whatever of the form is retained, is founded upon expediency, (though expedieney would have justified more of it,) principles not so easy to oppugn, and in the durability of which we have still some confidence. For instance, we might refer a reasonable man, who had doubts about his faith, or doubts about the excellency of our establishment for the support of it, to Paley on the evidences of the one, and on the expediency of the other; or, in the latter case, with still more satisfaction, to Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, to the Consecration-Sermon of Barrow, or to Warburton's admirable Essay on the Alliance between Church and State; but previous to the Reformation, if doubts were entertained upon either of these points, where were the people to go for the solution of them? The evidences were then a branch of theology little explored. The First Harmony of the Gospels (a work so conducive to the evidences, indeed their very alphabet) was the fruit of the controversies of those times. Assuredly he would have been a bold man who had appealed to the evidences for much of what was then taught as Scripture. Credo quia impossibile est, was much the safer maxim. Then, for the expediency of the church establishment of those days, who was allowed to express a doubt upon it? Who, therefore, was intrepid enough to attempt a defence of that which it would have been heresy to suspect in want of one? Pol! me occidistis, amici! would have been the cry at such a proceeding. The framers of the Catechismus ad Parochos, when something of the kind is at length forced from them, give token enough how little prepared they were to hear the value of a churchman made a matter of question. They are equally extravagant in their demands, and feeble in the support of them. If, therefore, men had their misgivings about the worth of religion itself, or of the establishment by which it was taught, (as numbers hed,) there was nothing for it but to smother their doubts. Meanwhile, the church stalked along, apparently caring for none of these things; but the danger was not on that account the less-still her path lay over hidden fires. As soon as the crisis came which allowed them to burst forth, they did so, and with the throes of a volcano. The evil principles which broke out at the reformation, and which, had they not been overruled, were tending to destroy all religion, both form and essence, were the effect of this incubus taken off, and deplored by none more than by the reformers themselves-by honest Latimer, in his sermons, above all. They well knew, that however such excesses brought the reformation, for a while, into disrepute, it was the consequence of old abuses, and that no devil will go out without rending in pieces the body which he has possessed. This, it must be confessed, was a very unsound state of things, fraught, perhaps, with much more real danger than that enmity which may now be openly shown towards Christianity, and the teachers of it. The more so, as it may be doubted whether the ministers themselves were in those days always true to the faith they professed. Our strongest ground of hope and confidence' (says Mr. Southey) is in the church itself, and the character of its ministers. In Roman Catholic states, and more especially in those which are most catholic and most papal, infidelity is as common among the higher and bettereducated clergy, as the grossest superstition is among those who are taken, with little education, from the lower order of the people. Among the clergy of the church of England, there may be some who believe and tremble, and a few (they are but few) who are false to the establishment in which they are beneficed, and would let the wolf into the fold; but if there be an infidel among them, it is known only to that Almighty and most merciful Father, to whom all hearts are open, and from whom no secrets are hid. Such a man may live self-reproached, but his want of belief will never infect others-it will be a hidden wound, quod proxima nesciat uxor.'-v. ii. p. 111. The church, then, has now nothing to fear from the reason of her adversaries, (which before the reformation she had,) though she has much to fear, God knows, from their want of it; nor yet from treachery within the camp. It is from the hold of un-reason and misrule that she needs protection; and they who are for withdrawing all adventitious supports from her, as if she were strong enough to stand upon her own purity alone, will do well to remember that it is not the rational convictions of mankind which set themselves in battle array against her, but their ignorance, and lukewarmness, and prejudice, and passion, and cupidity; and what can her purity do, however unblemished, against adversaries like these? The lady in Comus would have counted in vain upon her chastity, for security, without other help. Dr. Sanderson and Dr. Hammond, we presume, might have cried to the parliamentary visitor, till they were hoarse, Thy servants are true men, they are sound scholars, they have done good service among the students at Oxford, having set forth the doctrines of the Bible with learning and integrity. My simple-hearted friends, would have been the answer of the Presbyterian, if he had spoken his mind, (which, however, it would not have been quite in his character to do,) this is all very true, but I want your professorship and your canonry. Nay, the bishops, in a body, had, no doubt, the best of the argument when they pleaded their own cause, previously to their temporary extinction. Milton, who was well-qualified to judge, and whose prejudices were not violently episcopalian, allowed it. What of that?-did the justice of their cause save them? Might will often overcome right, and legisla tors tors who are wise will take men as they are, not as they ought to be, and frame their laws accordingly. This is the ground upon which the church seeks an alliance with the state, that she cannot altogether depend upon the reasonableness of her cause before a tribunal which is not altogether reasonable. But though this is true, still in the reasonableness of her cause she has great strength; for a considerable portion of this nation (and that, of course, the most virtuous) will ever be governed by it; and this is one ground of hope with us, that though the religion, and the religious establishment of the country, are exposed to more storms than in the days of popery, they are held by a stouter anchor. They were before at peace, but it was the peace of ignorance-they are now in strife, but they have some honest conviction of their worth, for an ally. They had, heretofore, many pretended friends, and few avowed enemies-they have now the open enemy, and the friend indeed; those who would trample both under foot, and those who would lay down their lives for either. This is a more wholesome, and perhaps a less perilous condition. There is another cause alleged for greater present apprehension -that, previous to the reformation, the church of Rome was one and undivided, whereas our reformed church is full of intestine divisions; her strength wasted by dissent. Doubtless the dissenters are a powerful body, and, as a whole, inimical to our establishment. They have a prescriptive right to be so-they are the old leaven of the puritan times, which, having lain dormant for a century, began to work again (as Mr. Southey says) when there was thunder in the atmosphere. But that the thunder came was in a great measure imputable to culpable negligence both in church and state. Ourselves were in the fault; · neque Per nostrum patimur scelus Iracunda Jovem ponere fulmina.' Mr. Southey thinks, and we see no reason to dissent from him, that John Wesley was an instrument in God's hands, for the correction of the times. For a century before him, the peculiar doctrines of Christianity had not been brought forward so prominently as they should have been by preachers in general. Unquestionably, some very orthodox sermon-writers there were, during that period; nay more, a school of divines then sprung up, who have furnished our theological armoury with weapons against deism, of a temper never equalled before or since; and deism, or a tendency to it, was the sin of the day. We have taken more occasions than one, of offering our feeble but unfeigned tribute of admiration to Bishop Butler. To him we believe that many men, whose thoughts, like Chillingworth's, might otherwise have proved more more than their own match, have 'owed their ownselves.' But whilst these controversies were going on amongst scholars, respecting the reasonableness of Christianity, (we are the last persons to underrate their importance,) the million, who, in the simplicity of their hearts, never doubted about its reasonableness, and regarded such disputes among doctors merely as questions of their law,' in which themselves had no interest, and concerning which they felt no curiosity, 'These hungry sheep looked up, and were not fed.' They and their teachers did not understand one another: the latter too often addressed them as Sadducees, who wanted conviction, which is seldom the case with the multitude in any nation. They felt themselves to be sinners who wanted relief, which is the case with the multitude in every nation, for it is the dictate of nature. They were asking for fish, and a serpent was given them; it might be the subtlest beast of the field, but it was not to the purpose: they were crying for bread, and a stone was offered them; it might be, indeed, a philosopher's stone, but it was not what they sought. We are aware that many there are to whose opinion the utmost respect is due, who do not take this view of the theology of the early and middle part of the last century. We state, therefore, our own impressions with much submission; but an author of those times, no fanatic either, but, on the contrary, one who dealt some of the heaviest blows at fanaticism that it has ever felt, takes the same view. And whatever extravagancies the prolific genius of Warburton led him into, amidst all his refinements, and discoveries, and paradoxes, the great principles of the Gospel, as they were held and taught by the reformers, he never lost sight of, (however he might not be true to some of inferior importance,) and any departure from those great principles no man was more quick to observe, or more anxious to reprobate. At the same time, it is not to be concealed that the theology of his day was not the more likely to find favour in his eyes, from the circumstance that his own most elaborate work had been received by his own order with suspicion, if not with alarm; and that in any sketch from his hand, even though drawn at a moment when no evil spirit was upon him, some allowance must be made for the native strength and boldness of his style: a 'The church,' says he, with his characteristic force, 'the church, like fair and vigorous tree, once teemed with the richest and noblest burthen; and though, together with its best fruits, it pushed out some hurtful suckers, receding every way from the mother plant, crooked and misshapen, if you will, and obscuring and eclipsing the beauty of its stem, yet still there was something in their height and verdure which bespoke the generosity of the stock they rose from. She is now seen seen under all the marks of a total decay; her top scorched and blasted, her chief branches bare and barren, and nothing remaining of that comeliness which once invited the whole continent to her shade. The chief sign of life she now gives is the exuding from her sickly trunk a number of deformed funguses, which call themselves of her because they stick upon her surface, and suck out the little remains of her sap and spirits. Meanwhile, population was increasing, and not increasing only, but shifting its relative position; mines, manufactories, and the like, distributing it in very different masses through the country. For this new order of things no religious provision was made. It has been computed that a body of nine hundred and fifty-three thousand persons, a number at that time actually exceeding the population of nine entire counties, had gradually accumulated within eight miles of St. Paul's, for whom, until recently, no church room had been provided. The progress of the evil had been observed, and an attempt made to meet it, in the reign of Queen Anne; some ten places of worship were voted by parlia ment, or rather built, for we believe fifty were voted, but that the funds proved inadequate to realize the vote. What need, then, have we to call in the conjurers to account for the increasing profligacy of the metropolis? The supineness of the last generation sowed the wind, and it is according to the natural order of things that we should reap the whirlwind. Our fathers have eaten the sour grapes, and our teeth are set on edge. We trust that the exertions which have been made of late, and which are still making, for the more adequate supply of the religious wants of the people, will tend to remove the charge which Sir T. More brings against us in Mr. Southey's dialogue, not, we fear, without reason. 'Your age,' says he, has not advanced more in chemical and mechanical science, and in promoting the comforts and luxuries of life for the classes to whose lot comforts and luxuries fall, than it has gone backward in some of the most essential points of polity. . . As there is no error' (it is added) more prevalent, so is there none more dangerous, than the doctrine which is so sedulously inculcated, that the state ought not to concern itself with the religion of the subjects; whereas religion is the only foundation of society, and governments which have not this basis are built sand.'-p. upon 284. Surely, if there be one fact established above another by the annals of the world it is this, that the state of religion cannot be safely disregarded by any government-that however jesters may deride, and philosophers despise, and politicians forget it, it will eventually assert its claims to attention, and prove them. Nothing Introduction to Julian. could |