BOOKS.
PALIN'S HTSTORY OF THE CHURCH or ENGLAND.* TirE object of this work is to complete the history of the English Church from the Revolution, where Burnet and Bishop Short, with some other writers, close, to the present day. The completion of the work will, however, depend upon public approbation: the first volume before us reaches no further than 1717, when the Convoca- tion, having been baffled and snubbed by successive Governments, was suspended.
The wish of the author, if not his purpose, is to restore the Con- vocation, with new life and increased energy, and the infusion of a lay element. The principles of Mr. Palin are those of what may be called a liberal and logical High Churchman : whether the logic. can be reduced to practice, in these times, may be another matter. Mr. Palin would. give the amplest religious freedom of action to all men, and interpose no civil obstacles on account of religious opi- nion. But he claims for his own church the freedom he would grant to all other churches. He wishes the Convocation, as we un- derstand him, to have powers as full in religious questions as Par- liament has in civil. Convocation, in case of disputed. doctrines, would decide which were and which were not characteristics of the Church of England,.—as, for example, the Gorham question. Convo- cation, we conceive, would exercise a veto upon nominations by the Crown,—as, supposing the assembly had decided that Dr. Hampden was convict of heretical opinions, then there must have been a new conge d'elire for Hereffird. It is not so clear whether matters of discipline would be brought before Convocation,—whether, for in- stance, cases of personal immorality on the part of clergymen would not, as now, be tried in the so-called bishops' courts ; but the clergy in Parliament assembled would take cognizance of heresy. A be& written by a divine or even by a layman and containing hereticIT doctrines would be subjected to censure, if not punishment: in ex- treme cases it would involve its authors in the penalty of excom- munication, which in the clergy would be accompanied Of course by deprivation of living.
All these matters are, logically speaking, the proper and peculiar province of the Church as a religious body : but they are not likely to be attained in the present day ; and there is this to be said of them in connexion with an established church—the cen- sures of such a church carry with them a weight, from its position, which does not belong to a voluntary body, and involve (in the temporalities) questions of property often of great value. A cen- sured or excommunicated. Romanist or sectarian is, publicly speaking at least, no worse off than he was before—the world knows and cares nothing about the matter. If he suffer among his immediate connexion, he may form a new one, perhaps on the very ground of his expulsion ; and though he cannot get back any money he may have given, he ceases to give it for the future. A. minister of any voluntary body, when he begins a new career as a separatist, proceeds on the same principle as other ministers of his class ; a clergyman of the Established Church not only loses his living, but, the payment of Churchmen not being by voluntary contribution, he is placed. at disadvantage. A body acting under the authority and with the power of the State is in a very different position from a voluntary convention. The publicity of its censures would be as a debate in Parliament compared with a parish meeting. Its ban would perhaps directly, and certainly indirectly, militate against a man's advancement in public or professional life, over and above the private injury which a congregational expulsion always produces. Then there are public interests, the feelings of the great, and very large amounts of property involved. The pre- rogatives of the Crown, the patronage of the Ministry for the time being, a seat in the Lords, (if the Bishops continued members of the House of Peers, as they did under the old system,) and the private Church patronage throughout the country, would to some extent be placed in the gripe of the Convocation. It may be that their pow- ers would be exercised with great discretion and moderation ; but priestly assemblies have not been famed for the uniform exhibition of these qualities. In all European countries, the State, as super- stition subsided, found it necessary to get by some means a control over the Romanist Church, notwithstanding its claims to inde- pendent action and. its power as a foreign establishment : in Scot- land, since the State became powerful in the Presbyterian Assembly, separations have been frequent. To give independence to a church, except by making it a voluntary body, is a problem yet to be solved.
The views of Mr. Palma are necessary to be borne in mind, be- cause they colour his narrative and influence his decision ; com- mentary forming a large portion of his narrative, and his conclu- sions being in conformity with his views, fairly reached, but still on his own side. The history itself is in the main a history of the Church, not of particular churchmen. What the Convocation did, what the Ministry and Ministerial Bishops were trying cs to make it do, any event which from its prominence affected the Church— as Sachaverell's trial—are the topics handled, rather than the works or acts of authors however eminent, unless controversy arises with them as historians of the Church, which is continually the case with Burnet. Numerous persons are introduced, and the narra- tive varied by their biographical notices ; but it is as actors in Church history rather than as divines, unless their works have given rise to disputes—as in the case of Hoadley, the Hampden of
• The History of the Church of England, from the Revolution to the last Acts of
Convocation, A.D. 1685-1717. By the Reverend William PalM, Trinity Col- lege, Cambridge, Rector of Stifford, Essex. Published by Rivingtons. his day. Faithful to his opinion of the " lay " element, and that all its communiennts form a part of the Church, Mr: Palin introduces. occurrences that mark the manners and opinions of the people in connexion with morals and religion, or it may be of superstition— as the last trial for witchcraft. With the exception. of standing up for his Church opinions, the historian is impartial, freely ad- mitting the faults of the Church ; but as he judges men through his own glasses, he will be deemed by many harsh in his estimate of William the Third, Burnet, Tillotson, and indeed all who are not of his party.
The principle of composition adopted by Mr. Palin is, when opinion is at issue, to give the original words of the authority, as far as may be practicable, and to offer his own conclusions freely in the form of comment. This of necessity gives fulness to the work, and makes it sometimes partake of the character of the sermon. But, though generally wanting in modern force and compression, it is animated by a thorough earnestness both in the subject and the work which always produces a degree of life and sometimes rises to eloquence. This passage from the Introduction may be taken at once as an example of the style and of the feelings of the author, for in his ease opinion almost passes into feeling.
"The learned may continue to linger profitably over the three first cen- turies; but in such times as these, we want the multitude to know more of the three last—the multitude busy, and influential for good or evil, at Par- liamentary elections, county meetings, and parish vestries; and the Church will bear knowing, needs but to be known. Let the Episcopate be judged fairly—the fault is not all there. Great generals may do much with bad troops, but great generals are not always to be had ; and the most tractable and loyal troops need some small amount of practical instruction and training. Had the mass known more of the history and distinctive features and claims of their Church earlier, it may be that the last twenty years would not have seen Ireland suffering from the decimation of her Episcopate, and England alike auffering from the refusal to augment it in the ratio of her population ; concessions to Popery would have ended with the amplest toleration and admissibility to civil offices, under real limitations and securities, instead of running to seed in a paltering and coaxing indulgence, endowment, and practical preference; the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts might have been deemed a sufficient largess to the ultra Protestantism of Dissent, without helping to propagate it by Committee of Council grants, on Dissenters' own terms, to their schools; and the whole legislation for the Church would not have been reposed solely in a Legislature and Privy Council no longer neces- sarily at all, and in practice only partially, consisting of members of her com- munion."
During the nineteen years of which the present volume treats, the Convocation did but little, unless the movements about Hoadley's sermon, which caused its destruction, may be called doing. A Commission of leading Churchmen was appointed under King William and Bishop Burnet to revise the Prayer-book, with the view of removing the objections of Nonconformists. The pro- positions arrived at may have some interest now, not only as a matter of curiosity, but from the tendency in. men's minds to a revisal of the service.
"Matters were well considered and freely and calmly debated, and all was digested into an entire correction of every thing that seemed liable to any just objection. The reader will infer the animus of the acting part of the Commission, on finding that the cross in baptism was decided to be one of the things 'liable tojust objection,' and therefore was to be entirely corrected,' by being used or omitted at the choice of parents; as was the Athanasian Creed, at the discretion of each minister. Other alterations were, the sub- stitution of Canonical for Apocryphal lessons. Tillotson (Nicholls says, Patrick, Burnet, and Stillingfieet assisting him) was to prepare new Collects, more agreeable to the Epistles and Gospels, for the whole course of the year, and with a force and beauty of expression capable of affecting and raising the mind in the strongest manner.' renison was to revise generally the lan- guage of the Prayer-book ; a new translation of the Psalms ; and 'Noncon- formist ministers going over to the Church were to be ordained hypothetically, as infants are baptized.' The other alterations proposed by the Commission, or rattier the acting part of the Commission, were, that the chanting of divine service in cathedral churches should be laid aside, that the whole might be rendered intelligible to the common people. "That the Apocryphal lessons, and those in the Old Testament which are too natural, be thrown out, and others appointed instead, by a new calendar, from which all the legendary saints' days and others not directly referred to ia the service-book be removed.
" That if any refuse to receive the sacrament of the Lord's supper kneel- ing, it might be administered to them in their pews. "That a rubric be made, declaring the intentions of the Lent fasts to con- sist in extraordinary acts of devotion, not in distinctions of meats; and an- other to state the meaning of Rogation Sundays' and Ember Weeks' ; that those ordained within the quatuor tempora should exercise strict devo- tian ; and that the rubric which enjoins ministers to read or hear common prayer, publicly or privately, every day,' be changed to an exhortation to the people to frequent these prayers. "That the absolution in morning and evening prayers might be read by a deacon ; the word priest in the rubric being changed to minister, and these words and remission' be put out, as not very intelligible. "That the Gloria Patri should not be repeated at the end of every psalm, but of all appointed for morning and evening prayer ; and that these words in the Te Dom, thine honourable, true, and only Son,' should be thus turned, thine only begotten Son,'—honourable being only a civil term, and nowhere used in &seri&
"That the Benedicite be changed into the 128th Psalm, and other psalms likewise appointed for the Benedictus and num ditnittis. The versicles after the Lord's Prayer were to be said kneeling, to avoid the trouble and inconveniences of changing the position so often in the worship. And after these words, • Give peace in our time, 0 Lord,' an answer was to follow, promissory of somewhat on the people's part of keeping God's law, or the like; the old response being grounded on the p.edestinating doctrine taken in too strict an acceptance. "All high titles or appellations of the King or Queen, &c., such as most illustrious,' 'most religious," mighty,' &c. were to be left out of the prayers, and only the word Sovereign retained for King and Queen. These words in the prayer for the King, ' Grant that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies,' as of too large an extent if the Ring engage in an unjust war, were to be turned thus, Prosper all his righteous undertakings against thy enemies,' or after some such manner. "Sponsors were to be omitted in baptism, if parents so desired. 'Health- ful was to be discarded, as an obsole e word. If any minister refused the surphce; the bishop or the people desired it, and the living would bear it, lie
was to provide a substitute who would officiate in it. The prayer which be-
gins God, whose nature and property' was to be thrown out, as full of strange and impertinent expressions, and besides not in the original, but foisted in since by another hand."
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