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    gestions which the legally constituted guardians of the Church had made , — in vain had they expressed their readiness to accept the already over-loaded Bill , even with the addition of further restrictions to any extent which did not render it impracticable as a measure of relief . Bigotry again successfully gnashed her teeth , and by a majority of four proxies the Bill was rejected in the Upper House without going into a detailed examination of its provisions .

    Such is the history of this measure , and we are much mistaken if every man of common candour will not readily admit the absence of indirect views in the course which Unitarians have pursued on this subject , and that they have kept their eye steadily fixed on their grievance , evincing a sincere desire to obtain its redress with the least possible sacrifice of the general system of law . That the frequent discussions of the subject must have opened the

    eyes of many to the impolicy of blending functions purely civil with the religious duties of the Clergy of the Establishment , we can readily believe ; and we sincerely hope that Nonconformists in general will , ere long , be completely emancipated from any necessity of ccming into contact with a body , too many of whose members express contempt for every thing relating to Dissenters , save their money .

    We must not omit to notice the remedy suggested by the Presbyter in the place of the measures hitherto proposed . " It is this : that we should acknowledge the validity of marriage contracts , entered into before a civil magistrate , according to certain forms prescribed by Act of Parliament . " With respect to the plan itself , if there be any thing remarkable , it is not its novelty in the abstract , but that it is founded upon a distinction which , however evident , so many politicians in and out of the Church contrive to overlook . That the marriage contract stands high in the scale of religious as well as moral obligations , we are most forward to admit ; but from this

    admission , to argue the duty of the State , as such , to prescribe a religious ceremonial , is as absurd as it would be to contend for the interposition of a religious rite in every important contract between man and man , because its violation would be an offence against reli g ious principle . With the desultory and not very perspicuous historical discussion into which our author

    enters , and his distinctions between the sufficiency of a contract inforo cwili and one in faro eonscientitp , ( from which an uncharitable critic might infer , that a Churchman ' s conscience is not to be bound by the former , ) and between " the extreme of Popery , which improperly has made matrimony a sacrament , " and the more accurate and well-defined notion of our Protestant

    Church , which only considers it «« as a hol y estate entered into by a religious ordinance , " we have no concern farther than to observe , that the Presbyter perpetually confounds the very distinguishable ideas of " religious ordinance" and " religious obligation , " like a Churchman of ancient breed . We feel obliged to him for introducing to more extended notice the act of the Frotectorate , alias the Grand Rebellion , for regulating the solemnization of marriage and the registration of marriages , births , and burials , which we concur with him in hoping « may be found useful in supplying hints . "

    That it would better comport with the dignity of the Establishment to permit its ministers to act as mere registrars of the acts of a lay-magistrate , ( as the Presbyter suggests , ) than that they should be the functionaries for receiving as well as recording the vows of the married parties , ( as Lord Liverpool recommended , ) we are utterly at a loss to understand ; btrt we are not much in the dark as to the motive for wishing the banns to be proclaimed in the market-place , and bigher fees to be imposed upon licences in London

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    870 ' Review . — Unitarian Marriage Bill .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 370, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/58/