AUTO-BIOGRAPHY OF "OH!"

"I say, sir, that on religious and moral grounds"-here the honourable baronet was interrupted by frequent cries of "Oh, oh," from all parts of the House, but especially from -(SPEECH OF SIR R. H. INGLIS, BART., M.P.)

̓Αντὶ δ ̓ εὐίων βακχευμάτων

Ποίμνας Κύκλωπος ανοσίου ποιμαίνομεν.—CrcLoPS.

SIR,-Many utterly insignificant have been treated with the greatest observance through their accidental connection with important events. My fate has been the very reverse-I have been closely connected with much that has filled the world's eye-nay, I have often been mainly instrumental in carrying it about, and yet, sir, I am forced into the lowest company, I am treated with the most insulting familiarity, and all my claims upon public attention are uniformly disregarded; but I will bear this no longer.

"Semper ego auditor tantum? nunquam ne reponam."

"The world shall hear something of my origin and of my doings." But in the outset let me say, that I must not be confounded with any of the common place-members of my numerous family.

I have a brother who is the very soul of glee; the companion of rejoicing. There is not a tale of fun, nor a tune of success-not a sparkling of the eye, not a rubbing of the hands, but he is there.

I have another brother of a very pitiful temper. He is always lavishing his power upon stories of distress; dwelling with sentimental damsels and Irish rockites.

There is one of us, too, who is always full of real sorrow. You would think that his long pale face had never been out of a dungeon, a poorhouse, or an hospital.

Again, there is a passionate brother who never shews himself but in a transport of pain or rage. But none of these are at all like me. I am a person of a very high and unbending spirit; I never could pity any one, except bigots; I never was in a real passion in my life, nor did I ever laugh but when I was stinging. It is usual, sir, to give some account of the personal appearance of the subject of a narrative. But my likeness is within the reach of all. Let any one who would see me, go into the company of a man of enlarged views, and there broach those superseded restraints which religion of old inflicted upon men, and he will see my fine, scornful expression grinning upon the face of the philosopher. It will go hard with him if he does not hear me escape from his lips.

"Dubius unde rumperet silentium

Misit Thyesteas preces."-Hon. Er. 5.

But to pass, sir, to my more important peculiarities, the actions of my life. It can hardly be expected by those who are at all acquainted with me, that I should be able here to be particular in my narrative. I have, indeed, been concerned in great events, but I have never refused to condescend to little things; I have ruined nations, but I

have not been averse to destroy the meanest individuals. Not a well disposed youth has been laughed out of meekness into profligacy, but I have mainly achieved his conversion. To attempt to follow out my life would be as utterly hopeless as to pursue one of the intertwining threads of a lady's carpet work, or one of the errors of Mr. Hume's calculations, through all its endless meanderings. A few of my greater achievements may be taken to illustrate my character.

The first occasion which stamped a lasting impress upon my nature was when the tempter stopped, with my aid, the misgivings of the mother of mankind. She had the apple in her hand-her lips were ready to receive it—when a sudden fear closed them again. But I had hardly reached her ear, with the addition of, "Ye shall not surely die," before her face mantled with anger-her fearful thoughts banished-and the great work was completed. Another time of goodly memory was, when Lot came to warn his sons-in-law about the burning of their town. Two of them were just going to fly with him, when I came in at the moment, and then the tables were turned at once. Lot seemed "as one that mocked," and had to fly alone. To be sure, his sons-in-law were hemmed up in the town, but what then? But who can say what I did when Noah had built his ark: at one time there were many amongst the men of the old world who began to be uneasy at his words; but there was a knot of fine brave souls who stood close by the ark, and call it "Noah's folly," and used me so plentifully, that the melting hearts were all steeled again, and they would have nothing to say to him or his ark; and when the waters came, how I skipped away from them, and left them my poor long-faced brother to comfort them in the cold waves. But I am growing too long for my habit, for I am but short breathed, for all I have done great things in my day; you must see my character at once. I hate meek spirited fools who are always prating about principle, and conscience, and judgment. I love to sit in the seat of the scornful, to carry things with a high hand, and laugh these womanish fears out of countenance. The best hit of the sort that I ever made, perhaps, was when I persuaded the Jews to slay that old fool, James the Just. My great master had tried all ways, and failed; but the moment I skipped out amongst them, it was done. It was but, "Oh," "Oh," the just man lying, and his business was settled. Now, sir, have I not a claim to greater consideration? Have I not done great things-am I not the very tip of the devil's tongue? the very high top of the wave on which the infidel and the atheist swims in upon the land? And I am not idle now, I assure you; I am far from superannuated. I have just obtained admission into the House of Commons in company with many other characters who were once excluded thence through the absurd prejudices of illiberal persons. You cannot think what a goodly company we are. There are infidels and socinians, and radicals, and atheists. I hop about from one to another; and when a miserable bigot gets up

* ' ώ ψευδεται ὁ δικαιος.—EUSEBIUS.

and talks about justice or principle, I am as busy as a bee; and if I can do nothing else, I can always raise a dust which will blind any one but Satan. I never could digest an argument—but I can smother a bushel of the best-and I am always handy. Thersites can make as much use of me as Achilles, Nabal as Ahitophel. Trust me but a little longer-let me have my sway in the senate-let me laugh down the godly and the right, and I shall soon have the nation as much the devil's slave as I am myself. I will banish every lingering blush from the face of shame-I will plant iniquity in the seat of justice-wrong shall burn on every man's hearth-every man shall hate his neighbour-and England shall be the noblest monument of my power.

"For a naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth; he winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers. Frowardness is in his heart; he decryeth mischief continually; he soweth discord. Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy."

П. Е. К.

DIOCESAN JURISDICTION.

SIR,-The day, I fear, is not very distant when the orthodox clergy of the church of England will be called upon to "make the stand" contemplated by your correspondent . in his letter on the Reform of the Liturgy, page 438 of your number for this month. The way in which the stand is to be made is indeed a matter of awful importance, and well demands deep and serious deliberation on the part of those who would be prepared for the conflict. "That there are men in the church, not few in number, nor weak in power, who will leave in a body those who are so greedy for alterations to their new friends, their new opinions, and their old preferments, and will, without hesitation, choose poverty with a good conscience instead of new ones with a bad one," I agree with the able writer in your Magazine for July, in thinking: nay, I would fain hope, that, notwithstanding the sectarianism which of late years have found their way so extensively among us, that this body is, as yet, the most powerful of the two. But the solution of the questions of your correspondent is a point on which such of us as are determined to make the stand ought to make up our minds. But how, Sir, are these questions to be solved ?-for I conceive the notions which . entertains with regard to the difficulties which will beset the seceding clergy to be on the whole correct. Should his supposition be realized, and should "a majority of our representatives in convocation, duly convened by royal authority, sanction such alterations in our Liturgy as to render the church of England, in the opinion of a large number of her clergy and laity, an heretical body; and should the orthodox bishops and presbyters be compelled to resign their preferment," the situation of these bishops

and presbyters will be one for which no parallel, I humbly imagine, is to be found in ecclesiastical history, and therefore we may turn over the pages of the "old almanack" for our guidance in vain. The case of the ejected prelates of the Scottish church, at the Revolution, is similar in nothing but their expulsion. They were driven out to make room for an establishment not only rejecting the previous forms and ritual, but also denying the necessity for, and the authority of primitive order and discipline. These venerable men, therefore, had no competitors to contend with them in the exercise of those high spiritual functions peculiar to their order; and having maintained their allegiance inviolate to the family of the sovereign from whom they originally derived their diocesan jurisdiction, they might, with a safe conscience, have exercised that jurisdiction over such of the clergy and laity as still adhered to them. I say they might have done it, but, if I remember right, they did not do so. They formed themselves into a college, exercising a general superintendence over the church, without assigning to each member of the college a particular district,-and nothing like diocesan jurisdiction was revived in Scotland till the year 1827. But, be this as it may, the features of our case will be widely different. The alterations in the liturgy and change in our articles (for changed they must be, if the innovations talked of shall be adopted) being sanctioned by competent authority; the prelates "of the reformed heretical church retaining their power of order, of which nothing can deprive them, must, I fear, in the eye of the law, be considered as the successors of the ancient confessors and martyrs in the sees in their possession;" and that the seceders will not be warranted in electing and consecrating, for every see so occupied, an orthodox bishop. Because, though the seceding prelates would obtain their spiritual, they would lose their political episcopacy by which their diocesan jurisdiction was originally conferred on them.

You are aware, Sir, that the canonists make a distinction between the power of order and diocesan jurisdiction, and consider these two things as separable: and separable we must allow them to be, unless we would withdraw the church from all subjection to the secular magistrate; or, what is worse, churchmen from subjection to the church itself, for it would be vain to talk of the secular magistrate's power over the church, or of the church over her own sons, if neither could divest a refractory bishop of his diocesan authority. The true source of diocesan jurisdiction with us is the secular sovereign; at least he is the prime source, though the immediate conveyance of the jurisdiction is by the ecclesiastical superior. This power of conferring diocesan authority was exercised by the sovereigns of the world, without opposition on the part of the church, from the first establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire by Constantine, down to those times when the bishops of Rome attempted to get it into their own hands, in which extravagant project they never completely succeeded. For many ages after Constantine the authority of the secular sovereign, in this matter, was so completely recognised by the church, that when the emperors ejected bishops from their sees, and appointed new ones,

which they often did in the most arbitrary manner, the faithful laity or clergy never, I believe, scrupled to receive the new bishop of the emperor's appointment, and to submit to him as their true and lawful bishop, unless he was an heretic. The secular sovereign, therefore, according to the practice of the highest antiquity to which in this case it is reasonable to appeal, is the true source of diocesan jurisdiction. I say according to the practice of the highest antiquity to which it is reasonable to appeal; for it is idle, in this question, to go back for precedent to the three first centuries, when the church was no where under the protection of the magistrate. But in the rejection, by the ancient church, of an heretic, we may be thought to have a precedent for our guidance; and so, I think, we should have, were it not for the other difficulty suggested by .:-What is to become of our doctrines about the king's supremacy? "Here, things cannot continue to stand on their old ground." And yet what is the change or modification of which they will admit? With my notions of the royal prerogative I cannot imagine a modification which, in foro conscientiæ, will absolve us from the doctrines we have hitherto held. I conceive that the secular sovereign, being a Christian, is every where the rightful head of the church within his dominions; that he has a supremacy even in those congregations that dissent from the established church, so far as to prescribe the conditions upon which they may be tolerated. This ecclesiastical supremacy of the secular sovereign being Christian, I maintain to be one of the natural rights of sovereignty. Without this right in the sovereign there could be no establishment; and, for the proof of this right, it is not necessary to resort to any scholastic subtleties of argument, but to appeal to the uniform practice of the Christian world, to the exercise of the right on the part of the sovereign, and the cheerful submission to it, on the part of the church, from the days of Constantine the Great, down to the times of the papal encroachments. This supremacy of the sovereign it would be no less the duty of the seceding prelates, as protestant bishops, to maintain than the divine institution of episcopacy-for it is the only principle to oppose with practical effect to the supremacy of the pope. It would have been the universal doctrine of protestants had not Calvin's ambition incited him to oppose it: for Calvin, though in other respects a good man, in ambition was a very Hildebrand. He meant to be the pope of the protestant churches, and wished to transfer the seat of ecclesiastical despotism from Rome to Geneva. And with these views he set himself to declaim against the supremacy claimed by the protestant sovereigns of this country, as an Erastian encroachment of the secular power upon the rights of the church. This doctrine, however, of the protestant sovereigns' supremacy the orthodox seceding clergy, for the reasons I have mentioned, can never abandon: and not only must they not abandon it, but, taking into their consideration the encroachments which the claimants for the papal supremacy have already made, and are still making upon the power, authority, and influence of the protestant establishment in Ireland, they must be particularly careful not to modify it to any degree which may weaken the efficiency of the principle involved in it, and yet how any modification