embarked in the same boat with the political dissenter, the member of the "Anti-State-Church Association." Hitherto, indeed, the tendency towards a separation between Church and State has among Churchmen been confined to the foremost ranks, or perhaps we should say, the most advanced skirmishers, of the two extreme parties in the Church; but there are sufficient elements of mischief at work to render the further development of that tendency, and the consequent conversion of Churchmen to Anti-State-Church principles, far from improbable. To the causes likely to produce such a result, we need do no more than briefly allude in this place. The attitude which the State has assumed in reference to the extension of Church education, and which, coming in the form of proffered assistance, amounts virtually to obstruction,-the pretension of the State, advanced with daily greater openness and violence, to treat the Church upon the footing of one sect among many, the only distinction made between them being that the State claims over the Church a right of interference which it dares not to attempt with regard to the meanest of the sects,-the bold and high-handed determination to exempt the Church patronage of the State from every check which the constitution of the Church has provided against the intrusion of unfit persons into her offices of trust, the perseverance in a pernicious system of Church legislation by a Parliament which does not recognize the principles of the Church, and which counts among its members a host of declared enemies of the Church and of her principles, a system necessarily productive of many unintentional blunders, if not of intentional injuries to the Church, and, last and most grievous of all, the recent proposal, not the less alarming because proceeding from a number of disaffected clergymen, to erect Parliament, although distracted by an endless variety of sectarian opinions among its members, and creedless in its corporate capacity, into an ecclesiastical synod, and to make it the arbiter of the Church's faith and doctrine,all these causes, with others of lesser account, and of a more secular character, are unquestionably calculated to make the most sincere and devoted Churchman feel that the connexion between the Church and the State is productive of the most serious, not to say of intolerable, evils. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that numbers, guided by impulse rather than by mature judgment, by zeal rather than by knowledge, should rush to the conclusion that the severance of the connexion between Church and State is not only allowable, but would be of positive benefit to the Church; that they should, as the Report of the Executive Committee for 1847 (No. 4), expresses it," turn their eyes to an alternative which practically

will bring them alongside of the British Anti-State-Church Association."

It is something to be clearly aware of the danger of this alternative; and it is with a view to bring those who view to bring those who may be tempted into it, acquainted with the company into which their aspirations for a separation between Church and State must lead them, rather than from any notion of the intrinsic importance of the Anti-State-Church Association, that we are induced to drag forth that body from its obscure notoriety, and to bring its constitution, its principles, and its action, under the cognizance of the members of the Church. In doing this we desire not to lose sight of the fact that connexion with the State is by no means essential to the being of the Church. We remember, of course, that there was a time, far from the least prosperous period in the Church's history, when the Church was not only not connected with the State, but persecuted by it, and threatened with extermination; it is a recollection from which we draw great comfort in the prospect, by no means an improbable, scarcely a remote one, of the renewal of a war of extermination on the part of the State against the Church. Neither are we prepared to maintain that in the event of matters being pushed to an extremity, the time may not come when it will be the duty of the Church, not indeed to force on by any act of hers the severance of her connexion with the State, but to offer to the encroachments of a political power acknowledging no other than a merely human, a utilitarian, materialistic basis of society, such firm resistance as will leave the State no option but that of repentance on the one hand, or persecution of the Church on the other. Yet, with a firm determination, we trust, when the time of persecution shall arrive, to bear our share of it, and with a clear perception of the fact that such a time may come, that it may not be very far distant, we feel anxious, all the more anxious because we are sensible of the approaching danger,-that no rashness of over-zealous churchmanship should accelerate the crisis, in order that when the evil day comes, Churchmen may be supported in it by the consciousness of having carried forbearance to the utmost limits to which it can be extended without a sinful surrender of the paramount obedience due to the invisible Head of the Church,—and, above all, that they may stand out in sharp and clear contrast from the unruly and ungodly multitude enlisted under the banner of the Anti-State-Church Association.

On inquiring into the origin of this Association, we learn that the world is indebted for it to the editor of the Nonconformist, a virulent dissenting print, started about eight years ago, whose motto is "the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the VOL. X.-NO. XIX.-SEFT. 1848.

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Protestant religion." A paper from the pen of Dr. Cox, read at the first Anti-State-Church Conference (No. 1), gives the following account of the early history of the movement :

"In 1842 the editor of the Nonconformist produced a series of articles on the evils of State and Church alliance, and proposed a convention of delegates to discuss the propriety of adopting measures for an aggressive movement; but the suggestion only tended further to illustrate the apathy of dissenters at that period. Providence soon employed another weapon, which the author of the projected mischief denominated an olive branch, but which nonconformists soon perceived to be a rod to chastise them into an ecclesiastical subjugation to which they were by no means disposed to submit; and by their unanimity and zeal, a Parliament with scarcely any dissentients, and a Government undoubtedly strong, were compelled to abandon their design.

At

"The same journalist immediately resumed his efforts to obtain a convention, but for a considerable time with no apparent success. length a brief appeal, signed by upwards of seventy ministers resident. in the midland counties, the purpose of which was to rouse to united action in order to rescue religious freedom for ever from the dangers of ignorant and intermeddling legislation, was sent, in the autumn of 1843, to the secretaries of various dissenting bodies in London. In the mean time the necessity of adopting some measures to secure and advance the interests of religious freedom had been seen by a few individuals, who held private meetings, employed some methods of ascertaining the sentiments of their brethren at a distance, and agreed to convene a meeting of ministers of the three denominations on the subject. Owing to untoward circumstances occasioning informality in presenting the memorial of the midland counties, but still more to a disinclination to adopt any present aggressive movement, that memorial was disregarded, and the efforts of such members of that body as were anxious to do something, were in consequence unavailing.

"Impatient of delay, a meeting of gentlemen, ministers and others, in the counties already referred to, was convened by circular, and held at the Town Hall Library, Leicester, on Thursday, December 7th, 1843; when the following resolution, among others, was adopted unanimously:

"That this meeting, impressed with the belief that the principle of national establishments for the maintenance of religion is essentially anti-Christian and unjust, derogatory to the sovereign claims of the great Head of the Church, and subversive of the indefeasible rights of man; that the practical working of this principle in Great Britain and Ireland is productive of numerous and most deplorable evilsspiritual, moral, political, and social; that strenuous and systematic efforts are now being made to extend the range, and to augment the efficiency, of this principle, both at home and in our colonies; that the introduction to Parliament, last session, of the Factories Education

Bill by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, affords sufficient evidence that the existing measure of religious liberty enjoyed in this kingdom is, during the continuance of the compulsory system, unsafe; and that the present juncture of events distinctly and loudly calls upon the friends of the voluntary principle cordially to unite, and earnestly to labour, in the use of all peaceable and Christian means, to accomplish, as speedily as possible, a separation of the Church from the State-deem it expedient that a conference of delegates be convened, representing all persons in these realms who repudiate the principle of a religious establishment, and who are of opinion that this is a suitable method of commencing a serious movement against it; and this meeting do hereby pledge themselves to use their best exertions to secure the assembling of such conference at the place and time which may hereafter appear most nearly to 'accord with general convenience, and with the demand of contingent events.'

"Three gentlemen from London, who were present at the meeting at Leicester (Dr. Cox, Dr. Price, and Mr. Miall), having been requested to act as a committee to carry out the general design of the meeting, by completing a list, which was subsequently proposed, of ministers and gentlemen resident in various parts of the country, to constitute a Provisional Committee, were requested, at a meeting in the Congregational Library in London, to unite with themselves three others (Rev. C. Stovel, Rev. J. Carlile, and Mr. Hare) chosen for the same purpose. That Provisional Committee consisted of nearly 200 individuals—145 ministers and 48 laymen-who readily acceded to the wishes of their friends, and proceeded forthwith to elect an Executive Committee of twenty-one. Incessantly devoted from the moment of their election to the fulfilment of the great object to which they were invited, namely, to devise the best means of obtaining a conference of the friends of religious freedom and the decided opponents of State-Church establishments having assembled on Thursday, Feb. 8th, 1844, they continued to meet weekly, to conduct an extensive correspondence with every part of the empire, and to prepare for a conference of all denominations on the great enterprise before them."

By these means the first Anti-State-Church Conference was brought into existence. It arose from an active, but artificial agitation, and drew its inspirations from a determination to obstruct as much as possible the diffusion of religious knowledge among the ignorant masses of our manufacturing population. We never professed to be admirers of Sir James Graham's Factory Education Bill,-the "olive branch," alias "rod," alluded to by Dr. Cox in the above extract. It was a measure which placed the Clergy in a position anomalous in itself, and calculated seriously to damage their consistency in the eyes of the people, and thereby to impair their efficiency. Still, before the awful revelation of heathenish ignorance in the manufacturing

districts, of a wholesale immolation of souls to the demon of lucre, 'the voice of the Church was mute; she was ready to forego her own rightful position rather than offer obstruction to a measure, however objectionable in other respects, which provided a remedy for so crying an evil. While this was the conduct of the Church in reference to Sir J. Graham's Bill, the defeat of which cannot -especially after the noble effort on her part to which it ledbe considered in any other light than that of a great service rendered to the Church by her enemies, it is worthy of notice, that the zealots whom Dr. Cox, himself one of the number, eulogizes as the indefatigable originators of the Anti-State-Church movement, were perfectly willing to undertake the responsibility of thousands of souls perishing in a condition of worse than pagan ignorance, rather than suffer the State to call in the aid of the Church for the removal of that ignorance and the salvation of those souls. It was the calling out of the remedial action of the Church for the cure of a great national evil, which gave the first impulse to the notable design of making war, war to the knife, upon the Church herself. Such was the effect of the dissenting system on this occasion, abundantly bearing out the Doctor's own remark, that "systems generate prejudices, work on human passions, envenom party feelings, render the amiable cruel, and the cruel ferocious." True, most true, plain-spoken Doctor Cox,it was indeed "ferocious" to say, "Rather than run the risk of the additional influence which this Education Bill may give to the ministers of the hated State-Church, let us doom thousands and tens of thousands of factory children to ignorance and to eternal ruin. Perish their souls! rather than that the Church should flourish." With such "ferocity" of fanaticism in act, making a holocaust of the blood of the innocents, it sounds more like hypocrisy than any thing else, to declare with pious unction: "It is material to observe that it is not against men, but systems, or rather against one great anti-scriptural system, that we wage holy warfare; and call upon all that love the truth to come up 'to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.""It was not with the "help of the Lord," but with the help of "the spirit which denieth," that Dr. Cox and his company arose to the battle; and that not against the mighty, but against weak helpless children, the lambs, as they are called to be, of the fold of Christ.

Being thus born and cradled in reckless disregard of the souls of men, it is by no means surprising that the Anti-State-Church Association should be found to pursue its career headlong, for the overthrow of the great religious institution of the country, the religious teacher of its present and by-gone generations, without the