of his hearers' opinions. But the sophistry of such an assertion is abundantly proved by the fact of the unflinching fidelity and zeal with which the sacred office is discharged among the great body of dissenters, and especially the Wesleyan Methodists. And considering the proneness of our nature to degenerate, we are bold to contend, that even if it were practicable for a church establishment to exclude all improper candidates from admission to the desk, it would be highly impolitic and unsafe to destroy the natural motives by which the purest minds require occasionally to be roused from apathy and indolence; or, to cut off so obvious and proper a bond of union between the pastor and his flock, as the voluntary plan affords.

But how much more necessary is it to preserve to the people this check upon ministerial neglect or indifference, if, as we have shewn, the ecclesiastical system furnishes no adequate guarantee for the personal piety of its ministers? For if the clergy be rendered independent of the people, such independence will in general be most fatal to pastoral diligence and fidelity, or there will be a servile dependence or expectancy elsewhere; and which has often been kept alive by the promotion, to the highest and most responsible offices in the church, of men noted chiefly for their abhorrence of evangelism and methodism, and for seldom troubling the flock with their presence, except in the collection of the fleece. From the sources then of a corrupt patronage, and the ecclesiastical monopoly which renders the incomes of the clergy independent of active zeal and usefulness, spring the nume rous evils of pluralities, non-residence, and a secular and negligent priesthood; while the church is converted into a mere engine of state-an heir-loom of the lay nobility and gentry-and a lure to the avarice and ambition of worldly men.

To advert to the episcopal order, is it to be supposed that the sole business of a bishop, who, in the primitive and apostolic church, was an overseer or pastor of a congregation, and not of other ministers, and exhorted to preach the word, be instant in season and out of season, give himself wholly to the work of the ministry, and do the work of an evangelist,-is to ordain ministers, hold confirmations, consecrate churches, and dance attendance at court and the senate? The supposition were a libel upon Christianity. Look at the American bishops, and say, if their example should not shame the supineness of our mitred lords? The fact is, that the former, independently of higher considerations, cannot

ease.

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afford to live without labour, and have not from two to twenty or thirty thousand a year to paralyze their energies, and raise them above their calling, to roll in luxury and And if the system of monopoly and secular patronage thus degrade the episcopal office, will not the same causes, aided by the example of their superiors, render the inferior ramifications of the clergy as a body altogether corrupt? If there be any connexion between cause and effect, such a result is inevitable; while daily observation furnishes abundant, though melancholy, evidence of the fact.

Hence we find men thrust into the church, who deny in the pulpit what they have uttered in the desk, and sworn at their ordination, such as the able and sophistical defender of ecclesiastical establishments, Dr. Paley, who says, "If any one asks what the expressions in scripture, regenerate, born of the Spirit, new creature, mean? We answer, they mean nothing!—nothing to us!nothing to be found or sought for in the present circumstances of Christianity. Yet this very individual subscribed again and again the articles and liturgy of the church of England, whenever a good benefice fell in his way, accumulated preferment to the amount of nearly £2000 a year, and endeavoured to pacify the consciences of himself and his brethren in the ministry, by maintaining that the clergy might profess their assent ex animo to the articles as articles of peace, though they should disbelieve many of the individual propositions they contain, and thus recommending a general system of prevarication! Dr. Paley, we have reason fear, is, in this matter, the authority and representative of a very numerous class of ministers in the establishment; and even, if his talents as a writer were more common than they are, we should consider them as infinitely too poor a substitute for moral honesty in the clergy, or an efficient and faithful discharge of the pastoral office.

To confirm our observation, that monopolies, whether civil, commercial, or religious, invariably produce the worst commodities, at a far greater cost to the public than the best could be had for, let us look at the enormous expense of the system. Not only are a vast many inefficient, morally unfit, and pernicious clergymen thus brought into the church, but the number of candidates is far greater than can find employment, or the establishment, in its present deteriorated state, can demand. To reform the discipline and regenerate the zeal and spirit of a church, we should be far more solicitous to

*Paley's Sermons.

improve the quality than augment the number of her agents: but it is the very vice of the system to multiply numbers, while it deteriorates the quality of the agents employed. And the immense revenues of the English hierarchy, which are supposed to amount to about £2,000,000 per annum, are divided with a most shameful partiality and injustice.

Each of the six-and-twenty bishops has from £2,000 to £20,000 or 30,000 a year; the eight-and-twenty deans, about £5,000 a year each; the two universities divide about £180,000 between them; £680,000 divided amongst livings of from £1,000 to £200 a year each, and £500,000 amongst those (of which there are more than 5,000) of from £40 and £50 to £100 a year. So that, of the 10,000 clergymen of the establishment, about one thousand, and these generally the most worthless and useless of the whole, engross all the richer preferments; or, according to a late analysis, the sum total of benefices, dignities, and minor canonries, in England and Wales, is 12,000; these are divided amongst 7,669 persons, of whom 3,853 hold one preferment only; 3,304, two; 370, three; 73, four; 38, five; 13, six; 4, seven; 1, eight; 2, nine; and 1, fifteen!!! While the Rev. the Earl of Bridgwater, and the Rev. Viscount Barrington, both golden prebends of Durham, and holding parochial livings besides, were (like the late Lord Bristol, bishop of Derry) permitted to reside abroad, and dishonour their sacred profession by spending the revenues of the Protestant church in Catholic countries, the former having died a short time since at Paris, and the latter at Rome!

The income of the Irish establishment is more than proportionably splendid, as nearly the same amount of revenue is spent upon a much smaller number of clerical agents; while it is subject to the same partiality and abuse in its distribution. Is it not monstrous that a church, which devours more than a tenth of the landed wealth of the kingdom, and costs more than all the ecclesiastical establishments of Christendom, or perhaps of the world, besides, should be stow the great mass of its revenues to enable a minority of its ministers to live in luxury and idleness, while (Oh tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon!) a vast body of working clergy are so scantily provided for, as to be compelled to seek the aid of a charitable society? But when we consider that the wealth of the church was bestowed upon her during the dark ages; that tithes were first given to the clergy in the eighth century by the grossest tyranny and spoliation on the part of two of our

popish and superstitious kings; and in one instance, as a commutation for murder! we do not so much wonder at the result, and are ready to confess the application of her riches is well worthy of their origin. Our only wonder is, that so vile a system of pollution and spiritual sacrilege should have so long survived the doctrinal reformation of the sixteenth century. That it can remain very much longer untouched by the hand of reform, amidst the rapidly growing light and intelligence of the times, we will not believe, notwithstanding the powerful interests which are opposed to the least innovation.

It is very fashionable to fling the most opprobrious epithets at the Roman church, and to call her the mystic whore of Babylon; but in her present degraded condition, the hierarchy of this country can be viewed as no other than the eldest daughter of that firstborn of wickedness. Let none presume to

lay the flattering unction to their souls," that such a state of things can be much longer tolerated; and if the settlement of the Catholic question produce no other effect than a thorough cleansing of the Augean stable of our ecclesiastical establishment, although no benefit should accrue to the Catholics, it will have materially contributed to the spiritual strength of the Protestant

cause.

The meeting last year at Cork of the high Protestant Tories, at which the Earl of Mountcashel presided, to petition Parliament for a reform of the abuses of the establishment, and the late meeting of the friends of church reform in the north of England,* clearly indicate what must sooner or later be the consequence. The question simply amounts to this, whether the church shall be made for the parish, or the parish for the church. Christianity can never, in my view, be universally extended, till all civil establishments of religion be abolished throughout Christendom; and I believe our own favoured land will never be fully christianized till the episcopal church be wholly disconnected from the state, and left to rely for support, as in the United States, upon its merits alone. Let the cross no longer rest upon the throne, or upon an arm of flesh, and it will soon be triumphant. Let establishments no longer make it the but of infidels, and it will soon, by a spiritual force which will prove irresistible, subdue its enemies, whether pagan, papal, or infidel, beneath its

feet.

At which a vote of thanks was passed to Mr. Rippon, for his concise, able, and public-spirited remonstrance to Sir Robert Peel, on the shameful abuse of Dean Philpotts being made bishop of Exeter, and allowed to retain the rectory of Stan-' hope (worth 4,000 ayear) besides!

A grand source of the evils which have oppressed this, and almost every country in the world, has been the attempt of rulers to erect and bolster up institutions, which dare not abide the test of utility and public opinion. But if any thing in the arrangements of human society cannot bear such a criterion, founded upon the spirit and precepts of the gospel, we are sure it must be radically vicious; and, in the name of religion and common sense, let it fall, and the community will be benefited.

Captain Basil Hall, in his "Travels in North America,” says, “the subjection of the state to the church, as in Catholic countries, would not fail to corrupt both religion and civil government; but that, as copartners, they are mutually beneficial." We say, on the contrary, that the distinction of the gallant captain between copartnership and subjection, is purely imaginary; that whereever such an unholy alliance obtains, the subjection must be reciprocal-of the church to the state, for the sake of the ecclesiastical revenues; and of the state to the church, for the perpetuation of the present system of government, and resistance to any political innovation or reform.

Some clerical advocates of the church tell us, that but for its civil establishment, the land would be overrun with infidelity; yet, what is this but saying, they would not stir an inch to promote the well-being of their country and their fellow-men, unless stimu. lated by self-interest and filthy lucre? And can any man doubt that the church would do infinitely better without such ministers than with them? The zeal, activity, and success of the dissenters and Methodists, however, disprove the allegation, and show that if the prevalence of infidelity is to be dreaded, it is from any thing rather than the want of a church establishment; and if the episcopal church of this country were immediately severed from the state, it would only be purged of the dross and corruption which it has contracted from its secular attachments, detach from her only such clergymen as ought never to have desecrated her altars, and enable all her faithful pastors to labour with tenfold energy and effect. The conclusion is hence irresistible, that no civil power on earth has any right to meddle with the religious interests of its subjects; that when it does so, it steps beyond the bounds of its legitimate authority; and that, as all history proves, such interference of necessity most awfully corrupts, degrades, and secularizes the church.

"Men are never so likely," says an able critic, "to settle a question rightly, as when they discuss it freely. A government can 2D. SERIES, NO. 3.-VOL. I.

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interfere in discussion only by making it less free than it would otherwise be. Men are most likely to form just opinions, when they have no other wish than to know the truth, and are exempt from all external influence either of hope or fear. Government, as government, can bring nothing but the influence of hopes or fears to support its doctrines. It carries on controversy, not with reason, but with threats and bribes. If it employs rea sons, it does so, not in virtue of any powers which belong to it as a government. Thus, instead of a contest between argument and argument, we have a contest between argument and force. Instead of a contest, in which truth, from the natural constitution of the human mind, has a decided advantage over falsehood, we have a contest in which truth can be victorious only by accident.

The

"We will not be deterred, by any fear of misrepresentation, from expressing our hearty approbation of the mild, wise, and eminently Christian manner in which the Church and the Government have lately acted with respect to blasphemous publications. We praise them for not having thought it necessary to encircle a religion, pure, merciful, and philosophical-a religion, to the evidences of which the highest intellects have yielded-with the defences of a false and bloody superstition. The ark of God was never taken, till it was surrounded by the arms of earthly defenders. In captivity its sanctity was sufficient to vindicate it from insult, and to lay the hostile fiend prostrate on the threshold of his own temple. real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave. To such a system it can bring no addition of dignity or of strength, that it is part and parcel of the common law. It is not now for the first time left to rely on the force of its own evidences, and the attractions of its own beauty. Its sublime philosophy confounded the Grecian schools in the fair conflict of reason with reason. The bravest and wisest of the Cæsars found their arms and their policy unavailing when opposed to the weapons that were not carnal, and the kingdom that was not of this world. The victory which Porphyry and Dioclesian failed to gain, is not, to all appearance, reserved for any of those who have in this age directed their efforts against the last restraint of the powerful, and the last hope of the wretched. The whole history of the Christian religion 147.-VOL. XIII.

P

shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power, than of being crushed by its opposition. Those who thrust temporal sovereignty upon her, treat her as their prototypes treated her Author. They bow the knee, and spit upon her; they cry, Hail! and smite her on the cheek; they put a sceptre into her hand, but it is a fragile reed; they crown her, but it is with thorns; they cover with purple the wounds which their own hands have inflicted on her; and inscribe magnificent titles over the cross on which they have fixed her to perish in ignominy and pain."*

III.—National churches inevitably corrupt legislation, and infringe civil and religious liberty. In proof of this fact, we have no occasion to look into the records of papal Christendom at large, or to trace down from the period when Christianity first acquired a political establishment. We find it abundantly confirmed by the history of our own country.

Before the Reformation, the clergy of this country, as in most Catholic states, formed virtually the third estate of the realm. Our laws were framed almost exclusively for the advantage of the monarch, the nobility, and the church; the people were not deemed worthy of consideration. And, from that period to the present time, the same spirit has too generally pervaded our legislation, though the public mind has latterly been too enlightened to tolerate the grossness of oppression.

The same abuses were most flagrant in France before the revolution. Every national church is conceived in the very spirit of infallibility, and assumes to itself the right of enforcing conformity to its dogmas, or, at least,of compelling dissidents and conformists to provide for its maintenance, or both. But is not such an assumption the most daring usurpation of the rights of conscience, and arrogant impiety against the Majesty of heaven? The antichristian conjunction of the civil and ecclesiastical power-the prostitution of civil authority to the maintenance of a particular religious system-is the fertile source of all the persecution and intolerance which have devastated the church, and filled the world with violence and blood. Hence originated the cruelties inflicted upon the primitive church by the Pagan and Jewish authorities of the day; the atrocities of the papal power; and the tyranny and coercion of many of the reformed, or soidisant Protestant establishments of Chris

Edinburgh Review, No. C. Article, Southey's Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society.

tendom. It is true, that from the spread of general knowledge, and the consequently greater prevalence of the spirit of civil freedom, some hierarchies of the present day no longer dare to coerce acquiescence in their forms or tenets by fire and sword, fine and imprisonment. But that, even in this country, this is not at all owing to the ameliorated genius of ecclesiastical power, but to the free spirit of our civil institutions, and the force of public opinion, is evident from the petty vexations of brief authority, which continually call for the vigilant aid of the "Religious Liberty Society," and show the demon of intolerance to be still alivewilling to wound, though yet afraid to strike."

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That it is not at all owing to priestly favour that we are not now deprived of liberty of conscience by a second Act of Uniformity, is evident from many facts. Some years since, a vicar of the church of England (will it be believed, gentle reader?) had the arrogance and audacity to propose to the legislature a law for depriving all ministers, who had not received apostolical (i. e. episcopal) ordination, of their functions!!! Popery could never have existed as a persecuting power, but for the impious and adulterous connexion of church and state; nor could it have obtained any ascendancy as a degrading and debasing superstition over the human mind. The main principle of the reformation, i. e. the right of every man to judge for himself in sacred matters, is diametrically opposed to church establishments, and had it been carried to its necessary and legitimate consequences, must have completely dissevered ecclesiastical from civil authority. When, however, we consider the darkness of the age of that great event, and the political agency which directed its rise and progress, we rather wonder so much was achieved, than that it should not have at once attained its full consummation. Coverdale, and some other of the reformers, saw this to be the inevitable result, but the majority of their colleagues were less enlightened, or perhaps hesitated to go further, from a fear of strangling the infant cause in its birth.

The great principle of the scriptures, and the reformation, which recognized afresh their sole authority in religion, completely annihilates the claim to infallibility, and asserts the right of every man, not merely to judge, but to choose for himself in sacred matters, and to give effect to such choice by an exclusive and voluntary support of that ministry which he deems the best. If the reformation has not established this; if it has not decided that human authority can