TOPICS OF THE DAY.
POSITION OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH.
To a cursory glance the Established Church appears in an anoma- lop and a helpless position. It can scarcely be called a church with strict correctness. Since the Revolution of 1688 made the Ministers of the Crown the responsible Executive, and subjected them to the majority in the House of Commons—since, in other words, the maxim ' le roi refine et ne gouverne pas" has been adopted—the Church cannot with due regard to its own inde- pendence allow the de facto Government of the country to exercise the kingly rights of headship ; and Parliament and the Ministers, for other reasons, cannot well permit the Sovereign to do it. The two provinces of York and Canterbury are therefore, practically, independent Churches. Again, the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury has been in abeyance ever since the accession of the House of Hanover; and the meetings of the Convocation of the Province of York had been discontinued much earlier. The Churches of York and Canterbury have no efficient legislative and administrative institutions surviving. -This is the internal condition of the Church of England: what is its relation to the other communions existing in the nation ? The Dissenters (exclusive of the Wesleyan Methodists) are almost as united a body as the Church. To comprehend fully the union which exists among them, it is necessary to look back to the cir- cumstances under which they separated from the Church. The Puritans and High-Churchmen were never formally separated till the time of Laud. When Hooker, the great standard of the Churchmen, was preacher at the Temple, his colleague Travers sup- ported the doctrine and constitution of the Church of Geneva. Even the clergymen who after being suspended or expelled, in the time of Laud, continued to officiate, did not cease to regard themselves as belonging to the true Church of England, but looked forward to the ultimate adoption of their views by the whole Church. After the suppression of Episcopacy by the Long Parliament, the Presbyterians thought to establish their form of church-govern- ment on the footing of a Divine ordinance, exactly as the Episcopalians had done before them. By this time, however, the Congregationalists had become a party, less numerous, it may be, but more energetic, than the Presbyterians ; and both parties were divided into an immense number of sections, differ- mg among themselves on doctrinal points. Cromwell settled their contest for ascendancy, by appointing a commission to take the charge of providing the churches throughout England with able, moral, and orthodox clergymen; and this commission se- lected ministers indifferently from the various sections of Presby- terians and Congregationahsts. At the Restoration, the Bishops were restored ; an attempt was made to gratify a numerous and important class, not bigoted either in favour of forms or against them, to modify the Liturgy and Episcopacy of the Church of England so as to admit of the moderate and educated portion of the Puritans joining it : but the attempt failed, and the Non- conforming ministers, to the number of about two thousand, were ejected from their benefices. A great number of the middle and lower classes, and not a few of the aristocracy, adhered to the deprived ministers. The rank and numbers of the parties who now for the first time assumed the character of Dissenters com- pelled the Government to tolerate them, even before the Revolu- tion of 1688; and after that event, their importance as supporters of the new dynasty gave them permanent security against any attempt to suppress them. The Test Act gradually weeded the aristocratic members out of the Dissenting Churches ; but the tone which they impressed upon the early congregations has re- mained. Among the ejected clergy, were some of the most learned and accomplished divines of their day. Great pains have been taken by the Dissenters to promote education and learning, by establishing and endowing schools, colleges, and libraries ; and liberal grants of land and money have been in- vested in trustees for the support of ministers and lecturers. Each section of the Dissenters has maintained a pretty efficient organization within itself; and " the Three Denominations" kept up an alliance, of which their library in Red Cross Street was the visible point of reunion. The Society of Friends, and other sects, have had their annual religious meetings in the Metropolis. Latterly, a common interest in political ques- tions, in Missionary and Anti-Slavery enterprises, has associated more intimately. the various sections of the Dissenting inter- est. Their opinions on points of doctrine and discipline scarcely differ more widely than those which have at times been advocated by members of the Establishment; their organization is scarcely more incomplete ; individually numerous and wealthy, they have a large amount of property devoted to spiritual and educational purposes. They are in effect, though with inferior privileges, as much an established church—part and parcel of the institutions of the land—as the Church that is called Established. And since the Union with Scotland, the united Dissenting Churches have in general received sympathy and support from the Presbyterians of that portion of the empire. The Roman Catholics of England, on the other hand, are not a nttmerous' and before the Union with Ireland they were still less a popularbody. Since that Union, identity of faith and com- munity of interest have established a kind of alliance between
them and their Irish brethren; it has never been very cordial. The extensive immigraton of Irish families into hind and Scotland has, 'however, established a Doman Catholic
-pojiiilationamong us that Sympathizes rn-ost entirely with-that of Ireland ; and the religious and educational foundations of the old and wealthy Roman Catholic families of England have lent a certain degree of union and influence to this new element of English society. The adherents of the Established Church of England, though more numerous than the adherents of any of the other Churches— and in England perhaps more numerous than them all put toge- ther—are a minority of the population of the empire. The Unions with Scotland and Ireland have in this respect materially altered the position of the Church. The upper and middle classes of the Dissenters and Roman Catholics are as well educated as those of the Established Church ; and, taking into account the Presbyterians of Scotland and of the North of Ire- land, and the Dissenters in the manufacturing districts, it is not improbable that their lower orders are better educated than those of the Establishment. If not equal in wealth to the members of the Establishment, the aggregated Dissenters and Roman Catho- lics are still wealthy. The internal organization of the Roman Catholic and Dissenting Churches is, apparently at least, more complete and efficient than that of the Established Church, and the practical organization of the combined Dissenting Churches scarcely less complete and efficient. Yet they would err widely who imagined that any other communion in this country, or all other communions together, possessed a tithe of the power and influence of the Established Church.
The Established Church is the church of the Court; it has able and wealthy representatives in the House of Lords ; its members have in their hands the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which have so much patronage to bestow, and which can facilitate admission into the learned professions of medicine and the law. The rural clergy rank with the landed gentry ; the younger branches of good families enter into orders and give the tone to the Church ; while young men of talent Of the meanest parentage not unfrequently work their way to prefer- ment. Family affection attaches the well-born to the Church ; family affection or regard for the squire attaches the peasantry. The doctrine and morals of a church of which Hooker, Taylor, Tillotson, Barrow, South, and Butler are the standard autho- rities, are of themselves sufficient to inspire reverential affection.
But, strong though the Church is in itself and in all these auxiliary advantages, it must defer to and conciliate public opinion ; and the public opinion of the nation is essentially what for want of a better name is called Protestant. The power of Roman Catholic opinion is in a ,e-reat measure local—confined to Ireland. In England and Scotland it is so limited that but for the alliance with Ireland it would scarcely be felt. Public opinion in Britain is divided between the Church and Dissent. The difference between the Dissenters and the great body of the laity adhering to the Church relates mainly to points of church- government and external ceremonies. Churchmen as well as Dissenters are thoroughly imbued with those views which caused the secession from the Romish Church in the sixteenth century— which attribute a predominating if not an exclusive importance to the spirituality of religion, and rather tolerate hierarchical insti- tutions and formal rituals, as promoting order and decorum, than regard them as essential. The majority of the people of England adhered at first and continue to adhere to the Established Church, because they thought they discerned in sectarian hostility to forms as bigoted and unwise an over-estimate of their import.. ance as in the Roman Catholic devotion to them. The good taste of the English ritual, and its association with devotional exercise and moral instruction, have endeared it to the greater part of the people of England. This is the secure foundation on which the influence of the Established Church rests ; and if this were taken away, the props of Court, Peerage, and Universities, would little avail it. Attempts to reestablish obsolete forms and ceremonies of public worship, and to represent them as of equal importance with moral duties and spiritual devotion, are as repulsive to the great body of laymen in the Church as to the Dissenters. Such attempts have been made by men amiable and con- scientious, but of bookish and recluse habits, who live in a world of their own imaginings, and threaten to array the mass of the laity in opposition to their spiritual teachers. If the con- troversy were to increase much in violence, it might seriously weaken' if not entirely. overthrow, the influence of the Esta- blished Church ; and it is in the want of any recognized autho- rity competent to decide it that the apparent weakness of the Church from its defective institutions really consists. Yet, perhaps, these defective institutions ought, on the other hand, to be considered as a source of security to the Church. Difference of opinion, and especially of religious opinion, never was effaced by the decisions of authority. The General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland had authority to decide on controversies, and its judgment on the Veto question has split the Kirk into two. A formal decision of a Convocation, a Synod of Bishops, or a Metropolitan Bishop, would have produced the same effect—it would havemade martyrs and new sects, and weakened the Church of England by a secession more or less numerous. The want of any supreme authority has prevented matters from being driven to this extremity. The decision of the theologians of Oxford may weaken the Tractarians ; but as it does not proceed from the recognized office-bearers of the Church, it will not oblige their partisans to withdraw from its communion. The opposition of the laity and of the Low-Church or Evangelical clergy to the surplice and the offertory have arrested the injudicious
attempts to restore these obsolete forms. The pressure of public opinion on the clergy themselves has given a tempo- rary check to unpopular innovations and the pressure of the same opinion upon Ministers can insure the promotion of clergymen to the high dignities of the Church who respect public opinion. In their respective spheres, Bishop, Dean, Rector, and Curate, possess every requisite facility for incul- cating sound views of religion and morality, and encouraging the practice of them. And the pressure of public opinion upon private patrons and the Ministers who dispense Crown patron- age is sufficient to check the introduction of superfluous cere- monies, unedifying and distasteful in the enlightened state of the national mind. Under these circumstances, consider- able latitude can be safely allowed to difference of opinion, and controversy left to exhaust itself. The Church is thus saved from coming into collision with public opinion, yet remains un- checked in the exercise of any of its essential functions. A more complete constitution might perhaps only strengthen the hands of the Church to multiply sects and overthrow itself,—a result which, without producing any compensating advantage, could not fail to diminish the numbers of a body respectable for their acquirements, and useful by their example and their counsels.
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