•I' 
 
 :'■!' 
 
 M 
 
 
 M 
 
 ^
 
 w-
 
 S)i6e^tabU8bment. 
 
 CHARGE 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 EDWIN PALMER, D.D. 
 
 ARCHDEACON OF OXFORD, 
 
 ^t bis 5Jtsttatt0n in iltag, 1$S5, 
 
 OXFORD, AND 6 SOUTHAMPTON-STREET, 
 STRAND, LONDON. 
 
 1885. 
 
 Price One Penny.
 
 Aly Brethren of the Clergy and of the Laity, 
 
 The subject which I have chosen for my ad- 
 dress to you at this Visitation is DisestabHshment. 
 I have chosen this subject, because it has been 
 brought prominently forward of late, and because 
 I think it desirable that all Churchmen — indeed, 
 if my voice could reach them, all Englishmen — 
 should give it a fuller and more dispassionate 
 consideration than it usually receives. I propose 
 to consider first the meaning of the word Esta- 
 blishment. I shall then examine the grounds on 
 which Disestablishment, in the popular sense of 
 that term, is demanded by its advocates, I shall 
 finally ask what part of the English nation (if any) 
 has a real interest in this demand — cui bono ? 
 
 First, then, what do men mean when they talk 
 of the Church Establishment or the Established 
 Church } The popular notion seems to be (though 
 it is hard to credit men of education with a notion 
 so absolutely unhistorical) that at some particular 
 time the Legislature of this country selected one 
 religious community out of a number of religious 
 communities then existing, endowed it with large 
 possessions, and gave exceptional privileges to its 
 members and its officers. All students of history 
 know that no such thing ever took place. 
 
 The endowments of the Church were the growth 
 of centuries. A very large part of them was de- 
 rived from the piety and munificence of private 
 
 B 2
 
 4 Charge delivered at 
 
 persons. In the earliest days of English Chris- 
 tianity, as in later days, as in our own, men gave 
 land or money which was at their own individual 
 disposal for the building of churches, and the sup- 
 port of clergy to minister in them. Kings, no 
 doubt, did this as well as barons ; but kings, like 
 barons, gave such gifts out of those possessions 
 which were theirs to enjoy or to alienate at their 
 pleasure. Moreover, a gift made by a king for 
 a religious purpose stood on the same footing 
 with the gifts which he made to individuals whom 
 he desired to enrich as a matter of personal af- 
 fection, or to reward for distinguished service. 
 Again, for many centuries there was no variety 
 of religious communities in existence out of which 
 the civil government could have selected one for 
 especial favour. There was but one community 
 of Christians in England. That community was 
 known under the name of the Church of England. 
 It was in close connexion with the Churches of 
 France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. At the time 
 of the Reformation, as we all know, the inti- 
 mate connexion of the Church in England with 
 the Churches on the Continent was interrupted. 
 Under the influence of Kincr Henrv VIII. both 
 Parliament and Convocation repudiated the su- 
 premacy of the Pope, which was regarded in most 
 countries of the West as the keystone of Church 
 unity. To detail the changes which followed in 
 the scrv^ices of the English Church, in its disci- 
 pline, and in the rule of teaching prescribed to 
 
 ^^ 
 
 '^ r 
 
 ^UIUC ,
 
 a Visitation in May, 1885. 5 
 
 its ministers, would be foreign to my purpose. 
 They were, doubtless, neither few nor unimport- 
 ant. But these changes were regarded by the 
 Legislature and by the people generally as re- 
 movals of superstitions and abuses from a Church 
 which had subsisted in England from time im- 
 memorial. There is not a trace in the Statute- 
 book of any such notion as that the civil govern- 
 ment made choice at the Reformation between 
 two or more religious communities, or that it 
 transferred to a new Church endowments which 
 had up to that date belonged to an old one. A 
 large amount of property which had been devoted 
 to religious uses was confiscated at the time of 
 the Reformation, and bestowed upon the Crown 
 by the Acts^ for the Dissolution of Monasteries. 
 Other property which had been devoted to reli- 
 gious uses, such as the endowments of cathedral 
 and parish churches, and their fabrics, remained 
 in the hands of the Bishops, and the Cathedral 
 Chapters, and the parish clergy, on the old titles, 
 without breach of continuity. All this, and much 
 more to the same purpose, is admirably brought 
 out in a publication'^ of the well-known historian, 
 Dr. Freeman, now Professor of Modern History 
 at Oxford. 
 
 So much for the endowments of the Church. 
 
 » 27 Hen. VIII. c. 28, and 31 Hen. VHI. c. 13. 
 
 ^ "Disestablishment and Disendowment what are they? by 
 Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL.D." (Macmillan and Co.) ist 
 ed. 1874, 2nd ed. 1885.
 
 6 Char<re delivered at 
 
 <!>' 
 
 Their origin is not to be traced to any Acts of the 
 Legislature in this country, though, like the pro- 
 perty of lay corporations and the property of in- 
 dividuals, they have enjoyed the protection of the 
 law, and Acts have been passed from time to 
 time to secure them to the Church, and to regu- 
 late their employment in her service. 
 
 The privileges of the Church stand on a dif- 
 ferent footing. They are based on the Statute 
 Law, or on customs anterior to that law. But 
 with regard to privileges as well as to endow- 
 ments, I must remind you that neither at the 
 Reformation nor at any earlier period did the 
 Legislature regard itself as selecting one religious 
 body out of many for especial favour. We find, 
 however, the Legislature concerning itself from 
 the earliest times down to the present day with 
 the welfare of the Church of England. And this 
 I believe to be the true historical meaning of the 
 word Establishment. I cannot find any evidence 
 that that word originally contained a reference to 
 endowment. It meant that the Church was re- 
 cognised and supported by the law of the land. 
 What is the first sentence of the Great Charter 
 {Magna Charta) which stands at the opening of 
 our Statute-book.'' 'First, we have granted to 
 God, and by this our present Charter have con- 
 firmed for us and our heirs for ever, That the 
 Church of England {ecclesia Anglicana) shall be 
 free, and shall have all her rights and liberties in- 
 violable.' The Church has been protected by the
 
 a Visitation in May, 1885. 7 
 
 law in the enjoyment of her property, she has 
 been protected by the law in the maintenance of 
 her discipline. The same process has gone on in 
 one shape or another to the present day. 
 
 For a long time the power of the State was 
 used to compel the obedience of Englishmen to 
 the Church of England. Before the Reformation 
 we find Acts of Parliament ° passed to assist the 
 Church in the suppression of heresy. Sheriffs 
 were commissioned to apprehend heretics. Here- 
 tics were to be punished with imprisonment, with 
 fines, and in the last resort with death. The par- 
 ticular Statutes to which I refer were repealed in 
 the first year of Queen Elizabeth ; but men were 
 liable to capital punishment for heresy long after 
 that day. If such punishment fell into desuetude, 
 and was formally abolished in 1676*^, it was not till 
 the accession of William and Mary in 1688 that 
 the Legislature abandoned finally^ the attempt 
 to enforce upon all Englishmen by penal regula- 
 tions conformity to the doctrine and worship of 
 the Church. Religious freedom dates from that 
 epoch. No layman has been compelled by law 
 since 1688 to conform to the rules of the Church. 
 With the conduct of the clergy, however, the 
 Legislature has never ceased to concern itself. 
 Before the Reformation it left, for the most part, 
 the maintenance of discipline over the clergy to 
 tribunals which were strictly ecclesiastical, al- 
 
 <= 5 Ric. II. Stat 2, c. 5 ; 2 Hen. IV. c. 15 ; 2 Hen. V. Stat, i, 
 c. 7. ^ 29 Ch. II. c. 9. « I Will, and Mar., c. iS.
 
 8 Charge delivered at 
 
 though the secular arm was used for the burning 
 of clergymen as well as laymen who were con- 
 victed of heresy, and an Act ^passed in the first 
 year of Henry the Seventh gave the Church 
 Courts power to punish immoral clergy with im- 
 prisonment. Since the Reformation many Acts 
 have been placed on the Statute-book which were 
 intended to enforce the obedience of the clergy 
 to the laws of the Church, or to provide addi- 
 tional securities for the efficient discharge of their 
 duty. I may mention as examples three Acts 
 passed in the present reign, — the Pluralities s 
 Act of 1838, the Church Discipline^ Act of 1840, 
 and the Public Worship Regulation ^ Act of 1865. 
 Laws, such as those which I have mentioned, 
 are the most important items in the Establish- 
 ment of the Church; laws which down to 1688 
 made Non-Conformity a crime, laws which down 
 to the present day enforce by civil penalties the 
 obedience of the clergy to Church discipline. 
 
 Other privileges the Church enjoys in conse- 
 quence of this legal recognition in which I have 
 put the essence of Establishment. Such a pri- 
 vilege is the presence of the Archbishops and 
 Bishops in the House of Lords. From the first 
 origin of our Parliaments the chief clergy of the 
 Church have been summoned to sit as advisers 
 of the Crown. Such a privilege is the recognition 
 of marriages performed in our churches as legally 
 
 ^ I Hen. VI I. c. 18. « i & 2 Vict. c. 106. 
 
 »' 3 & 4 Vict. c. 86. ' 37 & 38 Vict. c. 85.
 
 a Visitation iii May, 1885. 9 
 
 valid without the presence of a Registrar. Such 
 a privilege is the selection of Church clergy to 
 fill chaplaincies, whether in the army and navy 
 or in workhouses or in gaols, of which the sti- 
 pends are charged upon imperial or local tax- 
 ation. 
 
 Over against these privileges, however, it is right 
 to set the control which the law exercises over 
 the affairs of the Church, while it does not pre- 
 tend to exercise any similar control over the af- 
 fairs of the other religious bodies which exist in 
 this kingdom and enjoy the substantial bene- 
 fit of its protection. Of this control we find 
 beginnings before the Reformation : it has been 
 extended and systematised since that epoch. The 
 Statutes known under the names of Provisors ^ 
 and Praemunire^ are examples before the Re- 
 formation. Another example of like date is the 
 influence which the Kings of England exercised 
 over appointments to Bishoprics and Archbishop- 
 rics, before any Statute w^as passed on the sub- 
 ject. An Act°^ of Henry VIII. secured abso- 
 lutely to the Crown the nomination of Bishops 
 and Archbishops, although it preserved a form 
 of election by the Cathedral Chapters. Another 
 Act " of the same year made it illegal for Con- 
 vocation — the Church Legislature — to meet with- 
 out the Crown's license, or to enact any Canon 
 when it did meet without specific permission from 
 
 ^ 25 Edw. III. Stat. 6. > 16 Ric. II. c. 5. 
 
 "> 25 Hen. VIII. c. 20. ■ 25 Hen. VIII. c. 19. 
 
 B 3
 
 lO C/iaro-e delivered at 
 
 <i> 
 
 the Crown for that purpose. The same Act sub- 
 jected the highest Ecclesiastical Courts in the 
 realm — the Courts of the Archbishops — to an 
 appeal to the Crown. These two Acts were 
 repealed in the reign of Philip and Mary ; but 
 they were re-enacted in the first year of Eliza- 
 beth, and they are still in force at the present 
 day. I pass over other instances of State con- 
 trol. There are none of more importance than 
 these. 
 
 If I am asked, then, what I understand by the 
 Establishment of the Church, I answer its recog- 
 nition by the State and the enactment of laws 
 for its security and well-being. Disestablishment, 
 pure and simple, would mean the withdrawal of 
 this recognition, the removal from the Statute- 
 book of all laws which are specially concerned 
 with its affairs, and the abolition of privileges 
 (such as the presence of the Bishops in Parliament) 
 which do not rest upon express Statutes. Con- 
 trol would naturally go with privileges. The 
 Crown would no longer appoint the Bishops who 
 were no longer to be its advisers. The Crown 
 would not receive appeals from Courts which it 
 did not recognise, nor would it regulate the pro- 
 ceedings of tribunals which it did not arm with 
 coercive powers. Convocation would sit and act 
 unfettered, because any Canons which it passed 
 would have no other authority than that which 
 belonged to the rules framed by other religious 
 bodies for themselves.
 
 a Visitation in May, 1885. 1 1 
 
 But Disestablishment, pure and simple, is not 
 the question of the present day. The advocates 
 of Disestablishment think chiefly of Disendow- 
 ment, with which Disestablishment pure and 
 simple has, as I have endeavoured to shew, very 
 little connexion. In what I have yet to say, 
 therefore, I shall take the word Disestablishment 
 in its popular sense. I shall take it to compre- 
 hend Disendowment. I shall examine the argu- 
 ments alleged for Disestablishment in this sense. 
 And I shall then ask the question, Ctn bono f to 
 whom would Disestablishment bring real advan- 
 tage "i 
 
 The first and most imposing argument which 
 is put forward is the argument of abstract justice. 
 Disestablishment is right, we are told ; Establish- 
 ment is wrong. What is intended by this asser- 
 tion } If any importance can be attached to the 
 name assumed by the Society which is chiefly 
 identified with the cause of Disestablishment, the 
 'wrong' involved in Establishment is the control 
 of religion by the State. I cannot help thinking 
 that there is a great confusion of ideas upon this 
 subject. That the State should dictate a parti- 
 cular form of religious belief and observance to 
 its subjects, and enforce it by penal legislation, 
 I do not for a moment doubt to be wTons". It 
 is true that this has been attempted in many ages 
 and in many countries. It was attempted in 
 England, as I have said already, with more or 
 less of consistency until the year 1688. But no
 
 12 Charge delivered at 
 
 such attempt has been made amongst us for two 
 hundred years. On the other hand, that religion 
 should be absolutely free from State control is im- 
 possible. The well-known example of the Indian 
 Thugs will illustrate my position. A state cannot 
 tolerate murder, because there is a set of men 
 within its borders who believe it to be the fittest 
 expression of devotion to the deity of their choice. 
 Another instance nearer home may be adduced. 
 Polygamy is a cherished practice with the Mor- 
 mons. Yet surely it is not wrong for a civilised na- 
 tion to forbid the re-introduction of such a practice. 
 Apart from extreme cases like these, many others 
 occur in which it is impossible for the State to re- 
 nounce all controlling power without dereliction 
 of its confessed duties. It is the duty of the civil 
 government to protect citizens in the enjoyment 
 of their personal liberty and of their pecuniary 
 rights. Religious societies have been known be- 
 fore now to interfere with the personal liberty of 
 their members. Religious societies at the present 
 day desire from time to time (and often with good 
 reason) to remove their members from positions 
 which give them pecuniary advantages. In either 
 case it is right and necessary that the civil go- 
 vernment should receive an appeal from the parties 
 who believe themselves to be aggrieved. It can- 
 not always determine such appeals without in- 
 quiry into rules and proceedings which are con- 
 nected with religious beliefs. It may find it ne- 
 cessary, in the interest of justice, to overrule
 
 a Visitation in Alay^ 1885. 13 
 
 decisions at which rehgious tribunals have arrived. 
 In this way the doctrine and discipline of Non- 
 Conformist bodies have come occasionally before 
 the Civil Courts in England. If any one contends 
 that it is wrong for the State to exercise over the 
 internal affairs of any religious body that peculiar 
 kind of control wdiich the State exercises in Eng- 
 land over the internal affairs of the English 
 Church, — and does not exercise over the affairs 
 of any other religious body amongst us, — there 
 is much more to be said for this contention. The 
 name of the ** Society for the Liberation of Reli- 
 gion from State Patronage and Control " might 
 seem to suggest this idea : but whether we look at 
 the composition of that Society, or at its action, it 
 is impossible to believe that the spirit which ani- 
 mates it is zeal for the liberties of the Church of 
 England. Nor does the tone of opinion which 
 meets us continually in Parliament and out of 
 Parliament leave any room for the supposition 
 that the English laity in general are conscious 
 of wrong -doing in respect of the control which 
 the State exercises over the English Church. 
 
 If the 'wrong' supposed to be involved in 
 Establishment is not the control of religion by 
 the State, what is it } Some, perhaps, will an- 
 swer, the endowment of one religious body by the 
 State while others are unendowed, and the con- 
 cession of privileges to one while others are un- 
 privileged. With regard to endowment, I have 
 already reminded you that the State, as a State,
 
 14 CJux rge delivered a t 
 
 never did endow the Church. I have reminded 
 you that the clergy of the Church are not paid 
 out of the public revenue, except a few chaplains 
 whose stipends the Church might well afford to 
 surrender, though it is far from certain that the 
 nation could afford to dispense with their ser- 
 vices. That it is wrong to allow an individual, 
 or a body of trustees, or a corporation lay or 
 clerical, to retain property which has devolved 
 upon the holders by legal succession, because 
 other individuals or corporations are not equally 
 fortunate, is a proposition which I cannot attempt 
 here to examine. Such a principle would, of 
 course, touch the endowments of Dissenting Col- 
 leges as well as Church endowments. With re- 
 gard to privilege, I venture to think that this 
 is a matter of sentiment, and not of right and 
 wrong. I cannot pretend to think that it is wrong 
 for the State to maintain the laws and customs on 
 which the existing privileges of the Church de- 
 pend, so long as they involve no real harm to the 
 unprivileged. On the other hand, I do not value 
 these privileges overmuch. I would gladly, for 
 my own part, surrender them all, if the control 
 to which I have alluded were to be abolished with 
 them. And I conceive this to be the mind of not 
 a few persons besides myself within the Church of 
 England, though there are also, beyond question, 
 not a few within her who would deprecate the 
 abolition either of Church privilege or of State 
 control.
 
 a Visitation in May, 1885. I5 
 
 Another plea which is sometimes urged for 
 Disestablishment is the financial relief which it 
 might bring to the whole nation. Though the 
 endowments of the Church do not come out of 
 the taxes, their confiscation, it is thought, might 
 lighten the burdens of the taxpayers. Capitalise 
 them, it is said, and they would pay off a con- 
 siderable amount of the national debt. Treat 
 them as public revenue, and the income derived 
 from them would relieve the taxpayer from the 
 necessity of providing for this or that part of the 
 national expenditure. A favourite way of putting 
 this suggestion is to say that such an employment 
 of them would enable us to dispense with all edu- 
 cation rates. Persons who use this argument are 
 of course indifferent to historical title. They pro- 
 ceed on the supposed right of the State to resume 
 for the public advantage all property, or, at all 
 events, all corporate property. The point on 
 which I desire now to insist is that, apart from 
 all question of right, such a proposal is unreason- 
 able, unless it be assumed that the present em- 
 ployment of Church endowments is mischievous 
 or useless. Such an assumption no Churchman 
 can be expected to concede : I do not think that 
 any believer in Christianity can reasonably concede 
 it. Indeed, certain wild projects for the substitu- 
 tion in our rectories and vicarages of apostles of 
 culture for their present occupants suggest a 
 doubt whether believers in civilisation feel quite 
 sure of its truth. I claim myself for our Church
 
 1 6 Charge delivered at 
 
 endowments that they provide for the mainte- 
 nance of an army of witnesses for God, and 
 teachers of love and justice and purity among 
 men, throughout the land, whose discharge of their 
 duty, however imperfect, is a direct benefit to the 
 inhabitants in each locality, and an indirect benefit 
 to the whole community. That such a relief of 
 taxation as might be purchased by the confisca- 
 tion of these endowments would compensate the 
 nation for the loss involved in such confiscation, 
 I am wholly unable to believe. 
 
 An ingenious attempt has been made to turn 
 the agricultural depression of the last few years 
 into an argument for Disestablishment. The 
 Church Establishment presses, it has been said, 
 with special weight upon the industry which is 
 most sorely tried. Of course the pressure which 
 is intended is that of tithe-rentcharge. From an 
 economist's point of view this is a burden upon 
 the land. It is a charge which the landowner 
 has to meet before he can draw a profit from the 
 land for himself either by rent or by tillage. But 
 the confiscation of Church endowments would 
 not remove this burden. Confiscation would but 
 transfer the ownership of the tithe-rentcharge 
 from the Church to the State. Moreover it would 
 operate only in respect of that portion of the 
 tithe-rentcharge which is at present in the hands 
 of ecclesiastical corporations. There is a large 
 amount of tithe-rentcharge in the hands of in- 
 dividuals and of lay corporations which it would
 
 a Visitation in May, 1885. 17 
 
 not touch. In the same spirit an appeal has been 
 made to the hunger for land of which we have 
 heard so much of late. In many English parishes 
 there are glebe lands from which the clergy of 
 those parishes derive the whole, or part, of their 
 maintenance. On these glebe lands, it is sug- 
 gested, if the Church were disestablished, the 
 labourers might be planted as peasant proprietors. 
 I need hardly remind you how unequally this land 
 is distributed throughout England : for how few 
 peasant proprietors it would suffice in the vast 
 majority of parishes : in how many parishes there 
 is no such land at all. Another thought rises in 
 my mind when I read the suggestion and compare 
 the few acres of glebe land with the entire acreage 
 of England. It is the thought of an old and fa- 
 miliar story in which a certain rich man who had 
 many flocks and herds ' spared to take of his own 
 flock and his own herd to dress for the wayfaring 
 man that was come unto him, but took the poor 
 man's lamb and dressed it for the man that was 
 come to him.' 
 
 These and such as these are the arguments which 
 are alleged for Disestablishment and Disendow- 
 ment. I turn from them to ask in whose interest 
 Disestablishment and Disendowment are advo- 
 cated — an bo7io ? I cannot believe that the nation 
 will desire, or its legislature decree, so great a 
 change without a clear answer to this question. 
 
 Is it in the interest of the Church of England t 
 There are conscientious men, I know, who feel so
 
 1 8 Charge delivered at 
 
 acutely the evils of State control that they are 
 prepared to answer 'Yes.' Two or three such 
 men have found their way on to the platform of 
 the Liberation Society and have been welcomed 
 and paraded there as converts. I am far myself 
 from reearding: the control which the State exer- 
 cises over the Church in England as an advantage. 
 I think that it is pushed to an unreasonable 
 length. But some control, as I have said already, 
 the State must exercise over all religious bodies. 
 And over a body to which it gives special privi- 
 leges it may reasonably exercise a special control. 
 For example, while the State undertakes to en- 
 force obedience to the Church Courts, it is reason- 
 able that it should claim to review their judg- 
 ments. While the Crown summons the Bishops 
 to sit in Parliament, it is reasonable that it 
 should have a voice — and perhaps a preponder- 
 ating voice — in their appointment. For myself, 
 I would willingly surrender these privileges, and 
 others like them, to obtain freedom from State 
 control. But no such choice lies before us. No 
 Disestablishment, we may be sure, will give 
 freedom to the Church which does not involve 
 the confiscation of her endowments. The prac- 
 tical question, therefore, for Churchmen is whe- 
 ther the control exercised by the State is toler- 
 able or intolerable ; not whether it is advanta- 
 o-eous or the contrary. The consequences which 
 would be entailed by Disendowment are so grave 
 that nothing short of intolerable tyranny can jus-
 
 a Visitatio7i in May, 1885. 19 
 
 tify us in inviting it. I will not dwell on matters 
 of feeling, however deep and natural that feeling 
 may be. To surrender * the holy and beautiful 
 houses in which our fathers worshipped ' would be 
 no slight thing. To surrender what I may call 
 our Home Mission Fund, the endowmients which 
 enable us to support an army of Clergy through- 
 out the country, to push our Missions at one and 
 the same time into the courts and alleys of our 
 crowded cities and into the dark places of hea- 
 thendom, and to support a thousand works of 
 charity besides, — this would be simple treason to 
 our Master unless the alternative were to sur- 
 render the Faith which He has taught us. No 
 such alternative is proposed. The control which 
 the State exercises is not intolerable, however 
 severely it may try our patience. 
 
 Disestablishment with Disendowment does not 
 promise a balance of advantage to the Church of 
 England. Does it promise advantage to Non- 
 Conformists 1 I mean, of course, to religious 
 Non- Conformists. I cannot think so. If, indeed, 
 there were but three or four religious communities 
 in England besides the English Church, and if 
 it were proposed to divide between those three or 
 four communities the endowments of the Church, 
 or even to divide them between the Church and 
 those three or four communities, — either equally, 
 or in proportion to the number of adherents which 
 each might reckon, — then Disestablishment would 
 promise a definite and palpable advantage to Non-
 
 20 Charge delivered at 
 
 Conformists. But the different religious commu- 
 nities in England are too numerous to be easily 
 counted, and no such proposal of equal or propor- 
 tionate division is before the country. 
 
 Pecuniary advantage, then, to Non-Conformists 
 is out of the question. Is any other advantage to 
 be expected by them 1 It may be thought that 
 the abolition of the privileges which the Church 
 enjoys would diminish the number of her ad- 
 herents. People who deem it right to follow the 
 choice of the nation, and belong to the National 
 Church, would be set free to choose for themselves, 
 and would go over to this or that of the other 
 religious communities which exist among us. 
 I venture to think such speculations very doubt- 
 ful. But, however this may be, I cannot do re- 
 ligious Non-Conformists the injustice of supposing 
 that competition in mere numbers with other com- 
 munities is a leading object in their eyes. 
 
 The confiscation of Church endowments would, 
 of necessity, cripple for a time the work of the 
 Church. She would be unable to maintain clergy 
 in some places — perhaps in many — where there 
 were few or no people able and inclined to find 
 a building for public worship, and a minister to 
 serve in it. This would leave, it may be said, 
 more room for the operations of Non-Conformists. 
 Is there a lack of room now } Is it not true, on 
 the contrary, that all the efforts of the Church 
 and of the Non-Conformist bodies put together 
 are insufficient to occupy the whole ground and
 
 a Visitatiofi in May, 1885. 21 
 
 overtake the spiritual needs of an ever-growing 
 population ? The inevitable consequence of Dis- 
 endowment would be to withdraw, for a time at 
 least, religious teaching from many whom it now 
 reaches, and to increase the amount of ignorance 
 and ungodliness in our country. This is surely 
 a result which no religious man can be supposed 
 to desire. It is true that men who are encracred in 
 controversy sometimes lose all sense of proportion. 
 They speak and act as if they thought the par- 
 ticular error against which they contend incom- 
 patible with the existence of truth or virtue in 
 the man in whom it is found. But no religious 
 man in his sober senses can seriously think that 
 irreligion is a better thing than any form of Chris- 
 tianity with which he does not wholly agree. I 
 am, of course, myself a Churchman, and I should 
 wish to see every Wesleyan, every Baptist, every 
 Congregationalist, a Churchman like myself: but 
 I could not contemplate without horror the pros- 
 pect of a single Wesleyan, a single Baptist, a 
 single Congregationalist, losing his hold of religion 
 and drifting away into indifference or unbelief 
 Nor can I think so ill of my Non-Conformist 
 fellow-countrymen as to believe that they would 
 view with satisfaction Churchmen falling from the 
 faith for want of religious teaching or opportu- 
 nities of public worship. On the contrary, as 
 I do not desire myself to see the working power 
 of any Christian community diminished, so I can- 
 not believe that any man who sincerely calls 
 himself a Christian would count it a gain that the
 
 22 Charge delivered at 
 
 working power of the Church should be dimin- 
 ished. 
 
 I am the more confident in my position that 
 Non-Conformists have no reason to expect advan- 
 tage to themselves from Disestablishment, be- 
 cause the most famous of Non-Conformist preach- 
 ers has said so himself within the present month 
 on the platform of the Liberation Society. 'Would 
 the separation of Church and State,' said Mr. 
 Spurgeon ^, ' aid Non-Conformists } They had 
 never thought so, and he did not think it had 
 occurred to them. They believed it to be right.' 
 I have already examined the plea that Disestab- 
 lishment is right : but, though I am unable to agree 
 with Mr. Spurgeon on this point, I claim him as 
 an important witness in my present contention. 
 ' Non-Conformists,' he says, ' have never thought 
 that the separation of Church and State would 
 aid Non-Conformity.' 
 
 Whom, then, will it aid ? Cid bono ? To whose 
 interest may it be expected to turn .'' The an- 
 swer is not far to seek. There are Englishmen 
 who are opposed to all forms of religion, cer- 
 tainly to all forms of Christianity, and especially 
 (if I may use a phrase of the present day) to 
 * all orthodox forms of Christianity.' Religion, 
 as it is professed by the Church and by the 
 chief Dissenting communities, is in their eyes 
 a delusion. Men should limit their views, they 
 think, to objects on this side of the grave. Con- 
 sideration for posterity, indeed, is legitimate, but 
 
 " " Nonconformist and Independent" of May 15, 1885.
 
 a Visitation in May, 1885. 23 
 
 only for the interests of posterity on this earth. 
 This present life or state of existence is the only 
 thing with which a reasonable man is concerned. 
 This notion is called Secularism, because the pre- 
 sent world was called seaduin in times gone by 
 when men spoke Latin. This notion has its 
 preachers and its lecturers. It has its followers 
 also. Secularists, of course, count all bodies of 
 Christians among their opponents. It is their 
 desire to weaken all such bodies in every pos- 
 sible way. It is a natural and reasonable de- 
 sire on their part, because they think that their 
 countrymen would be better and happier w^ithout 
 religion. If they begin with the Church, it is 
 because the Church is the largest and most power- 
 ful religious body in England. Every blow which 
 can be struck at her is an important blow in the 
 Secularist cause. To pull down her churches or 
 turn them into music-halls and lecture-halls, to 
 confiscate the endowments of her clergy, to make 
 it hard for Churchmen either to keep their settled 
 congregations together, or to set on foot new 
 missions in ignorant and densely populated neigh- 
 bourhoods, or to spread the knowledge of Chris- 
 tianity in countries where Christ has not yet been 
 named, all these things are good in the eyes of 
 Secularists, and tend to their advantage. But 
 they tend to the advantage, I must be allowed 
 to repeat, of no other class of Englishmen : not 
 of Churchmen, not of religious Non-Conformists. 
 On a famous occasion in English history a
 
 24 Charge delivered at a Visitatioji in May, 1555. 
 
 Roman Catholic King sought the help of Pro- 
 testant Non-Conformists against the Church of 
 England in the interest of his own community. 
 The bribe which he offered was large. They had 
 long been under persecution : they were under 
 it still. They were to be set free, and their old 
 foes were to be humbled. They perceived the 
 true bearing of the measure, and refused the 
 bribe. "The universal cry? of the Non-Conform- 
 ists was that they would rather continue to be 
 under the penal statutes than separate their cause 
 from that of the prelates." The days of perse- 
 cution are now over. The battle of religious free- 
 dom has long since been won. The only bribe 
 which Secularism can offer to Non-Conformity is 
 the humiliation of old opponents. It is a tempting 
 bribe to human nature : but it would be an insult 
 to any religious man to suppose that he would 
 yield to such a temptation. The duty of Church- 
 men to their Master forbids them to weaken their 
 own hands for His service, by giving up the en- 
 dowments which they have inherited from the 
 piety of former generations. Charity forbids them 
 to believe that, to avenge wrongs long since past, 
 Non- Conformists to whom Christianity is dear 
 will deliberately promote a measure from which 
 no cause but that of Secularism can hope for real 
 and permanent advantage. 
 
 P Macaulay, Hist, of England, ch. viii. 
 
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