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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

AN ADDRESS
ON THE CONNECTION OF
CHURCH AND STATE

DELIVERED AT SION COLLEGE

February 15, 1868

BY

AETHUE PENEHYN STANLEY, D.D.
DEAN OF WESTMINSTER

|tmtii.oit
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1868

LONDON : PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

PREFACE.
This Address was delivered before a meeting, chiefly
of Clergy, in the Hall of Sion College, and is now
published in deference to the wishes of some of those
who heard it. A few notes have been added by way
of explanation.

THE

CONNECTION

OF

CHURCH AND STATE.

The connection of Church and State, whatever is meant objections
by it — and unquestionably something is meant — is at nection of"
present assailed from formidable, though very different anastate
quarters. There is the old Nonconformist objection, origi
nating partly in a small fraction of the Puritans, partly in
the Scottish Covenanters, which, though it has died out in
its extremest form of the Antiburghers, still with more or
less intensity, pervades the religious creed of the modern
Independents and Baptists of England and the Free Church
and the United Presbyterians of Scotland. There is the
modern philosophical objection, which received a strong
additional impulse at the French Eevolution of 1789, and
fortifies itself by the example of the United States. And
lastly, most formidable, perhaps, because most recent, and
from within the Established Church itself, the modern High
Church objection, which showed itself first in the Non
jurors, and then breaking out again with more force in
the early Oxford ' Tracts for the Times,' has reached its
highest flights in our own day, in the claims of a section
of the Colonial Bishops and some of the promoters of the
Pan- Anglican Synod.

2 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
Their ob- Before entering on the question itself, it may be worth
jections. w]iile briefly to jn(jicate one circumstance in the growth
of these objections, which somewhat diminishes the pres
tige that they would otherwise possess. That circumstance
lies in the fact that in the first instance they all, as I have
pointed out, had their rise in a temporary and transitory
sentiment. The first beginning of the Nonconformist hos
tility to the connection of Church and State arose, not
from any scruple as to its abstract lawfulness, but from
the antipathy of the Scottish Covenanters to any Govern
ment which would not take the Solemn League and Co
venant, and therefore to the Government of 1688, and
from the natural irritation of the Puritan Nonconformists
against the persecuting acts of 1662.* The objection of
the Liberal School in great measure arose from a just dis
like of the Pope's temporal sovereignty — an institution
which, so far from being identical with what is properly
called the connection of State and Church, is an example
of the opposite principle, that of guarding the separate
powers of the clergy by special guarantees against the
ordinary course of human, and national law. The origin
of the High Church objection, in like manner, arose, in
the first instance, not so much from the tenets of the
High Church party, who in Laud's time maintained the
connection with considerable energy, as from the resist
ance of the Jacobite clergy to the Dutch and Hanoverian
dynasties, and afterwards, at the time of the Oxford
' Tracts,' from the alarm awakened by the suppression of
the Irish bishoprics. In each instance, the vehemence of
the feeling was continued after the occasion had passed
away. But it has meanwhile taken the form of an ab
stract principle, threatening to undermine institutions very
* The Five Mile Act, the Conventicle Act, and the now rescinded clauses
of the Act of Uniformity.

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 3
different from those which first engendered the sentiment.
It is this abstract principle which gives force to the com
bination of these three new allies, and which it will be
my attempt to combat.
What then is meant by the Connection of Church and The es-
State? Doubtless the variety of elements which it includes the"con-
is at once its strength and its weakness — its strength, nectl0Ii:
because, as has been well observed, not one act, but a
hundred acts of Parliament will be required to break it
up ; its weakness, because it thus presents a wider surface
for attack. For this reason, let me briefly distinguish its
accidents from its essence.
It is not the existence of Endowments. Endowments not En-
materially contribute to the same purpose as an Establish- owmen '
ment, and perhaps in some shape almost necessarily flow
from it ; but an Establishment may exist to a great degree
without them, as in the case of Eussia, and Endowments,
as in the case of Nonconformist colleges, can exist without
an Establishment.
It is not the continuance of ecclesiastics in offices of nor se-
secular importance, such as the Cardinals in the admi- ncesTof the
nistration of the Eoman States, or the German Prelates Clersy;
in their Principalities, or the Bishops in the House of
Lords, or the country clergy in the functions of Justices of
the Peace. In point of fact, the English clergy are ex
cluded from the House of Commons by virtue of belong
ing to the Established Church.
Nor would the connection of itself be broken, though nor con-
it might be greatly weakened, were the State to delegate terference
a large part of its ecclesiastical functions to an exclu- °^thee
sively ecclesiastical body. To a certain degree this was
actually the case in the General Councils under the Em
pire, and is still in the General Assembly of the Esta
blished Church of Scotland, and in most of the rules
B 2

4 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
that relate to sacramental and quasi- sacramental ordi
nances in the Church of England.
The es- These and other like matters are but so many various
the Co°nf- forms of the connection of Church and State. Its essen-
thfchur'ch ^ features> in which the idea represented may be more
and state. or legs faintly seen, but which still are sufficient to secure
the principle, may be simply stated thus : —
The recog- The first is that the State should recognise and support
controiaf some religious expression of the community ; the second,
bh6thergy *nat tn^s rengi°us expression should be controlled and
state. guided by the State. These two elements are inseparable,
and must be attacked and defended together. It will be
my purpose to show that, in spite of various objections
which I shall state before I conclude, this connection has
been, and may still be, fruitful, especially in England, of
inestimable advantages both to the Clergy and the State.
I. Prac- I. It is hardly necessary to repeat at length the argu-
va^tage "of ments of Chalmers and of Arnold as to the benefit of
nUionoTa securmg a clergy m those parts of the country where
church by it is least likely that such a provision would be made
the State. J l
by the people themselves ; something saved k out of the
' scramble, which no covetousness can appropriate and
' no folly waste ; a provision made for public purposes in
' the most unattractive districts no less than in the most
' inviting — a man of education placed in every part of the
' country, in the most improving of all situations, that is, a
' life of constant intercourse with men, of which the direct
' and acknowledged business is to do them good physically
' and morally.' It may be that if all the established clergy
were withdrawn, and all the parish churches closed, there
would be a rush of enthusiasm to fill up the vacant places.
Such was to some degree the effect of Wesleyanism in the
last century. But it would be a hazardous experiment,
and it cannot be denied meantime that an immense amount

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 5
of the revival of religious life in our day has taken place
within and upon the framework of the parochial system.
Even in the great outburst of Wesleyan fervour, there was
no spot more blessed by its apostolic piety than the parish
of Fletcher of Madely ; and the Wesleyan leaders them
selves, as well as the original founders of Nonconformity,
were originally nursed in the bosom of the National
Church. No such remedy of voluntary enthusiasm was provided
in France, when the Established Clergy were overthrown
in the Eevolution of 1793.
An Established Church, says an eminent Nonconformist,
if properly worked out, ' supplies an instrumentality for
' acting uniformly and constantly on the moral and spiri-
' tual condition of the whole country which harmonises
' with all our ideas of a perfect civilisation.'*
II. I pass on to less obvious but not less real advantages, n. General
which appeal not only to the practical interests, but to the tages?"
spiritual and speculative conscience of mankind.
The connection of Church and State is the nearest ap- Nearest
proach which, in our complex modern society, can be made jo^°ach
to the original and essential idea of the Christian Church. °r'gmai
D . constitu-
This may be best shown by stating the most common tionofthe
objection to the institution. The fundamental objection,
whether proceeding from Scottish Free Churchmen or
English High Churchmen, is, that there is in the nature
of ecclesiastical affairs something which makes it unlawful
for lay or secular persons to approach them. The very
expression 'Theocracy,' often applied both by friends and
enemies to a purely clerical government, implies a belief
that there is in it a divine character which would be de
based if it were controlled or guided by any other than
clerical hands. All the expressions, now so common in the
* Mr. Tayler's Catholic and Christian Church, p. 37.

6 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
English Church, as to ' the galling fetters of the State,' the
' heavy price paid by the Church for its union with the
' State,' ' the less the State interferes the better,' ' the
' Erastian heresy,' the ' emancipation of the Colonial
' Churches,' &c, imply a belief that, by their subjection
to the power of the Law, the clergy are exposed to a
servitude which they may perhaps bear in consideration
of other advantages, but which ought to be reduced within
the narrowest possible limits, and which ought to be
thrown off whenever and wherever opportunity can be
found.
The power If we revert to the origin of the Christian Church, we
christian shall see that the fundamental idea of the Church in the
commu- $ew Testament is the reverse of this. It is that of a body
in which the officers, of whatever kind they may be,
Bishops, Presbyters, or Deacons, are ministers — that is,
servants — of the whole community. As in answer to the
question, 'What is the Tiers-Etat?' Sieyes replied, 'the
' nation, minus the clergy and the nobles ; ' so, in answer
to the question, ' What is the Laity ? ' Arnold replied,
' the Church, minus the clergy.' Or, to use the language
of one of my own predecessors, Dean Vincent, ' It might
' be thought an absurdity to call the large body of the
' laity " the Church," to the exclusion of the clergy ; and
' yet it is a far greater absurdity to call the small body of
' the clergy " the Church," to the exclusion of the laity.'
In whatever way the control of ecclesiastical affairs by
the laity, or rather by the whole community, is exercised,
there can be no question that it is in them that by the
New Testament and by the first ages of Christendom the
supremacy over the Church was vested. They elected
their ministers. They chose their own faith, they moulded
their own creed, they administered their own discipline,
they were the Ecclesia, the Assembly, ' the Church.'

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. rf
But here arises the question, how, in the present complex How to be
state of the world, and in the social condition of a country now ?lse
like England, is this right to be carried on ? How can
the real voice and mind of the Church be arrived at ?
Not by the Clergy alone. In the middle ages, when so i. Not by
large a mass of the intelligence of Christendom was ab- aion'e';1^
sorbed in the clerical ranks, when metaphysical philo
sophers like Albertus Magnus, and scientific inquirers
like Pope Sylvester, could be put side by side with theo
logians like Aquinas, and priests like Hildebrand, this
might have been partially true ; but even then there
were elements of life in the king, the nobles, and the
people, elements especially of family life, of intellectual
life, which the clergy failed to represent. St. Louis was
a far truer exemplar of Christian virtue, Dante of Chris
tian intelligence, than any ecclesiastic, however high in
rank or however devout in character. And this is much
more the case now, when the lay professions have been so
infinitely multiplied.
Not by an assembly of the whole Christian community, 2. Not by
for the simple reason that, in a nation like England, such extra? e
an assembly would be impossible ; still less by separate ""g™81
assemblies in particular towns or provinces, which could blies ;
not represent the whole community itself. The for
mation of Christian nations is a fact which cannot now
be recalled, and therefore to exclude the principle of
national life from religious affairs would be to deprive
religious thought of one of the noblest and most enkind
ling of human motives.
Not by what is called the lay element in church not by the
synods. The laymen who, as a general rule, figure in menthi
such assemblies do not represent the true lay mind of the synote;
country. They are often excellent men, given to good
works, but they are also usually the partisans of some

Church.

8 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
special clerical school ; they are, in short, clergymen under
another form rather than the real laity themselves.
but by the Where and how, then, can the true voice of the laity
be found for the Church ? Surely in the same manner as
it is found in other spheres. Whatever is the motive
guiding force that rules the intelligence and the con
science of the whole country, by whatever means that
force is called forth, that is the lay element which in our
age corresponds to the early assembly of the Christian
Church. And this, in its highest form, is what we call
the Government or the State. It is no disparagement to
the Clergy, because, drawing into itself the essence of the
whole community, it includes the Clergy as well as the
Laity. Like everything human, the State is essentially
imperfect ; but it is not more imperfect than the purely
clerical governments. No Princes of secular states have
led more abandoned lives than some of the Eoman Pon
tiffs ; no Parliaments have, except in the wild times of
revolution, committed more unchristian acts than those
perpetrated by the Councils of Constantinople, Ephesus,
and Constance. The State may be despotic, but so may
be a Bishop or a body of Bishops ; it may be democratic,
but so may be a Convention or a Convocation. The
language of the great secular press, at least in this coun
try, is incomparably more just, more truthful, more mo
derate, and therefore more Christian, than that of the
so-called religious newspapers which claim to represent
the sentiments of the clerical and religious world. Of all
earthly institutions, the State is that in the improvement
and perfecting of which every class in the community
has the deepest interest ; and, speaking for a moment on
Scriptural grounds, there is no existing institution which
can claim from the Bible so distinctly sacred a character.
Even before its conversion the Eoman Empire was re-

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 9
garded by the Apostle as a ' Minister of God,' ' ordained
' of God, the ordinance of God.' No stronger expressions
can be found in the New Testament for any outward
office or officer inside the Christian community. After its
conversion, the State by a natural instinct assumed those
functions of the old Christian democracy which were felt
incompatible with the changed condition of things. By
¦the sovereigns of the State the chief ecclesiastical officers
were appointed, as formerly by the tumultuous gather
ings in the market-place. By them the Christian laity were
represented in the Councils, as once by the ' brethren,'
even after the claims of a distinct hierarchy had sprung
up. And so it must emphatically be in such a country
as ours. The supremacy of the Crown, that is, of the
Law, over all causes, and over all persons, ecclesiastical
as well as civil, is the supremacy of the whole nation
over its own concerns, spiritual as well as temporal. It
is no encroachment on that which does not belong to it.
It is the direct expression of the laity and the clergy,
through the best organs which the experience and wis
dom of a thousand years have been able to contrive, on
matters which touch them more immediately than any
other interests in the world. Cultivate independence, re
press servility, check centralisation, reform the repre
sentation, amend the division of labour in its different
departments, elevate the press, purify public opinion ;
but it is by improving these, not by creating new insti
tutions drawn from small sections of other communities,
that you will ever get a true Government for the Church
of this great nation.
Clergy and laity alike have a duty to conscience — a
duty to God, which no law of either Church or State can
touch ; a submission due to the real spiritual authority
of Truth, with which no ecclesiastical and no secular

10 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
decrees can interfere. ' We must obey God rather than
' man,' is a principle which may require resistance to the
State, neither more nor less than, to the religious com
munity to which we belong. But, so far from considering
their position as servants of the State to be a degradation,
not a few of the clergy regard it as their highest honour
and privilege ; nay, I cannot but believe that this is so,
even in spite of themselves, with the majority of English
pastors, both conforming and nonconforming. ' The
' Church of Christ,' as Arnold says, ' is indeed far above all
' human ties ; but England to a true Englishman ought to
' be far dearer than the Church of England,' or than any
particular form of Episcopacy, Presbyterianism, Indepen
dency, Wesleyanism, or Unitarianism, with which we may
severally have been brought into contact. We serve God
before all ; but next to our service of God is the service
of our country through and in that particular calling in
which Providence has placed us. A Judge is not less,
but more a Judge, because he sits on the Queen's Bench ;
a sailor is not less, but more animated with the inde
pendence and the courage of a sailor, because he serves
in the Queen's ship ; and a clergyman surely ought not
to set forth Divine truth less faithfully, or consider the
consciences of those with whom he has to deal less ten
derly, because he does it in the name of the Law, and as a
representative, in his own place and calling, of the kingly
Commonwealth of England.
Confusion The fact is that, through all the arguments which are
of the word ... °
'spiritual.' used to undermine this grand- position, there runs a
secret belief that the word ' spiritual ' can be used for
some process apart from the inward operation of our
souls and spirits — a tacit assumption that some par
ticular ecclesiastical organisation, and that alone, is iden
tical with the kingdom of Heaven, and that all civil

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 11
organisations,* and those alone, are identical with the
kingdom of this world. If this were true, then, as Pope
Innocent III. remarked long ago, the civil power must
not only be separate from the ecclesiastical power, but
altogether subordinate to it ; and the clergy ought every
where not only to be independent of the State, but to
oppose and thwart it. The only consistent maintainers
of this principle that I ever heard of were the Camero-
nians of a Highland village, who delated their minister
for having asked to have a post office in the village —
thus recognising for the first time the Government which
had not accepted the Solemn League and Covenant. But
the whole assumption is based on a mere abuse of words.
The kingdom of Heaven — that is, the triumph of good
over evil — is no more identical with any earthly organi
sation, either ecclesiastical or secular, than it is with
geographical limits or external pomps. It is something
above and beyond and through them all. The kingdom
of Christ is not of this world at all ; neither of this
world as it appears on the throne of Kings, nor on the
thrones of Bishops, nor on the benches of Parliament,
nor in the seats of General Councils or of General
Assemblies, nor in Conferences, whether suggested by the
Emperor of the French at Paris, or by Canadian or
African Bishops at Lambeth, nor even as founded by
John Wesley in the great Conference of the Methodists.
Every society, by the mere fact of its being a human
society, must be temporal, must be guided by mixed
motives, must have a temporal human government.
When our Scottish friends say that Christ is the Head
of the Church, in any other sense than that in which He
* ' If any -whosoever think the interests of Christians and the interests of
' the nation inconsistent, or two different things, I wish my soul may never
' enter into their secret.'— Oliver Ckomwbll.

12 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
is the Head of all Churches and all States alike, they
are clothing with a splendid name a very commonplace
institution. A learned Scottish Judge remarked, in lan
guage as perspicuous as it is true, and as applicable to
England as it is to Scotland, ' The position that our
' Saviour is the Head of the Church of Scotland, in any
' temporal, or legislative, or judicial sense, is a position
' which I can dignify by no other name than absurdity.'
I have heard of a conversation between a Free Church-
woman and an Established Churchwoman to this effect :
Free Churchwoman : ' D'ye ken wha's the head of your
Church ? — it's the Queen.' Established Churchwoman :
' Weel, I'm glad to hear it ; I believe that she's a very
' decent body. But d'ye ken wha's the head of your
'Church? — ye think ye ken wha it is — it's no such
' thing. I'll tell you — it's Joseph Thompson, the tailor,
' that neither ye nor the minister dare peep or wag a
' finger, if it does not please him. He's the head of your
' Church ; and for my part I am quite as well content
' with the head of ours.' Strip this conversation of its
grotesque personalities, and it exactly represents the true
and the only difference between an Established and a so-
called Free Church. The Headship of Christ in its true
sense belongs equally to both Churches or to neither.
Their actual earthly headship and governance, in the one
case, is vested in the law and the government of the
whole country ; in the other case, in the irresponsible in
fluence of some particular individual or congregation that.
happens for the moment to have gained the popular ear.
I do not deny that there are advantages in the latter
kind of headship, and disadvantages in the former ; but
what I have maintained is, that one of them is no more
Spiritual spiritual than the other, and what I shall proceed to
tegTs"" snow is that the Constitutional headship of the State is

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 13
more likely to be truly wise, truly just, and thus truly
Christian, than the absolute headship either of a Bishop or
of a Synod, or of the preponderating influence of some
local leader or congregation in the next street. From
these advantages I will select the most essential.
1. There is, first, the security that it gives for the 1. supre-
supremacy of equal law in the most important of human ^ °
interests. It is in the absence of calm, judicial wisdom
that small societies, especially those animated by religious
zeal, most signally fail. It was by emancipating them
selves from the control of the law that the clergy of
Western Christendom, in the middle ages, created a posi
tion as dangerous to themselves as it was mischievous to
the whole community. The principle of the Constitutions
of Clarendon, which subjected what were called spiritual
persons to lay tribunals, though thwarted for nearly four
hundred years by the reaction which followed the murder
of Becket, is now acknowledged by almost every country
in Europe as indispensable alike to the welfare of the
clergy and the laity. No step more fatal for either could
be taken than the endeavour to establish a new code of
laws, applicable to the one and inapplicable to the other.
It is this which constitutes the true mischief of the
temporal power of the Pope. That exceptional power
establishes in the one country where it exists a claim for
the independence of the clergy, not only from the national
laws which govern all other citizens, but from the inter
national laws which govern all other states. It is the
extremest exaggeration of the pretensions of the separation
of the Church from the State. The Free Churches of Scot
land and the would-be Free Churches of England desire
from their respective legislatures a protection of the sup
posed inalienable privileges of the clergy, which shall
prevent the entrance of the civil power into their courts.

14 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
The Free Church of the Papacy demands from the Em
peror of the French the protection of Chassepot rifles to
enable it to suppress the national and reforming ten
dencies of its own s.bjects. The one thing which these
several societies in common need and dread is the just
and equal administration of law to all classes. I quote
from the words of a liberal and pious Eoman Catholic :
' Indifference to justice between man and man is pre-
' eminently the fault into which a clerical body is apt
' to fall, which . . . rejects everything approaching to
' public responsibility as detestable and anti-Christian.'*
I quote also from a distinguished Scottish Judge : ' I
' cannot forget that, under the discipline of one of the best
' Christians and greatest theologians the Church ever knew
' — that of the great Calvin — 414 public trials took place
'before the Consistory in two years (1558 and 1559),
' ending not only in Church censures, but many in civil
' punishments, for matters a great number of which there
' is not a pious Christian of the present day who would
' not deem wholly unfit to be noticed in any other way
' than by private rebuke. 'f The chief example of a
Judge on religious matters whom St. Paul and St. Luke
hold up to us as a model of impartial justice, but whose
name with ecclesiastical zealots has by a strange mistake
of interpretation become a term of reproach, is the
Proconsul Gallic J ' He cared for none of these ' things,'
says the author of the Acts, with a genuine burst
of admiration, as he records his noble indifference to
the popular clamour of the Jews at his judgment-seat.
And had the course of law, as it might easily have done,
* Letter in the Guardian, June 15, 1807.
t Lord Justice Clerk Hope, in the case of ' Sturrock v. Greig,' July 3 1849,
quoted in The Law of Creeds in Scotland, p. 225. By W. Tavlor Innes.
% See Note B.

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 15
led him not to dismiss the complaints, but to go into
them at length, it would still have been with the same
calm and dispassionate serenity which so well became the
blameless brother of Seneca and the magistrate, whom
St. Paul calls, ' God's minister to him for good,' ' a
' terror not to the good ' works of faith and love, ' but to
' the evil spirit ' of fanaticism and oppression.
2. Secondly, there is the opportunity given in a higher 2. Oppor-
degree than has been found possible elsewhere, or by any develop-
other means that have yet been discovered, for the gradual ™iigi0°us
growth of religious forms and religious opinions, and of freedom-
that free expression of individual belief which is indis
pensable to any healthy development of religious action.
And the changes conducted by the power of a great State
are far more likely to be in conformity with the feel
ings of the whole community, and of the most intelligent
part of it, than those which are proposed and carried by
majorities in excited clerical or quasi-clerical meetings.
The Eeformation in every country in Europe, except
Holland, was carried by the direct intervention and aid of
the Government. The beneficial changes which have been
made in the ecclesiastical regulations of England — those
which are most precious to the Nonconformists — and
which are clearly recognised to be good, even by those
who at the time most resisted them, were all effected by
the Legislature — that is, not by the Clergy alone, or by
the Dissenters alone, sometimes against the advice of both
or of each, but by the joint effort of the whole Christian
Community — the Toleration Act, the Abolition of the
Slave Trade, the Test and Corporation Act, the Eoman
Catholic Belief Act, the Church Eeform Acts, the Eelax-
ation of Subscription.
The interpretation of the English formularies by the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council have not only

16 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
been almost all favourable to freedom, but have almost
all been acquiesced in subsequently even by those who at
the time regarded them with the greatest alarm. Of
the Gorham decision it has been truly said, that so
far from its having been a heavy price to pay for the
connection of Church and State, it was a blessing which
hardly any price would have been too heavy to purchase.
The doctrine which it was thought to disparage, if preached
less constantly, is not held less strongly — the doctrine
which it tolerated is held without its former bitterness, and
without the sense of irritation. The Eitual judgments
are the only acts of authority which have had the slightest
effect in tranquillising the fierce passions engendered on
either side. Of the ' Essays and Eeviews ' judgment, even
High Churchmen are beginning to acknowledge that any
other decision, would have been in direct contravention of
those General Councils which High Churchmen most delight
to honour. It may be observed, in passing, that decisions
of this kind, though they constitute the chief point
against which the missiles of Liberationists, whether inside
or outside the Church, are directed, yet are the very
point of contact between the State and religious convic
tions, in which almost every ecclesiastical community is
equally concerned. No question of interpretation of doc
trine, in regard to property, can arise in any religious
body in England which may not eventually be brought
before a tribunal of this nature for its settlement. It is
the only tribunal in which all the contending parties will
acquiesce. The only difference in this respect, between
the Eoman Catholic and Protestant Nonconformists on
the one side, and the Church of England on the other, is,
that the Church of England, in its Articles and constitution,
openly acknowledges the principle which the others admit
indirectly. When Cardinal Wiseman taunted the Church

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 17
of England with having appealed from the High Priest's
hall to the Hall of Caasar, he might have remembered
that this was exactly the course gladly pursued by the
Apostle Paul before Festus, and that the judgment-seat
of Pilate, the Eoman magistrate, was the one opening of
escape from the dark and iniquitous judgment of the High
Priest Caiaphas. He might also have remembered that it
was an appeal which he himself, willingly or unwillingly,
must have made had a question in regard to property
arisen, touching that large class of doctrines which one half
the Eoman Catholic world regards as lawful, the other as
unlawful within their Church.
The only Protestant community which seems to have
succeeded in making the ecclesiastical tribunals absolutely
irresponsible is that of the United States. There, by an
ingenious system of distinguishing between Churches and
Corporations, St. Paul's right of appeal seems to be
almost entirely barred — I say almost, for even there the
complex definitions of the American law appear to have
left a loophole,* through which in some future time the
right of individual members or ministers may be protected.
It is remarkable that in the United States, whatever
may be the case in regard to the expression of general
opinion, the expression of opinion within the particular
Churches is far less free than it is in England. The
Episcopalians of America have, I am told, no elements
within their body corresponding to those which furnish
the strongest stimulus to learning and inquiry in our
Church. The Independents of America have re-enacted
the stringent Savoy Confession which the English Inde
pendents in the neighbourhood of an Established Church
have thrown aside. f
* Law of Creeds in Scotland, p. 410,
t In England and Scotland it is a significant token of the protection and
control which the law insists on exercising over Non-established bodies, that
C

18

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

Church.

3. Elasti- 3. Thirdly, from this elasticity and capacity of growth
National " — as well as from the mere fact that the religion acknow
ledged by the State is the National religion — it furnishes
a refuge for the simple and childlike, as well as for the
aspiring and comprehensive, minds of every community.
The State, it has been often said by way of objection,
cannot enter into the detailed dogmatic belief of parti
cular sects. It must be latitudinarian ; it must, as in
Great Britain, recognise the possibility of different forms
of Christian belief — as of Presbyterianism in Scotland,
Anglicanism in England, Eoman Catholicism in Ireland ;
it must, as in France and Prussia, recognise as national
both the Eoman Catholic and the Protestant Church.
This, however, is one of the best arguments in its favour.
It is the ground of the comprehensiveness of the Church
of England. It thus fulfils the ideal which the ' ever-
' memorable Hales ' drew of a National Church — that its
shield should be as near as possible like that of Amphi-
araus — a blank shield, with no device of party or sect.
It fulfils the ideal of the Early Church — an ark, a vessel
containing the clean and unclean beasts alike. What we
often mean by ' profound ' is, as Talleyrand well re
marked, not deep but hollow. If the theology of the
State is not profound, at any rate it is not hollow. It
is much nearer to the theology of Bacon, Shakspeare,
Scott, — the theology of Butler and, in great part, of
Hooker, — of that long line of self-controlled theologians,
who, beginning with some of the Alexandrian and Greek
Fathers, reappearing more fully in Erasmus, Grotius,
the doors of their churches, like those of Established churches, are for
bidden to be locked, barred, or bolted. Publicity no doubt is a condition
which all bodies, aiming at ends not contemplated by the law, are anxious
to avoid, and it is therefore so much the more remarkable an instance of the
interference of the Government to secure it.— Law of Creeds in Scotland
p. 246. '

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 19
Hales, Chilling worth, Cudworth, Taylor, Baxter in his
latest years, and in the fundamental tenets of Wesley, has
formed the backbone of Christian theology, on Avhich all
who are not partisans of either extreme will ever fall back
in their calmer and better moods.
No one will accuse Burke of lukewarmness in philo
sophy or religion, yet he says : ' Had I possessed a vote
' when the Directory was going to be established, I
' would have divided for the Common Prayer ; or had
' I lived when the Common Prayer was re-established, I
' should have voted for the Directory. The reason is
' obvious. They were not essentially different. Neither
' contained anything contrary to the Scriptures, or that
' could shock a rational Christian.' *
No doubt the judicial decisions of Privy Councils, as
well as of General Councils, ' may err, and sometimes
' have erred, even in matters pertaining to the faith.' The
case of Mr. Heath is an unfortunate instance of a clergy
man having been deprived of his benefice virtually because
he was deaf. But still, in point of fact, the theology of
these great judicial sentences has frequently been as good
as the law. There is, perhaps, no decision of any Council
or Holy Office equal in moderation and insight to that of
the Gorham Judgment, unless it be that which so greatly
resembles it in its inclusion of two opposite principles —
the decision of the First Council at Jerusalem.
Many good men think that this is a dangerous lati
tude, and that the main use of independent ecclesiastical
courts is to secure unity in doctrine. But look at the
case of Scotland. No Churches have been more torn by
disputes on what they believe to be essentials than the
Free Churches of Scotland, and yet, outside their own
communities, it is impossible for any human being to dis-
* Burke's Works, i. 94.
c 2

20 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
tinguish or unravel the points in dispute. What is true
of the quarrels between the Belief and Secession Churches
in the highest degree, is true more or less of many of the
questions to which each theological sect attaches most
importance, but which the State would probably treat as
they would be treated by all except the special partisans
of the opinions in question.
'There is some one,' said Talleyrand, speaking of
worldly politics, ' more clever than Voltaire, more saga-
' cious than Napoleon, more shrewd than each minister,
' past, present, and to come, and that some one is every-
' body.' ' There is some one,' we may say, in ecclesiastical
politics, ' more learned, more able, and more versatile
' than any individual Bishop — more likely to be right than
' the Pope of Eome, or the Wesleyan Conference, or the
' General Assembly — and that is the whole community.'
The connection of the Church with the State is, in
this respect, merely another form of that great Christian
principle — that cardinal doctrine of the Eeformation,
which is at the same time truly Catholic and truly Apos
tolical — that Christian life and Christian theology thrive
the most vigorously, not by separation, and isolation,
and secrecy, but by intercommunion with the domestic
and social relations of man — in the world, though not of
it. What the marriage of the clergy, what the religious
tone of the laity, what the free expressions of religious
opinion in literature, are in common life—may I say, what
Westminster Abbey is in the ecclesiastical architecture
of England? — that the control of the State and the con
nection with the State is to the Christian Church. We of
the Established Church have doubtless much to learn
from Nonconformists ; but, if we were to become Noncon
formists, even for the sake of conforming with opinions
most like our own, we could only do so by surrender-

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 21
ing — I do not say our worldly advantages, but what I
trust most of us would value far more, as the chief privi
lege of our position, that which binds us to a common
Christianity apart from any particular sect, that which
unites us to the past history of our country, to the national
life of the present, to the possible hopes of the future.
ni. I now proceed to state, briefly, the real objections in. Objec-
to the connection, which I quite acknowledge, but which
admit, I hope, partly of an answer, partly of a remedy.
1. There is the impediment which the incorporation Diificuity
of ecclesiastical affairs with the State places in the way of ° c ange"
an unlimited expression of sentiment, and an unlimited
change of ritual or creed. There can be no doubt that
nothing but the law at this moment prevents an explosion
of opinions and a diversity of worship which would, for
the time, be the highest gratification to many excellent
persons of all kinds.
But, first, the resistance to wholesome changes and
removals of restraint exists socially, if not legally, in Non-
established communities, and in Established Churches
proceeds far more from the Clergy than from the State.
Whatever difficulty there may be in removing the Con
fession of Faith from the Established Church of Scotland,
exists in a far deeper form in the Free Church. What
ever obstacles arose in England to the relaxation of
Subscription, and to the abolition of what were erroneously
called the State Services (that is, the services which had
been composed by Convocation without the consent of
Parliament), were not from the State, but from the
Clergy. Almost to the last these changes met with sup
port only from a few individuals in the clerical body,
though now that they are effected everyone acknowledges
their advantage. And if once the laity appreciated the
true importance of their position in the Church ; if once

22 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
the clergy were possessed with a desire to avail them
selves of their assistance — the facility of effecting all
desirable changes would be infinitely increased.
And, secondly, the self-restraint rendered necessary by
such a state of things is on the whole beneficial, espe
cially when, as in England, there is perfect freedom to
retire ; and the fact that, with this freedom, so few do
secede, is a proof that, in spite of all declamations to the
contrary, the Establishment is regarded as the Themistocles
of the country. High Churchmen, Broad Churchmen,
Low Churchmen, perhaps even Nonconformists, however
much they would each desire to see their own plans
carried out, yet feel a stronger spiritual attraction towards
the Church of England than towards any other commu
nity that invites their allegiance.
Worldly 2. Another drawback is the corrupting influence of the
great worldly positions which are sometimes offered in
Established Churches— the immense temptation to sup
press conviction, to avoid or attack unpopular names, to
secure the support of powerful parties or individuals.
No one can question the reality of this evil who has lived
in the turmoil of ecclesiastical life, or witnessed one or
two of those long successions of shocks of bishoprics,
deaneries, canonries, and rectories, occasioned by the fall
of an archbishopric. But, first, it is an evil which de
pends more on the hierarchical constitution of the Clergy
than on the influences of the State. In the Established
Presbyterian Church of Scotland it hardly exists at all.
In the Papal Court, where the clergy reign supreme, with
hardly any admixture of lay influence, the evil is cheater
than with us. Nothing can be more secular than the
motives which regulated the election of Pius VIL, as
recorded, with the utmost na'ivetd, by Consalvi, Secretary
of the Conclave ; the more remarkable because the Papacy

influences.

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 23
was at that time separated from its temporal monarchy,
and both Pius VH. and Consalvi were eminently respect
able men. No character and no stratagems can be more
entirely worldly than those exhibited in the picture, of
which the faithfulness is not questioned, of the schemes
of Dr. Packthread, in Mrs. Stowe's novel of ' Dred,' in
the Free Churches on the other side the Atlantic.
A certain exclusive ardour and purity of discipline
may be kept alive by breaking up the religious community
into small fragments. But this principle, to be consistently
carried out, must divide and subdivide infinitesimally.
The answer of Constantine to the first Puritan- — the first
Liberationism the Novatian Acesius — is still true : ' Take
' a ladder, and climb up to Heaven by yourself.'
I quite concede the advantages which even a solitary
hermit like Acesius confers on the Christian world by
his independence and austerity of life. It is one of the
large debts which we owTe to Nonconformists, that they
have vindicated in England the sacredness of the individual
conscience, the ideal of Christian purity, the noble im
petuosity of Christian enthusiasm. All honour to them
for it ! But, on the other hand, they themselves, I be
lieve, would testify to the jealousies and narrowness en
gendered * by the machinations of small religious circles.
* ' Dissenting churches, as a whole, fail to be " in the world, yet not of it."
' They are not " churches in the world," far less The Church — the Body of
' Christ in the world — but " cliques apart from the world ; " very pious and
' earnest, doubtless, but of a piety that locks itself up in the chapel and the
' Sunday, and never escapes into the market and the weekday.
' Objection is taken to Hooker's position, that every member of the Com-
' monwealth is also of the Church of England,because, therefore, "no discipline
' " can be maintained over laity and clergy." I have no space or time now to
' argue whether the whole position of Dissenting Churches is not unsound ;
'but, taking the facts as they are, what greater bondage can be imagined on
' ministers and people than the frequent terms of trust-deeds — what more
' notorious than the inconsistency between the opinions of many members,
' and even ministers, and those laid down in trust-deeds ? And as to Church-

24 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
I would add also that some of the points of contact
with the world in the Established Church, which cause
most offence, have a side which its assailants perhaps
have not sufficiently considered. The seats of Bishops
in the House of Lords are important not so much as
giving them additional dignity, but as bringing them into
' membership, who knows not — that is at all acquainted with Dissenting
' religious life — the exaggeration constantly made of the importance of such
' Church-membership — degrading as it does communion of saints into com- .
' mumon with a particular party, or a clique calling itself and " voting "
'itself a "Church"?
' As to Church discipline over the clergy, who that knows how ministers
' are got for congregations, the influence of Heads of Colleges, the jealousy
' of Deacons, the suspicious inquiries regularly instituted, will not say that
' (imperfect, from laxness or from martinet rigidity, as may be the examination
' of Bishops' Chaplains, and the usual routine of Ordination, yet) the satis-
' faction of being beyond the worry of sectarian suspicion, when once the
' Creeds and Articles are signed, and a recognised legal protection spread over
' one, are infinitely to be preferred by any noble independent mind ? If any-
1 one -wants to know this, let him read the pages of the " Christian Spectator "
' and " Salem Chapel." Dissenting pulpits are either occupied by men strong
' enough to kick down the petty narrowness that surrounds them ; or are
' subject to the influence of every coterie of old women, or young women,
'or "large" subscribers, "weighty" friends, and elderly deacons in the
' Church or Congregational circle, without half the education or a tithe of
' the sense of the minister. There are plenty of Dissenting ministers who
'have joined the Church — ask them whether the act of subscribing to
' Articles has not been like drawing a long breath of deliverance after years
' of worse than Lilliputian bondage and arrow-pricks to Gulliver ?
' Then, as to discipline over the laity, one of the chief points long in dis-
' cussion among Dissenters is the " deputation practice ; " in sending a couple
' more members, deacons or others, to wait upon and examine a candidate for
' membership. Li London, I am informed, it is much given up ; and I know
' of young ministers who are breaking down the practice, from the intolerable
< intrusion on private conscience it has become. And as to the inconvenience
' lately felt in the legal limits of parishes, and the authority of clergy within
1 them against intruders, I can only say there is plenty of jealousy anion"
' Dissenters of one another ; and at the worst it reminds me of a Scotch
' saying in regard to abuses grown with years in long-established institutions
' compared with new ones, — " When your lum (chimney) has reeked as long
' " as ours, we'll see whilk will be the mirkiest " — (». e., the dirtiest) I '
From a Letter to.the English Churchman, by ' A Dissenter against his Will.'
This may contain exaggerations, but still it gives one side of the picture
that ought not to be overlooked.

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 25
free and equal intercourse with the laity, and under the
direct control of public opinion and public questioning.
Nor will the ecclesiastics of the State Church be found,
on the whole, to have been more servile towards the State,
whilst they have probably been less servile towards the
people, than the unendowed and unestablished ministers.
If Bishop Horsley was swept away by the anti-revolu
tionary panic of 1793, so was Eobert Hall. Bishop Ken
was bolder in his rebukes to Charles II. than the Quaker
Penn to his brother James ; and in that great struggle
for English liberty, it was not the Nonconformists, but
the Seven Bishops of the State Church, who by their in
dependence saved both Church and State.
3. Another objection is, that it is unfair of the State choice of
to choose one creed, and set it up above the others. CreecU
Doubtless this is a serious difficulty, which can only be
truly met by making this creed as wide as possible, and
by maintaining that which is the creed of the large
majority of the nation. At the present moment, how
ever, the only test, in fact, of membership in the English
Church is the Apostles' Creed.* The subscription to the
XXXLX. Articles, imposed on the clergy and the Univer
sity of Oxford, was a later and extrinsic addition, which
the most eager advocates of the union of Church and State
have always endeavoured to mitigate or remove — an
endeavour which has, in recent times, been to a great
extent successful. But, in point of fact, the State has
never, strictly speaking, made a choice at all. The
Church of England, meaning thereby the ecclesiastical
system of England, has grown up, historically, like all the
other elements of the English Commonwealth. It is not a
single institution, but a group of institutions — not a cor
poration, but a group of corporations ; and the State can
* Note D.

26 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
be said to have chosen these only in the same way as it
has chosen Monarchy, and the House of Lords, and the
Universities, and the House of Commons, and the Three
Denominations, each in their several ways.
This is the true reason of the retention of much that
might else have better not have existed, and also the
ground for believing in the possibility of the peaceable
modification of that which needs alteration. So far as
there is an exclusive creed, a narrow choice, so far the
Established Church is no doubt an evil ; because, so far,
it descends to the level of a sect. And, therefore, the more
barriers it can wisely throw down, the more open it can
render its Ministry and its Universities, so much the more
has it fulfilled its true mission ; so much the more nearly
does it rise to the true nobleness of a National Church,
which is the nearest approach that, in the present condi
tion of the world, can be made to a Catholic Church.
Social 4. Lastly, there is the objection that the State recogni-
ment!raSe" tion, be it great or small, involves an unfair and injurious
amount of social disparagement. I am not sure how much
this exists ; but, as far as it does exist, we ought all to grant
that it is an unmixed evil, wThich ought to be recognised
as such by none so keenly as the Clergy of the Established
Church, or with so earnest a desire for its disappearance.
It proceeds, however, not so much from the national
position of the clergy, as from an ill-understood view of
the claims of the Episcopal succession. Accordingly, it
is a fact that the language of American and Scottish
Episcopalians is often far more • contemptuous towards
their Presbyterian brethren than that which is heard
from the majority of English Churchmen. Let us hope
that this estrangement, which has doubtless of late years
already diminished, may altogether cease, and that we
may more and more learn to treat our Dissenting

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 27
brethren as our friends, our equals, our allies — in one
word, as ' Nonconforming members and ministers of the
' National Church.'
And I would here venture to suggest one particular
remedy which would be at once practicable and efficient.
Eeunion, absorption, intercommunion, or the like, may be
desirable or not. These must be the end, and not the
beginning, of close approximation. But larger commu
nity of preaching — the permission to our Nonconforming
brethren of England, and our Presbyterian brethren of the
Scottish Church, to preach in our pulpits, under what
ever restrictions they or we might desire — would be an
unmixed good. It would be but giving to Nonepisco-
palians what we have, within the last few years, granted
to the Episcopalian Nonconformists of America and
Scotland. It would be but restoring to Presbyterians
the sympathy and the rights which they enjoyed in the
Church of England during the first hundred years after
the Eeformation. It is all but legal, if it is not altogether
legal now.* This would indeed be an endeavour to make
the Church really national ; to draw the hearts of the
fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers ;
to atone for the injuries, to heal the bitterness, and to
repair the lost opportunities, of the past. It is, at any
rate, in efforts of this nature — in bringing together our
own countrymen into one communion and fellowship of
good words and good works, whether of outward form or
not — that our energies are far better spent, than in
schemes of remote unions with distant Churches which
we may never see, or systems of independent and sepa
ratist organisations amongst ourselves.
I have run rapidly through this great subject. The
necessary imperfections of the connection of Church and
* Note C.

28 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
Conciu- gtate i kave freely a]]owed. Like every human institu-
sion. . J j ~\
tion, it may be doomed to destruction, and to be succeeded
by something better than itself. It may fall, as a rehc
of the past, with all the other old institutions of England —
the Monarchy, the Aristocracy, the mysterious Constitution
itself. It may be that we shall hve to see the triumph of
the triple alliance between the descendants of the Puritans,
the descendants of Eousseau, and the descendants of
Laud. It may be that we shall see this venerable growth
of English history uprooted, the parochial system swept
away, the National Church broken into fragments, the
cathedrals and parish churches closed, Westminster
Abbey sold to the first chance purchaser for what its
stones are worth ; the Episcopalian clergy left to the
tender mercies of irresponsible Bishops, the Presbyterian
clergy to the equally irresponsible tribunals of Pres
byteries and General Assemblies ; the nation at large cut
off from any control over the greatest and most sacred
of all its interests ; the true voice of the laity and of the
Church silenced in its greatest and most powerful organ ;
the nation ceasing to recognise the loftiest and purest
of all the missions entrusted to it. This, and nothing
less than this, will be a true and complete separation of
Church and State. This may be, and out of this chaos our
children may be called laboriously to construct a new
order of things. But, till the fatal hour be come, I, for
one, am prepared, as an American Bishop, impressed with
the evils of his own system, recently urged us, k to fight
' for our present constitution, to the moral death.' Let us
reform, enlarge, ease the system as much as we can ; but
let us not, without a struggle, consent to see this back
bone of the English Church and Commonwealth broken
to pieces. Let us not rashly part with the framework
which, with all its faults, has sheltered, down to this

THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 29
time, what has been truly called ' the learning of the most
' learned, the freedom of the freest, and the reason of the
' most rational Church in Christendom.' Let us not be
ashamed of that theory of the Church of England
which was proclaimed by Cranmer and Eidley, which
satisfied Burke and Coleridge, which inspired Hooker and
Arnold with enthusiastic love and admiration. Let us
not be ashamed to be Erastian with St. Paul. Let us not,
so long as Providence permits, willingly surrender the best
opportunity which the world affords for a natural growth,
side by side, of scientific enquiry and religious earnest
ness, such as will meet the natural wants of the English
character, and the needs of future generations. Let us not
cast away the golden chance for this age of transition —
which enables us to wait in patience the changes and the
trials and the blessings which may be in store for us —
the golden chance which, when it is gone, will perhaps
be vainly lamented by those who, within and without
the Establishment, are labouring to cast it aside. Episco
palians, Eoman Catholics, Wesleyans, Unitarians, Indepen
dents, Quakers we may become, if the Establishment is
overthrown ; but English Churchmen, with all which that
name implies of glory in the past, and of hope in the
future, we shall be no more. And, therefore, for all the
reasons which I have urged, in spite of all obloquy from
my High Church, my Liberal, and my Nonconformist
friends, I still venture to trust that the Church of Eng
land may yet continue as ' a Free Church in a Free State '
— not in that degraded sense in which it means an en
slaved Clergy amidst an indifferent Laity, but in the only
true and exalted sense which those words ought to bear
— in the sense of a Clergy whose freedom is bounded only
by Law, and a State in whose free constitution and free
press and free aspirations the voice of the Church finds
its best expression.

HIE IRISH CHURCH. 31

NOTE A.
THE IRISH CHURCH.
A few remarks may be permitted to explain why, in
connection with the general subject of this Address, I
have avoided a topic of such pressing interest as the
Established Church of Ireland.
1. It is often said, both by the defenders and the as
sailants of the Irish Protestant Church, that this is the
very battlefield, the crucial case, in which the principle
of an Established Church must be fought out. The
defenders urge this with the view of enlisting the sym
pathies of English Churchmen on their side, on the
maxim of Proximus Ucalegon. The assailants urge it,
with the view of attacking the principle of Establish
ments generally, through this, which is supposed to be its
weakest side.
It is surely more true to say that the anomalous and
peculiar condition of Ireland, in reference to England,
makes it too exceptional a field for the trial of any
general principle. It is not only, as has been often said,
that many of the reasons which justify an Established
Church in England condemn it in Ireland, and that many
of the reasons which condemn it in Ireland justify it in
England ; but that the variety and force of the disturbing
elements in Ireland ought to warn us against drawing
general conclusions from so precarious an example —
against attacking or defending so insulated a position

32 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
with arguments intended to cover a much larger extent
of ground. I venture to say thus much, not with the
view of prejudicing the case on either side, but rather
with the view of disentangling a serious practical question
from irrelevant considerations, and an abstract principle
from a peculiar political difficulty.
2. Whatever may be the issue forced by the emer
gency of the time on those who have to deal with the
Irish Church, and viewing it merely as an isolated pro
blem, it must be remembered that the question of the
connection or separation of Church and State is not of
necessity involved in it. When, sixty or seventy years ago,
the difficulty of the Irish Establishment first arose, it
presented itself under the form of endowing and estab
lishing the Eoman Catholic Church, by the side or in the
stead of the Protestant Church. The notion of parting
with the benefits of an Established Church altogether
had not then become one of the elements of discus
sion. This has been introduced into the question
partly, no doubt, by the external action of the English
Liberationists, partly also by the difficulties thrown in the
way of such a scheme by the Eoman Catholics themselves.
It may be that the combined forces of these two streams
will be too powerful to resist. But it is worth while
remarking, that dispassionate observers seem generally
agreed in considering, that if such a solution is adopted,
it will be not as the best, but as the only one which
existing circumstances will allow — perhaps as in itself
the worst, except for the pressure of those prac
tical difficulties. It is probably admitted on all sides
that, on the one hand, the dependence of the Eoman
Catholic clergy on their flocks for subsistence, and on a
foreign Prince for dignity and rank, which now forms
the worst feature of the Irish ecclesiastical system in the

THE IRISH CHURCH. 33
eyes of all reasonable men, would remain undiminished.
In no other country in Europe have the Eoman Catholic
clergy refused the endowment and control of the State.
No other Government in Europe, Eoman Catholic or Pro
testant, would willingly lose, such an opportunity of guard
ing and guiding so powerful an element in the national
life. And, on the other hand, it seems also agreed —
indeed, by some it is put forward as a reason for dises
tablishing the Protestant Church — that in that case the
vehemence of the Orange party, now confined and
moderated in some degree by the influence of a vener
able and legal institution, would be set loose on a new
career of proselytism and aggression, which certainly
would not tend to increase the harmony between the
two Churches. This, again, is a state of things which no
Statesman, no large-minded Christian, would naturally
desire, however much he may be constrained to acquiesce
in it as an escape from immediate evils, and a concession
to urgent demands.
I repeat that I do not in these remarks enter on the
question of the mode of dealing with the Irish Establish
ment. I only venture to suggest that, as even in this case
the results of a complete severance of the connection with
the State are generally deemed questionable in themselves,
they cannot be pleaded as arguments in behalf of carry
ing out the same system where no such exceptional cir
cumstances exist.
3. It is worth remarking, that there is a sense in
which the Churches of England and Scotland are na
tional, which can hardly be said either of the Eoman
Catholic or the Protestant Church in Ireland. The
Church of England, however much some of its formu
laries and institutions raise objections in the minds of
Nonconformists, yet is still viewed by them with respect,

34 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
and in some points with affection. The Prayer Book is
a monument of Enghsh sacred literature (to say no more),
of which every Englishman is justly proud. The Com
mentaries, Hymns, and Sermons of many Anglican divines
are read with pleasure by almost every class of the com
munity, however widely they may be separated on points
of doctrine or discipline from the Church in which the
authors were educated. The Authorised Version is the
Bible of the whole community, and binds together even
those who have no other bond. Of the Church of Scotland
it is still more true, that, however fierce the animosities
between the different Scottish sects, yet its Confession of
Faith, its Catechism, its form of Church Government, its
Hymns, its Paraphrases, and its style of preaching, are
accepted, almost without questioning, by the extremest
dissidents from its pale. In Ireland this is hardly the
case either with the Eoman Catholic or the Protestant
Church. The sacred literature, the Prayer Book of the
Protestant Church, are not the common property of the
whole Irish nation — nor, reciprocally, have the ritual or
the sacred literature of the Eoman Catholic Church pene
trated into the Protestant section of the people. The
Authorised Version of the Protestant Church — the Douay
Version of the Eoman Church — are points of repulsion,
not of attraction. It is therefore to be feared, that al
though in a certain sense each of the two Churches in
Ireland may be called national, the one as representing
the intelligence, the other the numbers of the people, yet
there is a distinction between them which must prevent
for a long time either of thern becoming national, in
the same sense as that in which even the Eoman Catholic
Church may be so regarded by the Protestants of France,
and the Lutheran Church by the Eoman Catholics of
Germany.

THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT AND THE CHURCH. 35
For all these reasons, it seemed to me useless and need
less to introduce into this particular Address a contro
versy which, however grave, derives its main interest
from other sources, and tends rather to confuse than to
enlighten the great subject here discussed.

NOTE B.
RELATION OF THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT TO THE EARLY
CHURCH.
Nothing is more remarkable in the Acts of the Apostles
and the Apostolical Epistles than the deference shown to
the Eoman State, and the gratitude expressed towards it
for the shelter which it afforded to the early Christians from
the violence and fanaticism of the Jewish Church. It is
evident that one expression of this general feeling is the
admiration expressed for Gallio, in Acts xviii. 13-17.
Determined attempts were made to turn him from his
duty as judge, whether by argument, as at first, or by
violence afterwards. He ' cared for none of these things.'
He showed that ' indifferent administration of justice,'
which is the Church's petition for all magistrates, and by
which the Imperial Government was so endeared to the
first Christians, who looked upon it, before the age of
persecution began, as their chief protector.
This is so evident to any careful reader of the sacred
narrative that it needs no explanation. But there is a
larger question raised, which has been discussed with
such force by the very able writer whom I have often
quoted, that I cannot forbear to give his discussion of it
in detail : —
' It is sometimes rashly inferred, that because the
' Roman proconsul " cared for none of those things "
D 2

36 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
' which were at this time brought before him, he there-
' fore acted with careless injustice in refusing to consider
' them. On the contrary, his speech is a perfect expres-
* sion of the wise and haughty justice of Eome. There
' can be no doubt that he was bound to dismiss the
' complaint. ' But it is sometimes assumed that, on the same grounds
' on which he dismissed this complaint, he would have
' been entitled to get rid of all such questions, however
' they were brought before him ; or at least, that being,
' as we may assume, disposed to get rid of them, he would
' on the same grounds have been able to do so. This is
' certainly not the case.
' Annasus Gallio was seemingly at this time newly come
' to his proconsulship ; but he could not have long re-
* mained a judge to that nation without finding cases in
' which a " matter of wrong " — aS/xyjjaa — coming before
' him could only be put right through means of an inquiry
' into some of the religionisms of the confused time. He
' could not, at least, always refuse an action in the same
' summary way to those who complained. If, instead of
' the Jews saying to the unsympathising governor, " This
' " fellow persuadeth men to worship God contrary to the
' " law," Paul had complained that they had turned him
' out of the synagogue with violence, or had refused hiin
' and his friends a share of the benefactions left in their
' hands by some devout and honourable person for all
' Jews who should hereafter come to Corinth, a personal
' action would seem to have been competent to the ag-
' grieved. It may be very doubtful indeed, whether Paul
' would have availed himself of this right of complaint.
'Instead of doing so, both here and in Ephesus, he " sepa-
' " rated himself " (evidently much against his will) from
' the regular synagogue and opened another hard by. But

THE ROMAN GOVERNMENT AND THE CHURCH. 37
' if his excommunication involved direct pecuniary loss or
'penalty, the complaint would have been primd facie
' competent. And the Exceplio or defence of the accused
<• would be that Paul was no Jew, for " after a way which
' " they called heresy so worshipped he the God of his
' " fathers ; " unless, indeed, they confined themselves to the
'preliminary objection, that on all matters connected with
' the synagogue they had full authority by the consent of
'the worshippers themselves. But whichever the ob
jection might be, the proconsul would send it, along with
' the accusation, to a Judex for his decision. Or let us
' take the most important case at once. Six years after this
' occurrence, Sosthenes and some of his fellow-rulers of
' the synagogue might again have appeared before the
'judgment-seat, complaining that by the gradual growth
' of this heresy two-thirds of the Jewish community had
' now adopted the views of the Tarsus enthusiast, and that
' the majority, having usurped the control of the synagogue
' in which their fathers had prayed, now refused to permit
'anyone to use it except in worship of that Jesus
' who had been condemned as a deceiver by the central
' authorities at Jerusalem. And the vindication of their
' building — their demand that it be given back to them
' exclusively — would be founded not on the allegation that
' the new religion was false, but on the allegation that it
' was another religion from that for which the building was
' intended. What would be the answer of Crispus and
' Gaius, and the other elders of the " Church of God
' " which is at Corinth "? Unless they had wholly lost the
' spirit of their Apostle, who said, " I stand at Caasar's
'"judgment-seat, where I ought to be judged," but who
' thought himself happy to stand there in the presence of
' King Agrippa, because he knew the king to be " expert in
' " all customs and questions which are among the Jews,''

38 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
they would have accepted the challenge with the utmost
alacrity. And their defence, as Jews, would be not only
that "they worshipped the God of their fathers, be-
" lieving all things which are written in the law and the
" prophets," but " that they alone clave to the promise
" to which their twelve tribes, instantly serving God
" night and day, for so many ages, had hoped to come,"
and that it was their opponents who had apostatised from
the central hope, for the cherishing of which the nation
existed and the synagogue was built. The proconsul
could hardly refuse to decide a simple question of pro
perty. Yet the question of property (or use) in this case
could not well be settled without deciding first the whole
great question of Church identity, which Paul argues in
many a fiery page — unless, indeed, the Eoman had acted,
like our earlier Scottish Judges, before Lord Eldon's time,
and simply given the property to the majority (of mem
bers of the synagogue, or builders of the synagogue, or
rulers of the synagogue, for all these were tried) without
any inquiry into opinions at all. But even this (which is
the course to which Scotch Churchmen have always
leaned) implies that the action is not dismissed as incom
petent, but entertained and decided.' *
* W. Taylor Innes's Law of Creeds in Scotland, note, pp. 330-331.— I
cannot quote this work without expressing my strong admiration of its
learning, ability, and (with a very few exceptions) impartial statement of
the whole question discussed in this Address.

RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO NONCONFORMISTS. 39

NOTE C.
THE SOCIAL RELATION OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH TO
NONCONFORMISTS.
The proposal to admit Nonconformist ministers, or the
Presbyterian clergy of the Estabhshed Church of Scotland,
to preach, under certain conditions, in the pulpits of the
Church of England, would probably conduce so greatly
to a better state of religious feeling, and an enlarged
efficiency of the whole ecclesiastical force of the country,
that it may be worth while to show how entirely it would
be in conformity with principles and practices already
acknowledged in the Church of England.
During the hundred years from the Eeformation to the Permission
Eestoration, there is no doubt that it was the acknow- t0 preac '
ledged usage. Under the 13th Eliz. c. 12, Presbyterian
divines were permitted, on conforming to part of the
Thirty-nine Articles, not only to preach, but to hold
benefices, in the English Church.* At the Eestoration this
was prohibited. But even under the Act of Uniformity
(13 & 1 4 Car. II. c. 15-20), it was possible, though under
limitations of a more stringent character, for lecturers to
preach even in parish churches with the consent of the
Bishop, and in cathedral and collegiate churches with the
consent of the ordinary, and accordingly Howe and Calamy
did so preach occasionally.f For these stringent regula
tions have now been substituted the milder forms pre
scribed by the recent Subscription Act. In this way, even
* Historical Inquiry, whether the Ministers of Nonepiscopal Churches may
receive Allowance to Preach occasionally in the Pulpits of the Church of Eng
land (London, 1859), p. 27.
t Life of John Howe, by Henry Eogers, p. 176.— Baxter's Memoirs,
p. 386.

40 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
without any alteration of the law, such occasional a:vl
exceptional lecturers or preachers, if they could so far
conform, might be admitted. The question remains, whe
ther the very wide latitude afforded by the recent change
would fail to include any large body of Nonconformists.
At any rate the permission, limited as it is, admits the
principle. And even the Act of Uniformity (13 & 14
Car. II. c. 9, 11) appears to allow to Nonepiscopal fo
reigners or aliens not only the power of preaching, but of
holding benefices.
Further, by 32 George III. c. 63, the clergy of the Pro
testant Episcopal Church of Scotland, who are in the
position of Dissenters towards the Established Churches
of both countries, were permitted to officiate with the
consent of the Bishop, although belonging to a different
communion, and in some important points, both of ritual
and discipline, divergent from the forms of the Church
of England. And yet more, by 3 & 4 Victoria, c. 33,
anyone ordained by the Bishops of the Protestant Epis
copal Church in the United States, is allowed the same
privilege ; so that it is now lawful for clergymen to preach
in our pulpits, who (with the American Episcopalians)
entirely reject the Athanasian Creed, omit one of the
Articles of the Apostles' Creed, and have adopted modifi
cations of the Visitation and Burial Services^ — points
which, whether rightly or wrongly, remove some of the
chief stumblingblocks of the existing English Liturgy in
the eyes of Nonconformists. 'As matters now stand,'
writes an able and conscientious minister (who calls him
self 'A Dissenter against his will'), 'I could cross the
' Atlantic, and come back an ordained brother of English
' Churchmen, ready for any kindly recognition any Bishop
' on this side would grant me for the sake of his American
'brother.' It is obvious that this circuitous opening

OCCASIONAL PREACHING OF NONCONFORMISTS. 41
through the American Church does, in fact, admit not
only the whole principle here advocated, but a large part
of the practice.
It may be further pointed out, that there is not any
thing either in the practice or principle of allowing
Nonepiscopahans to preach in our churches (under such
conditions as might be agreed upon) to which the ex-
tremest High Churchman need object. It is not proposed
^-Nonconformists themselves probably would not wish
that they should be authorised to administer the Sacra
ment of the Lord's Supper, or to ordain. But the right
of persons not episcopally ordained to preach has been
recognised at all times, both in the ancient and in the
Eoman Church. The famous preachers Pantasnus, Origen,
and St. Anthony, the founder of the monastic rule, were
not in Orders at all. St. Francis, when he first commenced
his great career of preaching, was neither priest nor
deacon. In the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United
States (lately recognised, by a large section of the En
glish Episcopate, as part ' of the Anglican Communion ')
it is, I believe, a not infrequent practice of the clergy to
admit Nonepiscopal ministers to preach in their pulpits.
The principle, therefore, is one which is recognised not
only by English law, but by those ecclesiastical authorities
which are most distinctly acknowledged by the only per
sons in the Church to whom such a practice could be
"expected to give umbrage.
I have ventured to suggest, for the consideration of our
ecclesiastical rulers, this relaxation of our ecclesiastical
system, as involving the maximum of increased usefulness
and good feeling on both sides, with the minimum of
organic change.
There are two other measures which, whilst desirable
on other grounds, would tend indefinitely to diminish the

42 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
social estrangement which every true member of the
National Church must deplore.
Revision One is the opportunity of including Nonconformists
Authorised witn Churchmen whenever the time shall come for the
Version, revision of the Authorised Version. Whenever the reve
rential interest of Englishmen in the Bible shall have
so increased as to render it impossible for the clergy and
laity of the Church to continue to read, as Scripture, texts
known to be spurious, translations of passages known to
be erroneous, and large portions of the Old Testament,
of which the meaning is perverted, then will come the
day, which it would be as wrong prematurely to anti
cipate as it would be needlessly to retard, when the
question must be considered, to whose hands this most
delicate yet necessary task must be confided. And inas
much as the Authorised Version has become the property
of the whole Protestant Anglo-Saxon community, and
forms a religious bond between its different parts, closer
than any other which exists, it is manifest that any sub
stitute for it must combine as great and as extended an
authority as is possible to obtain. This — besides the pro
bable need of invoking the learning of the Nonconformist
as well as of the Established divines — would make it
necessary that, in any Commission for the revision of the
translation, both should have their place. For such a
recognition of unity, for such a reunion in the grandest
of all the works which belong to a National Church, we
must look forward, and, looking forward, do all that in
us lies to prepare for its accomplishment.
Admission Another such means may be specially named — the free
Univer- admission of Nonconformists to our Universities. There
may, especially in regard to the Colleges, be some prac
tical difficulties in detail ; but the general effects of such
a measure (if past experience can enable us to forecast

ADMISSION TO THE UNIVERSITIES. 43
the future) can hardly fail to exercise the most beneficial
influence both on the Church and the Dissenters. It
must be remarked, that the same alarm as that now ex
pressed has appeared at the proposal of each successive
relaxation of the academical tests. It was expressed
by hundreds when it was proposed to abolish the sub
scription to the Articles at matriculation. It was ex
pressed again when it was proposed to abolish the
subscription at the degree of B. A. It was expressed
again, I believe, at every attempt to abolish the subscrip
tion at the degree of M. A., even after it had ceased, in
its • stringent form, to be exacted from the clergy. The
ancient Universities and Colleges afford exactly that field
of equal social intercourse, which would most effectually
soften the exasperation and reduce the misunderstanding
which now exist between Churchmen and Noncon
formists. Whilst — speaking as a Churchman, and as one
who desires to maintain, so far as it can be maintained,
the influence of venerable and sacred associations — the
genius of the place and the prevailing atmosphere of the
society would have more power than any other single
agency I do not say to turn Nonconformists into
Churchmen, or Eoman Catholics into Protestants, or
sceptical inquirers into devout believers, but at least to
remove that sense of estrangement and hostility which
now makes all approaches between them so difficult and
so precarious. There is not at present — there has not
been for the last forty years — any lack of theological
divisions within the University of Oxford. It has been
the very battlefield of the contending armies, not of the
Church of England only, but of the intellectual and eccle
siastical struggles of the whole nation. But the huma
nising, civilising, Christianising effects of the sense of a
common University, of a common course of education of

41 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCn AND STATE.
a common pursuit of truth and of goodness, have ren
dered these differences compatible not only with private
friendship, but with kindly sympathy — with earnest active
work for the interests which the best spirits of the con
tending schools have at heart.

NOTE D.
RELAXATION OF SUBSCRIPTION.
' It was observed of the Oracle of Delphi, that during all
' the ages when the oracle commanded the real reverence
' of Greece, the place in which it was enshrined needed no
' walls for its defence. The awful grandeur of its natural
' situation, the majesty of its temple, were sufficient. Its
' fortifications — as useless as they were unseemly — were
' built only in that disastrous time when the ancient feeling
' of faith had decayed, and the oracle was forced to rely on
' the arm of flesh — on its bulwarks of brick and stone, not
' on its own intrinsic sanctity. May God avert this omen
' from us ! It is only in these later ages of the Church, or
' chiefly in the Protestant portions of Christendom, that
' subscriptions have been piled up to circumscribe our
' oracle and our sanctuary. Let us show that we, in these
' later days, are willing to free ourselves from these un-
' sightly barriers, which encumber, without defending, the
' truth which they enclose and hide. Let us show that we,
* in our Eeformed Church, are not afraid to dispense with
' those artificial restraints which the Catholic Church in
' ancient and, as we think, less enlightened times scorned
' to call to its aid.'*
* Letter to the Bishop of London on the State of Subscription, 1863, pp.
53, 54.

RELAXATION OF SUBSCRIPTION. 45
These words, from a former publication, were quoted,
in a kind and courteous spirit, in the discussion which fol
lowed on my Address, by an able speaker, who adduced
them as an argument against the position which I had
advocated. I am glad to have this opportunity of re
affirming my entire adherence to them, as regards the
purpose for which they were originally used.
That external institutions must exist for carrying on
the instruction of the world, whether religious or intel
lectual, is undeniable. Universities, schools, churches, are
of this nature, and the freer and wider they can be
made — the more comprehensive, the more national — so
much the stronger and the more efficient do they become.
Even the Oracle of Delphi had its splendid temple, and
its unrivalled situation, quite irrespective of the unsightly
fortifications which were built round it in a later age. It
is the artificial and extrinsic bulwarks of subscriptions,
and adhesions* to formularies (which ought to stand, and,
if they are worthy to stand, will stand by their intrinsic
merits), that I ventured to deprecate as useless and un
necessary, whether imposed by Nonconformists or Church
men, by the Clergy or the State. I rejoice to think
that, since these words were written, the object which
they sought has been in great part accomplished. Within
a year from that time a Eoyal Commission was issued,
for the purpose of considering this very question. It is

* The test of Membership required by the Church of England (see
' Letter to the Bishop of London on Subscription,' pp. 66, 67) is, the Apostles'
Creed as required in the Baptismal Service and the Office of the Visitation
of the Sick. The original tests for the clergy are (ibid. 67-73) : 1. An ac
knowledgment of the Supremacy of the Crown ; 2. A promise to administer
the doctrine, sacraments, and discipline of this Church and Bealm; 3. An
acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Bible ; 4. A promise of faithful
teaching diligence, devoutness, domestic purity, and concord ; 5. A promise
of deference to superiors. All the other subscriptions are of later date.

46 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
true that the powerful appeal * made to it by the vener
able Dean of the Metropolitan Cathedral, for removing
the subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles, was not en
tirely successful. But it was heard, as we have been told
by an impartial eyewituess,f with respect and admiration ;
and the result of the whole inquiry has been such a
modification of the existing forms of subscription, as to
take from them every one of those expressions of em
phasis and particularity, which have caused so much
scandal and scruple, from the time they were first im
posed till the day when they were swept away. The
stringent declaration of assent to the Prayer Book, which,
more than any other single cause, produced the disrup
tion of the Nonconformists in 1662, has entirely disap
peared. The stringent subscription to the Thirty-nine
Articles, with which the High Church party was so con
stantly taunted in 1845, has disappeared also. In their
place there remains only the most bare and general assent
to the doctrine of the Church of England, as contained in
both documents equally, with all the qualifications and
counteractions which each of the two supplies to the
other. No contrast of ecclesiastical events in our time has
been more encouraging than the transition from the panic
amongst the leading clergy, when the change was first
mooted in the House of Lords in 1840, to the enthusiastic
reception which the change met in the Southern Convo
cation, and the easy and almost silent acquiescence in the
House of Lords, when it was finally accomplished in 1865. J
* Speech of the Dean of St. Paul's before the Boyal Commission, re
printed in Eraser's Magazine, March 1864.
f ' Never had I a higher intellectual gratification than in hearing that
noble old man expound his view before us.' — Speech of the Bean of Ely in
the Lower House of Convocation in 1865.
X I may refer to a description in Eraser's Magazine, December 1805,
pp. 741-744.

RELAXATION OF SUBSCRIPTION. 47
Whether these subscriptions might be reduced further,
is a question on which I need not enter here ; but as
regards the general argument in relation to the Esta
bhshed Church, it is evident that they would not be
rendered more easy if the Church were to abandon its
connection with the State. The case of a well-known
Professor, who was excluded within our time from the
headship of a Nonconformist College, shows that less
liberty was there allowed than is conceded within the
Church of England. And those within our own pale
who have been most desirous of escaping from the control
of the State have also been most desirous of imposing at
least two — probably several — additional Articles of Belief
on the English Clergy.

NOTE E.
In referring to Hooker, as one of the chief champions of
the doctrine set forth in this Address, I cannot forbear to
quote the following admirable summary of his position,
from the Preface to the First Book of his ' Ecclesiastical
'Polity,' just published amongst the Oxford 'English
' Classics.' ' His education was under the characteristic influences
' which marked the age and reign of Elizabeth, and he
' lived to be one of the most original and worthy repre-
' sentatives of its spirit : the one adequate exponent of its
'religious ideas and policy. With these no one more
' fully sympathised ; and no one conceived them in so
' comprehensive and masterly a manner. The results of
'the religious movement of the time had taken shape
' under the resolute but cautious hand of the Queen in a
' Church polity, which was thought at the time, and has

48 THE CONNECTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
' proved to be, unique ; but which has also proved singu-
' larly suited to the character of the English nation. Of
' this system, which looks like the growth of accident,
' though it was really rooted in the conditions of the
' people whose history it has since so profoundly affected,
' Hooker discerned the effective and governing principles ;
'he divined what was permanent and capable of life in it,
' in comparison with clamorous and more plausible rivals ;
' he gave it a broad and defensible theory, and he seized,
' and exhibited in an impressive form, all that it con-
' tained of what was noble and attractive.'

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