Wk r .-2:0- -^by BANCROFT LIBRARY ■*#» THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/essaysecclesiastOOconyrich ESSAYS ECCLESIASTICAL AND SOCIAL. London : A. and G. A. Spottiswoode, New-street- Square. ESSAYS ECCLESIASTICAL AND SOCIAL. REPBINTED, WITH ADDITIONS, FROM THE EDINBUKGH EEVIEW. v>oi'(lvavr» John BY -WV--J7 CONYBEARE, M. A. 1%'?*-/* It L.ATK FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CA5IBRIDGE. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 1855. c 7 a-«J Bancroft LIBRARY PREFACE. In the true sense of the words, there can be no eccle- r- siastical question which is not also a social question, t[ nor any social question which is not also an ecclesiastical question. For the Church is nothing else but a catho- lic society, divinely instituted for social ends ; and if the actual realised the ideal, therein would originate, and thereby would be applied, the remedies for all moral evils w^hich afflict humanity. Yet, perhaps, there is no branch of the Universal Church which now adequately fulfils this heavenly mission. In England, indeed, the National Church cannot even attempt the task, except by the Zj isolated efforts of her individual members ; for she has o no power of collective action, and can scarcely be said 3: to possess any functionaries except her clergy, c The main purpose of the present Volume is to illas- c: trate the great need which exists for a more perfect ^ organisation of the Church, both with a view to in- ternal discipline and external efficiency. The four first Essays are designed to give a picture of the actual state of the National Establishment, viewed in several different aspects ; the general object of them all being, partly to remove some prevalent misconceptions, but principally to throw light upon those causes which A 3 VI PREFACE. have prevented the Church of England from adapting herself to the emergencies of modern times, and from taking her proper place at the head of the nation, as the originator of all good and holy reformation. The two last Essays (those on " Mormonism " and on the "Agitation against Intemperance") are meant to illus- trate the nature of those calls upon her energies which she is at present unable to meet : the former exemplifies the helplessness of her people against the seductions of a blasphemous imposture; the latter shows the need of her guidance to aid in suppressing a national vice, and to check the follies which must always blemish popular movements uncontrolled by authoritative wisdom ; and both give evidence of the great results which may be wrought even by the weakest instruments, with the aid of co-operative machinery, systematised association, and unity of action. Torquay, April 3. 1855. P. S. For the alterations made in the present edition of the Essay on " Church Parties," the reader is referred to the separate prefatory notice prefixed thereto. CONTENTS, General Preface - - - - - - v, vi ESSAY I. — The Church in the Mountains: Social condition of the mountain Clergy similar to that of the rural Clergy in the seventeenth century - - 1 — 5 Causes of this - - - - 6 — 1 1 Details respecting the character of the Clergy, the disposal of patronage, the celebration of public worship, and the education of the poor in Wales - _ - n — 26 Similar details concerning the Church in the English mountains - _ - 26 — 28 Differences caused by the prevalence of dissent in Wales . - - - 28 — 36 Other difficulties peculiar to Wales - 36 — 40 Improvements effected in the present genera- tion ----- 40—48 Desiderata, 1. Increased income for the' Mountain Clergy 2. Improvement of their I ^g ^g education 3. Better discipline 4. Better organisation vin CONTENTS. ESSAY II Church Parties : Prefatory notices - - - Triple subdivision of Church Parties 1. Normal type. The Evangelical Yartj - 2. Exaggerated type. The Recordite Party 1. Normal type. The Anglican Party - 2. Exaggerated type. The Tractarian Party The High Church 1 Stagnant types (consi- „ Low Church J dered together) "1. Normal type (divided into two sections, The Low Church The High Church 57—59 59—60 60—74 74_100 100—115 116—134 135—141 The Broad Church^ theoretical and anti- theoretical) - 141 — 149 2. Exaggerated type - 150 — 154 ,3. Stagnant type - 154 — 156 Numerical strength of the different parties - 156—159 Increase of popular infidelity (caused by religious strife) must be checked by mutual toleration - - - 159 — 164 ESSAY ni. — Ecclesiastical Economy : Sources and amount of the Ecclesiastical revenues in England - - - 165- Vulgar errors on the subject - - 171- The professional income of the parochial Clergy _ . _ Incomes of Dignitaries, and reasons for main- , taining them - - - - Motives which induce men to become Clergymen - - - - 179 — 185 ■171 ■173 - 173—176 176—179 CONTENTS. IX Essay ///.—continued. Pages Mercenary Ministers not peculiar to Esta- blished Churches - - - 185—190 Necessity of Cathedral Establishments main- tained by Dr. Chalmers - - 190—191 Evils of lowering the social position of the Clergy - - - . 191—194 Correction of misconceptions on the subject of Curates and Clerical avarice - 194 — 198 Legislative provision required : 1. For management of Church estates and augmentation of poor livings 1 99 — 200 2. For education of the poorer Clergy 200 — 202 3. For reduction of the fees of Ecclesi- astical attorneys - - 202 — 203 4. For building and endowing new Churches - - . 203 — 204 5. For reform of the Laws of Simony and Patronage - - - 205 — 213 Protest against legislative alienation of Ecclesiastical Property - - 213 — ^218 ESSAY rV. — Vestries AND Church-rates: Tardiness of Ecclesiastical legislation - 220 — 222 The Vestry, the Parochial Synod - - 223 Example of its actual working - - 223 — 227 Original causes of its degradation - - 228 — ^229 Powers of the Vestry - - -230—231 The Lay Officers of the Church : 1. Churchwardens - 231—233 2. Parish Clerk - 233—234 3. Sexton - - 234—235 Origin, history, and present law of Church- rates ----- 235—244 Evils of the present system - - 245 — 256 Changes proposed, divided into three classes, and separately considered - - 257 — ^269 X CONTENTS. Essay IV. — continued. A new scheme suggested - - - 270 — 272 Reform of Church-rates should be accom- panied by — 1. Change in Ecclesiastical law proceedings - - 272 2. Legal facilities for restoration of genuine parochial Church assemblies - - - 272—277 These changes would pave the way to the restoration of Diocesan and National Synods - - - - 277—279 ESSAY Y.—Mormonism: History and character of the Book of Mormon - - - - 280—283 Early Life of Joseph ^mith - - 283—289 Foundation and early struggles of the Mor- mon Church - - - - 289—300 Joseph Smith's reign at Nauvoo ; his im- prisonment and death - - 300 — 307 His character - - - - 307—310 Exodus of the Mormons, and colonisation of Utah - . - - 310—326 Mormon emigration from Europe - - 326 — 330 Theology of Mormonism, and its recent development - - - - 330—342 Mormon polygamy . - _ 342 — 354 Other ethical peculiarities - - 354 — 356 Their public worship, and Ecclesiastical constitution - - - - 357 — 361 Their present chiefs - - -361 — 365 Mormon missions - - - - 365 — 367 Causes of the success of MormoniBm - 367 — 372 Its future prospects - - - 372 — 374 Practical inferences - - - 374 — 376 CONTENTS. Xi ESSAY VI. — Agitation and Legislation against In- TEMPERANCE : Political power of " Platform Agitations" - 377—378 Follies of the popular agitators - - 378 — 383 Their violence against the moderate use of fermented liquors - - - 383 — 387 Their perversions of Scripture - - 387 — 390 Their better points - - - 390—392 Medical Arguments in favour of total ab- stinence - - * - - 392—398 Effects of intemperance in producing crime (evidence of the judges, &c.) - - 398 — 401 Effects of intemperance in destroying the comfort of the working classes - 401 — 402 Proofs that severe labour and exposure are better endured without alcoholic stimulus - - - _ 403 — 408 Religious objections, answered by practical effects (Gough's life) - - - 408—415 Moderation versus Abstinence - -415—417 Results of the temperance agitation in England . - . . 417—418 Its prohibitory legislation in America - 418 — 420 Arguments in defence of this, moral and political - _ . - 420 — 425 Results of the prohibitory laws in America 425 — 426 Movement for similar legislation in Eng- land, and its difficulties - - 426—429 Such prohibitory laws should be accom- panied with increased provision for popular amusement - - - 429 — 430 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. April, 1853. 1. Life of R. Walker, Perpetual Curate of Seathwaite, By the Rev. R. Parkinson, B.D., Principal of St. Bees College. London: 1843. 2. Reports of the Commissioners on Education in Wales, Lon- don: 1847. 3. Wales, By SiR Thomas Phillips. London: 1849. 4. Report of the Society for providing additional Clergymen in the Diocese of Llandaff. London: 1852. In the liveliest and most graphic of all histories, there are few passages more lively or more graphic than that in which our great historian sketches the condition of the clergy between the Restoration and the Revolution. Nor is there any other portion of his work which has subjected Mr. Macaulay to more angry criticism. He has been accused of exaggeration and of caricature ; of mistaking the exceptions for the rule ; of making sati- rical lampoons the basis of historical statements; and even of intentionally misrepresenting the evidence which he cites, out of a desire to degrade the clerical order. His assailants, before they disputed the accuracy of his picture, and even denied the possibility of such a state of things as that which he portrays, would have done B 2 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. more wisely if they had examined, not only the records of the past, but the facts of the present. Instead of forming their conclusions from what they saw around them in the wealthier districts of southern or central England, they should have made acquaintance with the mountain solitudes of Wales, or the wild moorlands of Cumberland. There they would have found even yet existing not a few specimens of a clergy whose general circumstances and position a few years ago might be accurately represented in the very words of that cele- brated description to which we have referred. " The Anglican priesthood," says Mr. Macaulay, " was divided into two sections, which in acquirements, in manners, and in social position, differed widely from each other. One section, trained for cities and courts, comprised men familiar with all ancient and modern learning . . . men of address, politeness, and knowledge of the world ; men with whom Halifax loved to discuss the interests of empires, and from whom Dryden was not ashamed to own that he had learned to write. The other section . . . was dispersed over the country, and consisted chiefly of persons not at all wealthier, and not much more refined, than small farmers or upper ser- vants. . . . The clergy [in these rural districts] were regarded as a plebeian class. ... A waiting woman was generally considered as the most suitable helpmate for a parson. . . . Not one living in fifty enabled the in- cumbent to bring up a family comfortably. ... It was a white day on which he was admitted into the kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the servants with cold meat and ale. His children were brought up like the children of the neighbouring peasantry. His boys fol- lowed the plough, and his girls went out to service." We have only to change the verbs in this passage from THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 3 the past tense into the present, and it will be a faithful representation, not of the Anglican priesthood in the seventeenth century, but of the Cambrian and Cumbrian clergy in the nineteenth. A description, then, of the habits and manners, the education and social position, of these mountain clergy is not uninteresting to the historian. Yet if that de- scription could serve no other end than to gratify his- torical curiosity, we should never have undertaken it ; for it is far more painful than it is curious, to wit- ness any case of failure in the greatest and most beneficent of our national institutions — the Parochial System of the Church ; and we cannot investigate the condition of our mountain districts without perceiving that such a failure has, at least partially, occurred. Under these circumstances, no mere curiosity would lead us to probe the wounds of the Church. If, indeed, the evils which we lament were incurable, we should veil them from the light in reverential silence. Nay, if we saw no sign of amendment, we might abstain, in hopeless discouragement, from suggesting remedies, where there was no wish for cure. But the case is far otherwise. Many of the worst abuses are already rooted out; others are much abated. A description which would, fifty years ago, have suited almost the whole of Wales, and many counties in the north of England, must now be limited to the most impoverished districts of the former, and the wildest regions of the latter. The realms of clerical barbarism are shrinking before the advance of civilisation and the efforts of conscientious men. Yet this improvement may be rendered more rapid, and these reformers may be aided, by co-operation from without. Such co-operation can only be expected from an enlightened public opinion ; and public opinion 4 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. requires a fuller knowledge of the facts for its enlighten- ment. It is in the hope of contributing to this know- ledge that we enter upon the subject. We have said that Mr. Macaulay's account of the Rural Clergy of the reign of Charles II. would ap- ply almost verbatim to the Mountain Clergy of the present century. We may add that this condition of things originates in the same cause which he assigns for it ; namely, the inadequacy of the parochial endow- ments. But here we must guard against misconception. Let it not for a moment be supposed that we consider poverty a degradation to the preacher of the Gospel. God forbid that wealth should be necessary to the mi- nistry of a religion which made the poor of this world rich in faith — a religion whose apostles were Galilean fishermen. A clergy may be very ill-endowed, and yet, by a judicious system of organisation and discipline, and by a proper provision for its education, it may command not only the love of the poor, but the respect of the rich. The efficiency of the Scotch establishment during the last century and a half is a decisive proof of this. But if we have a clergy taken from the poorer classes of society, and left in indigence, without educa- tion, without superintendence, without organisation, and without discipline, then it will inevitably become de- spised and despicable. Not that a priesthood of vulgar paupers is in reality more contemptible than a hierarchy of well-bred Sybarites ; for, in the sight of God, Leo X. was perhaps more despicable than Tetzel ; but that the cultivated Epicurean will be able to veil his faults under a more decent disguise. The careless and undevout members of an uneducated peasant clergy will retain the low tastes and coarse vices of the class from which they sprang ; and the zealous (who at the best must be THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 5 a minority) will disgust their more intelligent parish- ioners by an illiterate fanaticism. These may be fol- lowed by the ignorant, but will be ridiculed by the educated; those will be deservedly despised by rich and poor alike. When men who are appointed by the State to be the religious guides and examples of the people thus forfeit both the respect of the wise and the esteem of the good, the object of their mission is defeated. But, before we proceed, we ought to notice the objec- tion which will be made to our views by some good men, whose disgust has been excited by the Mammon -worship too often seen in a rich establishment, and who fancy that they might get rid of worldly clergymen if they could get rid of wealthy endowments. Those who imagine this forget that poverty does not secure zeal, and that fasting must be voluntary to foster self-denial. Poor benefices are as great a temptation to the peasant as rich bishoprics to the peer. Secular motives are not excluded by small emoluments, but only brought to bear upon a lower class. If we could expect that the minis- ters of the Gospel would be all, or most of them, men of apostolic life and apostolic wisdom, their apostolic poverty would relieve them from many trammels ; and their lowly origin, while it enabled them better to sym- pathise with the humblest, would command the rever- ence of every rank ; for no real vulgarity can exist in him who is the devoted servant of God. Lancashire, among all her worthies, boasts none worthier than the poor and ignorant Walker of Seathwaite. But such men are necessarily exceptional. In regulating a great national institution, we must consider the effect of cir- cumstances, not upon apostolic individuals, but upon the multitude ; we must deal with men as they are, not as they ought to be. If no man were to be admitted to B 3 6 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. the ministry who had not the spirit of a Paul or a Ber- nard, a Xavier or a Wesley, we must give up established churches and parochial systems altogether. No human regulations can raise the general mass of any great pro- fession above the weaknesses of ordinary humanity; but a wise machinery may, nevertheless, create a body of parochial ministers, who, though falling below the ideal standard, may confer a thousand blessings on the nation. We repeat then, that poverty, though in a Church perfectly organised and provided with all requisite ma- chinery it would not necessarily degrade the clergy, yet has been, under our existing system, an actual cause of their degradation. In mountain countries, the produce of the land, and consequently the value of the tithe, must always be smaller than in more fertile districts. But this necessary poverty has, both in England and Wales, been much increased by spoliation. In the middle ages the tithes of many parishes were alienated to monastic bodies ; and when the monasteries were suppressed, the tithes, instead of reverting, as they should have done, to the parochial clergy, were granted by the Crown to other parties. It is strange, that the Church was most robbed in the very localities where it was originally poorest. The tithes thus alienated from the parochial clergy amount in the diocese of Bangor to a third of the whole ; in St. Asaph and Llandaff to half; and in St. David's (which has been most despoiled), to four-sevenths of the whole. In the diocese of Carlisle*, four parishes out of ^yq (199 out of 249) have been stripped of more than half their tithes, and 154 stripped * We include in the diocese of Carlisle the portions of Lancashire and Westmoreland prospectively transferred to it by Act of Parliament. THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 7 of the whole. In Durham, 147 parishes out of 260 have been entirely deprived of tithes.* In Wales, there are 282 benefices in which the clergyman's annual in- come is below 100/., and 527 benefices in which it is below 150/. In the diocese of St. David's, the number of livings below 150/. is 290 out of 419, or about three in every four; and 167 of these are below 100/. In Durham, 62 livings out of 260 are below 150/. In Carlisle, which is the poorest of all, out of 249 livings, 151 are below 150/., and 95 (nearly half) are below 100/. But the actual poverty of the clergy in these districts has been even greater than that which the above statis- tics would lead us to suppose. For, till very recently, it was the practice to accumulate the richer benefices in a few favoured hands, and to leave only the refuse for distribution among the mass of the clergy. The bishops of half a century ago seem to have been absolutely without a conscience in the disposal of their preferment. Their best livings and stalls were usually bestowed in leashes upon their sons or nephews ; and when these were satisfied, the benefices next in value were similarly strung together in favour of some Episcopal chaplain or college friend. Sir T. Phillips gives the following ex- amples of such abuses, selected from the first report of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, which was published twenty years ago. At that time, a single ecclesiastic held the following preferment; in the diocese of St. David's three rectories, including five parishes ; in the diocese of Gloster one rectory, including three parishes ; in the diocese of Bristol one prebendal stall. Another * In Durham, however, many of these perpetual curacies are sufficiently endowed from other sources, though they have lost their tithes. B 4 8 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. individual held two rectories in St. David^s, a prebend of St. David's, two perpetual curacies in St. David's, an archdeaconry in St. David's, and a prebend of Brecon. Another held a rectory in Bangor, a perpetual curacy in Winchester, and two vicarages in St. David's. Another held a stall in St. David's, the chancellorship of St. Paul's in London, a rectory in Durham, and a perpetual curacy in Durham. Another held a stall in St. David's, a rectory in Salisbury, a stall at Wells, and a rectory in Winchester. Another held a rectory in St. Asaph, a rectory in Durham, a second rectory in St. Asaph, a vicarage in Durham, and a stall at Norwich, and his income from these five preferments amounted to AOOOL a year.* We ought not, however, to mention these abuses with- out stating that they belong to the past, and are rendered impossible for the future, not only by the higher sense of duty which animates the dispensers of ecclesiastical patronage, but also by an Act of Parliament against pluralities, which was passed in the present reign, with the unanimous concurrence of the Episcopal bench. Nevertheless, the consequences of these past transgres- sions still exist ; the law must respect vested interests ; * For other gross cases, see Phillips, p. 214 — 217. Canon Williams of St. Asaph, in a visitation sermon recently published, gives the following ac- count of the former state of things in that diocese. " The best preferments were notoriously given with reference to some political or family influence. Even within my own recollection of many parts of this diocese, clerical non- residence appeared to be the rule, and residence the comparatively rare ex- ception. The spiritual care of the parishioners, was entrusted to curates, en- gaged at stipends disgracefully low. Even in their case, residence was not invariably enforced, and they often travelled several miles to perform their Sunday duty. On week days the intercourse between the pastor and his flock was in great measure suspended. . . . Nor was it always con- sidered necessary to preach even a single sermon on Sundays." THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. V and the pluralists created by a less conscientious age will cumber the ground for a few years longer.* These pluralities probably reduced the average income of the Welsh clergy in the poorer counties, twenty years ago, to below 100^. a year. In the English moun- tains, as we have seen, it is still not much higher than this. Now it is plain that no parent whose means enable him to give his son a liberal education, will edu- cate him for a profession in which his probable income would be (at the best) under 200Z. a year. The cost of an English University education, including school as well as college, ranges between 1000^. and 3000/.; 1500/. may be considered 'a moderate estimate. But a parent would clearly be making a bad investment for his son, if he sank 1500/. for him in a way which only produced a life income of 150/., charged with the condition of performing certain professional duties. In fact, he might purchase a life annuity charged with no conditions at all, on better terms.f Hence it follows, that the paro- chial clergy of districts so ill-endowed as those we have described, must be mainly drawn from classes below the gentry. And, in point of fact, we find that they are, with few exceptions, the sons of farmers or small trades- men, who do not difi*er in habits or education from their parents, brothers, and cousins. But it must be remembered, that amongst this rustic hierarchy are to be found, scattered here and there, some clergymen of rank and fortune, some of professional * Out of 56 parishes, in the North of Pembrokeshire, 33 were still with- out a resident clergyman in 1847. See Educ. Com. Rep. i. p. 24. f It is no answer to this to say, that English gentlemen of the highest education are daily ordained to curacies of less value than this; because these curacies are only the first step in their professional life, just as an en- signcy is the first step in a military career. 10 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. eminence, some of European reputation. So groundless is that cavil which accuses Mr. Macaulay of inconsistency in representing two orders of men so widely different from each other as existing side by side in the same pro- fession. The very difference which he describes may be still seen in the regions of which we write. Thus, while the diocese of Carlisle was adorned by the science and piety of Dean Milner, and the acute logic of Archdeacon Paley, the mass of the inferior clergy were, in manners and acquirements, scarcely raised above the Cumbrian peasantry ; and even now, within sight of those cathe- drals which we associate with the names of Copleston and Thirl wall, indigenous pastors ^e to be found who cannot speak English grammatically, and who frequent the rural tavern in company with the neighbouring farmers. It is this latter class of clergy which forms our present subject. Their numbers may be roughly estimated at between 700 and 800 in Wales *, and about 200 in the * We have ascertained that out of 100 clergymen in the diocese of Bangor, taken at random, in November, 1852, there were — sons of clergymen, 29 ; sons of other gentlemen, 30 ; sons of farmers or tradesmen, 41. That is, two- fifths are the sons of farmers or tradesmen. We believe the proportion in St. Asaph is about the same. Now in 1852 there were (including curates) in the diocese of Bangor, 169 clergy, and in the diocese of St. Asaph, 221 clergy. Hence, two-fifths of these, or about 150 of the North Welsh clergy, are the sons of the lower classes. But, probably, a third of this number have received an Oxonian education, as servitors of Jesus College (a cu-cum- stance which does not exist in South Wales). Hence we may deduct 50 from the class, as being better educated than the rest, and reckon the pea- sant clergy in North Wales as 100. In South Wales the livings below 150/., and the curacies, are almost invariably held by this class ; and many of the livings of higher value also. So that if we reckon all the curacies, and all the hold- ers of livings below 150?., as belonging to the peasant clergy, we shall still understate their number. Now in Llandaff" diocese this will make their number 219, and in St. David's 402. So that we shall have 621 in South Wales, and in the whole of Wales their number will amount to 721. THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 11 north of England.* The features which we have to notice are strikingly similar in both localities ; but we shall speak first and chiefly of that which, from its size and quasi-national peculiarities, is of most importance — the Principality of Wales. A friend of ours was consulted, not long since, by a shopkeeper in a Welsh provincial town, concerning the prospects of his second son. "I am thinking, sir," said he, "of sending him into the Church. His brother is a clever lad, and takes well to the business, but I can't make anything of this one. I thought to set him up in trade, but he hasn't the head for it. But I fancy, sir, he might soon learn enough to be ordained." But, not- withstanding some recruits of this kind from the com- mercial interest, the chief supply of clergy is derived from the farming class ; probably because the shop- keepers, by pushing their children in trade, can give them a better provision than the Church would ofi*er. The general character of the small farmers among the Welsh mountains has been indicated in the Keports of the Edu- cational Commissioners. They are there described as ignorant, and addicted to intemperance ; and their house- holds are said not unfrequently to exhibit scenes of the coarsest immorality. f In such a home the future pastor receives the moral training of his childhood, and imbibes * We have 151 livings in Carlisle below 150/., most of which are not above 70/. or 80/. ; adding to these 30 curates, we have 181. In the adjacent hills of Durham and Ripon dioceses, there may be about 80 more of the same class. So that in all they may amount to 260. In other parts of England, livings of 120/. a year would be held by gentlemen of private fortune, who take such small preferment from a love for the work ; but this is seldom the case in the Northern hills. We may, however, suppose some slight deduc- tion from the above 260, on this score. t See Ed. Com. Rep. i. p. 21., and Rep. iii. p. 61. and p. 334. 12 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. his earliest views of life ; those views which abide by us to our latest hour. In very many cases his father is a dissenter ; but that does not prevent him from bringing up one of his sons to be a clergyman — for it is his duty to provide for his family — and a mountain living, though but a poor maintenance, may be rather better than a mountain farm. Let us suppose, then, that thirty years ago, David Jenkins, a small farmer in Brecknockshire, resolved to bring up his son Evan for the Church ; and let us at- tempt to follow the lad through his subsequent course, educational and ministerial, till he obtained a benefice. Young Evan acquired the art of reading at the Sunday school attached to the nearest meeting house. In due time he learnt what was called English (which, however, he was never taught to translate into his vernacular tongue*) at some day school in the neighbourhood. At length the time arrived when he must be sent to a grammar school. Such schools were scattered over the wildest portions of the Principality, by the benevolence of former ages ; and though they have suffered much from the negligence of trustees, and have many of them sunk into a state of shameful inefiiciency, still they con- tinue in most cases to exist. In those days the College of Lampeter was not in existence, and these grammar schools formed the chief places of education for the clergy, some of them being specially licensed for that purpose. The pupils of these, when they had com- pleted the prescribed course, were by a singular mis- nomer called literates. In such a seminary Evan leanit to talk broken English, and perhaps to construe Cassar. There too he gained the power of stumbling through a * See Educational Reports, passim. THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 13 chapter of his Greek Testament, and was crammed with such a store of theology as satisfied the easy require- ments of a Welsh examining chaplain. He was now qualified to enter holy orders. But one indispensable condition must first be satisfied ; he must obtain a title; that is, he must be nominated to a curacy by some in- cumbent. In the days of which we speak, the demand for such titles exceeded the supply. And in order to obtain this passport to their profession, the young can- didates for ordination were willing to undertake curacies for the smallest possible salary. But here the law in- terposed ; for it enacts that no curate shall receive less than a certain stipend, fixed according to the popula- tion and value of the benefice; and lest any evasion should be practised, both incumbent and curate are re- quired to make and sign a solemn declaration to the bishop, that the former intends bond fide to pay, and the latter to receive, the whole amount of salary specified. We grieve to say that this declaration, when made by Welsh curates and incumbents, was too often deliberately false. We have heard of instances in which the curate agreed to serve for a salary of 5/., while he solemnly affirmed in his declaration that he intended bond fide to receive 50/. Nay, such was the state of morality amongst this class of clergy, that these frauds were un- blushingly avowed, and treated as matters of course. We will hope, however, that Evan Jenkins escaped this snare, and obtained holy orders without resorting to fraudulent pretences. He was engaged (we may sup- pose) at the lowest legal salary by one of the non-resi- dent pluralists whom we have before mentioned, to feed the few poor sheep who were left by their shepherd in the wilderness. In this employment the following years of his life were spent. Being a young and healthy man, 14 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. he contrived in a short time to combine the charge of two neighbouring parishes with his own. Thus he had every Sunday to serve three churches, each divided from the others by a distance of seven or eight miles over mountain roads. By the aid of an active pony, a rapid elocution, and sermons reduced to the minimum of length, he contrived to get through his Sunday work with great credit ; for two services in a country church were then unheard of. On the week days he was not much troubled with clerical duties, for the population were dissenters, and did not require his visits. Thus he had leisure for fishing and coursing, by which he added an occasional dish of broiled trout or jugged hare* to his simple fare. Meanwhile he was earning, by his plurality of curacies, a collective income of 70/. or SOL a year, much more easily than his brother, who now cultivated the paternal farm. On the strength of this wealth, he married the daughter of a farmer in his parish. His bride's sister was lady's maid in the house of a neighbouring baronet; and he thought that this connexion might gain him powerful patronage, and help him to preferment. If his calculations proved correct, and fortune favoured him, he perhaps obtained, by this influential intercession, a benefice of 140/. per annum, just as the olive branches were beginning to grow so thickly round his table as to throw rather a gloomy shadow over the frugal board. The manner in which livings were obtained in those times, is illustrated by the following narrative of a case which actually occurred in the diocese of St. David's * There was a clergyman of tliis class in Glamorganshire, who used every season to lay in a stock of hares, which he salted down for consumption dur- ing the remainder of the year. THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 15 during the last generation. We give tlie story (with the exception, of course, of the names) as it was told by the son of its hero. The Eev. David Jones was a curate in Cardiganshire, and had long watched the failing health of his neighbour, the Vicar of Dim Saesoneg. At length he received the news of his friend's decease, of which he had secured the earliest intelligence. No time was to be lost. His pony was instantly saddled, and off he rode by the shortest cut over the mountains to Abergwili, the residence of the bishop. The distance was fifty miles, half bog, half torrent ; but hope lent wings to David, and soon he was in sight of the palace chimneys. Suddenly a cold pang shoots through his heart ! He has forgotten his credentials ! He had ob- tained, only a week before, a letter of recommendation to the bishop from an influential member of the squire- archy. And this letter he has left at home in the pocket of a week-day garment. What is to be done ? It is useless to attack the bishop without the letter. He must return for it at all hazards. Luckily he has a cousin who keeps a country inn not far from Abergwili. There he borrows a fresh horse, and pushes back with all speed. It is a moonlight night, so that he can follow the mountain track without difficulty ; and before dawn he astonishes Mrs. Jones by his unlooked-for appearance in the nuptial chamber. But he vanishes from her sight again like a vision ; he has found the precious letter, and buttoning his coat tightly over it, he hurries to the house of a friendly neighbour, who lends him another steed. While it is being caught and saddled, he snatches a hasty breakfast, and then is off again to Abergwili. Faint and saddle-sore he felt (so he told our informant) when once more he came in sight of the palace. Nevertheless, he tarried not for refreshment 16 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. but hastened on to the episcopal mansion. Tremblingly he rang the sonorous bell at the entrance, and when the door was flung open by the purple footman, in the ex- citement of the moment he accosted him as " My Lord." The servant was not disconcerted, being quite accus- tomed to such titular elevation. He showed Mr. Jones quietly into the library, where the bishop soon after made his appearance, and inquired, with an air of bland dignity, into the business of his visitor. The matter was soon explained, the squire's letter produced, and the bishop (having received no prior application) bestowed the desired preferment on the enraptured curate. In the highest elation, David retired to his inn, when whom should he meet in the stable yard, but his neighbour Thomas Williams, who filled the next curacy to his own. At sight of Jones's joyous countenance, a deadly paleness overspread the face of Williams. He felt that he was too late. But hope is tenacious, and he refused to believe in his rival's success, till he had himself seen the bishop. He rushed to the palace, and was admitted to an audience ; but it was only to receive a confirma- tion of the unwelcome intelligence, with the additional mortification of an episcopal rebuke. " Sir," said the Prelate, " Mr. Jones was obliged to ride a hundred and fifty miles to obtain this living ; had you possessed his energy, you might have been here long before him, and secured the preferment for yourself." Such was the disposal of Church patronage, such the education and character of incumbents through great part of Wales, twenty years ago.* Since then much im- provement has taken place, of which we shall presently * This subject of patronage reminds us of a story wliich was told by the late Bishop Jenkinson of St. David's. He had received a request from a THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 17 speak; and the junior members of the profession have been, in some respects, trained under happier auspices. But the older clergy were formed under the circum- stances which we have described, and still retain the impress stamped upon them in their youth. And the extraction and social position of the Welsh clergy as a body still remains the same throughout the poorer dis- tricts. The distinctive features which we are attempt- ing to portray, are to be found most fully developed in the region of which Cardigan is the centre, and which comprehends also the counties of Brecknock and Car- marthen, with the south of Merioneth, the west of Montgomery and Radnorshire, and the north of Pem- broke and of Glamorgan. In the northern parts of Wales, as we have before stated, the Church has been less despoiled of its parochial endowments, and a ma- jority of the clergy have received a university educa- tion ; so that our description will not, without much limitation, apply to the northern counties, nor to the southern portion of Glamorgan and Pembroke, or the south-eastern part of Radnorshire. The injurious effect produced on the usefulness of the clergy, by the low position which they hold in society, would surprise those who argue that worldly rank and station unfits a man for the office of an evangelist, and who imagine that his influence over the poor will be in- creased by his separation from the rich. We find, on Radnorshire squire to bestow a vacant living on a certain curate. The bishop consented, and being in London at the time, wrote to the curate, pro- mising him the living, and desiring him " to come up to town " for institu- tion. The curate replied very gratefully, and expressed his desire to obey his lordship's directions instantly, " but, for me," he added, " I know not to what town your lordship alludes." " Going to town," in his habitual phraseology, meant the market town he was in the habit of visiting. C 18 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. the contrary, that where the manners and education of the clergyman are decidedly inferior to those of the upper classes, the lower soon lose the respect due to his office. As an illustration of our meaning, we will relate a scene which occurred not long ago in one of the counties which we have just enumerated. A friend of ours who had inherited an estate there went to reside upon his property, and when Sunday came, he of course attended his parish church. Out of respect for their new landlord, most of his tenantry (though they were all Dissenters) came to church also; so that a congrega- tion of unusual size was collected. After service the young squire waited in the churchyard, surrounded by a knot of curious observers, till the vicar came out ; and then, respectfully accosting him, hoped that he would give him the pleasure of staying to partake of an early dinner at the hall, instead of returning to his own resi- dence, which was at a distance. The clergyman looked exceedingly embarrassed, colouring and hesitating very much, till the aAvkward silence was broken by one of the farmers present, who stepped forward as spokesman for the congregation, and said, — "He is shy, master; he is shy. He does not know what to answer you. He should not like to dine at your table. He be not fit company for you. If you shall let him have some re- freshment in your kitchen, he shall be glad to come." The squire, exceedingly horrified by this blunt explana- tion (in which the vicar entirely acquiesced), continued to urge his invitation, and at last prevailed upon the clergyman to become his reluctant guest ; but the poor man was so obviously miserable during the repast, that the landlord never again subjected him to the persecu- tion of a similar hospitality. Injurious as all this is to the poor, it can hardly fail THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 19 to produce an effect on the gentry. Want of respect towards the ministers of religion may extend to religion itself, and that, too, the more easily as attendance at church is rendered irksome by the fact that the services are performed in a language either very imperfectly or not at all understood by the higher classes, and gene- rally in a tone and manner peculiarly distasteful to them. This may in some measure account for the statements made by the Government Inspectors, con- cerning the indifference frequently shown by the land- owners in these parts of Wales for the improvement and instruction of the population.* ISTor is this the only way in which their low position acts injuriously upon the clergy. We do not agree with Burke, that " vice loses half its evil by losing all its coarseness;" but it is true that refinement of mind and manners tends to suppress some vices, by suppress- ing their manifestation. A well-bred man is ashamed to give utterance to "those coarse bad thoughts" of envy, hatred, and malice, which, among the rude and uncultivated, find vent in outspoken Billingsgate. If one gentleman has outstripped another in the chase of some object of ambition, the unsuccessful candidate (whatever may be his secret feelings) must meet his rival with outward courtesy. But when two Welsh curates have met, after one had obtained a benefice which the other sought, we have known instances of the vanquished assailing the victor with the most scur- rilous vituperation. When we see the pursuit of pe- cuniary advantage in its eager and undisguised mani- festation, among these simple children of the soil, we cannot help wishing that they had learnt to apply the doctrine of Reserve to their worship of Mammon. It * See Minutes of Council for 1849—50, pp. 194, 195. c 2 20 TIIE CHURCH IN THE MOUKTAINS. is true that this cult is not confined to any one class of society ; but it is less revolting to the taste, when dis- guised under a veil of decorum. There is something shocking to the feelings in the open gathering together of the eagles around the carcase of every defunct in- cumbent. The crowd of begging letters with which the disposers of ecclesiastical patronage are over- whelmed, on every fresh vacancy, is a painful proof that incompetence does not inspire men with modesty, nor rusticity with contentment.* But this want of refinement leads to evils still more serious than any we have yet mentioned. It exposes the peasant clergy to temptations which sometimes betray them into scandalous and degrading vice. Springing themselves from the lower classes, they have not been raised by education above the gross and animal tastes of their younger days. They are sur- rounded by friends and relatives whose highest enjoy- ments are found in the conviviality of the village alehouse. They are cut off, by want of cultivation and opportunity, from the pursuits of literature and art. What wonder is it, if they have yielded to the allurement of more familiar pleasures ? if they have sought the only social relaxations which w^ere open to them ? and if many of them have, in consequence, been led to push conviviality into intemperance ? Such a result from such circumstances is not surprising, how- ever deeply to be deplored. We rejoice to know, * The manoeuvres of these artless candidates for preferment are sometimes amusing from their simplicity. For instance, we have heard of a case where a curate sent a panegyric on his bishop anonymously to the county news- paper, when a living was expected to be vacant ; and having cut out the printed letter, sent it to the bishop as soon as the desired preferment had fallen in, with a note in manuscript to the effect that " this letter was written by the Reverend of ." THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 21 however, that these scandals are far less frequent than they once were. A drunken clergyman, once no un- frequent spectacle, is now rarely seen. There are still, however, districts to which this improvement has not fully reached ; and we fear that it will be long before the clerical character recovers from the stigma which has been branded on it by the vices of former gene- rations. As a specimen of the reputation which is thus at- tached to the profession, we may mention a scene which occurred not long ago, at an auction, in a market town of Brecknockshire. A case for holding spirits was one of the lots put up. For this there was a keen compe- tition between a neighbouring squire and his vicar. At last the layman gave in, and the spirit-case was knocked down to the clergyman, amidst loud cheers from the bystanders, who exclaimed : " The parson do deserve it better than you, squire ; he shall make more use of it." All flagrant scandals, however, are gradually being suppressed by a more conscientious public opinion, and by the increased vigilance of the ecclesiastical authori- ties. Those who are detected in a state of intoxication run a risk of serious punishment. An unfortunate sinner of this description was staggering homewards from the market town, where he had indulged some- what too freely, when he was overtaken by a neighbour- ing incumbent, who was the nephew of an influential dignitary. The rector bestowed a look of disgust upon his erring brother, and was riding on, when he -was stopped by the piteous cries and entreaties of the cul- prit, who implored him to believe that it was quite unusual for him to be in his present state, and besought him not to expose the accidental frailty. " Promise me not to tell your uncle, Mr. ; promise me not c 3 22 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. to tell your uncle." Such offenders are now made to feel the terrors of the law. Our readers may, perhaps, remember a grotesque case of barbarism which was brought, by the late Bishop Copleston, before the Court of Arches. Two clergymen had quarrelled and fought over their cups, and one had actually bitten off the other s ear ! The defence set up in these cases is some- times extremely ludicrous. In a recent instance, where a curate was accused of habitual intoxication, he pleaded that he only entered the public houses to gain pastoral influence over his parishioners, and that he never took more than two glasses at a time. The latter assertion turned out, upon investigation, to be literally true ; for there were four public houses in the village, and he took two glasses daily at each. It is needless to say that the clerical duties are not likely to be very efliciently discharged where such habits are prevalent. The clergy there, indeed (as we have before remarked), are not even expected by their pa- rishioners to perform those duties of pastoral visitation which form the daily task of an English clergyman. Their flock have long since forsaken the pastures of the Church, and look to other shepherds for spiritual food. During the interval between Sunday and Sunday, their office remains little better than a sinecure. In some, at least, of the districts before enumerated, even on Sunday there is seldom more than one service, and that is often omitted. Thus we read, in the Government Reports, of parish churches where " Divine service is very seldom performed unless there are banns to publish" (Rep. ii. p. 131.) ; of others where " no service is performed in the church during five out of six Sundays, for want of a congregation" (Rep. ii. p. 135.); of others where "the vicar rides by on the Sunday afternoon, but seldom THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 23 has occasion to alight and do duty" (ibid.). The vicar will naturally be tempted, in such a case, occasionally to omit his afternoon's ride altogether. Thus, we know a parish where, not along ago, the service was left un- performed on Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, consecutively. These things sound shocking; but perhaps when service does take place in sucih parishes, one is inclined to wish that the church had remained unopened. An air of slovenly carelessness, and poverty- stricken neglect, pervades the aspect of the edifice and the ministrations of the officiator. The church is like a barn ; sometimes " with large holes in the roof" (Rep. ii. p. 132.), sometimes with "the panes of the chancel window all out" (Rep. i. p. 406.) ; the floor is of uneven earth, or perhaps irregularly covered with broken fragments of the original pavement ; the pulpit is in such a rickety condition that a preacher with much action would soon bring it down altogether ; in the chancel, a communion table, propped upon three legs, is fenced by worm-eaten rails, half of which are broken down ; the area below is filled by dilapidated old pews, of which nine out of ten are entirely empty. A dirty-looking man, in a sur- plice still dirtier than himself, ascends the reading-desk, and gabbles through the prayers. A ten minutes' ser- mon follows, and the brief ceremony is complete. We quit the building, feeling that the abomination of desola- tion has indeed taken possession of the holy place. Nor is its aspect improved on Aveek-days. If we enter the churchyard, we find the vicar's horse or cow grazing among the tombstones.* The precincts of the sacred * See also the " Ecclesiologist " for December, 1852, No. 97. Of Breck- nockshire we read : — "In some small churches .... there is scarcely any architectural character of any sort, and the condition of several of them is quite disgraceful from dirt and neglect." Of Pembrokeshire : — " The state of several churches in this county is very bad. both from neglect and c 4 24 THE CHUECH IN THE MOUNTAINS. building are used by the parishioners for purposes quite incompatible with the spirit of sanitary reform*; for the Persian imprecation : " May the graves of your ances- tors he defiled^^^ would have no superstitious terror for the villagers of Wales. We turn in disgust from these pollutions, and seek shelter within the church, the door of which stands invitingly open. To our surprise, it is half filled with a set of disorderly and irreverent chil- dren, who are dispersed throughout the pews. After some minutes of perplexity, we discover that these urchins constitute the parish school, and that the old Welshman who sits within the communion rails is pre- tending to teach them English. The communion table serves for the master's desk, and is sometimes removed to another part of the church, to suit his convenience.! The font, also, is made useful ; being filled with " bits of candle, slates, and fragments of books." J On seeing a dilapidation." Those who are interested in the subject of Church Archi- tecture in Wales will find much valuable information in the article from which these extracts are taken (" On the Churches of Wales "), The writer, who gives us the result, as it seems, of personal inspection, has classified the churches of any note or peculiarity of construction, according to their type, under the several counties in which they are found. * "The churchyard is generally used by the poor of the town as a privy, few of them possessing at home any convenience of that nature" (Rep. i. p. 241.). Compare the following from Archdeacon Allen's report: "On drawing my companion's attention to the filth left by the children under the walls of the church, and observing to him that he would not permit that sort of pollution under his parlour window, he replied, * Nay^ nor under my kitchen window neither.'' " — Minutes of Council for 1845. t " The school was held in the church, and the children were dispersed throughout the pews. They behaved themselves in a most disorderly man- ner ; one of them was singing a tune during the whole time I was there " (Rep. i. p. 270. ; see also p. 410. 444.). Again : " A portion of the church is, in Radnorshire, the most common place for school-keeping" (Allen's Report in Minutes of Council for 1845.). The above extracts refer to South Wales, but the same practice prevails in some parts of North Wales also, (See Rep. iii. p. 6.) I See Allen's Report, quoted above. The communion table is not always THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 25 visitor, the old pedagogue calls up bis first class, and desires them to say their catechism, which is un- doubtedly a good exercise of memory, since they do not understand a word of English, the language in which they learn it. Or perhaps he gives them a portion of the Bible to read, in which case it will be cruel if the visitor insists upon choosing the chapter ; for the poor children can only read one, which is always selected by the master when they are called upon to exhibit. Perhaps, however, it may be thought that the keeping of the parish school within the walls of the church is, at any rate, a sign that the incumbent takes an interest in the education of his parishioners. We rejoice to know that there are many who do so, and that the number is daily increasing, as we shall presently show. But we may be very sure that no such interest is taken where there prevails indecency and irreverence like that which we have just described. It is possible that a parish may be so impoverished, and the landowners so careless of their duty, as to render the erection of a proper school-room impossible ; but even in such a case, a good clergyman will find means of personally superintending the teach- ing of the young, the only portion of his flock which his dissenting parishioners will now entrust to his care. How far the Welsh clergy have been, till very recently, from fulfilling their duty in this respect, is but too clearly shown by the Reports of the Educational Com- missioners. For there we learn that a large proportion of the day-schools nominally connected with the Church throughout Wales, were, up to the year 1847, never visited by the clergy at all*; and that even in those used as the master's desk; sometimes he prefers boards. laid across the bier. (Rep. iii. p. 6.) * See Rep. i. p. 30., Rep. li. p. 27., and Rep. iii. p. 38. • 26 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. which they occasionally visited, they very seldom gave any systematic instruction. The consequence was, that the religious teaching, being left to ignorant and un- trained schoolmasters, degenerated into a mere sham ; and the scholars were only saved from a state of heathen ignorance by attending the Sunday schools of the Dis- senters.* No doubt there were many exceptions to this rule in the more civilised portions of the principa- lity f ; and the advance made during the last five years has been great ; but this improvement has not, we fear, very deeply penetrated those ruder districts which form the main subject of our present sketch. The description which we have thus attempted of the peasant clergy in Wales would serve equally for their brethren in the mountains of England. These pecu- liarities have been created, not by any inherent ten- dencies of race, but by causes which have produced the same results upon the Saxons of the North as upon the Cymry of the West. We have before mentioned that the poverty of these mountain clergy is even greater in England than in Wales, and that they are derived from the same classes of society as their Welsh compeers. They were formerly educated (as in Wales) at licensed grammar schools scattered over the country. These have now been superseded by the College of St. Bees, though specimens of the former system are still to be found among the older clergy. The poverty of their * Painful details may be found in Rep. i. p. 26—29., Kep. ii. p. 35, 36., and Rep. iii. p. 24., and 45 — 47. t We ought especially to refer to the labours of the excellent Dean Cotton of Bangor, who is justly praised in the Government Reports (Rep. iii. p. 30.), as the father of Church education in North AVales ; and also to the more recent exertions of Bishop Short of St. Asaph. The latter, indeed, advocated and promoted the secular education of the poor when he was himself a coun- try clergyman, and at a time when he stood almost alone in his sentiments on this subject. THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 27 endowments leads most incumbents to eke out their subsistence by subsidiary employments; some keep village schools ; most farm a little land ; nearly all attend fairs and markets with the neighbouring farmers. This association naturally leads to the same results which we have before lamented. A friend we have consulted, who is well acquainted with the diocese of Carlisle, estimates the proportion of the hill-clergy in West- moreland and Cumberland, who are " more or less intoxicated at one time or another, at parties, fairs, or markets," as one-sixth of the whole number. Another informant writes, that "several of the clergy" in his neiofhbourhood " are notorious drunkards." The social position held by the clergy may be inferred from the above statements. It is in fact precisely the same with that assigned to their predecessors by Mr. Macaulay. A gentleman who resides in Westmoreland writes thus : — '^ As a rule the clergy here are of a low order, and rarely associate with the gentry. In our own village, for instance, where the clergyman is not by any means a bad specimen, no servant is kept at his house, and several of his sons have been brought up to handicraft trades. We are very good friends, but he could not visit at my house. . . . His sister was waiting-maid to a friend of ours." As an illustration of these statements, it may be worth while to mention that the writer of these pages, some years ago, when in a boat on one of the Cumberland lakes, observed upon the road which ran along the shore, a man and woman ride by on the same horse, the man in front, the woman behind. " There goes our priest and his wife," said the boatman. On landing, soon after, the worthy couple were seen mak- ing hay together in a small field which the clergyman farmed. 28 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. Thus far the aspect of the Church is the same in tlie northern as in the western hills. But there is one marked feature of difference. In Wales the Dissenters outnumber the Church, and by their superior energy- have obtained almost the entire control of the reliofious education of the people. In these English districts, on the contrary, the Dissenters are a weak minority ; and the prevalent sect is that of the Wesleyan Methodists, who are but little alienated from the Establishment. This difference would appear at first sight a proof of the greater attachment entertained towards the Church by the inhabitants of the English mountains. But we fear that it is in reality only an indication of the greater supineness and stolidity in which their clergy were sunk during the last century. For the dissent which now exists in Wales did not originate in the invasion of the Church's territory by an external foe ; it sprang from the unwise attempt of her rulers to stifle a religious movement which arose spontaneously in her own com- munion, and amongst her own ministers. The history of that outburst of religious life, which so strangely broke the deadness of an age of spiritual stagnation, is now well known, so far as England is concerned ; for who has not read that most readable of biographies, Southey's " Life of Wesley ? " Every one is aware that Wesleyan ism was created and organised by ministers of the Church, and that its system was only designed to be subsidiary and supplemental to that of the Establish- ment. But many will be surprised to learn that this was still more especially the case with the Calvinistic Methodism of Wales, which is now regarded as one of the most hostile forms of dissent. The founders of this sect were all members of the Church, and all but one were clergymen. In the midst of the ignorant boors who THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 29 then filled most of the Welsh pulpits, there were to be found, here and there, men of a very different stamp; men burning with apostolic zeal for the salvation of souls, and called to the priesthood by a higher ordination than that of human hands. Such was Griffith Jones, vicar of Llan- dowror, in Carmarthenshire, the father of national educa- tion in Wales, who, in 1730, founded the first of those catechetical schools, by which, before his death, a hundred and fifty thousand persons had been taught to read the Scriptures in their native tongue.* He spent a life of self-denying labour, in establishing schools, and cir- culating Bibles; for, till his time, the Bible had been an unknown Book in the cottages of the poor.f He adopted the practice of field-preaching, and addressed large audiences in the open air, in different parts of Wales, with remarkable effect. Nevertheless, being an in- cumbent, he could not be deprived of his benefice without a legal cause; and accordingly he lived and died vicar of Llandowror. But his successors and imitators, being only curates, were removable at the pleasure of the bishops; and, one by one, they were ejected from their cures, by worldly prelates, who feared enthusiasm more than sin, and were zealous in nothing but in hating zeal. Such was the fate of Daniel Row- lands, the chief organiser of Calvinistic Methodism ; of Williams of Pantycelyn, whose hymns are now sung in a thousand chapels ; and of Charles of Bala, who suc- ceeded these early leaders, and introduced Sunday * For a full account of this excellent man, see Phillips, p. 284, &c. We may take this occasion of noticing a singular exaggeration in the very valuable Report of Mr. Mann on the Educational Census for 18.51. In p. 11. the author describes "popular education" as the creation of the nine- teenth century, and Joseph Lancaster (in 1796) as the first inventor of popular day schools ! t Phillips, pp. 125. 285. 30 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. schools into Wales in 1785. Howel Harris, though educated at Oxford, was refused ordination altogether ; he afterwards founded the Methodist College of Trevecca, but never quitted the communion of the Church. Such men could not be silenced by episcopal prohibitions. They heard a voice from heaven commanding them to preach the Gospel ; they saw that thousands were won by their labours from heathenism to Christianity; and they felt that even if schism were to result from their success, the guilt must rest on those who had cast them out. Meanwhile they continued members of the Church, and kept their followers in her communion. Nor was it till our own times that the separation occurred between the Welsh Methodists and the Establishment. Until the present century they received the Sacraments ex- clusively from clergymen of the National Church, and recognised none others as duly ordained. In the year 1811 they first resolved to ordain ministers of their own, and only since that time have they been a dissenting sect. They have now about eight hundred places of worship scattered over every part of Wales, and teach more than a hundred thousand children in their Sunday schools.* These Sunday schools exhibit (as Mr. Lingen truly observes) the most characteristic development of the Welsh intellect. " They have been," he adds, " almost the sole, they are still the main and most congenial, centres of education. Through their agency the younger portion of the adult labouring classes in Wales can generally read, or are learning to read, the Scriptures * See the table given by Sir T. Phillips, p. 171. The Sunday scholars of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists are equal in number to those of all the other sects collectively. The number of their chapels was, at the last cen- THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 31 in their native tongue. A fifth of the entire population is returned as attending their schools."* The propor- tion of teachers is one to every seven scholars ; so that a large number of the working classes devote their only day of rest to these labours of love. A considerable amount of theological knowledge is thus diffused among the population, though unhappily it takes the form rather of polemical than of practical divinity. Men utterly destitute of secular information, ignorant of the simplest elements of geography or arithmetic, may be heard discussing deep questions of Scriptural meta- physics or ecclesiastical polity, in the tongue of the ancient Britons. " Apart they sat upon a hill retired. And reasoned of foreknowledge, will, and fate — Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute." The language itself has been thus enriched with many new terms, and a native literature has been created by the appetite for theological information. f And however we must regret that these healing springs should be poisoned by the bitterness of party strife, yet we cannot doubt that the intelligence of the peasantry is stimulated by the discussions in which they take part; and we may hope also that their religious feelings are * Rep. i. p. 3. For similar testimony from the other commissioners, see Rep. ii. p. 51., and Rep. iii. p. 59. We find from the latter report that in North Wales the Church of England Sunday Schools were only 124 out of 1,161. t On this subject we would refer our readers to the interesting informa- tion contained in Mr. Johnson's Report (Rep. iii. p. 59.), and to the list which he gives of the periodicals and other works recently published in the "Welsh language. Every sect seems to have its own magazine. We learn from Mr. Lingen's Report (Rep. i. p. 7.), that many of the contributors to these magazines are found among the peasantry. It appears, also, that three-fourths of the contemporary Welsh literature is theological. 32 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. nourished by the devotional ingredients which are mixed, though too sparingly, with their dogmatical repast. Had the rulers of the Church done their duty during the eighteenth century, all this energy, instead of being driven out from her pale, would have been fostered, guided, and utilised ; and thus the evils which have attended its present sectarian development might have been avoided. For sects, like monastic orders, have an invariable tendency to degenerate. The fervour of the first love dies away ; the truths which were preached by those who had (as it were) discovered them anew, with such enthusiastic faith, and such life-giving power, turn in the second generation into stereotyped formulas. The regenerating creed is metamorphosed into a dead shibboleth of party. Welsh Methodism has now fallen into this phase of formalism. The distinc- tive tenets of the sect are carefully inculcated on its members, but the spirit is evaporated. Their Sunday schools vie with each other in committing to memory the pynciau*, in which their dogmas are embodied. The young people of both sexes meet in evening schools to prepare these schemes of doctrine ; but, alas, such nocturnal meetings for devotion too often end in immorality, f This is the natural result of appealing to animal excitement as a test of spiritual renovation. Even the first founders of Welsh Methodism, excellent as they were, fell into this error. Whitfield boasts that during the preaching of Rowlands he had seen a con- gregation of ten thousand persons, " shouting Gogun- * A pw7ic (plural pynciau) is a scheme of doctrine printed in question and answer, with Scripture proofs. The different classes in a school learn dif- ferent parts of it ; and when it is completely committed to memory, the school makes a triumphal procession to other chapels to recite it, as a kind of friendly challenge. t See Rep. i. p. 21., and Rep. ii. p. 60. THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 33 iiiant Bendyitfci, and ready to leap for joy;"* and too soon this readiness to leap turned into actual leaping. These fathers of the sect, however, were educated men : not merely clergymen, but raised above their clerical brethren in intellect and acquirements. Now, on the contrary, the great mass of preachers are utterly illite- rate ; and the most popular are those who can rake up the expiring embers of enthusiasm into a blaze by vio- lent stimulation. Thus we have a residuum of much flame and little heat, "the contortions of the sibyl without her inspiration." Such preachers especially delight in calling forth that disgusting exhibition of folly and fanaticism which has disgraced the very name of religion in Wales — the practice of ^' jumping,^' A whole congregation may be seen, drunk with excite- ment, leaping and shouting in concert, and profaning the most sacred names by frantic invocations.! We cannot wonder that these bacchanalian orgies end too often in the same manner as their heathen prototypes ; for such fervour being purely of the flesh, is easily turned into the current of mere carnal passion. More- over, the doctrine of the preachers who stir up such " revivals," is frequently of the most antinomian ten- dency. Hence we must explain the melancholy fact, that the spread of religious knowledge in Wales has not been attended by an improvement in the morality of the people. In no other country has so large a portion of the population been instructed in controversial theo- * See Southey's Wesley, vol. ii. p. 225. Their real cry was Gogoniant Bendith i ti (Glory, Blessing be to Thee), but Whitfield did not understand Welsh, though he preached with great success to Welsh audiences, who un- derstood scarcely a word of English. t These scenes, however, are getting less common than they were, and many preachers discourage them. " I do make them wip (weep) and cry for mercy," said a preacher with a very Welsh accent, to a friend of ours, " but I do not make them lip (leap). I do not wish to see them lipping.''^ D . 34 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. logy ; and we fear that in no other country is there a greater prevalence of unchaste habits among the poor. Such, at least, is the unanimous evidence of the numerous witnesses examined by the Government Commissioners. * Another evil which has attended the development of Sectarianism in Wales, is the entire religious separation Avhich it has caused between the higher and lower ranks. Mr. Lingen too truly says that, " even in religion the Welsh peasant has moved under an isolating des- tiny ; and his worship, like his life, has grown different from that of the classes over him." The cause of piety, and of social order, both suffer from this unnatural isolation. The very idea of the Christian congregation is that it should embrace " high and low, rich and poor, one with another." Within the walls of the cliurch all disparities are equalised ; here, at least, as in apostolic times, *' the believers have all things common." How painfully different is the state of things in Wales, even in the better districts, where the clergy are both educated and efficient. You enter the church, and find perhaps five pews occupied. In one, the squire slumbers in the softest corner of the manorial seat. In another the but- ler's attitude shows that he is sharing the repose, though not the cushions, of his master. The third pew is filled by the rector's family, the fourth by his domes- * The general result of this evidence may be summed up in the words of one witness (Rep. ii. p. 60.) : "Want of chastity is the giant sin of Wales.'' Or is, perhaps, still more correctly stated by another, a magistrate of North Wales : " Fornication is not regarded as a vice, scarcely as a frailty, by the common people in Wales" (Rep. iii. p. 68. See also Rep. i. p. 21.). We fear that this unanimous testimony of so many witnesses of all ranks and sects is not shaken by Sir T. Phillips's arguments. He has proved, indeed, that the number of illegitimate births is not greater than the English average ; but he has forgotten to notice the evidence given, that a large proportion of the poor women in Wales are pregnant some months before marriage. THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 35 tics. The fifth is occupied by the wife and children of the parish clerk, bound, by virtue of his office, to con- form externally to the Church. But where is the popu- lation? A glance at the interior of the neighbouring Zoar or Ebenezer will show you them. There they sit, as thick as bees in a hive, stifling with heat, yet listen- ing patiently to the thundering accents of a native preacher, which you had heard while you were yet afar off, breaking the stillness of the sabbath air. Tan uffern (hell fire) is the expression which falls oftenest on the ear. The orator is enforcing his favourite doctrine of reprobation upon his rustic hearers ; and you cannot help fearing that they are mentally applying his teaching, by complacently consigning the squire, the rector, and the parish clerk to an uncovenanted doom. This unhappy condition of things not only severs the strongest bond of union between different ranks of so- ciety, but it also renders even the best and ablest clergy- men comparatively inefficient. The pastoral position of a Welsh clergyman in most parishes, is indeed of a very hopeless kind ; and the more zealous and energetic he is, the more distressing he must find it. Through no fault of his own, he is deserted by his flock; and those among the poor who frequent his ministrations are generally the worst men in the parish, who are rejected by the discipline (lax as it is) of the Dissenters; and to show their spite against those who have excluded them, exercise their legal right of attending the National Church. Such circumstances might well discourage the most sanguine ; and it is infinitely to the credit of some among the Welsh clergy (and those no inconsiderable number), that instead of yielding to indolent despair, they have found in the very sterility of the soil entrusted to their cultivation only a new call to labour. Repulsed D 2 36 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. as theological teachers by their people, they have be- come their best instructors in practical religion. They have built parish schools, and thus have taken up the only ground not pre occupied by dissent ; for the Dis- senters in general have contented themselves with their Sunday schools, without attempting Day schools. Such clergymen, therefore, have easily become the voluntary schoolmasters of their parishes, and thus secured the affection and respect of the younger generation ; while, at the same time, they have been the friends and comforters of the aged, the sick, and the helpless ; and by showing a benevolence unrestricted by sectarian distinctions, they have taught their opponents the catholicity of Christian love. But virtue and energy like this cannot be expected from the majority of any profession ; and we ought to make some allowance for the indolence and uselessness even of the worst among the Welsh clergy, when we remember the circumstances in which they are placed by the alienation of their flock. Many of them, in fact, occupy the same position with the ministers of the Scotch Establishment in those localities where the whole population has gone over to the Free Kirk ; and we know how nearly irresistible is the temptation to such ministers, notwithstanding the stringent discipline of the Presbyterian Church, to convert their office into a sinecuro, But the Church of Wales has to contend with other difficulties no less formidable than those which arise from dissent. The chief among these, is the prevalence of two languages. The parishes of Wales may be divi ded into three classes. First, those where Welsh only is the language of the great majority. Secondly, those where English is spoken or understood by all. Thirdly, those in which the population is divided into a Welsh THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 37 and English portion, neither being inconsiderable in re- spect of the other. These latter, or bilingual parishes, constitute the chief difficulty. If an Englishman is appointed to them, how can he satisfy the Welsh ? if a Welshman, how can he minister to the English ? The clergyman should, of course, be able to speak both lan- guages ; but he must speak one of them as an acquired, the other as a native tongue ; and the very circumstance which attracts his Celtic parishioners will repel the Saxons. Again, how is he to manage about the ser- vices ? Here he cannot please both nations; so he is reduced to a compromise which pleases neither, by per- forming service alternately in either tongue.* The rule adopted by the Welsh bishops seems, in itself, a right one ; namely, that where so much as a sixth part of the parishioners do not understand English, at least half the Church Services should be in Welsh. Yet when, as often happens, the English inhabitants are churchmen and the Welsh dissenters, the action of this rule is un- satisfactory ; compelling, in fact, the performance of one service every Sunday to empty walls. In those places where English is either generally unknown, or univer- sally understood, the same perplexities do not occur. But in the former case, where W^elsh prevails exclu- sively, another difficulty is introduced, from the want of a supply of tit persons to undertake the ministerial office. The Bishop of LlandafF, in the valuable charge with which he commenced his Episcopal labours, states it as the result of his long previous acquaintance with * In some of these parishes the clergy adopt a singular mode of pleasing their Welsh parishioners, when the service is in English. They give out the text of their sermon, and that alone, in Welsh. The effect upon a stranger is sometimes startling. He imagines that the clergyman is suddenly burst- ing into a paroxysm of " the unknown tongues." D 3 38 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. South Wales (he having been for fifteen years Vice- Principal of Lampeter), that the only class whence the Welsh-speaking clergy can hope for recruits, is too poor even to afford the small expense of a Lampeter educa- tion.* We may add, that the same fatal difference of language excludes Wales from a source of aid by which England is largely benefited. There we see many of the very poorest livings held by clergymen of indepen- dent fortune, who have taken orders from a love for the work of the ministry, and who neither need nor seek more valuable preferment. Such men would gladly help that most ancient branch of their Church which has been established in Britain ever since the time of Oonstantine. But they are shut out by the impassable barrier of a foreign tongue. Another cause of the inefficiency of the Welsh Church is the immense size of the parishes into which its terri- tory is divided. As examples, we may mention Lland- rillo in St. Asaph diocese, comprising an area of forty- two square miles, and endowed with only 16U. ; Beddge- lert in Bangor, comprising nearly fifty square miles, and endowed with 93/. ; Ystradyfodwg in Llandaff, contain- ing forty square miles, and endowed with 120/. ; and Caron in St. David's, comprising about fifty-five square miles, and endowed with 80/. !f In the English moun- tains there are to be found parishes of even greater area than these, but there they have been mostly divided into separate chapelries, of a manageable sizej ; whereas the * Primary Charge of Bishop of Llandaff, p. 45—47. The Bishop suggests as a remedy, the foundation of Scholarships or Exhibitions ; a recommenda- tion which has been since acted on by some benevolent persons. t Many similar instances are given by Sir T. Phillips, p. 222 — 224. J Thus the parish of Kendal, in Westmoreland, contains an area of above a hundred square miles ; but it has been divided into sixteen chapelries, each of them under the charge of an incumbent endowed with about 70/. per THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 39 Welsh parishes have generally remained undivided. It is evident that such an extent of parochial territory renders the full performance of pastoral duties impossible. The great size of these mountain parishes shows that when our parochial system was originally established, they were very thinly inhabited. And so they remained till the present century. But now, in some parts of Wales, especially in the south, the mineral wealth which has been discovered below the soil has covered its surface with a dense population. The counties of Glamorgan and Monmouth (nearly the whole of which are in- cluded in the diocese of LlandaiF) contained 140,000 inhabitants in the year 1821 ; and 417,000 in 1851. So that the population has trebled in thirty years. Within the last ten years it has risen from 305,000 to 417,000; a greater increase than that of any other portion of Great Britain. Thus the ecclesiastical agency, which was intended to provide for a few shepherds and farmers scattered among the hills, is now called on to meet the wants of overgrown manufacturing towns, which are doubling themselves every twenty years. So that we see " the machinery and appliances of the Church, origi- nally designed for tens, or at most for hundreds, stand- ing in solemn mockery of the wants of thousands and tens of thousands."* It might have been hoped that the creators of this vast population would have spent annum. So the large parishes of Crossthwaite in Cumberland, and Kirby Lonsdale in Lancashire, are each divided into seven chapelries. * See Letter of Archdeacon Williams, of Llandaff, on the wants of the Diocese (London, 1850), p. 5. Much interesting information will be found in this pamphlet, the author of which is distinguished not only by his elo- quence and ability, but by a practical wisdom to which the Church of Wales is already largely indebted. Among other instances, he mentions that of Bedwelty parish, which in 1801 contained 619 inhabitants, and now con- tains about 30,000. D 4 40 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. some portion of their enormous wealth for the benefit of those to whose toil they owe all that they possess. But we grieve to say that, with a few noble exceptions*, they have hitherto shown themselves insensible to the truth, that property has its duties as well as its rights. One of the Government Commissioners says of this manufactur- ing population ; — "I regard their degraded condition as entirely the fault of their employers, who give them far less tendance and care than they bestow on their cattle, and who, with few exceptions, use and regard them as so much brute force instrumental to wealth, but as no- wise involving claims on human sympathy." f — Strong as this language is, we fear it is not exaggerated. Having then to contend against all these gigantic difficulties, the progress which the Church of Wales has made in the last few years is most creditable to those who have been instrumental in effecting it. And though such improvement has been chiefly in the more civilised districts, yet even among the peasant clergy sufficient amendment has taken place to show the truth of our previous remark, that poverty, though the actual cause, is not a necessary cause, of many blemishes which have disfigured the establishment. In the first place, those * Amongst these exceptions the Rhymney Iron Company should be men- tioned with honour. In 1838 they unanimously agreed to the following re- solution, " That the Company having caused to locate, on what were before barren mountains, a population of eight thousand souls, is upon every principle hound to provide and endow a church for the use of the tenants of the Company."^ Accordingly the Company built and endowed a church and parsonage, and provided schools also. t Rep. ii. p. 293. See also the anecdote at p. 63. AVe find from the Re- port of the Diocesan Church Building Society, that 1 OOOZ. was anonymously given last year, to be expended in building a chui'ch in whatever spot might be considered the most spiritually destitute in the diocese. After due con- sideration it was determined to spend it in building a church for the work- people of the wealthiest iron master in Great Britain. THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 41 gross and scandalous abuses which prevailed in the last century are either entirely swept away, or fast disappear- ing. Episcopal superintendence has been changed from a name into a reality. Archdeacons visit their arch- deaconries, and the obsolete office of rural deans has been revived ; so that the bishop is kept constantly sup- plied with information of the state of every parish in his diocese. The ordinance of Confirmation, which non- resident prelates had suifered to fall into disuse, is now regularly administered. The clergy reside, for the most part, upon their livings, and no longer leave their duties to be discharged by half-starved curates. Pluralities are henceforward impossible, and the pluralist will soon be an animal as extinct as the Plesiosaurus. Full ser- vices are now performed in churches which had never before been opened twice a Sunday within the memory of man. Glebe houses are rising in every direction.* New churches are built ; and old ones are restored which the slothful negligence of a former generation suffered to fall into ruin. The eighteenth century may be called preeminently the age of ecclesiastical dilapidation. Totally without the sense of architectural beauty, it re- signed the glorious masterpieces of Gothic art to the mutilation of the churchwarden ; the cheapest patchwork of lath and plaster was good enough to repair a church. But in England there was at least sufficient sense of de- cency to keep the walls standing, and the roof weather- tight. In Wales, on the contrary, several parishes thought it the cheapest method to let the structure tumble down f altogether ; and the negligence of ecclesi- ♦ In St. Asaph 70 parsonages have been built or restored in the last 40 years (Canon Williams' Sermon, p. 23.). In Llandaff 60 parsonages were added during the 20 years of Bishop Copleston's episcopate. •j- Instances are given at Rep. ii. p. 163., and other parts of the Reports. 42 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. astical authorities actually connived at this breach of law. But such slovenly profaneness was not confined to sequestered villages ; it extended even to Episcopal residences and Cathedral foundations. The palaces at LlandafF and St. David's were abandoned to the moles and bats. The prebendaries of Brecon suffered their Collegiate Minster to fall into decay. But the ruin of Llandaff Cathedral was the worst example, and most characteristically illustrates the age in which it occurred. The bishop had long ceased to reside ; the prebendaries had followed his example * ; the daily service had been discontinued ; the very organ had been broken up, and Willis the antiquary (who visited the Cathedral before its fall) tells us that he found the pipes scattered about the organ-loft. The building itself was suffered to re- main utterly without repair, although the Chapter liad repeated warnings of its dangerous condition. At last, it was literally blown down b}- a great storm in 1722. The nave and towers were left in ruins ; the choir under- went a more degrading fate, for it was patched up in the worst style of a Baptist Meeting-house ; the noble arches being filled with brickwork, bull's eye windows being added for ornament, and a white-washed ceiling to make all snug. The then bishop congratulates himself on the change, in a letter which has been happily pre- served. " We have," he says, " a quarry of alabaster near the place, with other very good materials for stucco, and we have employed a skilful plaisterer to adorn the inside in such a manner as decency requires We propose to take down the two steeples which at present serve as a western front to the two aisles, and to raise a tower over the front of the nave, and then to finish with a ♦ See the address of Bishop Blethin to the Prebendaries of Llandaff, in the Appendix to this volume (Note A.). THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 43 rustic porch." * Such was the fate of a cathedral which had been the seat of a Christian bishopric while the Saxons were yet idolators, and when Canterbury was still a pagan city. In this disgraceful condition the fabric remained for 120 years, typifying, by its appear- ance, the state of the Church to which it belonged; a Church whereof two-thirds exhibited the spectacle of an ancient and venerable institution fallen into uselessness and decay ; and the only portion which still served any re- ligious purpose, was transformed into the semblance of the conventicle. Let us hope that as its ruin was thus emblematical of the past, so its restoration may be signi- ficant of the future. At all events, its present condition shows that the sordid economy of a former age has been superseded by a different spirit. Thanks to the conscientious zeal of the late and present deans, it is fast rising from its ruins, in all its original beauty. The Gothic arches have emerged from their plaster cover- ing; the conventicular abomination has utterly dis- appeared; and the graceful clerestory and lofty roof once more raise the heart heavenwards. Thus a flagrant instance of ecclesiastical breach of trust has been atoned for, and a foul blot wiped out from the escutcheon of the Church. But this is only one of many examples where the piety of the children is paying the debts of their fathers, in the matter of church- building. By the most strenuous efforts, the Church is striving to keep pace with the increase of population in the manufacturing districts. During the last three years ten additional churches, and nearly twice that number of clergy, have been provided, to meet, in some degree, the most pressing wants of that vast tide of po- * Extracted from a letter written by Bishop Harris, of LlandafF (dated Oct. 22, 1736), to an ancestor of the late Lord Rolle. 44 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. pulation which has deluged the counties of Monmouth and Glamorgan ; and this work has been accomplished mainly by the labours of the present bishop. Similar efforts have been made to supply the needs of the Flint- shire coal fields, and the Carnarvon stone-quarries. And even in the rural districts, many parish churches have shaken off the slovenly squalidity which so long dis- graced them, and are restored to decency, if not to beauty. But the true edifice of the Church is built, not of stones but of men ; and therefore we hail with greater pleasure than any of these external reforms, the proofs furnished b}^ the last few years, that the Welsh clergy, as a body, are beginning to take a zealous and effectual interest in the education of the people. Of this, the Minutes of the Committee of Council furnish the most decisive evidence. Not only do we find a most excellent training college for the Principality, established under the eye of the Bishop of St. David's, but diocesan boards of education have sprung up in every diocese, organis- ing masters have been engaged in visiting and remodel- ling the Church schools throughout the country, and Her Majesty's Inspectors report more and more favour- ably of these schools every year. But the most infal- lible test of their improvement is the rapid increase of Pupil-teachers paid by Government; because they are only assigned to schools in a state of thorough efficiency, and are themselves subjected to a severe annual exami- nation before they can receive their salary. In the schools under the superintendence of the Welsh clergy, the number of these pupil-teachers in the year 1849 was 90, in the year 1850 was 125, and in 1851 was 182.* * See Minutes of Council for 1849-50, 1850-51, and 1851-52. In one of the Inspectors' reports we find the following gratifying statement concerning THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 45 In England, the improvement of the mountain clergy has, perhaps, been less marked than in Wales ; but still it has been considerable. It was itself a great step in advance, when the Grammar schools were superseded by St. Bees' College; although it is to be regretted that the poverty of that establishment does not allow of the erection of proper collegiate buildings ; so that the stu- dents, instead of being under the moral control and superintendence which they would enjoy if they resided under the same roof with their teachers, are left to their own guidance in private lodgings. This may, perhaps, account for the fact, that the clergy supplied by St. Bees are less satisfactory than those trained at the new University of Durham, the foundation of which has been the greatest boon conferred upon these poor moun- taineers. The number of such Durham graduates is increasing among the clergy, though not so rapidly as could be wished; but no doubt the leaven of their ex- ample will in time spread throughout the mass. Al- ready drunkenness (once so common) is considered discreditable ; and though not extinct, is very much less prevalent than it was. The immoral clergy (for- merly a considerable class in these districts) have dis- appeared. And an increasing interest is manifested in the education of the people, and in other good works. The reforms which we have described have been three great centres of the manufacturing district, " The incumbents of Merthyr, Dowlais, and Aberdare, three gentlemen of rare courage and zeal .... have opened evening schools for adults .... in which a large corps of volunteers, chosen from among the tradesmen, &c., perform the gratuitous functions of teachers, by monthly and weekly rotation .... The clergy are always present in these evening schools." (Minutes for 1849-50, p. 212.) [Since the above was first published, the increase of pupil-teachers in church- schools in Wales has gone on rapidly. In 1852 they rose to 324, and in 1853 (the last Minutes which have appeared) they were 350.] 46 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. mainly effected, both in England and Wales, during the last quarter of a century. The bishops (with scarcely an exception) have taken a leading part in these im- provements, which they have frequently themselves originated, and always encouraged by their co-operation. We are anxious to make this acknowledgment distinctly, because we have spoken strongly of the mischief done by the bishops of a former generation ; and we desire not to be misunderstood as if we confounded the present with the past. It would be difficult indeed to condemn too harshly the corrupt negligence and interested laxity of those prelates who misgoverned the church during the last century. The Welsh bishops found it even easier than their English brethren to turn their office into a sinecure. They could despise the censures of a remote and barbarous province, while they spent their time agreeably in the social pleasures of Bath, or the political intrigues of London. Thus sometimes they passed many years without once visiting the flock to which they had sworn to devote their lives. We have seen how they disposed of their patronage, and how faithfully their neglect of duty was copied by their in- feriors. But we may form a better notion of what they were, from the autobiography of the man who was one of the last, and was generally considered the best of them, the celebrated Bishop Watson of Llandaff. This prelate held his see for thirty-four years. During all that time he never resided in his diocese, and seldom came near it. During the lasL twenty years we believe he never visited it. Including his bishopric, he held nine pieces of preferment, and actually contrived to reside on none of them. He settled in Westmoreland as a country gentleman, and there employed himself (we use his own words) " principally in building farm THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 47 houses, blasting rocks, inclosing wastes, and planting larches."* During all these years, he compelled the starving curates of his diocese to travel from South Wales to Westmoreland for ordination ; a journey which, in those days, must have cost them a year's salary. And yet, at the close of a long life, he looks back upon his career with the most undoubting self-complacency, and evidently considers himself a model of Episcopal merit. And what is still more singular, he was so considered by others, and was generally regarded as an ornament of the bench. So low was the standard of opinion, fifty years ago. By such men irrevocable harm was done, yet they escaped with no censure. And now the sins of the fathers are most unjustly visited, not on their children, but on their successors. This has been especially the case in Wales, where a small but active knot of agitators tries to gain a miserable popularity by rousing the dormant jealousy of race, and stirring up the passions of Celt against Saxon. This party makes the appointment of "Saxon bishops" a special griev- ance, and the abuse of existing Welsh bishops a profit- able part of their political capital. The Bishop of St. David's has been made the chief mark for their shafts f; and we honour him for the manly frankness with which he has turned round on his assailants, and exposed the * We cannot quote this autobiography without recommending it to our readers as one of the most amusing books ever published. The picture of Cambridge as it was in the middle of the last century is particularly in- teresting, and forms a sort of continuation to the period of Bentley and ^liddleton. t The character of these attacks may be imagined from the popular super- stitions to which they have given rise. Thus it is said to be believed in Cardiganshire that the bishop is everywhere accompanied by a favourite dog, which is trained to know and bite a curate. We have no doubt that this belief has saved his lordship from many troublesome applications. 48 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. motives by which they are actuated. We fully agree with him, that it is important that the English public and English statesmen should be made aware of the meaning of that clamour for Welsh bishops which sounds at first so plausible. If these agitators contended only that a Welsh bishop is the better for understanding the Welsh tongue, we should quite agree with them. But they are not satisfied with this. The two bishops of South Wales already preach in Welsh. The very prelate whom they chiefly assailed, acquired the lan- guage so perfectly as to use it in public within a year of his appointment. And any intelligent Englishman mio'ht do the same, unless he were made a bishop so late in life as to have lost the faculty of learning a new lano-uage, which would make his appointment objection- able on other grounds. But the Dim Saesoneg party tell us that they will have no bishops but those whose mother-tongue is Welsh. The clergy who fulfil this condition we have already described. At any rate, the number of Welsh-speaking clergy otherwise qualified for the episcopal office, is too narrow to afibrd a proper field for selection ; and we leave our readers to judge whether the main body would supply desirable rulers for the Church. We repeat, then, that the existing bishops are not re- sponsible for the evils which we have mentioned. On the contrary, they have done, and are doing, their best to reform what is amiss. So far as the executive go- vernment of the Church can amend its defects, their amendment is secured. But in truth the changes needed are beyond the power, not only of any individual bishop, but of all the bishops collectively. The reforms required are not administrative but legislative reforms. The thing wanted is a better educated and more respected THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 49 body of clergy ; and this cannot be obtained (speaking generally) without an ampler provision for their educa- tion and maintenance. Here then are two desiderata : less poverty and more instruction. A third, is a stricter discipline, to repress scandalous offences. A fourth, more perfect organisation, to make the Church in reality what it is in idea, the dispenser of the greatest possible good to the greatest possible number. How are these four wants to be supplied ? First, the income of every parochial clergyman throughout the Welsh and English mountains should be raised to not less than 200/. per annum. This is not the place for discussing the details of such a reform ; but we believe that the revenues to be vested in the Ecclesiastical Commissioners will afford the means for effecting it. In these revenues will ultimately be in- cluded the appropriate tithes (i. e. those alienated to ecclesiastical bodies), which amount in Wales to a quarter of the whole tithe rentcharge. However the augmentation of small livings is effected, it ought to take place gradually; the benefices being augmented as they successively fall vacant. Thus a superior class of men would be induced to educate their sons for the ministry of the Church. As to the second desideratum, of securing a higher education for the mountain clergy, the course of im- provement already begun should be farther carried out. Proper buildings should be provided for the College of St. Bees', that its students might be brought under moral and social, as well as intellectual, discipline. The college itself might be incorporated into the University of Durham, on the same principle as so many colleges are affiliated to the University of London. Thus its stu- dents would gain the advantage of stricter examinations E 50 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. and academic degrees. In Wales, the College of Lam- peter should (as Sir T. Phillips advises) be transformed into the University of St. David's. Its staff of profes- sors should be increased, and its collegiate buildings should be rendered adequate to accommodate a sufficient number of future clergy to supply the demands of the principality. Exhibitions and scholarships ought also to be founded for the support of the poorer theological students; a good work which (as we have mentioned) has been already begun at Lampeter. The funds necessary for these educational purposes can scarcely be now expected from the State ; although it would have granted them willingly thirty years ago, had the rulers of the Church been at that time alive to her wants. But it would not, perhaps, be too much to hope that Parliament might advance to the Ecclesiastical Com- missioners what was requisite to render the existing institutions efficient ; such loan to be repaid by instal- ments out of the income at the disposal of the Commis- sioners, which is increasing annually. Much aid might also be given to the education of the poorer clergy, if Mr. Lingen's suggestions concerning endowed grammar schools (Rep. i. p. 41.) could be carried out. He proposes that the free nominations in those schools should be thrown open to competition, and bestowed upon the more distinguished scholars of the primary schools; by which means a supply of the fittest material would be continually drawn upwards from below. The same advantage will no doubt, in some degree, result from the creation of the pupil-teacher system ; the greatest educational reform which has ever been made in this country. As to the third desideratum, stricter discipline, it has been long generally acknowledged that some legislative THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 51 interference is required ; yet it has been found very difficult to frame any satisfactory measure on the sub- ject. When a clergyman is notoriously guilty of some flagrant offence, such as drunkenness or immorality, the bishop is often inconsiderately blamed for allowing him to escape with impunity, by those who know not how small is the power of a bishop over an incumbent. In such a case the bishop must prosecute the offender at his own expense in the Ecclesiastical Courts; and, from some defect of evidence, or some technical mistake, he may fail at last in obtaining a conviction, after having spent several thousand pounds in vain. Yet we do not blame the law, while the organisation of the Church remains what it now is, for so jealously limiting the exercise of episcopal authority. So long as any power is irresponsible and arbitrary, it ought to be narrowly watched, and fenced in with restrictions. Nor would it suffice to surround the bishop with a council of presby- ters, as some propose, although that would undoubtedly give greater weight to his decisions. For the laity will always entertain a just jealousy of power wd elded only by the clergy, even though it be over a member of their own order. What sort of justice would Mr. Gorham have received had he been tried by a jury of Exeter clergymen ? A tribunal consisting exclusively of pro- fessional men must necessarily be unfitted for trying a member of their own profession. They know too much about him beforehand; and they are unconsciously swayed by class prejudice or party antipathies. This does not apply peculiarly to the clergy. A jury of barristers would be a very bad tribunal for the trial of an unpopular advocate. The verdict of a court-martial is notoriously often swayed by considerations extraneous to the justice of the case ; though in this instance an E 2 52 The church in the mountains. exceptional judicature is tolerated by the law, from the absolute necessity for immediate action in military affairs. But ecclesiastical causes may be conducted more deliberately ; and the laity have shown that they will rather endure many flagrant scandals than allow of any approximation to priestly tyranny. The third desideratum, therefore, cannot be supplied without the fourth ; better discipline is impossible with- out better organisation. In order that the Church may be enabled even to repress the offences of her own officers — much more, that she may become the channel of social regeneration to the people — she must com- prehend in her practical administration, not only her ministers, but her members. In the words of Bunsen, she must cease to be a " clergy-church." Her laity must find a place in her system ; and that a post, not merely of passive obedience, but of active co-operation. As things now are, a layman may pass through life without being once called to perform any ecclesiastical function. In other .Protestant Churches and sects, the religious layman is as much an office-bearer as the clergyman ; he has a function to discharge, a work to do. The whole ecclesiastical community is thus per- vaded by a common life, and all co-operate, with a personal interest, in promoting the ends of the body corporate. So it must be with the Church of England before she can win that triumph over abuses inherited from the past, and difficulties developed by the present, which, we trust, is still before her. She must live as a comnmnity, and not only in the lives of isolated indi- viduals. At present she is like those lower orders of animals which are divided into a number of separate centres of nervous action, with no pervading will to give unity to the whole. She must rise to that higher THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 53 scale of animated being in which the central volition is diffused by a spontaneous action through all the mem- bers ; " the whole body being fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, accord- ing to the effectual working in the measure of every part." To accomplish this there would be no need of revolu- tionary changes. It would be no difficult matter to give a recognised existence and ecclesiastical functions to the communicants of every parish ; to unite the clergy of each rural deanery, with lay representatives from their several parishes, into a ruri-decanal presby- tery ; to entrust such presbyteries with the election of a diocesan Convention ; and to assign to each of these bodies their proper work, under the superintendence of the Bishop. The times are ripe for such a reform as this ; and till it is effected, the Church must remain mutilated. If it were accomplished, it would probably soon be followed by all and more than all the changes which we have represented as desirable. One conse- quence to be expected from it would be the reabsorption into the Church of those great bodies of dissenters who agree in her doctrines, and object not to her forms. The natural position of the followers both of Whitfield and Wesley, is the position which they retained for so many years in spite of persecution, that of Religious Orders affiliated to the Church of England, and super- adding to her system an internal discipline stricter than it is possible,^ or would be desirable, to enforce uni- versally in a National Church. Who can doubt that these communities would return to the post which they quitted so reluctantly, if the lay element were duly re- presented in the councils of the Establishment ? Then, and not till then, the Church would include almost the £ 3 54 THE CHURCU IN THE MOUNTAINS. whole population in her pale, and that strength which is now wasted in intestine warfare would be directed against moral evil. Many of the clergy complain that for a century and a half the Church of England has been left without a government. They say that, had Convocation been suffered to sit during this period, the abuses which we have enumerated would have been impossible. Non- resident bishops (for example) would have been shamed into at least an outward show of decency, if a repre- sentative assembly of the Church had annually met, in which their default of duty might have been discussed. We may admit this, and yet maintain that greater evils would have been caused than cured, by committing the government of the Church to the Convocation as it is at present constituted. The laity of England are firmly determined never to entrust the Church of England to the sway of a clerical assembly. As a well-known dig- nitary wittily observed the other day, the fate of the Church must not be risked on the battle-field of Steno- clerus* But the feeling would be different, if repre- sentatives of the laity, in due proportion, were joined with the representatives of the clergy, as in the Con- vention of the Episcopal Church of America, or the Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland. No fear could then be entertained lest the powers necessary for discipline and efficiency should be abused to the promotion of sacerdotal interests. * See Herodotus, ix. 64. [It should be remembered, however, that the Convocation has no power to alter its own Constitution. It ought, therefore, to be praised, not blamed, for exercising the powers which it possesses, and making such progress as it can in the right direction. In the two years which have passed since these remarks were first published, it has done far more than could reasonably have been expected.] THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. 55 The practical advantages which would be derived from the existence of such a body are sufficiently obvious. Indeed, it must be universally admitted to be an anomaly, that while we have the Horse Guards to regulate the army, and the Admiralty to watch over the navy, we have provided no instrumentality whatever to superintend a department of the public service surely not less important. If muskets and uniforms require occasional alteration, so also do sees and parishes. If regiments have been sometimes misgoverned, so have dioceses. Our defences may need repair to keep out ecclesiastical as well as military invaders. Imagine the condition in which both army and navy would now be, had they been left for a hundred and fifty years to the direct administration of Parliament,with no in- termediate machinery provided for adapting them, from time to time, to the changing circumstances of the age. We do not believe that Parliament would resist any well considered measures for giving the Church a machinery which should enable her to work efficiently. For if the State had ceased to believe in the principle of an Establishment — if it were convinced that the re- ligious instruction of the people would be more wisely entrusted to the Voluntary System — it would carry out this conviction by disestablishing the Church. That is, it would appropriate (with due respect to vested interests) the ecclesiastical revenues to civil purposes. But to this course the Legislature has never yet shown the slightest inclination. It could not therefore con- sistently, while maintaining an Establishment, refuse to it that government which might be held, after mature consideration, most conducive to the ends for which, and for which alone, the Church has been established. We believe that the great body of the Church, both lay E 4 56 THE CHURCH IN THE MOUNTAINS. and clerical, are daily becoming more and more of one mind upon this question. And we are convinced that when those who thus agree come at last to learn their strength, and their unanimity, they will find all obstacles disappear before them. CHUECH PARTIES. October, 1853. Preface to the Srd Edition, The Author's object in writing the following Essay was to show how much of good exists in all the great parties of the Church, and to prove that the evils and follies, often attributed to whole parties, are really confined to their extremes. In a faithful picture of the latter, it was impossible to avoid a description of absurdities, which, being in themselves ludicrous, cannot be described without raising a smile. Some most excellent people have objected to the appearance of levity thus given to the treatment of a serious subject. But these objectors should recollect that the existence of the absurdities attacked injures the cause of religion, and that the only possible remedy is to exhibit them in their true colours. To say that such exposure casts ridicule on religion, is as mistaken as it would be to say that those who decry pews and galleries are ridiculing church architecture. It is hoped and believed that nothing really sacred is treated profanely in the following pages. And accusations of levity may be more easily borne, when it is remembered that they were brought, on the same grounds, against the Provincial Letters; for the bitterest enemy of satire must admit that an attempt, however feeble, to imitate Pascal's example, cannot be really inconsistent with religious earnestness. It is needless to notice the numerous attacks made on other grounds by the organs of the extreme parties. One direct misrepresentation, however, has been published, which must be answered. It has been said that, in this Article, the Recordite party is "described as Anti- nomian." It is a sufficient refutation of this to call the reader's attention to page 79. (being page 285. in the Edinburgh Review), where it is expressly said that the preachers of this party " seldom proceed to the conclusion of the Antinomian." The above-mentioned misrepresentation has been defended on the ground that, in the account of the Recordite creed, the Reviewer states, that from the doctrine of justification by faith, the Recordite " infers the worthlessness of morality." But that phrase is so fully 58 . ^ CHURCH PARTIES. explained in the very passage where it occurs, that such a misinter- pretation of it ought to have been impossible. It has also been objected, that no man ought to be called a member of the Recordite party, unless all his opinions agree with those of the Record newspaper. This objection is founded on a simple miscon- ception. By the Recordite party is designated, according to the definition given, the extreme section of the Evangelical party ; which section, taken as a whole, is represented in the press by the Record newspaper. Would those who object to this use of the term Recordite be willing to restrict their own application of the term Tractarian to the few persons who agree in every sentiment of all the ninety Tracts for the Times ? A complaint similar to that last mentioned has been also made from the opposite quarter. It has been urged that it is unfair to apply the term Romanisers to clergymen of the Tractarian party, on the ground that some of them have expressed strong antipathy against the Church of Rome. This objection also is founded on misconception of the term. It may suffice to refer to the analogy of the verb Gallicise, A man who imitates the French customs and the French style as nearly as the English language and English nature will permit, is a Galliciser, althougli he may be engaged in actual hostilities against France. A Romaniser does not mean a Romanist, any more than a Galliciser means a Gaul. Postscript to the 5th Edition. There are some differences between the present and the former editions of the following Essay. In the first place, the description of the Broad Church party has been considerably enlarged. Secondly, the names of all living individuals criticised have been struck out. It is true that, in its original form, the Article mentioned very few persons by name ; and that no one was noticed except for his public acts or his published writings. Yet, to those few, it gave greater annoyance than could possibly have been anticipated. For it was written only for the ordinary circle of readers of the Edinburgh Review ; and no one could have foreseen that its circulation would be so far wider, and consequently its criticisms so much more irritating. Hence the present alteration has been made, that no feelings of per- sonal annoyance may be perpetuated. Ill making this change, however, I wish it distinctly to be under- stood that I retract nothing which I have previously puMished, except in the single instance of the Bishop of Ossory. In the original Article, this bishop was classed among the "Recordite" party on the CHURCH PARTIES. , 59 evidence of one of his Visitation Charges. The passage in that charge to which I referred, still appears to me liable to the objection made against it. But the other works of the bishop fully prove that he does not belong to the party in which I had erroneously placed him. I take this opportunity of publicly apologising to him for my mistake ; which drew from him a pamphlet in his own defence, written in a style of very natural and excusable asperity, but yet not violating any of the laws of courtesy and propriety. 1. The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice. By W. GOODE, M.A. 2nd Edition. London: 1853. 2. Discourses on the Controversies of the Day. By W. F. HoOK, D.D. London: 1853. 3. Means of Unity. A Charge by Archdeacon Hare. London : 1847. The three writers whose works are named above may be taken as representatives of the three great parties which divide the Church of England. These parties have always existed, under different phases, and with more or less of life. But they have been brought into sharper contrast, and have learned better to understand themselves and one another, during the controversies which have agitated the last twenty years. They are commonly called the Low Church, the High Church, and the Broad Church parties ; but such an enumera- tion is the result of an incomplete analysis. On a closer inspection, it is seen that each of these is again triply subdivided into sections which exemplify respec- tively the exaggeration, the stagnation, and the normal development of the principles which they severally claim to represent. And these subdivisions, though popularly confounded with each other, differ amongst themselves, as much as the delirium of fever or the torpor of old age differs from the calm circulation of health. 60 CHURCH PARTIES. It would be an interesting task to trace these parties historically, from the Reformation downwards ; to show how far they may be regarded as continuous branches, how far as modern revivals, how far as new modifications of ancient schools of opinion. But this would require researches far two extensive for our limits. We only propose at present to examine the divisions of the ex- isting Church of England, and to study their forms and boundaries, not as they would be coloured in a chro- nological chart, but as they would be laid down in an actual survey. Of the parties named above, the most influential in recent times has been that which is termed Low Church by its adversaries, and Evangelical by its adherents. It originated in the revival of religious life, which marked the close of the last and the beginning of the present century, — the reaction against a long period of frozen lifelessness. The thermometer of the Church of England sank to its lowest point in the first thirty years of the reign of George III. Butler and Berkeley were dead, and had left no successors. The last of that generation of clergymen which had founded the Socie- ties for " the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge," and the *' Propagation of the Gospel," were now in their graves. Unbelieving bishops and a slothful clergy had succeeded in driving from the Church the faith and zeal of Methodism, which Wesley had organised within her pale. The spirit was expelled, and the dregs remained. That was the age when jobbery and corruption, long supreme in the State, had triumphed over the virtue of the Church ; when the money-changers not only entered the temple, but drove out the worshippers; when ec- clesiastical revenues were monopolised by wealthy plu*- ralists ; when the name of curate lost its legal meaning, CHURCH PARTIES. 61 and, instead of denoting the incumbent of a benefice, came to signify the deputy of an absentee ; when church services were discontinued ; when university exercises were turned into a farce ; when the holders of ancient endowments vied with one another in evading the in- tentions of their founders; when everywhere the lowest ends were most openly avowed, and the lowest means adopted for effecting them. In their preaching, nine- teen clergymen out of twenty carefully abstained from dwelling upon Christian doctrines. Such topics exposed the preacher to the charge of fanaticism. Even the calm and sober Crabbe, who certainly never erred from excess of zeal, was stigmatised in those days by his brethren as a " Methodist," because he introduced into his sermons the motives of future reward and punish- ment. An orthodox clergyman (they said) should be content to show his people the worldly advantage of good conduct, and should leave heaven and hell to the ranters. Nor can we wonder that such should have been the notions of country parsons, when, even by those who passed for the supreme arbiters of orthodoxy and taste, the vapid rhetoric of Blair was thought the highest standard of Christian exhortation. At last, this age of stagnation was ended by that great convulsion which startled Europe from its slumber. The triumph of Atheism in France restored Christianity to England. Faith revived in the tempest ; the solemn time woke solemn thoughts ; and forgotten truths were preached to eager hearers, by an ever-increasing band of zealous men, whose one desire was to rekindle in the hearts of others that belief which filled their own, in the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel. These doctrines had hitherto been rather tacitly ignored than openly contradicted. The Articles were subscribed by those 62 CHURCH PARTIES. who disbelieved * them as *• Articles of Peace," to use the fashionable euphemism ; but by most they were neither believed nor disbelieved. The mass of the clergy troubled not their souls with theological diffi- culties, but hunted and tippled peacefully with the squirearchy. And now, when such doctrines as Human Corruption and the Divine Atonement were prominently brought forward, they were received by the majority with a storm of opposition. The aspect of the struggle which ensued is most anomalous. Truths embodied in every formulary of the Church, enforced in her homilies, and stereotyped in her liturgy, were assailed as heretical novelties by her ministers. Yet they were compelled, Sunday after Sunday, to affirm in their reading-desk what they contradicted in their pulpit. Though they denied human corruption in the sermon, they were forced in the prayers to acknowledge that all mankind were "tied and bound by the chain of their sins;" though they denounced as fanatical all mention of the Atonement, they were compelled to speak of it them- selves, not in their own words, but in the words of the Universal Church, with the deepest pathos and the most enthusiastic love. Such inconsistency was too glaring not to be felt, even by the dullest ; and it gave an over- whelming superiority in argument to the assailing party. Thus their triumph was more rapid and complete than is usual in theological controversies. In less than twenty years the original battle-field was won, and the enemy may be said to have surrendered at discretion. Thence- forward, scarcely a clergyman was to be found in Eng- land who preached against the doctrine of the creeds. * Palej, in his defence of the Feathers' Tavern petitioners in 1772, states it as an admitted fact that the only persons who then believed the Articles were the Methodists, who were refused ordination by the Bishops. CHURCH PARTIES. 63 The faith of the Church was restored to the level of her formularies. But, meanwhile, the combatants who had won the victory were no longer united under a single standard ; or rather the banner of the Cross, under which they fought, was seen to wave over the encampments of three separate armies. And each of these was more or less recruited, and its character more or less altered, by the enrolment among its troops of a portion of the con- quered enemy. From this period the Evangelical party began to as- sume the form which it still retains. At first it had comprehended many different shades of theological opinion. All religious men had been classed together by their opponents as enthusiasts, fanatics, and Metho- dists, and had agreed to forget their minor differences in their essential agreement. But when the great truths of Christianity were no longer denied within the Church, the maintenance of them ceased to be a distinctive badge of fellowship ; and other secondary doctrines as- sumed greater importance, as forming the specific creed of the majority of those who had hitherto been contented with a more catholic bond of union. Of the tenets which then became, and have since continued, the watch- words of the Evangelical camp, the most conspicuous were the two following ; first, " the universal necessity of conversion,^^ and secondly, '^justification by faith.''^ A third was added, to which subsequent controversy gave more than its original prominence, namely, " the sole authority of Scripture as the rule offaith.^^ Each of these doctrines may be held and taught in two ways ; either as a living principle of action, or as the corner-stone of a technical system. Thus, " the necessity of conversion^'' in the mouths of some who preach it, means that the selfishness of man's earthly nature 64 CHURCH PARTIES. must be superseded by the strength of a diviner life, before his actions can possess any spiritual worth ; in the mouths of others, it means that every individual must experience, on a particular day and hour, certain prescribed sensations, in a defined order. Agam, ^'-jus- tification by faith " may be an expression of the truth, that peace and holiness must be derived from conscious union with a present Saviour, and can never flow from a routine of outward observances ; or, on the other hand, it may be turned into the scholastic expression of a dis- tinction without a difference. So " the sole authority of Scripture^^ may symbolise the sacred duty of private judgment, involving the necessity of personal religion ; or it may be the mere negation of ecclesiastical autho- rity. Moreover, besides this difference in the mode of apprehending and enforcing these doctrines, there is a farther difference in the results deducible from them. If either be taken as the basis of a system of speculation, it may be made, by an apparently logical train of argu- ment, to evolve extravagant consequences. And these consequences will be embraced by a certain order of minds, whose creed will be the " exaggeration " of Evangelicalism, to which we shall presently return. The old Evangelical party, the party of Milner, Martyn, and Wilberforce, has for the most part taught its characteristic tenets in their practical and positive, not in their controversial and negative aspect. Accord- ingly, it has been singularly fruitful in good, both public and private, among rich and poor, to England and to the world. Those great acts of national morality, which will give an abiding glory to the present century, were all either originated or carried by this party in the Church. Its representatives in Parliament, Wilberforce, Stephen, Babington, Thornton, Buxton, and their coad- CHURCH PARTIES. 65 jutors, successively led the van of philantliropic pro- gress, and raised the tone of the public conscience. To them is due the suppression of the slave trade in the last generation, to them the abolition of slavery in the present. The reform of prison discipline was effected by their efforts, the criminal law was robbed of its bloodthirsty severity by their aid.* To their benevo- lent agitation it is owing that Hindoo widows are no longer burnt alive, and that the natives of the most distant and barbarous colonies know that they will not appeal in vain to English sympathy against English op- pression. In more recent times the population of our factories and our mines may thank the exertions of another Evangelical champion, for the investigation into their sufferings, and the improvement in their condition. Even the outcasts of society, neglected and despaired of by others, have been won to civilisation by the untiring benevolence of the same party and the same leader, the establishers, though not the inventors, of " Ragged Schools." Others have declaimed more copiously on the diseases of the body politic, and the regeneration of society. But while such men have only talked, these single-minded Christians have worked ; doing what they could, and the best they knew, to stop visible and pressing evils ; while their depredators content them- selves with idly proclaiming that faith is dead, and worship obsolete. But while they have devoted themselves thus zea- lously to philanthropic objects, the members of this party have not neglected to labour for ends more ex- clusively religious. Convinced of our national respon- * Witliont the aid of the Evangelical party, and their ont-of-doors agita- tion, the efforts of Romilly and Mackintosh might have remained fruitless. F (^6 CHURCH PARTIES. sibility to the lieatheri populations with which our com- merce brought us into contact, they inaugurated the present century with the foundation of the " Church Missionary Society." That Society now maintains about two thousand ministers and teachers, of whom two hundred are ordained, and has estabhshed more than one hundred stations, scattered over the world. Centres of relio^ious truth and of civilisation are thus fixed in the midst of heathendom, which cannot fail to produce results far greater than anything which they have hitherto effected. Yet the visible fruits already garnered would well repay the labour. For, not to mention the converted towns on the coast of Africa, whole districts of Southern India have embraced the laith ; and the native population of New Zealand (spread over a territory as large as England) has been reclaimed from cannibalism, and added to the Church. About the same time, the same party were chiefly instrumen- tal in establishing the " Bible Society," which, in the course of the last half century, has translated the Scrip- tures into one hundred and forty-eight languages, and circulated forty-three millions of copies. Besides this, it has so greatly reduced the price of the English Bible as to bring it within the reach of the poorest labourer. Nor is it to be reckoned the least merit of this body, that it has promoted Christian charity by forming a bond of union between all sects of Protestants.* The conspicuous position occupied by these societies, and their striking results, have eclipsed in the public view the more domestic efforts of their supporters ; and * We wish that we were not obliged to confess that this last merit of the Bible Society is too often cancelled by the uncharitable abuse of Roman Catholics, which sometimes forms a main topic at its meetings. CHURCH PARTIES. 67 the Low Church party has been accused of neglecting nearer duties, for the more exciting pursuit of evange- lising the antipodes. Yet the charge is obviously un- founded ; for the very men who were most energetic in their endeavours to christianise the world, were also the authors of every scheme devised in the present century for christianising England. They were the first to call attention to the fact, that our population had outgrown the religious machinery provided by the existing paro- chial system of the Church. They endeavoured from the beginning, so far as the defective state of the law allowed them, to supply this growing population with the means of worship. The first Diocesan Church Building Society was founded by Archbishop Sumner, soon after he became Bishop of Chester*; and during his episcopate in that diocese he consecrated more than 200 new churches. At a still earlier period, Mr. Simeon of Cambridge had spent his whole private fortune in an effort to meet the same evil by a different method. He saw that, in many of our great towns, myriads were under the pastoral charge of a single clergyman. In such a position he knew that the slothful found ample excuse for doing nothing : but he knew also that the zealous might do much ; and that the very sight of a clergyman devoting himself to his work under such difficulties would win co-operation. Acting on this view he purchased the advowsons of many such livings, and vested them in trustees. The inhabitants of Bath, Clifton, Bradford, and many other places similarly situated, have been thus supplied with a body of labo- * The General Church Building Society was founded by Sir T. Acland, Lord Kenyon, and others, ten years earlier, in 1818 ; but this is supported by public collections under Queen's Letters, not exclusively by private efforts. F 2 68 CHUHCH PARTIES. rious ministers ; and their improved condition attests the wisdom of the plan. With the same end in view, the same party founded the *' Pastoral Aid Society" in 1836. It now supports more than 300 additional clergymen (besides above 100 lay assistants), ministering to a population of nearly three milUon souls. Again, at a still later period, they have attempted to reach those godless multitudes who, though within " the sound of the church-going bell," are far beyond the sphere of its attraction. With this purpose they have instituted a new ecclesiastical order, under the name of *' Scripture Readers," drawn from the same class of society as those to whom they are sent. These lay Evangelists are often able to penetrate where a clergyman's visit would be repelled ; and some- times their simple earnestness triumphs over the logic of Tom Paine and the rhetoric of the Sunday newspaper, and wins back family after family of baptized heathens to the pale of Christendom. These are some of the objects effected by the collec- tive exertions of the Evangelical body. But the work they have done is not to be measured by these public undertakings. They have been still more extensively useful by their private efforts, each in his own parish going about doing good, healing the sick, and preaching the Gospel to the poor. It has been by such silent labours that the profound darkness in which the Eng- lish peasantry were enveloped at the beginning of the century* has been gradually dissipated. They were * See, for example, Hannah More's account of the state of the Somerset- shire peasantry, when she began to establish schools among them. In read- ing it, one can scarcely believe that such barbarism could have existed in England only fifty years ago. It is true that the " Christian Knowledge Society," at the beginning of the 18th century, made some noble efforts in CHURCH PARTIES. 69 the establisliers of Sunday Schools, of Infant Schools, and Lending Libraries. By weekly lectures in the sequestered hamlets of their parishes, they brought the teaching of the Church to the door of the most distant cottage. They promoted benefit societies and clothing clubs, and all the manifold machinery of parochial be- nevolence. And by always residing on their prefer- ment, they brought the civilising influence of a resident gentry to bear upon many a village which had been de- stitute of that advantage for several generations. Unhappily, the rapid growth of the towns outstripped their eflbrts, and therefore the results effected have been wholly inadequate to the necessities of the time. Yet here, too, they did their best ; and they were long the only party in the Church which attempted to do any- thing. By the institution of " District Visitors," they have established the only method of parochial organisa- tion which can enable a clergyman to become the minis- tering pastor of congregated myriads. Moreover, they have sought out the sailors on our docks, and the dig- gers on our railways, and gathered them together for worship. And they have not hesitated to preach in filth}^ courts and alleys, the haunts of vice and infamy, to audiences which could not be tempted to listen under any roof but the sky.* It is true, that in our own times, these various means of good are pursued with equal zeal by other parties in the* Church ; yet we must not on that account forget tlie same direction, and continued to do all that was done at all for the re- ligious education of the people till recent times. But after the middle of last century, it had fallen into languor and decrepitude, from which it did not revive till after the beginning of the present. * This open-air preaching has been lately tried with great success by some of the clergy in our large towns, especially at Liverpool. r 3 70 CHURCH PARTIES. the debt of gratitude due to their originators. It is often said, indeed, that the Evangelical body are no longer what they were forty years ago ; that they have lost their first love, and ceased to do their first works. This charge is perhaps not altogether groundless, for their creed has now become an hereditary system, which must often be adopted more from habit than conviction. Yet if we keep in mind the distinction to be drawn between genuine "Evangelicalism" and its two degra- dations (the exaggerated and the stagnant), we shall find that the original type still contributes largely and healthily to the religious element of our national life. We have already given sufficient proof of its continuous activity in public matters. In the more important sphere of private duty it is less easy to cite examples, which could not be mentioned without violating the modesty of unostentatious merit in secluded parsonages. But we imagine that most of our readers can supply examples fo^ themselves, by looking round among the clergy of their neighbourhood. Such pastors may not perhaps be men of the most comprehensive understand- ing ; not the fittest teachers for inquiring minds, nor qualified to refute the learned infidelity of Strauss or Newman. But upon the middle and lower ranks of their parishioners, they often have a stronger influence than their more intellectual brethren. The attraction of their personal character, shown forth in a daily life of self-sacrificing love, gradually wins many to righte- ousness, and turns the hearts of the disobedient to the Avisdom of the just. The biographies of two such men, Hamilton Forsyth and Spencer Thornton, have recently been published, and have passed through several edi- tions. They both died before middle age, but were no otherwise distinguished from hundreds of their fellows. CHURCH PARTIES. 71 Tlicy gave themselves to the work of their calling, with no great abilities and no public notice. Yet those who study the narrative of their lives will see how much they did, by the mere force of unquestionable sincerity and personal holiness, during the short time in which they were permitted to serve their generation. A third biography, equally recent and equally popular with the above (that of Mr. Fox the Missionary), represents an adherent of the same theological scliool, but of a less ordinary type. While a school-boy at Rugby, he de- voted himself in heart to the work of convertins^ the heathen. When he had completed his education at Ox- ford, he carried this purpose into execution. Southern India was the scene of his ministrations; and under that burning sun, in a few years of too eager labours, he wore out a strong constitution, and came home to die. Yet his life was not thrown away, nor do such martyrs ever sacrifice themselves in vain. In them is still fulfilled that which was said of old, semen est sanguis christianorum. For one who thus falls, many spring up to take his place. Henry Fox, himself the follower of Henry Martyn, has been already followed by other aca- demic students like-minded with himself.* But there is no need to dwell on the merits of the dead, nor to violate the modesty of private station, in order to disprove the assertion that the party of Wil- berforce, Cecil, and Simeon is effete. The notion is sufficiently confuted by living examples in the most conspicuous positions. One only we will mention, as a type of his class. Dr. Perry, now Bishop of Melbourne, began his career by obtaining the highest honours which * The readers of Dr. Arnold's life will remember how another of his " evangelical" friends renounced tlie comforts of an Oxford fellowship to preach the Gospel on the shores of the Carnatic. r 4 72 CHURCH PARTIES. Cambridge can bestow. He was the Senior Wrangler of his year, and afterwards obtained a Fellowship of Trinity, and resided for some years in his College chambers. In that luxurious seat of learning he de- voted himself, not to the amusements of literary leisure, but to alleviating the sufferings and caring for the spi- ritual interests of the destitute and wretched. Barn- well, a great suburb of Cambridge, had recently sprung up, and then contained 10,000 inhabitants, almost ex- clusively of the very lowest class, and a large proportion of them supported by thieving and prostitution. For this population there was one small church, which held 200 people, and was endowed with 40Z. per annum. The incumbent (a man of the old school, now deceased) utterly neglected his flock, which was in a state of as hopeless degradation, spiritual, moral, and physical, as it is possible to imagine. Mr. Perry's first step was to purchase the advowson of this living, and to present a working clergyman. He next built two large churches, and divided the overgrown cure into two ecclesiastical districts, each provided with its parochial schools, its district visitors, and other appliances of a well-organised parish. The second of these he took under his own pastoral charge, and refused, for its sake, one of the best livings in the diocese, which the Bishop offered him as a testimonial of his eminent services to the Church. Soon afterwards, the colonial bishopric of Melbourne was pressed upon him by the Government of the day. Mr. Perry was already a man of established reputation and independent fortune. He had everything to lose, and nothing to gain, by accepting the offer. Had he acted on selfish principles, he must have refused to give up the society of Cambridge, the comforts of English civilisation, and the reverential attachment of CHURCH PARTIES. 73 grateful parishioners, and to exchange all this for per- petual exile and disheartening labour, far from the seats of all the Muses, among the Mammon -seeking and Jaco- binical population of a new colony. But he was not a man to hesitate, when duty was on one side and inclina- tion on the other. All earthly motives urged him to remain ; but he heard a voice which called him to build up the Church of Christ, and graft upon the vigorous growth of a new nation the germs of a higher life. That call he obeyed, and went forth in the spirit of the patri- archs, '* not knowing whither he went.''^ And now, from time to time, come the tidings of his stedfast faith and patience triumphing over difficulty and prejudice ; his unwearied activity ; his confirmations in distant settle- ments ; his visitations through the bush ; and, latterly, of the personal hardships to which ho has been sub- jected, by the sudden metamorphosis of his diocese into the gold mine of the world. The last intelligence we have seen of him was given by a picture in an Illus- trated Newspaper, which represented him preaching on the fork of a tree to the gold-diggers of Mount Alex- ander. That picture must have touched the hearts of many of his Cambridge pupils, as they remembered the happy English home which he had abandoned for such a destiny. Who shall say that faith is dead, when such fruits of faith are living ? Do men gather grapes of thorns, or iigs of thistles ? We deny, then, that the old Evangelical party is efftte, while it still brings forth children so worthy of their spiritual ancestry. Yet at the same time we must confess that its strength and vigour is relatively if not positively diminished, and that its hold upon the public is less than it was in the last generation. This may be accounted for partly by a certain narrowness 74 CHURCH PARTIES. and rigidity in its teaching, which has increased as its traditional doctrines have become more fixed and tech- nical ; partly by the almost inevitable tendency of the human mind, while contending for truth, to insist that her shield must have both sides of the same colour ; partly also from that neglect of theological learning, with which all parties in the Church are chargeable, and for which the blame must rest, not on one or the other party, but on the universities and the nation.* This neglect, and especially the want of critical study of the text of Scripture, has paved the way for the ex- travagances of the extreme party which calls itself by the same name, and is by the public often confounded with the old Evangelical body. The disgust but too justly excited by the eccentric offspring, has alienated some reasonable men from the sober-minded parent. This exaggeration of Evangelicalism is sometimes called the Puritan, sometimes, from its chief organ, the Re- cordite party. In describing it we shall adopt the latter designation ; because the name of Puritan, associated as it is with some of the noblest deeds and greatest * The Evangelical party has been too much devoted to practical work to think much of Literature. Yet its chief literary organ, the " Christian Ob- server," was at first very ably conducted by Mr. Zachary Macaulay. And it has now, after a long interregnum of dulness, recovered something of its original character. At present, moreover, the party may boast of numbering among its members one of the most learned writers of the day, Mr. Goode, who in his own line of controversial theology is probably unsurpassed. One reason of the neglect of learning in the Church, is that such men are not en- couraged by Cathedral Preferment, which would set them free from parochial cares to follow their true vocation. It is a singular and not a creditable fact, that Mr. Goode and Mr. Home, two of the most eminent contributors to our scanty stock of theological literature, should both be suffered to remain in- cumbents of London parishes. We see, indeed, from the Clergy List, that Mr. Home does hold a Prebend of St. Paul's, one of that class called the laudatur et alget Prebends, worth eleven pounds per annum. The Canonries are in the gift of the Crown. CHURCH PARTIES. 75 men that England ever produced, ought not to be ap- plied to a party which, though adopting the traditional theology of the Puritans, yet has no sympathy in their higher aims ; and though it may wear their mantle has not inherited their spirit. The distinctive doctrines of this party are derived from those of the Evangelical school, by pushing each of these to extravagant consequences. Thus, from jus- tification by faith the Recordite infers the worthlessness of morality*; on conversion by grace he builds a system of predestinarian fatalism ; from the sole supremacy of Scripture he derives the dogma of verbal inspiration. Under the first head, he teaches not only that faith is the sole source of virtue, but that its genuineness must be tested not by the works but by the feelings; and faith he defines, not as a spiritual afi'ection, but as an assent to the single proposition " I believe that I am saved." This, at least, is the definition adopted by the more logical members of the party ; but the majority, repelled by its monstrous consequences, substitute a circular definition, which makes faith to be " the belief that man is justified by faith." True believers are those only who can pronounce the Shibboleth of the sect ; and this is the sufiicient criterion of conversion. Hence results that worst of formalisms, the substitution of a form of words for the worship of spirit and of truth. Even at the hour of death, when other delu- sions are dispelled, this reigns triumphant. The dying * By a most unfair misrepresentation It has been alleged that the Recordltes are, in this passage, called Antinomians. The " Record" itself, however, in a leading article on this essay, vindicates the writer from such a charge, by confessing that its party does hold morality (as morality) to be of no spiritual value, unless it be joined with an agreement in their own religious opinions. And this is all that is asserted in the text. 76 CUURCH PARTIES. sinner, if his blanched lips can mutter the prescriptive phrase, is dismissed undoubtingly to Paradise. The dying saint, if he has not rehearsed the formula, is con- signed to a future of despair. No matter though his life have been spent in the labours of an apostle — though his last words breathe trust and love — his case is considered doubtful, if not desperate, if he has not recited the magic words " I believe that I am justified by faith." To prove that this is no exaggerated view, we quote the judgment of the party (as expressed in their chief organ) on the death-bed of Arnold. " Did he" (says the critic) " even in death, rest intelligently and clearly on that fundamental doctrine [justification by faith] on which Luther declared the Gospel turned, and whosoever denieth which is not to be accounted, in the words of Cranraer, for a Christian man. We can- not SAY. It does not appear." * To appreciate fully the superstition of this, it must be remembered that Arnold was a conspicuous defender of the doctrine of justification by faith ; so that the doubt of his salvation is caused by his failing to go through a certain verbal form in his dying agonies. What heathen incantation, what negro fetish- worship, can be more unspiritual than this idolatry of a Shibboleth ? Yet we have lived to see an exhibition of the same narrow-hearted bigotry even more startling than this. While all Europe was applauding the zeal and love of those saintly women who off'ered themselves to en- * Record, Feb 3. 1845. The article goes on to express a charitable hope that Arnold's faith secured his personal safety; but concludes with warning its readers against adopting his opinons lest they should "perceive, when too late, tlie truth of the closing words of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, '•''then I saw that there was a way to hell even from the gates of heaven^ as well as from the citi) of destruction.^'" CHUBCH PARTIES. 77 counter a lingering martyrrlom in the pestilential charnel-houses of Scutari, a puny croak was heard from the Recordites of England, denouncing these Christian heroines as unsound in their dogmatical theology. Nor was this all. Not merely were the nurses denounced collectively, but individuals among them were singled out for reprobation. Their noble-minded leader was assailed by disparaging innuendoes ; and still more inex- cusably, private ladies who accompanied her, holding- no official position, and having never obtruded them- selves on public notice, were dragged from their obscu- rity by the vile pen of unmanly calumniators, and stig- matised by name in the columns of a religious newspaper as " Puseyites " and ^' E-omanisers." And this was done by Pharisaical partisans, who not content with refusing themselves to help in the blessed work, must needs vent their sanctimonious venom on those who had redeemed England from her reproach, and had proved that Pro- testantism could supply a nobler Sisterhood of Mercy than ever left the shores of Italy or France. It is gra- tifying to know that these Pharisees were rebuked by a clergyman of the old Evangelical persuasion, a repre- sentative of the opinions of Wilberforce and Milner, in whose orthodoxy even the " Record " itself could find no flaw. The following were the words of Mr. Gurney, which we are glad to quote, as proving the correctness of the distinction drawn in these pages between the Recordite and Evangelical parties. He says : " We have seen a gifted and holy woman marked out by Pro- vidence for the blessed healing work — dedicated to it by her own choice — summoned from her privacy by ministers of the crown who knew her worth — changing her quiet duties, with- out a moment's hesitation, for responsibilities which might have daunted one not strenojthened from above — bravinix all that 78 CHURCH PABTIES. cold-hearted and narrow-minded lovers of prudery might say to her disparagement, and then assailed in print by self-styled re- ligious men, as being not perfect in her theology, as having sym- pathies or associations with things or persons which zealots call by a bad name — as being suspected, at any rate, of certain ' right-hand or left-hand deflections,' from the straight path of their orthodoxy. Truly, religious partisanship has done much already to make wits merry and infidels more bold. Men of sagacious and candid minds have marvelled to see the spirit of Christianity so imperfectly reflected, so often contradicted, in the periodical literature which many serious-minded people love best. But the last exhibition, I think, is the worst ; and for myself, while I deplore the bigotry, I wonder at the hardihood, which, in the face of the English nation, could make Florence Nightingale the mark for hostile criticism, while the walls of Scutari resound with blessings on her name." * The same formalism which leads to this rigid enforce- ment of a peculiar phraseology, leads also to a supersti- tious fear of ethical exhortation. If a preacher of the School ventures to enforce morality at all, he does it in a style the most timid and hesitating ; and begins by apologising to his hearers for seeming to limit the freedom of the Gospel, and by explaining that his ob- ject is not so much to exhort them to holiness, as to convince them of helplessness. If he begs them to ab- stain from evil, it is only because the commission of sin will '* cloud the clearness of their assurance." More- over, he is careful to destroy all the cogency of his ex- postulations, by explaining that sin cannot affect the safety of a believer, for " the sins of believers are forgiven even before their commission." On the other hand, if a man be not a " believer," his virtues are nothing * From a lecture on " God's Heroes and the World's Heroes," by Rev. J. II Gurney, Rector of Marylebone. CHORCII PARTIES. 79 better than "splendid sins."* Hence the very ideas of right and wrong have no meaning beyond the limits of the sect ; and within its boundaries they would have as little, but that man's conscience is stronger than his logic. Thus the very preachers who proclaim the " im- puted righteousness " of the most sinful believer, seldom proceed to the conclusion of the Antinomian, — '' Let us continue in sin that grace may abound," The belief in Predestination, which we have men- tioned as the second article of their faith, does not in- deed belong distinctively to them. It is shared by many sects, not only of Christians, but of heathens. Greek philosophers and Turkish mollahs have adopted the same solution of the same insoluble problem. It would be the extremest presumption peremptorily to deny the theoretical truth of that solution ; nor is it less presumptuous peremptorily to affirm it. The question is left undecided by Scripture, and cannot be decided by Reason. But, whatever may be thought of fatalism as a speculative theory, it is evident (as Butler has taught us) that men must act as if such a theory were false. Hence, it would seem to follow that exhortations meant to influence action should not put it prominently for- * The Recordlte party justify this assertion by appealing to the 13th Article, which declares that *' works done before grace have the nature of sin." But this proposition, if interpreted in the Puritanic sense, would con- tradict the inspired declaration, that the prayers and alms of the heathen Cornelius were acceptable to God (Acts, x. 4. and 35.). The true meaning of the Article is only that Divine Grace and Human Goodness are co-exten- sive ; so that where there is no Grace there is no Goodness, and, conversely, that wheresoever there is Goodness there is Grace. Thus the virtues of Socrates are not denied, but only ascribed to their true source. Whereas in the Puritanic view (which unhappily was adopted by some of the con- tinental Reformers) they are denied to be virtues at all ; and thus the very Ibundations of all religious evidence, the axiomatic ideas of morality, are cut away. 80 CHURCH PARTIES. Avard.* This rule is systematically violated by the most popular preachers of the Recordite party, who obtrude their own vieAvs of these impenetrable mysteries as certain truth, and deduce consequences from them which shock the elementary ideas of morality. They address their hearers as divided into two classes by an im- passable, though invisible, line of demarcation. Those on one side are predestined from eternity to salvation ; those on the other are doomed before their birth to re- probation. f The "Church" consists of the former only, though many of them are now living in vice ; for they will all, sooner or later, receive that "effectual calling" which will irresistibly compel them to come in. The notion of a Visible Church is (according to these preachers) a falsity : all who do not belong to their "Invisible Church" are without the pale of salvation. Hence their opposition to those parts of the Anglican liturgy which teach that " all who profess and call them- selves Christians" are admitted to all tlue privileges of the Catholic Church. J Hence also their anxiety to alter the Baptismal Service, and the Church Catechism. The majority of their fellow-Christians are collectively stigmatised as "the world which lieth in wickedness." And so great is their horror of this Christian world, that, being compelled in the course of the Sunday Les- sons to read the declarations that "God loved the world," and that our Lord "came to save the world," • Archbishop Sumner's work on "Apostolical Preaching" contains some excellent remonstrances against preaching predestination. If all who profess to look up to him with veneration would follow his advice and example, there would be but few Recordites. f The word "reprobation" is, however, seldom heard ; and the doctrine, though always implied, is seldom distinctly preached. J A clergyman of this party in Devonshire was not long since suspended by the Court of Arches for refusing to read the Baptismal Service without mutilation. See also note B. in the Appendix. CHURCH PARTIES. 81 some of them have been even known to interpolate an explanation on the spot.* From the same theory they derive conclusions con- cerning the Divine attributes which are peculiarly of fensive to the human conscience. For this very reason they delight in proclaiming such tenets, because they consider their rejection a proof of man's natural hostility to God. They assert (for example) that the sole object of the Creator and Redeemer was, not to promote the happiness of his creatures, but to increase his own glory. It would be blasphemous to state the conse- quences of such a view in its bearing on the axiomatic truth that the perfection of man is to be sought in a moral resemblance to God. Hence, also, they infer that it is the highest attainment of Christian grace to delight in contemplating the execution of Divine vengeance on the wicked. The third cornerstone of the Recordite creed is the dogma of " Verbal Inspiration." The Bible is regarded, not as a collection of books written by men under Divine guidance, but as a single book, dictated in every word and letter by God himself. This theory, avowedly opposed to the primd facie evidence of Scripture, is maintained by the a priori argument, that if we once introduce the slightest uncertainty into Revelation, we are left without any sure guide at all ; the precise ground on which Romanists defend Papal infallibility. In accordance with this assumption, every casual allu- sion in Scripture to a fact of history, geology, or astro- nomy, however unconnected with religion, must be literally and infallibly accurate. By these dogmatists * Within the last iQvr years there was a clergyman (now deceased) in Leicestershire who used to read such passages thus : " God so loved the elect," "I came not to judge the elect, but to save the elect," &c. G 82 CHURCH PARTIES. (says Bishop Hall) "every point of heraldry in the sacred genealogies is made matter of no less than life and death to the soul."* Hence they are compelled to resort to the most arbitrary and unscrupulous misin- terpretations, either violently wresting Scripture to make it accord with facts, or denying facts which they cannot reconcile with Scripture. From the principle which they assume, the condemnation of Galileo for affirming the earth's motion follows as an inevitable consequence. f From the same premises it is inferred that each book in the Bible is equally valuable to the Christian, and that the only distinction between the Old Testament and the New is their difference of bulk. Hence the Old Testament, containing four times as many pages as the New, should be four times as much studied. We do not know that this proposition has been arithmetically stated by the Recordite School, but it is practically acted on. J By a strange paradox, the very party which in its phraseology most magnifies the Gospel and disparages the Law, practically raises the Mosaic dispensation above the Christian. It is essen- tially a Judaizing party. The characters on which it * Hall's Occasional Meditations. f The earliest instance we have met with of this theory is mentioned in Montuela's History of Mathematics. When first the true doctrine of the ^Multiplication of Fractions was taught, a Spanish friar wrote against it, alleging tliat it was heretical to assert that multiplication by a Fraction diminished the Multiplicand, because Scripture had said " Increase and multiply," and thereby had made Multiplication equivalent to Augmentation. Specimens of modern absurdity, quite equal to this, may be found embedded in that rich conglomerate, the Appendix to the 5th Edition of Professor Sedgwick's " Discourse on the Studies of Cambridge." \ Good old Mr. Romaine (a Recordite before the Record) came very near the arithmetical statement. His mode of reading the Bible was to begin at the first chapter of Genesis, till he reached the last of Revelations, and then to begin with Genesis again. Thus he read four pages of the Old Testament for one of the New. CHURCH PARTIES. 83^ dwells most fondly, the ordinances to which it clings most passionately, are the characters and the ordinances of Judaism. Its models of Christian life are the Jewish Patriarchs. Indeed, the religion of some members of this party seems to consist solely in love of Jews and hatred of Papists. Their favourite society is that which professes to be founded for the conversion of Israelites to Christianity, but which too often acts as a Propa- ganda for converting Christians to Judaism.* It spends vast sums in sending emissaries over the country who diffuse Judaic views of Scripture, and proclaim the spiritual inferiority of the Gentile to the Jew. Those glorious prophecies of the restoration of Israel, and the blessedness of the new Jerusalem, which have their ful- filment (according to the teaching of St. Paul) in the destinies of the Christian Church, are applied by these propagandists to the carnal seed of Abraham, to the pawnbrokers of Monmouth Street, and the slop-sellers of St. Giles's. Nay, some of the most eminent leaders of the party seek even to revive the ordinance of cir- cumcision ; and their most popular writer, the late Charlotte Elizabeth, published a pamphlet addressed to Bishop Alexander (the first English Bishop of Jeru- salem), exhorting him to enforce the observance of this rite upon his sons.f * The faults of this society are not in its design, but in its management ; and we must acknowledge that they are redeemed by one great merit, viz., its co-operation in the establishment of the Jerusalem bishopric, the most ttuly catholic deed ever done by the Church of England, whereby she has given the hand of fellowship to the Protestants of Germany on one side, and the Greek, Syrian, and Coptic churches on the other. t " Israel's Ordinances, a Letter to the Bishop of Jerusalem." The Bishop was a Jewish convert, and the substance of the pamphlet is contained in the following paragraph. " Call you what we will, my Lord, you are a Jew, a circumcised Jew. My dear Lord, bear with me, while I respectfully and airectionately put once more the query — why are not ymr sons also Jewsf^ G 2 84 CHURCH PARTIES. But the most conspicuous example of Judaizing ten- dencies in the party, is furnished by their Sabbatarian views. In defiance of the clearest expressions of Scrip- ture — in defiance of the universal consent of all foreign churches, Catholic and Protestant — in defiance of the express declarations of the Reformers — but in ac- cordance with the tradition of the Scotch and English Puritans — they teach that the Christian Lord's Day is identical with the Jewish Sabbath. Nay, they require that it should be observed with a stern severity unknown even to the Mosaic ritual. The effect of such an obser- vance upon those who submit to it for conscience' sake, is, we freely own, most beneficial. Nor does it differ materially from that observance of the day which is the highest privilege of the Christian. Those who know how much we need every help to raise our thoughts above the turmoil of the world, will feel thankful that they are permitted to rest from earthly cares and amuse- ments on the Sunday. They will be ready to exclaim with Herbert, — " O Day most calm, most bright, The fruit of this, the next world's bud. The week were dark but for thy light." But the Puritans and their puny modern copyists have always enforced this religious privilege of the ad- vanced Christian, as if it had been a command com- pulsory upon all men. And they have enforced it, moreover, in its negative and prohibitory aspect ; where they could, by penal laws ; everywhere, by dam- natory denunciations. Thousands are thus alienated from piety, by associating it from their earliest child- hood with a day of gloom and restriction, imposed CHUBCH PARTIES. 85 upon them by arbitrary force. As one example among a hundred of the method pursued by this party to repel children from religion, we will quote the following hymn " for Saturday night," from a popular collection of de- votional poetry : — " Haste, put your playthings all away, To-morrow is the Sabbath day. Come bring to me your Noah's ark, Your pretty tinkling music-cart. Because, my love, you must not play. But holy keep the Sabbath day. " Bring me your German village, please, With all its houses, gates, and trees ; Your waxen doll with eyes of blue. And all her tea-things bright and new. Because, you know, you must not play, But love to keep the Sabbath day. " Now take your Sunday pictures down. King David with his harp and crown. Good little Samuel on his knees. And many pleasant sights like these. Because, you know, you must not play. But love to keep the Sabbath day."* To such well-meant coaxing, the child replies bluntly, "I don't like Sunday pictures, Ma; I like my doll." And on being scolded for this, and taunted with the example of Samuel, if it is a very naughty child it exclaims, "I hate that nasty little Samuel!" Where- upon a whipping terminates the controversy. A some- what similar poem is sung in many Infant Schools, * "E-bymes for my Children," by Mrs. JDuncan. G 3 86 CHURCH PAETIES. which should be entitled ''The Infant's Reason for hating Sunday." It begins thus : " We must not play on Sunday ; But we may play on Monday, On Tuesday and on Wednesday, On Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Till Sunday comes again. *' We must not laugh on Sunday ; But we may laugh on Monday, On Tuesday and on Wednesday, On Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Till Sunday comes again." We may laugh (on Monday) at these absurdities, but the results of such folly are often no laughing matter. The child is father of the man ; and a childhood thus trained too often fathers a manhood of impiety. Yet it is not on those who can be constrained, whether by force or by persuasion, to Sabbatise, that the bad effects are most serious. The real sufferers are the working millions, whom Nature, shut out by factories and fur- nace-chimneys during the week, draws forth upon the day of rest, to refresh their lungs with purer air, and their eyes and hearts with gazing on the unspoiled works of their Creator. Religion is too often known to these multitudes in the Puritan form alone. They have been taught by their spiritual guides, both Episcopalian and Dissenting, that it is "Sabbath-breaking" to look upon green fields and running brooks; and that Sabbath- breaking is as great a sin as drunkenness or fornication. Thus their Sunday pleasures, in themselves so innocent, are turned into guilt. Being placed under the ban of religion, they become reckless of her restraints. As they are Sabbath-breakers already, they think they may as^ CHURCH PARTIES. 87 well be drunkards too. And when, upon the wings of steam, they liave left the smoky town far behind, they vary their excursions by a visit, not to the rural church (whither, by wiser treatment, they might easily have been won), but to the road-side ale-house. Thus the masses are brutalised and degraded by the attempt to raise them prematurely to a high degree of spiritual advancement. Such are the main points in the theoretical system of this extreme school. AVe must remember, however, that a man may agree in some of these opinions, and yet be no genuine Recordite. To make him such, he must combine his creed with the proper amount of ignorance and intolerance, and must enforce it in a damnatory spirit. Of this latter quality a few specimens will suffice, out of the ample supply afforded by the recognised organ of the party. Take the following as a sample of the mode of silencing an opponent: " Of all this we may say to Mr. Gresley, as Christian says to Ignorance in Pilgrim's Progress, the working of which faith^ I perceive^ poor Ignorance^ thou art ignorant of. As to this person going on to describe the errors of men of Evangelical principles, the propriety of such criticisms from such a quarter is that of a man blind from his birth discoursing on the ocular mistakes of those who have sight."* In the same spirit the Crystal Palace question is thus settled: ^' It is surprising that any ani- mal, with a head of a higher order than a Chimpanzee, should pronounce it innocent to open a place for public worldly amusement on the Sabbath. " f The same paper, after lamenting the fact that all English railways * Remarks on Mr. Gresley, reprinted from the "Record" nevvspnpcr, p. 18. t Record, Nov. 19. 1852. G 4 88 CHURCH PARTIES. run trains on Sunday, denounces the shareholders as follows: "The consciences of the shareholders and di- rectors appear to be seared. We are tempted to ask, where can such men live? What religion do they pro- fess? Are they Jews? Are they Infidels? Do they ever enter a church?"* This intolerance, however, proceeds not from a bad heart, but from lack of knowledge and feebleness of mind. Dr. Arnold has justly described their literary organ as " a true specimen of the party, with their in- finitely little minds, disputing about anise and cummin, when heaven and earth are coming together around them."f And he defines an " Evangelical" of this class to be " a good Christian, with a low understanding, a bad education, and ignorance of the world." J The only objection to this definition is that their ignorance is not limited to worldly affairs, but extends impartially to things sacred and profane. It cannot, indeed, be fully understood except by those who have had tlie privilege to " sit under" thirty or forty Recordite preachers. Yet, from time to time, specimens are brought before the public, which cast a light upon the depths below. To give instances of their misinterpretation of Scripture, their desperate dislocation of text from context, and the cruel wrongs done to grammar in the struggle, would be an instructive task. But we abstain from undertak- ing it, lest we should unintentionally connect ludicrous images with holy words. Such ignorance is often accompanied by a want of taste equally deplorable. This shows itself conspicu- ously ill the grotesque buffooneries of platform oratory. But its most painful manifestation is the irreverence with which even the most sacred names and persons are • Record, Dec. 6. 1852. f Arnold's Life, p. 225. J Ibid. p. 221. CHURCH PAKTIES. 89 treated in the pulpit. Yet for the reason above given, we will not dwell upon this topic. But we must hasten from the preaching of the party to their practice. Their theory naturally leads them to neglect the mass of their parishioners, and confine their attention to the few whom they regard as the elect. Moreover, their view of the ministerial ofl[ice makes preaching its only essential function. According to this theory, the clergy must not scruple to omit their visits to the sick and poor, if by so doing they can give greater force to their hebdomadal performance in the pulpit. It is not wonderful that such a doctrine should com- mand the willing assent of a considerable portion of the clerical body. For it is a nmch easier task to sit in a comfortable study beside a blazing fire, than to trudge in sleet and snow through miry lanes ; a much more agreeable duty to lounge over a volume of Divinity in an easy chair, than to kneel beside the filthy bed of a dying pauper. But, in truth, a Recordite clergyman is out of his element in a parish. When he has one, indeed, he often labours most conscientiously among his parish- ioners ; but the parochial system, with its practical re- cognition of the universal brotherhood of Christians, cannot be made to square with his theological exclusive- ness. What he likes is, not a Parish, but a Congrega- tion. The possession of a chapel in a large town, which he may fill with his own disciples, is his ideal of clerical usefulness. The kind of post desired is continually de- scribed in the advertising columns of the "Record." Here is one example out of many: — ^^ A Clergyman M.A. of evangelical views desires a sole charge in some town spJiere of usefulness. Advertiser sets forth zealously and faithfully the whole counsel of God, and preaches un- 90 CHURCH PARTIES. written sermons. His qualijications being of rather a high order, a suitable stipend required. Also, as he is a BACHELOR, the advantage of good society desirable. Ad- dress L. L. B. at the office of the Record.'^* The above o;entleman makes no invidious distinction between one town and another ; but the following is more particular, and requires a London audience : " The Advertiser having been found, under God, very successful in preaching the doctrines of Grace, would be glad in meeting another Metropolitan sphere. He has a powerful voice, an earnest delivery, and a style of preaching best suited to an edu- cated and enlightened audience.^' \ It Avould be unfair to estimate the general character of the Recordite clergy by these advertisements, but they show the nature of the "sphere" most coveted. In fact, few positions are, in a worldly point of view, more enviable than that of the popular incumbent of a town chapel. No vestry patriots vex his meditative moments; no squabbles with tithe-abhorring farmers disturb his sleep. When he looks round him from his pulpit, his glance is not met, like that of the parochial clergyman, by the stare of stolidity or indifference: but he beholds a throng of fervent worshippers who hang upon his lips, and whose very presence as voluntary members of his con- gregation is a pledge of their personal attachment to himself. There is something not merely soothing to vanity, but animating to the better parts of his nature, in such a spectacle. The zealous man must feel his zeal quickened, the pious his piety warmed, by such evidence of sympathy; and among the Recordite clergy, men of * The latter part of this advertisement is so strong, that we at first thought it must be a hoax. But its genuineness was acknowletlgeJ by the " Record" itself, in answer to a correspondent who attacked it. t Record, Oct. 25. 1852. CHURCH PARTIES. 91 zeal and piety are not lacking. But, besides these ad- vantages, he is exempted from all the more burdensome responsibilities of the pastoral charge. His flock con- sists exclusively of the wealthy or easy classes : so that the painful task of attempting to enlighten brutal igno- rance, and to raise degraded pauperism, is not among his duties. Even if a local district has nominally been attached to his chapel, its poor inhabitants form no part of his congregation, or, at most, only a straggling re- presentative of their class lurks here and there, behind the pulpit, or beneath the organ. The duties of such a district, if there be any, are performed by the Curate, who reads the prayers and is kept "to serve tables" while the incumbent devotes himself to " the ministry of the Word." This ministry consists essentially in preaching two extempore sermons on the Sunday. But there are other duties incidentally pertaining to his office. One of the most important is that of attending at the evening parties of his wealthier adherents. These social meet- ings are, indeed, among the most characteristic phe- nomena of the sect. In them we can best study its peculiar phraseology, and some of its most curious etiquettes and observances. The principal topics dis- cussed in such assemblies are the merits and demerits of diff*erent preachers, the approaching restoration of the Jews, the date of the Millennium, the progress of the " Tractarian heresy," and the anticipated " perver- sion" of High Church neighbours. These subjects are convassed in a dialect diff^ering considerably from com- mon English. The words "/<7^7/i/^^/," " tainted^^^ " ac- ceptable^^^ " decided,^^ " legal,'^ and many others, are used in a technical sense. We hear that Mr. A. has been more " owned^^ than Mr. B., and that Mr. C. has more 92 CHUllCH PARTIES. ^^ seals '^^ than Mr. D. Again, the word ^^ gracious^^ is invested with a meaning as extensive as that attached by young ladies to " nice.^^ Thus we hear of " a gracious sermon," " a gracious meeting," " a gracious child," and even "a gracious whipping." The word '^ dark^^ has also a new and peculiar usage. It is applied to every person, book, or place not impregnated with Recordite principles. We once were witnesses of a ludicrous mis- understanding resulting from this phraseology. " What did you mean" (said A. to B.) "by telling me that was such a very dark village ? I rode over there to-day, and found the street particularly broad and cheerful, and there is not a tree in the place." " The Gospel is not preached there,'^ was B.'s laconic reply. In such conversation the evening wears away, not without instruction to the stranger who is initiated into these mysteries for the first time. At length, when he is preparing to depart, a rustling of gowns announces a general change of position ; and suddenly the scattered chairs range themselves in a great semicircle, radiating from a central table, at which the clerical hero of the feast is seated. The fatal truth flashes upon the stranger's mind. An ^''exposition'' is about to begin, and he is doomed to sit it out. The minute-hand of the time- piece opposite must traverse three-fourths of its circle, before that lengthened torture ceases. And then there follows a scene yet more painful to every right feeling; a bye-play of complimentary etiquette between the clergy present, accompanied by polite pressing and coquettish refusals of the request urged by one upon another to offer the concluding prayer.f * A preacher is said in this phraseology to be " owned" when he makes many converts, and his converts are called his "seals." t We trust that nothing we have here said will be considered as implying CHURCH PARTIES. 93 But these evening assemblies are not the only amuse- ments permitted by the party. They are often pitied as the doomed victims of ennui ; for it is supposed that the absence of balls and races, cards and theatres, games of chance and tales of fiction, must render existence in- supportable. Yet, even when they are destitute of higher objects, their life is by no means so colourless as is imagined. Novels and fairy-tales, it is true, are for- bidden luxuries ; but their place is abundantly suppHed by the romantic fictions daily issuing from the Prophetic Press.* The imagination, cut down to the roots on one side, only pushes forth more vigorous shoots in another direction. Nor is variety wanting to this lite- rature; for no two writers agree in their predictions, and some new history of futurity is published monthly. Again, it is a popular delusion that the Recordites are excluded from public amusements. Nothing can be more contrary to the fact. Races indeed, and theatres, they abjure ; and good reasons may be urged for the abjuration : but public meetings and platform orators fill up the vacant space. Nor are these accessible only to the Londoner, or confined to the area of Exeter Hall. The religious world of every manufacturing town and watering-place has its fashionable season, when the secondary stars of London shoot down from their metropolitan sphere, to glitter on the provincial boards. Then follow morning meetings in the rotunda, an objection to the practice of ending the social meetings of Christians with common prayer. We only deprecate the faults which tend to brino- that practice into disesteem. * The fertility of the Prophetic Press may be estimated from the fact, that, besides innumerable treatises and pamphlets, it sends forth seveial re- gular periodicals, of which the " Christian Ladies' Magazine," the " Quarterly Journal of Prophecy," and the "Prophetic Herald" have (or had), we be- lieve, the largest circulation. 94 CHURCH TARTIES. and evening gatherings in the amphitheatre ; Protestant breakfasts and Jewish luncheons; lectures here, ad- dresses there, and speechification everywhere. Day after day, while fathers and husbands are busy in the counting-house, maids and matrons struggle for prox- imity to the platform. Their patient zeal is rewarded by the grateful orators with allusions complimentary and facetious, contrasting strangely with the solemn themes on which they are grafted.* On these occasions the Jewish Society generally attracts the largest audi- ence ; nor is this surprising, when we remember the sex which furnishes the majority of the hearers. For where can curiosity find richer gratification than that supplied by this prophetic propaganda. Their bill of fare includes the immediate approach of the Red Dra- gon ; the achievements of Gog and Magog ; a fresh "discovery" of the Lost Tribes (sometimes in the val- leys of Kurdistan, sometimes in the plains of Timbuc- toof ) ; a new and accurate account of the battle of Armageddon ; and a picture of the subversion of Omar's Mosque by an army of Israelites marching from the Seven Dials. Such is the food provided for that love of Jews which distinguishes the sect. Nor is less ample * The following specimen from the " Record " may suffice : " The noble lord^ in order to show the good which might he effected hy those young ladies ahotU to he married^ related an anecdote of a lady who^ during the existence of the Anti- Corn-law League^ refused to marry her suitor until he hecavie a suh- scriher to its funds. Of course such an obstacle as that did not stand long in the way^ although the gentleman did not approve of the Association. And if the youug ladies present would follow a similar course with respect to the Bagged School Union, they would speedily increase its income to a considerable extent.'^ AVe purposely suppress the name of the noble speaker, as it is not otherwise known to the Public ; and we are anxious not to give needless pain to private feelings. ■j- It was our fortune once to hear one of these Judaizers advocate the no- tion that the *' Lost Tribes" are identical with the Saxons, on the ground that Saxon is an abridjrment of Isaacs Son. CHURCH PARTIES. I' 5 provision made for their other ruling passion, the hatred of Papists. For its gratification, the Keformation So- ciety meets in the subscription-rooms. There subtle calculators announce a new solution of the Number of the Beast; there Protestant rhetoricians rekindle the flames of Smithfield in many a gentle bosom ; there the dungeons of the Inquisition are once more flung open to the light of day ; and there the chaste eloquence of Father Achilli expatiates on the abuses of the confes- sional, and details with biographical fidelity every abomination of the Scarlet Woman. The extravagances and buff'ooneries which too often disfigure these public meetings, are perhaps unavoidable excrescences of a system which is itself a necessary evil. For it is said, and we fear truly, that without these pe- riodical displays, it would be impossible to raise the requisite funds for religious or charitable objects. It is a farther cause of regret that it should be needful to spend so large a part of the income thus contributed in the mere work of collection ; and that so little of this service should be the free-will off'ering of Christian love. In fact, the whole machinery of these societies has become far too much a mere matter of trade. From the following advertisement it would really seem as if they were sometimes got up in the same spirit as Eail- way Companies. "To Keltgious and Benevolent Societies. A gentleman of high staiiding in address and knowledge in getting up^ conducting^ and correspond- ing with the public in aid of charitable institutions^ is desirous of meeting with a confidential engagement^ in the above capacity^ either in town or country. ^^ (Record, Oct. 14. 1852.) No doubt it is inevitable that, when a party grows 96 CHURCH PARTIES. powerful in numbers and in wealth, it should attract retainers who join it rather from love of Mammon than from love of God. But this general truth is exemplified in a manner peculiarly painful among the adherents of the Recordite sect. AVe can scarcely look down a column of the Record without stumbling on the ma- nifesto of some religious speculator, who is bent on turning godliness into gain. Conspicuous among these offenders are the clerical adventurers, some of whose advertisements we have already quoted. Next to these, governesses and tutors furnish the largest proportion of this mercenary class. As a specimen of the former, we may take the lady whose wishes are recorded as fol- lows: " Wanted, by a middle-aged lady, an active and useful situation in a serious family, where her services would be considered equivalent to remuneration. A sanctified taste for literature would be valued, but oppor- tunities of promoting the interests of the kingdom of God would be much preferred'^ This lady must surely be related to the author of the following : " To Godly Parents. A lady of practical piety, opposed to Trac- tarianism, wishes to meet a Godly family desinng to bring up their children in the way they should go. . . . She has finished her pupils without the aid of masters, and is thirty-five years of age."* These ladies are ri- valled by the young gentleman who thus expresses his ambitious aspirations : " To Christian Noblemen. A young man desires to enter a decidedly pious family as resident tutor. His whole aim will be to train his young charge in heart and life to the Lord. He teaches the Classics.'' f Schoolmistresses are equally eager to at- * Record, Nov. 25. 1852. f I^i^- C>ct. 11. 1852. CHURCH PARTIES. 97 tract the patronage of the party. In the older editions of the late Mrs. Sherwood's religious tales, one was fre- quently interrupted at the crisis of the narrative by a fly-leaf interpolated between the pages, which contained a glowing description of an " establishment for the edu- cation of young ladies" kept by the authoress; re- minding one of the Italian Improvisatori, who send round their hat before the catastrophe of their story. More recently, another lady of the same profession has adopted a more original mode of making known her merits, by publishing a treatise upon ^* Christian Mar- riage," wherein she describes her mode of instructing her young charge in the art of love. Bookmakers also of every description make their profit out of the sim- plicity of the religious public, and adopt every adver- tising device to enhance the value of their wares. One of the most offensive we have seen, is the following puff of a tract called " The Sinner's Friend." The writer, after telling us that " eleven hundred thousand copies" of his book have been already sold, goes on as follows : ^' The personal kindness of the deservedly revered Arch- bishop to the author^ far exceeds the power of the most glowing language to express^ hut may well he understood hy those who have tasted its sweetness and encourage- ment,''^* Another characteristic notice is that which announces the merits of " The Layman's Prayer-book." " It is altered^^^ says the author, " so slightly from that you now use^ as to he perfectly adapted for use in churches hy the congregation^ while the minister is reading from the present one ; yet it is altered sufficiently to avoid unscrip- * Record, Dec. 6. 1852. We have omitted a part of this advertisement, which could not be quoted without profaneness. We do not mean to impeach the sincerity of the author of this tract, and hope that the puff may have been inserted by his publisher without his sanction. H 98 CHURCH PARTIES. tural and unprotestant doctrines. Will you huy my little book, brother ? Will you take it with you to church ? " Besides these literary advertisers, Ave find that ladies* maids, female companions, confidential clerks, coach- men, and butlers, may be had in any number, of the prescribed opinions. And in a recent number of the Kecord we discovered a demand (no doubt soon followed by a supply) for "J. good plain cook, of evangelical sentiments. ^^^ It would, however, be most unjust (as we have be- fore admitted) to take these advertisers in the Record as a fair sample of the Recordites. That party contains as large a proportion of sincere members as any other. And although we think the harm it does collectively exceeds the good effected by its adherents individually, yet we must not deny that it has accomplished some useful tasks, which could not have so well been achieved by any other party. Every one now acknowledges the success of its emissaries in Ireland ; and so much could scarcely have been effected against the ultra-montanism of Cullen and M'Hale, except by intolerance and dog- matism as peremptory as their own. Nor is it only in Ireland that we may see moral triumphs achieved by the Puritanic divinity. There are probably some minds so constituted, as to be incapable of receiving the truths of Christianity, except under the Calvinistic form. And these seem to be principally found in a class where Christianity is much needed, the middle rank of society in trading and manufacturing communities. Many a worker in the gold diggings of Lancashire and York- shire, who might otherwise have remained a selfish wor- shipper of Mammon all his days, has been roused by * Record, Oct. 19. 1852. CHURCH PARTIES. 99 Puritanic preachers to the consciousness of a spiritual destiny. Such converts may be often seen devoting the hours of their well-earned Sunday, not to a calcula- tion of the profits of the coming week, nor to idle re- laxation from the toils of the past, but to the labours of the Sunday School or the District Visitor, in lanes reeking with the stench of sewers, and cellars pestilent with fever. Men like these, let their opinions be as narrow as they may, are the salt of this world, and the earnest of a b'btter. But the merits of individuals must not blind us to the mischief wrought by their party. This mischief consists, not in their success, but in their failure. The injury is done, not to those whom they convert, but to those whom they repel. If, indeed, they could succeed in proselytising the people, they would do far more good than harm : because, though some of their opinions verge upon Antinomianism, they seldom practically lead to immorality; and religion, once admitted into the heart, will expel all demons thence. But, unhappily, though the Puritan theology is attractive to a few, it is repulsive to the multitude. By most minds it is re- jected at once, with an instinctive repugnance. And yet this theology is, by the lower ranks of society in our great towns, very generally identified with Chris- tianity itself, which has been too often presented to them in no other shape, either in the Meeting-house or the Church.* To this circumstance may be attributed much of the infidelity now so general among the best * It must be remembered that, in the great towns, a large majority of the Churches, and all the Dissenting Chapels, are supported on the voluntary principle, i. e. by pew rents. They are therefore dependent on the religious portion of the shopkeepers who take the pews. But the shopkeepers as a class, if religious at all, are puritanically inclined. This accounts for the fact mentioned in the text. H 2 100 CHURCH PARTIES. instructed portion of the labouring classes. It is a me- lancholy fact that the men who make our steam-engines and railway carriages, our presses and telegraphs, the furniture of our houses and the clothing of our persons, have now in a fearful proportion renounced all faith in Christianity. They regard the Scripture as a forgery, and religion as priestcraft, and are living without God in the world. The revelations of the late census have shown that in England alone there are more than five millions of persons who absent themselves'entirely from religious worship.* This state of things, sapping as it does the very sincAvs of our national life, cannot be wholly laid to the charge of any one party. All are in some measure accountable for it, in so far as all have fallen short of that perfect standard of Christian good- ness, the sight of which is the only effectual instrument of conversion. But we do not hesitate to say that the party most directly guilty of driving half-educated men into Atheism, is that which has pushed Evangelical opinions into Recordite extravagance, f These exaggerations of Protestant doctrine could not fail to produce a reaction in the opposite direction. As in the seventeenth century the intolerant Calvinism of the Synod of Dort promoted the triumph of Arminian theo- logy in England, so in our own times a disgust at the vagaries of the second-rate copyists of Puritanism caused that rapid growth of High Church opinions, which dis- * Census, 1851, Religious Worship, p. 88. t The two other chief causes of this infidelity are, Jirst^ the hateful dis- tinction made by our pew system between rich and poor ; and, secondly^ the practice of dragging Sunday Schools to church at an age when they cannot possibly understand a word of the Service. What ought to be done with Sunday Scholars during service-time is another question ; and could only be properly answered by the restoration of the order of Deacons. CHURCH PARTIES. 101 tinguished the second quarter of the present century. It is often said, indeed, that the High Church party was predominant during the greater part of the preceding century, and continued powerful till the close of what we may call the Eldonite period. But this is a mere confusion, caused by similarity of names, between par- ties utterly dissimilar. The " Church and King men," who flourished thirty, fifty, or seventy years ago, were a political, and not a religious party. They sometimes talked of Orthodoxy, at Visitation Dinners or University Elections ; but they meant by Orthodoxy not any theo- logical creed, but love of tithes and hatred of Methodists. They had no aflinity with modern High Churchmen, except the dislike of Protestant Dissenters. The true High Church theology represents the dominant school of the Caroline epoch ; a school which, though too often identified with despotic bigots like Laud, yet produced many illustrious writers and many eminent saints. This party died out at the beginning of the last century, after its exaggerated phase (with which we have recently been again familiarised) had developed itself in the Non-jurors. From this extreme form, however, it must be distin- guished by every candid historian. The Anglican, though it may be pushed into the Romanistic creed, is not identical therewith. It was revived in a systematic form twenty years ago, by an able knot of writers, the principal of whom solemnly pledged themselves to one another*, to use every means of reviving a belief in the doctrines of Anglicanism, and originated for that pur- pose the " Tracts for the Times. '^ It is true that these writers very rapidly developed the opinions from which * See the account of this compact (which was made in 1833) given by Mr Percival, himself one of the parties to it, in his well-known " Letter to the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal." H 3 102 CHURCH PARTIES. they started into actual Romanism. But the earlier Tracts contain a bond fide attempt to base the creed of the Church upon strictly Anglican tradition. Mr. Newman has fully explained the way in which he and his ablest followers were led on, step by step, from this original standing point to higher ground. Nor would we deny that, according to the rules of strict logic, this progress was inevitable. But logical results from one principle are often modified by conclusions no less logical from another. And it is historically certain that many intellects, and those of no contemptible power, are capable of acquiescing in that system of belief which was maintained by Bull and Pearson, though to other minds its premises seem necessarily to involve the con- clusions of Rome. The characteristic tenets of this party are supple- mental rather than contradictory to those of their pre- decessors. The Anglican accepts the doctrine that " we are justified hy faith^' but gives equal prominence to the additional truth that, " we are judged by works ^ He acknowledges that men must be converted by grace, but maintains that Christians are regenerated by baptism. He assents to the sole supremacy of Scripture, but adds, that " the Church hath authority in controversies of faith. "* And this authoritative Church he distinguishes from all pretenders by its apostolic descent. Thus, the watchwords of the School are ^^ Judgment by works,^^ " Baptismal Regeneration^^^ " Church Authority ^^^ and " Apostolical Succession, " As to the first head, there is no real difi^erence be- tween the moderate Anglican and the moderate Evange- lical. Both agree that the works of man cannot earn reward from God ; both agree that without sanctifi cation ♦ Article 20th. CHURCH PARTIES. 103 there can be no salvation. But perhaps the Evangelical party had laid too much stress on the beginning of the religious life, and had trusted to the spontaneous action of that first spiritual impulse for producing all requisite growth in holiness. * The Anglicans saw this mistake, and have corrected it by a teaching more systematically practical. The second tenet, that of Baptismal Kegeneration, is more distinctive. The Eecordites, as we have seen, practically heathenise Christendom, by denying the Christian name to all except that narrow circle whom they designate as the elect. The Anglicans meet this uncharitable dogma with the assertion that all Chris- tians, as such, are in a condition spiritually different from that of the heathen. They teach that all the members of the Visible Church are the elect of God ; and that all baptized persons are members of the Visible Church, and as such are endowed with all gifts and graces necessary to salvation. Even here, though the difference may appear considerable between the High Church and Evangelical phraseology, it is really a difference rather in terms than in meaning. For the moderate Low Churchman allows that those who are baptized into the Christian Church are admitted to a share in spiritual blessings ; and the Anglican acknow- ledges that, if the regenerated infant grows up a sinful man, he needs conversion before he can enjoy the bless- ings to which he has been called. * One of the best and ablest of the modern Evangelical Clergy has recently admitted this. Speaking of the preachers of his party, he says : " The Gospel, they say, is made up of a few cardinal truths, which cannot be too often re- peated. . . . With so much time spent in laying the foundation again and again, little is left for informing and guiding men's consciences as to the thousand details of active life." (^Rev, H. Gurneys Sermon on Duke of Wellington, preface, p. 4.) H 4 104 CHURCH PARTIES. The addition of the authority of the Church to that of Scripture seems, at first sight, the most serious dif- ference of the three. Yet such authority is undoubt- edly claimed by the Articles, and may be narrowed within limits strictly Protestant. Nor can it be denied that a reasonable man, in the formation of his opinions, would give great weight to the collective judgment of other Christians. Yet, on the other hand, this principle has an alarming power of expression. The Anglican divines have been led to cherish it partly because they felt the evils of perpetual doubt and presumptuous questioning ; partly because they sought for some authoritative guidance to check the follies of weak brethren* ; but chiefly because they loved those moral qualities which are closely linked to obedience and submission. But their teaching on this head is beset by great difficulties. " We acknowledge, " say their opponents, " the authority of the true Church ; but for what Church do you claim this power, and where shall we find her teaching ?'* The Anglican replies, that the Church is that of England, and her teaching is to be found in her Liturgy and Articles. But these formu- laries admit of diverse interpretations, and need a living voice to decide between conflicting interpreters. " Where then," says the inquirer, "shall I seek this living voice, which may solve my doubts ?" To this it is replied that the accents of the Church are to be heard from the lips of her bishops, and that her presbyters ordained by those bishops are her living oracles to each individual lay- man in every separate parish. But when asked whether * About the time of the first appearance of the " Tracts" half the reh'gious world was going mad after the Irvingites (who spoke in unknown tongues), the Rowites (who worked miracles), and the Plymouth Brethren (who advo- cated a community of goods). CHUECH PARTIES. 105 the laity under the charge of Mr. Gorham are to believe a different creed from those under Dr. Pusey, the Angli- can is perplexed for an answer ; and still more so when he is reminded that the collective voice of the bishops is silent, and that individual bishops differ as much as their presbyters. But again the inquirer demands satisfaction on a farther point. " How am I to know," he says, "that the English establishment is that true Church which can alone claim authority to teach and guide ?" The Anglican theology replies that the true Church possesses unity as well as visibility. Truth is one ; therefore, the true Church is one. And this one Church has a note whereby she may be known. In each country she is that body of orthodox Christians which is governed by bishops possessing the Apostolic Succession. Hence the Dissenter, who secedes from his parish church, is forsaking the communion of the Apostles. But here again the High Churchman is embarrassed by his Ro- man antagonist. For a rival Church exists in England, also governed by bishops to whom the Apostolic conse- cration has been lineally transmitted from the very source whence the Anglican bishops derive their own orders. And that Church declares the Anglican doc- trine not orthodox but heretical, and her bishops not successors of the Apostles but schismatical usurpers. How are the laity of the Metropolis to decide whether their allegiance be due to the Bishop of London or the " Archbishop of Westminster" ? Their decision can scarcely be determined in favour of the former by the criterion of Unity, Ecclesiastical Authority, or Aposto- lical Succession. Thus these hierarchical claims of Anglicanism are dangerous weapons ; serviceable artillery, perhaps. 106 CHURCH PARTIES. against the sectarian, but liable to recoil in the dis- charge. They do not, however, hold a prominent place in the teaching of moderate High Churchmen. They are not the basis of their system, but only secondary and ornamental details. Even against Dissenters they are not rigidly enforced. The hereditary non-conformist is not excluded from salvation. Foreign Protestants are even owned as brethren, though a mild regret is expressed that they lack the blessing of an authorised Church government. Apostolical succession is not practically made essential to the being of a Church, but rather cherished as a dignified and ancient pedigree, connecting our English episcopate with primitive anti- quity, and binding the present to the past by a chain of filial piety. In the same hands, Church authority is reduced to little more than a claim to that deference which is due from the ignorant to the learned, from the taught to the teacher. Meanwhile the maintainers of these views are useful, not only as a counterpoise to the extravagance of the Recordites, but for much positive good achieved by themselves. And considered as a whole, they form a party which the Church could ill aiFord to spare. In the first place, their system gives freer scope to the feelings of reverence, awe, and beauty, than that of their opponents. They endeavour, and often success- fully, to enlist these feelings in the service of piety. Music, painting, and architecture they consecrate as the handmaids of religion. Thus they attract an order of men found chiefly among the most cultivated classes, whose hearts must be reached through their imagination rather than their understanding. It is surely well that such provision has been made for those whose taste (perhaps over refined) has been shocked by the flippant CHURCH PARTIES. 107 faralliarity of superficial religionists. But the influence of these Anglican divines is not confined to the fastidious few. They have given a greater reality to the religion of all ranks, by their energetic protest against the hol- lowness and insincerity of popular pietism. The Ke- cordite party, as we have seen, had substituted (as their criterion of conversion) a verbal profession of faith for a life of holiness. Too often a "professor of religion" was led to think that by the pronunciation of an easy Shibboleth, coupled with an abstinence from balls and theatres, he atoned for a life of covetousness and self- indulgence. The old Evangelical body, it is true, always discountenanced such self-deceit. But the An- glican School has checked it more successfully by the prominence which they give to the duties of daily life and the formation of habits. Moreover, their exhor- tations cannot be turned aside by excuses which often parry the home-thrusts of other preachers — "We are waiting for the time of our conversion" — "We hope to receive our efi'ectual calling in due season." — To such pleas their reply is ready and consistent : " You have already received the needful help. You have the power to pray and act. You are now the elect of God ; make your election sure, lest you be cast away.'' Such addresses administer no palliative to the conscience, and encourage no indolent hope of a compulsory reformation. In the same spirit, the writers of this party have contributed to the religious literature of the day many admirable works which under the guise of fiction teach the purest Christianity, and exemplify its bearing on every detail of common life. To the training of child- hood especially they have rendered most valuable aid, by thus embodying the precepts of the Gospel. But we 108 CHURCH PARTIES. need not do more than allude to works so universally known and valued as those of Miss Sewell, Mr. Adams, and Bishop Wilberforce.* Again, the revival of the High Church party has effected an important improvement among the clergy. Many of these were prejudiced by hereditary dislike against the doctrines and the persons of the Evangeli- cals, and by this prejudice were repelled from religion. But under the name of orthodoxy and the banner of High Church, they have willingly received truth against which, had it come to them in another shape, they would have closed their ears and hearts. A better spirit has thus been breathed into hundreds who but for this new movement would have remained, as their fathers were before them, mere Nimrods, Ramrods, or Fishing-rods. We cannot trace to the party of which we are now speaking, such great measures of public morality as are due to the school of Wilberforce and Buxton. But this is no reproach to them ; for they did not exist as a dis- tinct party till those national reforms were accomplished. They have, however, originated two public movements of much importance in our own time ; that for the es- tablishment of Protestant Sisterhoods of Mercv, and that for the general creation of Colonial Bishoprics.f * The Evangelical party has also pursued the line of religious fiction, but generally with less success. Mrs. Sherwood, it is true, had great power of narrative, but her love of the pomps and vanities of the world too often over- powered her sense of religion. One recent Evangelical work of this kind, however, we may notice, as possessing great merit, — " The Daughter at Home," by an anonymous author. As a picture of the power of religion in gradually subduing the asperities of a gloomy disposition and morbid temper, this story is unequalled. t It is true that the first example of this in the present century was given by the Evangelical party ; the foundation of the Bishopric of Calcutta in 1814 having been entirely due to the exertions of Wilberforce. But no general eflTort was made in the same cause, till the establishment of the " Colonial Bishopric Fund." CHURCH PARTIES. 109 Some discredit has been thrown upon the former of these objects, by the indiscretion of its more conspicu- ous promoters. Yet even in the midst of this indiscre- tion, there has been much to admire, in the self-devotion of body and soul to the relief of misery. And the ori- ginal sisterhood, instituted under the superintendence of the Bishop of London, to train nurses for the hos- pitals, has, we believe, furnished no such occasion of stumbling. The movement for establishing Bishoprics in the Colonies has attracted greater public attention, and has met with more unqualified success. In the last thirteen years, fifteen new Bishoprics have been founded, and the complete organisation of the Church transferred to as many nascent empires. We need not say that our satisfaction at this result springs not from our attributing any miraculous powers to the episcopal office. We value it not as the source of thaumaturgic influence, but as an instrument of good government ; not for its magical, but for its moral energy. The superintendence of any central authority can do much by combining and harmonising the isolated efibrts of individuals ; the superintendence of a zealous and intel- ligent man can do more. Nor does he only render more efficient the labours of those amongst whom he comes to preside ; his presence attracts more labourers into the vineyard. Those who would have shrunk from the isolation of independent action, now gladly go to work under a chief pastor on whose wisdom they rely, and on whose affectionate sympathy and encouragement they depend. That this is no mere theory is proved by the fact that in thirteen years the number of clergy in those fifteen new episcopates had increased from 274 to 503. In connexion with these efforts for the benefit of the Colonies we should also notice the great impulse given 110 CHURCH PARTIES. by the High Church party, during the last twenty years, to the Society " for the Propagation of the Gospel," and also the foundation of St. Augustine's College at Can- terbury, for training Colonial Missionaries. But, as we have already said, the public measures promoted by an ecclesiastical party are a less certain test of its merits than that afforded by the conduct of its private members, and the efficiency of their paro- chial ministrations. From this criterion the Anglican party has no need to shrink. The moderate High Churchman (supposing him, of course, to be in earnest) is peculiarly fitted for the management of a country parish. With the aristocratic classes his view of Chris- tianity is usually more acceptable than any other ; and his heartiness and old English feeling, his love of festi- vals and holidays, and his active benevolence, render him popular among the poor. With the middle class, the shopkeepers and artisans, he is usually less suc- cessful. They are not as yet sufficiently cultivated to be susceptible of the artistic and imaginative influences which attract the higher ranks, and they are filled with a jealous and not unnatural suspicion of everything in which they fancy a Romeward tendency. Hence the Anglican clergyman should, for his own comfort, and for the good of those under his charge, be placed rather in the country than in the town*; because, in the for- mer, his parishioners consist almost exclusively either of the rich or poor, while the middling class is dominant in the boroughs. Such a clergyman as we have de- scribed will not differ from his Evangelical neighbours in any material point of doctrine. Had he lived fifty years ago, his sermons would have stamped him as a "Methodist" or a " Calvinist," among the fox-hunting * Leeds is an exception to this rule ; but it is, so far as we know, the only exception. CHURCH PARTIES. Ill parsons who used these terms synonymously, and ap- plied them to every man who was an earnest believer in Christianity. Nor are his ordinary parochial labours distinguished from those of his Low Church brethren. Pie and they are equally to be found in the cottages of the poor, comforting the afflicted, reading to the sick, and praying with the dying. He adopts the same plans of usefulness which have been originated by his Evan- gelical predecessors. Like them he encourages the zeal for missionary exertion, though perhaps he may be pre- judiced against the " Church Missionary Society," and the Committee which he establishes may collect funds for its elder sister of " the Propagation." He vies with his neighbours in zeal for the education of the poor ; pays daily visits to his school ; turns the " apprenticed teachers^^ into his private pupils; and works hard in preparing the master and mistress for the annual visit of Her Majesty's Inspector. Within the walls of the church the distinction of parties is perhaps more marked than in the school-room or the cottage ; though even here it is becoming gra- dually obliterated, by the adoption among the best men in every party of the reforms originating with either side. The first difference which strikes us, regards the Sacra- ment of Baptism. In its administration the Anglicans have revived the practice (alike Rubrical and reason- able) of celebrating it in the public service. The infant member is adopted into the Christian family with the sympathising prayers of his assembled brethren. The external appliances of the rite are made to correspond with its dignity and beauty. The mean basin of crockery is discarded, and the ancient font of stone restored, and filled to the brim with clear water, the consecrated type of purity and innocence. Nor is it (for the sake of a 112 CHURCH PARTIES. needless symbolism) pushed into the porch, where it must be invisible to the congregation, but placed in a conspicuous and central spot, where the service can be witnessed by every eye, and heard by every ear. The same sense of artistic fitness which dictates these changes, prompts also to other restorations. The parish priest has generally inherited from the past a church beautiful in its original structure, but defaced by the tasteless in- novations of recent barbarism. The " high embowed roof" no longer retains its original pitch ; the windows have lost not only their stained glass, but even their tracery; the pillars are cut away to make room for hideous monuments ; and the stone is buried under a hundred coats of whitewash. He hastens, so far as he can obtain the means, to restore the sacred edifice to its pristine beauty. The mouldings emerge into light ; the whitewash disappears; the storied windows once more fling a chequered colouring over the walls ; the crosses rise again from their broken shafts, over a lofty roof. But, when all this is done, the worst abomination remains behind. The area of nave, choir, and aisles is choked up with high square pews only half occupied, where the richer parishioners recline in solitary state, while the poor are too often left to stand in the gang- ways. This, perhaps the most odious practical abuse introduced into the Church during the last two centu- ries, the Anglican party has the credit of successfully combating. " Equality within the House of God," has been from the first their motto and their practice. Nor is it an easy task which they have undertaken. The fat farmer, who for fifty years has snored unseen beneath the shelter of his wooden walls, is frantic at the idea that he should be exposed to the vulgar gaze. The young rustic, who has carried on a comfortable flirtation CHURCH PARTIES. IIS in the corner of the adjacent penfold, regards the cur- taihiient of its lofty proportions as treason against the privileges of love. The selfishness of ownership, the dignity of property, are roused to the combat, and fight energetically against the invasion of their rights. Moreover, the clergyman cannot legally make any alterations at all, without the consent of his church- wardens, who are often the most pigheaded opponents of his reforms. This consent once obtained, he must hasten on the work, lest they should change their mind ; nor let him hope for any rate fi^om his vestry to aid him in the execution. If at length he has succeeded in re- placing the old boxes by decent seats, there remains the invidious task of assigning to each householder his due share of room. No one must be too far from the pulpit, no one too near the door ; to put a man behind a pillar is to create a mortal enemy. The clergyman who suc- ceeds in triumphing over all these difficulties, without making himself the most unpopular man in his parish, must possess a rare union of tact and courage.* Yet that many such clergymen exist in the Anglican party, is evident from the number of old churches which we see freed from the nuisance of pews, and filled by con- tented parishioners. It must be acknowledged, how- ever, that every such improvement renders all similar changes in its neighbourhood comparatively easy. The * A friend of ours lately visited a parish where this kind of reformation was proceeding amidst a storm of opposition. One farmer was especially furious at the removal of a hideous gallery, which for the last fifty years had blocked up a beautiful window. He declaimed indignantly against the Parson's tyranny. " I have heard of them tyrants of Antikkity," said he, " who burnt people because they wouldn't agree with their notions. And our Parson is just as bad — burning our gallery." Another said, "It was all Popery. — Weren't thehi new-fangled narrow pews what they used to call Monks cells?'' I 114 CHURCH PARTIES. advantage of the reformed arrangement is so manifest, that in a short time it is generally acknowledged. The restored church is cited as a model ; strangers come to see it ; the natives grow proud of it ; their neighbours become emulous, and at last allow the example to be imitated with little opposition. The removal of this and other barbarous innovations may be considered to belong to that work which has fallen peculiarly to the Anglican clergy — the restora- tion of ancient churches. But the same party has shown equal taste and activity in the building of new ones. To the noble edifices bequeathed us by the Middle Ages, they have added others not unworthy of their prototypes. But, above all, their revival of Church Music deserves honourable mention. Till their epoch, the psalmody of a village church was truly a disgraceful exhibition. A choir, consisting frequently of the most drunken repro- bates in the parish, bawled out the " Hanthem^^^ which they sang in parts^ that is, in a complicated kind of dis- cord. No other music varied the service, except the singing of a metrical psalm, from which the poetry had been previously extracted by Tate and Brady. The instrumental accompaniment of the performance was the squeaking of a cracked flageolet, and the growling of a base viol. All this is now on the road to amend- ment. Music is taking its proper place in the public worship. The wretched metrical version of the psalms is superseded by hymns uniting poetry with devotion ; and at the same time the more ancient melodies of the Church are restored to their due prominence. It is a vulgar error that the chanting of the psalms, and the appropriate singing of the other musical parts of the service, is a difficult feat of art. On the contrary, the CHURCH PARTIES. 115 best chants are the simplest kind of music known, con- sisting of a very few notes perpetually reiterated. A congregation can far more easily learn to join in this kind of psalmody than in ordinary hymn tunes, which are much more complex. We know village churches where the whole congregation join in the strains of Farrant and Tallis, and the Gregorian tones. And it is found that when the people are thus trained to take an intelligent part in the musical portion of the liturgy, they will not leave their responses in the prayers to the listless articulation of the Clerk. Such are some of the services lately rendered to the Church by the Anglican party. Its modern hagiology is of course less copious than that of the Evangelicals, inasmuch as its existence as a resuscitated party has been much shorter. Yet we need not doubt that it will again produce saintly men, as in the times of old. For its creed is the same which nourished the piety of the best Churchman and the best Churchwoman of the seven- teenth century; her whose gentle virtues shone amid the pollution of the most corrupt of courts, with the lustre of a pearl upon a dunghill; — and him who is pronounced by an historian not likely to be partial, to have " approached as near as human infirmity permits, to the ideal perfection of Christian virtue."* Nor are there wanting living representatives of the practice, as well as the profession, of these ancient worthies. Bishop Selwyn is not undeserving of a place in the same cate- gory with Bishop Perry. And among the lay adherents of the Anglican creed are men who might be cited as examples of the purest type of English character, and women worthy to belong to the same sex and country with Margaret Godolphin. * Macaulay, Hist. i. p. 637. I 2 116 CHURCH PARTIES* Notwithstanding the merits of this party we have seen that its teaching involves, in some degree, the vague assertion of two principles — Apostolical Succession, and Church Authority. These may, it is true, be made to mean but little ; and, veiled in a graceful mist of words, they may become an ornamental and dignified appendage to a system essentially Protestant. But they may also be made the basis instead of the superstructure, and a fabric may be built upon them at which the Anglican stands aghast. In this latter method they were dealt with by those bold essayists who revived, twenty years ago, the theology of Laud. Their earlier and more moderate statements of doctrine found ready acceptance among the clergy, and they speedily were at the head of a large body of adherents. But they pressed recklessly to the front, and soon left the mass of their troops behind them. Yet still they hurried on towards the goal of their logical career, and abandoned, one by one, the traditions of the Anglican divinity from which they started. Meanwhile, after they had advanced beyond the High Church camp, they continued for nearly ten years members of the Church of England, and formed a new party, which took from their writings the name of Tractarian. The doctrines of this party are regarded by themselves as necessary developments of the Anglican principles. The foundation of their system is Aposto- lical Succession, which they hold essential to the being of a true Church. The Bishop duly consecrated is by virtue of this succession the representative of the Apostles. The Presbyters on whom he lays his hands, are thereby endowed with supernatural powers, which enable them to change the Eucharistic elements into the body of Christ. They are also a mediatorial Priesthood, ordained to offer prayers and " unbloody sacrifices " for CHURCH PARTIES. 117 the people. By their hands, moreover, the Church ex- ercises " a power which places it almost on a level with God himself — the power of forgiving sins by wiping them out in baptism — of transferring souls from Hell to Heaven."* The efficacy of both Sacraments depends solely on the opus operatuyn of their external acts. Hence these writers deplore the imperfection of the Anglican Communion Service as " a judgment upon the Church f," because it ascribes no miraculous power to the words of consecration. Again, in the Baptismal Service, the Church requires a profession of faith to be made in the infant's name, before it is baptized, or (if it has been previously baptized in articulo mortis) before it can be received into the Church ; thereby testifying that the blessings bestowed are conditional on moral qualifica- tions. Whereas our Romanising divines teach that the baptismal rite, even if performed in jest, would so change the nature of the child that its post-baptismal sins would be excluded from the benefit of the Atonement. Thus Christianity becomes a system of magical forms and in- cantations, tending to the exaltation of the sacerdotal office. Indeed, this object is distinctly confessed, by a champion of the party, with unusual candour, as follows : " Until the people shall think thus of these mysteries, they will not think of us as it is far more for their benefit than ours that they should always think." J We are called upon to believe these doctrines upon the infallible authority of the Church. But if we ask where this authority resides, and who is empowered to embody this infallibility, these teachers are more sorely puzzled for an answer than even their Anglican prede- cessors. And in their attempts to reach a firmer ground, * Sewell's Christian Morals, p. 247. f Tract 90, p. 4. X Charge of the Bishop of Exeter, 1842. I 3 118 CHURCH PARTIES. notwithstanding all their struggles against the force of logic, they are borne down by an irresistible current to the chair of Peter. The foremost of them soon per- ceived the goal whither they were tending, and at first got over their difficulties by declaring that they ac- knowledged the authority of the Roman See, and held all Roman doctrine*, and that they could reconcile the English Articles to their Papal creed, by interpreting them in a "non-natural sense." They openly abjured the name of Protestant ; they allowed that, if cut off from the Roman Communion the Church of England must be schismatical ; but they maintained that the two Churches were not really separated, and that their mutual excommunication was the result of a misunder- standing which time would clear up. This view, how- ever, was too contrary to common sense to be long defended, even by its inventors. They soon acknow- ledged their error; and their leader, renouncing for ever the Anglican allegiance, passed over the Rubicon, and rushed into the heart of the Italian territory. But not all who advanced to that fatal frontier had courage to cross with Caesar ; the rabble of his army remained shivering on the brink. And now they are taunted by the indignant sarcasms of their former captain, as he adjures them by every principle they hold sacred to come over and help him. He proves that their present position is untenable. He proves that, while professing to repudiate all private judgment, they are in fact standing on the point of the loneliest pinnacle which private judgment ever reared. f He overwhelms them * These were the published words of Mr. Ward and Mr. Oakelj, some time before they left the Church of England. t See the Oratorian Lectures of Father Newman, on Anglican difficulties^ delivered in London in 1850. CHURCH PARTIES. 119 With those arguments which proved irresistible to him- self; the arguments which forced him to renounce the dreams of ambition and the reality of power, which tore him from his Oxford home and his devoted friends, and drove him into exile among strange scenes and uncon- genial men. But he reasons and he appeals in vain. Those on whom he calls have stopped their ears against the voice of the charmer. Their only answer is, " Here we are, and here we will remain."* Yet we must not hastily accuse all these waverers of dishonesty. Some of them, there cannot be a doubt, are men who would sacrifice, not their preferment only, but their lives, in the cause of duty. But they feel that, although the logical consequences of their principles thrust them forward, yet there are moral and religious difficulties which raise insuperable obstacles in the path. There are points in the doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome which seem to them irreconcilable with Christian truth. If, only, they could get over these stumbling-blocks, gladly would they follow their cap- tain's steps. But till then they remain where Providence has placed them : halting between two opinions as to their own position ; and still hoping, almost against hope, that the Church of England may be a true branch of the Church Catholic. These are the best of the Tractarian party ; but they are very few. The common run, even of their leaders, are usually third-rate Academics, misty and muddle-headed, who with intense labour have attained a Second Class Degree, and afterwards perhaps * It must be remembered, that we are speaking of those who still adhered to the Tractarian opinions after Mr. Newman's secession. But many of his followers, frightened by his desertion, fled back in the opposite direction, and intrenched themselves in the Anglican fortresses which they had abandoned. These are now distinguished among the Anglican party by the bitterness of their hostility to the Church of Rome. I 4 120 CHURCH PARTIES. have published some unsaleable lucubrations on logic, or some incomprehensible tractate on transubstantiation. The rank and file are young and silly partisans, who have joined their standard more for the sake of amuse- ment and notoriety than for any other reason. They are guiltless of insincerity, in not pushing strong opinions to extreme consequences ; for, in fact, they have never formed any opinions at all. They have but learnt by rote a set of phrases for which they shout. If guilty of dishonesty at all, it is only in pretending to decide on theological questions, while conscious that they are desti- tute of the simplest rudiments of theological knowledge. The manner of such a pretender is highly charac- teristic. It is marked by supercilious silliness and fatuous conceit, assumed to hide the depths of his ig- norance. It is sometimes difficult to maintain one's gravity, when one hears such a neophyte affecting the tone of a Doctor Seraphicus, and volubly pouring forth theological polysyllables which he would be sorely puzzled to render into English. One is tempted to re- mind him how few years have passed since he was nearly plucked for his degree, and to ask how long it is since he has acquired the power of construing the Greek Testament, wherein he was then so wofuUy deficient. To describe the costume, the phraseology, and the ritual of this party would be a waste of time. Their peculiarities have been made familiar to all, by the pen and the pencil of innumerable satirists. Who does not recognise, when he meets them in the railway or the street, the clipped shirt-collar, the stiff and tie-less neck- cloth, the M. B.* coat and cassock waistcoat, the cropped * Every one knows how this name was accidentally disclosed to a Tiacta- rian customer by a tailor's orders to his foreman ; and how the artist was forced reluctantly to confess that it was an abbreviation for " Mark of the Beastr CHURCH PARTIES. 121 hair and un-whiskered cheek ? Who does not know that the wearer of this costume will talk of *' the Holy Altar," and " the blessed Virgin," of " Saint Ignatius Loyola," and " Saint Alphonso de Liguori ?" And that he will date his letters on " the eve of St. Chad," or "the Morrow of Saint Martin?"* Who has not seen the youthful Presbyter bowing to the altar, and turning his back on the people ? Who has not heard him in- toning the prayers, and preaching in his surplice on the " holy obedience" due from laity to priesthood ? Who is ignorant that he reads the offertory after his sermon, and sends round little bags at the end of long poles, which are thrust in the faces of the worshippers to extort their contributions ? Who has not noticed the gaudy furni- ture of his church, the tippeted altar, the candles blazing at noon-day, the wreaths of flowers changing their colour with feast or fast, the mediaeval emblems em- broidered on the altar-cloth ? After all, these are but harmless fopperies, only mischievous if they stir up the wrath of the people. But the Tractarian mode of cele- brating the Communion deserves graver censure. In the first place, continual bowings and genuflexions are introduced, without the authority either of Rubric or custom. Secondly, the elements are placed, before con- secration, upon a peculiar piece of furniture, a side- board called a protliesis or credence table, although the use of this has been adjudged by the highest Ecclesias- * Some of the party have even rebaptised the days of the week, as appears from the following advertisement in the " English Churchman." " What is THE Gospel ? not Protestantism, but the Prayer-Book. This work mil be brought out regularly at F. Gilmours, High Street^ Sarum, every As- cension Day Qieathenishly called Thursday)^ and will be in the hands of the London and Oxford Booksellers every Passion Day, dedicated idolatrously by all Protestants to the Heathen Goddess Friga^ 122 CHURCH PARTIES. tical Court to be positively illegal.* Thirdly, in the reception of Ihe consecrated bread, a novel usage is adopted, which has excited scandal, and even caused disturbance, in the administration of the eucharist. Still more perilous to the peace of the Church is the attempt recently made by some Tractarian clergy to innovate upon the burial service. Under pretence of a rigid adherence to the Rubric, they have insisted on pausing in their office, after the coffin is lowered, till the whole grave is filled up. Meantime the mourning relatives (including, perhaps, sickly women) are com- pelled to stand shivering in the rain or snow; while the solemn impressions made by the majestic pathos of the service are effaced by anger, and tears of grief changed into tears of rage. The disregard thus shown for human sorrow makes this an instance of heartless folly, almost inconceivable in our tender-hearted age. Yet the refusal of the same party to bury those who have been baptized by Dissenters shows a similar tri- umph of bigotry over compassion. There might be some excuse for this, if one could believe that it arose from a conscientious obedience to the Rubric. But that is impossible; for the very men who affect this scrupulosity are themselves daily violators of the most precise directions of the Rubric. If there be one Rubrical enactment more important than another, it is that which prescribes the daily celebration of Morning and Evening Prayer in every Church. Yet this is not * See the Judgment of Sir H. J. Fust on the Stone Altar case. The contempt shown by the Tractarians for this judgment is the more remarkable, because they profess such reverence for the same judge's decision on the Gorham case. The number of churches now possessing credence tables is considerable enough to make the manufacture of credence cloths a regular branch of trade, as appears from the advertisements in the " Guardian." See " Guardian," Feb. 9. 1853. CHURCH r ARTIES. 123 obeyed by one Tractarian out of twenty. We entirely sympathise with the answer given by a well-known Bishop to a Romanising clergyman, who wished for permission to preach in his surplice, and pleaded that his conscience, bound as it was to Rubricality, forbade his officiating in his gown. " Of course, then," said the Prelate, *' as you are so scrupulous in your obedience, you celebrate Morning and Evening Service daily?" The clergyman confessed that he did not ; it would en- croach upon his other duties, and so forth. " Then I Ideally think, sir," replied the diocesan, " that in future the less you say of your Rubrical conscience the better." This inconsistency is felt by some who yet are un- willing to impose upon themselves the burden entailed by their principles. They wish to have daily service, but do not wish to perform it. We find an advertise- ment from one such Incumbent who appeals to the public to help him in raising " a fund to maintain the services of a Curate to perform daily service ;^^ and tells us that he would gratefully accept aid from " any pious Christian who feels disposed to assist in such a work^ * The following exhibits a similar mode of dealing with such embarrassments : — " The Incumbent and Deacon of a poor district on the S. W. coast, who are endeavouring to bear witness to the truth of Catholic principles, amid opposition of the most decided character from those by whom they are surrounded, venture to hope that som.e Catholic Priest, blessed with independent means, will come and help them for a few years, in their attempt to set the Church fully and fairly before the people. Money IS URGENTLY NEEDED /(?r the expense of the Choir, ^c."f The Tractarian, whose conscience allows him to dis- ♦ Guardian, Sept. 8. 1852. f Ibid. Nov. 24. 1852. I2i CHURCH PARTIES. pense witli daily service, is not much troubled with his spiritual duties during the week. He sets his face against most modern plans of parochial benevolence as Protes- tant inventions. He seldom patronises the secular edu- cation of the people ; it would be a very Erastian step to put his school under Government inspection; which is (generally speaking) the only way to make it efficient. He doubts the propriety of pastoral visits to his poor parishioners, unless they are sick ; because the Church has appointed no special office for that purpose. He is willing, however, to attend a death-bed when summoned ; and he sometimes gives special dignity to such an errand, by marching through the village in his surplice. More- over, he has perhaps a few female penitents, who come to him occasionally for auricular confession. But these employments do not take much of his time. His prin- cipal energies are devoted to the task of opposing " Puri- tanism." And as a practical protest against error is always the most eifectual, the junior members of the party display their repugnance to Puritanic heresy by at- tendance at balls and races. In fact, the frequentation of these amusements seems as essential a part of the one creed as their renunciation is of the other. But ball-going and race-frequenting, though the most effectual, are not the only modes in which the Tracta- rian clergy combat heterodoxy. They also amuse them- selves with a chronic agitation, which has for its object the safety of the Church. The quintessence of this agi- tating spirit is concentrated in the "Church Unions." These are clerical associations (including sometimes a few laymen), which meet together at intervals, usually once a month, to make speeches and pass resolutions concerning things in general, and their OAvn neighbour- hoods in particular. Besides these periodical debates. CHURCH rARTIES. 125 there are other occasional opportunities for indulging in the luxury of ecclesiastical warfare. We have lately seen the obsolete form of choosing Proctors for Convo- cation galvanised into unexpected life, to give such partisans the excitement of an electioneering intrigue. Then there is sometimes a petition to be got up against Government education ; sometimes a protest to be circu- lated against the Judicial Committee ; sometimes a man- damus to be sued out, forbiddhig the consecration of an heterodox Prelate ; and, if nothing else be stirring, an address against that great fautor of heresy, the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, will fill up the vacant time. The noise made by all this astonishes those who know how few are the makers of it. Provincial newspapers are always ready to print the proceedings of any local meeting, without too close a scrutiny into the attend- ance. There are also several London journals willing to fill their columns with accounts of any demonstration which seems to support the party that they advocate. In this multiplying mirror, the image of a single Tracta- rian is transformed into an assembly of divines ; and a little knot of ambitious curates pass themselves off on the dazzled public as the leaders of ecclesiastical opi- nion.* It has been said that parties, like snakes, " are guided by their tail, not by their head. '^ But perhaps it would be truer to say that the waggling of the tail is thought to indicate a motion of the more important members when they are really quiescent. In the in- stance before us this mistake is fostered by the circum- * In one case a " Church Union" consisted for some time of a clergyman, his curate, his churchwarden, and his schoolmaster ; and the resolutions and proceedings of this important body regularly filled several columns of the " English Churchman." We ought to add that this newspaper has lately be- come the organ of a more moderate party, but its circulation is infinitesi- mally small. 126 CHURCH PARTIES. stance that the journals generally supposed to repre- sent the High.Church party, really represent its extreme section only. This, indeed, is equally the case on the Low Church side. For quiet and moderate men (what- ever be their party) will seldom tear themselves ^from their daily duties to get up newspapers, to agitate against agitators, or to protest against protesters. Thus the High Churchman laments the violence of his " Chro- nicle" or his " Guardian," and the Evangelical groans over the absurdities of his " Record." But finding no other paper free from similar faults, they continue grumblingly to take in the offending prints. The agitation we have described cannot exist without involving much insubordination. Accordingly, the party which began with the watchwords of order and obedi- ence, is now the most disorderly and disobedient in the Church. Every clergyman is pledged, not merely by acts of Parliament, but by Articles, by Canons, and by repeated Oaths, to acknowledge the Royal Supremacy in Ecclesiastical Causes. Yet we have lately seen the de- cision of the Queen in Council openly repudiated with a formal publicity which exposed the guilty parties to the penalties of a prcemunire. But it may be said that the Supremacy, though an Anglican, is not a catholic doc- trine ; and that a " catholic mind" acknowledges sub- ordination to the divinely appointed governors of the Church, not to the earthly rulers of the State. Such is, indeed, the profession of the Tractarian party. *' The Bishops, " they tell us, " are the living representatives of Christ;" and again, "Whatever we ought to do, had we lived when the Apostles were alive, the same ought we to do for the Bishops. He that despiseth them despiseth the Apostles."* But, alas, these guides are only divine • Tract for the Times, No. 10. CHURCH PARTIES. 127 and apostolic so long as they side with their professed worshippers. If they venture to decide against them, they instantly become not merely fallible but heretical. 'Out of the whole body of English bishops, two only are now considered sound in Tractarian faith. And the scorn expressed even for their collective decisions, may be seen in the contemptuous denunciations hurled by these champions of Ecclesiastical Order against the Epis- copal Monition to the Clergy, which was signed in 1851 by twenty-four out of the twenty-eight bishops on the bench. The party seems, in fact, to take a schoolboyish pleasure in showing the annihilation of Episcopal power, and the unlimited licence of disobedience practically possessed by the clergy. Greenwood and Penry were hanged by Whitgift, Leighton was whipped and muti- lated by Laud, for the use of language against bishops mild in comparison with that which every pamphlet- eering curate now uses with impunity. We were espe- cially edified by one pamphlet which was published by a rustic pastor soon after the Gorham Judgment. The worthy man (who was Yicar of Puddleton Parva in the county of Wilts*) informed the Archbishop in all sober sadness, that whensoever he, the said Archbishop, should present himself as a communicant at the altar of Puddleton, he should be repelled therefrom. Imagine the vindictive satisfaction with which Archbishop Laud would have received such a document ! and how plea- santly he would have noted in his diary, a few weeks afterwards, the results of its pubHcation upon the ears, nose, back, and cheeks of the author ! -j* * From a desire not to expose a country clergyman to unnecessary ridi- cule, we suppress the name of this Wiltshire Vicar, and alter that of his parish. t See Laud's detailed account (in his diary) of the execution of Leighton's sentence (Rushworth's Collections, vol. ii. p. 57.). 128 CHURCH PARTIES. But if the Primate, by *^ voluntary betrayal of liis most sacred trust,"* has deserved such treatment from the faithful, at least the Bishop of London, we might hope, must command their grateful deference. He' favoured not the heterodoxy of Gorham ; nay, he stood alone among his brethren of the Privy Council in re- [fisting the Institution of that obstinate heretic. And at the time, he was glorified by the members of the Sect as the pillar of orthodoxy. But this was when he gave a judgment in their favour ; since then he has ventured to decide against them ; and now he too is a mark for the scoffs of the "Chronicle," and the more polished sar- casms of the " Guardian." His fall is connected with a controversy which was brought before Parliament three years ago. It will perhaps be remembered that Lord Palmerston, when Foreign Secretary, displaced the Chaplain at Madeira. The Bishop of London, however, did not think the faults committed deservinof of so se- vere a punishment, and refused to withdraw the Chap- lain's Episcopal licence. The ejected clergyman con- tinued to minister to a section of the British residents, and the new chaplain was denounced by the seceding party as the worst of heretics. No sooner was he landed than his predecessor put into his hands a solemn pro- test. In this document (which, with its Appendix, fills up thirty pages of the Parliamentary Blue Bookf con- taining an account of these transactions) the chaplain is informed that his " assumption of the ofiSce without licence from the Bishop is a schismatical and unlawful act. " X His congregation are warned that if they attend * Pastoral of the Bishop of Exeter, p. 112. f Correspondence respecting the British Chaplaincy in Madeira, printed by order of the House of Lords, 1849. X Above-mentioned Blue Book, p. 146. CHURCH PARTIES. 129 his ministrations they will ^' become partakers in the sins of disobedience and schism;"* and innumerable quotations are gathered from old fathers and modern di- vines, to enforce the Ignatian maxim that " the obeying of the Bishop is the necessary condition of Christian com- munion^ and he that does not obey the Bishop is worse than an irifideL'^f Who would have supposed that the very man who wrote this protest, and his followers who applauded it, would within three years be themselves defying the authority of the self-same Bishop ? Yet so it was. The extravagance of their conduct induced the Bishop to withdraw his countenance. At once obedi- ence was changed into rebellion. The Priest who had just stigmatised unlicensed ministration as worse than infidelity, himself continued to officiate for many months after his licence was cancelled. When he left the island, the extreme section of his partisans went yet farther. For the Bishop, having, in the meanwhile, given a licence to the Government Chaplain, they refused to acknowledge its validity, on the ground that it was granted to a notorious schismatic. And when the Bishop desired them to recognise his nominee, " as the only clergyman acting there under Episcopal autho- rity, "J they replied by new citations from the Fathers, directing the faithful to resist heretical bishops, and opened a church on independent principles. § All this insubordination is defended by the Tractarian party on the ground of a higher allegiance. " The * Above-mentioned Blue Book, p. 146. t Ibid. p. 186. J Letter of the Bishop of London, September 1. 1852 (quoted from the "Guardian"). § " I have reopened our church," says their minister, " falling back upon the general mission possessed by every priest for acting in special emergen- cies." (C?M«r(Zm«, Dec. 29. 1852.) K 330 CHURCH PARTIES. Church of their baptism," is in d^ger, and they must defend it even against the successors of the Apostles. But here they are assailed by their Eomish friends with the question, how they can venture, on their private judgment, to pronounce a successor of the Apostles guilty of heresy ? Confounded by this difficulty, many of them are driven to renounce Church, baptism, and all. Some, indeed, have contrived to renounce their baptism without quitting their Church, which is stranger still. One of their leaders, in a work which he has lately published upon the Greek Church, openly avows that on the 24th of July, 1851, he presented a document to the Patriarch of Constantinople, wherein he stated that " finding himself oppressed within the Anglican pale by a majority of heterodox, careless, or weak mem- bers," he "was desirous of obtaining admission into the orthodox Communion ;" and that, to this end, he " was willing to own the defective character of his former baptism^ and to submit to conditional immersion.''^* The clergy- man who thus proposed to renounce his baptism still re- tains his fellowship ; and the Tractarian organ mentions his conduct without a word of censure. The party whose salient features we have thus at- tempted to sketch, is (as we have intimated) more noisy than numerous. Its chief habitats in England are the two South-western dioceses ; and we often find in the advertisements for curacies in the " Guardian," a proviso that the appointment must be in Exeter, or Bath and AVells. Another favoured haunt of the sect is among the Episcopalian Non-conformists of Scotland. These * Quoted from a work on the Ortliodox Greek Church by a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, whose name is omitted, for the reason stated in the preface to this edition. What would the Fellows of Magdalen of 1688 have thought of their modern successor ? CHURCH PARTIES. 131 descendants of the Non -jurors, whose worship was, within living memory, subjected to the penalties of the law, still retain the spirit and temper, as well as the liturgy, of Laud. Their bishops are elected solely by the clergy, and the clergy of each diocese average from ten to twenty in number.* It is natural that these functionaries should make up for their want of temporal importance by exalting their spiritual dignity. Their communion affords a refuge to those who, though dis- gusted with the Protestantism of the Church of Eng- land, cannot quite resolve to join the Church of Rome.f Several of these seceders have been elected to Scotch "Bishoprics," and amuse themselves harmlessly with playing at prelacy. For here they can lord it safely over their tiny flocks, andean hurl their mimic thunder- bolts without setting the country in a flame. We re- joice, however, that they have lately been restrained from publishing their excommunications against those who difler from them, by the decisions of the Courts of Law, that such publication is libellous.J Tractarianism also flourishes in some of our Colonies, where members of the party have been sent out as bishops. We have already expressed our hearty sym- pathy with the establishment of a Colonial episcopate ; * The three smallest Scotch "Dioceses" contained in 1852 only thirteen clergy apiece. The other day there was a fierce contest for the election of " the Bishop of St. Andrews." Sixteen clergy were brought to the poll, eight on one side, and eight on the other, and the successful candidate, Mr. Wordsworth, was so far from affecting the nolo episcopari that he gave a casting vote for himself It is but justice to say that he deserved a much higher honour than that thus obtained, being a man of real learning, and one who has done much for the cause of Christian education. t We find from the official accounts that half the clergy now officiating as Episcopalian Non-conformists in Scotland were ordained in the English Church. X In the case of Sir W. Dunbar v. the Titular Bishop of Aberdeen. K 2 132 ' CHURCH PARTIES. and we therefore can more freely lament the mistakes made in some of the appointments towards the close of Archbishop Howley's life. The Government very pro- perly consulted the Archbishop on these nominations, since the endowments had been subscribed by members of the Church ; and the Archbishop having latterly fallen under the guidance of a small clique of Eomanis- ing clergy, several bishoprics were given to their parti- sans. Thus we find the Churchmen in some dioceses protesting against the Tractarian character of the clergy appointed by their rulers, who have succeeded, in cer- tain cases, in giving to their own party a majority of six to one. The organs of the clique applaud the Bishops for having reduced the Low Church to this in- significant minority. We own that, to us, such victories show neither the gentleness of the dove, nor the wisdom of the serpent. We trembled for the Church, when we found that a prelate of this school had claimed a seat in Convocation. Had the claim been conceded, we suppose that the more ambitious Colonial bishops would have resided permanently in the Metropolis, and appointed deputies to perform their diocesan duties. As it is, some of them seem to spend half their time here, and we never see an account of any public festivity during the London season, without finding three or four of these Episcopi minorum gentium among the company. Xavier never returned from India, to star it at Madrid ; and, unless our Colonial bishoprics be given to men of Xavier's spirit, they have been created in vain. The Tractarians are essentially a clerical party, and have but few lay retainers. Nor have they sutficient wealth and influence to attract so large a body of trad- ing members as the Rccordites. Still these followers of worthy Master Byends are not altogether wanting in the CHURCH PARTIES. 133 advertising columns of the Tractarian press. Peda- gogues and schoolmistresses make, as before, the principal figure. There we find several " establishments" where ^^the pupils have the gi^eat advantage of attending the morning and evening prayers of the Church;'^ and we are invited to send our sons to receive a " classical AND Anglo-Catholic EDUCATION," where "a limited number of pupils are received,^^ and where, " N. B. The Daily Service will he used^^ Nor can we hesitate to place our daughters under the shadow of Episcopal pro- tection in "aS^. Margaret's Collegey Crieff^ Perthshire, for the education of young ladies. Visitor, the Bishop of St. Andrews. ^ * * Dancing, Madame Apolline Ztwigle.^'f Besides this class of advertisers, there are a few Tractarian tailors, who proclaim the merit of their clerical frock-coats and cassock waistcoats ; several High- Church haberdashers, who supply offertory bags, and clothe the altar and the credence-table with mediaBval millinery ; and one undertaker, who professes (mirabile dictu) to make Anglo- Catholic coffins I But the most formidable tradesman of the party we have ever en- countered was a polemical dentist, into whose hands it was once our unhappy lot to fall. We were ignorant of his ecclesiastical politics, and made an incautious reply to his first question, wherein he pressed for our opinion on the character of the Primate. Bitterly did we repent our folly. Plunging his brad-awl (or whatever that horrid instrument is called) right into the nerve of the tooth which he was stopping, he sternly corrected our heterodoxy, and consigned the Archbishop to the com- pany of Judas. We instantly assented, tried to retract our previous blunder, and gave up the Metropolitan to ♦ From the English Churchman. f Guardian, July, 1852. K 3 134 CHURCH PARTIES. his doom. But it was too late. Our jaw was ruthlessly seized, and speech was thenceforth impossible. During the succeeding hour, " stretched on the rack of a too easy chair," we listened to a lecture on the Gorham con- troversy, while every point of the discourse was empha- sised by an excruciating poke into the living heart of the tooth. Yain were our attempts at recantation, vain our shrieks of agony. The merciless operator continued to storm against heresy, and stab against the nerve, till he thought he had punished us sufficiently. At last we were allowed to rise, with aching jaws, better qualified to appreciate the logic of Torquemada, and vowing that we had rather spend an hour even under a Recordite expounder than under a Romanising dentist. Such proselytes, however, are very rare among the middle and lower classes. Indeed, the chief mischief done by the Tractarians is that they alienate these classes from the Establishment. The accession of a Tractarian rector is always followed by the overcrowd- ihg of old conventicles, and the erection of new ones. The clergyman who has thus succeeded in driving half his hearers into Dissent, seems often rather pleased than otherwise at his achievement. He congratulates himself that he has winnowed the corn, and fairly separated the chaff from the wheat. "I have only twenty people now who come to church," said a country rector — ''but they are all sound churchmen." Moreover, such a priest feels his labours lessened by the desertion, as he is not bound to take any charge of his schismatical parishioners, and gives himself no farther trouble about them, except that of crossing himself and spitting on the ground when he passes the Zion or Bethesda where they assemble.* * A clergymjvii of tliis party was walking with a friend through a great CHURCH PARTIES. 185 This exaggerated manifestation of High Church principles, mischievous though it be, is less disgusting than the stagnant form of the same party, which was so widely diffused in the good old days of Eldonian Toryism. Its adherents, always indolent and ignorant, were once politically formidable by their numbers and their wealth. Now they are fallen from their high estate, and are contemptuously denominated the " High and Dry"; just as the parallel development of the Low Church is nicknamed " Low and Slow." There is so much analogy between these two fraternities, that it is best to consider them together. Their professed doc- trines, indeed, are dissimilar, but these are only acci- dentally adopted, and make no essential distinction. In sluggish mediocrity, in hatred of zeal, in dread of innovation, in abuse of Dissent, they are in perfect harmony. The blundering and languid utterance, the want of life and fire in their style, the absence of any thing in look, voice, or manner, which could touch the heart of their hearers, characterises both alike. If they write their own sermons, it is " with drops of opium upon leaves of lead ;" and such is the narcotic effect of these discourses that the most attentive listener can hardly retain his consciousness long enough to discover whether the preacher is to be classed among the " Dry" or the " Slow." Indeed, a sermon of either class might often be turned into one of the other, by simply sub- manufacturing town. As they passed a large and ugly building, " How fri