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W THE LEADER. [Satprday, °^ ____ L'
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CHURCH POLITY versus CHURCH POLITICS. Mb...
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IRISH POLITICS. It is in a Dublin editio...
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The French Crisis And Its Consequences. ...
rage who went forth , to conquer principalities in the eleventh century , did not limit themselves to Italy , Sicily , Syria , or Greece ; but one of them , with a bar sinister indeed over his escutcheon , yet attended by a large retinue of high-born soldiers , sought to establish a principality in another country , England . . Louis JNTapoleon has said before the French peers , that he represents " a name , a principle , and a de feat " the name Kapoleon , the principle the Srtv « r « i < mtv of the people , the defeat Waterloo .
Waterloostandsbefore Frenchmen , onthe declaration of Louis Napoleon , as the defeat to be redressed : the conquest of William the Norman would be a congenial example . At all events , we are approaching the close ol one of the Napoleonic chapters , and we await the opening of the next .
W The Leader. [Satprday, °^ ____ L'
W THE LEADER . [ Satprday , ° ^ ____ L'
Church Polity Versus Church Politics. Mb...
CHURCH POLITY versus CHURCH POLITICS . Mb . Gladstone is again one of the sitting Members for the University of Oxford He has polled sixteen more votes than he polled in July , and he has defeated the tool of the unnatural alliance , whose main object was , and is , "to worry Mr . Gladstone out of his seat , by the respectable majority of one hundred and twentyfour . Personal hatred , shabby trickery , honest intolerance , and shameless desertions , have failed to deprive the University of her ablest representative since the days of Robert Peel . The dreary
purblind Convocation House is closed ; the last special " train , the last lingering omnibus , has set down the last reluctant voter . There is quiet in Broad-street , and peace in Magdalen Hall . The weary , the disappointed , the exasperated , the successful champions on either side have gone home . Mr . Archdeacon Denison has retired to his parochial duties at East Brent , not , however , without inditing another letter . William Beresford and " C . Lempriere" can sit in
the shades of the Carlton and the Temple , and strive to drown the memory of defeat , or plan new wiles and stratagems to trouble honest men over the bottle . The glistening Isis rolls along , unmindful of the moodiness of College Dons conning the lesson of failure on its banks ; and the most interesting city in the kingdom is again ostensibly devoted to the education of the select of Young England .
And this fierce combat in the halls of Oxford has not been in vain . Day by day the great fact was becoming clearer to the eyes of the farsighted observer , that discord and disunion prevailed in the so-called church of England ; but few were prepared for the coalition of antagonisms which this election has thrown into high relief . The line of demarcation between Church Politics and Church Polity has been drawn , however faintly ; and although we have not seen the last of the former , we have seen the
beginning of the latter . Church politics expelled Robert Peel in 1829 ; but the same power has not yet been able to expel Mr . Gladstone in 1853 . This is a testimony to the spread of liberal views which we must not undervalue , and it carries us some way out of the old entanglement , which knotted up together the State religion and the Tory party . The Nineteenth Centurv has invaded and conquered even Oxford ;
nnd henceforth she enters on a new phase . It it were only the revolution in the tutorial body which it has disclosed , the strong desire to purify , extend , and strengthen the great English seminary , the content would have for us an incalculable value . But it has torn a still wider rent in the curtain which vciln the future , and given us a glimpse of vast eventualities yet to be worked out . The Church of England Is not now what it once was , when dissent was penal in all its forms . when it had no legal political existence , and froo discussion was sedulously repressed . The Church of England is not now the National church , whatever it may have boon when bolstered up by penal codes and disutilities . The Church is now a sect supported by state countenance , shackled with state fetters , amenable to State control . When Convocation was stifled , the Church became a mere spiritual police establishment , as far iih the State was concerned ; and what Henry the Second began , and Henry tho Eighth bo much advanced , George the First com-W ^ ttftfcl ' KA bulwhat ruined her P Politics . Sho r na » 9 Q < i , rfLt ^ political pre-eminence , not contont r ^^ rd' ^^^ supremacy ; her abbots were i * / rWftN ? t * W 01011 * i her" bishops became Peers
of Parliament ; her clergy Jacobite leaders . She abandoned the strong ground of faith—the sword of the spirit—and clutched at the sword ot the flesh . She failed , and deservedly . Her error was the error of Borne . Disobeying the precept of her founder , she tried to serve God and Mammon- ^ the spiritual and the temporal ; she aspired to rule in Church and State , to enforce conviction at the point of the sword . She failed , and always will fail . And the result was that famous Compromise which Lord Derby and Mr . Denison so harmoniously approves .
But Compromise , in a matter so awful and so vital , is a disease which is fatal to its advocates . Cromwell crushed it ; Charles II . and William III . patched up the fragments ; George I . hammered it together with no gentle hand ; and it sheltered the parsons of the eighteenth century well enough . But the Church P Oh , she had become " the cloth , " a " liberal profession , " a tavern toast ; a convenient lodgment for cadets ;
a " vested interest . " In a negative way this made up a National Church , because dissent was fenced off with penalties , and the mother Catholic faith was placed on the level of felony . But those external conditions , lapped in which the Church quietly slumbered , broke down in 1825 and 1829 . Dissent was recognised—was legal . To a certain extent the State ceased to acknowledge the Church of the Compromise as the sole Church , at least in secular matters . The
State agreed to ignore religious opinions in some of its constituent members ; Catholics and Quakers were admitted to civic and parliamentary offices ; and from that time the Compromise became an impossibility to honest conscientious men . The disease broke out with virulence . Tractarianism arose , to which the Compromise was of necessity unendurable ; and following in its train came the great sections of Evangelicals , Puseyites , Gorhamites , Seceders , Rationalists , Via Media men , all kinds of professions . The
iniquity of all these parties taking pay for ostensibly professing one faith was felt oy all honest men . The common sense of the nation revolted ; and all the vices , and abuses , and crimes of the Church were raked up and gibbeted with " tremendous cheers . " It was not only seen by Radicals and no-churchmen , but by the masses , rough or cultured , that the Establishment was , in the main , a political machine ; that her members were more politicians than priests ; and that
they guarded their own secular emoluments and the political privileges of their patrons , while they trenched on the spiritual and temporal liberties of the people . As a political body , the last act of the clergy was to hoist the Conservative party into power , in 1841 , —for whatP to preserve tlie Corn-laws ! And as if this deliberate Mammon-worship , and its inevitable effects , were not a lesson sufficiently fatal , a portion of the clergy madly plunged into the political contest iuat brought to a close .
Are we then to suppose that political parsoncraft is inevitable P It would seem so . Indeed , it is a question whether political churchmanship be not an inseparable accident from a political church . The oracle of East Brent , in his latest letter which we have seen , confirms this view . Although Mr . George Anthony Denison concurred a fortnight back in tho maxim that a " Churchman should have no politics , " he now reverses his belief . Repl y ing to a clerical friend , anxious for tho Archdeacon ' s reputation , Mr .
Denison deliberatel y asserts that " m a country which has an Established Church , and where ' liberal' politics are moro or less identified with diHsent , Churchmen must always have politics . " These emphatic italics arc his own . How then can ho consistently assort in the same epistle that " I made my move against Mr . Gladstone upon considerations apart from , and superior to , considerations of personal adherence or party politics ? " How can he who so ostentatiously supported the Derbyito candidates in July , deny
that ho is , and was a political agitator , who has " confidence in Lord Derby P" Tho fact is that Mr . Denison has deliberately adopted Church politics , and abandoned Church polity ; that is , lie clingB to politics and submission to the State , in preference to no politics and tho chance of indopondeneo . Tho correspondent who drew from him the KruHtian avowal , that he adheres to tho State and Toryism , because liberal politics arc ? idonifcfied with dissent ( an assertion by the by which is untrue ) lias formed a justor estimate of tho impending crikUB in church matters . Tho Reverend J £ . A .
Ommaney , of Chew Magna , expresses his news in preferring this request to the political arch deacon : — "In behalf of many who , like myself , have been for years associated with you in the great struggle for the , liberties of the Church of this land , I write to ask whether it be not desirable to give some public assuranpe that questions of merely secular policy have not influenced our discussions or proceedings , that we have cautiously avoided identifying ourselves with any party in the State , and that in endeavouring to maintain Church principles we have looked for success to the justice and sacredness of our cause rather than to the support of this or that cabinet ?"
Mr . Denison ' s answer is that which we have quoted above . In our opinion Mr . Ommaney has shown a true appreciation of the position of the Church . He embraces what we call Church polity in preference to Church politics . He seems disposed to rely on " the justice and sacredness" of his cause ; and we believe that reliance on that alone affords a " chance" of escape for the Church from her false position . It is not for us to decide . The Establishment must " gang its ain gait . " One thing is clear ;
matters will not be allowed to remain as they ^ are . The time is coming when no " vested interest " wUTbe tolerated ; when the legal State will be less purely Church of England even than it now is ; when Church abuses , least of all , will be able to resist destruction ; when political parsons will find their influence gone ; and when the growing question , as to whether the connexion between the Church and the State shall be maintained , will press for decision . We leave
those to answer who are interested ; but whether would it be better that the Church should base her future existence on a purely Church polity , totally abandoning politics ; or that she should abide by the maxim that a " churchman must always have politics , " and act on that principle in the spirit of a partisan P If the former course be adopted , independence and security may follow ; but if the latter be acted on , servile submission , at least , is inevitable— destruction
may be . Let no one underrate the importance of the Church's future . Her present false position is a national evil . Public safety demands the application of powerful remedies either from within or from without . It is impossible to calculate the immoral effect upon the community at large of the present state of forced dishonesty in which churchmen exist . Simony , preferments from political motives , nepotism , abuse of charities , the awful amount of doctrinal antagonism professedly
in one and the same Church—all these things tell on the national character to an unimaginable extent . If Church politics be maintained these must be maintained ; if a wise and generous polity , purely ecclesiastical , be adopted , these things must vanish . But that polity must be concurrent with religious equality , the fullest freedom of discussion , and the unquestioned right of all men and all serious opinions to an unrestricted development .
Thero is a promise of this in tho result of tho University election ; and that promise , much moro than tho return of a Minister , or the defeat of a political faction , forms its value in our eyes .
Irish Politics. It Is In A Dublin Editio...
IRISH POLITICS . It is in a Dublin edition of Mr . Joseph Miller ' s work , that tho story occurs of tho sailor rebufling the ostler , who had suggested that a horso must not bo mounted right leg first , by tho inquiry , " How do you know that I wasn ' t going to ride with my face to the tail ? " Only six weeks ago wo were complimenting the Irish party on their improved tone and bettered tactics ; but our congratulations were premature . Wo did not know fclmt the Irish party could ride with its face to tho tail . All was then order , compactness , hope . ! Now all is confusion , despair . Let us endeavour to point tho melancholy moral .
Tho " Irish party , " as it appeared in the short session preceding Christinas , was a noble confederation . It was sent to Parliament by tho Irish pooplo , at enormous individual and general pacriiicos , in the face of unparalleled landlord intimidation , and despite the most reckless effort at corruption on tho part of the then Government and the Orange faction , to forward two grand principles—Tenantlti ght and Religious Equality . Tho death of O'Connoll , tho failure of tho Young Irelandorn , had , together , destroyed tho popular parties in tho country ; and oon . curron . tly arrived
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 22, 1853, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_22011853/page/12/
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