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    Untitled Article

    revenues and distributing them among the curates and poorer incumbents ; removing the offensiveness of tithe and direct taxation : — what would such alterations as these signify , or who cares much about them , save those who think a tub may divert the whale ? The probe must go deeper , however much the patient may wince . What is called Church Property is a public trust for the spiritual culture of the entire population . We except from this category all private donations and bequests bestowed since the existence of dissent was legally recognised by

    the passing of the Toleration Act . From that time the donors niay have regarded the Established Church as a sect and not as the nation . They may have wished to endow it for qualities which distinguished it from other sects . The exception relates , we apprehend , to a very trifling portion of the funds in question . Up to that period , with the exception of the times of the

    Commonwealth , the Church was , in the eye of the law , the sole and universal source of religious and moral instruction to the community . Whatever treasures it inherited or acquired , were inherited or acquired by it in that character , which character it has ceased to retain , either in law , or in public opinion .

    The series of enactments on behalf of Dissenters , which commenced with the Toleration Act and ended with the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts , have reduced the Church to the legal position of a privileged sect amongst a number of equally recognised sects , each of which may thus claim to have a portion , varying in size , perhaps , of the once seamless robe of the national

    instructor . Legislation must retrace its steps to the Revolution , ( meeting another revolution on the road , ) in order to renew the sole claim of the Church to the funds which were assigned for the spiritual culture of the entire population . And if this were done , which is utterly impossible , the damning flaw in the title would still remain , —the failure , the complete and disgraceful failure of the Church to fulfil the requisite condition of actually instructing the people .

    Tithes and other ecclesiastical endowments are in this predicament ; a choice must be made between the form and the spirit of the original investiture . If we adhere to the form , the Church of England must forthwith hand over all its funds to the Roman Catholic hierarchy ; if we adhere to the spirit , the Church of England must prepare to submit , as the Church of Rome was compelled to submit before it , to such arrangements as the Government , or now we would rather say the people , acting by their legal organs , shall deem best fitted for the advancement of sound morality and pure religion . It is to the formation of such arrangements that the best attention of all friends of their country should

    be p romptly and strenuously directed . Of what ' means and appliances' does the great mass of the community stand in need , in order to its being trained to wisdom ,

    Untitled Article

    Church Reform . 809

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1833, page 809, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2628/page/5/