in a Government to allow those who complain of its tyranny to emigrate peaceably, than to shut up every door against their escape, and then to subject them to fine, imprisonment, and death! But if we were to see nearly half the inhabitants of any country preferring a voluntary banishment to a longer abode in their native land, we should not be much inclined to hold up the Government of such a nation as a pattern of mildness and liberality. And here it seems to us, that the author of the 'Letters' has done the Civil power injustice, when he complains of its imposing a Liturgy and Articles upon the Church by its secular authority. On the contrary, the error of the Civil power in England has been to receive and sanction, much too passively, the Articles which the Clergy have tendered to its acceptance. When the House of Commons, in the reign of Elizabeth, delayed for some time to pass the Act to legalize the Articles of Religion submitted to them by the Bishops, Archbishop Parker expressed his displeasure at this hesitation— as if religion were a matter in which they had no right to exercise their own freedom of judgment. Nor can it be doubted that Parliament, at almost any period of our history since the Reformation, would have readily consented to any alterations in matters purely spiritual, which the Bishops and the great body of the Clergy might have recommended to be made. We repeat, therefore, that the needless multiplication of terms of conformity, which has caused so large a portion of the people to dissent from the Church of England, is principally, and almost entirely the fault of the Clergy; and that the Civil Power is only to be blamed for sanctioning too negligently whatever they thought proper to frame.

Canons are 17 in number, and subjoined to them is the Royal Assent, fully approving and ratifying all their provisions. The third Canon is directed against Popery; and, amongst other things, it strictly enjoins that the children of Popish recusants shall be brought up by Church of England schoolmasters, in the doctrine of the Church of England, notwithstanding the prohibition of their parents: and if the parents should then take away the children from the school, their names should be given up to the Bishop of the diocese, who was to return them to the Judges at the Assizes, to be punished according to the Statutes. And the fifth Canon specially makes all the penalties and proceedings enacted against the Roman Catholics applicable to all Protestant Dissenters, or to any persons who should refuse or neglect to attend their parish churches for the space of a month, without some lawful impediment.

These detestable provisions are to be found in a collection of the Articles, Canons, Orders, &c. of the Church of England, published by Sparrow in 1671, with the object, as his title-page declares, to vindicate the Church of England.'

6

But it is contended, that, in a National Church, there must be one uniform doctrine taught, and one form of worship universally enjoined. We are far from meaning to enter into a theological discussion, which would be most unfitted to these pages: But we may still observe, that the essential articles of Christianity are allowed on all hands to be few, and on these all denominations of Christians, with one exception, are agreed; that although some violent spirits might insist on enforcing their own peculiar opinions, even on points which they allowed to be of subordinate importance, yet that many would see the reasonableness of forbearing to teach such doctrines, so long as they were permitted freely to acknowledge their belief of them; that on matters of Church government, disputes have been mainly engendered by the intermixture of something not essentially connected with the question; as for example, the inveteracy of our forefathers against Episcopacy, arose chiefly out of its connexion with Prelacy;-because Bishops happened accidentally to be invested with great temporal power and splendour, and, instead of being chosen by other Bishops, with the consent of the clergy and people, were merely nominated by the Crown; and that thus Institutions, which in their corrupted state were rejected with abhorrence, might, when stript of these additions, be admitted without scruple; we should not hesitate also to say, that the fancied inconvenience of having the pulpits filled at different times with men of different opinions, is greatly overrated; that in point of fact they are, and ever must be so filled ;-for no articles of religion can ever embrace all, or a hundredth part, of the topics which are discussed in public preaching; and that the Uniformity which subscription ensures, is much less important than that discordance, which it cannot prevent, in the tone of mind, in the moral opinions, nay in the very earnestness and seriousness of different ministers; so that the preaching of two men, both conscientiously subscribing to the same Confession of Faith, may lead their respective hearers to the most dissimilar views of religious duty; that indecent and personal controversy in the pulpit may be restrained by the proper authorities; but that the mere expression of different opinions on unessential points can produce no evil, so long as it is known that one good man will yet unavoidably differ in many of his sentiments and views of things from another, and that the agreement of men, so differing, in the main articles of Christian doctrine, is rather a satisfactory confirmation of their truth.

III. The Government and External Constitution of the Church of England are full of abuses, and bear divers marks of the mistaken notions and extreme misgovernment of the

times in which they were formed, and of those which neglected to amend them. It may never have occurred to some of our readers, that the Greek word which we translate Church,' Exxxnoia, was the peculiar term used to denote the general assembly of the people in the old democracies; that it essentially expresses a ، popularly constituted meeting;' and that such, in great measure, was the original constitution of the Christian society. We need not say with what different associations our English version of it is now connected; we need not ask what popular elements are left, in a body in which the people have no voice at all, either by themselves or their representatives; where the chief officers, the Bishops, are appointed by the Crown, and are accountable to no one but the Archbishops and the Crown for the manner in which they discharge their trust. Anciently, indeed, the two Houses of Convocation may appear to some to have formed an Ecclesiastical Parliament -to have been respectively the aristocratical and democratical branches of the Legislature of the Church. But the truth is, that these represented, not the Church, but the Clergy; and even in this character, the proportion which the deputies of the parochial clergy bore to those of the Chapters, and to the Archdeacons and other such dignitaries, in the Lower House of Convocation, was about the same which the representatives of free boroughs in the House of Commons bear to those who are nominated by the influence of Government or of the Aristocracy. We are far, therefore, from regretting, that the Convocation is become no better than a name; But certainly its virtual annihilation has left the mass of the members of the Church, both lay and clerical, without any means of expressing their sentiments as a body; and the Church now deserves as little to be called a Society, as the army or the Its acnavy. tual governors, the Bishops, appointed by the Crown, and out of all proportion too few for the extent and population of England, afford about as apt an image of primitive Episcopacy, as the Consuls under the Roman empire did of the Consular government of the old commonwealth. Nominated as they now are-assisted by no ecclesiastical council-accountable to no general assembly of the Church, it were most dangerous to strengthen their powers, or even to wish that they should exert to the utmost those which they actually possess.

Then comes the system of Pluralities and of Dispensations, -the relics of the worst times of Popery, which the Protestant Church of England retains, even in the nineteenth century. One person may hold two benefices, if they are within forty

miles of one another;-and the distance is always computed, not by the number of miles along the road, but as if the incumbent could fly with the crow, or ride on a steeple-hunt from one of his cures to the other;-to say nothing of the absurdity of fixing on such a distance as the maximum to be allowed by law;-for if a minister can discharge his duties in a parish forty miles distant from him, he may just as easily fulfil them in one that is four hundred. Again, those persons who have taken degrees in Civil law, and the domestic chaplains of Noblemen, are permitted to hold two benefices. In the one case, this indulgence was granted to encourage a study which the clergy in ancient times always laboured to propagate; but now, amid the ignorance of the Civil law which prevails in England, and when the degree of Doctor of Laws does not necessarily imply an acquaintance with its simplest rudiments, its continuance is utterly ridiculous. In the other, it marks how little the Reformation in England was able to correct abuses patronized by the aristocracy; while the readiness with which the friends of the Church * acquiesced in them, shows how greatly they wanted some of the most essential qualities in the character of perfect reformers. We notice the number of exempt jurisdictions, or of particular parishes, and in some instances large districts, not subject to the authority of any Bishop, merely as examples of evident abuses, even according to Episcopal principles, + and as showing again how imperfectly the Reformation in England was effected.

For,' says Hooker, while arguing in defence of the privileges granted to the chaplains of noblemen, we are not to dream in this case of any platform which bringeth equally high and low into parish 'churches, nor of any constraint to maintain, at their own charge, those 'sufficient for that purpose; the one so repugnant to the Majesty and Greatness of English Nobility; the other so improbable and unlikely to 'take effect, that they which mention either or both, seem not indeed to ' have conceived what either is.'-Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V. § 81. The eloquence of Hooker has been deservedly praised; but the justice of the epithet 6 Judicious,' which his admirers have attached to his name, is rather more questionable. Certainly there never was a more thoroughgoing advocate of things established, than he has shown himself in the whole Fifth Book, forming more than a third part of the entire Ecclesiastical Polity.

+ Most of these, we suspect, were mere jobs from their very origin. There is still extant a Correspondence between Richard the Third, the Pope, and the Archbishop of York, relative to the erection of Middleham in Yorkshire into a deanery with a peculiar jurisdiction, independ

We shall next mention the total want of any system of Education, peculiarly fitted for those who are to become ministers of the Church. It is not saying too much, to say, that the public schools at which boys in England commonly remain till sixteen or eighteen, do not so much as furnish the rudiments of a clerical education. The Universities, again, profess to know no distinctions between the future professions of those. who solicit academical degrees-and they are quite right not to do so. They require of all who present themselves at their examinations, a certain portion of religious knowledge as Christians; but they do not pretend to say that this is a sufficient qualification for Christian teachers. The sole provision made at the Universities for the peculiar instruction of those who are designed for the Church, consists in the Lectures of the Divinity Professors; a certificate of having attended which is, we believe, always required by the Bishops, at the ordination of any person who has belonged to either University. It is with sincere pleasure that we bear testimony to the zealous and able exertions of the individual who now fills the Divinity Chair at Oxford; as, in addition to his public Lectures, he has formed a smaller class of students, who attend him voluntarily, and whom he examines as to their proficiency in such books as he has before recommended to their perusal. This is a practice worthy of the spirit and good sense of him who has first introduced it; but be it observed, that this only benefits the few. Attendance on these Lectures is entirely voluntary; and we do not want the means of furnishing instruction for those who desire it, but of ensuring an adequate amount of knowledge in that far larger class, who will gain of their own accord the smallest quantity that will be tolerated.

In other professions, interest affords a sufficient stimulus to industry; and besides, a young man intended for the law, or for the study of medicine, has in fact a distinct professional education to go through after leaving the University; whereas a young man intended for the Church, and quitting College, as is commonly the case at two-and-twenty, too. often considers his education as completed, and employs the intervening year, before he is old enough to take orders, in

ent of the Diocesan. Richard, when Duke of Gloucester, had resided for some time at his castle of Middleham; and contracting a fondness for the place, he took this method of showing it; and the Pope and the Archbishop, as might be expected from the lax principles of the Church in those days, seem to have made no difficulty in consenting to gratify him.