prison. At Philippi, Paul united with devout Jews in prayer at the river's side. At Miletus he prayed with the pastors of Ephesus; and at Tyre consecrated the sea-shore to the same sacred exercise. Yet in the face of all these instances of social prayer, the State has enacted, by 52 Geo. III. Cap. 155, 'No congregation or assembly for religious worship, of Protestants, at which there shall be present more than twenty persons, besides the immediate family and servants of the person in whose house, or upon whose premises, such meeting, assembly, or congregation, should be held, shall be permitted or allowed, unless the place of such meeting shall have been duly certified to the bishop of the diocese, the archdeacon, or the justices of the peace.' The last provision of this Statute being limited to Dissenters, the State still prohibits members of the Establishment from meeting for prayer in any greater number than twenty, besides the family. Since Dissenters may now freely meet in any numbers, this restriction upon social prayer is only retained upon ecclesiastical grounds, on which grounds alone it was advocated by the Bishop of Exeter and by Lord Brougham when it was last brought before the House of Lords; the Bishop contending that such meetings for worship were contrary to the spirit of the 23rd article, and Lord Brougham urging that they would prevent parishioners from attending at the parish churches."*

Our other extract relates to the restraint placed by the Church upon efforts for the diffusion of religious truth:

"Ere our Lord left the world, he said to his disciples, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature;' and added, 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world He himself preached the gospel on the mountain side, on the shore of the lake, and through all the villages and towns of Galilee. After his death, his disciples preached every where; and every zealous preacher who went forth to the heathen was to be helped in his work. But the State has, in various ways, hindered the pastors of the Establishment from obeying these precepts. It has several times suspended the preaching of the gospel altogether within the Establishment till further order from the Crown, and the Crown has the same prerogative now. Although numbers of unconverted and irreligious men are, it is to be feared, ordained within the Establishment, the law gives to each of these the exclusive right to preach in his parish. So that while in many parishes ungodly incumbents cannot fulfil the law of Christ by preaching the gospel to the people, the State prohibits any godly ministers within the Establishment from fulfilling it. However extensive a parish may be, and however negligent the legal pastor may be, no chapel-of-ease may be erected within the parish by the people without consent of the diocesan, patron and incumbent, except in some cases specified by recent Church-building Acts. However negligent or even vicious a pastor may be, no preacher of the Establishment may preach in any church or chapel within the limits of the parish without his consent. Whatever ignorance or irreligion may prevail in a diocese, no minister without a benefice in the diocese, however exemplary, wise and holy he may be, has any right to officiate within it, in any way whatever, without the license of the bishop. So that when the State places an ungodly bishop over any diocese, it enables him, to a great extent, to exclude the gospel from the churches within his territory. Any clergyman may be by law suspended for preaching in any place which is not licensed by the bishop, although there may be thousands of persons in his immediate neighbourhood who never hear the gospel preached, and who will not come to the parish church. If this supremacy of the State is in itself a dishonour done to Christ, and if it practically sets aside many of his commands, how can those who wish to honour him perpetuate it by upholding the union between the State and the Church? To allow any association of men not authorized by him, and, still more, to allow an association which cannot

P. 187.

but, from its constitution, be composed of worldly men, to direct the administration of the churches of Christ in spiritual things, manifests in the churches which consent to it a disregard to the authority and to the honour of Jesus Christ, on the criminality of which it is painful to reflect. In that guilt, too, every member of the Establishment who does not openly protest against the union must be involved."*

After having made these allowances for Mr. Noel's position, and given him credit for the reality and fervour of his religious feeling, we must plainly say, that his theological and ecclesiastical theory is to us extremely objectionable. We are quite surprised that such a theory should be adhered to in connection with the degree of enlightenment to which he has attained. His theology is of the narrowest possible kind. He has no sympathy with any other views of the gospel than those he himself holds; nay, he has no notion of Christianity in any form besides that embraced by his dogmatic belief. To the limits of that belief he is entirely confined. It constitutes a state of bondage with regard to him. He not only adopts it in its most exclusive application, but he adopts the least expansive view of it. His ideas of ecclesiastical discipline are, moreover, as narrow as his theology. He is opposed, with the strictest Puritan severity, to matters of mere amusement, and seems to regard the reading of light literature as inconsistent with a Christian profession. Such sentiments as these he would enforce by the censures and excommunications of the Church, and thus establish within its pale a government of the most inquisitorial and oppressive description. While we allow the superior advantage, in point of prospective liberty, which a church founded by him upon the basis of voluntaryism would possess, we are fully persuaded that a church formed according to his model would, as long as it was able to exercise the power for which he contends, be the instrument of a greater spiritual tyranny than does or can attach to the existing establishment.

The representation we have just made will account in a great measure for the deficiency as to the argument from religious freedom which we before pointed out in this work. We would, however, observe, that although justice is not by any means done by it to that argument, it contains some striking illustrations which might well serve the purpose of such an argument. The following passage presents one of these illustrations, and forms an admirable statement of the intellectual slavery to which the Church of England subjects its ministers:

"When any pastor finds out the errors of the Prayer-book or the unscriptural character of the duties imposed upon him, he may withdraw from the Establishment; but by that step he would necessarily expose himself and his family to great suffering. According to the maxim of the ecclesiastical law, 'Once a priest, always a priest.' He may be prosecuted in the Court of Arches for officiating in any diocese without the license of the bishop, even after he has seceded as Mr. Shore has recently been, under these circumstances, prosecuted by the Bishop of Exeter. But if he be spared this persecution, it is only to be esteemed by many of his former friends a schismatic, to be shunned as an apostate, to become a by-word and a proverb, to lose his position in society, to be reduced to penury, to be without employment and without prospects. Few men have the courage to plunge into such an abyss

* P. 198.

of trouble, and therefore they must adjust their belief to their circumstances as best they may. To expose the errors of the Prayer-book, or to renounce unscriptural practices, is out of the question. In either case, a minister would be at once suspended or deprived. What must he then do? First he may make desperate efforts, by exclusively reading on one side, and by living solely with ardent conformists, to persuade himself that all the statements of the Prayer-book are true, and all the requirements of the State are scriptural. Should this effort fail, and should the errors of the Prayer-book force themselves upon him, his next attempt must be to conceal his dissentient opinions by absolute silence on the subject. But this is a fearful course for a minister of Christ. Was he not placed by Christ in the church as a witness for the truth? Is not concealment of the truth at once an infidelity to Christ, and a wrong to the world? His silence prevents the overthrow of error, and confirms others in mischievous delusion. Besides, in his circumstances, concealment is falsehood: for he has subscribed to the truth of the Prayer-book, and only on that condition is he allowed to retain his living; so that the effect of his silence is to induce the people, the clergy and the bishop, to think that he maintains the Prayer-book to be wholly consonant to Scripture. Silence, too, is almost impossible. Occasions must arise when to say nothing would be equivalent to an avowal of dissent from the Prayer-book: and in such an emergency he would be strongly tempted to defend himself from the suspicions of zealous conformists by professions not entirely sincere. To avoid this pain, however, there is another course which the pious Anglican pastor may take. He may exaggerate the importance of the union, extolthe Church' as the purest and best in the world, persuade himself that it is the chief bulwark of Protestantism: he may fill up his time and thoughts with the duties of his ministry, and may resolve not to read, speak or think on those disputed topics. Thus he may strive to hide out the errors of the Prayer-book, and avoid every conclusion respecting the legal fetters of his ministry, shielding himself under the thought that many excellent men do all that he is called to do, and that matters so trifling ought not to endanger an institution so venerable and so necessary. Symptoms of this state of mind are, I think, common. Amongst pious Anglican pastors it is common to hear strong and even violent denunciation of Popery, which requires no courage, because the thunderer launches his bolts against a despised minority, and is echoed by admiring multitudes. But the ten thousand practical abuses within the Establishment wake no such indignant thunders. The nomination of worldly prelates,-the exclusion of the gospel from thousands of parishes in which, by the union, ungodly ministers have the monopoly of spiritual instruction,-the easy introduction of irreligious youths into the ministry,—the awful desecration of baptism, especially in large civic parishes,-the more awful fact, that sixteen thousand Anglican pastors leave some millions of the poor, out of a population of only sixteen millions, utterly untaught,--the hately bigotry of the canons, which excommunicate all who recognize any other churches of Christ in England except our own,-the complete confusion of the church and the world at the Lord's table,-the obligation upon every parish minister publicly to thank God for taking to himself the soul of every wicked person in the parish who dies without being excommunicated, the almost total neglect of scriptural church discipline,-the tyranny of the licensed system, the sporting, dancing, and card-playing of many clergymen,-the Government orders to the churches of Christ to preach on what topics, and to pray in what terms, the State prescribes, the loud and frequent denunciaation of our brethren of other denominations as schismatics,-the errors of the Articles and of the Prayer-book, and the invasion of the regal prerogatives of Christ by the State supremacy, the total absence of self-government, and therefore of all self-reformation, in the Establishment, &c., &c., &c.,-all these enormous evils are tolerated and concealed. Dissenters are often and eagerly attacked, because comparatively weak; but scarcely a tongue condemns the

tyranny of the State toward the Anglican Churches, because the State is strong and holds the purse. Some eagerly search into the future, compel unfulfilled prophecy to reveal to them the fate of distant generations; but majestic and momentous events passing before our eyes are overlooked. They keenly discuss what Jerusalem is to be in the millennium, but do not ask what Scotland and the Canton de Vaud are now. There is not a corner or nook of prophetic scripture which they do not explore, but they know little of what the same scripture declares of the constitution and discipline of Christian churches. Books and pamphlets without end solicit attention to the millenium, but scarcely a whisper suggests how existing churches are to be purified and revived. The evils without the churches are delineated with vehement fidelity, but the evils within nestle undisturbed. We hear much of an immediate advent of our Lord, but few labour to set his house in order for his coming. Were he to come, he would find the Establishment in many things like the temple at Jerusalem, which moved his indignation, and scarcely any will do any thing to purify it. The lamps are burning dim, and no one trims them. Almost all reading and reflection on the subject of Churches and Establishments appears to be with many on one side. Mr. M'Neile's Lectures on the Church,' and even Mr. Gladstone's less popular treatises, are read extensively; but Wardlaw, Ballantyne, Conder, Gasparin, Vinet, Baird, with greater power, are unread and unknown. Nay, such is the terror generated by the system, that some seem afraid to do right till others do it. When any effort of Christian benevolence is proposed as the London City Mission, for example-the first questions which seem to arise to such are, not whether it is right, scriptural and useful, but questions of the following kind: What do the other clergy think of it? What does the bishop say? Does the project violate any canon? Is it agreeable to ecclesiastical law? How will it affect the Church'? Can I do it safely? All this is very unfavourable to the formation of a free, earnest, sincere character, eager to find truth and ready to maintain it; yet this is essential to the efficiency of Christian ministers."

We are tempted, by way of forming a pair of pictures, to quote, in immediate connection with the passage we have just given, one relating to the injurious influence exerted by the Church of England upon Dissent:

"The State by exalting one sect must depress the rest. There may be the most complete toleration which is compatible with any Establishment, and Dissenters may have access to all the honours and emoluments connected with civil office, yet if the State pays the Established clergy alone, and confers upon them dignities which are refused to others, it bestows on their sect an authority, and, for a long time at least, a superiority of numbers, which expose all other sects to proportionate neglect and contempt. Fashionable persons will in every country belong to the religion of the State. No man of fashion would like to be a Roman Catholic at St. Petersburgh, a Protestant at Madrid, or a Dissenter in London. And all those who are connected with the fashionable world, even remotely, feel the temptation to be ashamed of any sect which the State has excluded from its favours. Similar influences act upon wealthy Dissenters themselves. When the possession of large fortunes has opened the way for them, and still more for their children, to fashionable society, their dissent is the chief barrier to be removed. The aristocracy is almost entirely devoted to the Establishment. Independently of obvious political considerations, the system which has the favour of the Crown and the smiles of the Government, and which includes within it prelates, peerages, and palaces, attracts them far more than a vulgar Presbyterianism, and a still more democratic Independency. Since, therefore, those who aim at admission

into this refined and noble society must leave that plebeianism behind them, the sons of wealthy Dissenters very often spurn the communion of their fathers, and by an enthusiastic support of the union prove their title to glitter in those aristocratic circles from which nonconformity is excluded. Perhaps the constant accession of poor persons to the ranks of dissent by faithful preaching, and the constant loss of the children of the wealthy, may not exercise an unfavourable influence upon the spirituality of Dissenting churches; but at the same time they must be considerably embarrassed and impeded in their operations by the fact that the wealth which was once employed by the parents to support their ministers, their schools, their missions, and their poorer members, is continually passing over, by the defection of the sons, to the aid of those who condemn them as mischievous schismatics. Being thus impoverished by the indirect influence of the Establishment, they are further taxed to support it."*

The great argument in opposition to voluntary religious instruction is the one so often insisted upon by the late Dr. Chalmers,—to the effect that the principle of demand and supply which is available in the case of man's physical wants, is not available in the case of his moral wants. We are told that, though the more hungry a man is, the greater is his desire for food, his desire for truth and virtue is the less, the more ignorant and vicious he is. This argument has been frequently and triumphantly answered; but it is, nevertheless, continually repeated, as though it involved an indisputable axiom on the subject.

We believe, and think we could prove, that the statement on which it is based is a fallacious one. Man's appetite for truth is at least as natural and powerful as his appetite for food, and, under similar circumstances, leads to similar results. It is only by regarding the two appetites under conditions so different as to destroy the fairness of the comparison, that any advantage in favour of the physical one can be exhibited. We can, however, do no more than hint at this view of the case; but we wish it to be particularly observed that the voluntary system does not depend upon the demand for religion which the irreligious may make. It includes, as the principal part of its agencies, the benevolent efforts to which the religious part of the community are impelled on behalf of the irreligion around them. This manifestation of voluntaryism will more than strike the balance in favour of the means it has at command for the spiritual regeneration of mankind, as compared with the means of supply and demand which prevail in the food market.

But what if this could not be established? What if the basis of this celebrated argument were as true as it is sophistical? It has, after all, nothing to do with the question in hand. It will not touch the real matter of dispute-no, not in the slightest degree. Let it be granted that the desire for moral good operates in a manner just the reverse of that by which the desire for physical good operates,that want, in the one case, produces a wish for the good, and in the other is connected with a positive aversion to it,-and what then? Does it follow that the State is the proper instrument for overcoming this aversion? Certainly not. In spite of all, it may be, and we believe it is, plainly demonstrable that voluntary means for religious instruction are the means best adapted to contend with the existing

Pp. 314, 321.