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 CHARGE 
 
 DELIVERED TO THE 
 
 CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE OF LLANDAFF, 
 
 AT HIS FOUETH VISITATION, 
 
 SEPTEMBER, 1860. 
 
 ALFRED OLLIVANT, D.D. 
 
 BISHOP or LLANDAPF. 
 
 PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 EIVINGTONS, WATEELOO PLACE. 
 
 1860.
 
 78 
 
 a month by partaking of the Holy Communion, at the parish or other 
 church; that he may be preserved from the spiritual dangers to 
 which his peculiar position may expose him, and be enabled to adorn 
 his Christian profession, and influence those among whom he ministers, 
 by his own example. 
 
 On the occasion of his attending the church for the purpose re- 
 ferred to, he is permitted, if the clergyman should desire it, to take 
 part in the service. 
 
 TIIU END. 
 
 GILBERT AND RIVtNGTON, PRINTERS, ST JOHn's SQUARE, LONDON.
 
 CHARGE 
 
 DELIVERED IN DECE:yrP.ER 180:2, 
 
 TO 
 
 THE CLERGY 
 
 DIOCESE OF LONDON, 
 
 AT HIS VISITATION, 
 
 ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL, 
 LOUD BISHOP or LONDON. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 JOHK MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1862.
 
 TO 
 
 THE CLERGY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE DIOCESE OF LONDON 
 
 IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 
 
 BY 
 
 THEIR FAITHFUL FRIEND AND SERVANT 
 
 A. C. LONDOjS. 
 
 FuLHAM Palace, 
 
 2d Dec. 1862.
 
 Almighty God, giver of all good things, who by thy Holy Spirit 
 hast appointed divers Orders of Ministers in the Church ; Mercifully 
 behold us thy servants ; and so replenish us with the truth of thy 
 doctrine, and adorn us with innocency of life, that, both by word 
 and good example, we may faithfully serve thee in our Office, to 
 the gloi-y of thy Name, and the edification of thy Church ; through 
 the merits of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth 
 with thee and the Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen. 
 
 '^owc
 
 CHARGE. 
 
 My Reveuend Brethren, 
 
 God has granted us to meet again after four 
 years for another solemn scrutiny. We do well, 
 joining in the Holy Communion and the other 
 Services of this week, to ask Him that He would 
 deepen our sense of responsibility, for it is in- 
 deed a great trust which He has committed to us, 
 and inestimably important are the issues which 
 hang upon our faithfulness. A Visitation puts 
 to each of us these questions — Art thou faithful ? 
 What are thy failures ? How canst thou improve ? 
 And many tilings conspire to give special so- 
 lemnity to our meeting at the close of this year. 
 We began the year with a public mourning, such 
 as England never knew before. Agitated with 
 apprehensions of a coming war, the nation then 
 felt in its heart the loss of the wise, and good 
 and loving Counsellor, to whom our Queen, from 
 her early youth onwards, had looked for support
 
 in every trial. We have, indeed, through God's 
 mercy been saved from war, bnt we are looking 
 forward now, for a vast multitude of our people, 
 to di'eary months of famine and its attendant 
 sickness. Again, in our distress, we feel the loss 
 of him who was ever foremost to aid our Queen 
 in promoting the people's good and alleviating 
 their sufferings. All men of Christian thoughts 
 throughout the nation see in these things the 
 hand of God, and remember how near they are 
 to Him. Our Church, too, at this time following 
 its loved Primate to his honoured grave, while it 
 enters a new period, to be noted by a new name, 
 has been reminded how the years of its probation 
 hasten to a close, and learns to look upwards 
 in all changes to Him for whose coming it is 
 waiting. 
 
 Bishops at their Visitations usually state their 
 views on the general condition of the Church, 
 and the important questions which have recently 
 arisen in it. If this be reasonable in any diocese, 
 it must be necessary in ours ; for the metropolis 
 stands in the fore-front of the Church's battle, and 
 we have to grapple personally with diificulties, 
 the very rumour of which alarms our brethren in 
 quieter places. Doubtless the especial object of 
 a Visitation must be, not to inspect the Church 
 generally, or deal with its general relations, but 
 rather to stir us one by one, each in his sphere to
 
 perform his own part faithfully and well. But 
 none of us stands alone. Members of a great 
 body, we cannot accomplish our own work well, 
 apart from the company of the faithful. Looking 
 on the Church as a whole, we may be saved from 
 exaggerating, each of us, our own petty difficul- 
 ties, and thus pusillanimously yielding to them. 
 We shall also, perhaps, understand better what it 
 is most important for us to do each in our own 
 limited sphere, from considering what are the 
 Church's most pressing wants and greatest dan- 
 gers. The eye will see objects better in their true 
 proportions, when it corrects its minute observa- 
 tions by sweeping over a wider range. 
 
 In my last Charge, amongst other subjects, I 
 drew attention prominently to two great dangers. 
 Eirst, to that of exaggerating the importance of 
 the outward and ceremonial parts of religion, and 
 thus coming to think lightly, in comparison, of 
 that simple Gospel, which is its spiritual essence : 
 and, secondly, to the danger, in our zeal either for 
 or against ceremonials, of not fostering that large- 
 hearted spirit of comprehensive love, which is cha- 
 racteristic of the real Christian. While I thus 
 spoke, I felt that there was danger lest that very 
 zeal, which we thanked God was taking the place 
 of the old lukewarmness, might encourage us to 
 split up into sections, each magnifying unduly the 
 importance of its own partial view of truth, and 
 
 b2
 
 its own helps to holiness. I was deeply convinced 
 that the great national Church of England must 
 "be careful not exclusively to mould itself according 
 to the fancies of the clergy only, or of some limited 
 number of persons of refined tastes, nor yet to 
 think, on the other hand, of the feelings of the 
 great body of the middle classes alone : again, that 
 it must neither overlook nor confine itself to its 
 mission amongst the poor ; that it has to deal 
 with men of subtle intelligence, as well as with 
 the unreasoning crowd. Of course, these dangers, 
 to which I especially drew attention in my last 
 Charge, still exist. They are the product of cer- 
 tain principles of human nature, nay, are con- 
 nected closely with certain Christian graces, 
 which we do not seek to eradicate or dwarf, but 
 to develop rightly, and wisely to direct, in due 
 subordination to the whole orderly training of 
 the Christian life. When the Church is alive 
 to the importance of its own ritual, there will 
 always be some danger of ceremonialism; and 
 Avhen souls are stirred to zeal for what they 
 love, there will be danger of a sectarian spirit. 
 On the whole, however, we have cause to thank 
 God that there is in our Church in these days, so 
 much appreciation of the real essence of Christ's 
 Gospel, and that men rightly zealous for their 
 own views have so much consideration for others, 
 and are able, without compromise of principle,
 
 to think so well of each other, and act so har- 
 moniously together. 
 
 The difficulties with which our Church has to 
 contend are, it is true, more or less the same 
 in all ages, hut they are modijSed hy the varying 
 circumstances of each generation. Some of our 
 difficulties have hecome more, some less pro- 
 minent and alarming, even during the short time 
 which has elapsed since our last quadrennial 
 meeting. Our Church — an established Church 
 in close connexion with the State— a true por- 
 tion of the Catholic Church of Christ, holding 
 fast by His unchanging, everlasting Gospel, con- 
 necting itself through the hallowed associations 
 of 1800 years, with Christ's saints of all ages 
 and countries, up to the Apostles ; — clinging to. 
 the oldest forms of worship and of government, 
 and yet protesting against errors with which, for 
 centuries before the Reformation, the Church 
 was clouded — has, committed to it by God, in 
 the middle of this nineteenth century, in an in- 
 quisitive and restless age, the difficult task of 
 gathering together, fostering, developing, re- 
 straining, and guiding the Christian feelings and 
 thoughts, and energetic life of many millions 
 of intelligent Englishmen, impatient both of 
 political and still more of ecclesiastical control ; 
 and that not in these densely peopled islands only, 
 but in colonies spread over the habitable globe.
 
 6 
 
 Now, perhaps, we sliall best appreciate the 
 momentous work which lies before our Church, 
 if we consider its present difficulties under 
 three of the several heads which might suggest 
 themselves. 
 
 I. The difficulties that spring from that un- 
 restrained spirit of free inquiry, which claims 
 the right to sift and test all theories, and bows 
 to no authority, however venerable, which can- 
 not make good by argument its claim on our 
 allegiance. 
 
 II. The difficulties which beset an established 
 Church, standing side by side with other reli- 
 gious bodies, in an age of perfect toleration, 
 when every collection of men is perfectly free, 
 so far as the law of the State is concerned, to 
 form a communion of its own, to believe what 
 it pleases, and worship God as it wills. 
 
 And III. The difficulties which spring from 
 an ever-growing population, rendering it scarcely 
 possible for the Church's machinery, keeping pace 
 with progress of the nation, to meet men's wants 
 as quickly as they arise. 
 
 I. As to free inquiry ; what shall we do with 
 it ? Shall we frown upon it, denounce it, try to
 
 stifle it? This will do no good even if it be 
 riglit. But after all we are Protestants. We 
 have been accustomed to speak a good deal of 
 the right and duty of private judgment. It 
 was by the exercise of this right and the dis- 
 charge of this duty that our fathers freed their 
 and our souls from E,ome's time-honoured false- 
 hoods. Are we to be scared from those great 
 principles which opened the closed door of truth 
 in the sixteenth century, because some men, 
 using our instruments of investigation, arrive 
 at false and dangerous conclusions ? As well 
 might Luther have turned against the E-efor- 
 mation because of the eccentricities of the Ana- 
 baptists, or our own divines have thought it 
 best to make common cause with the Jesuits 
 because of the spread of Unitarianism. Am I 
 convinced of the heavenly origin of those great 
 truths, for which the Church of England has 
 been appointed by the Lord Jesus as the chief 
 witness upon earth ? And shall I, from a craven 
 fear lest these truths be shaken, disparage the 
 use of that great instrument of reason which 
 God has given to man for the investigation and 
 defence of truth ? If I am wise I will not ask 
 my people to give to the Church's teaching an 
 unreasoning and stolid assent. I will set myself 
 to work, as being conscious of the value of that 
 priceless gift of reason, to discipline myself, and
 
 8 
 
 help others, that we may use it as God directs ; 
 and I shall feel confident that its investigations 
 rightly and reverently conducted must result in 
 furthering the cause of the God of truth. Do 
 I believe that supernatural Revelation and the 
 natural discoveries of reason are two methods 
 through which God makes himself known to 
 man? Then I can have no doubt that ultimately 
 the conclusions arrived at by the use of God's 
 two instruments must agree. It would argue 
 little faith to have any doubts on this score. 
 
 What then are we afraid of ? Is the approach 
 of no real danger intimated by all the alarm 
 which has discomposed the Church for the last 
 two years ? To assert that there is no danger 
 would be folly ; but it is a danger to meet which 
 requires calmness and great discretion. The 
 difficulties we have to deal with need very deli- 
 cate handling. If there are persons likely to 
 injure themselves and others by free inquiry, 
 they can only be effectually met by those who 
 are able to a certain extent to sympathise with 
 them, and to enter with considerate feeling into 
 the intricacies of those questions which have 
 unsettled their faith. 
 
 Por example — am I the pastor of a parish, and 
 do I know that some intelligent and promising 
 young man of my flock is distressing the old- 
 fashioned piety of his parents by giving utterance
 
 9 
 
 to speculations which sound to them like blas- 
 phemy ? How shall I deal with him ? Before I 
 try to influence him I must carefully endeavour 
 to ascertain what is his real state of mind. An 
 affected scepticism, bred of ignorance and shal- 
 low self-conceit (and there is abundance of such 
 abroad in the world noAV as in all ages), might 
 not unnaturally provoke a sharp rebuke, though, 
 perhaps, it is doubtful even in such cases how far 
 the rebuke would do good. An exposure of the 
 man's ignorance might perhaps tell upon him, 
 and teach him more humility. But suppose I 
 find that the young man is not more self- con- 
 ceited than his neighbours — that he is of a really 
 inquiring mind, anxious to know the truth, but 
 unsettled. He has been, say, to the University, 
 and has heard questions freely discussed there, of 
 which he never dreamed in childhood ; questions 
 as to the nature and limits of inspiration, as to 
 the difficulties which stand in the way of an 
 unquestioning assent to the perfect historical 
 accuracy of the Bible narrative ; questions as to 
 the possibility of reconciling a belief in mira- 
 culous interpositions with the maintenance of 
 unchanging laws; questions as to how far the 
 discoveries of modern science agree with the teach- 
 ing of the sacred books; or (after the general truth 
 of the Bible scheme is admitted), intricate meta- 
 physical questions which still may be raised as to
 
 10 
 
 the particular mode in which the life and death 
 of Christ avail for man's salvation, and how far 
 the exact truth on this momentous subject is ex- 
 pressed in the Church's formularies. 
 
 A man need neither be conceited, nor shallow, 
 nor rash, nor irreverent, to have had his thoughts 
 exercised on any one of these subjects. Nay, 
 are you an ordained guide of souls — a minister 
 of that God who has promised to lead you and 
 your people into all truth, responsible to Him 
 for wisely directing all who come to you in their 
 difficulties — not the souls only which are depressed 
 with the burden of sin, or uncertain as to practi- 
 cal questions of conscience in matters of every- 
 day outward action, but souls clouded with intel- 
 lectual doubts also — and are you, though thus set 
 apart for this difficult work, unable to minister 
 where the help of your ministry is so much re- 
 quired ? The questions now raised cannot be 
 new to you if you have been rightly trained for 
 your office. You must be able to say to him 
 whom you would influence, I know what these 
 perplexities mean. I can point the way to solve 
 them. Let us talk of these things quietly and 
 reverently together, invoking the Divine blessing, 
 and by the Divine guidance we shall certainly 
 emerge into the light. We believe with the 
 Church of all ages that the Bible is the Word of 
 God ; that through it God speaks to each separate
 
 11 
 
 soul, and through it also God's voice is heard 
 century after century proclaiming truth aloud to 
 a world wandering in error : We believe that the 
 eternal Son of God visited, in human guise, the 
 earth He had created : that His advent was 
 heralded, and His presence attested by many 
 miracles, and that when the men He came to 
 save slew Him, His power over death, as the 
 Prince of Life, was shown by His rising, the 
 greatest of all miracles : We believe that through 
 His death the barrier was thrown down, which, 
 as the effect of sin once entering into our nature, 
 kept God and man asunder — that thus God was 
 reconciled to man once for all — as, through the 
 spectacle of His death and rising again set forth 
 to human souls age after age, they are one by 
 one reconciled to God. 
 
 Are you called to reason with one who dis- 
 believes these verities ? Ask him first what are the 
 points on which, if there be such, he has no doubt, 
 or practically, at least, no doubt: say to him, *'0n 
 these at least we are agreed. We shall gain com- 
 fort and light from dwelling reverently on these. 
 Are you convinced of the being and nearness of 
 God ? How will the soul be solemnised by the 
 great thoughts which spring from truly realising 
 even one deep religious truth." Indeed, experi- 
 ence as well as Scripture teaches us how much is 
 gained towards acquiring a full view of all reli-
 
 12 
 
 gious truth, when the mind is once thrown, as it 
 were, into the religious attitude, and has, as it 
 were, its religious faculties awakened. I sup- 
 pose the eye which has heen accustomed to gaze 
 attentively through the telescope at one star is 
 better prepared to scan and take in the whole 
 intricacy of the heavenly maze. God has inti- 
 mated that he who has mastered even that sim- 
 plest of all religious truths, viz. that he ought 
 to obey conscience, and clings to this, is on the 
 road to learn all religious truth. If a man wills 
 to do God's will, he shall know of the doctrine 
 whether it be of God.^ 
 
 It is thus, I think, that a wise pastor will deal 
 with any members of his flock whom it is desired 
 that he should influence while they are likely to 
 be misled by the prevailing free inquiry, and the 
 intricate questions on which it expatiates. And as 
 we are to deal with our people one by one, so the 
 Church generally has to deal with public opinion. 
 Nothing would be so likely to spread scepticism 
 and unbelief amongst an intelligent laity as any 
 crude attempts on the part of the Clergy to 
 treat the difficulties arising from free inquiry 
 without thoroughly understanding them. Dog- 
 matic denunciations — sweeping accusations as to 
 the corrupt state of heart from which doubt and 
 unbelief is supposed to spring — unwise and arro- 
 
 1 John vii. 17.
 
 13 
 
 gant claims to an unquestioning obedience and 
 submission of the understanding — I can conceive 
 nothing more likely to irritate intelligent men, 
 and excite the very evils we desire to allay. So 
 also is it with any unskilful and ill-informed treat- 
 ment of the questions at issue. Much knowledge 
 and experience, much charity, and a wise con- 
 siderateness for the thoughts and feelings of 
 men unlike themselves, must be required, if the 
 clergy, by their preaching or their writings, are 
 beneficially to influence the laity in such matters. 
 Nothing is to be gained by haranguing against 
 scepticism to a sympathising crowd of attentive 
 orthodox believers who never knew a doubt. 
 And if even of " Butler's Analogy " it has been 
 reported to have been said by a man of the highest 
 ability, whose mind was supposed to be too much 
 engrossed in questions of practical statesmanship 
 to allow leisure for religious speculation, that it 
 raised within him more doubts than it solved, 
 what must be the effect of ill- digested discussions 
 on momentous historical or metaphysical questions 
 connected with the evidences of our faith poured 
 forth inconsiderately to the mixed bodies which 
 form, for example, our ordinary congregations 
 in the metropolis ? I have known it insinuated 
 that to hear a young uninformed divine preach 
 on the evidences of the Kesurrection, is not un- 
 likely to make a clear-headed lawyer doubtful
 
 as to points which he before steadfastly believed. 
 Certainly it is much to be deprecated that, in our 
 alarm at the dangers of free inquiry, we should, 
 either in our preaching or our wTiting, hurry 
 into an argumentative contentious style, always 
 attempting to slay supposed adversaries, and 
 probably, for the pleasure of easily disarming 
 them, i^utting into the hands of imaginary com- 
 batants weapons which our real opponents never 
 would have used. It is in the attempt practi- 
 cally to build up your people's Christian cha- 
 racter, to deepen their convictions of the great 
 Gospel truths, as presented to them in the sim- 
 plest and most scriptural form, without either 
 compromise or exaggeration, that you will find 
 the chief field of your preaching. And if there 
 be occasions, as there undoubtedly are, when 
 it is right for those who are equal to the 
 task, to enter distinctly upon controversy, even 
 then, if, either in your preaching or "v\Titing, 
 you would win your way with the followers of a 
 sceptical or unbelieving school, deal with them 
 in your public, as I have already advised you to 
 deal with individuals in your private, ministra- 
 tions. DavcU much on the positive truths wliich 
 you know your opponents hold — urge them to 
 act on these truths, to show that they believe 
 them, not in name only, but heartily — not to 
 yield to them a half-acceptance, but to embrace
 
 16 
 
 them in their depth and breadth, with all their 
 cognate truths, and all the consequences that 
 flow from .them. This is our best chance of pre- 
 paring their minds to receive the evidence of the 
 other truths we love, which at present they 
 hesitate to accept or have rejected. 
 
 I have hitherto spoken of our duties respect- 
 ing such matters, in our attempts to influence 
 the laity. But the apprehended dangers of free 
 inquiry are not confined to laymen ; and here, 
 perhaps, is the most difficult and delicate part 
 of the whole subject. In a Church like ours — 
 which does not separate its clergy into a priestly 
 caste ; which wisely educates in common its 
 young candidates for the ministry and the aspi- 
 rants to secular professions ; which encourages 
 its clergy to mix freely with the laity, and join 
 in all their interests — no thoughts and feelings 
 can prevail extensively amongst laymen without 
 the clergy also being greatly influenced. We 
 must not, therefore, be staggered if we find the 
 sort of difficulties we have spoken of put forward 
 even in a more marked manner by clergymen 
 than by laymen. Indeed, a layman may be 
 contented to let such things alone. It is, per- 
 haps he says, no part of his business to be 
 attempting to instruct others on such questions ; 
 he has some other profession, which practically 
 claims his time and thoughts in another direc-
 
 16 
 
 tion. But a clergyman cannot altogether avoid 
 such questions. He is called every day, in his 
 common occupations, to announce that he has an 
 opinion on one side or the other of at least some 
 of them. He cannot therefore shut his eyes to 
 them. He may, indeed, say, and wisely, that as 
 a young man, or not a very learned man, he will 
 leave intricate questions untouched as much as 
 possible, and trust, in such matters, to the 
 general guidance of those who know better than 
 himself ; he may feel that he has, in dealing 
 with his people's souls, an abundant sphere of 
 practical occupation, into which such questions 
 scarcely enter ; and he may thank God that his 
 own soul's religious life is independent of them. 
 Still, I suppose we must allow that the clergy 
 generally are more brought face to face with 
 such questions than the laity. And we must not 
 be, therefore, alarmed if we find free inquiry 
 amongst the clergy. 
 
 To be sure, there is certainly this difficulty 
 respecting the clergy-^that it is part of their 
 commission to teach a distinct and settled 
 system of Gospel truth : And, as embodying this 
 principle, most religious communions — our own 
 Church, perhaps, neither more nor less than 
 others — require of those who have the commis- 
 sion conferred on them a declaration that they 
 believe and are ready to teach the truths to
 
 17 
 
 which the Cliurcli witnesses. There is cer- 
 tainly a difficulty as to the prosecution of any 
 very free inquiry by those who begin by thus 
 professing their belief in fixed formularies of 
 doctrine, and obtain the very position which 
 gives them influence as teachers, in virtue of 
 this profession. Still, it would be altogether 
 wrong to exaggerate this difficulty. It will 
 never do to lay down that a clergyman is bound 
 not to inquire. Like any one else— if you will, 
 even more than any one else, in virtue of the 
 sacredness of his calling — he is bound, entering 
 on such inquiry, to proceed in a deeply reve- 
 rential frame of mind, looking up to the Holy 
 Spirit of God to be his guide. And this is 
 certain, that, neither while he is conducting, nor 
 when he has finished such inquiries, can he be 
 justified in availing himself of his position, as 
 one of the Church's ministers, to speak against 
 the truths to which the Church is pledged. If 
 his mind is long harassed by doubt, he will, 
 during this time of suspense, be subjected to a 
 very great trial. God knows, he is entitled to 
 the sympathy of all good men ; and if the doubt 
 ends in disbelief of the Church's doctrines, of 
 course he will resign his office as one of the 
 Church's authorised teachers. Very many have 
 done so on one side or the other since the be- 
 ginning of the present century. The general 
 
 c
 
 18 
 
 principles which we lay down must apply alike 
 to those who wander in the E-omanizing, the 
 ultra-Calvinistical, and the free-thinking direc- 
 tion. Much as we lament the loss of the services 
 of those who have left us — greatly as we deplore 
 (while we respect their honesty and self-sacrifice) 
 that they should have missed what we firmly 
 believe to be the truth, — we cannot for a moment 
 admit any theory, which, teaching that as clergy- 
 men they were bound to an unquestioning ad- 
 herence to the Church's standards, removes the 
 clergy out of the category of inquiring honest 
 men, thus robbing the Church of all that weight 
 of testimony in favour of its doctrines which is 
 derived from the heartfelt free adherence of so 
 many of the most intelligent and best men of 
 each generation, who have found their highest 
 happiness as its ministers. 
 
 It may be said, indeed, that the period for free 
 inquiry ought to have ended before holy orders 
 were obtained, and that the clergyman, once 
 having chosen his lot in life, as a minister com- 
 missioned to teach the Church's doctrines, dares 
 not look back, and is free no longer to examine 
 them. I do not urge in answer to this the 
 early age at whicli holy orders are usually sought 
 accordini? to the Church's rule. God forind that 
 I should overlook the deep responsibility as to 
 doctrine, as well as in reference to his whole life,
 
 19 
 
 which for the youngest as well as for the maturest 
 of our candidates the ordination vow implies. 
 
 A grave thing it is, indeed, after a lengthened 
 preparation and many warnings as to what we 
 are doing, to have placed ourselves, by our 
 own deliberate act, through a solemn service 
 of dedication, in that intimate relation with the 
 heart-searching God, which is implied in becom- 
 ing His commissioned ministers, and to have 
 bound ourselves with the heavy responsibility 
 that henceforward many souls, looking to us as 
 a guide, must be affected by what w^e do and 
 say and think. It is difficult to exaggerate the 
 solemnity or responsibilities of ordination. Still 
 no man is bound by his ordination vow to turn 
 a deaf ear to the whisperings of his conscience, 
 even if it be a mistaken conscience ; or to resist 
 those longings of his highest nature, w^hich urge 
 him to make sure of truth. What the Church 
 prays for him in the Ordination Service is, not 
 that he may cease to inquire, but that, daily 
 led by God's teaching, he may grow^ to greater 
 ripeness of knowledge and a more thorough ap- 
 preciation of the real truth. If seeking he falls 
 into error, and acts, at whatever personal sacri- 
 fice, straightforwardly according to his convic- 
 tions, great as is the inevitable separation 
 between a man who forsakes the Church's 
 ministry and those who continue in it, he is 
 
 c 2
 
 20 
 
 certainly not to be denounced ; he is entitled to 
 our respect. The clergy, therefore, are not 
 precluded from free inquiry, even at the risk of 
 this inquiry leading them far aAvay from the 
 Church, in which it was once their heart's desire 
 to exercise a lifelong ministry. 
 
 And here I will remark that I do not look 
 much to legal prosecutions and the courts of 
 the Church's judicature for the preservation 
 of orthodoxy in our clergy. The Church of 
 England is wisely jealous of such prosecutions. 
 The precedents for their management and effects 
 are found sparingly in our annals ; and this, not 
 I suppose because we have been more free than 
 other nations from dangerous opinions— for each 
 generation has had its own peculiar bias of error — 
 but rather because the authorities of our Church, 
 under the leading of its best divines, have ever 
 deemed it wise not to spread the influence of 
 unsound teaching amongst a generous people, 
 by any the remotest semblance of persecution; 
 and have rather sought ever to overcome the 
 danger of heresy by the manifestation of supe- 
 rior learning and acuteness and a truer Christian 
 spirit, than to prop up truth by the terrors of the 
 law. It is not to courts of justice that we are 
 indebted for our having been brought safe through 
 the Arianism of the last or the Romanising teach- 
 ing of the present century. A wise son of the
 
 21 
 
 Church of England will be very jealous of every 
 sort of prosecution for opinion, unless demanded 
 by some overwhelming and inevitable necessity. 
 
 After we have reverently sought the Holy 
 Spirit's guidance for ourselves and those whom 
 we would influence, we trust most — both for our 
 people's safety and the ultimate recovery of those 
 who we fear are misleading them — to wise argu- 
 ment and kindliness and considerate forbearance, 
 acting on that manly honesty of character which, 
 thank God, as a general rule, we find in all our 
 countrymen. Of course, if questions of erroneous 
 or heretical opinion are brought before a court 
 of justice, and the law is sought to be enforced 
 (and I do not say that sometimes such a course 
 may not be inevitable), all that the members of 
 the court can do is to decide to the best of their 
 ability, and on conviction the penalties must 
 follow. But this can only be requisite in excep- 
 tional instances. 
 
 It is worth noting that some of the most 
 attached members of our Church, deeply con- 
 vinced of these principles, think it no evil that 
 the system of our Ecclesiastical courts presents 
 an effectual bar against cheap and easy prosecu- 
 tions for heresy. They deem it to be no dis- 
 paragement to our Church, but in full consistency 
 with her free and tolerant spirit, that such pro- 
 secutions as we have been speaking of should be
 
 22 
 
 difficult as well as rare. I do not advocate the 
 maintenance of this cumbrous mode of indirectly 
 compassing a good result, but this I think is 
 certain, that, whatever reforms in our ecclesias- 
 tical law are contemplated, no encouragement 
 should be given to rash prosecutions of this 
 kind. Some complain that under the present 
 Church Discipline Act no one but the Bishop 
 can institute proceedings against a clergyman. 
 But certainly such prosecutions at least as we 
 now speak of, ought never to be allowed to be 
 instituted, except at the instance of some one 
 occupying a grave and important position, re- 
 sponsible to the Church and the country for his 
 every act. After all, it is only dishonest men 
 who can be kept in check by the fear of penalties. 
 As matters stand at present, a good, truth-loving 
 man, who falls into great error, will usually, 
 long before he arrives at that point where alone 
 the divergence of his opinions from the authorised 
 standard would be cognisable by law, have made 
 up his mind, following the dictates of his own 
 conscience, to forsake, of his own accord, the 
 ministry of a communion in the teaching of 
 which he has ceased to believe. The whole 
 experience of our history shows that determined 
 teachers of error in our Church sooner or later 
 leave the Church. They cannot bear the Liturgy 
 and Articles.
 
 23 
 
 Por one thing I would plead in passing, that 
 as we are unwilling to force any into separa- 
 tion, so we should leave as ready an oppor- 
 tunity as possible for those who have already 
 gone, to return, if God brings them to a sounder 
 mind. It is very satisfactory to know that several 
 of our clergy, of late years seduced by the at- 
 tractions of Rome, have now come back to their 
 allegiance ; and we earnestly trust that it may 
 be so with all who ever fall into any grievous 
 error. So long as a man desires to remain one 
 of our clergy, we may feel confident that he 
 must have in his heart a stronger sympathy 
 with our system than we are willing to believe 
 in the heat of controversy. It is a grave res- 
 ponsibility to drive any from us who feel that 
 they are really of us, and the consequences of any 
 harshness in their violent expulsion may be quite 
 as grievous as any evil likely to result from their 
 teaching. 
 
 But ought not the Bishops to take care so to 
 fence the gate to holy orders, that no young men 
 can enter the ministry who are ever likely thus 
 to wander ? I confess this seems to me to be 
 asking too much. We are very fallible in such 
 matters. Nothing, indeed, can excuse a Bishop 
 who does not employ every means within his 
 reach to ascertain that his candidates are deeply 
 impressed with the responsibilities of the mini-
 
 24 
 
 sterial office. He must see that they have con- 
 sidered carefully, as before God, whether they can 
 give their lives to those self-denying efforts, by 
 which Christ calls His ministers to win souls 
 to Him. And he must see, also, that so far as 
 their age and progress in education admits, they 
 have well weighed and sifted the Church's doc- 
 trine. If he perceives any young man to be 
 of a wavering unsettled spirit, he is bound to 
 warn him of the danger of taking upon himself 
 the solemn and enduring voavs of ordination. 
 Any appearance not only of common worldliness, 
 but of light-mindedness, of not having weighed 
 fully and prayerfully all that ordination implies ; 
 of hanging so uncertainly by the great simple 
 Gospel doctrines of which our Church is the 
 guardian, as not to be able to speak of them to 
 men's souls in Christ's name — these are serious 
 matters which the Bishop must note, and unless 
 the unfavourable impression is removed, he dares 
 not proceed Avith the ordination : and he will seek 
 to make the preparatory ember days a time of 
 great solemnity, that the candidates may not only 
 be tested by their examiners, but stirred by prayer 
 and exhortation to understand the momentous 
 point in their lives which they have reached. He 
 is bound to do everything in his power, to prevent 
 young men from being ordained, without seeing all 
 that lies before them. But as he ought not to pry
 
 25 
 
 into youug men's consciences, so he must not strive 
 to probe, with too minute a scrutiny, every pos- 
 sible phase of their necessarily unformed opinions. 
 He must trust them, and he must pray for them, 
 and he must do his best to guide them in the real 
 Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But he must 
 not strain their belief, or endeavour to twist them 
 into his own mould. And so very liable are we 
 to make great mistakes, when we attempt to con- 
 jecture what will probably be in coming years 
 the course of thought of a young man of twenty- 
 three, that I think the Bishops are certainly ex- 
 pected to go beyond their office and their power, 
 if they are asked to admit no man to holy orders, 
 who may possil)ly wander in course of time into 
 grievous error. 
 
 Even as to the declarations which the law of the 
 land requires to be made at ordination, I should 
 be ready myself, even now, in spite of all tempo- 
 rary alarm as to unsound opinions, to relax rather 
 than to tighten the bond. I hold that in this ques- 
 tion of guarding the threshold of the ministry, 
 as elsew here in dealing with the difficulties of an 
 inquisitive age, the generous confiding policy is 
 the best and the most Christian. It would be 
 indeed a melancholy catastrophe, if by an unwise 
 over-sensitiveness, w^e were to deter from ordina- 
 tion, I do not say merely the most intelligent 
 of our young men, but many of the most really
 
 26 
 
 thoughtful and conscientious — if formalists and 
 hypocrites, and persons who had never thought 
 at all, were, as is quite possible, to satisfy an 
 ordeal through which the ablest and most holy 
 young man could not pass, if in matters of opinion 
 he was at all inclined to eccentricity, or at all 
 morbidly afraid of committing himself, beyond 
 what he had realised in its fulness, as the posi- 
 tive decision of his personal faith. We must not 
 forget the kindly consideration with which Arch- 
 bishop Howley made allowance for the youthful 
 scruples of Arnold.^ And certainly, most good 
 men will allow, that the Church of England of 
 this century would have been maimed if Arnold 
 had been scared from its ministry. 
 
 Where then is the Church to look for security 
 that its young clergy shall, by God's blessing, be 
 fully imbued with the Gospel doctrines which 
 Christ has committed to it ? Bishops are ex- 
 pected to guide their clergy, and it is their duty to 
 test and warn them at the entrance of their office ; 
 but whose business is it to train them ? This 
 is a serious question for the Universities. With 
 them far more than with any less important semi- 
 naries must rest this great Avork. Our Universities 
 have undergone many salutary changes of late 
 years. There is said to be much more encourage- 
 ment to study — there is certainly great enlarge- 
 
 ' Arnold's Life. Vol. II. p. 132. Firle Appendix A.
 
 27 
 
 ment and improvement in the machinery of edu- 
 cation : but so far as my own experience goes, 
 I cannot speak very confidently of any marked 
 improvement as yet, in the way in which they in- 
 struct and train candidates for holy orders. This 
 is a great responsibility which rests with our Uni- 
 versities. The experience of our own, as of all 
 past ages, will show that it is scarcely possible to 
 exaggerate the influence which a hearty, vigorous, 
 able teacher wins over the generous minds of his 
 young disciples in a University. Shall we not 
 trust that a reverent admiration of holy Scrip- 
 ture, and a zealous desire to be imbued with its 
 teaching, and a love for the great truths of Christ's 
 Gospel, and a hearty appreciation of the wise 
 tolerant spirit of our own Church — as well as of 
 those time-honoured schemes of devotion and of 
 doctrine which the Church has inherited — may be 
 stirred up in the hearts of a generous youth, eager 
 to devote themselves to the noble oflice of the 
 ministry? If, by God's blessing, the Universities 
 send us a large sujoply of prayerful, studious, in- 
 telligent, humble-minded young men, there need 
 be no fear that we shall lack able ministers 
 to hand on the torch of Christ's truth, burning 
 brightly and purely to another generation. 
 
 II. We pass to the difficulties which beset the 
 Church as established in an age of unbounded
 
 28 
 
 toleration, and in the face of sects, some at least 
 of which strongly oj^pose even when they are 
 not determinatcly hostile to it. 
 
 And here we need not dwell long on disad- 
 vantages to which, according to some amongst 
 us, the Church is exposed from the very fact 
 of its being established. Granted that an 
 established Church must have parted in some 
 degree with its liberty ; that laws of uni- 
 formity, sanctioned and enforced by the State, 
 must restrain its power of self-action and of 
 adapting itself freely to the changing circum- 
 stances of each age according to the unfettered 
 discretion of its ecclesiastical rulers. Granted 
 that civil rulers must, in an established Church, 
 according to the compact of its establishment, 
 have certain rights of control conceded to them, 
 which they could not claim l3efore the days of 
 Constantino — rights which go much beyond that 
 ordinary power of superintendence in the admini- 
 stration of justice, and the regulation of property, 
 which the sovereign authority in every state 
 must exercise over the members of all commu- 
 nities, whether religious or secular, in Avhich 
 its citizens have been enrolled. Probably this 
 want of perfect Church liberty, whatever it 
 may amount to, is well compensated by those 
 fresh elements, conducing to order and greater 
 stabilitv in the mode and instruments of its
 
 29 
 
 operation, which the Church receives from its 
 connexion with the State, ratified on fixed con- 
 ditions. Certainly, also, in the discharge of the 
 commission it has received from its Head, a wide 
 field is opened for the Church, and many helps 
 afforded, from this very association with the 
 State. What a blessing to have the whole 
 land mapped out by the law of the State into 
 parishes, for the express purpose of enabling 
 the Church to promote the spiritual welfare 
 of the citizens. What an advantage that the 
 clergy, depending on some fixed legal endow- 
 ment, should be enabled, in so many thousands 
 of districts (in every district, if the system 
 of an established Church were fully developed), 
 to minister the Gospel without fee or reward 
 from those to whom they minister, having 
 become perhaps at first thus chargeable to no 
 man through bequests of ancient charity or 
 piety, Avithout the direct interference of the 
 State ; but being secured by the State in the 
 enjoyment of these bequests during many cen- 
 turies and throughout the whole country, and thus 
 placed in a position of independence to which 
 no non-established Church has ever attained. 
 Let those who, for the support of themselves and 
 their families, are dependent altogether on the 
 voluntary offerings of the people, and on their 
 own powers of attracting numbers to their con-
 
 30 
 
 gregations, tell us whether they do not think that 
 we enjoy a great advantage for our ministry in 
 that independent position in which so many of 
 us are placed. 
 
 Are there plain advantages in these arrange- 
 ments of an established Church even in towns ? 
 And how would the Church be cramped in bearing 
 its message to the scattered populations of remote 
 country places, if men could secure no ministers 
 of the Gospel to dwell amongst them, except in 
 dependence on the liberality of small farmers, or 
 the cheerfully- given, but very ill- spared, pennies 
 of the poor. The Roman Catholic Church in 
 Ireland, indeed, depends on such alms and fees ; 
 but I do not think our clergy, as a body, could 
 ever bear rigidly to exact such payments. We 
 are thankful that most of us are independent of 
 them, and we recognise in this a great help for 
 our spiritual work. 
 
 Moreover, the fact of our being clergy of an 
 established Church, as it gives us influence in 
 the State, brings us more into contact with men 
 of all orders, and thus affords us an opportunity, 
 for which we are deeply responsible, of better 
 leavening the nation with Christian principles, 
 through its many Christian institutions for 
 charity, for education, for the development alike 
 of its social and its corporate life. Wherever Eng- 
 lishmen are met together for any purpose not
 
 31 
 
 unworthy of them as Christians, there the clergy 
 of the national Church have their proper place 
 assigned to them. I cannot see how such an 
 obvious acknowledgment of Christianity could 
 be secured, if men had to select from amongst 
 the ministers of a number of rival bodies, having 
 no clergy of any established Church at hand to 
 whom they could always naturally turn. 
 
 The State must receive from an established 
 Church, if its clergy are faithful, great helps 
 towards extending and deepening those Christian 
 influences which foster and give power to its 
 national life. The State, through our connexion 
 with it, gains much from us if we are faithful, as 
 we also are greatly aided by it in the discharge of 
 our duties to our heavenly Lord. The great 
 Nonconformists of old felt and acknowledged 
 this. They would have been as much shocked 
 at the idea of a Christian nation not maintain- 
 ing the Church in its connexion with the State 
 as the most rigid of our own divines or Church 
 and State politicians of last century. Nay, though 
 we hear a great deal now-a-days of the vaunted 
 excellency of what is called the " voluntary 
 principle," we may fairly doubt whether, if we 
 polled the whole body of those who, from various 
 causes, dissent from the Church of England, we 
 should find anything like a numerical majority 
 of them opposed to Chnrch establishments. It is
 
 32 
 
 as with the show of hands at a popular election. 
 The loudest and most violent, on account of the 
 noise they make, and their vehement demonstra- 
 tions, we very often take for the majority, when, 
 in truth, they represent hut a very small hody. 
 And if a few unwise voices have at times been 
 raised from amongst ourselves, lamenting as if 
 the Church were trammelled by its connexion 
 with the State, it will, I think, be well, both for 
 ourselves and those who differ from us, that we 
 should quietly call to mind some of the heads 
 now suggested, under which the national benefits 
 of a Church establishment may be classed. 
 
 But it is not of the general objections to an 
 established Church that I would now chiefly 
 treat. Xo doubt it is a peculiar difficulty of this 
 century, not perhaj)s in our own country alone, 
 that an established Church has never before 
 been maintained in the midst of an imbounded 
 toleration of all communities that differ from it, 
 with most perfect religious as well as civil liberty. 
 I should feel alarmed as to the stability of our 
 established system, if I did not believe that we 
 are, and are likely to continue, a truly national 
 Church, commanding the affections of the nation, 
 and representing, on the whole, the nation's faith. 
 The days when a dominant Church amongst us 
 could look for the support of any extraneous 
 helps derived from some lingering remnants of
 
 33 
 
 the spirit of persecution, are hai)pily for erer 
 gone. We stand on the merits of the system we 
 administer — on its being interwoven with the 
 noblest associations of our national history — on 
 its giving strength to the constitution of our 
 Christian land — on its being felt to be promotive 
 of sound learning, good education, well-regulated 
 piety, pure morality, and thus advancing the 
 best interests of the people whom, for Christ's 
 sake, we serve in the maintenance of His truth. 
 Our commission as a Church comes direct from 
 Christ's delegation, and we trust to His promise 
 for a never-endino^ stabilitv. As an established 
 Church, on the other hand, we may be over- 
 thrown, and our security must greatly depend on 
 our being thus rooted in the heart of the nation 
 in which God's providence has established us, and 
 bound up with what the nation acknowledges to 
 be its best interests. 
 
 ^N'ow it is not uncommon for us to hear great 
 exaggerations as to the number of persons who 
 are alienated from the Established Church. We 
 naturally desire to ascertain exactly how we 
 stand : it is well we should know both the best 
 and worst aspects of our position. Eut perfectly 
 trustworthy statistics by which to judge, are 
 difficult to obtain. Certain well-known circum- 
 stances attending the last and the previous census, 
 and the way in which all attempts to remedy 
 
 D
 
 34 
 
 alleged mistakes as to the religious statistics 
 taken in 1851, were, for some strange reason, 
 opposed in 1860, have involved the whole subject 
 in obscurity. All that we can do is, without 
 pretending to speak with perfect accuracy, to 
 enumerate such of the data placed in our hands, 
 as, when taken together, may seem likely to give, 
 in the aggregate, a tolerably fair view of the case. 
 1st. Church accommodation is said ^ to have 
 been afforded, in 1851, for 29 per cent, of the popu- 
 lation by the Church of England ; for 12 per cent. 
 by the AYesleyan Methodists ; for 6 per cent, by 
 the Independents ; for 4 per cent, by the Bap- 
 tists ; for 1 per cent, by the E.oman Catholics ; 
 for 3i per cent by all other sects. That is, speak- 
 ing roughly, the Church of England, it is asserted, 
 was able, at the time of the calculation, to supply 
 29 per cent, of church accommodation, as com- 
 pared with 27 per cent. supj)lied by all other 
 bodies. This, if accurate, would be for Church- 
 men a discouraging aspect of our relative posi- 
 tions, were we not aware that the clergy of the 
 Established Church are responsible for the whole 
 mass of those who look to them for comfort and 
 relief, whether there be room provided for them 
 in church or no ; whereas the ministers of other 
 bodies necessarily confine their efforts much more 
 
 ^ Vide Abridged Report on Religious Worship. Census Returns, 
 1851, p. 72.
 
 35 
 
 to their congregations; and were it not that 
 further it is very difficult to ascertain how much 
 extra accommodation the Church provides through 
 its innumerable services in school-rooms, respect- 
 ing which we can scarcely ascertain whether they 
 were generally returned or no. 
 
 2d. A second point bearing with great force 
 on the illustration of the first, is that, in 1851, 
 all the places of worship of the Nonconformist 
 Protestant bodies, including the Wesleyans, were 
 served by 6,405 ministers ; whereas the clergy of 
 the Established Church reached 17,320.' This 
 shows that amongst Nonconformists the existence 
 of a place of worship does not imply the presence 
 of a minister, or that provision for the social wel- 
 fare of the surrounding district, which is inherent 
 in the very idea of a well-appointed parish church. 
 
 3d. The Education Commissioners' E-eport- of 
 1861 shows us that the influence of Dissent is 
 greatly maintained by Sunday-schools. AVhereas 
 there are reported to be in all, in England and 
 TVales, 33,516 Sunday-schools, attached, all of 
 them, with very rare exceptions, to reKgious 
 denominations; the Church, indeed, supplies 
 22,236 of these, as compared with the remainder 
 of 11,280 ; but yet the sum of scholars taught 
 in all these many Sunday-schools of the Church 
 is returned as less than the aggregate in the 
 
 1 Census, 1851 ; Occupations, &c., vol. i. p. cxl., table xxviii. 
 
 2 Page 594. 
 
 D 2
 
 36 
 
 non- Church Sunday-schools. The Church has 
 1,092,822 Sunday scholars ; and deducting 2,662 
 as the scholars in the 23 non-denominational 
 Sunday-schools, we have a remainder of 1,292,913. 
 That is, the reported aggregate of the Sunday- 
 school scholars of all the other hodies, exceeds 
 those of the Church hy 200,000 ; the Wesleyans 
 furnishing 453,702 ; the Primitive Methodists, 
 136, 929 ; and the Calvinistic Methodists, 112,740; 
 while the Roman Catholics are reported as fur- 
 nishing only 35,458. Now, this result from the 
 Commissioners' Report is deserving of most seri- 
 ous consideration. It points to a wide- spread and 
 growing influence of Dissent amongst the reli- 
 gious poor. Nor is the force of this inference to 
 be shaken hy the fact that Dissenters are alleged 
 to make a great point of their Sunday-schools, 
 while the clergy look to their day-schools rather 
 for the maintenance of an enduring good influence. 
 4th. The same Education Commissioners' Re- 
 port certainly shows that in the maintenance of 
 day-schools for the poor, the Church, as com- 
 pared with other hodies, occupies a truly national 
 position. Of the 22,647 day-schools for the 
 poor supported hy religious bodies, 19,549 belong 
 to the Church of England.^ Of the 1,549,312 
 scholars taught in such schools, the schools of 
 the Church of England furnish 1,187,086. 
 
 1 Page 593.
 
 37 
 
 Again, of 2,036 evening-schools the Commis- 
 sioners calculate that the Church of England 
 supports 1,547, in which are taught 54,157 
 scholars out of the whole number of 80,966.' 
 
 5th. It is stated that above 80 per cent, of the 
 whole marriages in the country are celebrated 
 by the Churcli of England.^ 
 
 The Church, then (if we can rely on this infor- 
 mation), is brought before us as affording not 
 much more than one-half of the available ac- 
 commodation for public worship. It is granted 
 even on an unfavourable and somewhat dis- 
 credited estimate ^ to supply more than one-half 
 of the worshippers, the other half being distri- 
 buted amongst thirty-seven other bodies, of whom 
 the various branches of the Methodists and 
 Independents, the Particular Baptists and the 
 Homan Catholics are alone returned as having 
 any important hold on the community. It 
 instructs not quite one-half of the children 
 frequenting Sunday-schools. But if we are thus 
 presented with but a low estimate of the Church's 
 influence on those seven millions and a quarter 
 who in 1851 were returned as habitual worship- 
 pers, there lies before it a boundless field of 
 missionary labour amongst the neglected masses, 
 
 ' Page 593. 
 
 ^ Registrar General's Report, 1862, p. viii. 
 
 ^ The Census Return of 1851, Religious Worship, (1854,) p. 19.
 
 38 
 
 in which it has comparatively few rivals : There, 
 in house to house visitation, organising and 
 superintending schools, and a thousand charities ; 
 it finds ample work for a body of clergy said to 
 exceed in number the aggregate of all other 
 Protestant ministers of religion in the ratio of 
 17 to 6i. 
 
 Again, as the Church has thus a boundless 
 work amongst the very poor, and is, I will make 
 bold to say, strong in their good-will, so it is 
 granted on all hands that it alone of all com- 
 munions has a real, perceptible influence with 
 the highest ranks. Its general hold on the nation 
 as the instructor, civilizer, guide, is thus very 
 great. And this influence it turns to the best 
 account by having vindicated for itself in so 
 remarkable a degree — not through the help of 
 old endowments or any fostering care of the 
 State, but through its own self-denying and un- 
 tiring eflPorts, and chiefly through the unexamj)led 
 sacrifices of its parochial clergy — the difiicult and 
 noble task of educating the great body of the poor. 
 
 Now when in all these ways the position of 
 the Chvirch is shown to be so strong, no wonder 
 that the habits of the people should bear witness 
 that its old traditions have a hold upon their 
 hearts, and that besides its own worshippers so 
 vast a number, even of those who are separated 
 from it in their ordinary pursuits, should desire
 
 39 
 
 to mark their still enduring union with it in the 
 chief events of their family life. 
 
 I cannot think that this picture, much of 
 which is drawn from representations not favour- 
 able to the Church, is discouraging, in an age 
 of perfectly unrestrained liberty ; when every 
 man, whether from hereditary prejudice, or some 
 idiosyncrasy of private opinion, or merely from 
 disliking the representative of the Established 
 Church who happens to be brought near to him, 
 is perfectly free to choose any communion which 
 may suit his convenience or his tastes. It seems 
 rather, that, while we have an almost boundless 
 field peculiarly our own, there is also a great 
 amount of half-expressed feeling in favour of the 
 Church and its ministers entertained even by 
 those who to a certain extent are alienated from 
 it, and a desire on their parts to profit by what 
 the Church has to offer, whenever they can do so 
 without a sacrifice of principle. How shall we 
 deal with this state of things ? How shall we 
 bear ourselves towards those who are completely 
 separated from us ? How hope to win back, or, 
 without winning back, strive as far as we may 
 to influence those who, without being distinctly 
 hostile, are still closely allied to some other com- 
 munion ? 
 
 Pirst, shall we conciliate them by change in 
 our own system ? Of the large number of persons
 
 4.0 
 
 in England who are unfortunately separated from 
 tlie National Church, a very large proportion of 
 those who have sufficient knowledge and intelli- 
 gence to understand the subject, feel no repug- 
 nance to our distinctly doctrinal formularies, 
 and are willing also to assent generally to the 
 teaching of our formularies of devotion. That 
 is, if they are deterred from subscribing to the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, this is not from any con- 
 viction that the teaching of the Articles is un- 
 scriptural. They probably occasionally join in our 
 worship ; or, if they abstain from doing so, this is 
 not because in our ordinary confessions, prayers, 
 thanksgivings, or songs of praise, they find any- 
 thing which they deem inconsistent with the 
 teaching and spirit of the Gospel. There are no 
 doubt certain portions of our more occasional 
 services to which they object, but this is generally 
 from attaching to them some meaning, which, 
 though put forward by a certain important sec- 
 tion of our Church as their true exponent, is by 
 no means adopted and sanctioned by the Church 
 as a whole. Now why, it is asked, should we not 
 conciliate such persons, by removing the com- 
 paratively few phrases, which are a stumbling- 
 block to them ? This is the form of the strongest 
 plea noAV advanced by advocates for liturgical 
 revision. " No need," they urge, " to insert 
 one statement which shall be distasteful to anv
 
 41 
 
 portion of the Churcli. If a man chooses to hold 
 any extreme doctrines as to the influence of 
 sacramental grace, or insists on exaggerating 
 the powers of the ministerial office, we have no 
 wish that he should he prevented ; only deprive 
 him of all pretence for asserting that his views 
 are the exclusive views of the Church of England, 
 and do not allow him to retain his few passages 
 which taken unexplained by themselves seem to 
 build him up in his mistaken opinions, and 
 enable him to terrify from the Church's portal 
 many who are anxious to find admittance." There 
 is no denying that at first sight there is a great 
 appearance of good sense and fairness in such 
 a plea. 
 
 If a few passages can be specified in our for- 
 mularies which might be expunged or altered 
 without wounding the feelings or convictions of 
 any, the alteration of which would make the 
 Church of England no less powerful a Avitness 
 than it is at present for Christ's truth, while 
 it would bring many to our communion who 
 are now estranged from it, no fair man will 
 maintain that we should be justified in resisting 
 so reasonable a demand. We must not, however, 
 hastily conclude that such an alteration of our 
 formularies is j)ossible. 
 
 In the first place it must be remarked generally 
 that, as is often said, mere omission mav be almost
 
 42 
 
 as painful to minds deeply convinced of certain 
 truth, as the assertion of its contradictory. The 
 Church in its formularies is to be a witness to 
 truth, and it may sacrifice principle by being 
 silent. To take an extreme case — in some com- 
 munions on the Continent, the attempt has been 
 made to conciliate Arians or Socinians by the 
 omission of all express mention of the Lord's 
 Divinity or atoning sacrifice. None of our pre- 
 sent liturgical reformers would wish the Church 
 to be silent on such subjects, or by its silence to 
 aim at such a compromise. Though it is well 
 to note by the way, that something like this was 
 the object of the movement for the alteration 
 of subscription in the last century.' I mention 
 this case now, however, only to show that we 
 must be careful how we omit, lest truth may 
 suffer even by silence. It has been well said 
 that an excision must leave a scar, and there- 
 fore a revised Prayer-book, in which nothing 
 has been altered except by omission, may leave 
 many blanks lamented by devout worshippers. 
 No doubt many will be pained by the mere 
 absence of words, speaking to them of views of 
 truth on which their hearts are much set. The 
 answer given is, that it is taken for granted by 
 
 ^ Archdeacon Blackburn's Proposal for an application to Parliament 
 for relief in matters of Subscription, published in 1771, was followed 
 by the Feathers' Tavern Petition, 1772. Vide Appendix B, p. 101.
 
 43 
 
 the very terms of the present proposal for re- 
 vision, that nothing shall be omitted which the 
 Church of England imposes as doctrine on all its 
 children. All that is proposed is, that certain 
 phrases, which when fairly viewed in connexion 
 with the whole teaching of the Church, are 
 capable of more than one interpretation, shall be 
 omitted, lest tliey should mislead, and because 
 they are practically found to be to some a stum- 
 bling block. 
 
 Now, as it is granted to be impossible that 
 such omissions should take place without offence 
 to some — the matter-of-fact question remains, 
 whether there is any reasonable ground for 
 believing that we shall conciliate more than we 
 shall alienate by such changes. Those who are 
 separated from us have their traditions — some- 
 times of two hundred years' standing — their close 
 associations one with another — their inherited and 
 acquired prejudices, very difficult to overcome. 
 Many interests of all kinds have grown up around 
 their communities, from the influence of which 
 it is difficult for them to free themselves. All 
 these things are against any migration on a 
 large scale from their ranks to ours. We must 
 remember, that it is very difficult to win over an 
 antagonist, very easy to distress and alienate a 
 friend. In all proposals which have hitherto 
 been made for such changes, I desiderate any
 
 44 
 
 reasonable assurance on this point, and till this 
 matter has been well weighed, and the probable 
 balance shown to be on the right side, the 
 authorities of the Church cannot be expected to 
 consent to changes, which may produce no result 
 but the alienation of friends. 
 
 If the advocates for change could prove any 
 of our statements t ) contain false doctrine, that 
 would be another matter. Not a word could then 
 be said in their favour. But what you hold out 
 is this — that some phrases are capable of being 
 understood as favouring certain extreme state- 
 ments, to which the general tone of the Church's 
 teaching gives no encouragement, or rather which 
 it repudiates as anything more than allowable 
 opinions. We are asked to expunge these. 
 Then seeing that, as a matter of fact, many of 
 our people are wisely or unwisely attached to 
 these phrases, before you ask us to move, give us 
 some good reason to believe that we, by the 
 changes you propose, shall really gain over more 
 opponents than we shall lose friends. If you 
 cannot satisfy us on this point, Ave must leave 
 things as they are. Change is not repudiated 
 in itself; but the burden of the proof that the 
 change will attain the objects for which it is 
 urged, must rest Avith its advocates. 
 
 And here we call to mind, that it is not so 
 simple a matter as some suppose, to alter Avords
 
 45 
 
 and phrases which are objected to in our for- 
 mularies, without altering doctrine. No doubt 
 all our Church Services are constructed on the 
 principle that Christ died for ail men; that 
 all baptized Christip.ns may and ought to be 
 addressed as God's children in Jesus Christ. I 
 do not mean that a Calvinist, holding the doctrine 
 of particular redemption, may not with perfect 
 honesty remain within the pale of our Church, 
 and subscribe her formularies ; but certainly our 
 Prayer-book and Catechism are not constructed 
 on a Calvinistic basis, and even with regard to 
 the Articles, it is important to note, that when 
 Calvinists came to have absolute power in Eng- 
 land, they thought it best to rewrite the Articles. 
 Now, any omissions which were to alter this 
 characteristic of our Church — which were to 
 weaken the force of that solemn protest which 
 the Church of England makes in favour of the 
 Gospel doctrine of God's all-embracing love, 
 giving His Son to die freely for all men in Jesus 
 Christ, and encouraging His ministers to address 
 their flocks collectively as God's children — would 
 be felt by a vast body — may I not say, by an 
 overwhelming majority of clergy and people— to 
 be a compromise of principle, and to involve a 
 failure of the Church's duty in bearing witness 
 to Christ's truth. On the whole of this range of 
 subjects, then, we are extremely sensitive. And
 
 46 
 
 even if, as a matter of private opinion, there 
 be any who ree^ret the addition respecting the 
 Lord's Supper in the close of the Catechism, or 
 wish that, at the Reformation, our Church, in its 
 Ordination Service, had returned more completely 
 to the simplicity of primitive centuries, still, with 
 that consideration for the opinions of others which 
 our union in a National Church implies, we must 
 ask them not to forget that the lapse of time, 
 and the advocacy of many honoured divines, have 
 conciliated for these portions of our ritual a degree 
 of affectionate regard which it is impossible to 
 overlook, and might be dangerous to set at nought. 
 
 It will be seen, then, that I am not hopeful as 
 to the probability of any safe, and wise, and con- 
 siderate plan of liturgical revision being pro- 
 posed with the assured prospect of uniting to our 
 Church those who are at present separated from 
 it, without driving from us many of our present 
 friends. This, I repeat, I must strongly maintain, 
 that such prospect ought to be held out to us be- 
 fore we can be expected to move. 
 
 But, again, it is urged that even without litur- 
 gical revision or any alteration of the Articles, 
 much may be gained by a relaxation of the 
 present terms of subscription to our formularies. 
 It is said that many hopeful candidates for the 
 ministry are at present deterred from serving our 
 communion, and retained within the influence of
 
 47 
 
 Dissent, which they would gladly leave, by the 
 required declaration that they give their un- 
 feigned assent and consent to everything con- 
 tained in the Book of Common Prayer. How 
 far there may he such persons thus deterred 
 from joining us, who yet are one with us in the 
 profession and love of the great Gospel doctrines, 
 I have not the means of knowing. I have already 
 alluded above to the argument in favour of a 
 relaxation, derived from the danger of offending 
 tender consciences amongst our own people, and 
 deterring some of the best of them from binding 
 themselves by the obligations of the ministry. If 
 there be really the additional reason now advanced 
 for a revision of our terms of subscription, the 
 subject certainly demands most grave considera- 
 tion, and I doubt not will — I trust, soon — receive 
 it both from the Bishops and from other members 
 of the Legislature. 
 
 I subjoin in the Appendix' a statement of the 
 actual subscriptions at present required, and the 
 authority on which they rest. I will not say that 
 these declarations may not be too minute in their 
 expression of agreement. Looking back to history, 
 we learn that their minuteness was devised for 
 the express purpose of driving out of the Church 
 many persons whom we should be very glad now- 
 a-days, under the prevalence of a better spirit, 
 
 ^ Fidn Appendix C, p. 1 1 1.
 
 4d 
 
 and with wiser views of the Church's compre- 
 hensiveness, to retain, and employ as its mini- 
 sters. It is a grave matter for consideration, 
 whether the apparent minuteness of this strin- 
 gency subserves any good purpose. Of course a 
 man must accept and believe the teaching of the 
 Prayer-book, if he is to use it habitually in his 
 public ministrations. It would be intolerable 
 hypocrisy so to use it, if his conscience revolted 
 against its teaching; but still it may fairly be 
 doubted Avhether that hearty assent to its general 
 teaching which we rightly presuppose in all, need 
 be expressed in the particular form of words 
 which has seemed to some men of tender con- 
 sciences, to exalt every outpoui'ing of devotional 
 sentiment into a strict logical statement of the 
 Church's doctrine. Doubtless, the declarations as 
 at present required, are fairly understood by the 
 great majority, both of those who administer and 
 of those who subscribe them,to imply that general 
 hearty acquiescence in the teaching of the Prayer- 
 book, which sees nothing in it contrary to Scrip- 
 ture, which, I have said, is indispensable in those 
 who are to use it with a safe conscience in their 
 ministrations. AYe explain to candidates for ordi- 
 nation that this is what is meant. But if it be true 
 that any considerable number of persons regard 
 the words of subscription as naturally meaning 
 something more— something which many of the
 
 49 
 
 voun» men who are called to subscribe cannot 
 fairly be expected to declare, in its simple literal 
 sense, from the necessary imperfection of their 
 knowledge, and the scanty opportunities they 
 have enjoyed of carefully studying all the intri- 
 cate questions which may be supposed to be in- 
 cluded in it ; if the scrupulous consciences of 
 some of the most thoughtful stumble at the 
 words, then, certainly, the whole subject of what 
 our subscriptions ought to be, requires, and must 
 receive, immediate attention. We are urged to 
 retain nothing of this kind which is not called 
 for by the real exigencies of the Church, and let 
 us carefully consider what these exigencies do re- 
 quire. This age has happily seen the aboKtion 
 of a great number of unnecessary oaths and decla- 
 rations. For the clergy, above all other men, it 
 is desirable that every solemn declaration to which 
 they are called, should express, in the simplest 
 and most straightforward language, the exact 
 meaning of what they are understood to assert. 
 This subject, I say, demands consideration, for 
 our own sake, and for the sake of our influence 
 over our o^ti laity ; it will be an additional argu- 
 ment for our pondering well the feasibility of 
 any change, if it can be proved, as is alleged, 
 that our present forms of subscription and decla- 
 ration deter from our communion any who are 
 one with us in heart and sentiment, and would 
 
 E
 
 50 
 
 gladly, if they might, he permitted to lahour 
 within our pale. 
 
 These, however, are matters of legislation, on 
 which great diversity of opinion must exist. 
 There remain other steps more easily taken, 
 wherehy it is helieved we may win over those 
 who differ from us, by gradually disj^elling the 
 prejudices which make them distrust us. We 
 may spread amongst them a truer understanding 
 of those parts of our Church system which they 
 cannot fail to recognise as valuable. We may 
 supply, in strict accordance with our own rules, 
 certain wants which hitherto we have too much 
 overlooked, their wise attention to which has given 
 Nonconformists much of their influence. 
 
 Of this last class, for example, of easily practi- 
 cable improvements are the efforts now wisely 
 making to enlist our laity more than hitherto in 
 some definite work for the Church. In the middle 
 classes especially, no doubt, many zealous lay- 
 men have been driven into Dissent by the apathy 
 with which our clergy, in times past, looked on 
 discouragingly, while they were burning with zeal 
 to be engaged in some directly sanctioned work 
 for Christ. The employment of district visitors 
 and Scripture-readers, while it greatly increases 
 the power which a clergyman brings to bear 
 uj)on his parish, will doubtless preserve for us 
 many who in other days would have wandered
 
 51 
 
 without our fold, simply because within it uo 
 definite work was assigned to them. Then again, 
 the legally appointed lay offices of the Church 
 are, I trust, every year becoming more truly 
 realities. Churchwardens and sidesmen are 
 learning to take more of an honest pride in the 
 strictly ecclesiastical part of their duties ; the 
 clergy are learning more to trust them, and 
 attach value to their advice and help. No doubt 
 throughout the whole country there is a great 
 and salutary movement, to unite the lay mem- 
 bers of our flocks with ourselves in active work 
 for the Church. And it is difficult to estimate 
 how much our Church's influence may be in- 
 creased by this movement wisely used. 
 
 Again, much may be done by a Avise and con- 
 ciliatory use of the advantages we enjoy, in 
 being able to offer education to all our people. 
 The Education Commissioners' Heport only re- 
 echoes what we learn from all other testimony, 
 that the great bulk of the educational machinery 
 for the poor in this country, is in the hands of 
 the clergy of the Church of England. Let us 
 thank God for their zeal and self-denial which 
 have won this result. Amongst many others 
 which are greater, it gives our clergy this ad- 
 vantage, that they have the opportunity of 
 winning the affectionate regard of the rising 
 generation, not only of their own peculiar flocks, 
 
 E 2
 
 52 
 
 but of the great body of those who dwell 
 within the limits of their parishes. Let them 
 administer their system of education wisely, 
 considerately, and in the best sense of the word 
 liberally, not drawing unnecessary distinctions 
 between Church people and others, nor offending 
 the consciences of any by forcing upon the chil- 
 dren observances or professions of faith to which 
 the parents, and therefore also according to 
 God's order of providence, the chilcben, cannot 
 conscientiously assent ; let them be charitable 
 and conciliatory, at the same time that they 
 sacrifice no real principle, and give to their own 
 people the fullest instruction in their own for- 
 mularies and their oavti faith. It is impossible 
 to calculate how much will thus be effected to- 
 wards rooting the Church of England in the 
 affections of the coming generation. A really 
 national system of education may be in our 
 hands to administer, if we will conduct it on 
 really national principles. 
 
 Moreover, in this very matter of education we 
 shall, if we are wise, learn from the bodies that 
 are estranged from us, many lessons as to how 
 better to retain under instruction, those who 
 have passed the age of school, but who, as mem- 
 bers of Bible-classes, and Sunday-school teachers, 
 becoming helps to the clergyman in dealing with 
 those who are younger than themselves, may, by
 
 53 
 
 a little kindly effort, be attached to our staff, and 
 made eminently useful in the Church. 
 
 When to such plans as these we add the many 
 ways in which the goodwill of those who differ 
 from us may be conciliated, in our common 
 relations as fellow-citizens, by kindly association 
 in charitable works, by watching for every oppor- 
 tunity in which, even in strictly religious matters, 
 we may without compromise of principle co- 
 operate ; certainly, we still find abundant oppor- 
 tunities for recommending our Church through 
 the offices of an expansive Christian fellowship, 
 to many both E^omanists and Dissenters, who 
 now look upoD it with suspicion and dislike. 
 It is an end worth labouring to secure, that the 
 Established Church of this nation may be in 
 very truth the Church of the nation — that it 
 may not only as now command the respect 
 and love of the nation, and number the great 
 majority within its pale, but include in the bonds 
 of a willing love and obedience, and in unity of 
 worship, not perhaps the whole, but well-nigh 
 the whole of the English people. Nothing, I be- 
 lieve, but our want of wisdom or of faithfulness, 
 can prevent the Church from gaining rapidly on 
 the affections of our countrymen. And we desire 
 the established Church thus to prosper because 
 we believe it labours faithfully for Christ. 
 
 Truly, it would be a good work for the Bishops
 
 64 
 
 of this age, if in God's providence it were re- 
 served for them to repair the mischief caused 
 by the folly or coldness of their predecessors of 
 the last century. The Wesleyan hody^ (Original 
 Connexion) is reported (accurately or inaccu- 
 rately) to number above 900,000 worshippers. 
 John Wesley never designed that his people 
 should be separated from the Church of England. 
 He loved its communion, and would not have 
 formed any body even partially separate from it, 
 had he not been driven from exercising his 
 ministry. It is, indeed, a result worth praying 
 for, and labouring for, if by God's goodness this 
 sad wound might be healed. 
 
 In our dealings with Wesleyans, as with others 
 who are separated from us, let us bear in mind the 
 wise words of Archbishop Bancroft ; spoken be it 
 remembered by a man of no latitudinarian spirit, 
 who sacrificed every worldly interest to maintain 
 his Church principles — words tinctured no doubt 
 bv the common horror of returnino' Eomanism, 
 which in 1688 had drawn Churchmen and Non- 
 conformist together from a sense of common 
 danger, but still expressing, we must suppose, 
 his real sentiments : — 
 
 He exhorts his clergy ^ — 
 
 " That tliey walk in wisdom towards tliose who are not of our 
 communion ; and if there be in their parishes any such, that 
 
 ^ Religious Worship Abridged Report. 
 Cftrdwell's Documentary Annals, Vol. II. p. 375. Oxford. 1844.
 
 55 
 
 they neglect not frequently to confer with them in the spirit of 
 meekness, seeking by all good ways and means to gain and win 
 them over to our communion. More especially that they have 
 a very tender regard to our brethi-en, the Protestant Dissenters, 
 that, upon occasion offered, they visit them at their houses, and 
 receive them kindly at their own, and treat them fairly wherever 
 they meet them ; discoursing calmly and civilly with them, 
 persuading them (if it may be) to a full compliance with our 
 Church, or at least, that whereto we have already attained, we 
 may all walk by the same rule, and mind the same thing. . . 
 And in the last place, that they warmly and most affectionately 
 exhort them to join with us in daily fervent prayer to the God 
 of peace, for an universal blessed union of all reformed churches, 
 both at home and abroad, against our common enemies ; that all 
 they who do confess the holy name of our dear Lord, and do 
 agree in the truth of His holy Word, may also meet in one holy 
 communion, and live in perfect unity and Godly love." 
 
 There remains one unpleasant cause of dis- 
 agreement between Churchmen and separatists, 
 which must not he passed over in silence. In 
 my last Charge I intimated that the then 
 Government was likely to propose some measure 
 for the settlement of the question of Church- 
 rates. That measure was not accepted. Eour 
 years have passed, and the question of Church- 
 rates is still unsettled. I gratefully recognise in- 
 deed the signs of a change in public opinion, as 
 evidenced by the changed votes of the House of 
 Commons on this subject. I feel grateful to the 
 eiforts of those who have roused the nation to look 
 at this question in a truer light. I do believe that 
 there has been great exaggeration as to the irrita-
 
 56 
 
 tion caused by Church-rate coutests, at least as they 
 are now conducted. What can he fau*er than that 
 the question shouhl he referred to the whole jiarish, 
 and that the majority should decide ? It is the 
 general characteristic of Englishmen to make a 
 bold fight for what they ^\dsh, and when fairly 
 outA^oted, to retire before the majority in tolerably 
 good humour, all the better pleased for having 
 had the opportunity of freely speaking their mind 
 while the contest lasted ; and I do not believe that 
 Church-rate contests are now any exception to 
 this rule. 
 
 Nevertheless, there are many difl&culties con- 
 nected with Church-rates as they at present stand, 
 whicli are calculated to keep up much irritation. 
 Many rejoice that the question has not been 
 settled hitherto, while the cry was strong against 
 Chiirch-rates, and while the Church being appa- 
 rently weak in the legislature, was ready to 
 accept a compromise. I cannot quite share in 
 this feeling. Prom the way, indeed, in which 
 both Churchmen and Dissenters, if I may venture 
 to say so, play with this question, it would seem 
 as if the grievance was not great. The one party 
 almost seems to rejoice in the privilege of object- 
 ing to the impost as their last remaining griev- 
 ance, the other to cling to the right of imposing 
 it, even where this right has become merely 
 nominal, as a proof that the old state of things
 
 57 
 
 is not entirely gone. Meanwhile, I believe that, 
 in many instances grave evils do follow. Cer- 
 tainly, within the Church, there is much dis- 
 satisfaction and injustice, especially in towns ; 
 while many parish churches are ill cared for 
 because they have nominally a legal right to 
 be supported out of public funds, which are 
 refused by a vote of vestry, and the existence 
 of the public right stops the supplies of indi- 
 vidual liberality. District churches have suffered 
 under the anomaly of their congregations being 
 at once chargeable to the rates of some distant 
 mother- church, and having out of their private 
 funds, to support their own church ; ' while in a 
 large number of the churches at least of this 
 metropolis, the main support of the fabric and 
 services comes virtually from the 23oclvets of 
 the clergy very ill endowed and overburdened 
 already by the claims of a hundred charities. 
 These are evils arising from the present un- 
 settled state of the Church-rate question within 
 the Church. 
 
 Neither can it be denied that a certain amount 
 of unnecessary irritation is kept up between 
 Churchmen and Dissenters. It is scarcely 
 creditable to the two great political parties in 
 the State, that they should apparently have 
 
 ' Dr. Lushington's decision of the 22d November, in Govgh v. Jones, 
 may be found very important in abating this evil.
 
 58 
 
 resolved to leave this question thus unsettled. 
 Is it not one of those questions in which the 
 chiefs of contending j)olitical parties, anxious 
 all of them for the welfare of their common 
 Church, might have been expected to unite, and 
 in which a settlement might have been accom- 
 plished long ago ? I cannot profess to offer ac- 
 ceptable suggestions where so many have failed, 
 but I will not forbear from calling attention to 
 the deliberate decision of that Select Committee 
 of the House of Lords, which carefully sifted 
 the subject in 1860, a committee on Avhich some 
 of the chief men of both parties sat. The re- 
 commendation was as follows :^ — 
 
 " Clause G. That the entire abolition of the (^hurcli-rate is 
 opposed to the general feclmg of members of the Church, is not 
 universally called for by Dissenters of various denominations, and 
 especially not by that large and influential body, the "Wesleyan 
 Methodists, and would, in the case of a great number of 
 parishes, be attended with serious and prejudicial consecpiences, 
 by restricting the existing means for the repair and maintenance 
 of the parish church, by greatly restricting the labour and 
 responsibility of the clergyman, and otherwise materially im- 
 peding the ministrations of the Church in these parishes. 
 
 "Clause 7. That viewing the grounds of objection to the 
 payment of Church-rates, as well as the impediments which exist 
 to their collection, it is expedient to alter the law in the fol- 
 lowing respects : 
 
 " 1st. That for the future, persons desirous of being exempted 
 
 ' Vide Report of Committee of House of Lords ou Church Rates 
 1860.
 
 59 
 
 from coutributiiig to the Church-rate in any parish, may give 
 yearly notice to that effect to the churchwardens jprior to the 
 meeting of any vestry, for the purpose of making a Church- 
 rate ; and that such person shall not he entitled to attend any 
 such vestry, or to vote upon the making or application of such 
 rate, or to act as churchwardens in any matter relating to the 
 church, or to retain any seat appropriated to them in the 
 church, during the time of such exemption. 
 
 " 2d. That the rate, when voted by the vestry, shall be levied 
 upon all such persons liable to it, who have not given such 
 notice. 
 
 " 3d. That the items for which a rate may be made shall be 
 definitely declared by law. 
 
 " 4th. That the ratepayers in any new parish or district shall 
 be rateable for the jDurposes of their own church, and no other. 
 
 " 5th. That there shall be the same powers for the recovery of 
 Church-rates, as exist for the recovery of poor-rates, and in case 
 of objection to the validity of the rate, an appeal shall lie to the 
 General Quarter Sessions, and that the jurisdiction of the Eccle- 
 siastical Courts in such cases shall cease." 
 
 " Clause 8. That the principle of assessing the owner instead 
 of the occupier, to the Church-rate, is well deserving the serious 
 consideration of Parliament, in any future legislation on this 
 subject." 
 
 The most reasonable objection made to this 
 plan is, that in many country places, Avhere 
 there is at present no difficulty in enforcing the 
 compulsory, it would introduce the voluntary 
 system, and this in the very places where, from 
 the general habits of a rural population, such 
 system would be very likely to prove a failure. To 
 avert this evil, it has been suggested, provision 
 might be made that the new system should only 
 be applicable in places where the church accom-
 
 60 
 
 modation fails to supply room for one-third of the 
 parishioners. This, it is nrged, would he reason- 
 able in itself ; for the old system of Church-rates 
 is obviously built on the principle that the whole 
 population is invited to receive benefits from the 
 parish church, and therefore ought as a body to 
 maintain it. AYliere the change of circumstances 
 prevents the Church from fulfilling this duty, it 
 may be supposed to have forfeited its rights. 
 And as this is the case solely, or principally, in 
 towns where Church-rate difficulties have arisen, 
 the new system, being introduced only where 
 the population is large, would remove irritation 
 and inconvenience wdiere it exists, without alter- 
 ing the old-established order of things in quiet 
 country places. 
 
 It cannot, perhaps, be expected that this, or 
 any such solution, will be accepted amid the 
 jealousies of contending parties ; but it is high 
 time to protest against unnecessary delays, and 
 against this great social question, wdtli all its 
 difficulties, being treated any longer as a matter 
 which may be left to settle itself, and which is 
 only worth attending to so far as it gives this or 
 the other political body the advantage of a party 
 cry and a momentary victory. 
 
 III. We now turn to the third, and most 
 directly pressing difficulty in our position —
 
 61 
 
 that, namely, which springs from our ever-grow- 
 ing population. Nowhere, of course, is this diffi- 
 culty more felt than here. The population of 
 this diocese, by the census of 1861, is 2,570,079. 
 The number of churches is 198 ; of licensed 
 parochial clergy (a somewhat floating number), 
 about 980, to whom must be added a consider- 
 able body of clergy unlicensed, affording occa- 
 sional or temporary assistance. We shall not go 
 very far wrong then, if we say that there is thus, 
 in the London Diocese, a church for every 5,000 
 of the population, and a clergyman for every 
 2,500. Rightly to estimate our j)arochial organi- 
 zation, we must reckon, in addition, a large 
 number of schoolrooms, school-chapels, and other 
 buildings — some under the Bishop's licence, as 
 used for the administration of the Sacraments ; 
 others employed for Divine service on a mere 
 temporary tenure ; and we must note, also, that 
 our clergy are aided by a large body of Scrip- 
 ture-readers, acting directly under their pastoral 
 superintendence. 
 
 At first sight, this appears to present us with 
 a somewhat encouraging picture. It is perhaps 
 more encouraging than might have been ex- 
 pected; and this is well. Nothing is so likely 
 to paralyse our efforts as a conviction that the 
 task we have before us is impossible. But
 
 62 
 
 now, let us view the matter in another aspect. 
 Between 1851 and 1861, the population of the 
 London Diocese has increased by 42 i, 232. The 
 number of churches consecrated in that interval 
 was 66, i. e. one for about every 6,500 of the in- 
 creasing population ; but 21 temporary churches 
 have also been added during that time, and, 
 altogether, there has been provided, in the ten 
 years, increased accommodation of worship for 
 about 73,000 persons. That is, during the ten 
 years, church accommodation has been sup- 
 plied for about one-sixth of the increased popula- 
 tion. Now, this is scarcely what is required 
 to keep pace with our growing necessities ; 
 and the appalling fact accordingly transpires, 
 that, whatever were our spiritual wants in this 
 respect in 1851, all our great exertions have not 
 lessened them, but have at best but prevented 
 the evil from growing worse. 
 
 Let us consider, then, carefully, how great the 
 evil is ; for hitherto, I repeat, it seems, at our 
 present rate of parochial extension, we are not 
 (so far as building new churches and forming 
 new parishes is concerned) making any pro- 
 gress in diminishing it. Obviously we dare not 
 intermit our present efforts in this matter : it 
 appears, by the great exertions which have 
 been made, we are able — but only able — to
 
 63 
 
 prevent fresh water from rushing in to sink the 
 ship. 
 
 I have said, on an average, we have one church 
 to every 5,000 of the population, and one clergy- 
 man perhaps for every 2,500.' But, ohviously, 
 this gives no sort of test of the real proportion 
 between population and the means of grace in the 
 several localities. We have one' country parish 
 with a population returned to me as under 20, 
 and three others under 400. We have thirty-one 
 City churches, with a population under 600. 
 I subjoin a list of parishes or districts, eighty -two 
 in number, where, so far as I can ascertain, there 
 is a population of 10,000 and upwards, assigned 
 to one church. Three only have, as returned, a 
 population above 30,000 for one place of worship. 
 Between 20,000 and 30,000 to one place of 
 worship, there are eleven ; fourteen between 
 15,000 and 20,000 ; and fifty-four between 10,000 
 and 15,000. The number of licensed clergy in all 
 these districts amounts to 301 ; on an average one 
 for about every 4,500 souls. I remark that in eight 
 
 ^ I find that at the last Visitation the number of Hcensed clergy, 
 now above 980, was 885. The number of churches con.seci*ated 
 in the interval has been 36, i.e. in four yeara we have gained 36 
 churches, and nearly 100 clergymen. If the population has increased, 
 as is calculated, by some 170,000, even this hopeful addition of 
 clergy and churches gives us somewhere about one church and three 
 clergymen for each 5,000 of the increased population. 
 
 ^ Vide Appendix, p. 118.
 
 64 
 
 districts, which I selected at the last Visitation ' 
 as specimens of the most destitute in respect of 
 churches and clergy, three new churches have 
 been consecrated in the four years, hut one of 
 these had been previously used for Church of 
 England worship as a proprietary chapel ; and 
 one new district without a church has also 
 been formed. This, after all, is but a slight 
 relief. We cannot estimate aright the magni- 
 tude of the CAdl, and the difficulty of its remedy, 
 without taking into account how strong the 
 tendency is, for obvious reasons, to build churches 
 in rich rather than in poor neighboiu'hoods. 
 Of the thirty- six churches consecrated since the 
 last Visitation, certainly not more than seventeen 
 have been erected in neighbourhoods where there 
 was an overwhelming poor population. It will 
 be seen, from all this, how very great is the 
 evil we have to deal with, and how difficult of 
 cure. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that I am speaking as 
 if the sole way to remedy the social e^dls of an 
 overwhelming population, and propagate true 
 religion, was to multiply churches, or even 
 clergymen. We well know that neither the 
 buildings nor the men will avail "\vithout the 
 mighty Spirit of God. "We are not insensible to 
 
 1 Charge of 1858, p. 74.
 
 65 
 
 self-denying labours of Dissenters and Roman 
 Catholics, and we grant the value of many other 
 appliances for promoting Christian civilization, 
 used by our own Church. Yet are we deeply 
 convinced, that our own parochial system, carry- 
 ing with it, besides churches and clergy, schools, 
 and a hundred arrangements of charity and philan- 
 thropy, gives the best hope of aiding our people for 
 time and for eternity. It is difficult to conceive 
 what a city of between two and three millions of 
 inhabitants must become, if it be not broken up 
 into manageable districts, each placed under the 
 superintendence of men, whose mission it is to 
 labour in every way for the social and religious 
 improvement of the people. Without this, no 
 regulations of a well-organized police, no array of 
 magistrates, will avail to repress crime, and bind 
 the State together. Nay, without this, we do not 
 see how a really efficient and kindly system of 
 relief, even of the people's temporal wants, can be 
 maintained in vigour. A vast proportion of our 
 poor in London come from country towns, where 
 they have been accustomed to their parish church, 
 and all the kindly influences which gather round 
 it. Shall we suffer them to join us in a great 
 army, adding to us yearly what is sufficient for 
 the population of a large new city ; and shall 
 their advent to our neighbourhood deprive them 
 of religious and social blessings which they might 
 
 r
 
 m 
 
 have enjoyed at home ? If we neglect them, 
 it will he at the peril of the nation. In support 
 of no nohler cause — to meet no more pressing 
 necessity, can we call upon the wealthy and the 
 comfortahle to spare of their abundance, that 
 they may bless the poor, and, through the bless- 
 ings given to them, save the State from great 
 trials. 
 
 Those of us who live in wealthy neighbour- 
 hoods, will do well to press upon our people the 
 duty of, at times, personally visiting the poorer 
 parts of London, and thus ascertaining for them- 
 selves, how much need there is for special 
 efforts to extend our parochial system amongst 
 the growing mass. I grant that in many of what 
 are justly ^considered wealthy parishes in our 
 Western districts, there is a great assemblage of 
 poor hidden in back streets and lanes, and their 
 wealthy neighbours must be urged to consider 
 their case first. But these parishes enjoy this 
 advantage, that they contain many wealthy as 
 well as poor parishioners. What has to be 
 pressed on the upper and the prosperous middle 
 classes in these parishes, is to look out of the 
 back windows of their own dwellings — not to 
 hurry, with their eyes shut, through those short 
 cuts by which they pass, from one street of 
 palaces or gilded shops to another ; but to take a 
 little time to look about them, and think who are
 
 67 
 
 dwelling very near their own doors. They hear 
 doubtless, from time to time, an appeal in their 
 parish chui'ch, in favour of the adjacent parish 
 schools ; they have only to go some few hundred 
 yards and visit these schools, and to follow some 
 of the children to their homes, and they will see 
 what God requires of them in their parochial 
 relations. I am glad to say, that in these 
 parishes there is not generally wanting a strong 
 parochial feeling, binding together the upper and 
 middle classes, in the effort to meet parochial 
 wants, and do good to the poor. Ladies and 
 gentlemen who, visiting London habitually, take 
 up their abode, even for a limited time in each 
 year, in such parishes, are inexcusable if they do 
 not find opportunities, through the clergyman 
 whose church they frequent, of co-operating in his 
 parochial work for the benefit of the poor around 
 them. And thus, in such parishes, to whatever 
 disadvantages they are exposed, the rich and 
 poor are reminded of their reciprocal duties, im- 
 posed by one common Lord, who, for His own 
 purposes, has separated them in rank, but united 
 them in the claims of right Christian principle. 
 The disadvantage of many of our other parishes 
 is, that they are inhabited almost exclusively 
 by poor — districts of tens of thousands, where, 
 except the clergyman and the doctor, and some 
 few tradespeople and publicans, no one has an 
 
 F 2
 
 68 
 
 establishment sufficiently expensive to require 
 the assistance even of one maid- servant. These 
 parishes lie out of everybody's way. Some of 
 them can scarcely be reached without giving up 
 a great part of the day to the journey. They 
 are full of a shifting and precariously employed 
 population of dock-labourers, or weavers, or 
 costermongers ; most of their best houses are in- 
 habited by mechanics ; and their chief aristocracy 
 consists of small tradesmen, greatly dependent 
 for their commercial prosperity on the wages of 
 the poor, whose slender wants it is their business 
 to supply. 
 
 Now consider how unspeakably important in 
 such parishes, for every social and political as 
 well as religious purpose, must be the presence of 
 a sufficient number of well educated and zealous 
 clergymen, with their schools and schoolmasters, 
 and other staff. 
 
 Truly, a few instances have occurred of men ap- 
 pointed to the supervision of such parishes, who, 
 unfaithful to their trust, have lived an easy, care- 
 less life, unmoved, and therefore hardened, by the 
 daily pressing calls which in vain urged them to 
 exertion. Such men, to their own shame and ruin, 
 have done more than any other obstacles which 
 can be thought of to impede Christ's work, and 
 discourage those who would extend His Church's 
 influence. A few others, and we cannot wonder
 
 69 
 
 at it — men fitted not for this rough work, hut for 
 some quiet country village — having accepted the 
 appointment to such posts in evil hour for them- 
 selves and others, have become so utterly dis- 
 couraged and beaten down by the want, and 
 ignorance, and vice around them, that they have 
 become reckless or insensible, being unable to 
 secure assistance in their hopeless labours from 
 without, and finding none within their own dis- 
 tricts. These may have failed, and no wonder ; 
 but, thank God ! the great majority of our truly 
 missionary clergymen are bravely doing their 
 Master's work, spending and being spent, bearing 
 up against discouragements which seem almost 
 overwhelming. Let us urge the wealthy, and all 
 who have leisure, in other parts of London, to 
 assist them. Money, time, sympathy will be well 
 spent in easing their burdens, and helping in their 
 inestimable work. Great progress has been made 
 in this work of late years. All thanks are due from 
 us, the clergy, to our lay friends who have thus 
 helped us, in whatever way. 
 
 It is something to find our Central Committee 
 of Relief, in St. Martin's Place, sending supplies 
 for the clergy to distribute in the most destitute 
 parishes, urging them to surround themselves 
 with district visitors, and helping them to esta- 
 blish provident funds. It is a remarkable feature 
 of the age, when we find that, through the in-
 
 70 
 
 struinentality of another Society, young officers 
 in the Guards, and other men of this class, have 
 been induced to give not only their money, but 
 week after week some considerable portion of their 
 time, to visit and relieve the very poor in our 
 destitute East-end parishes. Great thanks are due 
 to those who, disregarding other claims of business 
 and of pleasure, have found time, in the hurried 
 months of the London season, to organize a regular 
 Committee for bringing the wants of the East-end 
 before the West; as also to those individuals who, 
 preferring to act singly, have placed themselves 
 in regular communication with some overworked 
 clergyman of a poor district, and eased his oppres- 
 sive burden. All these attempts have done much 
 to make the maintenance and extension of a real 
 parochial system possible in such parishes. And 
 all thanks especially to those who, by great acts 
 of Christian munificence, have constituted some 
 new parish, with a new parochial organization, in 
 some densely -peopled, poor neighbourhood. Many 
 more efforts than heretofore must be made in 
 this direction, if we are to avert great evils. Our 
 new parishes, constituted hitherto according to 
 the proportion of the last ten years, we have seen, 
 barely keep pace with the increasing population. 
 We must gain upon it ; and the thing is not diffi- 
 cult, if we would throw ourselves into the work 
 with a good heart. Do we, at our present rate,
 
 71 
 
 add eight or nine parishes annually to the me- 
 tropolis ? Make it even fourteen, and by the 
 return of the next census we shall, by 140 new 
 parishes, with their clergy, churches, schools, 
 school-chapels. Scripture-readers, and district 
 visitors, have produced a sensible effect on the 
 hitherto untouched mass. 
 
 And here let me say, as an advocate of church- 
 extension, it is very important to guard ourselves 
 against the disadvantageous contrast continually 
 drawn between the greatness of the effort re- 
 quired for the erection of a new church and the 
 scantiness of its uses when erected. Every church 
 with a thin congregation casts a slur upon the 
 efforts of church-builders ; so every church which 
 is not often used — which on Sunday, for example, 
 in the midst of a superabundant population, is 
 open only twice, or which has its doors closed all 
 through the week. A great effort was made, 
 some years ago, to increase the number of our 
 regular daily church services. There is now 
 scarcely any neighbourhood in the metropolis in 
 which the limited number of persons who can 
 avail themselves of the full daily service will not 
 find it provided for them within an easy walk 
 of their homes. But why should not all our 
 churches be used in some way during the week ? 
 The Litany, with a hymn and a short exposition 
 of Scripture, at some suitable hour, would be wel-
 
 72 
 
 corned as a boon by very many whose hard work 
 forbids attendance on a lengthened service. And 
 why shoukl not our churches be open habitually, 
 to give the poor a quiet place for private prayer ? 
 How great is the disadvantage under which they 
 labour, deprived of the power of retirement, ex- 
 posed to ridicule or other interruptions in their 
 crowded lodgings. It is now several years since 
 I heard the opening of our churches for this 
 object advocated by Dr. McNeile, at a great 
 meeting in Exeter Hall; but I am not aware 
 that any steps have yet been taken to act on 
 the good suggestion. 
 
 There is everything to encourage us in be- 
 ginning from this point a renewed effort. Noble 
 instances of self-denial and munificence are 
 already before us to set a good example. There 
 is a growing recognition on the part of the 
 owners of house-property in London that the 
 rents with which they fill their coffers will rust 
 and breed corruption if they do not largely tithe 
 them for the benefit of their tenants' souls. The 
 Ecclesiastical Commissioners have been called 
 upon by Parliament to use whatever funds they 
 derive from any district in the first instance for 
 providing for the spiritual wants of that district, 
 and by the recognition of this principle a great 
 movement has begun for the formation of new 
 Peel districts in that group of large poor parishes
 
 73 
 
 stretching from St. Luke's, Old Street, through 
 Shoreditch and Hoxton, down towards Spital- 
 fields. And when such parishes are formed, symp- 
 toms are not wanting that young men of the 
 requisite qualifications, earnest to win souls,- are 
 ready to leave the refinements of the University 
 or the amenities of the country parsonage, that, 
 in their vigour, they may do this rough work for 
 Christ which is scarcely fitted for declining years. 
 Let us urge our people, then, to support their 
 own Diocesan Church Building Society, the centre 
 and organiser of all this work in London. It 
 does much by the grants which pass direct 
 through its own channels. It does even more by 
 collecting information and giving every help to 
 those who prefer to carry on the work of church- 
 extension in their own way. Its movement 
 for the erection of missionary or school-chapels 
 and the payment of missionary curates prepara- 
 tory to parochial subdivision, has of late greatly 
 extended its usefulness. Let us urge also the 
 claims of the Additional Curates and Pastoral 
 Aid Societies, which supply us annually the first 
 with 4,310/., the second with 4,410/., to aid in 
 curates' salaries, without which our parochial 
 work could not be maintained.^ Let us tell our 
 
 ' The Metropolitan Church of England Scripture Readers Society, 
 also gives us annually £8,400 for lay agents, all placed under the 
 direct superintendence of the clergy.
 
 74 
 
 people to aid the Diocesan Home Mission in 
 going out into the lanes and hyeways, compelling 
 those to come in whom our more established 
 organizations cannot as yet reach, and thus rough- 
 hewing the material for future parishes, in the 
 quarry which our regular labourers have not as 
 yet touched. 
 
 By these and many kindred exertions there is 
 every hope that our parochial system may greatly 
 be extended. With the boundless wealth and 
 energy of London it would scarcely cost an effort, 
 if we had the will, to double our present work, 
 and then, in a few years, we might, by God's 
 blessing, expect that the metropolis would assume 
 a new aspect. 
 
 Not to speak directly of instances nearer to our- 
 selves, the venerated Archbishop Sumner, whose 
 kindly gentle influence and unobtrusive activity 
 men of every shade of opinion and of party have 
 learned to honour, added 250 churches to the dio- 
 cese of Chester^ during his twenty years' tenure 
 of that see. It is not, indeed, every one who can 
 hope to stir men's hearts and win their sympathy 
 as he did. The way in which, three months ago, 
 his death called forth hearty expressions of re- 
 gard from all good men, whether Churchmen or 
 Dissenters, spoke of an unrivalled power which 
 
 • ' For this information I am indebted to Mr. Felix Kynatt, hia 
 Grace's secretary.
 
 75 
 
 few bishops have possessed for enlisting the 
 sympathy of all Christians in the Church's 
 work, recommending that work to all English- 
 men as indeed the work of Christ. His pecu- 
 liar success might be the reward of that 
 quiet energy which was sustained by a life of 
 prayer — of that apostolic simplicity of character 
 which inspired a wide- spread confidence that 
 every work undertaken had but the one aim of 
 advancing God's glory — of that gentle consider- 
 ateness which enabled him to end a long, busy 
 life of government without making an enemy — 
 drawing all to love him who were ever brought 
 within his influence. But still the example of 
 what he achieved, and what we ourselves have 
 witnessed in past years in our own and in a 
 neighbouring diocese, may well encourage us to 
 renewed efforts. 
 
 We must not, however, forget that, after all, 
 perhaps the greatest difficulties in our work are 
 to be found, not in the attempt to extend it, but 
 in doing really well that particular portion of it, 
 be it what it may, which falls to our allotted 
 share. We all know in London the great temp- 
 tation to be attempting many things rather than 
 doing a few well — to spread our activity over a 
 large area, rather than concentrate it on the most 
 carefully selected spot. This is like firing on the 
 enemy at random, rather than forcing a breach
 
 76 
 
 in his fortifications by repeated well-directed 
 assaults on the same weak point. 
 
 Have you a vast parish ? Pirst be careful that 
 you are not lost in the immensity of your work. 
 As it will never do to be sitting with folded 
 hands waiting till the parish is divided before we 
 attempt to influence our people, so neither must 
 all our activity be directed that we may be 
 ourselves instrumental in effecting its division. 
 Neither, again, will it be wise to be hurrying 
 over it, now here and now there, touching it all 
 lightly and not settling steadily on any one 
 point. The first thing to be done is to separate 
 between its distinctly missionary, and its settled, 
 established work — arranging what energy is to 
 be brought to bear on each. And no amount of 
 attention to those whom with all our efforts we 
 can scarcely induce to hear us, will justify any 
 perfunctory discharge of duty to that inner circle 
 which willingly attaches itself to the parish 
 church. A man, say, has a large moorland farm : 
 he will scarcely prosper if, in his attempts to 
 reclaim unprofitable acres, he neglects to till 
 diligently what is already brought under culti- 
 vation. 
 
 I grant that there are two dangers for the 
 best clergymen in large parishes ; one, while we 
 build up a little model congregation of the upper 
 and middle classes, with the more respectable
 
 77 
 
 of the poor, to treat as if it did not exist that 
 dull mass of ignorance and degradation which 
 clings, as it were, to the skirts of our respecta- 
 bility, dragging us down; while it makes itself 
 felt, if in no other way, through the frightful 
 increase of the poor-rates. The other is, while 
 we think of this mass, not to give sufficient 
 attention to preparation for the pulpit and to 
 visiting members of our congregation in sickness, 
 and preparing their young people for confirma- 
 tion, and well organizing and superintending 
 our schools and other established institutions. 
 Obviously, neither fault is to be thought lightly 
 of, and both may be avoided by system and by 
 husbanding our means, and by the tact to avail 
 ourselves of delegated influence. But what I 
 press now is, that, if we are faithful, the portion 
 of work which falls to our own share must be 
 well done. 
 
 A man who works very well and carefully in 
 any one spot of Christ's vineyard, will find that 
 the influence of his good example spreads wonder- 
 fully. What a blessing, in any neighbourhood, 
 is a single well- worked parish. And a well-trained 
 and instructed congregation in the centre of a 
 parish, having their duties and means of influence 
 forcibly set before them, will be certain to affect 
 a large circle beyond of those who do not frequent 
 the church. There was a time certainly when
 
 78 
 
 the clergy neglected their parishes in thinking 
 only of their congregations. I would have them 
 neglect neither. But that you may have wide 
 influence, strive to make it deep. However 
 vast be the size of your parish, labour steadily 
 with your congregation and your school. And if 
 you have a small parish — say a City parish, and 
 are contented, even at a loss of income, to make 
 the effort to find some place where you may live 
 in it, that you may be the real central moving 
 power of your flock, be it great or very small — 
 then you enjoy great facilities for doing all your 
 work thoroughly, serving your own people first, 
 and benefiting indirectly many others. I have still 
 to regret that thirty-eight of the City clergy reside 
 without the limits of their parishes. Where there 
 is no parsonage house, and no suitable house to be 
 obtained in or near the parish, the law allows them 
 to reside in any licensed house within two miles. 
 One great object proposed by the Act for the Union 
 of the City Parishes, which I was instrumental in 
 having passed two years ago (23 & 24 Vict. c. 42), 
 was to remedy this very serious evil by providing 
 the means of obtaining a parsonage house in each 
 united parish. Let us hope that the requisite 
 consents will not long be refused to enable this 
 Act to be put in force. 
 
 I will not weary you, my reverend brethren, 
 by entering upon details as to your work, in
 
 79 
 
 which you are quite as capable of giving as of 
 receiving instruction. Suffer only a few general 
 words on three out of the many instruments as- 
 signed to you for the effectual working of your 
 parishes — your sermons — your schools — your 
 confirmation classes. 
 
 1. We have heard of late a great deal of criticism 
 on our preaching. Now the part of sensible men, 
 whether they feel that the unpleasant remarks 
 made on them be deserved or no, is to consider 
 what is said carefully, and make the best use of 
 it for improvement. I need scarcely touch on 
 what is alleged as to indistinctness of utterance, 
 or a dull monotony of manner. All persons who 
 are called to speak in public may find at first 
 that they are liable to these faults. The mis- 
 fortune is, that while other speakers who labour 
 under them are soon obliged to correct their faults, 
 or else find their opportunities of speaking gone, 
 by the fact that no one requests them to speak, or 
 if they do speak no one stays to listen, we clergy- 
 men, on the contrary, whether we can or no, are 
 obliged to speak in public every week ; it is an 
 essential part of our ofiice ; and a considerable 
 number of persons is obliged to sit patiently, and 
 at least appear to listen to us. AVe have not the 
 benefit of that practical criticism of our defects 
 which soon teaches men in other professions 
 either to amend or be silent. Now a good deal
 
 80 
 
 has been said as to Bishops and Examining 
 Chaplains correcting these faults. That they 
 should do so directly is out of the question. 
 Only glaring imperfections of the kind may 
 legitimately stop ordination ; and in the Ember- 
 week examinations it is our especial business not 
 to teach, but to test. Real goodness of utterance 
 and manner (except so far as it is a natural gift) 
 can only be acquired through the training of 
 boys and young men at school and college ; and 
 the time spent in acquiring it will not be lost, 
 whether their future profession is to be clerical 
 or lay. After ordination also, I should advise 
 the experienced clergy not to hesitate kindly, in 
 a straightforward way, to point out to their 
 young assistants any deficiencies in this respect 
 which they observe, and young men will scarcely 
 be unwisely sensitive as to such criticism. If a 
 man can speak in a clear and forcible manner, 
 he is sure to do so, if the one great requisite be 
 there, viz. that he speaks from the heart, and is 
 awake to the importance of what he is doing, as 
 bearing a message from God to the consciences of 
 His people. 
 
 But the matter of our sermons is of course 
 far more important than the manner. Here, 
 obviously, the one great requisite must be, that 
 we preach Christ — His work — both His outward 
 works, manifested in the records of His past
 
 81 
 
 history, and His spiritual work, which goes on 
 still in the immediate presence of the Almighty 
 ^Father and in the believer's soul. If this kernel 
 and heart of all good preaching be absent, no 
 graces of oratory, no interesting narrative, no 
 discussion, no learning will avail. Ministers of 
 Christ — ambassadors of Christ — bearing a mes- 
 sage from God respecting Christ ; commissioned 
 to win souls to Christ, and build them up after 
 Christ's likeness by the Holy Spirit aiding us- — 
 it is thus that our office as preachers of the 
 Gospel is characterised. But of course even the 
 holiest truths and the best Gospel doctrine may 
 suffer from an unskilful handling. 
 
 Besides considering what we have to say we 
 must think carefully to whom it is we have to say 
 it. Hence there will be no effectual preaching 
 without a knowledge of our people's characters. 
 It is not only that a highly educated and a 
 simple poor congregation will often require to 
 be addressed differently : all the several classes, 
 ages, and professions have their own peculiarities, 
 and it requires no little skill in speaking to a 
 mixed congregation, so to adjust what we have 
 to say, as to meet the prevailing wants of the 
 majority, and leave none to go away without a 
 word in season. This would be impossible for 
 us, were it not — Pirst, that we have mainly to 
 speak to that in man which all men have in 
 
 G
 
 82 
 
 common ; and Secondly, that the book which 
 we have to expound in speaking, while it sets 
 forth one unchangeable gospel, is yet as in- 
 finite in the variety of its adaptations to all 
 men's changing wants, as is the infinite God 
 whose voice it bears to them. To be mighty in 
 the Scriptures, well acquainted with every part of 
 them in its peculiar history, and bearing — accus- 
 tomed to read and ponder many other books by 
 the light which Scripture throws on them — to 
 know human nature, by having thought much 
 about it, and observed it closely ; to be well ac- 
 quainted with our people by going in and out 
 amongst them, and seeing how they bear the trials 
 of life, its joys, sorrows, and difficulties ; and then 
 to know the springs of action, how the conscience 
 is reached, and the will influenced ; to have the 
 Church's doctrines well fixed and arranged in our 
 minds, in their proof, their relations, and their 
 scope — not like some dead catalogue from the 
 schools — but each of them illustrated and under- 
 stood from its bearing on our own and other 
 people's hearts and lives ; to be a man of prayer 
 and holy thoughts, who lives much in that un- 
 seen presence, from which he is commissioned to 
 bear messages to his people's souls ; no less than 
 all this must enter into our conception of a really 
 good preacher, and no wonder if we fall very far 
 short. But let each of us hold up to ourselves
 
 83 
 
 the high standard — our only hope of excellence 
 will be to aim at it — and then mechanically we 
 may be helped by sundry plain rules. 
 
 a. Obviously, if preaching be what this state- 
 ment implies, it is out of the question for a man 
 to preach other people's sermons, or even to form 
 sermons for himself out of some dry digest of 
 another's thoughts. If preaching is an ordi- 
 nance of God, the preacher bears a message from 
 God, and his announcement of it must have the 
 living reality of being poured forth from his own 
 heart to which God has spoken it. 
 
 h. I have used the word speech, not as dis- 
 couraging the preacher from using a manuscript ; 
 only, whether written or directly spoken, the ser- 
 mon is a speech. A man, certainly, to deal well 
 with all the varieties of a large London parish, 
 must be able, in the literal sense of the word, 
 to speak freely, as well as to write and read these 
 speeches. It will require a sound discretion to 
 decide, in reference both to our own rhetorical 
 powers, and the particular nature of the congrega- 
 tions we from time to time address, how we shall 
 best approach them with that earnestness, point, 
 and fulness of statement and illustration, and yet 
 condensed force of words, which go to make up 
 a really good sermon : whether, on each varying 
 occasion, we shall be most likely to arrest the at- 
 tention, touch the heart, instruct the judgment, 
 
 g2
 
 84 
 
 and control the will, by a freely spoken or a care- 
 fully written discourse. A really good preacher 
 must, I think, in our parishes, be equal to both 
 tasks. 
 
 c. There can be no good preaching without 
 much careful preparation. If a preacher is at 
 times to be called to speak to his people with- 
 out any preparation (a task he will always 
 eschew), it Ayill be here, as in other oratory; he 
 can only speak well thus unprepared on an 
 emergency, from his habitual careful preparation 
 having given him a ready command both of 
 thoughts and words. To study carefully the best 
 models of old and of modern divines, to note 
 their striking thoughts and phrases carefully and 
 minutely, and prayerfully to examine Scripture, 
 and fix it in the memory, marking the bearing 
 of its teaching on the subjects we are likely to 
 have to handle; this must be the clergyman's 
 habitual work : And then each week to choose 
 early the definite subject, look at it in all its 
 bearings, turn it over in the mind, consider to 
 whom it is we are to unfold it, and how, treating 
 it briefly and tersely, or at greater length, we 
 shall best win their attention, and make them 
 profit by our teaching ; searching the Scrip- 
 tures again carefully, and turning to our work of 
 preparation, with that prayer for right direction 
 which a trembling sense of our own weakness,
 
 85 
 
 and the importance of the issues that hang upon 
 our due discliarge of duty, must wring from a 
 man of humble spirit. This will be the distinct 
 preparation for each separate discourse. A good 
 man will not think it an easy matter to speak to 
 the unlettered poor any more than to the edu- 
 cated, though the special sort of address suited 
 for each may require a special preparation. 
 
 d. And then, when he reaches the pulpit, the 
 preacher will endeavour to realize where he is 
 — what he is come for — who are around him — 
 how there, on the spot, he shall best deal with 
 their intellects and hearts. There is great mean- 
 ing in those few moments of private prayer by 
 which the custom of the Church encourages us 
 to recollect ourselves and ask God's help before 
 Vv^e preach. He will be most likely to avoid 
 being tedious and losing his hold upon his people, 
 who, distinctly realizing the purpose of his coming 
 before them, watches them as he proceeds, and 
 is not so tied to his previous preparation as to 
 be unable to enlarge or curtail as the occasion 
 and auditory shall suggest. If all experience 
 proves that eloquence resides partly in the ear 
 of the hearer as well as in the tongue of the 
 speaker — or is greatly dependent on that mys- 
 terious sympathy Avhich causes the one to listen 
 to the other's charm — certainly no preacher can 
 afford to overlook the visible signs of the impres-
 
 86 
 
 sion he is making on his hearers and to be in- 
 fluenced by it as he proceeds. 
 
 €. Again — and I shall obtrude no more advice 
 on this subject — I would request the elder clergy to 
 be careful that they do their best to enable their 
 young assistants to learn by practice (the only 
 effectual teacher) how to preach well. If reality 
 is the life and soul of all good preaching, and 
 we wish our young curates to be good preachers 
 (and to help to train them in their work is the 
 very condition on which we receive them on a 
 title in the Diaconate) — if we wish them, I say, 
 to learn to be good preachers, we shall seek occa- 
 sions for their preaching when they may speak 
 with reality and authority. It is not a bad plan 
 to intrust some one service entirely to their re- 
 sponsibility. I have often pointed out to young 
 men, at their ordination, that if they feel diffident, 
 as they well may, of speaking with authority in 
 their unripe age, and without exj^erience, they 
 should remember that they have many to address 
 who are younger, less experienced, and far more 
 ignorant than themselves. A young curate may 
 well learn to preach effectively by habitually ad- 
 dressing sj)ecific congregations of young people. 
 He will, perhaps, know better what to say to them 
 even than his elders ; and other stated congrega- 
 tions may be found of elder people, whom, young 
 as he is, he is entirely in his place in addressing.
 
 87 
 
 One thing I Avould especially deprecate — his heing 
 set to preach — which has, I helieve, in former 
 times, been too often the case — at some ill-fre- 
 qiiented afternoon service, the very sight of the 
 congregation at which is enough to chill him into 
 awkwardness. It is cruelty, to ask him to under- 
 take as his chief duty what is either the most use- 
 less or the most diificult part of our parochial work. 
 Indeed, with our teeming thousands, there ought 
 to be no services at which we have scanty congre- 
 gations. I cannot help thinking there is some fault 
 on our parts if there are such. But, certainly, if 
 we set our curates to learn how to preach by 
 addressing empty benches, they will probal)ly 
 learn their work so badly as to be likely to preach 
 to empty benches as long as they live. 
 
 Your kindness will, I know, excuse these few 
 homely remarks on what, certainly, is one chief 
 instrument by which the clergy greatly influence 
 that portion of their parishioners whom they can 
 reach, be it large or small. It would be a mis- 
 take to suppose that the days when men are 
 likely to be much influenced by preaching are 
 gone by. Quite independently of preaching being 
 an ordinance of God, which He has always used 
 in His Church for the conversion and edifica- 
 tion of souls, deadness in church shows a dead 
 state of society. There never was a time when 
 men were more ready to listen to lectures and
 
 88 
 
 speeches than now. It has been well said, that 
 multiplicity of books, and the easy access to 
 them, has produced the very same effect which 
 once resulted from their paucity. Men, tired or 
 bewildered by them, will turn now, as in the old 
 days, when they could not have them, to the more 
 interesting and exciting deliverances of a living 
 guide. And, certainly, it will be great shame to 
 us, the clergy, if, through any failure on our 
 part, the manner, voice, life, substance of our 
 speeches for God be not as carefully used, and as 
 effective in their way, in rousing and ^uiding our 
 people, as are the lectui'es of laymen on common 
 secular subjects. 
 
 2. I dare not enter at any length on that other 
 instrument of parochial work which I spoke of — 
 our schools. The subject of our national system 
 of education has, within the last twelve months, 
 produced so sharp a controversy — the changes still 
 in contemplation, modified though they be, are 
 so uncertain in their issue, and the course which 
 school managers may feel themselves obliged, in 
 certain localities, to take, is as yet so undefined, 
 that probably, if I attempted to sj)eak explicitly, 
 experience, before another Visitation, might 
 prove me to have been altogether a false prophet. 
 But let me urge a few points which ought not to 
 be forgotten amid our controversies or alarms. 
 
 a. Thank God, in the first place, that the country
 
 89 
 
 is so deeply imbued with the necessity of every 
 system of education being religious, if it is to 
 be good, that I cannot have any fears on this 
 score. 
 
 It seems to be allowed by all who know the 
 subject, that, speaking generally, our whole zeal 
 for education has taken a religious direction, 
 and that the various other denominations are as 
 anxious on this head as the Church of England. 
 All subsequent enquiry has confirmed what Sir 
 James Kay Shuttleworth said in 1853 :' — 
 
 " No one who has examined the history of Enghsh Public 
 Education, can doubt that to attempt to separate it from religion, 
 would be to offer the rudest violence, not only to the traditions 
 of the country, but to its institutions, whether they be the 
 growth of centuries, or the most modern offspring of the popular 
 will. 
 
 "... No scheme of Public Education could be more extrava- 
 gantly rash and arrogant, than one which would either venture 
 to overlook the religious origin, or the existence and peculiar 
 organization, of so great a number of schools. 
 
 "... Whatever plan be adopted for the education of the 
 entire nation, it is therefore clear, that it must be founded on 
 religion, and recognize the existing schools." 
 
 b. Again, as to specific religious instruction, the 
 Church of England, we have seen, has gained so 
 great a start in this matter, that it can never in 
 our day, and scarcely at all, unless from unfaith- 
 
 1 Public Education as affected by the Minutes of the Committee of 
 Privy Council, from 1846 to 1852, with Suggestions as to future 
 pohcy, by Sir Jamea Kay Shuttleworth, Bart. 1853. Pp. 30, 3(=, 37.
 
 90 
 
 fulness in time to come, be deprived of this 
 advantage. 
 
 c. Agaiii, if it has been resolved to give a more 
 common practical turn to that part of education 
 for which the country directly pays, and to leave 
 higher accomplishments to be nurtured by those 
 in each particular district who, feeling them to 
 be needful, are not likely to encourage them to 
 the neglect of things more needful — and if the 
 result of this arrangement be, as is its promo- 
 ters' hope, that a greater number of persons 
 shall be able to read and write, it will be con- 
 trary to all experience if this increased facility 
 does not increase also the demand for higher 
 instruction; and I do not see why any impedi- 
 ments should prevent the clergy and other school 
 managers from supplying such instruction. If the 
 boon of communicating it comes more directly 
 from themselves, instead of from the Govern- 
 ment, and if from the Government arrange- 
 ments, the number of j)ersons who are capable 
 of profiting by the boon and are desirous of it is 
 widened, this cannot fail to increase the influence 
 of those who supply it. Let us trust that higher 
 education will not suffer, or those who give it 
 lose their influence, because means are adopted 
 to lay more deeply and spread out more broadly 
 the foundation on which it must rest. 
 d. Again, if our schoolmasters and pupil-teachers
 
 91 
 
 are made more to depend on their own exertions 
 than on a forcing system of connexion with the 
 Government — necessary at first, but not cer- 
 tainly to he continued always — their profession 
 will lose none of its importance in a free en- 
 lightened country, where in all professions self- 
 reliance is the rule, and Government dependence 
 the rare exception. And if thus made more 
 independent in their position, they are, at the 
 same time, in the free interchange of what they 
 can supply with what school-managers demand, 
 to be brought into more intimate relations with 
 those who are their real employers, perhaps the 
 result will be good for both parties, who will 
 work in more entire harmony and with more of 
 mutual self-respect. 
 
 Let it not be supposed from this that I am 
 insensible to great difficulties which very pro- 
 bably may arise in the working of the new 
 system. What I wish to set forth is, that as 
 we grant, almost all of us, that there are good 
 features in it, so there can be nothing to justify 
 the clergy in being so discouraged as to relax 
 those great efforts by which they have so clearly 
 proved, that the Church of England earnestly 
 desires, for the good of the country, a thorough 
 education of the whole community — that in the 
 spread of such education it sees the surest hope 
 of extending its own influence, knowing our 
 very motto to be that sound religion and useful
 
 92 
 
 learning go hand in hand. I am as confident 
 now as I ever was, that every clergyman in this 
 diocese will find a most powerful instrument for 
 his parochial work in his school — will have his 
 schoolmasters and other teachers as his aids, in 
 winning his way to his people's hearts, and in 
 moulding their characters, and will he incessant 
 in pressing the claims of his schools on all who 
 are able to assist him in supporting them. 
 
 3. The third and last instrument of which I 
 proposed to speak, was our confirmation classes. 
 It is impossible to exaggerate the importance 
 of our confirmation work. With the poor it 
 deepens what religious teaching has been given 
 in the school. It brings young people of all 
 ranks directly under the pastor's eye. You form 
 them into classes to instruct them ; you examine 
 them, and converse with them ; you see them 
 one by one, and pray with them. My reverend 
 brethren, if wb do this work effectually, there is 
 no estimating its value. Is Confirmation one of 
 the Bishop's special functions ? — to govern, to 
 consecrate, to ordain, to confirm — this is the 
 cycle of his work : to rule the Church, to set 
 apart its holy places and those who minister in 
 them, and through Confirmation to admit each 
 of the baptized singly to riper Church member- 
 ship. Of these functions Confirmation is that 
 which brings him into most immediate connexion 
 with all his people. It is that function which
 
 93 
 
 supplies the Bishop in this diocese with the 
 most habitually recurring portion of his public 
 work, and certainly not the least important. 
 But for the due administration of Confirmation, 
 the Bishop is greatly dependent on his clergy. 
 
 When we look to the population of this diocese, 
 the serious question arises, whether our candi- 
 dates for confirmation at all reach their proper 
 number. My reverend brethren, I know you to 
 be earnest in this matter : there are indeed some 
 lamentable exceptions, of large districts scarcely 
 supplying any candidates. This must be from 
 some very great fault. If we make allowance 
 for peculiarities, the number of his candidates 
 for confirmation is not a bad test of a pastor's 
 earnestness. 
 
 And here I will remark that I find a great 
 difiiculty in estimating what proportion of the 
 population ought to be expected to be annually 
 confirmed. The arrangements of this diocese, 
 handed down to me from my predecessor, and 
 gradually enlarged by myself without any per- 
 ceptible addition of labour or time on my part, 
 would admit of many more being confirmed than 
 now present themselves ; even according to the 
 present usual limit of 300 in one church, to 
 which I strive by multiplying opportunities to re- 
 duce the candidates. I am ready at any moment 
 to extend the present facilities, if, as I trust it 
 may, the supply of candidates increases, wishing
 
 94 
 
 that no confirmation should be overcrowded or 
 occupy more than two hours. From the local 
 peculiarity of this diocese, there is no difficulty 
 in any person finding a confirmation within a 
 very limited distance of his home, almost at any 
 time. The confirmations go on all through the 
 year, except during the two months of vacation, 
 and are to be found every year in all quarters of 
 the diocese. This is an advantage which we gain 
 amidst many difficulties from living in the small 
 area of this closely packed metropolitan region. 
 Hitherto the numbers each year have varied from 
 10,000 to about 15,000. 
 
 We all feel how important it is that our con- 
 firmation classes should be increased — that 
 the confirmation should be looked ujoon as the 
 initiation into regular habits of receiving the 
 Holy Communion month after month. How 
 well would it be if that intimacy between pastor 
 and people, for which a confirmation gives the 
 opportunity, were rightly maintained in after life. 
 If confirmation classes developed into meetings 
 of communicants for prayer and reading of the 
 Scriptures, the pastor in the largest parish would 
 thus find himself at the head of a compact body 
 of coadjutors, selected from his congregation, 
 who would greatly aid his missionary labours, 
 amongst the surrounding crowd. 
 
 And now, my reverend brethren, I ought not to 
 detain you. God grant, that in looking steadily at
 
 95 
 
 our own and the Clmrch's difficulties, we may- 
 learn more manfully to face them, and do our 
 allotted portion of Christ's work. The time is 
 short. Each year tells of many of our fellow- 
 lahourers snatched from their work. I could run 
 through a long list of names of zealous clergy 
 familiar to you, taken since we last met, either 
 from our own diocese, or the Church's more ex- 
 tended sphere — we trust to the Church in heaven. 
 The message which they have left behind for us 
 is : Work while it is day — work, as waiting for 
 your Master's summons, and anxious to have 
 done somewhat for Him before He calls you ; 
 above all things, work in prayer. 
 
 To my brethren the Churchwardens, if any of 
 them have remained for this service, let me 
 say in conclusion, in your name, my reverend 
 brethren, as well as in my own, how we feel 
 that we need their co-operation, and how much 
 the whole diocese benefits by their faithful dis- 
 charge of their duties. 
 
 They are the Bishop's officers, and as such they 
 have come here this week with their present- 
 ments. Let me explain that these presentments, 
 unlike the questions answered by the clergy some 
 months back, have of course as yet not been laid 
 before me. It will be my duty to have them 
 carefully sifted, and the Churchwardens may rest 
 assured that their suggestions shall receive due 
 attention. But it is not only in their strictly
 
 96 
 
 official capacity as my officers that we claim 
 their aid. Perhaps their most valuable service 
 is that service of kindly regard which so many 
 of them yield cheerfully to a pastor whom they 
 love. I shall indeed rejoice, and shall feel that 
 the Church is being greatly strengthened and the 
 progress of true religion advanced, if the inter- 
 change of friendship between the clergy and the 
 lay Church officers of this diocese is greatly 
 increased. Thanking all for their attendance, 
 I commend you to the blessing of our common 
 Lord. 
 
 COLLECT. 
 
 AiiMiGHTT God and heavenly Father, who, of thine infinite love 
 and goodness towards us, hast given to us thy only and most dearly 
 beloved Son Jesus Christ, to be our Eedeemer, and the Author of 
 everlasting life ; who, after he had made perfect our redemption by 
 his death, and was ascended into heaven, sent abroad into the world 
 his Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Doctors, and Pastors ; by whose 
 labour and ministry he gathered together a great flock in all the 
 parts of the world, to set forth the eternal praise of thy holy Name : 
 For these so great benefits of thy eternal goodness, and for that thou 
 hast vouchsafed to call thy servants here present to the same 
 Office and Ministry appointed for the salvation of mankind, we 
 render unto thee most hearty thanks, we praise and worship thee ; 
 and we humbly beseech thee, by the same thy blessed Son, to grant 
 unto all, which either here or elsewhere call upon thy holy Name, 
 that we may continue to show ourselves thankful unto thee for these 
 and all other thy benefits ; and that we may daily increase and go 
 forwards in the knowledge and faith of thee and thy Son, by the 
 Holy Spirit. So that as well by us thy Ministers, as by them 
 over whom we are appointed thy Ministers, thy holy Name may 
 be for ever glorified, and thy blessed kingdom enlarged ; through 
 the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth 
 with thee in the unity of the same Holy Spirit, world without end. 
 Amen.
 
 APPENDIX A, 
 
 The following extract is from Mr. Justice Coleridge's 
 Letter, prefixed to the first volume of Arnold's Life. Ed. 
 1844^, vol. i. p. 20 :— 
 
 " In our days the religious controversies had not yet 
 begun, by which the minds of young men at Oxford are, 
 I fear, now prematurely and too much occupied. The 
 routine theological studies of the university were, I admit, 
 deplorably low ; but the earnest ones amongst us were 
 diligent readers of Barrow, Hooker, and Taylor. Arnold 
 was among these, but I have no recollection of anything 
 at that time distinctive in his religious opinions ; what 
 occurred afterwards does not properly fall within my 
 chapter ; yet it is not unconnected with it, and I believe 
 I can sum up all that need be said on such a subject, as 
 shortly and as accurately from the sources of information 
 in my hands as any other person can. His was an 
 anxiously inquisitive mind, a scrupulously conscientious 
 heart ; his inquiries previously to his taking orders, led him 
 on to distressing doubts on certain points in the Articles ; 
 these were not low nor rationalistic in their tendency* 
 according to the bad sense of that term. There was no 
 indisposition in him to believe, merely because the Article 
 transcended his reason ; he doubted the proof, and the 
 interpretation of the textual authority. His state was very 
 painful, and I think morbid ; for I remarked that the 
 two occasions on which I was privy to his distress, were 
 
 H
 
 98 
 
 precisely those iu which to doubt was against his dearest 
 schemes of worldly happiness ; and the consciousness of 
 this seemed to make him distrustful of the arguments 
 which were intended to lead his mind to acquiescence. 
 Upon the first occasion to which I allude he was a fellow 
 of Oriel, and in close intercourse with one of the friends I 
 have before mentioned, then also a fellow of the same col- 
 lege. To him as well as to me he opened his mind, and 
 from him he received the wisest advice, which he had the 
 wisdom to act upon. He was bid to pause in his inqui- 
 ries, to pray earnestly for help and light from above, and 
 to turn himself more strongly than ever to the practical 
 duties of a holy life. He did so, and through severe trials 
 was finally blessed with perfect peace of mind, and a 
 settled conviction. If there be any so unwise as to rejoice 
 that Arnold, in his youth, had doubts on important doc- 
 trines, let him be sobered by the conclusion of those 
 doubts, when Arnold's mind had not become weaker, nor 
 his pursuit of truth less honest or ardent ; but when his 
 abilities were matured, his knowledge greater, his judg- 
 ment more sober. If there be any who in youth are suf- 
 fering the same distress which befel him, let his conduct 
 be their example, and the blessing which w^as vouchsafed 
 to him, their hope and consolation. In a letter from that 
 friend to myself of the date of February 14, 1819, I find 
 the following extract, which gives so true and considerate 
 an account of this passage in Arnold's life, that you may 
 be pleased to insert it ; — 
 
 "I have not talked with Arnold lately on the distressing 
 thoughts which he wrote to you about, but I am fearful, 
 from his manner at times, that he has by no means got rid 
 of them, though I feel quite confident that all will be well 
 in the end. The subject of them is that most awful one, 
 on which all very inquisitive reasoning minds are, I be- 
 lieve, most liable to such temptations— I mean the doctrine
 
 99 
 
 of the blessed Trinity. Do not start, my dear Coleridge ; I 
 do not believe that Arnold has any serious scruples of the 
 understanding about it, but it is a defect of his mind, that 
 he cannot get rid of a certain feeling of objections, and 
 particularly when, as he fancies, the bias is so strong upon 
 him to decide one way from interest ; he scruples doing 
 what I advise him, which is, to put down the objections by 
 main force whenever they arise in his mind, fearful that in 
 so doing he shall be violating his conscience for mainte- 
 nance' sake. I am still inclined to think with you, that 
 
 the wisest thing he could do would be to take John M 
 
 (a young pupil whom I was desirous of placing under his 
 care), and a curacy somewhere or other, and cure himself, 
 not by physic, that is, reading and controversy, but by diet 
 and regimen, that is, holy living. In the mean time, what 
 an excellent fellow he is ! I do think one might safely 
 say, as some one did of some other, ' one had better have 
 Arnold's doubts than most men's certainties.' " 
 
 The following note occurs p. 132 of the second volume : — 
 
 " In connexion with this subject, I may as well recur to a 
 previous passage in his life, which only came to my know- 
 ledge within the last year, and which this and other acci- 
 dental hindrances prevented from appearing in its proper 
 place. The graver difficulties which Mr. Justice Coleridge 
 has noticed as attending his first ordination, never returned 
 after the year 1820, when he seems to have arrived at a com- 
 plete conviction, both of his conscience and understanding, 
 that there was no real ground for entertaining them. But 
 during the inquiries which he prosecuted at Laleham, 
 there arose in his mind scruples on one or two minor 
 questions, which appeared to him for a long time to pre- 
 sent insuperable obstacles to his taking any office which 
 should involve a second subscription of the Articles. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 
 
 ' I attach/ he said, ' no importance, to my own difference, 
 except that however trifling the point, and however gladly 
 I would waive it altogether, still, when I am required to 
 acquiesce in w^hat I think a wrong opinion upon it, I must 
 decline compliance.' 
 
 " On these grounds he long hesitated to take priest's 
 orders, at least, unless he had the opportunity of explain- 
 ing his objections to the Bishop who ordained hun ; and it 
 was in fact on this condition that, after his appointment to 
 Rugby, whilst still in Deacon's orders, he consented to be 
 ordained by the Bishop of his diocese, at that time Dr. 
 Howley ; as appears from the following extracts from 
 letters, of which the first states his intention with regard 
 to another situation in 1826, which he fulfilled in 1828, in 
 the interval between his election at Rugby and his entrance 
 upon his office. 1. ' As my objections turn on points 
 which all, I believe, consider immaterial in themselves, I 
 would consent to be ordained, if any Bishop would ordain 
 me, on an explicit statement of my disagreement in those 
 points. If he would not, then my course would be plain, 
 and there would be an end of all thought of it at once.' 
 2. ' I shall, I l)elieve, be ordained priest on Trinity Sunday, 
 being ordained by the Bishop of London. I wished to do 
 this, because I wished to administer the sacrament in the 
 chapel at Rugby, and, because I shall have, in a manner, 
 the oversight of the chaplain, I thought it would be scarce 
 seemly for me as a Deacon, to interfere with a Priest ; and 
 after a long conversation with the Bishop of London, I do 
 not object to be ordained.' 
 
 " This was the last time that he was troubled with any 
 similar perplexities ; and in later years, as appears from 
 more than one letter of this period, he thought he had, 
 in his earlier life, overrated the difficulties of subscription. 
 The particular subject of his scruples arose from his doubt, 
 founded chiefly on internal evidence, whether the Epistle
 
 101 
 
 to tlie Hebrews did not belong to a period subsequent to 
 the Apostolical age. It may be worth while to mention, 
 that this doubt was eventually removed by increased study 
 of the Scriptures, and of the early Christian writers. In 
 the ten last years of his life he never hesitated to use and 
 apply it, as one of the most valuable parts of the New 
 Testament : and his latest opinion was inclining to the 
 belief that it might have been written, not merely under 
 the guidance of St. Paul, but by the apostle himself." 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 
 The following account from the " Annual Eegister," may 
 be interesting at this time, as setting forth the steps taken 
 in 1772 by the Clergy who were believed to favour Arian 
 opinions : — 
 
 " A petition was soon after (Feb. 6) offered to be pre- 
 sented to the House, from certain Clergymen of the Church 
 of England, and certain members of the two professions of 
 civil law and physic, and some others, who prayed for relief 
 from the subscription to the Thirty -nine Articles of faith. 
 These gentlemen had for some time assembled at a tavern 
 called the Feathers, and had invited by public advertise- 
 ments in the papers, all those who thought themselves 
 aggrieved in the matter of subscription, to join them in 
 obtaining redress. The petition was signed by about 250 
 of the Clergy. 
 
 " In this petition they represent, that it is one of the 
 great principles of the Protestant religion, that every thing 
 necessary to salvation is fully and sufficiently contained in 
 the Holy Scriptures ; that they have an inherent right, 
 which they hold from God only, to make a full and free 
 use of their private judgment in the interpretation of those
 
 102 
 
 Scriptures ; that though these were the liberal and original 
 principles of the Church of England, and upon which the 
 reformation from Popery was founded, they had been de- 
 viated from in the laws relative to subscription, by which 
 they are deprived of then- invaluable rights and privileges, 
 and required to acknowledge certain articles and confessions 
 of faith and doctrine, drawn up by fallible men, to be all 
 and every of them agreeable to the Scriptures. 
 
 " They also represent these subscriptions as a great 
 hindrance to the spreading of true religion, as they dis- 
 courage further inquiries into the real sense of the sacred 
 writings, tend to divide communions, and to cause mutual 
 dislike among fellow-Protestants. That the diversity of 
 opinions held upon many of these Articles, occasioned great 
 animosity and ill-will among the established Clergy ; that 
 they afforded an opportunity to unbelievers to charge them 
 with prevarication, and with being guided by interested 
 and political views, in subscribing to Articles wliich they 
 could not believe, and about which no two were agreed in 
 opinion ; and that they afforded a handle to Papists, to 
 reproach them with their inconsistency, by departing from 
 the principles on which they had grounded their separa- 
 tion from them, and now admitting of human ordinances, 
 and doubtful and precarious doctrines, though they pre- 
 tended that the Scripture alone was certain and sufficient 
 to salvation. 
 
 " The two professions of civil law and physic complained 
 of the hardships they suffered, at one of the Universities 
 particularly, where they were obliged at their first admission 
 or matriculation, and at an age so immature for disquisi- 
 tions and decisions of such moment, to subscribe their 
 unfeigned assent to a variety of theological propositions, 
 in order to be enabled to attain academical degrees in their 
 respective faculties ; and that their private opinions upon 
 those subjects can be of no consequence to the public, as
 
 103 
 
 the course of their studies, and the attention to their prac- 
 tice, neither afford them the means nor the leisure to 
 examine into the propriety or nature of such propositions. 
 They also lament the misfortune of their sons, who at an 
 age before the habit of reflection can be formed, or their 
 judgment matured, may be irrecoverably bound down in 
 points of the highest consequence, to the opinions and 
 tenets of ages less informed than their own. 
 
 "The petition being read in the House, by the gentleman 
 who moved to bring it up, it was said by those who sup- 
 ported the motion, that it was a matter highly deserving of 
 the most serious consideration ; that grievances that affect 
 the conscience, are of all others the most grievous ; that 
 religious toleration could never be too extensive ; that 
 nothing could be more absurd, or more contrary to reason 
 and to religion, than to oblige people to subscribe articles 
 which they did not believe ; that it was establishing under 
 a religious authority, habits of prevarication and irreligion ; 
 that the Articles were compiled in a hurry, were the work 
 of fallible men, were in some parts contradictory, and in 
 others contained matters that were utterly indefensible ; 
 and that such a compulsion upon consciences, was pro- 
 ductive of great licentiousness in the Cliurch ; and from 
 its tendency to lessen, or entirely to destroy Christian 
 charity, had the worst effects upon its members. They 
 said that a happy opportunity was now offered, of opening 
 such a door for the Dissenters, as it was probable tliat 
 most of them would enter at, and thereby be received in 
 the bosom of the Established Church ; that instead of 
 weakening it, this would be the means of giving it such 
 a firmness of strength as nothing could shake ; and that 
 the Church of England could never be in any danger, 
 while the hierarchy and Bishops existed. 
 
 " The great majority that rejected this petition, founded 
 their opposition upon different grounds and principles.
 
 104 
 
 The high church gentlemen considered it as little less than 
 blasphemy to propose any innovation in the Thirty-nine 
 Articles. They said it would give a mortal wound to the 
 Church of England ; that the Church and State were so 
 intimately united, that one could not perish without the 
 other ; that this petition was levelled directly against 
 Christianity, and that the next would be for annulling the 
 Liturgy. They called to mind the destruction of Church 
 and State in the last century, which they charged upon 
 the sectaries ; represented the conduct and views of the 
 petitioners as avaricious and hypocritical ; and inferred 
 from the licentiousness of some writings which had ap- 
 peared on that side of the question, that they denied the 
 doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of our Saviour. 
 They said that Parliament could not grant any relief to 
 those who had already subscribed, as they had no power to 
 vacate oaths ; and that for those who were not yet beneficed, 
 and who wanted to seize on the emoluments of the Church 
 without believing in her tenets or complying with her 
 laws, they were not at all to be listened to, as from every 
 principle of reason and justice they should be excluded 
 from her from ever. They further contended, that it was 
 not in the King's power to comply with their petition, as 
 he was bound by oath to preserve the Established Church ; 
 and that a compliance with it would be a breach of the 
 articles of union, as it was engaged by them, that the 
 Church governments both of England and Scotland should 
 for ever continue as they then were. 
 
 " Many other gentlemen, who were more moderate in 
 their temper or principles, though totally averse to a com- 
 pliance with the terms of the petition, or to the reviving of 
 polemical disputes, by even making its controversial points 
 a subject of discussion, were notwithstanding inclined to 
 treat it with lenity and respect ; and some were disposed 
 to its being brought up to the table, and let to lie over till
 
 105 
 
 the end of the session ; while others were for applying to 
 the King, that he might appoint a committee of the Clergy 
 to consider it. Upon the same principle they vindicated 
 the petitioners from the heavy imputations that had been 
 laid upon them, and showed several of them to be men of 
 the most irreproachable characters. They also set those 
 right who had been of opinion that the legislature had no 
 superintending control over the articles of the union ; they 
 not only showed that a supreme controlling power was 
 inherent in every legislature, but pointed out two parti- 
 cular instances in which it had been exerted since the 
 Union, and which affected both the English and Scotch 
 Churches ; the first of these was the act against occasional 
 conformity, and the latter, that which destroyed elective 
 patronages. 
 
 "But though some of these gentlemen declared them- 
 selves friends to toleration and to religious liberty, in the 
 most liberal and extensive sense, that could be compatible 
 with the public tranquillity and the good of the community, 
 they notwithstanding objected to the principles of the 
 petition. They insisted, that all governments had a right 
 to constitute the several orders of their subjects as they 
 pleased ; that the priesthood, in this instance, stood in the 
 same predicament with the others ; that it was necessary 
 that those who were appointed to be the public teachers 
 and instructors of the people, should be bound by some 
 certain principles from which they were not to deviate ; that 
 to prevent the disorder and confusion incident to so great 
 a number, it was also necessary, that some public symbol 
 should be established, to which they should all assent, as a 
 mark of their conformity and union ; that a simple assent 
 to the Scriptures, would in this case be of no signification, 
 as every day's experience showed, that no two would agree 
 in their general construction of them, and that it was too 
 well known, that the greatest absurdities, and even bias-
 
 106 
 
 pheniies, had at difterent times been attempted to have 
 been supported or defended upon their authority. It was 
 also said, that so far as subscription related to the Clergy, 
 who were those principally concerned, it could not be con- 
 sidered that they suffered any injustice, as they were under 
 no necessity of accepting benefices contrary to their con- 
 science, and if their scruples arose afterwards, they had it 
 always in their power to quit them ; and that every man 
 now, according to the prayer of the petition, was at liberty 
 to interpret the Scriptures for his own private use ; but 
 that his being authorized to do so for others, contrary to 
 their inclination, was a matter of a very different nature. 
 
 " Many gentlemen who did not think the difference of 
 opinion with respect to the Articles, a matter simply in 
 itself of any great consequence, opposed the motion, merely 
 because they would not give any opportunity of increasing 
 our civil dissensions, by lighting up the more dangerous 
 flames of religious controversy. The House in general 
 seemed to be of opinion, that the professors of law and 
 physic being bound in matter of subscription, was a matter 
 of little concern to the public, and it seemed to be wished 
 that the Universities would grant them relief in that respect, 
 as well as to the young students at the time of matricula- 
 tion. The gentlemen in opposition were divided upon this 
 question ; many of them supported it, and others were now 
 seen, upon the same side with administration, and with 
 a great majority ; two situations which were not often 
 presented. The numbers were upon the division, 71 for, 
 and 217 against the motion."
 
 107 
 
 The Petition itself was as follows : — 
 
 " Copy of the Petition of the Clergy, (&c., relative to the 
 Suhscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles, offered on 
 Thursday, the Qth of February, to the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 To the Honourable the Commons of Great Britain, in 
 
 Parliament assembled. 
 The humble Petition of certain of the Clergy of the Church 
 
 of England, and of certain of the two Professions of 
 
 Civil Law and Physic, and others, whose names are 
 
 hereunto subscribed, 
 
 Sheweth, 
 
 That your petitioners apprehend themselves to have certain 
 rights and privileges which they hold of God only, and 
 which are subject to His authority alone. That of this 
 kind is the free exercise of their own reason and judgment, 
 whereby they have been brought to, and confirmed in, the 
 belief of the Christian religion, as it is contained in the 
 Holy Scriptures. That they esteem it a great blessing to 
 live under a constitution, which, in its original principles, 
 ensures to them the full and free profession of their faith, 
 having asserted the authority and sufficiency of Holy 
 Scriptures in — ' All things necessary to salvation ; so that 
 whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, 
 is not to be required of any man that it should be believed 
 as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or neces- 
 sary to salvation.' That your petitioners do conceive that 
 they have a natural right, and are also warranted by those 
 original principles of the reformation from Popery, on 
 which the Church of England is constituted, to judge in 
 searching the Scriptures each man for himself, what may 
 or may not be proved thereby. That they find themselves, 
 however, in a great measure precluded the enjoyment of
 
 108 
 
 this invaluable privilege by the laws relating to subscrip- 
 tion ; wliereby your petitioners are required to acknowledge 
 certain articles and confessions of faith and doctrine, drawn 
 up by fallible men, to be all and every of them agreeable 
 to the said Scriptures. Your petitioners therefore pray, 
 that they may be relieved from such an imposition upon 
 their judgment, and be restored to their undoubted right 
 as Protestants of interpreting Scripture for themselves, 
 without being bound by any human exphcations thereof, 
 or required to acknowledge, by subscription or declaration, 
 the truth of any formulary of religious faith and doctrine 
 whatsoever, beside Holy Scripture itself 
 
 " That your petitioners not only are themselves aggrieved 
 by subscription, as now required (which they cannot but 
 consider as an encroachment on their rights, competent to 
 them both as men and as members of a Protestant esta- 
 blishment), but with much grief and concern apprehend it 
 to be a great hindrance to the spreading of Christ's true 
 religion : As it tends to preclude, at least to discourage, 
 further inquiry into the true sense of Scripture, to divide 
 communions, and cause mutual dislike between fellow- 
 Protestants : As it gives a handle to unbelievers to re- 
 proach and vilify the Clergy, by representing them (when 
 they observe their diversity of opinion touching tliose very 
 Articles which were agreed upon for the sake of avoiding 
 the diversities of opinion) as guilty of prevarication, and of 
 accommodating their faith to lucrative views, or political 
 considerations : As it affords to Papists, and others dis- 
 affected to our religious establishments, occasion to reflect 
 upon it as inconsistently framed, admitting and authorizing 
 doubtful and precarious doctrines, at the same time that 
 Holy Scripture alone is acknowledged to be certain, and 
 sufiicient for salvation : As it tends (and the evil daily 
 increases) unhappily to divide the Clergy of the Establish- 
 ment themselves, subjecting one part thereof, who assert
 
 109 
 
 but their Protestant privilege to question every human 
 doctrine, and bring it to the test of Scripture, to be reviled, 
 as well from the pulpit as the press, by another part, who 
 seem to judge the Articles they have subscribed to be 
 of equal authority with the Holy Scripture itself: And, 
 lastly, As it occasions scruples and embarrassments of con- 
 science to thoughtful and worthy persons in regard to 
 entrance into the ministry, or cheerful continuance in the 
 exercise of it. 
 
 " That the clerical part of your petitioners, upon whom 
 it is peculiarly incumbent, and who are more immediately 
 appointed by the State, to maintain and defend the truth 
 as it is in Jesus, do find themselves under a great restraint 
 in their endeavours herein, by being obliged to join issue 
 with the adversaries of revelation, in supposing the one 
 true sense of Scripture to be expressed in the present 
 established system of faith, or else to incur the reproach 
 of having departed from their subscriptions, the suspicion 
 of insincerity, and the repute of being ill-affected to the 
 Church ; whereby their comfort and usefulness among 
 their respective flocks, as well as their success against the 
 adversaries of our common Christianity, are greatly ob- 
 structed. 
 
 " That such of your petitioners as have been educated 
 with a view to the several professions of civil law and 
 physic, cannot but think it a great hardship to be obliged 
 (as are all in one of the Universities, even at their first 
 admission or matriculation, and at an age so immature for 
 disquisitions and decisions of such moment) to subscribe 
 their unfeigned assent to a variety of theological propo- 
 sitions, concerning which their private opinions can be of 
 no consequence to the public, in order to entitle them to 
 academical degrees in those faculties ; more especially as 
 the course of their studies, and attention to their practice 
 respectively, afford them neither the ineans nor the leisure
 
 110 
 
 to examine whether and how far such propositions do agree 
 with the word of God. 
 
 " That certain of your petitioners have reason to lament, 
 not only their own, but the too probable misfortune of 
 their sons, who, at an age before the habit of reflection can 
 be formed, or their judgment matured, must, if the present 
 mode of subscription remains, be irrecoverably bound down 
 in points of the highest consequence, to the tenets of ages 
 less informed than their own. 
 
 " That, whereas the first of the three Articles, enjoined 
 by the Thirty-sixth Canon of the Church of England to be 
 subscribed, contains a recognition of his Majesty's supre- 
 macy in all causes ecclesiastical and civil, your petitioners 
 humbly presume, that every security, proposed by sub- 
 scription to the said Article, is fully and effectually pro- 
 vided for by the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, pre- 
 scribed to be taken by every Deacon and Priest at their 
 ordination, and by every Graduate in both Universities. 
 Your petitioners, nevertheless, are ready and willing to 
 give any further testimony which may be thought expe- 
 dient of their affection for his Majesty's person and 
 government, of their attachment and dutiful submission in 
 Church and State, of their abhorrence of the imchristian 
 spirit of Popery, and of all those maxims of the Church of 
 Rome which tend to enslave the consciences, or to under- 
 mine the civil or religious liberty, of a free Protestant 
 people. 
 
 " Your petitioners, in consideration of the premises, do 
 now humbly supplicate this Honourable House, in 
 hope of being relieved from an obligation so in- 
 congruous with the right of private judgment, so 
 pregnant with danger to true religion, and so pro- 
 ductive of distress to many pious and conscientious 
 men and useful subjects of the State ; and in that
 
 Ill 
 
 hope look up for redress, and humbly submit their 
 cause, under God, to the wisdom and justice of a 
 British Parliament and the piety of a Protestant 
 King. 
 
 " And your petitioners shall ever pray, &c. 
 
 " Sir William Meredith moved to bring up the above 
 petition ; but Sir Eoger Newdigate objected to the receiving 
 of it, as it came from persons who had done that which 
 they represented to be wrong, and which they wanted to 
 undo. Lord John Cavendish wished the petition to be 
 brought up and examined with temper. Lord North ob- 
 jected to it, as tending to revive the flames of ecclesiastical 
 controversy ; and wished never in that House to proceed 
 to the discussion of orthodoxy. On a division it was 
 rejected; Yeas 71. Nays 217." 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 The Subscriptions made hy the Clergy, and the avihority 
 by which they are enjoined. 
 
 I. At ordination : 
 
 1. Subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, enjoined by 
 the Act 13 Eliz. c. 12, sec. 5. 
 
 2. Subscription to the three Articles of the 36th Canon, 
 relating (1) to the Queen's Supremacy, (2) to the Book of 
 Common Prayer, (3) to the Thirty-nine Articles. 
 
 This subscription is made upon the authority of the 
 Canon itself, passed in 1603. 
 
 The first of these is not ordered to be made in any 
 special form ; the second is to be made in the words—
 
 112 
 
 " I do willingly and tx animo subscribe to the three Articles above men- 
 tioned, and to all things that are contained in them." 
 
 The common practice, however, is to put them together 
 
 in the following form : — 
 
 ■' I do willingly and from my heart subscribe to the Thirty-nine 
 
 Articles of Religion of the United Church of England and Ireland, and 
 to the three Articles of the Thirty-sixth Canon, and to all things that are 
 contained in them." 
 
 The three Articles of the Canon are as follmxs : — 
 
 " 1. That the Queen's Majesty, under God, is the only b„pi eme Governor 
 of this Realm, and of all other Her Highness's Dominions and Countries, 
 as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal; and 
 that no foreign Prince, Prelate, State, or Potentate, hath or ought to have 
 any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authoritj-, ecclesias- 
 tical or spiritual, within Her Majesty's said Realms, Dominions, and 
 Countries. 
 
 "2. That the Book of Common Prayer, and of Ordeiing of Bishops, Priests, 
 and Deacons, contain eth in it nothing contrary to the Word of God, and 
 that it may lawfully so be used, and that he himself will use the form in 
 the said Book prescribed, in public Prayer and administi-ation of the 
 Sacraments, and none other. 
 
 " 3. That he alloweth the Book of Articles of Religion, agreed upon by 
 the Archbishops and Bishops of both Provinces and the whole Clergy, in 
 the Convocation holden at London in the Year of our Lord One Thousand 
 Five Hundred and Sixty-two ; and that he acknowledgeth all and every 
 the Articles therein contained, being in number Nine and Thirty, besides 
 the Ratification, to be agreeable to the Word of God." 
 
 The words of the Act 13 Eliz. c. 12, sec. 5, are as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 " And that none shall be made minister or admitted to preach or ad- 
 minister the sacraments . . . nor shall be admitted to the order of deacon 
 or ministry unless he shall first subscribe to the said Articles." 
 
 The declaration made on admission to Priest's is the 
 same as that on admission to Deacon's Orders. 
 
 II. On being licensed to a curacy, the same subscription 
 is made as on ordination, with the addition of the words, 
 
 " I do declare that I will conform to the Liturgy of the Church of 
 England as it is now by law established."
 
 113 
 
 These words are also subscribed to separately, and the 
 Bishop's certificate that they have been subscribed to is 
 read in church within three months after the license. 
 
 This form is prescribed by the Act of Uniformity, 
 13 Chas. II. c. 4, sect. 9, in a declaration mainly directed 
 against rebellion and the Solemn League and Covenant, all 
 of wliich, except the words relating to the Liturgy, have 
 been since repealed. It is to be made by every person in 
 holy orders "who may be incumbent or have possession of 
 any deanery, canonry, prebend, parsonage, vicarage, or any 
 other ecclesiastical dignity or promotion, or of any curate's 
 place, lecture, or school." 
 
 The words of the Act requiring this declaration to be 
 subscribed and read publicly (sections 10 and 12) are as 
 follows : — 
 
 " The said declaration or acknowledgment shall be sxibscribed before the 
 respective Archbishop, Bishop, or Ordinary of the Diocese by every other 
 person " {i.e. other than teachers in Universities) " hereby enjoined to sub- 
 scribe the same." " And after such subscription made, every such 
 Parson, Vicar, Ctirate, and Lecturer shall procure a certificate under the 
 hand and seal of the i-espective Ai'chbishop, Bishop, or Ordinary of the 
 Diocese (who are hereby enjoined and required upon demand to ,make and 
 deliver the same), and shall publicly and openly read the same, together 
 with the declaration or acknowledgment aforesaid, upon some Lord's Day 
 within three months then next following in his parish church where he 
 is to ofl&ciate, in the presence of the congregation there assembled, in the 
 time of Divine service." 
 
 III. At institution to a benefice, the person to be 
 admitted makes before the bishop the same declaration as 
 a licensed curate. 
 
 The subscription to the Articles rests upon the Act 
 13 Eliz. c. 12, sect. 3, the words of which are as follows : — 
 
 " And that no person shall hereafter be admitted to any benefice with 
 cure, except he . . . shall first have subscribed the said Articles in presence 
 of the Ordinary, and publicly read the same in the Parish Church of that 
 benefice, with declaration of his unfeigned asent to the same." 
 
 At reading-in, the incumbent reads the Morning and 
 
 I
 
 114 
 
 Evening Prayers ; and after Evening Prayers professes his 
 assent to the use of the Book of Common Prayer. He 
 also reads the Thirty-nine Articles, and declares his con- 
 sent to them. 
 
 The reading of the Articles is enjoined by the Act 
 13 Eliz. c. 12, sect. 3. ISTo form of expressing assent is 
 prescribed. 
 
 The reading of the Liturgy and the declaration of assent 
 is prescribed by the Act of Uniformity of 1 662, 13 Chas. II. 
 c. 4, sects. 2 and 4. Sect. 4 enacts that : — 
 
 " Every person who shall be hei'cafter presented or collated, or put into 
 any Ecclesiastical benefice or promotion within this realm of England, and 
 places aforesaid, shall in the church, chapel, or place of public worship 
 belonging to his said benefice or promotion, within two months next after 
 that he shall be in actual possession of the said Ecclesiastical benefice or 
 promotion, upon some Lord's-day, openly, publicly, and solemnly read the 
 Morning and Evening Prayers appointed to be read by and according to 
 the said Book of Common Prayer, at the times thereby appointed ; and 
 after such reading thereof, shall, openly and publicly before the congrega- 
 tion then assembled, declare his unfeigned assent and consent to the use 
 of ail things therein contained and prescribed according to the form 
 appointed. " 
 
 And the form is given in sect. 2 : — 
 
 "... shall declare his unfeigned assent and consent to the use of all 
 things in the said booli contained and prescribed, in these words and no 
 other : — I do here declare my unfeigned assent and consent to all and 
 everthing contained and prescribed in and by the book, intitled the Book 
 of Common Prayer, and administration of the Sacraments, and other rites 
 and ceremonies of the Church, according to the use of the Church of 
 England ; together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, pointed as they 
 are to be sung or said in churches : and the form and manner of making, 
 ordaining, and consecrating of bishops, priests, and deacons."
 
 APPENDIX D. 
 
 A LIST OF PAROCHIAL DISTRICTS IN THE DIOCESE OF 
 LONDON, CONTAINING A POPULATION OF 10,000 AND 
 UPWARDS. 
 
 Note. — Some of these Parishes contain more than one Church or licensed 
 place of worshi}} ; hut, after deducting a population proportionate to the 
 number aiul size of the extra Churches, the remainder is iqnvards of the 
 number specified for the Class in tchich Uiey are pilaced. 
 
 The numbers are taken from the Returns made by the Clergy, and the 
 Census 0/I86I. 
 
 Class A contains more than 30,000 people. 
 Class B „ between 20,000 and 30,000. 
 
 Class C „ „ 15,000 „ 20,000. 
 
 Class D „ „ 10,000 „ 15,000. 
 
 No. of Clergy 
 
 in the Parish 
 
 or District. 
 
 Class A. 
 
 Population. 
 
 St. Peter, Walworth 32,000 
 
 St. Dunstan, Stepney 30,000 
 
 St, Mary, Haggerstone . " 38,000 
 
 Class B.i 
 
 St. James, Clerkenwell 26,400 
 
 St. Luke, Chelsea 20,000 
 
 St. Luke, Old Street 24,000 
 
 Christ Church, Marylebone .... 30,000 
 
 St. John, Hoxton 24,800 
 
 St. Giles in the Fields 25,000 
 
 Bromley, St. Leonard 24,062 
 
 Woolwich, St. Mary 41,693 
 
 Greenwich 39,000 
 
 Plumstead 25,000 
 
 St. George East 30,000 
 
 ^ The Return from Poplar, which was not made in time to be entered, 
 gives 33,000, with two Places of Worship, and four Clergy.
 
 116 
 
 Class C. 
 
 Population. 
 
 Holy Trinity, Paddiugton 16,500 
 
 St. Stephen, Camden Town .... 10,000 
 
 St. John, Fitzroy Square 18,000 
 
 Holy Trinity, Haverstock Hill . . . 16,800 
 
 Holy Trinity, Southwark 17,700 
 
 St. Mary, Newington 15,000 
 
 South Hackney ' 15,000 
 
 All Saints, Islington 17,500 
 
 St. Andrew, Holboru 16,000 
 
 Spitalfields. 15,000 
 
 St. Mary, Whitechapel 15,500 
 
 St. Anne, Limehouse 15,600 
 
 St. Peter, Stepney 15,000 
 
 St. Philip, Stepney 15,000 
 
 No. of Clergy 
 
 in the Parish 
 
 or District. 
 
 . 3 
 
 . 2 
 
 . 4 
 
 . 3 
 
 . 2 
 
 . 2 
 
 . 2 
 
 . 3 
 
 . 5 
 
 . 4 
 
 . 3 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 . 2 
 
 Class I). 
 
 St. George, Bloomsbury 17,392 ... 9 
 
 St. James, Hatcham 10,000 ... 3 
 
 Trinity, Brompton 10,000 ... 3 
 
 St. John, Notting Hill 12,000 ... 5 
 
 St. George, Hanover Square .... 24,000 . . .17 
 
 St. Gabriel, Pimlico 16,000 ... 4 
 
 St. Michael, Chester Square .... 10,870 ... 4 
 
 St. Paul, Knightsbridge 14,120 ... 8 
 
 St. Peter, Pimlico 15,000 ... 6 
 
 St. Martin-in-the-Fields 16,000 ... 7 
 
 St. Clement Dane's 16,000 ... 5 
 
 St. Anne, Soho 13,000 ... 4 
 
 St. Marylebone 26,252 ... 16 
 
 St. Stephen, Marylebone 10,000 ... 2
 
 117 
 
 Populaticin. 
 
 St. Mary, Bryanstone Square , . . . 27,678 
 
 Holy Trinity, Marylebone ..... 14,000 
 
 St. Mary, Paddington , 10,000 
 
 St. Pancras 13,000 
 
 Old St. Pancras 11,300 
 
 Kentish Town 12,000 
 
 St. Peter, Regent Square . . . . . 10,666 
 
 St. James, Hampstead Road .... 14,000 
 
 St. Luke, King's Cross 10,000 
 
 St. Andrew, Haverstock Hill . . . . 11,000 
 
 St. James, Piccadilly 12,504 
 
 St. Paul, Walworth 12,000 
 
 St. John, Walworth 10,000 
 
 St. Botolph, Aldgate 14,500 
 
 St. John, Stratford 12,764 
 
 St. Mary, Plaistow 11,000 
 
 West Hackney 13,000 
 
 St. Philip, Dalston 10,244 
 
 St. Peter, Islington 13,509 
 
 St. Paul, Ball's Pond 12,000 
 
 St. Andrew, Ishngton 15,000 
 
 St. Leonard, Shoreditch 15,000 
 
 Christ Church, Hoxton 14,500 
 
 Holy Trinity, Hoxton 10,800 
 
 St. Barnabas, King Square .... 10,000 
 
 St. Thomas, Charter House .... 10,000 
 
 St. Mark, Clerkenwell ...... 10,000 
 
 Holy Trinity, Gray's Inn Lane . , . 13,560 
 
 St. Mark, Whitechapel 15,300 
 
 St. Matthew, Bethnal Green .... 14,000 
 
 St. Andrew, Bethnal Green .... 10,000 
 
 St. Bartholomew, Bethnal Green. . . 10,000 
 
 St. John, Bethnal Green 10,000 
 
 St. Jude, Bethnal Green 14,000 
 
 St. Matthias, Bethnal Green .... 10,000 
 
 St. Philip, Bethnal Green 14,000 
 
 No. of Clergy 
 
 in the Parish 
 
 or District. 
 
 . 7 
 
 . 6 
 
 . 3 
 
 . 5 
 
 . 2 
 
 • 2 I 
 . 2 
 . 2 
 . 4 
 . 2 
 . 5 
 . 2 
 
 • 2 ^ 
 , 3 
 . 2 
 . 2
 
 118 
 
 St. Thomas, Stepuey . . . 
 Holy Trinity, Stepuey . . . 
 All Saints, Spicer Street 
 Christ Church, Watney Street 
 
 Population. 
 
 14,000 
 10,478 
 11,000 
 13.145 
 
 No. of Clergy 
 
 ill the Parish 
 
 or District. 
 
 . 2 
 
 In all the Parishes of Class A together there are 100,000 
 persons, with 11 Clergy, or 1 to every 9,100 persons. 
 
 In all the Parishes of Class B together there az-e 309,955 
 persons, with 53 Clergy, or 1 to every 5,850 persons. 
 
 In all the Parishes of Class C together there are 224,000 
 persons, with 39 Clergy, or 1 to every 5,760 persons. 
 
 In all the Parishes of Class D together there are 710,582 
 persons, with 198 Clergy, or 1 to every 3,590 persons. 
 
 The numbers are taken from the Census of 1861. 
 
 Country Parishes under 400. 
 
 Perivale 48^ 
 
 Littleton 110 
 
 Cowley 370 
 
 Ickenham 360 
 
 City Parishes under 600. 
 
 Allhallows, Bread Street 122 
 
 Allhallows, Lombard Street ......... 415 
 
 Allhallows, Staining 358 
 
 St. Anne and Agnes 362 
 
 St. Antholin 263 
 
 St. Bene't, Graceohurch 278 
 
 1 Returned by the Incumbent as hating less tban 20 inhabitanta. 
 There seems to be some mistake in tlie Census,
 
 19 
 
 St. Botolph, Billingsgate 222 
 
 St. Catharine Coleman 444 
 
 St. Clement, Eastcheap 198 
 
 St. Diouis Backchurch 534 
 
 St. Edmnnd-the-King 501 
 
 St. James, Garlick Hythe 461 
 
 St. Lawrence, Old Jewry 535 
 
 St. Margaret, Lothbury 164 
 
 St. Martin Outwich 165 
 
 St. Mary, Abchurch 264 
 
 St. Mary, Aldermary 444 
 
 St. Mary, Aldermanbury 443 
 
 St. Mary-le-Bow 317 
 
 St. Mary Woolnoth 291 
 
 St. Matthew, Friday Street 167 
 
 St. Michael, Bassishaw 501 
 
 St. Michael, Cornhill . 371 
 
 St. Michael, Wood Street 214 
 
 St. Michael Royal 400 
 
 St. Mildred, Bread Street 86 
 
 St. Mildred, Poultry 257 
 
 St. Olave, Jewry 328 
 
 St. Stephen, Walbrook 300 
 
 St. Swithin 459 
 
 St. Vedast, Foster Lane 352 
 
 R. CLAV, SON, ANl) TAVI.OK, PRINTEIIS, liliEAD STKEKT HII.L.
 
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