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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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Untitled Article
rise to the honour of being called elders , presbyters , when the snows of life ' s winter indicated the experience on which the church might confidently repose . These are stirring , searching times . Our grandmothers express the feelings which their disturbed repose suggests by calling them awful times . We were early taught that truth should be our guide , and that where it leads we should follow ; and we fearlessly explore all things that we may hold fast , and expect others to hold fast that which is good . And if any folly , time-consecrated , crosses our path , any prejudice , the ivy-clad ruins of a barbarous age ^ comes in our career , we remorselessly and fearlessly set too to remove the rubbish , fully persuaded that the space will be occupied by something better and more useful .
In this spirit we feel inclined to contrast , no—let us be candidto compare the bench of bishops with this primitive model on which we have descanted . And far be it from us to intend any reflection on the man who may be so fortunate as to hold that high station , except as this station has unavoidably operated to produce a modern bishop , the ostensible and parliamentary successor of those who flourished in the primitive ages of the Christian church .
Their dress , grotesque and singular , and upon vulgar minds imposing , is , to say the least of it , very inconvenient for much exertion ; adapted to impede motion , unless they tuck their aprons up as Peter metaphorically exhorted the elders to gird op their loins . Their large and ample wigs ' made white with other snows than those of time , ' which could suffer no energy of motion and speech , no supplosio pedis , or vehemence of fervid action , without changing what was black to dusted white ; their silk and lawns , their splendid palaces and enormous incomes , their high thrones and higher ambition , their seats in the House of Lords and their subserviency to lordly aristocratic pride , their total separation from the people , or the unmeaning ceremony in which alone they come in contact with the mass of living beings who look up to them as vicegerents of heaven—Good heavens ! what have such things to do with Christianity P What can clothe so much worldly-mindedness with such a sacred name ? What infatuation can prevent the people from seeing that the spiritual power and
character is gone , and that the worldly state and pomp of circumstance have assumed its place ? And so long as this remains to be the ardent object of aspiring priests , the consummation devoutly to be wished , the good to which by all means they push forward !—alas 1 it is written , * My father ' s house is a house of prayer , but you have made it a den of thieves . ' Not * something , ' but all * is rotten in the state of Denmark . * Far other aims his heart has learned to prize , who possesses a spark of the truly episcopal spirit ; who aims to be one * fff those * malfe kings and priests unto God ; ' who desires , in tho apostolic sense / the
Untitled Article
What constitutes a Bizhop ? 471
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1832, page 471, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1816/page/39/
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