The Archbishop of Dublin (Dr. Trench) charged the clergy of
his diocese on Tuesday in reference to the prospects of the Dis- established Church. He approved the right of voting by orders in the Church Body, but disapproved, but without advising resist- ance to it, the resolve that the representative laity shall be double the number of the representative clergy, on the ground that it would tend to render the voting by orders a regular instead of an exceptional practice, because if the majority of one order were generally one way, and the majority of the other order the other, voting by orders would be the only mode of giving any effect to the view of the majority of the numerically weaker order. Dr. Trench then went on to warn his clergy against any attempt to narrow the doctrinal basis of the new Church, which he wished to consist of the Prayer-Book and the Articles, as before. He even desired some security that it should never be altered in future, and talked of "loyalty to the Prayer-Book," as if the Prayer-Book were a living God. We quite agree with Dr. Trench that the Church should not be "narrower than her Articles and Prayer- Book," and that these should not be interpreted in such a sense "as to exclude any of those who have hitherto ministered at her altars ;"—but is it so clear that it should not be wider? that it should not include them and some others too ? The American Episcopal Church, for instance, has admitted those who reject the Athanasian Creed,—has expunged that creed from her formularies. Is that humble innovation intolerable? Is "the Prayer-Book" a new law of which not a letter is to be changed? Loyalty to a book has a very dead sound to our ears,—looks very much like the formula of a Church without a life.
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