more are for peace, on the ground of preserving matters as they are; others are for open war. The Metropolitan has issued his bull, indeed, to silence all refractory and belligerent suffragans; yet really, its roar is so very like that of a sucking dove, that even the children are not frightened: its voice, moreover, requires an interpreter, since both evangelicals and tractarians persist in claiming His Grace as on their own side. These, then, are the parties in the Church of England; and now let us glance at its internal and external position, in the midst of the most powerful nation of Europe. And nearly the first thing which strikes one is its palpable, glaring, inconsistency. Here we have an institution claiming the most sacred character before men, and yet openly setting at defiance the commands of God! On the one hand, it asserts an apostolic descent, a divine origin, rights derived from scripture to the spiritual allegiance of these realms, doctrines that cannot be gainsȧid, primitive discipline, and an inherent immortality of existence; on the other, it demands and maintains an alliance with the state, in the teeth of what Christ has declared about his kingdom not being of this world; it rests its external and visible foundations upon acts of parliament; it appropriates five millions of revenue to its own purposes, for which it has bartered away every shadow of internal discipline; and it denounces all attempts made to separate those which the bible says never ought to have been joined together, as so many efforts aimed at the overthrow and destruction of christianity! Either the church of England can subsist without the compulsory principle, or it cannot. If the former, where is the ground for her trepidation and alarm-her anathemas and horrible insinuations against the dissenters? If the latter, what becomes of her essential immortality? Or is it really true that the state alone summoned her into existence, and could to-morrow sentence her to annihilation? Do tithes, and glebes, and endowments, and secular wealth, constitute her very being? Upon her own showing, therefore, does she not blow hot and cold with the same breath? So, again, with regard to her situation between catholicism and nonconformity, her aspect is unquestionably that of Janus-an image with two faces. She frowns, indeed, fiercely upon both; but let her be asked, with all coolness and kindness, how she came to forsake the quarry out of which she was hewn? Her answer must sooner or later be melted down to this,-namely, that she exercised the privilege of private judgment. Very well,' reply the Wesleyans-with all the representatives of ancient puritans- and it was in the exercise of a similar privilege that we separated from you!' But then we hear of her apostolical succession, of the validity of her ordinations and sacraments, of the four-first-council character of her discipline and doctrines, of her exclusive authority touching the new covenant, and of her being, like the king's daughter, all glorious within,' a meet spouse for the Redeemer, possessed of both visibility and uniformity. Whence came all these, estimating them at her own value, for the sake of argument, and expounding them upon her own principles? If we attempt tracing them up to some British church founded in the first or second centuries, the higher links, as is well known, vanish in a cloud of legend and traditionary fable. From Rome, alone, can they have been derived, if link is to be added on to link in the ecclesiastical chain: and then, how came the Church of England into circumstances of dissent and schism? There appears to us no conceivable escape from the dilemma. If she conscientiously differed from the Vatican, how can she complain of a conscientious exception to Lambeth? If her Roman mother were not so corrupt as to invalidate the sacraments, how could the daughter, upon her own statements, separate without sin? If the parent had thus degenerated, what then becomes of that which is derived from her? The clean thing can by no just process of induction be brought out of an unclean. Her antagonists above, and her rivals below her, both convict her in the same moment of the same culpability as soon as she dares to open her mouth: ex ore tuo te instanter condemnavimus! Then again, in looking at our ecclesiastical establishment ab intra, we cannot fail to be most forcibly impressed with its servility to its secular master. There have been known cases of painful bondage, where there has been no slavish mind. Yet here it is not so. If the resistance of the seven bishops to James the Second be adduced, our immediate answer is, that the foolish monarch had touched the apple of their eye. Had he let the property of the church of England alone, she would have stood by him as she had done by his father; and as too many of her children would afterwards have done by the Pretender, upon the same good understanding, that her pelf and power were to be left untouched. In all that relates to civil and religious liberty, into which scale have our hierarchy and clergy thrown themselves? As directors of the royal, aristocratic, parliamentary, and national conscience, were there ever any audible whispers against smuggling, bribery, simony, the desecration of the holy communion as a test for taking office, or against gambling as permitted in the palaces or mansions of the great? When George the Second avowedly sold place and preferment on behalf of his German mistresses, where were the archbishops and bishops, or the very reverend the chaplains and clerks of the closet? In our own days, how fared the British Sardanapalus, who had divorced his consort-who turned day into night through his indescribable debaucheries,-who reigned and revelled in oriental voluptuousness, with a spiritual staff around him, pluming itself on the revival of its piety? Our princes and peerage were as profligate as any ever heard of, although living in the midst of Protestantism, until public opinion, without any thanks whatever to the highly salaried establishment, effected, under the divine blessing, a mighty change. In the glorious conflict for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade, neither the hierarchy or clergy ever peeped or muttered for many years. The brunt of the battle, with some highly honourable individual exceptions, was borne by the despised schismatics, quakers, presbyterians, independents, baptists, et id genus omne, as was often contemptuously observed. In the abolition of lotteries, and all other analogous nuisances, the church remained pretty nearly in respectful silence. It seemed rather to stroke, than to rouse the general mind. Its activity was at least of a passive kind, like that of certain antiquated apothecaries, who hung stuffed crocodiles for their signs outside, and dispensed within for a given premium, opiates, narcotics, charms for the ague, and poisons for vermin. Was it ever known that our thirty spiritual peers in the House of Lords had attended at the cabinet of an administration, to extend the limits of popular liberty, to enlarge the suffrage, to support a Reform Bill, to ameliorate our criminal code, to suppress the game laws, to enlarge the narrow prison, or wipe away the tears of the children of poverty and misfortune? We grant, that when success in any of these particulars has been just on the eve of achievement, or that when an obvious point has to be made in favour of their own side, in politics or polemics, there have now and then occurred some rather over-acted endeavours to discountenance socialism, or shut up brothels. Yet what a scene of ecclesiastical depravity was exposed under the last head. It was discovered that the chapter of Westminster derived large rentals from the tabernacles of public prostitution! It was a Clodius indeed, who called attention to the disgraceful fact; but so it is with all our advantages of an establishment, where factious prelates choose to become tribunes clamorous for freedom and virtue : Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes? The same homage, moreover, which the dignitaries pay to the powers that be, they exact from those beneath them. We remember the bishop of London declaring in parliament that he could obtain at any time, hundreds of petitions of a certain cha racter, which he specified, through issuing the requisite printed forms to his archdeacons, and, through them, to his inferior clergy and their churchwardens. Immense indignation was expressed at his lordship's want of tact and delicacy, in thus exposing the nakedness of those with whom he was once upon a par; but the correctness of the statement, as all are aware, it was utterly impossible to deny. There is also another feature, which meets the notice of every intelligent observer, when he surveys the position of things, within the doors of the church of England. There has come over the spirit of its dreams a most fearful apprehension, that probably a day of reckoning is at hand, when all its wealth will pass away. Hence proceeds that nervous tremulousness which we see now so often displayed. The contest for a churchrate will agitate an entire district. The proposition of Lord Ashley and others, for something like a system of lay-readers, has filled the clergy of nearly all parties with absolute dismay. Their general aspect is that of men feeling as if the ground were about to slide from under them. Hence flows no slight share of the zeal in building new chapels, as if each fresh edifice may act as a buttress of masonry to prevent the landslip. Charges, sermons, addresses on public occasions, are all redolent of alarm. A commutation of tithes has considerably increased their means, so far as mere pecuniary income is concerned; but the sword of Damocles always seems to be suspended over them. The ecclesiastical commissioners are pretending to pare away various abuses, which, in the opinion of the most thoughtful, will rather strengthen their foundations than otherwise: but then follows the distressing imagination, that as the laity have interfered once in this century, and that once rather successfully, they may indulge more fancies, and dare to interfere again. Reform from any quarter, but a clerical one, is the grand bugbear. Meanwhile, genuine spirituality of necessity declines. The wings of the heavenly Paraclete hover not over the house of turmoil and perturbation. Worldliness enters in at the gate in the fulness of a flood-tide. From the ark floating on its waters there issues a raven rather than a dove. Theologians are wrangling from morning to night about topics of small interest to the pious and the peaceful. These hunger and thirst for the hidden manna and the gentle brook of Siloa. Numbers are leaving the establishment in consequence, as many witnesses will testify. Galleries, built recently for accommodating an augmented population, and within the last twelvemonth crowded with attentive hearers, are now deserted. Husks, and shells, and chaff, will never nourish souls for eternity. The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' We write it without anger, yet knowing that we speak the plain truth, when we reiterate the assertion, that episcopalian pastors are fast losing their influence over their people. Take the case of Helstone in Cornwall. The parish contains 3,500 inhabitants, with only one church connected with the establishment; of which the fabric was found, in 1837, utterly inadequate for the accommodation required. Several old square pews were in that year removed, and their space occupied by modern seats. A large gallery was also added at the same time. The number of sittings was thus raised from 470 to nearly 1,000, of which 445 were free to all persons. Four hundred and ninety were appropriated at fair rents, which never failed to be full; the attachment of the parishioners to their place of worship being truly cordial. 'All went on well,' says an accurate informant on the spot; the church funds were plentiful; the spirit in the town for supporting the church was excellent; and in the ensuing half dozen years, no less than £2,500 was voluntarily contributed and expended in adorning and improving the building. An organist was appointed at a good salary; there was a paid choir, and the entire sanctuary was handsomely lighted up with gas. In addition to the appointed curate, a stipend was afforded to a lecturer, for an additional service, out of the voluntary contributions of the congregation. Things proceeded thus satisfactorily until the beginning of 1842, when a gentleman named Barlow was appointed curate. He commenced by preaching in the surplice, and attempting to introduce all the other obsolete ceremonies, so repugnant to the taste of the people, and which have at length aroused their determined opposition.' The congregation immediately began to fall off, and complaints were made to the bishop against the course pursued by the new preacher. His lordship was so pressed, that in order to quiet applications, he withdrew Mr. Barlow, and substituted Mr. Blunt; a most jesuitical procedure, from first to last; for it was notorious, that Mr. Blunt had emptied a large church at Teignmouth, where the gospel had been faithfully and energetically illustrated by an able and much respected evangelical minister. However, Mr. Blunt came to Helstone, ostensibly to mend matters, in reality to make them worse. What ensued has occupied the public journals for many weeks past? But now let our readers mark the result. I attended,' says the same reporter, 'yesterday morning, at the parish church, when, instead of being crowded in every part, as formerly, I found it almost empty. On counting heads there were only sixty-five persons, nearly all women, instead of the customary thousand. The new gallery, recently erected, had its dreary vacancy interrupted by two young men, who alone occupied it. There were not a dozen |