triumph of the Low-church or Evangelical party, mainly aided by the religious spirit diffused over the country by Methodism. In its turn, however, High-churchism advanced, chiefly by means of the Tracts; and this so aggravated the intestine war between the two parties, that at last it came to an issue in the great Gorham case.

The decision in this case was a great step in favour of free inquiry, and ought to have been recognized as such. A tribunal mainly of lawyers and laymen, anxious to save the Establishment from immediate disruption, came to this conclusion, viz., that on a point of extreme delicacy (the nature and efficacy of the sacraments), though the Church had required subscription from all alike, yet the subscribers might interpret the words subscribed in senses directly opposed to each other; -a decision which involves a renunciation, it should seem, of that authority which is the boast of High-churchmen, and ought to have gained for it some favour from the Nonconformist enemies to subscription, which is thereby rendered, if not ridiculous, at least powerless as a weapon of assault.

The glorification of the priesthood constituting the essence of Popery and being the aim of High-churchism, the connection of the Church and State becomes a most important feature in the inquiry. Here arise the important questions, how far the continuance of the present Church Establishment is or is not a bulwark against the Church of Rome, and also, whether it becomes the liberal Dissenters, and our friends in particular, to act in alliance with that violent Anti-StateChurch Association which the spirit of Calvinistic Evangelicism has raised with so great violence against the Church of England?

I cannot go into the question of a Church Establishment further than this, that I trust I am now entitled to assume that the present Anglican Church interferes less with personal liberty than the Church of Rome does wherever it reigns supreme. In that Church, notoriously, the alliance of Church and State means simply the subjugation of the State to the Church. The conflicts that even governments which are called Catholic have never ceased to carry on against the Pope are well known. I have no time to enumerate them. I remark merely, that at no period was the Church of Rome so triumphant as at this moment. The young Emperor of Germany has surrendered to the Pope all those laws protective of the State against the Pope enacted by the reforming Jos. II., and though the liberties of the Gallican Church are not formally renounced, yet the party opposed to them have the ear of Louis Napoleon, and caused the military occupation of Rome to restore the Pope to his authority. In the face of these facts, and with a full knowledge of the character of the Church of Rome, I ask, does it become us to give our aid to the Anti-State-Church Association, without considering the consequences of success? To me it seems that that success would be a deplorable result, by advancing the interests of the priesthood in opposition to the salutary influence of the most enlightened portion of the community. By the State in England is now manifestly understood, not the Crown or the Court, but the body of educated laymen of property and influence. Under the republicanized monarchy of England, the Crown can exercise no power over the Church or in education but under the guidance and through the agency of the intelligent laity; hence the fierce opposition of the High-church party to the

Government scheme of Education. The late contest on the Government scheme was a contest between priestcraft and the liberal tendencies of the age. I do not reproach the High-church party for this. They were fighting for their all; but I do lament the blindness, from hate, which makes the Dissenters the allies of their bitterest enemies.

It is well known that an alliance of the Tory enemies of the Whig Ministry in Parliament with the opposition of the orthodox Dissenters, under the direction of their ministers (who are PRIESTS without being aware of it), has more than once defeated the well-intended Educational schemes of the Ministry. Now let us suppose the Anti-StateChurch Society to succeed in overturning the Church, what is to become of its revenues? Are they to be given to each parish in relief of the rates? Or are the landlords to have a gift of the tithes? Or are these revenues to be still appropriated to the clergy, and are the clergy in each parish to be elected by universal suffrage? It is sufficient to suggest the ulterior inquiries which must be raised, in order to induce every one of the least power of reflection to shrink from any act which should necessitate a practical answer to these questions. I permit myself one other question: Were the wealth, power and patronage now possessed by the State Church, thus explained, torn from the Church and given as a prey to be fought for by the clergy of the churches Roman and Anglican, Congregational and Methodistic,-the Unitarians having their share in due proportion to their numbers,-what, I ask, would be gained for liberty, forbearance, rationality, and every other social virtue, Pagan or Christian?

There is, however, another consideration which must render all thinking men cautious before they attempted the destruction of the National Church, were it in their power. It cannot have escaped their observation that it is not every one who can with safety be left to the formation of his own creed, and who can stand alone without the aid of a Church. There is a large proportion even of morally excellent persons who would find the task of constructing a creed for themselves oppressively burthensome, and who wish to put themselves voluntarily under the yoke of a Church. They feel "the weight of chance desires." Conscious of their own incapacity to solve the problems which a scholastic theology has framed, and being alarmed by the threat thrown out even more fearfully by the orthodox Protestant Churches than by the Roman Catholic, they seek an asylum in an infallible Church, which is an unquestionable authority. This is the secret of the power of the Church of Rome, and priests of the Anglican Church, envious of this power, have gone as near asserting it for their Church as its position permitted; and unsatisfactory as their asserted authority is, it still suffices for many. Were, however, this Church broken up, a very large proportion of its members would have no other place of refuge than the Roman Catholic Church. The swarm of pious believers longing for a community and home, would be attracted by the tinkling of the Roman bell, and hived in the bosom of the infallible Church. The profit of the destruction of the Anglican Church would go into the treasury of the Romish Church-at least a larger proportion than the destroyers would get for their pains.

Among the instances of a purely selfish or sectarian view of the subject, common to all these gentlemen, is this, that they consider

exclusively the effect on them of this Papal assumption. Even Mr. Thom remarks, "We do not feel that Rome is a whit nearer to us (the italics are his) than she was before." Now no one fears or cares much for the effect on the educated Nonconformists of the Papal Bull. I feel ashamed of adverting to such an arrant commonplace as this, that Church Establishments are formed, not for those who are qualified or inclined to choose a Church for themselves, but for the mass of uneducated persons, for whom the Established Church is (whether at all times avowed or not) the most important instrument of popular education; and as such it is surely a question easy of solution,-Shall that instrument be placed in the hands of a Government emanating from the people, and now unquestionably amenable to the people, whose character it expresses; or shall that instrument be put into the hands of a body of ecclesiastics nominated by a foreign Bishop, whose subjects they ostentatiously declare themselves to be?

66

Let not these remarks be deemed irrelevant, since it is manifest, though nowhere in terms avowed, that the destruction of the Church of England would not be considered by any one of the gentlemen I have named as a calamity. One and all represent the two Churches as of similar character. The very titles of the sermons shew this. Popery in all Churches the proper Object of Protestant Antagonism," says Mr. Robberds. "Ecclesiastical Pretensions, Romish and English," is the watchword of Mr. Thom. Nowhere is the eventual destruction of the English Church, and the substitution of the Church of Rome in its place, adverted to as a calamity. In this I see a want of discernment akin to that of the unfortunate frogs in the fable, who were taught by bitter experience to see the great difference between King Log and King Stork. May a like fate be averted from this land!

A branch of this State Church topic is the reference, so fertile in misrepresentation, to the Supremacy of the Queen. On this point Dr. Wiseman makes what he affects to consider as a conclusive appeal to the Protestant Dissenters. You, he says, acknowledge as little as we do the Supremacy of the Queen, and have no right to resent a contempt on our part in which you share. My reply would be that of Mr. Thom. Speaking of the Dissenters as a body, I answer, We can without hesitation acknowledge the Queen to be the Head of the Church-not of Christ, but of England. We deny the pretended authority of that Church over ourselves, but we acknowledge her Majesty's authority over her willing subjects as a portion of her Royal prerogative, she being "supreme over all persons, ecclesiastical as well as civil," to use the words of the Bishops in their late address to the Queen,-by which we assert merely this, that at the head of the State she administers its power in all the offices of government by her Ministers, and in conformity with the law of the land. We are far from imagining that she possesses such a power as is implied in the last No. of the Christian Reformer, p. 771: "It is not by substituting the Queen's Supremacy for that of the Pontiff of Rome, &c., that Popish aggression is to be withstood." These words tend to confirm the most erroneous notions concerning this Supremacy. The moderate and reasonable portion of the Church mean nothing that resembles Papal Supremacy. That which they maintain is purely administrative, and respects only the secular concerns of the Church. In the highest spiritual sense, the

Church wants no Head, though practically there is an inconvenience in the want of an accessible and universally recognized Head, as is found in all matters of litigation. With this want of a visible authority and head the Church of Rome taunts the Protestant Churches; and the late High-church denial of the Queen's Supremacy as it is now recognized, is but a step towards the obtaining hereafter an organization that may approximate to the Romish Church, and under the pretext of removing the reproach of Erastianism, industriously re-establish the power of the priest; for the Supremacy of the Queen being taken from her, must be given to the priest. His power is seen in a state of highly-condensed malignity, as we maintain, in the Church of Rome, which its members conceive to be merely a state of perfect efficiency. I can here only advert in a sentence to the seeming paradox of Dr. Arnold, who maintained the identity of Church and State, he almost alone of Churchmen being fully aware of the sad mistake which practically considers the clergy as the Church, though it affirms the contrary. To those who acknowledge that the laity are the Church, and who consider the Queen as the representative of the nation in all the executive branches of the government, her Supremacy is in substance but the supremacy of the nation, that nation being, it is assumed, Christian. This most important reference to the Anglican Church as the national Church, is absolutely overlooked by every Unitarian writer and speaker we have heard of,- -a consequence of their sectarian view of the subject, as if the question concerned them merely as Dissenters, and not as Englishmen.

Next in importance to the flagrant injustice manifested towards the Church of England, is the really astonishing extravagance of representing the expected prohibition of the erection of a Church Establishment by the Pope as a violation of civil and religious liberty. This is common to the writers and speakers in question. It is but justice, however, to remark that no one of them affects to consider the Romish Church as changed or capable of change. An amiable M. P., who seems inclined to follow in the wake of Messrs. Hume and Roebuck, said to me lately, "I know they would burn me to-morrow if they could; but this makes no difference." And at the Unitarian District Society meeting, one solitary speaker, opposing the general sentiment, said, THE TIME IS COME WHEN WE MUST OPPOSE INTOLERANCE TO INTOLERANCE!!! which is reported with this typographic criticism in the Inquirer,-though all the speaker could have meant was this just suggestion, that when engaged in defensive war we must use the weapons employed against us. This sad misapprehension originates, probably, in a very general misunderstanding concerning the nature of liberty, which is essentially negative and passive. In France it is by every one, and in England by very many, confounded with popular power. I will borrow an illustration from early ecclesiastical history. The primitive Christian martyrs suffered death rather than offer up incense before a Pagan idol, and for this their names have been ever held in honour and their murderers execrated. In a later age, the descendants of these martyrs, whose horror of idolatry had increased, became iconoclasts, and they too were willing to suffer death for the outrages which they thought it their duty to perpetrate on the idols which the State had erected. Now, with every inclination to respect

even the fanaticism of that zeal which authenticates its sincerity by martyrdom, it must in candour be acknowledged that the merit of the sufferers was not the same, nor was the reproach due to the vindication of the law the same as in the case where the martyr merely refused to perform an act of seeming idolatry.

With the heightened zeal of the iconoclasts increased the tenacity of priests in maintaining the public images. This led to an act of horrible cruelty in France in the year 1766, by which all Europe was scandalized. Some young French officers in a drunken frolic broke off an arm from a statue of the Virgin at Abbeville, for which the Chevalier de la Barre was broken on the wheel. This incident, and the execution of Calas for a falsely-imputed murder, contributed more than any other events of the day to bring Christianity into disrepute, spread over Europe the notion that cruelty and injustice were inseparable from the priestly character, and gave popularity to the writings of Voltaire and the French school of infidelity. But what irritated the moral sense of enlightened Europe was, in the case of La Barre, the disproportion between the crime and the punishment. He was undeniably a legitimate object of punishment.

There are other idols

To apply these facts to the subject before us. than those of wood and stone; and, to narrow the field of controversy, it may be conceded that the Church of England is justly an idol in the eyes both of Romanists and Protestant Dissenters. Under the Stuarts the Dissenters were ordered to worship this idol by attendance in its temples, and abstaining from attending in rival temples; and grievous was the persecution they endured rather than comply. They are now relieved from the obligation to burn incense, and they are content. Not so the Romanists; and the Pope of Rome, by issuing his Bull and establishing his hierarchy, must be considered as in effect breaking the idols of the State; or, if this be denied, at least he is guilty of the impertinence of setting up his own idols by the side. It pleases some Dissenter to say, "With all my heart-one is as bad as another." I hope I have shewn that this is not the fact; but were the Roman and Anglican Churches otherwise the same, at least one is the idol of the nation, erected by the national will; the other is an insolent imposition upon the nation by an Italian priest. To consider the repression of this as a violation of liberty, is to overlook its character of obtrusive insolence, an act I have no doubt cunningly contrived to place our Government in a dilemma, the perpetrators hoping to profit whether their act be tolerated or resisted, and going out of their way to perform it. If it be allowed, the Romanists take their stand in an advanced position, and the alleged inconsistency of repression will become greater. If prohibited, these meek sufferers, the successors of Dominic and Loyola, will raise a sham cry of persecution. I say a sham cry, though our Unitarian friends have, in a tone to my mind equally incomprehensible and deplorable, raised it for them, in, I hope, a correct anticipation of Government measures of prohibition. I call this a sham cry, because I think that, though every Christian man may rightfully refuse to perform an act which is made to appear voluntary and therefore becomes an acted lie, and he may honestly plead his conscience as a reason for his disobedience, yet that plea of conscience becomes a pretext which the Government may disregard when it is alleged to justify