On this page

• Text (1)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • 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.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    an enlightened Government , be made largely available to improve the spirit of the popular religion . By bringing forward into stations of dignity and influence those among the clergy in whom religion assumed the most generous and the most intellectual form , a Government in whom the people had confidence , might do much to unsectarianize the British nation . But this is supposing a Government far wiser than the people , and it is much if we can hope that ours will not be inferior to

    hem . The Establishment , in its present state , is no corrective , but the great promoter of sectarianism ; being itself , both in the exclusiveness of its tenets , and in the spirit of the immense majority of its clergy , a thoroughly sectarian institution . Its . very essence is subscription to articles , and the bond of union by which it holds its members together is a dead creed , not a living spirit . We would rather not have any changes which left this unchanged ; and any change in this we shall not see . Generations would be required to reform the principles of the Church ; to destroy it will only be the work of-years .

    We have wandered far from our original topic , the Lord Chancellor ' s speech . That speech is itself the strongest of confirmations of the hopelessness of any improvement in the ChuTch through the influence of the State . Here is a man , confessedly of mental endowments far superior to any other of the ministry , perhaps to any one who is likely to be in the ministry ; and he , in a discussion involving the very existence of the Church Establishment , a discussion so naturally suggesting every topic

    connected with the religious condition of the country , the tendencies of the age in respect to religion , and what is to be desired , or may be done , in respect to any of those tendencies—what does he find to say ? Nothing but the veriest common places , familiar to every schoolboy , on the advantages of some Establishment or other . Not a vvord either of general and comprehensive theory , applicable to all times , or of statesman-like estimation of the exigencies of the present time . Neither the philosophy of the question , nor its immediate practical policy .

    The Primate followed , with a speech of which natvetS was the most prominent characteristic . He wondered how it waa that k while Churchmen entertained the most friendly feeling towards Dissenters , and addressed them in a friendly spirit , the Dissenters should manifest such personal hostility to Churchmen . ' It was true that Churchmen thwarted the Dissenters in all their wishes , but then it was entirely for their good .

    He , for instance , and most of the other bishops , had resisted the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts : * not , ' however , * from any feeling of hostility towards Dissenters , but because they conceived the measure would be productive of injury as regarded the general policy of the country / The Dissenters , however , dislike being trampled upon , even when it is from such laudable and disinterested motives . As to the

    question , which side feels most resentment , we see no proof that the most hostile feeling is on the side of the Dissenters , but we should feel neither surprised nor indignant if it were so . The Archbishop is probably the first who ever thought it wonderful that the party in possession Bhould be in the better temper . When one brother has given to theother the outside of their father ' s house , and taken to himself the inside .

    it is amusing to see him look out of his warm place upon the other who is shivering with cold , and profess to be astonished at bo muck unbro * tfieriy feeling .

    Untitled Article

    Lord Broughams * Defence of the Church Establishment . 44 &

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1834, page 445, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2634/page/63/