^3<i
 
 L I E) R.ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVLRSITY 
 
 or ILLINOIS
 
 ^/ 
 
 ^ 
 
 L 
 
 a^MA/h 
 
 " THE STATE IN ITS RELATIONS WITI^ 
 THE CHURCH:" 
 
 A PAPEE EEPEINTED FEOM THE "BEITISH CEITIC," 
 OCTOBEE, 1839. 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 EEV. JOHN KEBLE, M.A. 
 
 VICAR OF HURSLEY. 
 
 WITH A PEEFACE BY THE REV. H. P. LIDDON, 
 
 JAMES PARKER AND CO, 
 
 1869.
 
 PREFACE, 
 
 "TjUIlING the past year many Churchmen have asked the 
 question, If Mr. Keble were still among us, what would 
 he say about the proposed Disestablishment of the Irish 
 Church ? 
 
 That question has received an answer which has neces- 
 sarily commanded attention. We have been told that "Mr. 
 Keble acknowledged the justice of disestablishing the Irish 
 Church *^." For this assertion the highest authority can be 
 produced ^ But it has been represented to the present 
 writer that such an assertion is, in its naked form, too un- 
 qualified to convey a true impression of Mr. Keble's general 
 mind on the subject, or rather, however undesignedly, not 
 to convey an untrue one. Accordingly the following Essay 
 is reprinted, not as contradicting but as supplementing and 
 balancing the opinion referred to ; as furnishing some cau- 
 tions and qualifications with which any such broad state- 
 ment would assuredly have been accompanied, at the least, 
 in the speaker's mind; and, in short, as filling up a back- 
 ground, the moral and religious colouring of which shews 
 that with Mr. Keble the same formula would have borne 
 a somewhat difi*erent meaning from that which would be 
 connected with it in ordinary political language. 
 
 Not that this Essay is altogether, at first sight, calculated 
 
 » "A Chapter of Autobiography. By the Right Hon. W. E. Gladsfone,'* 
 p. 52, note J. 
 
 t> Cf. " A Memoir of the late Rev. John Keble, M.A., by the Right Hon. Sir 
 J. T. Coleridge, D.C.L." (Oxford : Parker, 1869), p. 518. Describing his last 
 interview with Mr. Keble, Dr. Newman writes : " Mr. Gladstone's rejection at 
 Oxford was talked of, and I said that I really thought that had 1 been still 
 a member of the University, I must have voted against him, because he was 
 giving up the Irish Establishment. On this Keble gave me one of his re- 
 markable looks, so earnest and so sweet, came close to me, and whispered in 
 my ear, (I cannot recollect the exact words, but I took them to be,) * And is 
 not that just ?' "
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 to secure such an object. In the first place it is a review. 
 As it happens, it is a review of that work of Mr. Gladstone's 
 earlier years which has of late been quarried so largely 
 with a view to furnishing ad hominem arguments, such as 
 Mr. Keble certainly would not have employed, against its 
 distinguished author. As a reviewer, Mr. Keble deals with 
 his subject incidentally, partially, indirectly; it is not his 
 business to observe the proportions of formal and exhaustive 
 discussion; he contents himself with examining particular 
 features of the book before him, which invite, in his judg- 
 ment, some measured criticism, and much earnest, nay 
 enthusiastic, approval. This should be borne in mind, in 
 order to prevent disappointment. From the nature and 
 necessity of the case, the reader is presented only with 
 a fragment of the writer's mind on a very large subject ; 
 and this moreover in that indirect form which belongs to 
 the discussion, not of a subject in itself, but of the opinions 
 of others about it. Had Mr. Keble been writing a treatise 
 on such a matter, it is unnecessary to say that he would 
 have said much which is unsaid here; while, it is at least 
 possible, that in some few and unimportant particulars he 
 would have been led to express himself differently. 
 
 In the second place, when the revered author of this 
 review was called to his rest, more than a quarter of a cen- 
 tury had already passed since its appearance in the then 
 brilliant pages of the " British Critic ^." It is natural to 
 enquire whether, during that long series of anxious years, 
 the opinions of so active a mind on a subject of such in- 
 tricacy and difficulty may not have undergone, did not 
 undergo, some important modifications. 
 
 Now, apart from the particular expression of opinion 
 which has been already referred to, there is good reason 
 for believing, that this Essay represents, in the main, Mr. 
 Keble's latest opinions on the subject which it discusses. 
 For to the last he was deeply sensible of the force and 
 soundness of arguments which, abstractedly, are to be 9^^ 
 
 = It will be found in the number for October, 1839. ^ UIUC ^ 
 
 \ $'
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 alleged in support of the establishment of the Church by 
 a Christian nation. But the readers of this paper will re- 
 mark its concluding pages, and especially its concluding 
 paragraphs. Mr. Keble, it is plain, was already afraid of 
 an enthusiasm for establishments, which should lose sight 
 of the rights and sacredness of the truth which is esta- 
 blished. He was nearer, much nearer, to Mr. Gladstone's 
 present position on this subject than was Mr. Gladstone 
 himself. " While we deprecate,'^ he says, " as earnestly as 
 the author, or any of those who think with him, the great 
 national sin of rejecting the Church, there is one thing we 
 are free to confess, which appears to us yet more to be 
 dreaded, and that is, the Church herself being induced, by 
 fear of public evil, or any other cause, to forego any of her 
 sacred principles for the sake of retaining her connection, 
 real or nominal, with the State.'' And, as the years passed 
 on, events combined to increase his sense of the imminence 
 and greatness of this "more dreaded" danger. When the 
 Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, overruling the 
 decisions of the Church's own courts, decided as it did, first 
 in the Gorham case, and later in that of the " Essays and 
 Reviews," Mr.Keble felt that it was the principle of Esta- 
 blishments, under our existing circumstances, that was really 
 upon its trial. He used often in this sense to say that we 
 should have soon to choose between our faith and our po- 
 sition. He did not of course suppose for one moment that 
 any judgment of a court of civilians, however highly placed, 
 or individually accomplished, upon a question of religious 
 truth, could really mould the faith or govern the conscience 
 of loyal and well-informed members of the Church of God. 
 But he dreaded acquiescence in the continued existence and 
 activity of such a court, as involving in fact " a sinful neg- 
 lect of our Lord's will and object in instituting the ministry 
 of His Church." How earnestly he took part in the move- 
 ment which followed the " Essay and Review" decision, and 
 which, alas ! led to no results, was known to all who knew 
 anything of his mind and occupations. " We never ought
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 to rest/' he said more than once, " until that unhappy court 
 is either reconstituted or abolished." 
 
 In the case of Dr. Colenso, Mr. Keble's anxieties respect- 
 ing the spiritual dangers of Establishment "at any price" 
 received a new impulse. Long before the trial and depo- 
 sition of Dr. Colenso by the Episcopate of South Africa, Mr. 
 Keble had maintained that some similar measure was neces- 
 sary, if the Church was still to bear her witness to Christ. 
 " I think I know," he said sharply on one occasion, " how 
 St. Athanasius would have acted in this matter." It might 
 have been supposed that an unestablished Church, like that 
 in South Africa, would have been allowed to vindicate the 
 truth of Holy Scripture by rejecting a pastor who denied 
 it, without encountering let or hinderance on the part of the 
 civil power. But experience has shewn that the disadvan- 
 tages of an Establishment may have a wider range of inci- 
 dence than its blessings ; and the South African Church, 
 herself unestablished, has paid dearly for a connection, 
 which should have been only a source of spiritual life and 
 strength, with the parent and Established Church of Eng- 
 land. It is unnecessary to repeat in detail a sad story, 
 the particulars of which are still fresh in the wounded 
 hearts of Churchmen. Suffice it to say that, with Mr. Keble 
 as with many others, the South African controversy did 
 its work, as he said, " its providential work," in reminding 
 us that worse evils may threaten modern Churches even than 
 total dis-establishment. In the summer of 1865, in private 
 conversation, he asked a friend, which of the colonial bishops, 
 in his opinion, had done most for the Church in our day. 
 On receiving an answer, he paused and said, " No ; I can- 
 not agree. If you ask me, I say, the Bishop of Cape Town. 
 He seems to me to be the noblest, the greatest, taken alto- 
 gether; — and, depend upon it, he is teaching us a lesson 
 which we shall before very long have to apply here at home." 
 
 It is in the light of these convictions that Mr. Keble's 
 saying, to which Mr. Gladstone has alluded, must probably 
 be set, in order to be duly estimated. Although it fell from
 
 PREFACE. VU 
 
 him while he was talking intimately to a friend, with whom 
 it was natural to make the most of all possible points of 
 sympathy, and even then in an interrogative form, which 
 was characteristic of his own self distrust ; it represented, 
 we cannot doubt, a serious moral conviction, based upon 
 an attentive consideration of Irish difficulties, and more 
 particularly of those which arise from the religious convic- 
 tions of the mass of the Irish people. Such consideration, 
 indeed, he was too religiously just to have refused in any 
 case ; but to give it may have been all the easier, if he felt 
 that "justice^' (whatever that inclusive term may exactly 
 mean) could be dealt out to the majority of Irishmen, with- 
 out inflicting an unmitigated injustice on the minority ; 
 unless, indeed, it is unjust to deprive a not unwilling man of 
 a position of outward honour, really fraught with peril to his 
 health and life'^. That the majority of the Irish bishops and 
 clergy would have taken Mr. Keble's later view of the rela^ 
 tive advantages and disadvantages of Church establishments 
 in our own day, was not perhaps to have been assumed 
 without enquiry ; but the expressions in question, as it ap- 
 pears to the present writer, are in part to be interpreted 
 by the supposition, certainly not dishonourable to them- 
 selves, of their doing so. 
 
 It will be observed that Mr. Keble says nothing about dis- 
 endowment ; a measure which, in some degree, it is pre- 
 sumed, must accompany the dis-establishment of the Irish 
 Church. What he would have thought of a transfer of some 
 portion of the Irish Church property to the pastors of the 
 majority of the Irish people, cannot now be affirmed with 
 any certainty ; but it is certain that he would have regarded 
 any application of such property to purposes of secular edu- 
 cation, or of non-religious philanthropy, as a distinct sin on 
 
 ^ The writer does not forget that in Ireland the Final Court of Appeal is the 
 old Court of Delegates, and not the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. 
 But even if the composition of the Court of Delegates were religiously consistent 
 with the preamble of the 24 Henry VIII., its principles and decisions would, 
 almost inevitably, be governed by those of the Judicial Committee, not less en- 
 tirely than are those of the Arches Court of Canterbury.
 
 VIU PREFACE. 
 
 the part of the country against Almighty God, to Whose 
 service it had been devoted. And those who knew him best 
 can best imagine what he would have thought and said of 
 a proposal, with which Mr. Gladstone most assuredly is not 
 to be credited; — the proposal, I mean, to strip the Irish 
 Church of her endowments with one hand, while perpetuat- 
 ing State-courts and State-interference in her concerns with 
 the other ; — the cruel proposal to turn her out in her old 
 age, famished and barefooted, into the cold ; and withal, 
 in a spirit of jealous suspicion, worthy of the narrowest and 
 least religious species of Erastianisra, to load her enfeebled 
 limbs with rusty irons that were forged by extinct despot- 
 isms, lest, forsooth, while she is providing herself with the 
 barest necessaries of life, she should become '^dangerous" 
 to the spiritual liberties of her despoilers. 
 
 If Churchmen state their principles strongly, they are not 
 therefore forgetful of the difficulties of statesmen who have 
 to recognise, as best they may, a vast variety of conflicting 
 interests, but who do in their hearts desire, as they under- 
 stand it, the well-being and the honour of the Kingdom of 
 Christ. And if the accompanying paper leaves untouched 
 much of the ground which has been traversed so generally 
 in the present controversies, it holds up to view, and that very 
 distinctly, some considerations by which, in the judgment of 
 earnest men, such controversies ought, in whatever propor- 
 tions, to be controlled ; and thus it raises the reader for the 
 time being into a higher atmosphere, upon which the acri- 
 monies and personalities of ordinary debate cannot intrude, 
 and in which truths are of more account than men, and 
 loyalty to light than fear of consequences. This, indeed, 
 alone might justify its republication ; since in any case it is 
 good to sit at the feet of a teacher who illustrates a spirit 
 and enforces principles which should govern a more ex- 
 tended discussion than his own. 
 
 H. P. LiDDON. 
 
 Christ Church, 
 Febncart/ Wv, 1869. . , , .
 
 THE STATE IN ITS EELATIONS 
 WITH THE CHUKCH*. 
 
 "TF we may, without irreverence, form a conjecture on 
 -*- the providential tendency of things as we see them, we 
 should be inclined to say, that in the turn which events 
 have been taking among us, often most contrary to human 
 expectation, for the last ten or eleven years, we may perhaps 
 discern symptoms of two main overruling purposes, such as 
 may hereafter serve as a key to not the least intricate of the 
 chapters of English history. Ever since the passing of the 
 Catholic Relief Bill, perhaps we might say ever since the 
 repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, the stream of events 
 seems to have tended on the one hand to the permanent 
 elevation of the enemies of the Church in the State, on the 
 other hand to the preservation, in spite of them, of her sub- 
 stance and framework, as well as to the revival of her spirit 
 among us. How many times during this long struggle has 
 it appeared, that, according to all political calculation, the 
 Conservative party must be on the point of triumphing, and 
 as often some unexpected event, some caprice or accident, 
 which could not be reckoned upon, has disconcerted all 
 man's expectations, and left us just where we were, except- 
 ing, of course, the gradual power >which the movement cannot 
 but acquire from its continuance. On the other hand, have 
 we not repeatedly seen measures which even the defenders 
 of order, united more or less with its disturbers in patron- 
 izing, unaccountably lingering and impeded when there was 
 hardly a minority to skirmish with them, and failing and 
 postponed session after session by some defect in form, or 
 
 » "The State in its Relations with the Church. By W. E. Gladstone, Esq., 
 Student of Christ Church, and M.P. for Newark." Third Edition. (London : 
 Murray, 1839.) 
 
 B
 
 2 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 other inexplicable forgetful ness? The Cathedral Bill, now 
 three years old, yet hardly born, will occur to every one ; 
 and we may mention the bill for admitting Dissenters to the 
 Universities, the abolition of the See of Sodor and Man, the 
 various Education schemes, and, even as we write, we hope 
 we may venture to add, the Church Discipline Bill. There 
 are circumstances in the history of each of these, which, 
 taken together, suggest the idea of a peculiar guardianship 
 over this part of Christ's household, exercised in a trying 
 and perplexing conjuncture to prevent us from inadvert- 
 ently betraying ourselves. May it be said, without pre- 
 sumption, that, conjoining them with the other series, the 
 two together seem to point to a high but trying and perilous 
 destiny, as probably reserved for the coming generation of 
 our Lord's faithful servants in this realm ? We may be mis- 
 taken; but the review of them seems to us to produce an 
 impression analogous to that which has been stated to result 
 from a certain cast of features, majestic yet melancholy, such 
 as those of King Charles I. : they lead, as we contemplate 
 them, in spite of ourselves, to anticipations of violence borne 
 with composure; they seem to bid us hope that our Lord 
 will still have a Church here, yet to warn us that its exist- 
 ence must be purchased by no slight privation and suffering. 
 
 Supposing anticipations somewhat like these to occupy 
 the mind of a thoughtful Churchman, he would probably 
 notice the appearance of such a work as Mr. Gladstone's as 
 a powerful confirmation both to his fears and hopes. Here 
 we have no village theorizer, no cloistered alarmist, but 
 a public man and a man of the world, a statesman of the 
 highest talent for business, an orator who commands the ear 
 of the House of Commons, so deeply impressed with the 
 perils of our Church's position at this raomeut, that he 
 makes time to develope and express his views, deep and 
 manifold, and brought out with serious labour, of the very 
 sacred nature of her connection with the State, if haply he 
 may lead any to think earnestly of it who have hitherto 
 treated it as a mere party question ; we find him writing 
 in a tone, not indeed of despondency, but of very deep and 
 serious alarm ; not as one who gave up the defence of a
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 3 
 
 place, but as one who thought the time was come for making 
 a last effort, and calling out those who would not shrink 
 from a forlorn hope. 
 
 " I know not/^ he says, " whether it be presumptuous to 
 say .... that the changes which have appeared, and which 
 are daily unfolding themselves, in connection with the move- 
 ment towards the overthrow of National Church Establish- 
 ments, seem as if they were gradually supplying what yet 
 remained void in thos3 fore-ordered dispensations of the 
 Deity towards man which are traced throughout the history 
 of this wayward world^." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " In combating the obstinate irreligion of the world, it is 
 something that the authentic permanent convictions of men 
 are declared, beyond dispute, to be with us by the legalized 
 existence and support of the fixed institutions of religion ; 
 but the conclusion towards which we are now led and driven, 
 threatened and cajoled, will reverse the whole of this bene- 
 ficial influence, and will throw it into the opposite direction, 
 to co-operate with the scoffer, the profligate, the unbelieving, 
 the indifferent, when it shall be told, amidst the exultation 
 of some and the tears of others, that there was a time when 
 the power of thrones and the paternal functions of governr 
 ment bore witness to the faith of Christ, and that the witr 
 ness is now withdrawn, and thus the truth emphatically 
 denied ^" 
 
 The cast of these sentences is evidently anything but saur 
 guine; and considering Mr. Gladstone's character and posi- 
 tion, we cannot but regard the simple fact of his allowing 
 himself in such forebodings as a striking lesson to the too 
 easy friends of Church and State, of whom there are still 
 a good many who shake their heads indeed abundantly at 
 each bad measure as it comes on, yet obstinately refuse to 
 contemplate, as a possible contingency, the result of the 
 whole, or anything else which would disturb the even tenor 
 of their Sundays and week-days, their summer tours, and 
 winter dining-parties. Surely it were well to look things in 
 the face, and be prepared with some notion what our own 
 
 ^ Chap. viii. 2. «= lb. 29. 
 
 b2
 
 4 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 duties would be in a case which has been pronounced on 
 such authority so far from impossible. 
 
 But further : we find also in Mr. Gladstone's undertaking, 
 warrant for the more consolatory part of our own anticipa- 
 tions. He states the more immediate occasion of his work to 
 be an apprehended co-operation of two very different classes 
 in the work of dissolving the Church Establishment. Having 
 mentioned Destructives of various sorts, he adds^,that "others 
 of a different stamp are beginning to view the connection 
 of Church and State with an eye of aversion or indif- 
 ference ; men attached to the State, but more affection- 
 ately and intimately cleaving to the Church, unwilling to 
 regard the two as in any sense having opposite interests, but 
 wearied, perhaps exasperated, at the injustice done of late 
 years, or rather during recent generations, by the temporal 
 to the spiritual body; injustice, inasmuch as the State has 
 too frequently perverted and abused the institutions of the 
 Church by unworthy patronage, has crippled or suppressed 
 her lawful powers, and has, lastly, when these same misdeeds 
 have raised a strong sentiment of disfavour against its ally, 
 evinced an inclination to make a separate peace and surren- 
 der her to the will of her adversaries. Such being the case, 
 we can hardly wonder, though we may lament it, that some 
 attached members of the Church are growing cool in their 
 approbation of the connection — " 
 
 We stop the quotation to demur to the next clause, 
 " under the influence of a nascent and unconscious resent- 
 ment :'' first, because the feeling in such cases is commonly, 
 we apprehend, far too vivid to be unconscious ; it gives 
 warning of itself, and puts men of high principles on their 
 guard very distinctly from the beginning : next, because it 
 is begging the question to assume that the scruples referred 
 to are matter of personal feeling, and not of conscientious 
 regard to rights and trusts ; and there are other considera- 
 tions to be presently mentioned. But we return to the im- 
 mediate purpose for which we were referring to these expres- 
 sions : they are consolatory so far as this, that they testify 
 to the existence of no inconsiderable body of men, so deeply 
 
 •^ Chap. i. § 2.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 5 
 
 rooted in right principles, that, instead of fearing lest they 
 should he tempted to compromise the Church itself for the 
 Establishment, sagacious observers are only alarmed lest 
 they too easily forego the advantages of the Establishment 
 for the Church's sake. So that, come what vi^ill, we may 
 hope, please God, to have a faithful remnant in our land ; 
 and that surely is as much as in any case attentive readers 
 of Church history could well dare expect. 
 
 But Mr. Gladstone's publication is also most encouraging 
 in another way \ from the earnest it gives us that even in the 
 high places of the State there are those who never will for- 
 sake the City of God, and still more from the rare and noble 
 specimen which it exhibits of what sound religious (in which 
 term we include sound ecclesiastical) principles can do for 
 a person in the most dangerous walks of life; how neither 
 political nor intellectual importance can mar the freshness, 
 the simplicity, the generosity, and (more than all, for it lies 
 at the root of all) the reverential spirit with which the 
 Church's true scholars enter on these high and delicate prac- 
 tical discussions. We will say no more, for we feel as if this 
 were one of the cases where praise is little better than im- 
 pertinence; only we must just point out his dedication as 
 an unequivocal instance of the tone which his work pre- 
 serves throughout, and of the uncompromising desire which 
 he evidently feels to stand in all events irrevocably committed 
 to the cause of primitive truth and order. He inscribes his 
 work to the University of Oxford, " in the hope that the 
 temper of it may be found not alien from her own." To 
 appreciate worthily such an avowal as this, one ought pro- 
 bably to know more of the House of Commons, and of the 
 tone of high metropolitan society at present, than we, or 
 perhaps most of our readers, do. But we should not, it may 
 be, greatly err, if we considered it as an instance of courage 
 akin to that of Jonathan, when he remonstrated with his 
 over-politic and tyrannical father, " Who is so faithful among 
 all the king's servants as David ?" Or, to take a yet graver 
 example, it may remind us of that highly favoured one, who 
 was cast out of the synagogue for saying, " Herein is a mar- 
 vellous thing, that ye know not from whence He is, and yet 
 He hath opened mine eyes."
 
 6 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 It is part of this earnest and thoughtful view that he has 
 declined the term '' alliance" in the title of his work, as im- 
 plying too much personal distinction, and suggesting the low 
 and false doctrine that the State is free to choose in such 
 a matter. We are rejoiced to have his liigh authority in 
 deprecating a mode of speech so apt to mislead : and the 
 need of some such caution is the more apparent, as we per- 
 ceive that Mr. Gladstone himself has not always been able 
 to avoid it^; and it may perhaps have here and there com- 
 municated to his reasonings an unconscious tinge, we will 
 not say of Erastianism, but of State as distinct from Church 
 policy. In other writers, and those too such as we are bound 
 to regard with much gratitude and respect, the ill-effect of 
 such phraseology is still more apparent. How, for example, 
 but by the inveterate use of it, are we to account for such 
 a sentiment as the following, adopted by way of deprecation 
 of certain '' complaints of the State's usurpation," by a writer 
 -who in other ways has shewn so true a sense of the Church's 
 claims ? *' The Church is not united to the State as Israel 
 to Egypt : it is united as a believing wife to a husband who 
 threatens to apostatize; and as a Christian wife so placed 
 would act, with patience, and love, and tears, and zealous 
 entreaties, and prayers, hoping even against hope, and cling- 
 ing to the connection until a law of God dissevered it : so 
 the Church must struggle even now, and save not herself 
 but tlie State from the crime of a divorce *^." 
 
 We had thought that the Spouse of the Church was 
 a very different Person from any or all States, and her re- 
 lation to the State, through Him, very unlike that whose 
 duties are summed up in '' love, service, cherishing, and 
 obedience." And since the one is exclusively of this world, 
 the other essentially of the eternal world, such an alliance 
 as the above sentence describes, would have seemed to us 
 not only fatal but monstrous : — 
 
 " Mortua quinetiam jungebat corpora vivis, 
 Coinponens manibusque manus, atque oribus ora : 
 Tormenti genus:— 
 
 To us, we confess, the word Incorporation, though Mr. 
 
 « See chap. ii. 61, 69 ; chap. iv. 4, 7—9. 
 ' "Quarterly Review," No. cxxvi. p. 561.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 7 
 
 Gladstone at once discards it, would have appeared in the 
 abstract far preferable to Marriage, Alliance, Union, or any- 
 other like them ; provided always that we understand it as 
 the meaning of the terms requires, of the admission of any 
 particular State, as of any particular individual, into the 
 bosom of the holy Universal Church; reserving the supe- 
 riority, according to the idea of a Corporation, to the body- 
 adopting, for the benefit of the member adopted. 
 
 We are bound in fairness to acknowledge that Mr. Glad- 
 stone's theory, though remote from the lax and unworthy 
 notions unwarily sanctioned in the passage just animadverted 
 on, yet seems hardly to come up to our own view of the re- 
 lations of Church and State. The way in which he arrives 
 at it is briefly this: — for we think it best shortly to analyse 
 his argument, clear as it is, and certain as we deem it that 
 almost all our readers are long since familiar with it. It is 
 the fairest way in reviewing argumentative works, for the 
 same reason that in actual debate it is well to state what 
 you understand to be the drift of the other party before you 
 allege your own views. — 
 
 He begins by a short notice of the most popular among 
 former theories on the relation of the Church to the State : 
 Hooker, Warburton, Paley, Coleridge, Dr. Chalmers. Of 
 these he finds some entirely deficient in principle, such as 
 Warburton and Paley, both of whom in fact deny to the 
 State any conscience in the matter, making it the business 
 of Governments to ally themselves, not with that society 
 which Christ established, but with any sect which may suit 
 best their political purposes. Dr. Chalmers sets out on the 
 same road with them, but parts company when the question 
 is started, '' What is to be done when the prevalent sect is 
 unevangelical in doctrine ?'' Allowing therefore the prin- 
 ciple, that the State has a conscience, and is bound to teach 
 the truth, but denying whatever is high and transcendental 
 in the claims of the Church, as a Church, i.e. as the Kingdom 
 of Christ, and not merely a witness of His Truth. With 
 Hooker and Coleridge, Mr. Gladstone seems substantially to 
 agree in principle, but he complains that neither of them 
 applies so immediately as might be wished to the exigencies 
 of our present condition ; the former treating rather of the
 
 8 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 terms than of the ground of the Union, and of those with 
 almost an exclusive eye to the controversies of his own day ; 
 the latter confining himself to a sketch of his view in the 
 abstract, with hardly anything of detail or practical appli- 
 cation. The extreme theories of Hobbes and Bellarmine, 
 the one making the whole Church the creature of the State, 
 the other the State the slave of the particular Church of 
 Rome, he thinks it enough just to mention, as beacons on 
 opposite sides of the course to be pursued. Hobbes's is in 
 fact the same with that of Machiavelli and others, which 
 Hooker denominates "godless politics,'' and is essentially 
 atheistical, at least if it be atheism virtually to deny God's 
 moral government. In our days, the same impiety vents 
 itself in a different kind of policy ; instead of counterfeiting 
 one religion to keep in order an ignorant superstitious gene- 
 ration, we are counselled to neglect all, that an enlightened 
 philosophical race may have scope for its energies. A change 
 in the controversy, by no means insignificant among the 
 many symptoms, which seem just now to shew which way 
 Modern Europe is verging, in such measure as she has thrown 
 off her reverence for the Holy Catholic Church. 
 
 Against this latter form of practical atheism in particular, 
 the notion that the civil magistrate as such has nothing to 
 do with religion, Mr. Gladstone advances in substance the 
 following propositions, which contain what we may call his 
 own theory of the mutual relations of the two societies, and 
 which he addresses to all who believe God's moral government. 
 First, Governors, as individuals, lie under an obligation to 
 profess and maintain religion in their government as in other 
 parts of their conduct. Secondly, the State itself, taken col- 
 lectively, has a personal existence, a duty and a conscience, 
 and is therefore bound collectively to the same profession 
 and maintenance. Thirdly, if externally able and internally 
 qualified, and if the same thing cannot be so well done other- 
 wise, the State ought to extend and propagate the same re- 
 ligion through the nation. But the same thing cannot be 
 so well done otherwise, as the failure of the voluntary sys- 
 tem, left alone, proves; and the State is externally com- 
 petent, both as having the means of endowment, and as 
 coming to men's minds with authority, and appealing both
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 9 
 
 to their sympathies and interests: and lastly, the govern- 
 ment is intrinsically competent, i.e. in proportion as it is 
 good government, it attracts to itself those among the people 
 who are best qualified to choose in matter of religion. 
 
 This last statement, it is important to observe, constitutes 
 no necessary part of the argument : as Mr. Gladstone him- 
 self has remarked^, "Even if we suppose that the Govern- 
 ment had no such superiority, we are still at liberty to argue 
 that it is bound to establish a religion." And it is well that 
 he has so guarded himself; for undoubtedly a theory would 
 not seem likely to carry much weight which depended for its 
 practical effect upon the statement that this or any other 
 Government is apt to attract to itself " the best wisdom of 
 the nation :" by which, in this instance, must be meant the 
 persons best qualified to judge of religious truth. Such a pro- 
 position is valid indeed as an argumentum ad hominem^ when 
 we are reasoning with idolizers of the State ; as it is with 
 reformers enamoured of their own power, and expecting all 
 good from the development of their principles. To them, if 
 reason could silence them, it would be reasonable to say, "By 
 your own account the improved constitution of England is 
 such as to engage in the actual government of the nation those 
 who are best fitted to make choice in all important questions 
 for the rest ; you cannot, therefore, if you will be consistent, 
 deny them a natural influence in religion also." But what if 
 any person, so far from adopting this sanguine view, should 
 believe that, according to present arrangements, it is morally 
 impossible but that unsound and superficial notions, even on 
 most of the great temporal questions, should prevail, generally 
 speaking, in the councils of his country? What if he should 
 think that all experience is against the idea that successful 
 political partizans are commonly good judges of religious 
 truth ? What if the very nature of the case exclude them, 
 as a class? That there may be splendid exceptions we 
 thankfully allow. Surely it will be difficult to exclude from 
 this subject the application of the text, " Not many wise 
 men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are 
 called.'' If the best judges of rehgious truth are those who 
 
 s Chap. ii. 47.
 
 10 The State in its Relations with the Church, 
 
 most devoutly practise religion ; if the high places of the 
 world are eminently unfavourable to the Kingdom of God ; 
 if the poor, as such, are "chosen to be rich in faith;" if "the 
 children of this world are in their generation wiser than the 
 children of light;" then, whatever favourable exceptions a 
 merciful Providence may at times allow, it does not seem 
 easy even to imagine a country so constituted, that the best 
 judges in matters of religion shall be permanently or com- 
 monly the prevailing party in it. 
 
 Waiving therefore this portion of the argument, we may 
 yet concur most heartily with Mr. Gladstone in all that he 
 proceeds to say of the inducements which the State has to 
 employ its means according to its competency, be that com- 
 petency little or much, for the recommendation and propa- 
 gation of religious truth, and especially of the Church. Be- 
 sides the reasons which are commonly alleged on this head, 
 he dwells with unanswerable force on the two following 
 topics : the subjugation of individual will by the discipline 
 of the Church, and the permanency of its doctrines and 
 institutions; which latter again brings this great collateral 
 advantage, that whereas, 
 
 " It is most difficult and invidious for Governors to select 
 any one form of mere opinion as such, and endow it; or 
 any institution, simply preferred because the doctrines taught 
 in it are agreeable to the views entertained by themselves : 
 the Church professes to be an institution not deduced by 
 human reason from any general declaration of God's will, 
 but actually and (so to speak) bodily given by God, founded 
 through His direct inspiration, and regularly transmitted in 
 a divinely appointed though human line. The State, there- 
 fore, does not here propose an opinion of its own for the ap- 
 probation of the people, but a system to which it has itself 
 yielded faith and homage as of divine authority. The differ- 
 ence is twofold : it is that between inheritance and acqui- 
 sition ; it is that between an attested, and a conjectural au- 
 thority from God"." 
 
 Lastly, it is argued, that the support and promotion of the 
 Church, thus on State principles made imperative^ must also 
 
 ^ Chap. ii. 61.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. ^ 11 
 
 be exclusive, even on the same principles, and still more 
 when her own sacred law of unity is considered. If in any 
 country either the governing body or the whole state be un- 
 happily so divided in religion that this object cannot be 
 achieved, "we do not here trace out all the consequences, 
 but it has been shewn that this involves dereliction of the 
 functions and responsibilities of Government; and it is 
 enough for the present to have marked it as a social defect 
 and calamity^ J' 
 
 We are too well aware how little justice we have done in 
 this brief and meagre summary to Mr. Gladstone's statement 
 of his leading principles. But his style is so condensed, and 
 so full of matter, that we feel an adequate analysis to be out 
 of the question. A paraphrase, occasionally, seems rather 
 what is wanted to bring out the connection and relative im- 
 portance of various portions of the argument, in which the 
 author perhaps has given his readers credit for more of his 
 own thoughtfulness than they are likely to possess. In this, 
 as in some other respects, he reminds us sometimes of Aris- 
 totle's manner in the Ethics; although the tone of strong 
 but subdued feelings, which is the great charm of the Chris- 
 tian statesman's work, be rarely and faintly heard from the 
 heathen moralist. 
 
 We have mentioned that the treatise has throughout an 
 aspect to two classes of opponents, who are supposed likely 
 to unite in disparaging the Establishment as such ; and to 
 the answering of their objections in detail, the author ad- 
 dresses himself in the chapters which follow the second. On 
 the first sort of scruples, however, those, namely, which are 
 felt by Liberals of all classes about the question, whether the 
 State has anything to do with Religion, it is not our purpose 
 now to dwell, any further than to express our surprise that 
 any writer of tolerable acuteness should have fancied the affir- 
 mative sufficiently disproved by merely finding out ludicrous 
 analogies for the doctrine of the State's personality and its 
 having a conscience. It is said^, *'at this rate our Railway and 
 Insurance Companies, our agricultural, astronomical, horticul- 
 tural meetings, nay, our cricket and chess clubs, are religious 
 
 ■' Chap. ii. 71. ^ See "Edinburgh Review," April, 1839.
 
 12 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 societies, and are bound in conscience to exclude unbelievers 
 and apply some test to the religious opinions of all whom 
 they employ." 
 
 Now, raillery apart, is it not certain that all companies 
 and associations of Christians are, in a very true sense, reli- 
 gious societies ? Would the deviser of these facetious sayings, 
 if seriously asked, himself deny that each and all of the asso- 
 ciations which have been named come within the Apostolical 
 rule, " Do all to the glory of God ?" and that accordingly, if 
 they can anyhow be any of them turned towards the end of 
 God's kingdom, it is our duty so to turn them ? But this 
 once allowed, (and it seems almost an axiom, unless men are 
 content to deny His moral government,) " the rest,'^ as some 
 one has said, *^ is matter of calculation/' The director of a 
 railroad or coach company is to consider whether the great 
 end is or is not likely to be promoted by his discouragement 
 of Sunday travelling, of drunkenness and blasphemy, among 
 those who are for the time, and to a certain extent, com- 
 mitted to his charge. The master of a family has to con- 
 sider whether or no the interests of morality, i. e. regard to 
 God^s will, require him in any particular case to practise 
 what is called invidiously exclusive dealing. The obligation 
 in every such instance, how inferior soever in importance, is 
 the same in kind with that which, in the case of Govern- 
 ments, appears to certain philosophic statesmen mere matter 
 of scorn and ridicule. If they carry their principles out in 
 their domestic arrangements, all we can say is, may our 
 servants keep at a distance from their servants, and our 
 children from their children. 
 
 This might be said even on the lowest view of the origin 
 of civil government, and supposing it no more of divine in- 
 stitution than any of the voluntary combinations above 
 mentioned. But with Mr. Gladstone the province of the 
 statesman is as much more awful than these, and more 
 sacred in its kind, as it is more momentous in reach and 
 extent. The will of God, as made known by the course of 
 universal Providence, and by the unsophisticated feelings of 
 all mankind, is surely his warrant, when he pours himself 
 out_, as in the following noble passage, on the true nature of
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 13 
 
 his calling as a political man, and the responsibility which 
 belongs to all who take on themselves any part of the con- 
 duct of a nation. 
 
 " Habituated to the false or secondary conceptions which 
 arise out of our inveterate poUtical sectarianism, we are very 
 apt to look upon the State in an irreverent or careless temper, 
 and to forget that next to the Church it exhibits the grand- 
 est of all combinations of human beings. It is a venerable 
 idea, in which the supremacy of law as opposed to mere will 
 is asserted, by which the sociality and inter-dependence of 
 our nature are proclaimed, and the best acts and thoughts 
 are arrested and perpetuated in institutions, and a collective 
 wisdom is made available for individuals, and the individual 
 is humbled and disciplined by being kept in qualified sub- 
 ordination to the mass. The adoption of a moral principle, 
 or scheme, or institution, by the State, is among the most 
 solemn and the most pregnant of human acts : and although 
 it cannot place what it adopts upon a ground higher than 
 its own, any more than water can rise above its level, yet 
 that ground is one of an order having more of natural jus- 
 tice, more of experimentally-demonstrated permanence, more 
 of divine authentication, than any other except the Church, 
 which it feebly though perceptibly imitates ; and certainly 
 much more than that private will, which, sooner or later, 
 learns to wanton in the whole spirit and practice of dis- 
 sent, reversing every fundamental law of the universe, and 
 asserting the isolation, and deifying the arbitrary caprice, 
 of man ^." 
 
 We do not envy those who can find in such aspirations 
 as these matter of derision, as if it were all but mere mys- 
 ticism; nor do we see how, consistently with their view, 
 they can profess to receive as unerring, a Book which de- 
 clares that by the Wisdom and Word of the Most High, by the 
 Providence of His Son, and under Him, ''kings reign and 
 princes decree justice;" and not only kings and princes, but 
 all who are concerned in the legitimate exercise of govern- 
 ment, even "all the judges of the earth™;" which verse, if 
 we read its meaning rightly, (and that we do so we have the 
 
 » Chap. iii. § 39. •» Proverbs viii. 15, 16.
 
 14 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 concurrent witness of the whole Church in its first and pure 
 ages,) represents to us civil governors, and especially kings, 
 as manifestations, in their several spheres, of our Lord and 
 Saviour; not less really so than His priests are in His 
 Church, though with different and inferior functions. It 
 can be no light perversion of mind, which would lead any 
 school or any individual to deal with an institution so war- 
 ranted and originated, as if it were no more sacred in its 
 kind, had no more to do with God's universal government, 
 than any of the fleeting and frivolous assemblages of the 
 day. Dismissing therefore, as decidedly irreligious, this 
 whole class of objections, we shall address ourselves, in what 
 we have further to say, to the other side, which only, to 
 Churchmen, is the side of practical difficulty. Mr. Glad- 
 stone professes to vindicate, not only the abstract principle 
 of establishment, but also the particular form in which the 
 relation of Church and State appears in this country at pre- 
 sent j not only the ground, but the terms of the union. In 
 doing so, he has sometimes expressed himself as if he thought 
 that not only the more conscientious sort of Dissenters, but 
 some too who would be accounted High Churchmen, had 
 been led by eveuts to disparage and deprecate the principle 
 itself, of the incorporation of the State in the Church. Now 
 we must once for all avow, that we know not anywhere of 
 this combination of opinions. We have never met with, we 
 have never read of, any set of persons admitting the divine 
 origin and paramount claims of the Apostolical Church, yet 
 denying the obligation of the civil magistrate to enter into 
 relations with it. All the scruples and demurs that we have 
 met with in such persons have had reference, not to the 
 principle of incorporation, but to tlie terms of it in this 
 or that particular instance. We apprehend, therefore, that 
 Mr. Gladstone is mistaken if he thinks, as some of his ex- 
 pressions appear to imply, that anything which has happened 
 in the way of wrong done to the Church, or of unworthy 
 compromise on the part of her defenders, has caused such 
 religionists to doubt or deny the duty of the State to con- 
 nect itself with the Church. They are perfectly aware of 
 that duty, and of the danger of falling away from it ; as will
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 15 
 
 have been seen by the application of the text in Proverbs, 
 just above, (if that may be admitted as a fair statement of 
 their views,) they are quite convinced that both Church and 
 State are (though in several ways) of divine appointment ; 
 that kings as well as bishops are in a manner representatives 
 of Jesus Christ on earth, consequently that our duties to the 
 one, rightly understood, can never by any possibility clash 
 with our duties to the other. Nay, they may perhaps be 
 ready to go further than the plan of Mr. Gladstone's work 
 enabled him to do, in asserting, not only the wisdom and 
 rectitude, but the positive divine institution, of a certain 
 relation between the Church and the State. They may 
 think that Holy Scripture distinctly shews us the seal of 
 the Almighty, set to the reasonings of wise men, and the 
 natural feelings of religious men, in favour of that connec- 
 tion; feelings and reasonings, before sufficient to constitute 
 a strong practical obligation, but which, so confirmed, come 
 to us as remembrancers from above of a duty which may not 
 be denied nor evaded. To go no further for the present in 
 Scripture : such persons might even be content to rest their 
 doctrine on the well-known texts of Isaiah", which repre- 
 sent the temporal powers as Nursing Fathers and Mothers to 
 the children of the Church ; texts which have been often 
 and ably alleged as virtually containing the terms of the 
 union in question, and which it seems hard for any sophistry 
 to expound, so as that they shall not plainly express a divine 
 sanction and ground for that union. And that which is di- 
 vinely sanctioned and grounded cannot in itself be a cause of 
 degeneracy and sin. No fear, then, lest those who, with the 
 unanswerable Leslie °, interpret those prophetic sayings as 
 a divine intimation of the duty of the State to the Church, 
 should ever give in, as seems to be suspected, to the tenet 
 of the upholders of the modern voluntary system ; that any 
 positive connection of the Church with the powers of this 
 world, is in the very nature of the case, sure to lower both 
 her doctrine and her morals. 
 
 Where, then, is the point of difference between those who 
 sympathize with such writers as Leslie, and those who really 
 venerate primitive antiquity, yet still continue anxious de- 
 
 «> Than. xUx. 22. o.*? • Ix. s 4 10 19. Ifi. ° Case of the Resrale. S 6.
 
 16 The State in its Relations with the Church, 
 
 fenders of things as they are among ourselves? Practically, 
 we apprehend, it comes to this ; rather to lessen their satis- 
 faction and confidence with the former in the cause, than to 
 withdraw from the ranks. In elections they will still be 
 found voting for the Conservative candidate ; their names 
 will not be wanting, when the proper authorities are to 
 be appealed to, in behalf of such influences as the Govern- 
 ment still allows the Church to exert on it : they feel that 
 it is the part of resignation and obedience to go on, though 
 in much doubt and perplexity, and keep things quiet as long 
 as ever conscience will allow, but they dare not conceal that 
 they do so with a heavy heart, and in continual fear of 
 giving up truth and duty ; they cannot sympathize with the 
 notes of exultation with which eager partizans and shallow 
 speculators welcome each onward step of what they call the 
 cause of the Church. They feel themselves continually 
 called to the disagreeable duty of protesting against the lax 
 notions and irreverent proceedings of those with whom them- 
 selves are acting; of damping unseasonable triumphs, and 
 checking plans of policy and compromise, often devised in 
 good faith, but tending, as they clearly see, to the surrender 
 of something which they dare not give up ; of silencing their 
 own scruples and regrets, in deference to the wishes of those 
 who have a right to direct them, when, according to all the 
 rules in which they have been instructed, perhaps by those 
 very authorities, the time of passive resistance would seem 
 to be full come ; and for half a life perhaps they have to lie 
 down and rise up in a corroding uncertainty, whether or no 
 they are doing their best, according to their station, to warn 
 their country and their countrymen of the fatal consequences 
 of dealing rudely with God^s Church. 
 
 Such, it seems to us, would be some of the sensations 
 with which one thoroughly imbued with ancient principles 
 would find himself continually forced to qualify his adher- 
 ence, under present circumstances, to the supporters of the 
 connection of Church and State in this kingdom. Nor will 
 any one be surprised at the statement who will consider how 
 much the trial of us all consists in doubts and perplexities 
 about duty, stationed as we are in paths made intricate by 
 our own sins and errors and those of our forefathers.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 1 7 
 
 In justice to our own view, we must mention some of the 
 particulars, though to most of our readers they will probably 
 occur of themselves, which may not unnaturally cause a pub- 
 lic man to feel dejected and embarrassed, even in assertino- a 
 cause which at first glance would seem to combine all that is 
 elevating and ennobling. And if in doing so we have inci- 
 dentally to question some of Mr. Gladstone's positions, we 
 shall do so with less scruple, because the influences are, to 
 our view, so evident, which would lead a person in his circum- 
 stances to survey with too favourable an eye the alliance as it 
 exists. A statesman admitted behind the scenes must see, we 
 fear, so much of moral unsoundness and decay in every de- 
 partment, as to make him more than ever unwilling to part 
 with any little relic of homage which may but seem to be still 
 paid to Religion, and he has the same kind of temptation to 
 overvalue it, and pay too dear for it, as clergymen in un- 
 manageable parishes have, to press the outward services of 
 religion on those who lead unworthy and immoral lives. The 
 nearer the evil is brought to himself the more does he shrink 
 from realizing it; especially if he have, with Mr. Gladstone, a 
 keen perception of the exceeding sinfulness of the State's dis- 
 avowing the Church, if he feel that such a step must be, sooner 
 or later P, ruin to the ofi'ending party. A public man who 
 reads his Bible can never overlook the awful sanction which 
 attends on his country's relation to the Church : *' The nation 
 and kingdom which will not serve thee shall perish, yea^ those 
 nations shall be utterly wasted J* It is not in human na- 
 ture but that he should hide his eyes from the fearful con- 
 viction that this sentence is virtually passed on the State 
 and Country in whose service he is himself engaged. He 
 will go on in hope, believing against hope, after others at a 
 greater distance have seen clearly that the time for hope is 
 over. In his zeal to avert that final revolt, which he knows 
 must decide the doom of his nation, he will be instinctively 
 disposed to think too slightly of the sacrifice of principle 
 likely to be involved in the successive accommodations which 
 
 P Sooner or later ; and therefore the case of the United States, or of much 
 older countries, which have refused to obey the Church, is no objection to the 
 argument — We see not yet what will come of it. 
 
 C
 
 18 The State in its Relations ivith the Church, 
 
 may be proposed to the Church : not perceiving that the 
 sentence has gone forth already, the nation and kingdom 
 has refused to serve the Church, when it has once forced on 
 the Church terms which amount to a renunciation of her 
 fundamental rules. Her giving way in such a case can do 
 no good to the nation, nay, rather harm, as encouraging it 
 in ill, and lessening its chance of coming to a better mind ; 
 and it will include the Church herself in the ruin. Natural, 
 then, as it may be to do so, yet we must not hide our eyes 
 from the fact, that better had the country be ruined than 
 the Church apostatize; or rather, better had the first fall 
 alone than drag down the other with it. 
 
 The best way perhaps to realize the drift of this is, to put 
 a strong case, such an one as nobody would hesitate in, and 
 then observe how less flagrant cases may insensibly work up 
 to it, and come in the end to the same mischief. Imagine 
 a State, then, in which Liberal principles prevailed, deferring 
 so far to the outcry against supposed human tests, as to 
 make it a condition of the alliance, that the Church should 
 abstain from the use of all the Creeds. This, we take it for 
 granted, would amount, in Mr. Gladstone's view, to a casus 
 foederis. And yet a great many human probabilities might 
 be alleged, unanswerable in their kind, to justify continuing 
 in the alliance, even at that sacrifice. Morality, and faith 
 too, it might be plausibly argued, would be more advanced 
 in the country by the general diffusion of the Scriptures and 
 the Sacraments alone, than by their partial adoption, under 
 the national sanction, with the safeguard of a pure Creed, 
 by those only whom a voluntary system could reach. But 
 no such reasoning would avail with a person trained in the 
 school of the Church. He would be aware that Catholic 
 tradition in fundamentals is divine, and may not be dis- 
 pensed with for any human views of spiritual expediency. 
 
 Imagine next a less startling case : that instead of omitting 
 all the Creeds, we are required to part with all except the 
 Apostles'. Here the student of antiquity, being aware of 
 the irresistible claim of the Nicene Creed to be esteemed 
 a portion of the Apostolical tradition, and not knowing how 
 near the silencing the voice of such a council may come to
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church, 19 
 
 rejecting a part of God's own Word, will probably feel little 
 more hesitation than before; but we should not wonder if 
 some of those who venerate tradition and the Church in 
 general, but have not had leisure to examine details, began, 
 even at this point, to waver; and still more would they do 
 so at the next, when the question rose about the Creed of 
 St. Athanasius ; as is too plainly shewn by the example of 
 the American Church in her formularies, and, as we fear, 
 too generally by that of our own Church, nay, and of the 
 Scottish Church, in their practice. We consider these as 
 cases in point, because, we apprehend, there can be no 
 doubt that the concessions in question are accommodations 
 to the mind of the laity, and represent so far a kind of State 
 influence. 
 
 Now, even by these few imaginary examples, it seems to 
 us not obscure, that the Conservative tendencies of the very 
 best public men require to be watched, in this matter of the 
 conditions of an Establishment, by persons more exclusively 
 concerned for the spiritual integrity of the Church. 
 
 We observe, what greatly confirms us in this idea, that 
 even the high-minded writer before us has not been quite 
 able to keep his language clear of a certain utilitarian tone; 
 we mean not utilitarian in any low or offensive sense, but 
 simply as denoting somewhat too much of regard to intel- 
 ligible and visible results in our estimate of a system, the 
 purposes whereof we are confessedly so very ignorant of. 
 Thus he writes : — 
 
 " Her end is ' the greatest holiness of the greatest num- 
 ber.' Her inanimate machinery has no capability of plea- 
 sure and pain ; has no interests in any intelligible sense. 
 Her living members have all one and the same interest : the 
 aggregate of that interest constitutes the interest of the 
 Church, and it is the production, not of the greatest possible 
 excitement connected with religion, nor of the greatest pos- 
 sible enjoyment connected with religion, nor of the greatest 
 possible appearance of religion ; nay, not even the greatest 
 possible quantity of actual religion, at any time or place; but 
 the greatest possible permanent and substantial amount of 
 religion within that sphere over which its means of operation 
 
 c 2
 
 20 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 extend. By religion we would be understood to mean con- 
 formity to the will of God**." 
 
 And again, — 
 
 " Nothing can stand against the proof (if proof could be 
 given) that the diminished amount or deteriorated quality of 
 personal religion is the result of that alliance, which we have 
 affirmed to be not less grounded on the nature and truth of 
 things, than affirmed by the general suffrage of mankinds" 
 
 Again, he argues for the Presbyterianism of Scotland, 
 that " we have seen it by a long experience to be not with- 
 out the blessing of God, and operative for good on human 
 character^^' May it be said without offence, that sentences 
 of this cast need always to be guarded by the recollection 
 what inadequate judges we are, either of the manifold ends 
 of the Redeemer's kingdom, or of the degree in which ''the 
 greatest holiness of the greatest number,^' which is but one 
 of them, is affected by any particular measure or system ? 
 On this subject all, and especially all who are in a position 
 to influence others extensively, would do well to study 
 Bishop Butler's admirable sermon, " The Gospel a Witness 
 to all Nations." It would help them to bear in mind the 
 awful truth, that " the purposes of Providence are carried on 
 by the preaching of the Gospel to those who reject it, as 
 well as to those who receive it.'' " Thou shalt speak My 
 words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they 
 will forbear ; for they are most rebellious." It is evident 
 that sayings such as these point to a very different standard 
 of the proceedings of the witnesses of the Gospel, from the 
 actual degree in which mankind are seen to benefit by them ; 
 and that the latter rule will require in practice to be con- 
 tinually checked by the former. 
 
 One thing we may be quite sure of: that what God 
 clearly wills, that must in the end be expedient, whether we 
 ever come to discern it or no : and thus it is, that discern- 
 ing in His word clear indications of His will that the Church 
 should be in a certain sense politically established, we should 
 acquiesce in such an Establishment, though our human and 
 outward experience led us to anticipate more harm than 
 
 1 Chap. iii. 23. ' Ibid. iii. 1. • Ibid. vi. 75.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 21 
 
 good at the result of it; and on the other hand, whatever 
 degree of holiness any given arrangement might seem to 
 produce, we could not acquiesce in it, if clearly opposed to 
 the revealed canon on such matters. 
 
 Now the life of a statesman must of necessity be spent 
 very much in calculations of expediency, and in measuring 
 things by their visible results : and the habit of thought 
 so generated may sometimes be unfavourable to that par- 
 ticular exercise of faith, the necessity of which in all Church 
 questions we have now tried to point out ; and especially 
 when he has been used to dwell affectionately and thank- 
 fully upon the real good results which he can discern. He 
 might be willing to hazard himself, but he fears to hazard 
 others, to hazard even their spiritual interests, upon pure 
 adherence to some portion of God's will, the practical ten- 
 dency whereof is not perhaps apparent. To make such 
 a venture on a large scale, maturely, wisely, resolutely, cha- 
 ritably, may, for aught we know, be one of the highest acts 
 here on earth of a pure and saintly faith ; it may require 
 a completer Church education than this age can anywhere 
 supply : yet it may do us all good to recollect that there has 
 been once an Athanasius who " stood against the world and 
 prevailed ;" and that he did so, chiefly by disregarding re- 
 sults when revealed rules and principles were at stake. 
 
 But in addition to this scarcely avoidable effect of public 
 life as such, there is a certain personal feeling, — may we be 
 excused for hinting at it? — which we fancy we can discern 
 in that class of statesmen whose views, generally speaking, 
 we suppose to be embodied in this book : which cannot but 
 unconsciously bias their reasonings on doubtful matters dis- 
 cussed in it. It is natural they should be impressed, as 
 public men, with a deep sense of the desecration of their 
 calling, which they apprehend must follow, should ever 
 the service of the State in this country be authoritatively 
 and formally separated from that of the Church. As it is, 
 there is probably enough, and more than enough, to disgust 
 them and make them fear contamination, in the wear and 
 tear of parliamentary and official life : and when the miti- 
 gating circumstances are withdrawn ; when no blessing from
 
 22 The Slate in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 the Churcli sliall precede the daily labours of the Houses of 
 Parliament ; when no holidays, perhaps no Sundays, shall 
 be recognised, except on profane and secular grounds ; when 
 the notion of doing anything for the Churcli shall have be- 
 come as obsolete as is now the notion of confining high office 
 to Churchmen ; when, above all, they have no longer to ac- 
 company them in their most irksome and unsatisfactory toils, 
 the consciousness that all is but part of the price of the con- 
 tinuance of so great a blessing as the presence of the Church 
 in all parts of the realm : then, indeed, we may well believe 
 that their calling may seem perfectly intolerable, their occu- 
 pation quite gone : while yet in withdrawing from it, the 
 dreary thought will accompany them, that they are giving 
 up their country altogether, and leaving it without hope in 
 the hands of the anti-Christian party. Instinctive anticipa- 
 tions of this kind may well render persons slow — we will not 
 say to allow the separation of Church and State, but to 
 admit the fact of such separation, after it has virtually taken 
 place ; and certainly it does seem almost like asking too 
 much, even of the most devoted children and servants of the 
 Church, to urge on them the continuance of their thankless 
 toil, even in such an extreme case; yet we know the illus- 
 trious Scripture examples, of persons who served in the 
 courts of heathen monarchs, with an eye throughout, as- 
 suredly, to the welfare of God's people, and were rewarded 
 beyond all personal advancement, by being made instru- 
 ments of the greatest deliverances to Israel. 
 
 But it may be said, Joseph and Daniel condescended to 
 minister, not to apostate, but merely to heathen princes : and 
 there was not the same scandal in belonging to their courts, 
 as in persevering to act under a polity which was Christian 
 and has ceased to be so. We reply, even under Ahab, 
 Obadiah, who " feared the Lord greatly,'' continued to be 
 over the king's household : nor do we find in the times im- 
 mediately before the captivity, that the prophets and others, 
 whose personal obedience was unsullied, declined to act 
 under or to counsel the fallen kings of Judah. And as the 
 Christians of the three first centuries were willing to serve 
 in the Pagan courts and armies, only, of course, keeping
 
 TJie State in its Relations with the Church. 23 
 
 ilieraselves from all communication with idolatry ; so we 
 read not that those of the fourth counted it unlawful to hold 
 civil or military commissions from Constantius, Julian, or 
 Valens, apostates as they were. Undoubtedly the condition 
 will be a most undesirable one, but we can conceive it un- 
 dertaken and borne in the spirit of a confessor, and bringing 
 with it a great reward. 
 
 Or if things should become too bad even for this ; if such 
 a state (no unlikely proceeding) should even go on to ex- 
 clude from her councils the attached members of the Church, 
 imposing, e.g. such a test, under plea of guarding against 
 intolerance, as would amount to disavowal of any exclusive 
 system : then, indeed, the State must be given up, and it 
 would be impossible for a good Christian to serve it ; but 
 no reason whatever to despair of the temporal fortunes of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven : then would the manly and dutiful 
 minds, who now least endure the thought of separation, be 
 driven perforce into the direct and avowed service of the 
 Church alone ; and who can tell what great results it might 
 please the Almighty to bring about by such a concentration 
 of the noblest energies in the one high and self-denying 
 cause? For aught we know, if human haste and restless- 
 ness mar not His gracious purpose, He may have in store 
 for us, by means such as these, a conversion, not of barbar- 
 ous heathens, but more wonderful yet, of civilized and lapsed 
 Christians, which may once again change the whole face of 
 Christendom as completely as that which ensued on the 
 downfall of the Roman Empire. At all events, the last thing 
 which those who would serve Him in faith need fear, is being 
 left out of His ranks, having their place on earth entirely un- 
 hallowed. Each day of their trial, as it brings its own task, 
 will bring also its light to shew and its strength to bear that 
 task : and the more they can use themselves to walk by this 
 simple faith, instead of always weighing and measuring visi- 
 ble events, the more competent will they prove to judge cor- 
 rectly of the difficult questions which arise out of the relation 
 of Church and State. As it is, we have to allow for the 
 effect both of their habits of calculation and of such natural 
 misgivings as we have been describing, and therefore may
 
 24 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 with less presumption question the full accuracy of some of 
 their views. 
 
 We have observed already that the plan of Mr. Gladstone's 
 work did not allow him to dwell much on the Scriptural part 
 of the argument, which is the more to be regretted, as all 
 modern views on the subject, and his own among the rest, 
 have the disadvantage of an ex post facto law : it is too 
 manifest that they are constructed with an eye to particular 
 cases, and thus they often fail in procuring conviction, even 
 where little or nothing can be said against their truth. The 
 theories, for example, of Hooker, Warburton, Chalmers, per- 
 haps also those of the Ultramontane Romanists, are each 
 in turn so nicely adapted to the very state of things in 
 which the writers found themselves placed, that we feel as 
 we examine them somewhat of the same kind of suspicion 
 as when a disputed will or other document coincides too ex- 
 actly with the interests of the witnesses who produce it. If 
 a theory can be found antecedent to all experience, it will, 
 by its very date, be free from surmises of this sort ; and as 
 w^e have hinted, such a theory is found in Scripture. It is 
 contained in Isaiah's analogy of the nursing fathers and 
 nursing mothers; which according to the ineffable fulness of 
 Scripture, will be found in its brevity and simplicity (would 
 men only work it out in good faith), equivalent to a whole 
 code of canon laws for the adjustment of relations often 
 found so intricate. 
 
 Some perhaps will think it strange to be referred thus to 
 the Old Testament, and to a single text there, for an evan- 
 gelical law of such great practicar import. But they may 
 consider that since it was not intended that the Church 
 should, at her first beginning, enter into relations with any 
 State, since that whole order of things was to be but a later 
 development of something in her original constitution, any 
 rules expressly concerning it could only be prophetic, and 
 the natural place to look for them would be in those por- 
 tions of the prophetic Scriptures which the Church, from the 
 beginning, knew to have reference to her own later times. 
 Nor would it be hard to find other usages and rules on 
 which the same remark might be made, viz. that they are
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church, 25 
 
 developments of something in the original system, for which 
 at first there was no occasion, and accordingly that for the 
 Scriptural sanctions of them we have to look in the prophetical 
 and typical Scriptures rather than in the New Testament 
 itself. Such for example is the penitential discipline of the 
 Church ; her earlier and purer times had comparatively little 
 occasion for it ; and when it became settled, it was in great 
 measure the development of precedents and hints from the 
 Jewish history, and the lessons of mortification and peni- 
 tence in the Psalms and Prophets. Such again is the splen- 
 dour of churches and church ornaments : the days of our 
 first poverty of course knew it not, but when it came, it 
 found its warrant in the records of Moses, David, and Solo- 
 mon. No prejudice, therefore, need lie against a similar 
 mode of deducing the obligation of the State to establish 
 the Church. 
 
 If any one ask of what particular article or fundamental 
 rule of God's kingdom this theory of Church and State is 
 a development, we should answer, of the Holy Catholic 
 Church, i.e. of the continued presence and manifestation of 
 Jesus Christ in the world, through the medium of that so- 
 ciety which is called His mystical body. The Church is the 
 spouse of Christ, and the mother of His family ; and these 
 passages of Isaiah declare what is the especial office of kings 
 and queens in that family, how they in particular stand 
 related to the Church. They are to be her nursing fathers 
 and mothers; i.e. as Leshe has explained at large, (and to 
 him we must refer for a thorough and most satisfactory elu- 
 cidation of the passages), they are among her servants and 
 attendants, trusted by Almighty God with the nourishment 
 of her children, with the training of them, and bearing them 
 aafe .in their arms. The phrase has acquired a trite and 
 almost a proverbial use, in a very different sense : as though 
 the Church were a helpless infant in the arms of some De- 
 fender of the Faith ; but the context puts the true force of 
 the image out of question : " Thus saith the Lord God, 
 Behold I will lift up Mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up 
 My standard to the people ; and they shall bring thy sons in 
 their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their
 
 26 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 shoulders. And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their 
 queens thy nursing mothers ; they shall bow down to thee 
 with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy 
 feet ; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord ; for they 
 shall not be ashamed that wait for Me *." Again ^ : *' Thy 
 sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall he nursed 
 at thy side." If in another verse we find, " Thou shalt suck 
 the milk of the Gentiles, and thou shalt suck the breast of 
 kings;" this cannot be so pressed as to denote childish de- 
 pendence and obedience, since in the very same prophecy, 
 as well as in the former one, apparently parallel to it, the 
 expressions of humiliation, nay subjection to the Church, on 
 the part of the potentates of the earth, are so very full and 
 unequivocal: "The sons of strangers shall build up thy 
 walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee." " Thy gates 
 shall be open continually, they shall not be shut day nor 
 night, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gen- 
 tiles, and that their kings may he brought. For the nation and 
 kingdom that icill not serve thee shall perish : yea those nations 
 shall be utterly icasted." These words throw light on one of 
 the distinctive titles given to Jesus Christ in the Apocalypse : 
 " Prince of the kings of the earth :" they point out in what 
 sense the kingdoms of this xoorld were to become the kingdoms 
 of our Lord and of His Christ; and how "the kings of this 
 world" were to bring their " honour and glory into the holy 
 Jerusalem." And that all this was not so much a predic- 
 tion as a promulgation of God's will on the subject, is proved 
 unquestionably by the fearful sanction annexed : perishing 
 and utter wasting to the nation and kingdom that will not 
 serve Zion. 
 
 Thus are kings and governors representatives of Jesus 
 Christ, in His protecting particular Providence, whereby He 
 educates those who shall be heirs of salvation ; that Pro- 
 vidence of which Moses, who " was king in Jeshurun," was 
 a type, when he had to bear God's people, " as a nursing 
 father beareth a sucking cliild,^^ which he describes in its 
 application to the whole people, where he says, " The eter- 
 nal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting 
 
 ' Isa. xlix. 22, 23. " Ibid. Ix. 4.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 27 
 
 arms:" and in its application to Benjamin individually (i.e. 
 to the energetic self-renouncing champions of the Church, 
 such as St. Paul, of whom Benjamin was the appointed 
 image), in the last clause of that highly-descriptive verse, 
 '' The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety, by (literally, 
 upon) Him, and the Lord shall cover, wrap him up in His 
 garment, and he shall dwell between His shoulders. ^^ There 
 cannot be an exacter — if it were uninspired we should add — 
 a sweeter and more engaging description of a foster-father 
 bearing a young child; and this, we have reason to believe, 
 is the appropriate Scriptural image, the sacramental sign, as 
 antiquity would have esteemed it, of the care due from kings 
 and governors to the children of the Churchy 
 
 We will not give way to the thoughts which instinctively 
 arise, on comparing such a description with certain late pro- 
 ceedings in the matter of Christian education : it is pleasanter 
 and better to turn back the mind's eye towards the days when 
 the kings and rulers of the world first began to appreciate 
 this highest part of their calling. St. Paul had taught Chris- 
 tians, from the first, that even heathen princes were Xeirovp- 
 yol, " ministers of God to His people for good j" and when 
 they came themselves to be Christians, it never entered their 
 minds that the true and eternal good was the one interest of 
 their people with which they were never to busy themselves; 
 on the contrary, the very word Xecrovpyo^ suggested to them, 
 as the word "minister" naturally might to us, the notion of 
 their being, though of course not literally as priests, yet in 
 some analogous way, called to wait on God in His Church; 
 and the prophet's word, " nursing fathers," would at once 
 inform them what that office was. They would well under- 
 stand that in spiritual matters they were to execute the laws 
 of Christ's Church, not impose laws upon her ; except it be 
 the office of a nurse to give directions to a parent, and not 
 rather receive instructions how the child ought to be ma- 
 naged. The strength of this impression on their minds will 
 account for such anecdotes as that of Constantine refusing 
 to take his seat at the Council of Nice until he was requested 
 by the bishops to do so; and again declining to receive an 
 
 * Deut. xxxiii. 5; Numb. xi. 12 ; Deut. xxxiii. 27, 12.
 
 28 The State in its Relations with the Church, 
 
 appeal when tendered by Donatists in an ecclesiastical cause; 
 and also for that remarkable expression, so different from 
 the tone encouraged by the modern doctrine of legal su- 
 premacy, in his promulgation of the Nicene decrees : " By 
 the suggestion of God, I called together to Nice the greater 
 part of the bishops, with whom, as one of you, I your fellow - 
 servant,^^ the fellow-servant of ordinary laymen, " and rejoicing 
 above measure so to be, did myself undertake the task of ex- 
 amining the truth/^ These and the other incidents of the 
 same era, commonly appealed to by writers on this subject : 
 such as Hosius ^ and St. Hilary's demurring to the sentence 
 of Constantius ; St. Ambrose's resistance to Valentinian and 
 his officers and excommunication of Theodosius; St. Basil's 
 refusal to a ter the Church formularies, though it might 
 bring Valens into Church communion ; and still more than 
 the incidents themselves, the manner in which such sacer- 
 dotal boldness was received by the several emperors, and the 
 tone in which it is related by contemporary writers, (some of 
 them of the highest authority, St. Athanasius, for instance, 
 and St. Gregory Nazianzen,) are sufficient indications, not 
 perhaps of any formal compact, such as some appear to 
 dream of, between the ecclesiastical and secular authorities, 
 but of something yet more striking and authoritative; 
 a general consent in the early Christian world, as to the 
 meaning of what Scripture teaches concerning the office of 
 kings in the Church. The notion of nursing fathers — con- 
 fidential servants entrusted to bring up her children accord- 
 ing to her laws — runs through the whole, and accounts for 
 each particular. The voice of the Church was, " we call 
 Christian emperors happy, if they make their power a hand- 
 maid to the majesty of God, for no purpose so much as the 
 propagation of His true religion and worship ^" And again : 
 " Whereas it is written. The sons of strangers shall build up 
 thy icalls, and their kings shall minister unto thee : it may be 
 that by kings he means here literally those who are crowned 
 
 y S, Athanas., Hist. Arian. ad Monacli., c. 44; S. Hilar, ad Constant., i. 1 ; 
 S. Ainbros. ad Valentinian., Ep. 21 ; ad Eugen., Ep. 57; ad Theodos., Ep. 51 ; 
 . Greg. Naz., Horn. 20, al. 43, ss. 48—51. 
 ' S. Augustin. de Civ. Dei, v. 24.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 29 
 
 with the highest honours, and sway the sceptre of royalty, 
 who also are ministers (Trapearrjo-av) of the Church; now 
 ministering in this place signifies obedience ^" The whole doc- 
 trine was, and we believe still is, significantly taught in many 
 parts of the Christian world, by the custom which prevails 
 of the sovereign at solemn coronations wearing a deacon's 
 habit, or part of it, under his robes of state ; thereby ac- 
 knowledging himself a servant of the Church, whose anoint- 
 ing and blessing he has just received, and bound to wait on 
 and guard her bishops and priests, somewhat as a deacon 
 should, in their holy offices ; and again (which is another 
 part of the diaconate), to take care that the Church's chil- 
 dren generally be duly taught, and warned of their own part 
 in the service. 
 
 Let us now try by this notion of a nurse's duty certain 
 particulars in our own Church establishment. It is a test 
 which requires no very complex discussion ; plain men, even 
 unlearned ones, are in a great measure competent to apply 
 it ; and should it unfortunately happen that we are on some 
 matters conducted to a less favourable point of view, by our 
 Scriptural argument, than Mr. Gladstone, by his more philo- 
 sophical and elaborate one, it will be some compensation for 
 the annoyance, if we come to see at all distinctly what are 
 the points in the Church polity of our country, for the amend- 
 ment of which, if we cannot or must not strive, we may at 
 least humble ourselves and pray — an alternative sometimes 
 perhaps left too much out of sight, when people are descant- 
 ing on the unpractical nature of such discussions, and the 
 uselessness of dwelling on grievances which one cannot 
 redress. 
 
 The matters, then, which occur to us as likely to be mate- 
 rially modified in our view by the application of this test, are 
 the obvious ones of our Church's nationality ^ as affecting its 
 Catholic character ; the legislative power, as at present exer- 
 cised, we fear we must say not by, but over it ; and its con- 
 dition in respect of discipline. In compliance with the order 
 of Mr. Gladstone's argument we will take the last of the 
 three first. 
 
 » St. Cyril of Alex, in he.
 
 so 21ie State in its Relations with the Church, 
 
 One would think, if there were any part of a nursing 
 father's duty, in which he was bound more than in another 
 to look strictly to the wishes and directions of the parent, 
 it would be the moral training of the child, — all that bears on 
 reward or punishment. Any obstruction here to the pater- 
 nal will would appear an especially flagrant dereliction of 
 duty. Now is it not notorious, that the ancient discipline of 
 the Church is at present in abeyance in this country ; that 
 the reason commonly assigned for this is the interference of 
 the laws of the land, which, under pretence of certain civil 
 results of excommunication, virtually wrest the command of 
 the keys of God's kingdom out of those hands to which our 
 Lord committed them ; and that this state of things is con- 
 trary, not only to the rule and order of the ancient Church, 
 but to the declared will and desire of the present, which en- 
 joins all her ministers annually and solemnly to declare, 
 that '' the restoration of the said discipline is much to be 
 wished ?" — a sufficiently distinct intimation, surely, on the 
 part of the parent, in what the nursing mother's duty con- 
 sists. And yet what but the reluctance of the State hinders 
 the accomplishment of this earnest wish ? What other will 
 but hers can possibly stand in the Church's way, and thwart 
 her desire, so emphatically and unequivocally expressed ? 
 For as to mere popular feeling, however necessary to be con- 
 sulted when State purposes are taken into account, it is not 
 to be supposed that the Church, left to herself, would allow 
 any such consideration to avail against the plain institution 
 of Christ, recognised by herself in all ages. 
 
 JBut if any one really doubt the mind of the State on this 
 subject, let him only put the case to himself of an uncom- 
 promising revival of discipline in any diocese. Is it not 
 quite certain, that if the present Statute Book were found 
 insufficient, new and more stringent measures would pre- 
 sently be invented to check such an effort of priestcraft and 
 intrusion on liberty ? 
 
 We are not, however, without our fears, that what we are 
 now deprecating may seem to Mr. Gladstone one of the feli- 
 citous results of our present position ; at least, there are 
 in his third chapter many expressions which at first sight
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church, 31 
 
 appear somewhat at variance with the wish recorded in the 
 Commination Service : — 
 
 " Certainly her faithful members must be content to 
 stand side by side with many who care little for religion ; 
 but the promises of Christ may secure them from the danger 
 of contagion ; and they may also acquire from their position a 
 livelier remembrance of that lesson, that we may not say one 
 to another, ' Stand by, for I am holier than thou/ I say, 
 the promises of Christ ; for the Establishment does but ful- 
 fil His prophetic declarations, in not attempting any univer- 
 sal separation of the tares from the wheat ; of the good fish 
 from the bad; content with the laws of her mixed condition 
 upon earth, emulous of the example of her Lord, who ate 
 with publicans and sinners, and generous as her heavenly 
 Father, who sends rain and light upon the just and the 
 unjust, rendering benefit, but not therefore receiving pol- 
 lution^." 
 
 And again : — 
 
 " We do not anticipate any evil from that contact which 
 may occur in the discharge of duty; and there is in view the 
 animatiug prospect of thus arousing many a dormant spirit 
 unto holiness, and rescuing many a tender lamb of the Re- 
 deemer from the fangs of the roaring lion^." 
 
 Yet once more : — 
 
 "We are prepared, then, to assert it generally of a na- 
 tional Church, that it brings human and secondary motives 
 to bear upon mankind in favour of religion, with a power 
 greater than that which would belong to it, cceteris paribus, 
 when unestablished, because ordinarily it would not occupy 
 the same station in public estimation. The fashion which 
 might, in a wealthy and luxurious country, choose to reject 
 attendance at church, is enlisted in its favour. A narrow 
 and feeble provision, no doubt ; but we must not despise the 
 day of small things'^." 
 
 It is not now, be it observed, from abstract views or feel- 
 ings on the comparative excellence of this or that motive, 
 that we feel inclined to deprecate statements such as these, 
 but we wish it to be well considered how they appear when 
 
 »» Chap, iii.26. « § 29. M 33.
 
 32 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 placed side by side with certain clear injunctions of our 
 Saviour, as explained by the recorded practice of the Apos- 
 tles. For example, when we read, among the recommenda- 
 tions of an Establishment, that '^ the fashion which might, 
 in a wealthy and luxurious country, choose to reject attend- 
 ance at church, is enlisted in its favour,'^ it occurs whether 
 there be not some little forgetfulness of the caution against 
 " casting pearls before swine. '^ And how would it sound to 
 say, ^' Her faithful members must be content to stand side 
 by side with many who care little for religion ?" immediately 
 after the reading of the Apostolical Canon ^, "I have written 
 unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called 
 a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or 
 a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner ; with such an one 
 no not to eat.'' 
 
 We are, we confess, a little jealous of the seeming accord- 
 ance of some of Mr. Gladstone's arguments on this part of 
 his subject with the opinions attributed to the late Mr. Knox, 
 who is reported to have maintained " that the want of disci- 
 pline so much complained of was one of the happy features 
 of our Establishment V^ and to have praised it for diffus- 
 ing universally a low form of religion. Mr. Knox's autho- 
 rity was deservedly great on many points, but in matters 
 where primitive antiquity has a right to be paramount, we 
 can hardly consider him a safe guide, considering that he 
 openly avows a sort of Eclecticism, quite inconsistent with 
 implicit submission to the holy Catholic Church. " Being 
 bound to nothing," he says^, " I seem to myself to have ac- 
 cess to the spirit of everything. Let it not appear arrogant 
 in me simply to say, that it is as if I saw from a high ground 
 variously fenced-in paths in a valley below, where safety is 
 secured, and guidance obtained, at the expense of confiue- 
 ment and coercion in various ways : in all which Divine Pro- 
 vidence seems most wisely to have consulted the diversified 
 exigencies of weak mortals. . . Now, among these fenced-in 
 paths, that formed by John Wesley interests me peculi- 
 arly,'^ &c. 
 
 ^ 1 Cor. V. 11. * Introd. to '* Burnet's Lives and Characters,'* edited by 
 
 B]). Jebb, pp. xxxiv., xxxv. » " Remains," vol. i. 74.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 33 
 
 It is no wonder that with this sort of notion, looking on 
 the road of primitive Christianity as only one among many 
 which led in their time and order to the same point, Mr. 
 Knox should have felt himself free to rejoice, as things are, 
 in the cessation of all Church discipline. But Mr. Gladstone 
 has other thoughts of antiquity. Since, however, some of 
 his phraseology may appear to countenance the lax opinion 
 alluded to, it may be well to point out that his own argu- 
 ment in defence of an Establishment does by no means 
 involve any necessity for depriving that Establishment of 
 discipline. He says, in effect, '* We must have some secu- 
 rity for the truth being presented to all, even to those who 
 will profit but little by it; and to secure this, which an 
 Establishment does, we must be content to have all sorts of 
 people included in the visible Church.'' Granted ; but it 
 does not follow that all should stand side by side in that 
 Church. To be a subject of excommunication, a man must 
 be of the Church ; and excommunication itself, as Hooker 
 has observed, does not so entirely shut a person out as that 
 he shall be thenceforth excluded from the influence of the 
 body. We may be within or around the Holy Place, though 
 the stations of the penitents, as compared with the commu- 
 nicants, and of the various orders of the penitents one among 
 another, be ever so religiously observed. It was so in the 
 time of St. Austin and St. Chrysostom; it is, or was so, to a 
 considerable extent, of later years, in the Kirk of Scotland ; 
 yet in both cases the system had the countenance of the 
 State. National Establishments, therefore, need not exclude 
 discipline ; and if ours do so the fault must be somewhere 
 else, and not in the mere circumstance of its nationality. 
 
 At the same time we cannot but apprehend, indeed Mr. 
 Gladstone himself seems to be aware, that there is no know- 
 ing how much of the alleged effect of the Establishment in 
 bringing home the Church to every one, may, in fact, be due 
 to the catholicity of the Church. All that is said about not 
 neglecting any, evidently belongs to her as well when sepa- 
 rate as established : her discipline, in one sense so exclusive, 
 is in another the most comprehensive possible; the differ- 
 ence to her, therefore, between separation and establishment
 
 34 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 is reduced to considerations merely temporal : protection, 
 countenance, pecuniary resources; which to reject, as long as 
 they can be innocently accepted, would of course be abusing 
 a talent and incurring a judgment; but when the question 
 lies between such things on the one hand, and but a pro- 
 bable breach of God's commands, or maiming of His work, 
 on the other, to state what would be the choice of faith, 
 seems a mere truism in Christian casuistry, such as one is 
 almost ashamed to have to set dovvn in words. The Lord's 
 hand is not so shortened. 
 
 And on this subject we cannot but regret to find high 
 authority lending itself to the common, but, as we think, 
 gratuitous assertion, that — 
 
 *' Christianity arrived at the summits of society by the 
 miraculous impulses of its original propagation, whose vibra- 
 tions had been measured, no doubt, with reference to the 
 space they were to traverse, and did not exhaust themselves 
 till they had reached the farthest point to which they were 
 destined '\" 
 
 Where, we would ask, is the warrant for this saying ? 
 What Scripture, what Catholic tradition, enables us so to 
 sound the exact depth of the cloud of glorious promises 
 which envelopes the Church? The prophetic word is, ^^ your 
 iniquities have separated between you and your God, and 
 your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear." 
 Let this barrier be removed, let the spirit of martyrdom, the 
 power of Christian self-denial, leaven the whole Church jis 
 in the first days ; and it is according to God's graciousness, 
 and the wording of His promises, to believe that such mi- 
 raculous aid as may be needful for her, thoroughly fulfilling 
 her office of witness, will not be withheld from her ; whether 
 established, as in Augustine's time, or persecuted, as in 
 Cyprian's, " her sound will go out into all lands, and her 
 words unto the ends of the world;" and in every town 
 in every land, all that pass along the streets will hear by her 
 the voice of Wisdom, and, listen they or forbear, will know 
 that there hath been a prophet among them. 
 
 But observe how closely her hope of success in either state 
 
 •» Chap. ii. § 40.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church, 35 
 
 is connected with our denying ourselves, and embracing the 
 Cross. Over and above all mysterious ways, in which, for 
 aught we know, such causes may work such effects, a glance 
 only at the machinery by which she actually prevailed in 
 former days, is sufficient to shew this. When open perse- 
 cution and martyrdom ceased, voluntary poverty, retire- 
 ment, and mortification, " the philosophy of the solitaries,^' 
 as St. Chrysostom delights to call it, which had flourished 
 all along, but had been comparatively obscured by the glories 
 of actual warfare, were brought forward in their power : and 
 by them, it should seem, as much at least as by any direct 
 imperial aid, were the truths and duties of orthodox Chris- 
 tianity propagated amongst the "dense masses'' of Constan- 
 tinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and other such cities. As if 
 on purpose to draw men's attention to this, it was they, the 
 solitaries, whose faithful warnings and sufferings, under the 
 direction of such champions as Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, 
 kept the stream of piety clear among the body of the people, 
 through more than one heretical and persecuting reign. Nor 
 shall we have any right to despair of the full declaration of 
 the Gospel by the Church to every creature in the vast 
 wildernesses of London and our own manufacturing dis- 
 tricts, until a like experiment shall have been tried here, 
 with or without State countenance, and shall have proved 
 ineffectual. 
 
 But the voluntary method, it is argued, brings the Church 
 iijto a worse dependence than that on the State ; " it tends 
 to give a preponderating influence, in determining the doc- 
 trine which shall be taught to the less qualified class ^ ;'' and 
 therefore is ill fitted to ensure either permanency of sound 
 doctrine, or acceptance of discipline, which must be often 
 unpalatable. 
 
 We ask which voluntary method ? For this matter is often 
 unfairly argued, as if in the nature of things and the ex- 
 perience of the Church, no other could be found than that 
 which prevails among most of our dissenters, Romish as 
 well as Protestant; the method, namely, of making collec- 
 tions for each teacher among his own flock ; whereas it 
 
 ' Chap. iii. 44. 
 
 d2
 
 36 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 is well known that the system of the early Church, volun- 
 tary as of course it was, threw no sucli snare in the way 
 of individual ministers, inasmuch as the whole oblations of 
 the faithful were cast into one sum, whereof the bishop was 
 steward, and at his discretion the portions of the several 
 priests and other ministers were assigned monthly ^. 
 
 In our own times, the Churches in Canada and elsewhere, 
 so far as they are supported by the Society for the Propa- 
 gation of the Gospel, and also the Wesleyan Methodists, may 
 be cited as exemplifying (more or less imperfectly, it is true,) 
 this ancient arrangement ; so ancient, that we may without 
 much hesitation refer its origin to the Mother Church of all 
 Christendom, and to the Apostles^ distribution of the gifts 
 which were laid in such abundance at their feet. 
 
 But, it may be said, even this method affords but incom- 
 plete protection. It exempts, indeed, each particular minis- 
 ter from suffering in his estate by the caprice or personal 
 feeling of his flock; but it leaves the Church, as a body, 
 subject to the shifting taste of the community, and what 
 may be called the spirit of the times : whereas the terms of 
 an ecclesiastical endowment, once fixed by law, are com- 
 paratively permanent. And, undoubtedly, cceteris paribus^ 
 such endowment is desirable : but supposing it to fail, 
 through no fault of the Church, there yet remains a resource 
 for the independence of her ministers, and consequent per- 
 manency of her doctrine ; one which Mr. Gladstone himself 
 has incidentally referred to. He asks, " Who does not see 
 that the Apostle himself, in writing to his converts that he 
 has laboured for his own support, because he would not be 
 chargeable unto any of them, affords an express recognition 
 of that truth for which we here contend ? namely, that when 
 the Christian flock are placed habitually in the position of 
 pay-masters, notions of pride and self-sufficiency will infal- 
 libly associate themselves with that function, and men will 
 claim the right to determine upon the doctrine, for whose 
 inculcation they are continually reminded that they supply 
 the pecuniary means ^ ?'' 
 
 '' See Bingham, bk. v. chap, iv, §§ 2, 3; and St. Cyprian, as quoted by him. 
 1 Chap. iii. 43.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church, 37 
 
 The statement, by the way, is perhaps a little too strong : 
 if the pride and self-sufficiency spoken of were " infallible" 
 results of the ancient voluntary system, St. Paul would scarce 
 have sanctioned it so cordially as he did in the case of the 
 Churches of Macedonia ; and he would have said more than 
 he has done, by way of recommending his own more com- 
 mon practice to the imitation of bishops and priests in 
 general. But however, he clearly indicates a resource, sup- 
 posing both endowment and voluntary bounty clogged with 
 conditions, virtual or express, such as Christ's servants could 
 not accept. They may labour, working with their own hands ; 
 nor need this be any degradation or disparagement to the 
 ministry, provided, what is all along supposed, that the 
 ancient discipline were kept up, to meet this among other 
 emergencies, for which it was at the beginning adopted. 
 And as to the continuance of good learning among the 
 clergy; there have been before now fraternities of devoted 
 persons, not only maintaining themselves in that way, but 
 earning so much over and above, as enabled some of them at 
 least to find leisure both for their own studies, and for the 
 training of candidates for the ministry. 
 
 This, it will be said, is all Utopian ; but it is surely within 
 the limits of possibility, and it is enough for our present pur- 
 pose, if the resource we point out be as likely to succeed, as 
 the need for it to arise : that need being, as we have seen, 
 the failure of endowments and the refusal of voluntary aid, 
 except on base conditions. 
 
 One word more on the question of Discipline, from which 
 we have too far digressed : it will have been seen that Mr. 
 Gladstone"' quotes some of our Lord's parables, such as that 
 of the Tares, and of the Net cast into the sea; and also the ex- 
 ample of our Lord in eating with publicans and sinners; the 
 dispensation also of Almighty God, in sending rain on the 
 just and on the unjust; and the evil mark set on those who 
 say, '' Stand off, for I am holier than thou." Here we seem 
 again to perceive the sinister influence of Mr. Knox's reason- 
 ings, for these are the very texts which persons of his way of 
 thinking are apt to allege against all discipline whatsoever. 
 
 But whether they have any such force may well be 
 m Chap. iii. § 26.
 
 38 The State in its Relations with the Church, 
 
 doubted : considering, first of all, that they cannot mean 
 anything inconsistent with the other and plainer texts, 
 which have been already produced in favour of discipline, 
 and with the practice of the Church ensuing. No reason 
 can be given why the Parable of the Tares, for example, 
 should be understood as prohibiting the separation wished 
 for by our Church, which will not make out that it equally 
 tells against all separation from notorious sinners, and there- 
 fore against St. PauFs canon, " With such an one no not to 
 eat." Nor do we see that such an interpretation of it can 
 be anyhow reconciled with the authoritative words, *' Whose 
 sins ye retain, they are retained." '* Retaining of sins" can 
 hardly be imagined without some sort of visible distinction, 
 such as shall prevent persons lying under that sentence from 
 standing exactly " side by side" with those whose sins are 
 remitted. We must therefore look out for some other in- 
 terpretation, and we have not far to seek; the early ex- 
 positors will teach us with one voice that this portion of the 
 parable is directed, not against that *' godly discipline" con- 
 cerning which the Church prays continually with Bishop 
 Wilson that it may be *' restored and countenanced," but 
 against that impatient feeling, so natural even to the best 
 of uninstructed men, which would lead them, as St. Cyprian, 
 alluding to this parable, expresses it", "to claim to them- 
 selves what the Father hath reserved to the Son, to imagine 
 themselves already capable of taking fan in hand and purging 
 the floor, or of separating all the tares from the wheat, by 
 their human judgment," an error which uncorrected tends 
 either to schism or persecution; and accordingly, as St. Au- 
 gustin made large use of this parable against the Puritanism, 
 if so one may describe it, of the Donatists ; so St. Chryso- 
 stom° distinctly explains it as forbidding to persecute here- 
 tics, yet leaving full power to correct them in the way of 
 discipline : " By the saying, Lest you root up also the wheat 
 with them, what else can lie mean but this : that if you wTre 
 to take arms and slaughter the heretics, many of the Saints 
 too must of necessity fall with them ; or that of the tares 
 themselves, many in all likelihood will change and become 
 wheat? You see, then, if you are too hasty in uprooting, 
 
 " Ep. 61-, ed. Fell. • In loco.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 39 
 
 you damage that which is to be wheat, destroying those who 
 may perchance alter and improve. The checking then of 
 heretics, and stopping their mouths, the depriving them 
 of power to speak openly, and dissolving their assemblies 
 and leagues, He forbids not, but the killing and slaughter- 
 ing them." St. Chrysostom points out, it will be perceived, 
 a significant circumstance in the parable, of itself sufficient 
 to keep us from applying it to check discipline, viz. the 
 reason alleged for not then gathering the tares, " lest ye root 
 up also the wheat with them ;" "you are not yet competent 
 judges which is or will be wheat, and which are mere tares ;" 
 whereas all men surely are competent judges, whether or no 
 their neighbour is openly living in any of those ways which 
 St. Paul says should exclude him from our company. 
 
 With regard both to this parable and to the other cited 
 by Mr. Gladstone, of the good fish not to be separated from 
 the bad, is there not some appearance of a confusion be- 
 tween precept, rightly so called, and prophecy? Our Lord 
 says, the good and the bad must go on together for a time, 
 but He does not say that it was His work or will, any further 
 than as He permits it ; any otherwise than as when He says, 
 that the love of the greater part must wax cold, and that 
 there must be false Christs and false prophets. As one 
 would not call the fulfilment of such prophecies " His clear 
 intentions,'^ so it may be questioned whether the term be 
 strictly accurate, applied to His intimations of the mixed 
 condition of the Church. It is a serious matter, many times, 
 to confound prediction with precept, and it seems therefore 
 right to note every seeming instance of it. Consider the 
 passage in the 18th of St. Matthew, one of the most pe- 
 remptory, perhaps, of those intimations : " It is impossible 
 but that ra aKavSaXa, the offences foretold, should come." 
 If our Saviour had stopped there, this also, we suppose, 
 would have been quoted as tending to forbid any judicial 
 strictness in the administration of the Kingdom of Heaven; 
 but it is followed up (and the fact is remarkable) not only 
 by a general " woe" against all by whom the offences come, 
 but also by distinct provisions for the enforcement of that 
 very discipline, \>hich such warnings are supposed to forbid,
 
 40 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 ending with, " If he neglect to hear the Church, let him be 
 unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." 
 
 The case is different, when, as in the prophecy on which 
 we have been dwelling so much, of the Nursing Fathers, 
 a sanction is annexed, namely, in the verse, " The nation 
 and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish ; yea, 
 those nations shall be utterly wasted :" or when from the 
 tone of the prophecy itself, or by comparison wjth other 
 passages, or in any other way, the Divine approbation is 
 intimated, though but doubtfully. 
 
 The mention of the Almighty sending rain upon the just 
 and unjust, and of our Lord Himself eating with publicans 
 and sinners, is not surely much in point, unless it can be 
 shewn that granting some benefits necessarily implies re- 
 serving none ; and that our Lord was in the same relation 
 to those w^ith whom He so condescended as ordinary Chris- 
 tians to an excommunicated person. Observe, too, that in 
 the very wording of the law of excommunication the terms 
 " heathen man and publican" are introduced, as if to remind 
 men of these passages, supposed by some inconsistent with 
 that practice, and so to evince that part of the care and love 
 which is enjoined towards those unhappy persons consists 
 in treating them with due reserve. Again, the state of mind 
 implied in " Stand off, for I am holier than thou," would 
 seem less likely to be encouraged by a regular system of 
 authoritative Church censures, which would prescribe for us 
 whom we ought to withdraw from, than by leaving each 
 person to draw the line for himself. 
 
 On the whole, we greatly wish that this part of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's argument were so expressed, as to give less encou- 
 ragement to the enemies of Christian discipline. We fear 
 the use which others may make of his statements. It is too 
 true, that Church censures have been practically long dis- 
 used among us; yet is it something, that the omission is 
 annually lamented in the Prayer-book, and the system re- 
 cognised in the theory of the ecclesiastical courts. In the 
 effort which is now making to do away, even in respect of 
 delinquent clergy, this last relic of the power of the keys, we 
 see but the natural result of undue concession to the State
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 4i 
 
 in former times. We know but too well the order of the 
 destructive process. First, when substantial power is to 
 be surrendered, people are reconciled to it by being told, 
 "It is but an arrangement forced on us for the time; you 
 see we keep the old forms and framework entire, and by and 
 by, should circumstances allow, they may be reanimated." 
 Then, as time rolls on, sober and practical men, men well 
 acquainted with the present Church, and too busy to trouble 
 themselves with obsolete observances, begin to ask, '* Why 
 retain the shadow when the substance is gone? especially 
 when such scruples are found to stand in the way of real 
 tangible reform." And thus, without deliberate apostacy, 
 we may easily conceive any Church principle whatever com- 
 pletely given up and vanishing from a country in the course 
 of two generations. The reformers of one age contrive to 
 paralyse it, and those of the next think they may as well 
 kill it out of the way. Were such a thing to happen in 
 respect of so sacred a matter as the judicial prerogative of 
 Bishops, it would be a great grief for sincere venerators 
 of the Church, like Mr. Gladstone, to find that they had 
 been unwittingly co-operating in it. 
 
 This topic naturally conducts us to the second head, on 
 which, as we think, the excellent author's " wish" has been 
 too clearly " father to his thoughts." How does the present 
 state of the Crown's legislative supremacy in England accord 
 with the prophetic idea of the regal office in the Church? 
 Those who were to sit upon thrones, judging the twelve 
 tribes of Israel ; those who were sent by our Lord, as His 
 Father sent Him ; those without whom St. Ignatius thought 
 nothing ought to be done in the Church ; and by whom, 
 according to St. Cyprian, " every act of the Church was to 
 be guided, and that by a Divine law ;" are not even allowed 
 to be judges, how many of their own order the necessities of 
 their own Church require. The Irish Church Bill of 1833, 
 to which in particular we refer, has been declared on high 
 authority P to be binding on the consciences of Anglican 
 Clergymen, Bishops as well as others, by virtue of the oath 
 
 p By the late Bisliop of Ferns, in liis Letter to his Clergy. Brit Mag., 
 V. 742.
 
 42 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 taken at ordination, that we will administer " the discipline 
 of Christ as this Church and Realm hath received tiie same.'* 
 That is, it is consistent with the discipline of Christ, as 
 received in this Church and Realm, — it is one of our con- 
 stitutional laws, — that bishopricks may be suppressed to any 
 extent by the sovereign, at the request of a body of laymen, 
 any number of whom may be heretics, contrary to the ex- 
 press protest of the episcopal body. For let it be well under- 
 stood, that this is the ground upon which the invalidity of 
 that Bill, as an ecclesiastical law, was maintained at the 
 time by certain Churchmen, viz. the public dissent of those 
 to whom by the law of Jesus Christ, and as they flattered 
 themselves, by the law of the English Church also, an indis- 
 pensable authority in all such matters was committed. They 
 imagined, therefore, that former unions of dioceses, to which 
 apparently the bishops were consenting, formed no precedent 
 for Lord Stanley's Bill, in which the same thing was done in 
 spite of their open and solemn protest. It seems we were 
 mistaken: and if the state of parties should at any time 
 make it expedient to carry the same system a little further ; 
 — to suppress, for example, the whole episcopate, with the 
 exception of the four Archbishops, or even to leave but one 
 Bishop for each of the islands ; — whatever may be said against 
 it on the score of piety or public interest, it would not be 
 contrary to Christ's discipline as England has received it, 
 and would be binding therefore on all our consciences, 
 though each and all of our spiritual Fathers had lifted his 
 voice ever so loudly against it. They might remonstrate, 
 but if they disobeyed, — if they took measures for continuing 
 but one of the condemned sees, — they would, on this con- 
 struction, be disloyal before God, and perjured. 
 
 When such is the view taken in such high quarters of the 
 actual relation of the Church to the State among us, no 
 wonder if some misgiving arise in those who have learned 
 that the Apostles were to represent Christ in His kingly, as 
 well as his sacerdotal and prophetic offices. They find little 
 resemblance between the attitude of a sovereign and par- 
 liament enforcing such laws, and that in which they should 
 be found, if they would fulfil the decree of IJim by Whom
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 43 
 
 kings reign. It seems to them strange that it should be 
 part of a nursing father's prerogative to cast down at will 
 the thrones of those whom the Father has ordained to govern 
 the whole family. In short, they cannot get it out of their 
 minds, that an alliance on such terms involves a great sin ; 
 not only on the part of the State enforcing, but also on the 
 part of the Church consenting to it; and they could have 
 w^ished that the State rather had rebelled alone, by cast- 
 ing off the Church for a time, than that our forefathers 
 had yielded [if they did really yield) to an arrangement so 
 plainly contrary to the Word of God. 
 
 Nor does it tend greatly to assuage their misgivings, when 
 they reflect on that other obvious instance of encroachment 
 by our nursing fathers, the nomination of the Successors of 
 the Apostles exclusively by the Crown, and enforcement of 
 the same by outlawry, confiscation, and imprisonment. They 
 can understand well enough how Constantius, Julian, or 
 Valens, might desire to force bishops on unwilling electors 
 or consecrators ; but they cannot conceive an Ambrose or 
 a Basil heartily allowing the claim, and maintaining it as 
 part of that discipline of Christ which every priest in His 
 Church is pledged to maintain. Our Lord called whom He 
 would, and they came unto Him, to be ordained, and as 
 He was sent, so were His Apostles and their successors: 
 could He mean them to have no voice at all — not even a 
 veto — in the designation of those whom they should con- 
 secrate ? 
 
 But this whole topic has been so fully and elaborately 
 argued, that it is unnecessary to do more than just mention 
 it, as completing the view of the Church's condition in re- 
 spect of legislative power. First, those fro m whom alone her 
 spiritual laws should emanate, are nominated by a power 
 which may be, and probably for a long time will be, hostile 
 to her rights : next, not even these are allowed so much 
 as an effective protest on matters the most vital to the due 
 execution of their trust. 
 
 But it is said, anomalous as all this sounds, and in some 
 respects even profane, yet the system has worked well, and 
 experience happily answers the objections which theory, ex-
 
 44 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 cept by abandoning the principles of the ancient Church, 
 has never yet been able to deal with. This seems to be the 
 ground on which Mr. Gladstone falls back with most con- 
 fidence. 
 
 "The Government of England has ever been distinguished 
 in civil matters less by accuracy of adhesion to any dogmatic 
 and determinate theory than by the skilful use of natural 
 influences, and a general healthiness of tone and harmony 
 of operation, resulting from a happy and providential fusion 
 of elements, rather than from deliberately advised intention. 
 If this has been the case in civil matters ; if our constitution, 
 as viewed by the crude speculatist, consist of a mass of ano- 
 malies, threatening perpetual contradiction and collision ; if 
 it has wrought rather by provision for the avoidance of such 
 evils than for their subsequent remedy ; so also it has been 
 with the Church, whose relations with the State had for 
 many years proceeded rather upon a mutually friendly un- 
 derstanding, than upon precise definitions of rights; and 
 therefore we cannot expect to exhibit a theory which will 
 bear throughout a critical analysis, in this more than in 
 any other department of our national Governments." 
 
 Most true : no considerate reader of our history but must 
 humbly and thankfully confess that we have been favoured 
 in this, as in other respects, far beyond expectation or 
 desert ; yet Mr. Gladstone himself allows that it has all de- 
 pended on a mutual friendly understanding with the State; 
 and if that be gone, or fast going, the anomalies of course 
 assume a more practical form, and must and will be more 
 thought of than in times of more harmony. 
 
 What is more, this answer is irrelevant to the main objec- 
 tion. It is like what is urged in behalf of Presbyterianism 
 in Scotland : "Do you not see how well it all works? It has 
 the blessing of God upon it, and cannot therefore be very 
 wrong." This is arguing by sight, and not by faith. The 
 punishment, for aught we know, may be only deferred ; and 
 perhaps, if we looked calmly and deeply, we should detect, 
 in both cases, evident symptoms of mischief, bearing more 
 or less the aspect of judicial inflictions, penal consequences 
 
 1 Chap. iv. § 15.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 45 
 
 o the surrender of the Church's rights. The only sufficient 
 defence of the arrangements in question, would be to recon- 
 cile them, or at least make it doubtful whether they could 
 not be reconciled, with Scripture and the voice of the early 
 Universal Church. No reasoning on apparent results cau 
 ever answer that purpose. 
 
 It is said again, the supremacy of the State " does not de- 
 stroy the independence of the Church, because there always 
 remains the remedy of putting an end to the connection." 
 
 "The alliance, then, is one durante bene placito of both 
 the contracting parties. And if the conscience of the Church 
 of England should by its constituted rulers require any law, 
 or any meeting to make laws, as essential to its well-being, 
 and such law, or the licence of such meeting, should be per- 
 manently refused, it would then be her duty to resign her 
 civil privileges, and act in her free spiritual capacity ; a con- 
 tingency as improbable, we trust, as it would be deplorable, 
 but one which, opening this extreme remedy, testifies to 
 the real, though dormant and reserved, independence of the 
 Church^" 
 
 Now we confess ourselves unable to comprehend this line 
 of argument. In the first place, if the English Church is 
 really in such a position with regard to the State, as to have 
 given up, though but for a time, certain inalienable privi- 
 leges, vested in her by our Lord Himself, which, according 
 to the statement of Bishop Elrington and others, we have 
 reason to think is the case, then is she pro tanto in a state 
 of sin, and has reason to feel uneasy and be afraid of God's 
 judgments. 
 
 Again, in what sense can it be said that the Church of 
 England retains in her power the remedy of putting an end 
 to the connection ? It may be said in the same sense, as we 
 might affirm of a man forcibly detained on ship-board, that 
 he has always in his power the remedy of jumping over- 
 board. It cannot be said in the same sense, as of two part- 
 ners in a mercantile transaction, that either of them when 
 he pleases may dissolve the partnership. At least, we should 
 be much obliged to any lawyer who would point out to us 
 
 ' Chap. iv. § 3, and § 9.
 
 46 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 the constitutional process by which the Church of England 
 might assert her independence, only giving up her temporal 
 advantages, and not incurring the penalties of Premunire, 
 except she could obtain the consent of the Civil Government. 
 Until this be made out, it really appears to us that the 
 remedy which she is here stated to have reserved, is one 
 which no power on earth could have deprived her of; it is 
 just the martyr's and confessor's remedy, leave to suffer, 
 when in conscience she dares not obey. 
 
 At the risk of seeming both tedious and quarrelsome, we 
 will add a few remarks on one more head, which may well 
 make an English Churchman anxious, on comparing what he 
 reads of with what he sees. We allude to a feeling already 
 mentioned, the excess of our Church's nationality ; the pre- 
 valence in it of what perhaps may be called not unfitly a sort 
 of ultra- Anglic an spirit. Mr. Gladstone, in his valuable chap- 
 ters on the '' Abuse of Private Judgment and on Toleration," 
 brings out, in a way to us both original and convincing, the 
 fact that nationality was the leading principle of the English 
 Reformation. That movement, he says, " was the establish- 
 ment of a national exemption from external restraint in 
 matters of religion. The question between the nation, either 
 through its Church or its State and the individual," i. e. the 
 question of toleration, ^* was of subsequent growth^." .... 
 " The first assertion of rehgious liberty was for the nation, as 
 against what lay beyond the nation, and not for the private 
 individual, as against all but himself. And the doctrine 
 grew imperceptibly by unconscious and progressive deflec- 
 tions from the rule of arbitrary power^" The preamble of 
 24 Hen. YIIL, chap. 12, which Act abolishes the papal su- 
 premacy, declares that the Spiritualty of the realm of Eng- 
 land, "'usually called the English Church, hath always been 
 thought, and is also at this hour, sufficient and meet of itself, 
 without the intermeddling of any exterior person or persons, 
 to declare and determine all such doubts, and to administer 
 all such offices and duties, as to their rooms spiritual doth 
 appertain.' 
 
 " We have here a clear view of the notion under which 
 
 » Chap. V. 61. ' Ibid. 62.
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 47 
 
 separation took place. The nation of England said : We 
 are an organized and integral whole, both in secular and 
 spiritual matters, capable of self-government and self-direc- 
 tion i^." 
 
 *' That the question of the English Reformation was emi- 
 nently and specially national ; that it was raised as between 
 this island of the free on the one hand, and an * Italian 
 priest* on the other, is a remarkable truth, which derives 
 equally remarkable illustrations from our history. The main 
 subject of contention between the State and the Romanists, 
 or Recusants as they were called, was not their adhesion to 
 this or that popish doctrine, but their acknowledgment of an 
 unnational and anti-national head. To meet this case the 
 oath of supremacy was framed.'' 
 
 Nor was this merely the legal and abstract view of the 
 transaction : there are places in Shakspeare, to go no fur- 
 ther, which indicate unequivocally the popular feeling to 
 have been the same : — 
 
 " "What earthly name to interrogatories 
 
 Can task the free breath of a sacred king ? 
 
 Thou canst not, Cardinal, devise a name 
 
 So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous, 
 
 To charge me to an answer, as the pope. 
 
 Tell him this tale ; and from the moath of England 
 
 Add thus much more, — that no Italian priest 
 
 Shall tithe or toll in our dominions : 
 
 But as we, under heaven, are supreme head, 
 
 So, under him, that great supremacy. 
 
 Where we do reign, we will alone uphold, 
 
 Without the assistance of a mortal hand ; 
 
 So tell the pope ; all reverence set apart. 
 
 To him, and his usurped authority \"' 
 
 And again, — 
 
 *' Though you, and all the kings of Christendom, 
 Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, 
 Dreading the curse that money may buy out." 
 ****** 
 
 *' Yet I alone, alone do me oppose, 
 Against the pope, and count his friends my foes^." 
 
 u §§63, 64. ^ King John, iii. 1.
 
 48 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 Now it will hardly be denied that some of the above ex- 
 pressions, to an ear versed in the old ecclesiastical language, 
 carry rather an unprimitive, uncatholic sound : they savour 
 a little of the fastus occide7italium, the complaint of which is 
 as old as St. Basil. The provocation from Eome was doubt- 
 less great; but it is one of the miserable consequences of 
 pride and usurpation to make those who resist them proud 
 and usurpers in their turn : and those who reflect on the 
 strict bond of union, which by the law of Christ subsists 
 among all Churches everywhere, will find perhaps something 
 to scruple at in a claim by any one national Church to be 
 considered " an integral whole in spiritual matters," and to 
 exclude " the intermeddling of any exterior person or persons 
 to determine any doubts." In fact, this exclusiveness has 
 been virtually disavowed by those Anglicans who from time to 
 time have appealed, as Cranmer and Bramhall, to a lawful 
 general council, when such may be had ; yet the spirit of it 
 undoubtedly leavens our Church, in some respects, with good 
 eflfect, but in others more entirely, than might be wished. 
 We are apt to think more of our nurse than of our mother, 
 and, as might be expected from an insular temper, to be 
 more frightened by the word un-English, than by the words 
 sectarian and un -catholic. If it were not for some feeling 
 of this kind, could we have endured to exclude so long from 
 our altars the Bishops and Priests of America and Scotland ? 
 Should we not ere now have fallen on some arrangement 
 whereby all invidious distinctions between their ordina- 
 tions and ours might be done away ? Would those unpro- 
 hibited ceremonies, such as turning to the east, whereby we 
 may express our desire to be in more perfect communion 
 with the whole Church, excite so much displeasure and sus- 
 picion as they do ? Would not our missionaries and travel- 
 lers, and the societies which authorize them, be a little more 
 scrupulous of disquieting foreign Churches, such as the Greek 
 and Abyssinian, by openly slighting their usages, and set- 
 ting up our own worship as in opposition to theirs ? It has 
 been well for England, no doubt, that this sort of stubborn 
 nationality has kept us, as in the days of Edward VI., from 
 the too close intercourse which many desired with foreign
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church, 49 
 
 schismatical bodies ; but the primitive hatred of separation 
 would as effectually have done that, as it would have retained 
 us in communion, or at least in the wish for communion, 
 with all who have not lost the essence of the Church, and of 
 faith. It is curious, and not unimportant, to observe, how 
 this same English self-will extends itself into the detail of 
 our Church arrangements, interfering not a little with rever- 
 ence, order, and obedience. In such matters, for example, 
 as where we are to be placed in church, and whether we 
 shall sit, stand, or kneel, and whether we will make any re- 
 sponses, and when ; and in all our demeanour as subjects of 
 pastoral care, many of us seem anxious to prove ourselves 
 
 *' penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos :" 
 and the feeling appears to be respected and encouraged, as 
 English, sound, and manly, by persons who would surely find 
 something to deprecate in it had they not been accustomed to 
 take their own standard too partially from the sixteenth cen- 
 tury. When one considers, on the one hand, the mysterious 
 intenseness of our Lord^s Prayer for the unity of His whole 
 Church, and, on the other, the present miserable state of 
 Christendom, for want of that unity ; when one looks back 
 to the days of General Councils, and of letters commenda- 
 tory between Church and Church, and recollects that they 
 were contemporaneous with the days of uninterrupted order 
 and Catholic consent ; our complete separation from other 
 Churches will appear no slight drawback on the benefit we 
 have gained by asserting ourselves an " island of the free ;" 
 nor will any usage, prejudice, or enactment, appear a trifling 
 evil, which tends to that sort of sullen, moody independence. 
 
 Reverting then to the divinely-suggested standard for ad- 
 justing the relation of the State to the Church, it would 
 seem that the Nursing Fathers in God's household cannot 
 in faithfulness either neglect the laws which He has set for 
 the correction of His erring children, or take into their own 
 hands the regulation of the whole family, or separate at their 
 will between the portions of it, when He has ordained that 
 all should live in mutual intercourse ; that under all these 
 heads, the State in England is clearly in sin ; and that it is 
 at least doubtful how far the Church has made herself a party
 
 50 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 to that sin. What then follows? are we to separate from 
 her? to become Romanists, or found a new sect? By no 
 means : and for this plain reason, that she is still the Church, 
 the true mystical Body of Jesus Christ, having His com- 
 mission, His word, and His sacraments, from whom it is un- 
 lawful to separate in any case, even though she exacted 
 unlawful terms of communion : we should then only have 
 to bear her censures patiently ; and as yet (we cannot be too 
 thankful for it) she does not exact unlawful terms of com- 
 munion ; none of her members are obliged in any way to 
 assent, either to the suppression of discipline, or to the State 
 usurpations of legislative power, or to the virtual excommu- 
 nication, in part, of the foreign Churches. If indeed we 
 were forced to accept Bishop Elrington's interpretation of 
 the clause in the Ordination Service; if we believed that 
 a priest's adherence to " the Discipline of Christ as this 
 Church and Eealm hath received the same,'' implied the 
 validity of such laws as the Irish Church Bill, passed as it 
 was ; then indeed we should think it impossible to be in 
 other than lay communion with the Church in England; 
 but we do not so construe that engagement; we consider 
 that it pledges us to the formularies of the Church, not to 
 the usurpations of the State ; and thus convinced, though 
 we thought even more deeply and positively than we do of 
 the Church's part in the transgressions above enumerated, 
 it would not in the least tend to drive us from her com- 
 munion. It is an old canon, and settled long ago by the 
 whole Church against the Donatists, that no amount of 
 faultiness in Church governors can make separation cease 
 to be schism. Not to dwell on the argument so largely un- 
 folded by Mr. Palmer and others, which appears a decisive 
 one, certainly, as against Romanists, that if unscriptural 
 concession in this kind unchurches a community, the Roman 
 Church herself has strayed out of Christ's pale, since no 
 intrusion of the civil power in England can be named, but 
 it may find its parallel in some country of the Roman obe- 
 dience, and that with formal sanction of Papal authority. 
 
 What then, it may be inquired, is the use of stirring 
 topics so delicate at all ? Is it not an unpractical, gratuitous
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 51 
 
 agitating of consciences ? In the first place, there is the 
 great duty of warning and protest, of which our Church 
 herself sets us an example, in the matter of discipline, yearly 
 in the Commination Service. And may we not venture to 
 expound the second paragraph of the Thirty-seventh Article 
 as a similar protest against other usurpations of Church 
 authority by the civil power? Be that as it may, the minis- 
 ters of the Church Catholic, which is the manifestation of 
 the Judge's presence, are bound to denounce all that He 
 will then condemn, whether in individual or corporate mem- 
 bers of His body : and it would indeed be an intolerabls 
 consequence of our establishment, if it forbade the watch- 
 man's putting his trumpet to his mouth. 
 
 Again, there is the duty of prayer and intercession, for 
 the due performance of which it is most desirable that we 
 should have, even as private Christians, tolerably correct 
 views of our position as a Church. The great lights of our 
 own Church, the Andreweses, the Wilsons, the Leslies, and 
 the Taylors, have left us models of assiduous prayer on these 
 very subjects : as that sovereigns and their nobles " may have 
 much power for, and none against, the truth "^ ;" that " godly 
 discipline may be restored and countenanced ^ ;" that " God 
 would lay to His hand, now that men have made void His 
 law ^ " that He would "unite all the members of the Church 
 in faith, hope, and charity, and an external communion, 
 when it shall seem good in His eyes ^" If one could succeed 
 in calmly stating the grievances of our Church, so as to 
 make such intercessions general and fervent among her 
 dutiful children ; those who believe what the Bible says of 
 prayer, will not think slightly of the service so rendered 
 to her. 
 
 But further j our views on these important public matters 
 influence our personal feelings and conduct more perhaps 
 than we might beforehand imagine. The great question of 
 Utile against Honestum cannot be once seriously decided, 
 even as a mere speculation, or in a matter of history, with- 
 out producing a tendency to decide again in the same way 
 
 * Bishop Andrewes* " Devotions." ^ Bisliop Wilson's " Sacra Privata." 
 
 ' Prayer prefixed to Leslie's " Case of the Regale." ' Bishop Taylor's 
 
 •' Holy Living"
 
 52 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 on the next occasion, great or small, domestic or national, 
 on which it comes before us. For example, a man has been 
 used to judge this way or that of the conduct of Cranmer or 
 of Laud in the several conjunctures which gave colour to 
 their lives and fortunes; can we doubt that when he himself 
 comes to be tried, on a small scale perliaps, in the govern- 
 roent of his parish, or his estate, his ovvn conduct will in- 
 sensibly take a tinge, he will be either stubborn or com- 
 promising, according to what he has been used to admire 
 or condemn ? Will not his standard on all other matters, 
 unconsciously to himself, be lowered or elevated ? and that 
 more effectually, the more sacred the one point is which 
 happens first to occasion this trial of his moral sense ? 
 
 Moreover, there is a sort of confident exulting tone which 
 whenever a man takes in his estimate of his country, and of 
 public measures, it augurs but ill for the tenderness of his 
 conscience in general; and that especially among English- 
 men, who are apt, in a strange degree, to identify their own 
 thoughts and feelings with the policy of their country and 
 its parties. Whereas really to feel humbled and alarmed at 
 the thought of the sins of our Church and country, com- 
 pared with our many and great privileges; to "open our 
 windows in our chamber towards Jerusalem," and bewail 
 the sins we have committed — " we, our kings, our princes, 
 and our fathers ;" — is both a symptom and an exercise of true 
 personal humiliation, and tends at least to pardon and relief, 
 though small indeed may be our chance of seeing an angel 
 " caused to fly swiftly" with the message of our deliverance. 
 The very doubt we feel so often, both as to the conduct of 
 those we read of, and as to our own conduct in real or pos- 
 sible cases, is a humbling, and therefore a salutary, circum- 
 stance : it makes us sit looser to a world, which at best 
 we find is very " full of perplexities ;" whereas the kind of 
 optimism whicli would overrule all such misgivings, may 
 nourish under the guise of contentment a good deal of self- 
 satisfaction and love of worldly ease. It has been said, " the 
 outward peace of the Church distils into peace of con- 
 science^;" much more truly, we apprehend, might it be 
 said, that a certain corroding care and fear about her public 
 
 *• Bacon's " Essays."
 
 The State in its Relations with the Church. 53 
 
 conduct and interests, occasioned by a deep estimate of her 
 mysterious privileges, is likely to distil into a contrite mis- 
 trust and scrupulous watching of a man's own self. 
 
 More particularly are these contemplations likely to be 
 wholesome to persons in our own condition, because it is so 
 very evident, as far as human eye can discern, that nothing 
 "which any of us can do is likely to be of avail, directly, to- 
 wards the visible deliverance of the Church ; we are thrown 
 back, more palpably almost than ever was any former gene- 
 ration, upon the instruments of a warfare merely passive : 
 upon protests, and warnings, and prayer, and humiliation, 
 and self-discipline. We deeply feel that it is a season- 
 able and friendly hint, which Mr. Gladstone has somewhere 
 given ; of the danger of self-will in the reproducers, as well 
 as in the creators or inventors, of a system, and trust that it 
 will not be lost on those whom it may concern. Yet the 
 danger, we would hope, is in some degree diminished, when 
 the effort is not voluntary, not the result of scheming aud. 
 calculation, but is even forced on quiet persons by the seem- 
 ing imminent and serious peril of God's household. In 
 all but very childish minds, such emergencies, one should 
 think, must subdue the tone of thought, and make men 
 forget self for a while. 
 
 Upon the whole, while we deprecate as earnestly as the 
 author, or any of those who think with him, the great 
 national sin of rejecting the Church, there is one thing, 
 we are free to confess, which appears to us yet more to be 
 dreaded; and that is, the Church herself being induced, by 
 fear of public evil or any other cause, to forego any of her 
 sacred principles for the sake of retaining her connection, 
 real or nominal, with the State. The sin of the temporal 
 body would surely never be the less flagrant for its involv- 
 ing the spiritual body also ; nor would the forfeiture of the 
 heavenly blessing prove the less certain or less complete. 
 And however fearful the view which may be taken of a world 
 anti-Christianized by the downfall of establishments, might 
 not a sadder picture be drawn, and one at least as likely to 
 be realized, of a Church turned anti-Christian by corrupt 
 establishments? a State succession of heretical pastors,
 
 54 The State in its Relations with the Church. 
 
 creeds omitted or corrupted, holy prayers and sacraments 
 profaned, or modified, or cast by at the popular will ; and all, 
 amid the din of self-praise, and high pretensions to evange- 
 lical truth, and every corner of the land ringing with gratu- 
 lations to England, on its containing, beyond question, " the 
 most moral and religious people on the face of the earth ?^' 
 This is the sort of anticipation which most alarms us ; and 
 the more, because it seems to exclude persecution ; whereas 
 the violent separation of Church and State almost appears 
 to involve it. There is no blood of martyrs in the former 
 prospect, no seed of future diffusion and victory : but sup- 
 pose the power of the State in hands which studiously dis- 
 owned all religious profession, and, notwithstanding the 
 liberal vauntings of the age, we are much mistaken if pains 
 and penalties would not soon be found for the resolute asser- 
 tors of Church principle. The persons, at least, who repre- 
 sent the party which in that case would be uppermost, seem 
 resolved to tolerate everything but intolerance, and to pro- 
 nounce the Church, intolerance. 
 
 We shall be called sad alarmists ; but it is as well, we 
 think, to realize a little the tendencies of things ; and we are 
 far indeed from holding out either of the above-mentioned 
 miserable consummations as inevitable. One of the Church's 
 best human hopes, under that merciful Providence which 
 has hitherto been so gracious to her in England, lies in 
 the assurance that a chosen band will not be wanting of 
 such persons as the author of the work before us, to assert 
 those principles which all in their station are so strongly 
 tempted to disown : even as it would be one among her con- 
 solations, should this evil age prevail, to know that they 
 were still on her side, realizing, but in a diviner sense, the 
 noble saying of old, Carl sunt parenteSj cart liberi, propinqui, 
 familiareSf sed omnes omnium caritates p atria una complexa 
 est ; that is to say, " The Jerusalem from above, which is " 
 and ought to be " free, the Mother of us all."
 
 APPENDIX, 
 
 The subjoined letter to the Editor of the "British Ma- 
 gazine** does not appear, for whatever reason, to have been 
 inserted in that publication. It is printed here, as supply- 
 ing a more complete statement of the real sanctions and 
 elements of Episcopal Jurisdiction than is to be found else- 
 where, it is believed, in Mr. Keble's writings. It was ac- 
 companied by the following note to the Editor, Mr. Hugh 
 James Rose. 
 
 Fairford, 18 Jan., 1834. 
 
 My deae Eose, — I don't know how you will like what I now 
 send, and of course I shall be quite prepared for your " plucking 
 it," as Newman and Froude say. So do, if you please, without 
 fear of affronting me. I seem to have a great deal to say, and no 
 time nor room to say it in. But I must just ask you in respect 
 of Church-rates (about which I see you want us to make a stand), 
 Is not the principle already given up by the Irish Bill ? Another 
 thing : would it not be a good way to have the said Bill, I mean 
 an exact analysis of it, somewhere among your documents ? I 
 have heard it complained of as wanting. Also, should not Mr. 
 McGhee's letters be there ? if only for the better understanding 
 
 of the Bishop of Eerns I take it for granted this (if received) 
 
 will be too late for the next number, so we can recast and modify 
 should you wish it. 
 
 Tours ever affectionately, 
 
 J. K , JUN. 
 
 To the Editor of the " British Magazine^ 
 
 My Dear Sik, 
 
 Will you admit a few lines from one who cannot help feeling 
 just now as if our Church were " on a needle's point," in regard 
 of those principles by which she is a Church ; and who fears that
 
 56 APPENDIX. 
 
 her enemies, and those of her friends who are inclined to what he 
 thinks undue concession, may take unintended advantage of some 
 things contained in your supplemental number for last year ? I 
 allude chiefly (I hope with sincere respect) to the Letter of the 
 Bishop of Leighlin and Ferns on the Church Temporalities Act. 
 
 The publication of that letter must be felt as a relief by those 
 among the Clergy of Ireland (if there be any such) who, like 
 myself, might otherwise have doubted whether their canonical 
 obedience would allow them to submit themselves to the late 
 parliamentary consolidation of dioceses. For the letter; in con- 
 junction with expressions of a similar opinion from others of the 
 Irish Hierarchy, removes the ground of that hesitation, by sup- 
 plying episcopal sanction to the arrangement in question. 
 
 My own view of the matter was (as far as I can judge of it at 
 this distance), that had I been so unfortunate as to have a cure 
 in either of the suppressed dioceses, I should, in the event of the 
 diocese becoming vacant, have consulted the Archbishop of tlie pro- 
 vince, or the Primate, and have yielded obedience to his decision. I 
 do not imagine that any of those who were most opposed to this 
 measure, thought of setting up altar against altar, as his lordship, 
 in one part of his letter, seems to imply. Their plan of resist- 
 ance, if I do not mistake it, went entirely on the hypothesis of the 
 Bishops themselves concurring with them, by a passive approba- 
 tion at the least. That hypothesis being removed, the course to 
 be adopted by the inferior clergy appears to me quite plain. The 
 responsibility of the submission is transferred entirely from them 
 to those witliout whom they cannot act, and by whose standard 
 they are bound to abide. Their officers, as it were, command 
 them to lay down their arms ; and they have nothing to do but 
 to obey. 
 
 The case, then, is ruled for the present. But the grounds on 
 which the decision proceeds, so far as they have been stated, are 
 open to respectful examination. At least, it may not be useless 
 to suggest certain implied modifications and limits, under which, 
 from the nature of the case, the positions of the letter were 
 doubtless meant to be received. 
 
 It might be inferred from the tenor of the reasoning in pp. 473, 4, 
 that the writer considered the ruling powers of a bishop, though 
 not his powers of Consecration and Confirmation, as depending 
 entirely on the civil state. But it is clear that tliis would be too 
 hasty an inference ; since (to go no farther) the Ordination Ser- 
 vice, quoted in the same page, recognises such a thing as " The
 
 APPENDIX. 57 
 
 Discipline of Cheist:" distinct indeed from His Doctrine and 
 Sacraments, but not less truly and exclusively His : containing 
 some parts which *' the Loed hath commanded," some which, 
 being left open by Him, "this Church and Bealm hath received " 
 and settled, "according" (or not contrary) ''to the command- 
 ments of God." The real question, therefore, between the Bishop 
 and those with a view to whose statements he was writing, is not 
 whether certain acta complained of are acts of ministerial or of 
 ruling power; but, granting them to be of the latter class en- 
 tirely, whether or no do they infringe on those particulars of 
 Cheist's Discipline, which " the Loed hath commanded," and 
 which no Church nor Realm may annul ? Now the Discipline of 
 Cheist, as distinguished from His Doctrine and Sacraments, — the 
 ruling power of a Bishop, as distinguished from his power of 
 Order, — must be comprised (with all ruling power) in the three- 
 fold division of legislative, executive, and judicial. Of these, the 
 last, the judicial, alone, is properly called Jurisdiction. As vested 
 in Bishops, it is commonly entitled, the Power of the Keys of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven : such, at least, is the exposition of that phrase, 
 most generally received in the Church. Now, this power is un- 
 concerned, except, perhaps, by remote implication, in the question 
 of the Church Temporalities Bill. It is not touched, one way or 
 the other ; with regard to it, therefore, nothing is conceded by the 
 qualified sanction which the Bishop has given to the bill. It is 
 true that in one place his lordship distinguishes between acts of 
 jurisdiction and acts purely episcopal. But the whole context 
 shews that the part of jurisdiction, of which we are now speaking, 
 viz., Excommunication and the processes leading to it, was not 
 just then at all in his thoughts. He cannot fairly be construed 
 as granting that the highest act of spiritual discipline is not an 
 act purely episcopal : or with hiuting that a prerogative, conveyed 
 by our Loed Himself to His A^postles, along with the words, "Re- 
 ceive ye the Holt Ghost," is not, properly speaking, spiritual : 
 nor can he be considered as casting any doubt on the due deriva- 
 tion of that prerogative, along with the powers of ordination and 
 government, and on its present existence in the Bishops of Eng- 
 land and Ireland. None of these admissions are at all involved 
 in what he has stated concerning jurisdiction. His concessions, 
 if any, refer entirely to the other two branches of ruling power : 
 the legislative branch, which may appear to be affected by the 
 manner in which the Act was passed ; and the executive branch, 
 supposed to be invaded by more than one of its principal clauses.
 
 58 APPENDIX. 
 
 The Executive branch of episcopal power consists of the ordi- 
 nary functions of Church government, such as controlling the 
 application of Church funds, assigning ministers to their several 
 cures, and the like. This, too, was committed by our Loed to 
 His Apostles, not only by the general grant or charter, **as My 
 FAxnEK hath sent Me, even so send I you:" but especially, by 
 the prospective appointment at the Last Supper: '*I appoint, or 
 solemnly assign, to you a Kingdom, as My Pathee hath solemnly 
 assigned to Me, that ye may eat and drink at My table in My 
 Kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel;" 
 i.e. according to a clearly intended analogy, exercising the highest 
 administrative offices in the Church. These words, interpreted 
 by the practice of the Apostles, and the uniform sense of the 
 ancient Church, burthen their successors with a responsibility 
 of which they cannot divest themselves ; and those who would 
 divest them, by force or chicane, are clear violators of Christ's 
 appointment. 
 
 Thus far, I conceive, all agree, who are Churchmen on prin- 
 ciple, and not for expediency or effect. Nor is there anything 
 in the Bishop of Ferns's letter which militates against this state- 
 ment. He says, indeed, that the civil power may interfere to 
 regulate a Bishop's jurisdiction in this sense of the word, but he 
 implies that the interference has its limit; a limit acknowledged 
 in the final clause of the passage quoted by him from the Ordi- 
 nation Service, AccoEDiNa to the commandment of God. Now 
 tliese are theorems to which, no doubt, the warmest defenders 
 of Church independence will assent. The only question is one 
 of detail, whether certain proceedings directed by the Act come 
 fairly within the range of secular interference, thus modified. 
 Such are the instating of a Bishop in his see, without any form of 
 Confirmation or instalment, by a mere decree of the secular autho- 
 rity. And again, in some instances, the permanent sequestration 
 of a benefice, by authority of a certain commission, superseding 
 that of the Bishop of the diocese. With regard to these acts, his 
 lordship considers them legal, as involving no usurpation of the 
 Power of Order, and amounting only to such regulation of the 
 Bishop's executive '-yxv\s,^\Q\AQTi as this Church has always permitted. 
 In proof of which last position he cites the cases of the Crown 
 appointing at one time a Coadjutor, at another Sufiragan Bishops, 
 without any Confirmation or instalment. In his lordship's view, 
 these are details which the Hierarchy, if they deem expedient, 
 may lawfully leave to the civil power, as they may lawfully trans-
 
 APPENDIX. 59 
 
 fer others of their own functions, such as collation, institution, 
 visitation, and in some cases the censure of offenders, to deputies 
 of a lower rank in the Ministry ; sometimes, it may be, even to 
 laymen. And when they do so, their clergy and people are bound 
 to acquiesce in their decision. Such, to the best of my under- 
 standing, is the substance and extent of the Bishop's allegations, 
 as far as the executive part of episcopal jurisdiction is concerned. 
 I do not now presume either to question or maintain the validity 
 and sufficiency of those allegations. My object is gained if I 
 have succeeded in pointing out that these are mere matters of 
 detail, and do not by auy means bind those who shall agree with 
 his lordship's view, to sacrifice all points of episcopal jurisdiction 
 which this or any future Parliament or Government may claim. 
 
 But the ruling power of the Apostles and their successors has 
 ever been understood to imply, thirdly, the power of legislating 
 for the Church, as a Church, i.e. in matters purely spiritual, and 
 in mixed matters, so far as they are spiritual. In proof of this it 
 is needless to dwell on the construction which some have proposed 
 of the binding and loosing, spoken of in St. Matthew, as though 
 it meant enacting and repealing laws. It is enough tliat Christ 
 " appointed unto His Apostles a kingdom ;" that He " sent them 
 as He had been sent by His Father ;" that they exercised the 
 office of Church legislators as long as they lived, and were acknow- 
 ledged by the Catholic Church to have bequeathed it, on their 
 departure, to the Bishops. This being so, and it being also evident 
 that the spiritual interests of the Church are greatly concerned 
 in the distribution of " the peculiar and respective spiieres of duty 
 of the ministers of the Grospel," it follows that any arrangement 
 of dioceses, in which the opinions of the episcopal body are over- 
 borne, is " an invasion of a fundamental principle of the Church.'* 
 And if the constitution of auy country be such as to enforce enact- 
 ments of that kind, it is, so far, a permanent invasion of Church 
 principles. Clearly the Church, by acceding to such a constitution, 
 sacrifices more or less of the very Discipline of Jesus Christ. I 
 do not see how this can be answered, except by supposing that 
 the legislative power of the Apostles, though it were a part of 
 our blessed Lord's institution, was not intended to be universal 
 and permanent, and is in fact virtually repealed by the conversion 
 of the civil magistrate or some other circumstance. To which I 
 shall say no more at present, but only this, that such expounders 
 would do well to be provided with a distinction, whereby to secure 
 the permanent force of the other parts of our Saviour's institution.
 
 60 APPENDIX. 
 
 Otherwise it seems neither impossible nor absurd, for those who 
 have succeeded in depriving Bishops of the power of ecclesiastical 
 legislation, to take from them, whenever they please, the power 
 of Order also and of Excommunication, resting, as they do, on the 
 same texts with the former, and all three being but equally sup- 
 ported by the testimony of the Catholic Church. 
 
 Our country, therefore, which on Scriptural grounds acknow- 
 ledges the power of Order in Bishops, must thereby be understood 
 to acknowledge in them a share in Ecclesiastical Legislation also. 
 At least, the burthen of proof wdll lie on those of our jurists who 
 maintain the contrary. And if couflicting precedents be found 
 in our history, the greater weight in reason should be allowed to 
 those who favour the episcopal prerogative, as being most in 
 unison with the original ground on which our Bishops are avow- 
 edly received. 
 
 These considerations encourage me to hope that the claim 
 adduced in their behalf of a real share in Church legislation is not 
 so completely overthrown, as some appear to think, by the pre- 
 cedents of dioceses which at various times have been consolidated 
 by Act of Parliament. Eor, not to dwell on the material con- 
 sideration that the Prelacy of those times respectively were not, 
 that we know of, at all averse to the several changes referred to, 
 ■whereas it is notorious that the great majority of the Bishops 
 earnestly deprecated the measures that have now been taken ; 
 nor to repeat, what however deserves remembrance, that Henry 
 the Eighth had papal authority, procured before the separation, 
 for his new arrangement of bishoprics ; the principle, stated above, 
 is recognised by the very existence of the Upper House of Con- 
 vocation, in the theory at least and ideal platform of our Polity. 
 It is implied in these words of the Thirty-fourth Article, *' Every 
 particular or national Church hath power to ordain, change, or 
 abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church." The word " Church," 
 in this proposition, must mean the several Estates of the Church, 
 and cannot, therefore, exclude the highest. And I presume no 
 Churchman will deny the Bishops to be the highest Estate in the 
 Church as such. Finally, the statutes of the liealm acknow- 
 ledge the four first general Councils as a main foundation of our 
 ecclesiastical law. Now the second canon of the Council of Con- 
 stantinople commits the ecclesiastical legislation of each province 
 to the Bishops of that province, excluding foreign Bishops, and 
 much more aliens and laymen ^ 
 
 • See also the twelfth and seventeenth Canons of Chalcedon.
 
 APPENDIX, 61 
 
 All this and more would make one slow to tliink, that when a 
 Prelate of our Church enforces obedience to the Church Tempo- 
 ralities' Act, he can mean to give up the general right of Bishops 
 to be consulted in forming Church laws ; and, indeed, the letter 
 goes no such length. It strictly confines itself, as far as legis- 
 lation is concerned, to the case in hand, the uniting and dividing 
 of bishoprics. For that process in particular, his lordship thinks, 
 there are precedents in English and Irish history, sufiicient to 
 make it the duty of the Bishops to give way to the present op- 
 pression, whatever their private sentiments may be. 
 
 Such, if I mistake not, is the full amount of concession, ex- 
 pressed or implied in this Canonical Epistle (if I may adopt such 
 an old ecclesiastical phrase) of a truly learned and venerable 
 Prelate. The matter of Jurisdiction, properly so called, i.e. of 
 Excommunication and the preparatory steps, he does not even 
 touch upon ; nor yet upon the general question, what share the 
 Prelates of a Christian realm may claim by Christ's ordinance 
 in ecclesiastical legislation ; but assuming the Act to have, vir- 
 tually, episcopal assent, he vindicates some particular provisions 
 of it from the charge of so violating Church principles as to re- 
 quire disobedience on the part of the inferior clergy. 
 
 At the same time, I respectfully submit, that the main scruple 
 of all remains unremoved : the scruple arising from serious doubt 
 how far the late changes in the Constitution affect the right of 
 Parliament to legislate for the Church. Many considerate persons 
 think, that the changes are so vital, so wrought into the very 
 ground of the system, as to amount to a virtual breach of the 
 terms of union between Church and State. So that, in their 
 judgment, the governors of the Church are at liberty, whenever 
 in their consciences they shall deem it most expedient, to decline 
 submitting themselves to the ecclesiastical laws of the Parliament. 
 Eor the two societies are no longer identical, according to the 
 theory of Hooker and the practice of the days of Queen Elizabeth ; 
 nor yet allied on certain fixed terms, according to the Toleration 
 and Test Laws, the rationale of which Warburton developed. As 
 far as this change extends, arguments from ancient practice would 
 appear to be inconclusive on questions of present right. But of 
 this difficulty we look in vain for any solution in the Bishop's 
 letter. It is passed over in total silence. Perhaps, in a solemn 
 official document, it would have been improper to admit such 
 a thought, even with a view to exposure and correction. 
 
 In one respect, however, the omission is much to be lamented ; 
 namely, that it gives an air of fallaciousness to some portions of
 
 62 APPENDIX. 
 
 the reasoning in tlie letter. For instance, several cases are quoted 
 of Irish dioceses consolidated by Act of Parliament; and it is 
 concluded " an error to suppose that the peculiar and respective 
 spheres of the ministers of the Gospel have been arranged by 
 the Church.'' Now the word Church here, as every one perceives, 
 must mean the clergy as distinguished from laymen. But those 
 who, in 1834, are claiming for the Church the right of ecclesiasti- 
 cal legislation, use the word in its proper sense, as opposed to 
 heretics and other aliens. 
 
 Again, his lordship presses on his clergy the sacerdotal engage- 
 ment at the time of ordination, by which we are pledged to 
 *' minister the Discipline of Cheist, as this Church and Realm hatli 
 received the same." Yet this will evidently bear an argument 
 leading just to the opposite conclusion. In case of any great 
 change, a question evidently may arise, whether by conforming 
 to such change we may not be swerving too far from what " this 
 Church and Eealm hath eeceived." It is clear the engage- 
 ment was meant as a test of the candidate's conformity to some- 
 thing which he found established, not of his submitting prospec- 
 tively to possible changes. Although no Christian man can doubt 
 the duty of obeying " the customs of the Eealm," where the law of 
 God will permit. But whether the law of God does permit the 
 continued acquiescence of those entrusted with the Church in a 
 system which permits aliens and heretics to bear the chief sway 
 in legislating for her, — this is the very point in dispute. 
 
 The writer makes no question, that many of the distinctions 
 drawn above will seem to many persons mere instances of over- 
 refining ; yet he is not ashamed to own, that he clings to them 
 with a very peculiar interest, not seeing any other mode of recon- 
 ciling the principles of Scripture and Antiquity with the practice 
 of the Church since the Reformation. Yet he knows too well his 
 great want of skill, both in legal and in historical questions, to 
 depend very positively upon his own views of the conduct of our 
 ancestors. It is too possible he may be mistaken in his notions 
 of what has liitherto been the constitution of the Anglican Church 
 as linked to the State. Principles and practices majj have been 
 long ago recognised, which would make it, in consistency, neces- 
 sary for her to concede the full claims of this or any future Parlia- 
 ment. So that, if on grounds of " conciliation," or oeconomy, our 
 Hierarchy were reduced to one single Bishop, still our assent 
 to " the customs of the Eealm" would bind us to submit to such 
 a regulation. 
 
 All this may be so. But if the writer does not wholly misun-
 
 APPENDIX. 63 
 
 derstand the commission of our Loed to His Apostles and their 
 successors, the day which shall see these things unquestionably 
 proved will render it the sacred duty of us all to exert ourselves, 
 in every allowable way, for the breaking of such an unhallowed 
 bond. For, indeed, the only parallel which occurs, apt to repre- 
 sent our condition in the case supposed, is furnished by the tyrant 
 Mezentius in Virgil : 
 
 "Mortua quinetiam jungebat corpora vivis, 
 Componens manibusque manus atque oribus era, 
 Tormenti genus ! " 
 
 I am, my dear Sir, 
 
 Very faithfully yours, 
 
 MuaoveoXoyos, 
 
 ^rmieb bjj lautca '^'^xktt ditl» Ca., tfrofait-garb, ^xia^.
 
 
 m^,^. .M 
 
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 -< J