Double, double, toil and trouble, So much for the crowd pedestrian; Which affords more choice of faces, Ireland, thy fair soul doth raise, But good things spoilt are worse than bad. Yet content with all that passes; Pleased with pump-room, music, shops, And be par-boil'd for the gout, Save 'em right, old skin-flint fusties!"- • See the unwritten laws of the Y-k H-e Club, an institution rivalling the Stock Exchange in the accuracy of its calculations, and its knowledge of the money-market. No doubt, Christopher, these pleasing Milesian varieties are familiar to your ears. If not, ODoherty will, I dare say, add a note explanatory. A celebrated Bath surgeon. VOL. XVII. C To this empty show and chatter; My advice won't mend the matter. Double, double, toil and trouble, Don't crusade to crush a bubble." Now, their toilet quite complete, Hat on one side gaily stuck, Morning saw them wan and wheezy, With new virtues may they bubble, Come, time wears; by way of change, To the coming night's parade. When his lank supporters learn With such grace doth Dickon stand, By some waning dandyzette, At whose shrine, his homage rude Whose eye, well-train'd by line and square, Due point-blank alone will bear, In a summary debate; Lo, anon the master swells Peep into yon solemn room "Bless ye, man, Easy task to pates so solid! On each pasteboard monarch's doom, Just as cheap as I or you; 'Tis but what one might expect; Which my Bath preserves, well-stored, Satyrs, owls, and doleful creatures, Destined still the sport to trouble, Nearly the whole of the Corporation of Bath are medical men. Vide Win Jenkins's complaint of "The Cuck," who appealed to the protection of her potticary the mare," on being detected in malpractices. Far be it, however, from us to suspect, that this respectable body would in the present day sacrifice to Esculapius one iota of the interests of Themis, even so far as to weigh rhubarb with her scales, or borrow, to spread plasters, that sword which she brandishes so imposingly over their townball. LETTERS FROM THE VICARAge. No. II. In my former letter I ventured to assert, that ever since the accession of the House of Hanover to the throne of these realms, the Church of England has gradually undermined herself, by yielding to the variable taste of the times in matters where she ought not to have yielded; and by pertinaciously struggling against that taste, when she ought quietly to have given way to it. In proof of the justice of my assertion, I directed the attention of your readers to the actual condition of the English Church, throughout which there appears to be no common bond of union-no rallying point round which her sons can muster, and say, "This is the doctrine which we feel ourselves bound to maintain." Among her lay-members, indeed, it is well known that there are few, if any, who so much as profess to adhere to her communion on other grounds than be cause she forms an essential part of the political constitution of the country, and conducts her public worship in an orderly and decent manner; whilst of her clergy, one half, or perhaps more than one half, can assign no better reason for their personal service at her altar, than that by serving there they obtain a comfortable independence an object which very possibly they might have failed in obtaining, had they sought it in any other walk of life. This is a sad condition for a spiritual community to be placed in; but the Church of England attained not to it all at once. The singularly loose opinions, or rather the total absence of all fixed principle, which now prevails among her members, has, on the contrary, been the growth, and the progressive growth, of a whole century; and its commencement may, I think, be very easily traced back to the period in our national history to which I have just alluded. Most of your readers are probably aware, that previous to the reign of George the First, and for some little while after his accession, the Church of England, though as perfectly allied to the state as she is at present, enjoyed the privilege of regulating her own affairs, through the instrumentality of a synod, or convocation of her clergy. In ancient times many privileges were claimed, and many rights asserted, by that body, the possession of which was clearly incompatible with the political welfare of the commonwealth; such as that no act of parliament should be valid, till it had first of all obtained the sanction of the third estate; and that the clergy should not be liable to taxation, except by a vote of their own representatives. Since the year 1665, however, when the last of these privileges was abandoned, and the clergy obtained, in return, the right of voting at the election of members of the House of Commons, the Convocation claimed no right of interference in state affairs, and filled, up to the moment of its virtual dissolution, the place which every ecclesiastical assembly ought to fill, namely, that of a spiritual body, met together, by permission of the civil magistrate, to investigate affairs purely spiritual, and for no other purpose. From the year 1665, therefore, up to the hour of its last meeting, the Convocation stood towards the Church of England in exactly the same relation in which the General Assembly now stands towards the Established Church of Scotland. The two bodies mutually represented their respective Churches, and represented them, each after its own peculiar fashion. Thus, whilst the Scottish Kirk, acknowledging no distinctions of rank among her clergy, causes the whole of her delegates to meet under the same roof, and to discuss, with the perfect equality of a popular assembly, such questions as may be brought before them, the Church of England, in accordance with her aristocratic form of government, divided her synod into an Upper and a Lower House. In the Upper House sat the Bishops and Archbishops, by virtue of their office; being to the body at large what the House of Peers is to the Imperial Parliament: whilst in the Lower, the inferior clergy were represented by the Proctors, consisting of all the deans and archdeacons, of one Proctor from every chapter, and of two from the clergy of each diocese. The total number of divines assembled in the Lower House of Convo cation was thus 143; and they chose their prolocutor as the House of Commons chooses its speaker, to enforce the attendance of members, to regulate the debates, to collect their votes, and carry them to the Upper House. I have said that the legitimate office of the Convocation was to regulate all such affairs as had reference to the spiritual concerns, and to the spiritual concerns only, of the Church which it represented. By spiritual concerns, I mean those over which the state has no right of direct control, and which it cannot seem directly to control, without falling into the Erastian heresy. Thus, it rests not with the state in any country to determine by what means, or by what authority, the spiritual character shall be conferred upon a layman; neither can the state decree what shall, or what shall not, be an article of faith among its subjects. These are matters, the management of which has been entrusted, by the divine Founder of the Church, to her, and to her alone; nor can she resign them into the hands of the civil ruler, without betraying the trust which He has confided to her. As long as the Convocation existed, to superintend these, and other similar affairs, was therefore its exclusive business, though its powers were by no means bounded altogether here. In its capacity of representative of the Church, it first exercised a right of deciding such disputes or controversies as might arise among the clergy, whe ther they related to matters of general faith, or to ecclesiastical discipline only; it took cognizance of all offences against established usages, wheresoever, or by whomsoever, committed; it had the power of revising and correcting, as they might appear to stand in need of revision and correction, all public formularies; it could enact new canons, abolish old ones, remodel, if necessary, the very articles themselves; and, above all, it composed a court of surveillance, to which every public functionary, as well of the Episcopal as of the Presbyterian order, was, to a certain extent, amenable. All this authority, Convocation, nevertheless, exercised in strict subserviency to the civil power. In return for the advantages which she obtained, by being preferred to the rank of the establishment, the Church of England acknowledged (as every national church ought to acknowledge) the supremacy of the Sovereign in every matter, spiritual, as well as temporal; and thence her Synod presumed not to assemble without having previously received a summons from the Crown; nor could any of its resolutions obtain the force of canon law till they had been confirmed by sanction of the royal assent. This was exceedingly proper; it was, indeed, the only method which could be devised to hinder the growth of an imperium in imperio within the nation; for, had the church been permitted to exercise even her legitimate functions, independently of the civil magistrate, an authority would have existed in the state commensurate with his, if not absolutely superior. In like manner, the Church of England has never questioned the right of the civil power to confer temporal dignities or preferments on whomsoever it will. All these she accordingly confesses that she derives from the state; nor has Convocation at any period assumed the privilege of interference in any way, either directly or indirectly, with their disposition. As I have already said, the legitimate powers of Convocation were purely spiritual; they extended only to the cognizance of spiritual affairs; and even over these they were not exercised without the direct sanction and approbation of the chief magistrate. It has always appeared to me one of the most unaccountable things in the history of British legislation, why a Synod, thus constituted, and thus effectually restrained from interfering with matters which lay not within its province, should have been dissolved; for the continual prorogation of the body virtually amounts to an utter dissolution. There is surely no good political reason to be assigned for it; whilst there are many ecclesiastical reasons, if we may so speak, against it. "It is a great error," says Bishop Warburton, a prelate whom no one will accuse of carrying high-church notions to a faulty extreme, "to imagine such assemblies, when legally convened, to be either useless or mischievous. For all Churches, except the Jewish and Christian, being human-policied societies, of the nature of which, even the Christian in part partakes ; and all societies, without exception, being administered by human means, it must needs happen that religious societies, |