not of the whether, but of 
 the how and when ; not of a conclusive judgment for or 
 against an Establishment, but of under what political 
 combinations, and how long before Disestablishment will 
 take place ? 
 
 And yet, surely, a National Church realised is too 
 grand an element in a nation's weal and life to be aban- 
 doned without misgiving : though fanatic sectaries, powerful 
 only to work ruin, may strive to bring it low ; or those 
 bigots may cause it to fall, whose only purpose in the 
 world's history would seem to be to bring on great 
 changes by fighting against all change.
 
 m 
 
 II, 
 
 One great Eeform seems practicable, by which Dis- 
 establishment may be averted, yet the disorganisation which 
 is at present spreading so rapidly be checked, and the 
 National Chnrch again more firmly set fast. 
 
 The barrenness of feasible suggestions which prevails, 
 warrants its consideration. 
 
 Eestore to the laity something equivalent to their 
 ancient rights in the Early and Saxon Church — a voice 
 in the election of their pastors. 
 
 How this may be done it will be attempted to set out 
 in some detail. Should any be disposed to decry the plan 
 for incompleteness, tediousness, or expensiveness, let them 
 show forth a better way. It will suffice for the writer to 
 have obtained discussion, to have set the stone in motion : 
 cj^escat vires eundo ! 
 
 Grenerally, then, all livings may be comprehended 
 under three heads : — 
 
 1. Livings in public patronage ; namely such as are 
 in the gift of the Crown, Bishops, corporate bodies, &c. 
 
 2. Livings in quasi public trust ; such as those in the 
 gift of bodies of trustees, constituted for particular pur- 
 poses. 
 
 3. Those in private patronage. 
 
 The steps taken for each of these kinds of patronage 
 would be different, and vary as to the time required to 
 Ijring the scheme into full accomplishment. 
 
 1. To deal with that first, which is more distinctly
 
 26 
 
 publici juris — patronage in the hands of the Crown, 
 Bishops, colleges, corporations, aggregate and sole. 
 
 As a first step in the restoration of the rights of 
 the laity, let all the above patronage in livings cease, 
 except Avhere the population of the parish is less than 
 one thousand souls, or where in boroughs with a population 
 exceeding this number the endowment falls below two 
 hundred and fifty pounds- per annum. 
 
 Even in such excepted livings the Crown patronage 
 should cease, and from this lapse Bishops, colleges, and 
 corporations aggregate, should have transferred to them, 
 as might be practicable and expedient, patronage in the 
 lieu of that lost by the above limitations. 
 
 In all livings in which patronage had thus ceased as 
 above, the laity should come at once into the exercise of 
 their rights at the next avoidance ; the modes will be 
 indicated below. 
 
 2. To take the quasi public trusts next. 
 
 These are usually held by trustees, who fill up by an 
 irresponsible choice the vacancies in their own body. 
 They have been much in vogue, and have been chiefly 
 constituted for the promulgation of particular doctrinal 
 views. As this is a nuisance more likely to spread than 
 to abate, and as the operation of these schemes converts 
 parishes, utterly irrespective of the views or wishes of 
 the residents, into entrenched positions for the doughty 
 champions of this or that party, there is a public ground 
 of interference. 
 
 Trusts so constituted are admittedly unknown to the 
 spirit and constitution of the Church of England ; and, 
 unless prescription and lapse of time have conferred a
 
 27 
 
 title^ it may be a question whether any Bishop who should 
 summon up moral courage enough to treat their presenta- 
 tion as a nullity, might not be on sound ground in holding 
 that the preferment had lapsed to him. 
 
 Yet with this class of livings public interference need 
 be very slight ; and, without giving direct countenance to 
 the object for which the trust was constituted at pecuniary 
 cost, still continue its fair influence. 
 
 Of such trusts it would be enough to enact that all 
 vacancies in the bodies of trustees should cease to be filled 
 up by co-optation, and that instead thereof new trustees 
 should be chosen from time to time by the seatholders of 
 the congregation, or the tithe-payers of the parishes them- 
 selves. 
 
 Such a change would involve neither cost nor injustice ; 
 since the maintenance of certain views should continue to 
 be attained by the affection and training of the electors 
 themselves. A perpetuity as long as desirable, and far 
 preferable to the growing narrowness and cliquishness 
 engendered by the trusts as now constituted. 
 
 In this kind of patronage the voice of the laity would 
 not be, as in the first, effectual at once, but would only 
 then become distinctly potential when trustees elected by 
 them should have become the majority. 
 
 3. We come now to the head of livings in private 
 patronage. 
 
 These may be sub-divided into two classes by their 
 incidents. 
 
 (a.) Those advowsons which are held in posses- 
 sion with the land of a parish, or manor within a 
 parish ; and
 
 28 
 
 {b.) Those which are entirely separated from the 
 possession of land, unless accompanying glebe. 
 Taking this sub-division as the basis of arrangement, 
 {a.) Let all advowsons of the first class continue 
 to be freehold. 
 
 (h.) Let those of the second class be converted 
 by enactment into a leasehold tenure. 
 
 {a.) With regard to those livings included in 
 the first sub-division. 
 It is no more than reasonable and expedient that this 
 importance and recognition should be continued to the 
 possession of land, seeing that the original endowment of 
 tithes in our Saxon Church was simply a portion of the 
 rent of a manor or manors — thus mainly coincident in 
 boundary with parishes^ — set apart for payment for 
 religious services by the Thanes who held the land in 
 allodial tenure. 
 
 Thus the original patronage vested in the lord of the 
 manor from whose lands the tithes were paid. 
 
 The separation of the patronage from the land was 
 effected afterwards as the regular clergy gained ground 
 against the secular. 
 
 Beginning from the primacy of Dunstan, in the 
 reign of Edgar, when the rights of patronage of new 
 Churches, except mortuary Chapels, were made to vest in 
 the incumbent of the paroichla^ it went on rapidly as 
 abbeys were endowed by the transfer of tithes of parishes 
 throughout the Norman and Plantagenet })eriods. 
 
 It was the dissolution of the abbeys at the Reformation 
 and the giving the tithes they held into private patronage 
 — too often accompanied with the appropriation of the
 
 29 
 
 great tithes to lay purposes — whicli, if it did not initiate, 
 developed and lias reduced to a system tlie scandal of the 
 sale of livings. Hence the patronage, separate from land, 
 which stocks the market and forms the wares of ecclesias- 
 tical hucksters. But it needs slight acquaintance with 
 our small country parishes to know the advantages which 
 a patron, holding large properties including whole parishes, 
 can confer by the judicious selection of ministers, who are 
 to live beside him and to work in harmony with him for 
 the benefit of his tenants and dependents. And if in 
 some instances, or not a few, such patrons are content with 
 a low standard of their responsibilities, the alterations 
 with respect to other patronage will tend to quicken their 
 sense of duty, and place them in its discharge under a 
 keener vigilance of public opinion. 
 
 Let then, those advowsons, remain freehold where more 
 than one-half the land in the parish shall be in the posses- 
 sion of the holder of the advowson, but fall into the 
 regulations of the class below, whenever any should be 
 separated by sale or otherwise from the land. 
 
 {b.) Let it then be enacted further that all other private 
 patronage should become of leasehold tenure ; that is 
 expiring after a certain number of years at a definite time. 
 
 The difference between the just value of the perpetual 
 and the leasehold advowson, is that which would be due to 
 the owner for this interference with his vested rights. 
 
 It was, perhaps, no more than a rough suggestion, and 
 hardly an original one, when the Bishop of Exeter pro- 
 posed that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners should buy 
 up all advowsons. 
 
 So thrown out, it was obviously crude and unpractical.
 
 30 
 
 All the endowments which the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 missioners are so usefully creating for populous parishes 
 would have to be diverted into the pockets of patrons. 
 
 Even then, so gigantic a purchase would overtask and 
 exhaust their resources, present and future. 
 
 But if advowsons are converted from freehold to lease- 
 hold, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners could well defray 
 the cost of the change. 
 
 For the difference between the present value of a 
 freehold in perpetuity and of a leasehold for ninety-nine 
 years at 3^ per cent, is less than 1 per cent. : at a higher 
 rate of interest proportionately less. Between a freehold 
 and a leasehold of seventy-five years there would be a 
 difference of little more than 2 per cent. ; and of fifty years 
 about 5 per cent. Considering the nature of the property, 
 it may be questionable whether the difference in value 
 between the present possession of an advowson, liable to 
 limitations, incidents, contingencies, and a leasehold of 
 fifty years of that advowson, guaranteed by Act of Parlia- 
 ment, could be more than that between a freehold and a 
 leasehold of ninety-nine years as above. 
 
 For it must be borne in mind that whatever legal 
 deference should be conceded to vested interests, the price 
 which an advowson may fetch is partially a speculation, 
 dependent not on rights, but on wrongs. 
 
 It is the practice of the sale of next presentations, or 
 of advowsons, with a corrupt undertaking on the part of 
 the existing incumbent for immediate possession, which 
 forces up their price in the market. 
 
 Yet in what spirit such transactions are looked upon 
 by the eye of the law is shown by the restriction in
 
 31 
 
 purchases upon the clergy themselves, and by the oath on 
 institution, so shamelessly evaded daily. 
 
 It is clearly within the province of Parliament, in the 
 spirit of the existing law, to place at once such restrictions 
 upon this traffic, to guard against their breach by such 
 sanctions, and to visit collusive arrangements with such 
 penalties, as should make it too hazardous and disreputable 
 a risk for any respectable office of legal advisers to have 
 anything to do with. 
 
 Such preliminaries of justice were due to the Church to 
 remove an existing scandal, altogether irrespective of any 
 such commutation as now proposed. 
 
 The true and just price of an advowson is only that 
 which it would command under such stringent and 
 effectual restraint upon simoniacal dealings. 
 
 Whatever the difference between this price and that of 
 a lease of the same advowson for fifty years, let this sum 
 be paid to the patron by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 
 and the living become ultimately in the public patronage 
 of the parishioners. 
 
 The purchase of any unexpired term of these leases of 
 fifty years might be left to be defrayed by rates levied by 
 vote of a due majority of parishioners, or by gifts of 
 private benevolence, or by grants from any society for 
 such object ; such rates, gifts and grants being met by a 
 grant of one-fourth their amount by the Ecclesiastical 
 Commissioners. 
 
 It may well be anticipated from the great sacrifices 
 which the Nonconformists make towards the sustentation 
 of their chapels and ministers, that not only would 
 patronage thus be purchased up by the action of a healthy
 
 32 
 
 religious enthusiasm, but that increased endowments (under 
 a vigour so given to such a scheme as that of the Marquis 
 of Lome) would throw a bright gleam of hope on the 
 desperate outlook of poor incumbents now drifting to lee- 
 ward. 
 
 The modes of trusts for such advowsons should have 
 a wide latitude, provided only that the rights of the laity 
 to an effective voice in the appointment of their pastors are 
 distinctly recognised therein. 
 
 Thus the presentation might lie, as it still does here 
 and there, in some old donatives (seemingly so humble at 
 their foundation as to have escaped Norman rapacity and 
 the greed of monks) with the householders in the parish. 
 
 In others, it might lie with the tithe-payers or seat- 
 holders. 
 
 In others, Representative Trusts might be constituted, 
 a plan which might be found generally to work the best 
 of all. 
 
 In these, /Ive trustees connected with the parish might 
 be elected by the parishioners for a term of years, with or 
 without the addition of Hvo lay representatives from the 
 Diocese. 
 
 The chairman of such trusts should be the Bishop, 
 having a casting vote only, but with power to issue his 
 warrant to his Archdeacon for the Archdeaconry, or to 
 the Rural Dean in the Rural Deanery, to act in his place. 
 
 Such would be the general features of a scheme which 
 would include all but perhaps a few exceptional cases. 
 
 By direct consequence, and as a part of such restora- 
 tion of their rights to the laity, another injustice to them
 
 33 
 
 must be remoyed — the present power of creditors by 
 Queen's writ to the Bishop to sequester a living to satisfy 
 the debts of an incumbent. Tithes in equity are an 
 annual payment for spiritual services so rendered by 
 the receiver. 
 
 It is a monstrous abuse that an incumbent's extrava- 
 gance, itself a grave proof of his unfitness for his position 
 as a spiritual and moral adviser, should be allowed to 
 forestall these payments for many a long year, and to 
 hand over the income of the living to his creditors, except 
 the scanty pittance eked out to him or his hcum tenens 
 for bare subsistence. 
 
 Such privilege accorded to creditors leads them to 
 complicity in extravagance, by carelessly subministering 
 opportunities of incurring debts ; whilst the parish is de- 
 prived of the benefit of the yearly administration of that 
 income within it, which should maintain the position of 
 its parson. 
 
 It is not out of common experience to find parishes, 
 which have suffered the moral blight and actual wrong of 
 such a state of things as this, throughout a generation. 
 
 Let the wrong to the parishioners be controlled and 
 circumscribed thus — that the proceeds of no living should 
 be capable of sequestration for more than thi^ee years ; that 
 the effect of a sequestration should be equivalent to a 
 bankruptcy, in so far that the receipts of these three years 
 should, by the payment of a dividend of so much in the 
 pound, wholly discharge the liability for these debts. 
 
 Should a second sequestration from fresh debts be 
 
 issued, then the living to be avoided by the process ; but 
 
 that there should then be assigned to the creditors no 
 
 c
 
 34 
 
 more than one'third of the proceeds^ nor for longer during 
 the tenure of the new incumbent than three years from 
 the date of issue. 
 
 III. 
 
 With regard to the further effects of this Reform for restoring 
 to the laity rights which they once had in the election of 
 pastors to the cure of souls, but which have been gradually 
 supplanted by the worldly lucre of property in souls, it 
 will be obvious that such changes would set others in 
 motion and would not rest in themselves. 
 
 Such further results might be left for the future to 
 develope in their own form and time ; but as they would 
 clearly tend in two directions — in that of organisation and 
 in that of dogma — some notice is due to them here. 
 
 I. In organisation they would necessarily lead (1) to 
 an entire reconstruction of that useless and obstructive 
 anachronism — Convocation. 
 
 That the Lower House of Convocation is not only no 
 representation of the whole body of the clergy, but even so 
 far as it is representative, is neutralised by an undue pre- 
 ponderance of nominees of the Upper House, or ex officio 
 members, is beyond denial. 
 
 Of the laity of the Church it is not only no repre- 
 sentation at all, but is a standing embodiment of that 
 false principle which obtained in the media3val, and now 
 holds full sway in the llomish Church, that matters of
 
 35 
 
 faith are for the discussion and settlement of Bishops and 
 priests alone^, and that to the laity pertains only to receive 
 and obey. 
 
 In reconstruction (for it is beyond mere reform) it 
 would yield place for a body representative as well of 
 the laity as of the clergy, whose regulations would there- 
 fore carry with them the weight of opinion of the assembled 
 National Church. 
 
 Again, (2) the reform proposed would lead not incon- 
 sequently to a different mode of election to the office of 
 Bishops. 
 
 It does not need to go back to the gross days of the 
 later Stuarts or the first Grcorges, to evidence the moral 
 unfitness of lodging this absolute power of appointing 
 chief pastors in the Church of Christ in the hands of the 
 Crown by its Prime Minister ; it is enough to recall the 
 admitted private character of some who have wielded it in 
 our own times. Nay, if it were otherwise, it is not right 
 that the disposal of these offices should depend on one 
 whose bias may be strongly in favour of one school, and 
 that perchance repugnant to the religious convictions of 
 the great body of the members of the Church. 
 
 Though for some time yet, and in a state of transition, 
 such power might remain as in deposit where it now is, 
 the election of its Bishops could hardly long be withheld 
 from a Church which had vindicated its rights in the 
 election of its pastors. Neither with its representative 
 body organised, would the mode of such election present 
 difficulty. 
 
 II. Those further changes in the direction of dogma 
 
 2
 
 36 
 
 to which the above reform would lead, must necessarily 
 lean towards relaxation ; an extension of " liberty of 
 prophesying." 
 
 As matters now stand^ the aspirations of revisionists 
 are a vain chimera, a phantom love. There is and can be 
 no possibility of their success in the Church as it now 
 exists. 
 
 But the position of the Clergy in permanent posts, 
 through the confidence of those by whom they were 
 elected, would give them a strength and support lacking 
 now. In the councils of the Church each would speak 
 with more weight, when conscious of having his people 
 with him. With such influence added to his own, an 
 option and alternative, at least, would be obtainable in the 
 usage of passages in the formularies, repugnant to a large 
 party, or of a creed more widely obnoxious still. 
 
 But then this scheme would not drive out the 
 Ritualists from their posts within the Church, supported 
 as they are by a minority, more influential perhaps by 
 wealth than numerous ? 
 
 Certainly not : nor should it be sought to impose novel 
 limitations on any already ordained at the time of their 
 adoption, since the other party would repel the attempt 
 to do so upon them. 
 
 But this it would do : it would bring the proportion of 
 clergy upholding Ritualism, to something like the propor- 
 tion of laity accepting it. It would obviate the outrage 
 of men of such views being thrust by episcopal nepotism, 
 or personal favor, upon congregations averse to their rule, 
 and regarding with detestation their })riestly claims. Its 
 effect would be to widen far more towards freedom of
 
 37 
 
 thought, than sacerdotal claims, the basis of the National 
 Church. 
 
 If, as we believe is the case, the vast majority of the 
 scientific and professional, the middle and artisan classes 
 are sound at heart in the principles of the Reformation, 
 let them but have such voice, that they may secure the 
 ministrations of men of accordant opinions ; and the 
 number of Clergy in parishes advocating sacramental 
 confession, host elevation, and such like, would soon 
 shrink to a number more commensurate with the nu- 
 merical paucity of their noisy and pretentious lay fol- 
 lowing. Grive to the disciples of Reformation principles 
 power to attain the posts of teachers, and scope to spread 
 their views more boldly, and whatever struggles sacer- 
 dotalism might make, it would have to give ground before 
 the advance of knowledge, and to accept defeat before 
 the deeper impulses of free religious thought. 
 
 Yet, if the early Church contained within its wide 
 limits an Origen and a Cyprian : if under a common 
 elemental creed it gave play to their divei'gencies of 
 thought ; is it too late to regain the freedom of the past ? 
 
 The Western Church, by deeming that it was neces- 
 sary to add dogma to dogma, in order to trace out the 
 confines of orthodoxy and the essentials of faith, has 
 narrowed Christianity and has made itself uncatholic. The 
 Reformed Churches, whilst casting off" much of the mind's 
 enslavement through the overgrowth of centuries, have yet 
 kept too much in the track of the Latin Church ; not 
 recognising the logical sequence from premises, on which 
 they asserted i)artial freedom, they have imposed later 
 creeds and new articles for the acceptance and assent.
 
 38 
 
 instead of issuing them as directories, at best only fallible, 
 for the help and guidance of the human soul. 
 
 It may be in the future of a Church more truly 
 national^ aye, universal, to retrace steps, which have 
 caused, by defining, heresies ; and perpetuated, by cutting 
 off, schisms. 
 
 In fine, we might hope that the freedom of election 
 above imperfectly advocated, since liberal to all, might 
 bring again within the pale of our Church the large bodies 
 of those who now are separate from her, since they would 
 have little cause for political hostility to a Church, whose 
 children enjoyed so wide a liberty, built upon the strong 
 basis of their own suffrage — a liberty open to them to 
 take their share of. 
 
 Our united strength would then be available for com- 
 bined aggression upon darkness and vice, upon ignorance 
 and sensuality at home and abroad, instead of being dissi- 
 pated on the internecine animosities which waste the strength 
 of all, and which make the state of the Christian Church 
 in England like that of Great Britain itself, when all along 
 the borders of Scotland and the marches of Wales the 
 force, which now concentrated under one Sovereign places 
 her amongst the first of nations, was neutralised in the 
 watchfulness of mutual hostilities and squandered in petty 
 reprisals. 
 
 But it may be objected this would be concurrent 
 endowment. Well, do not let us be too hastily alarmed 
 at the sound of a clap-trap cry. 
 
 It would Ije concurrent endowment, so far that the 
 National Church would comprise openly — as in truth it 
 does more or less in secret now — men of very different
 
 39 
 
 schools ; but the endowments would then be used only 
 just so far as the sense of the nation in its units of con- 
 gregations attributed such revenues to the furtherance of 
 the one or the other. 
 
 Let those who are affrighted at the word consider 
 whether, if we could suppose a revolution to sweep away 
 endowmentSj seat rents, churches, and to hand them over 
 to secular purposes, endowment, though separate yet 
 virtually concurrent, would not be set up by each party 
 again, just in proportion to the strengh of its resources, 
 the depth of its religious fervour, and the constraint of its 
 self-denial. 
 
 Like the realisation of the wild dreams of Communism, 
 such revolution would be but to make away with the 
 present, to begin on the morrow the same round of aims 
 and purposes anew. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The advantage of the changes above advocated would 
 be general, and more or less be partaken of by all. 
 
 It would be vain indeed to appeal to the Eitualists for 
 their support, since their effect would be to circumscribe 
 and contract the field of which they are now gaining 
 possession. Yet, whilst it would prevent their being 
 thrust on unwilling flocks, and enabled to force, as now, 
 their ministrations in parishes, on those who abhor their 
 tenets, it would give them a firmer ground in places where 
 their doctrines and practices were acceptable.
 
 40 
 
 It would be also more than sanguine to expect the old 
 High Church to concur, since they have with consistent 
 persistence opposed every reform in the direction of 
 political or religious freedom ; yet they are men who hold 
 a well-won respect, distinguished for kindliness of spirit 
 and practical good sense in the every-day matters of life, 
 and whose very faults spring from the tenacity and solidity 
 of thorough English character. 
 
 It is surely worth their while to weigh well whether, 
 as they have followed in silence where their leaders have 
 prudently yielded before, the above compromise in favor 
 of the laity were not better than that their rash allies, 
 the Eitualists, to whom they have lent dangerous counte- 
 nance, should hurry them forward till the national feeling 
 is aroused, and in an hour of political excitement the 
 calamity, as we both should deem it, of Disestablishment 
 overtake and befall the Church. 
 
 On the Evangelical party the acceptance of the reform 
 might be strongly pressed, as the only way by which they 
 can struggle out of the distressing position of helplessness 
 and complicity with sacerdotalism into which they have 
 by late events been cast. 
 
 They have little to fear, and much perchance to gain. 
 Their congregations, nursed up under ministers of their 
 own appointment, would be likely to select as representa- 
 tive trustees men of like opinions, and secure their present 
 ground ; whilst many a parish, now closed against them, 
 would, through lay election, be gained to their cause by 
 adherents, braced by the inspiration of newly-won inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 They would be apt indeed to look with suspicion lest
 
 41 
 
 tliese gains should be shared by a section whom they 
 dread more even than the Eitualists — the Broad Church. 
 
 No doubt freedom of thought would obtain more definite 
 recognition ; but, though here and there a thoughtful man 
 might exercise exceptional influence^ they need fear little 
 that the hesitations and spirit of painful investigation, 
 which exercise men of student life, will ever become 
 widely popular. 
 
 The standard of intellectuality must be strangely raised 
 amongst our middle classes before they become prone to 
 discuss or to be interested in the speculations which dis- 
 turb or stir the minds of men of this school : " the weari- 
 some bitterness," as old Lily calls it, ^^of the scholar's 
 learning." 
 
 He who attains the greatest popularity as a religious 
 guide is not he who teaches much and argues profoundly ; 
 but he who makes a little of truth go a great way, extends, 
 amplifies, and illustrates, presenting clearly in fresh forms 
 the same recurrent familiar ideas. 
 
 Better for the Evangelicals such recognition of the 
 Broad Church, to which the principles of the Reformation, 
 to which they profess to defer, plainly lead, than the 
 suppression which now prevails ; just as the open stream 
 is less destructive in its effects than the concealed under- 
 current secretly mining. 
 
 Amongst those not now of her communion, let the 
 Wesleyans remember the fidelity of their founder to the 
 Church of England, and their old friendship. Of late 
 they have been driven off as at a tangent by the increase 
 of Ritualism, and have shown signs of throwing in their 
 lot with those who seek her Disestablishment.
 
 42 
 
 Let tliem consider fairly whether such reform does not 
 offer an Eirenicon to them, and open out the way for their 
 return to union on honorable terms. 
 
 Nay, were the position so changed, might not the 
 great bodies of Nonconformists, who are now banding 
 together, and invoking the working classes to use their 
 new power to hurry on Disestablishment, give pause ? 
 
 It were worthy their struggles of old for conscience 
 sake, to regard the question, not in the petty interest of 
 this or that group of chapels, but as to what best concerns 
 the spiritual advance of a whole nation. 
 
 Let them not be led away by the igiies fatiii of 
 abstract theories. An old country is not the place where 
 they can be exclusively developed. To carry practical 
 reforms is feasible : not to start society afresh on the 
 uniformity of a theory. Its advocates will be let and 
 hindered on every side. Their strongest denunciations 
 will but evoke a counter animosity in the battle-field of 
 civil strife, where the victory is never wholly to one side. 
 Let them rather, as honorable allies, further with all the 
 weight of their organisation and votes this reform within 
 the Established Church, and they will have gone far to 
 gain all the spiritual freedom, in which they themselves 
 may take full share, which they look for from Disestablish- 
 ment, without the poverty and dependence to which they 
 would reduce the ministers of the Gospel by successful 
 Disendowment. 
 
 The forces of Churchmen loyal to the Reformation 
 within, and of Nonconformists without, organised and 
 united, would be powerful enough to accomplish this — a 
 greater act of reform in the National Church, whilst a less
 
 43 
 
 painful enterprise, tlian the Disestablisliment and Disen- 
 dowment of tlie Churcli of the minority in Ireland. 
 
 '' The Church of England/' says the leading organ and 
 most accurate dynanometer of public opinion, " is not to be 
 Romanised. If the Bishops cannot prevent it the laymen 
 must try ; and if they fail, the end of the experiment is 
 near at hand." 
 
 And again, " If the evil of habitual confession goes on, 
 popular feeling will undoubtedly make short work of an 
 institution which shelters so offensive a superstition under 
 the shield of national authority." 
 
 The Archbishops, from their position slow to speak, 
 have concurred in describing the danger as " real." 
 
 There is, indeed, another alternative ; that the nation 
 should gradually yield ; and through the machinations of 
 the Ritualists within, and her own efforts without, the 
 foreign Church of Rome be successful "in subjugating 
 the inflexible will of an imperial race." 
 
 The success of sacerdotal ambition could only mark 
 the decadence of England's glory, and the loss of her 
 place amongst nations ; but if this we deem unreasonable 
 to suppose, since things cannot remain as they are, but 
 are inevitably hurrying onward towards some great change, 
 we must fain endeavour to answer the question, " Reform 
 OR Disestablishment, which?" 
 
 Robert Hardwicke, Printer, 192, Piccadilly, W.

 
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