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of a multitude deprived of its natural leaders. It would give laws to the State, instead of being legislated for by the State at the will of its adversaries. The Church, even now, bereft as it is of the active leadership of an united Episcopate, is not without power to resist what is evil. The Church is strong in her principles, united on great points (though apparently and outwardly divided), and determined to uphold what she believes to be right, and just, and holy; no matter what Sovereign, or Minister, or Prelate, or Peer may say to the contrary. And in spite of all the difficulties and discouragements that lie before her, we believe that her stedfast perseverance in the path of duty, without fear of man, will in the end be successful.

But in the mean time, our present condition is most alarming. We are divided, not merely by differences on some religious questions; but we are divided by the influence of the State. We can never reckon on unity amongst our hierarchy even on questions of the most vital importance to the existence of the Church or the preservation of her greatest privileges. Our Deans-our Archdeacons-our Canons and members of Chapters-large masses of our parochial clergy-are nominated, either directly or indirectly, by the State: and that State has ceased to have the interest of the Church at heart-ceased to recognize the Church as teaching the Truth. In dealing with the State we are not able to act with perfect independence. The State has its interest within our body: a portion of us are under State influence: some of us cannot act freely: they are bound to discourage all independent action: they are partizans of the State rather than of the Church. With the best intentions, and the purest motives, men are often influenced by their connexions, and their position, and their engagements, to a certain course-a mode of action justified by a thousand excellent principles of duty, loyalty, submission, discretion, and precedent, which, in other times, would have been rightly applied, but which, in the present day, are inapplicable, or rendered obsolete by the change of circumstances.

It is the positive, actual pressing dangers of our position-not any mere speculative and remote prospects, to which thoughtful minds amongst our laity are now directing their attention. The position of the Episcopate is more distinctly seen than formerly. Circumstances have brought out its serious disadvantages; and when we now urge on men who were formerly most earnest in their desire for an increase of the Episcopate, to pursue that object, we are frequently met by objections arising from the position of the Episcopate as nominees of the Minister of the day. They are not desirous of seeing the Minister given the power of creating more bishops, because they have no confidence that any

Minister will make such appointments as will really benefit the Church in her spiritual capacity. The feelings which are widely spread amongst the laity and the clergy of various schools, are fairly described in the following passage from the able and interesting publication of the Honourable Richard Cavendish, the title of which we have prefixed to these pages. This pamphlet, which is addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, draws the attention of that Most Rev. Prelate to various statements in Mr. Noel's recent publication, and having referred to his views on the union of Church and State, proceeds as follows: :

"Of course, I shall not now attempt to prove the lawfulness of the union between Church and State, nor to point out the fearful calamities which would ensue from a separation between them. Too surely the day which shall dawn on this portentous divorce shall witness the sunset of England's glory, England's greatness, and England's stability. It is with the firmest conviction that nothing can ever justify the State in ceasing to promote, as much as lies in its province, the continuance and increase of religion in the land, and that nothing can ever justify the Church in severing the connexion between herself and the State, so long as she can maintain it without disobeying the clear und unmistakeable laws of God, that I approach the consideration of some abuses to which Mr. Noel has directed our attention.

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But, my Lord, while I entertain this conviction, I know also that there has arisen a deep and growing feeling amongst the most thoughtful and earnest of our clergy, as well as amongst the most religious of our laity, that the evils resulting from the actual relation between the English State and the English Church, are such as to make it their duty to endeavour at all hazards to effect by all lawful means an alteration in the existing conditions of that relation. Recent events have not tended to lessen the force of this feeling. Can we wonder, after the experience of the last year and a half, that a conviction should have arisen in the minds of men more ardent and zealous perhaps than prudent, but still men ardent and zealous in the cause of Christ and His Church, that a system which can produce such fruits is too vicious to be treated by any other remedy save that of annihilation?

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Now, my Lord, in the belief that the best, if not the only, way of averting the disastrous consequences which would arise from a total disruption of all ties between Church and State, is to place them on a sounder footing than that which they now occupy, I venture to entreat your Grace's attention to a few among the many items, in Mr. Noel's long catalogue of practical abuses.

"Mr. Noel first adverts to the influence of the union as regards a bishop. He says, 'To fulfil his office rightly, a bishop must be more free than his brethren from ambition and covetousness, more spirituallyminded, more devoted to his ministry, more anxious to bring sinners to Christ, more brotherly and liberal to his fellow-Christians, more zeal

ous for the honour of his Master, more entirely consecrated to God. As a pastor who is less pious than the members of the church over which he presides, does them mischief, because his ministrations tend to bring them down to his level; so a prelate less pious than the pastors whom he governs, inflicts on them a similar mischief. His duty to them is what theirs is to the Churches. He has to convert unconverted ministers, to guide the erring, to reclaim the backsliding, to animate the despondent, to strengthen the weak, to encourage and aid the most devoted. To accomplish these objects, he must surpass them in wisdom and Christian experience, in faith and fervency, in meekness and self-control, in holiness and spirituality of mind. Like Paul, he should be able to say, 'Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.'- 'Be ye followers together of me, and mark them which walk so, as ye have us for an example.' To an office like this a man ought to be chosen with exclusive reference to his spiritual qualifications by pious men, with the utmost caution, and with the most solemn prayer. When the Church at Jerusalem chose Matthias as one of those most suitable to succeed the apostle Judas in his place as an apostle, they then sought the guidance of God. And when Paul was set apart for his mission to the Gentiles by the Presbyters of Antioch, they fulfilled that duty with fasting and prayer. With no less solemnity, earnestness, and dependence upon God, should pious men choose those prelates who exercise so vast an influence in the Anglican Churches for good or evil. But ministers of State are little likely to choose them in this manner. Since prelates have votes in Parliament, where parties are often nearly equal; the most religious statesmen are strongly tempted to make zeal for their political party a leading qualification for a bishopric; and, secondly, since prime ministers are usually the ablest men of their party, chosen, without reference to religious character, for their knowledge of public affairs, and their administrative skill, they have often been destitute of piety. Hence men have often been raised to the bench from party considerations: the choice of the nominee being determined by the wish to please a powerful adherent, or to strengthen the party by the accession of a debater of known capacity, not to mention more questionable motives. The way to rise is obvious. Let any cleric of fair abilities, who aspires to rank and power, be respectable, but not over religious, make himself a good scholar, write some work of literary merit, be a moderate but firm supporter of the party in power, express no opinions on any subject which could be inconvenient to the Government, be a foe to innovation, without being unfriendly to improvements of detail, cultivate the friendship both of powerful families and influential prelates, be a staunch but good-tempered supporter of the Church against dissent; above all, be a safe man, who neither in the administration of a diocese, nor in any parliamentary business, would create embarrassment to the Government, and he may be almost sure of reaching the highest honours of his profession.

"I will not say,—

'That he

Must serve who fain would sway; and soothe and sue
And watch all time, and pry into all place,

And be a living lie-who would become

A mighty thing among the mean ;'

but a course too near to this has often led to greatness. Government can count upon the services of pliant men who never form inconvenient opinions; but they would be exposed to trouble should they nominate any man who, with severe integrity and ardent love of truth, will frankly express his convictions, and manifest the least approach to the temper of a reformer.'

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My Lord, the force of this striking passage depends not on any personal opinions of the author. He states facts; they are notoriously and indisputably true. Let us not, whatever may be the mischief with which worldly men, wise in their own generation, may threaten us if we raise the veil from these arcana of the system with which their interests are entwined, let us not attempt to blink the truth. There would be no true wisdom in the endeavour, even were it, by some possibility, to be successful. Perhaps if we look the evil boldly and honestly in the face, we may, by God's blessing, discover a better way of overcoming it."

We hold it as an axiom, which no one will venture to dispute, that men holding the sacred and awfully responsible office of a Bishop in the Church of God ought to be chosen primarily, and beyond all other considerations, because they are held to possess spiritual qualifications for that office-because they are fit for that office. To appoint men merely because they are of unobjectionable character and conduct, or because they are good scholars, or because they hold office in the universities, or because they are connected with noble families, or because they have been useful in political contests, would be to set aside altogether the grand question of qualification. Every one must admit that this ought to be the first question, and that every thing else should give way to it. Yet all the world knows that this question is, practically, lost sight of entirely. No one ever dreams of a minister looking for spiritual qualifications in a bishop. Let us again hear Mr. Cavendish's remarks on this subject. They are well deserving of attention: such views are rife in all directionsamongst men of the most different theological schools :

"My Lord, I cheerfully admit that we are bound, in spite of appearances, to pass no judgment on the motives which dictated such appointments as those to which Mr. Noel alludes, except that which is consistent with the great law of Christian charity. However hard it is to think so, it is certainly just possible that they may have been con

scientious. But what can we say of a system in which such scandals can be conscientiously committed, and committed too without raising an universal cry of indignation, so natural are they considered to be under that system? The prime minister is appointed, as Mr. Noel frequently reminds us, by the majority of a House of Commons, including Romanists, Socinians, and other Dissenters, and which moreover soon may, and probably will, include Jews, if not Mahometans. He has been all his life engaged in party struggles for the attainment or retention of office, sometimes in less creditable occupations. If by chance he be a conscientious and religious man, how in the nature of things can he, with the best intentions, be qualified to select bishops? Few ministers have earned or deserved a better reputation as dispensers of ecclesiastical patronage than Lord Liverpool. Yet his chief merit in this capacity was negative. It will scarcely be asserted by the warmest admirers of this statesman, that during his administration, the best and fittest men, or any thing like the best and fittest men, were chosen for vacant bishoprics. I dwell on this point of selection, because it is that which lies at the root of the evil. The Church, it may be said, possesses certain inherent safeguards against improper appointments. I admit that the Church has not yet been legally pronounced to have been robbed of her clear and inalienable right to exercise her immemorial privilege, and perform her imperative duty at the confirmations of her bishops. But supposing that she were freed from all the impediments so tyrannically sought to be placed in her way as regards this essential point, would even this secure good appointments? Assuredly not. Many a person may be appointed to an office, of whom all men may be morally convinced that he is unfit to discharge its duties, and yet against such a man it may not be possible to bring any tangible charge. A right reverend prelate, of whom I wish to speak with the deep respect due not only to his great abilities and learning, but to his high-minded conscientiousness and integrity of character, observed in the House of Lords, that the Church possesses ample security as regards the appointment to bishoprics, because the minister is confined in his choice to clergymen, already approved of by their bishops as fit to hold the office of pastor. Was the bishop exercising that talent of irony, which he possessed in so eminent a degree? Granting that all clergymen were fitted, as regards their moral and religious character, for the office of bishop (Mr. Noel has uttered nothing more severe of the Church than is implied in this hypothesis), still to say that every one of these many thousand gentlemen was qualified for so high and difficult an office, would be about as true as to say that every fashionable young officer in the Guards was qualified to command an army. It cannot, therefore, be too strongly urged, or too continually borne in mind, that as long as the appointment to bishoprics shall rest with the prime minister for the time being, so long can the Church entertain no valid or reasonable hopes of exacting a compliance with her just and reasonable demands that none shall be set over her as bishops, who are not chosen simply for their fitness to discharge the apostolic office. There are now in the

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