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Untitled Article
« * - piety ; not succeed to the station officially . Or if there be any virtue in the hereditariness of the office , that might be still continued . To us it would seem more reasonable to make the lower offices hereditary rather than the highest . There might be hereditary bishops ; some men might be born priests , and some only in deacons' orders ; the offices of chorister , organist , and verger ,
mig ht descend from generation to generation . If the head be hereditary ,, why not the body and the tail ? Left to itself , the Church would probably as soon submit to the one arrangement as to the other . When we consider how few kings have anv pretension to religious character , and how irregular and profligate some are , the curtailing of this headship would seem to be quite as desirable for the Church as for the State , for the Episcopalian as for the Dissenter .
It would be an immense good , both for Church and State , to get rid of that corrupt influence which arises from the patronage of livings and disposal of dignities . The only persons interested in this , are the aristocracy and their dependents . This is their great fund from which drafts are issued at the expense of reli gion and patriotism . It constitutes them a Joint Stock Company for the diffusion of hypocrisy , the degradation of religion , and the promotion of taxation .
The separation of Church and State would involve the release of the Bishops from their attendance in the House of Lords . This would not , that we know of , be much regretted by any body . If the total exclusion of clergymen from the Legislature were thought an unjust stigma , they might be made eligible like
other members of the community . The objection is , to making the peerage an appendage to a spivitual function . A fifth link is the power to levy Church rates on the entire bod y of parishioners . Dissenters help to pay , not onl y for keeping the church in repair , but for the organ that plays within its walls , and
the sacramental bread and wine that are eaten and drank by its communicants . This paltry imposition should be removed ; not by shifting any portion of it to the general amount of national taxation , but by fairly allowing- the princi p le that no man shall be taxed for the support of a religion of which he disapproves . We believe our enumeration is complete , by adding those nuisances , the Ecclesiastical Courts . We suppose any discreet
advocate for the Church would let judgment go by default against them . Whatever is useful in their functions might be easily transferred to the civil tribunals . And now let any reasonable man say what there is in this separation , when lookdd at in detail , to make an outcry about ? Who would be injured b y it ? Who would not be benefited ? As soon as the matter is clearly understood , the only objectors will be those who want to make money out of the name of reli gion by quartering themselves , or other incompetent persons ! upoa the
Untitled Article
— — On the Seoaration of Church and State . 317
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 317, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/5/
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