To this empty show and chatter; Double, double, toil and trouble, 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. With such grace doth Dickon stand, By some waning dandyzette, square, Due point-blank alone will bear, In a summary debate; Lo, anon the master swells Glad of a pretence for flirting, In North Wilts or Gloucester French; Hubble-bubble, hubble-bubble, Peep into yon solemn room "Bless ye, man, "Do they never more than talk?" Easy task to pates so solid! On each pasteboard monarch's doom, 'Tis but what one might expect; * 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 townhall. 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 148; 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, whether they related to matters of general faith, or to ecclesiastical discipline only; it took cognizance of all offences against established usages, whereso ever, 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 (asevery 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, as well as civil, will have frequent oocasion to be new-regulated and put in order. Now, though by this alliance of church and state no new regulations can be made for church government, but by the state's authority, yet still there is reason that the Church should be previously consulted, which we must suppose well skilled, (as in her proper business,) to form and digest new regulations before they come before the consideration of the civil legislature. Acting otherwise is changing this, which is a federate alliance, into an incorporate union." I am well aware of the reasons which are usually given for the dissolution of Convocation. Its own turbulence; the continual disputes which were carried on between the two Houses; these, together with the extreme anxiety of the King and his ministers that the Church should not ruin herself by internal divisions, are the causes which ostensibly led to that effect. Now, granting that the Convocations which sat during the last years of Queen Anne, and the first of King George, were as turbulent and pugnacious as they are represented to have been, does their turbulence furnish any sufficient reason why the privilege of holding Synods should be for ever taken away from the Church of England? The last years of Queen Anne, and the first of King George, were distinguished by distinguished by an extraordinary degree of turbulence in every public body. In the English Parliament, the Houses of Lords and of Commons were at open war, whilst the Scottish Parliament, as long as it lasted, was little better than a hotbed of faction. But because Parliament was somewhat divided against itself, would this have furnished the sovereign with sufficient grounds for dispensing with the service of Parliaments in all time coming? or would the people of England submit to be deprived of that legislative assembly? The heats and animosities which prevailed in Convocations, therefore, immediately previous to the virtual annihilation of the body, supply no kind of argument why Convocations should not be restored to life after a short dissolution. As appears from the constant subject of these quarrels, the dissensions between the two Houses arose from not having had their respective rights and privileges defined with sufficient accuracy; nor was any other measure required to allay these dissensions for ever, except an accurate understanding on that head. This, no doubt, would have been obtained in time; exactly as the two Houses of Parliament have arrived at length, and that too only of late, at tolerably correct notions touching their respective privileges; so that it cannot be doubted, that Synods, convened and meeting on proper principles, would have proved the reverse of pernicious to the state, or fruitless to the church. So at least thought Hooker, no bad authority on these matters, who characterizes religious councils or synods as "a thing whereof God's own blessed spirit was the author; a thing practised by the holy apostles themselves; a thing always afterwards observed, and kept throughout the world; a thing never otherwise than most highly esteemed of, till pride, ambition, and tyranny began, by factious and vile endeavours, to abuse that divine invention, unto the furtherance of wicked purposes. But, as the first authority of civil courts and parliaments is not therefore to be abolished, because sometimes there is cunning used to frame them, according to the private intentions of men over-potent in the commonwealth, so the grievous abuse which hath been of councils should rather cause men to study how so gracious a thing may again be reduced to that first perfection, than in regard of stains and blemishes sithens growing, to be held for ever in extreme disgrace." There is, indeed, an argument, which I have sometimes heard urged against the existence of any synodical body in the Church of England, and which, as it carries great weight with the few professed high-churchmen of which our ecclesiastical society can still boast, deserves to be noticed. It is this—The Church of England being purely Episcopal in its constitution, supports a distinct order of officers, whose peculiar business it is to direct and govern the society; but as long as Convocations lasted, much, if not the whole governing power, was assumed by the inferior clergy, in direct violation of the rights of the Episcopals. Now, not to repeat the quotation just extracted from Hooker, I would ask the divines who thus argue, whether the Church of Christ was not Episcopal in the days of the Apostles ?-whether |