370 "THE CHURCH IS IN DANGER" [ESSAY III of men; and shall be content to bear my portion, if I can promote that purification of a Christian church of which none but the prejudiced or the interested deny the need. They who endeavour to conceal the need may be the advocates, but they are not the friends, of the church. The wound of the daughter of my people may not be slightly healed. It is vain to cry Peace, peace, when there is no peace. What then will the reader who has noticed the testimonies which have been offered in this chapter think of the propriety of such statements as these? The "establishment is the firmest support and noblest ornament of Christianity."* It "presents the best security under heaven for the preservation of the true apostolical faith in this country."† "Manifold as are the blessings for which Englishmen are beholden to the institutions of their country, there is no part of those institutions from which they derive more important advantages than from its church establishment."-Especially, what will the reader think of the language of Hannah More?-Hannah More says of the established church, "Here Christianity presents herself neither dishonoured, degraded, nor disfigured;" Bishop Watson says of its creed, that it is "a motley monster of bigotry and superstition." Hannah More says, "Here Christianity is set before us in all her original purity;" Archdeacon Blackburn says that "the forms of the church, having been weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, are found greatly wanting." Hannah More says, " She has been completely rescued from that encumbering load under which she had so long groaned, and delivered from her heavy bondage by the labours of our blessed reformers ;"§ Dr. Lowth says that the reformation from popery "stopped in the midway." Hannah More says, We here see Christianity "in her whole consistent character, in all her fair and just proportions, as she came from the hands of her Divine author;" Dr. Watson calls her creed "a scarecrow, dressed up of old by philosophers and popes." To say that the language of this good woman is imprudent and improper is to say very little. Yet I would say more. Her own language is her severest censurer. When will it be sufficiently remembered that the evils of a system can neither be veiled nor defended by praise? When will it be remembered, that if we "contend for abuses," the hour will arrive when "correction will be applied with no sparing hand?" It has frequently been said that "the church is in danger." What is meant by the church? Or what is it that is endangered? Is it meant that the episcopal form of church government is endangered-that some religious revolution is likely to take place, by which a Christian community shall be precluded from adopting that internal constitution which it thinks best? This surely cannot be feared. The day is gone by, in England at least, when the abolition of prelacy could become a measure of state. One community has its conference, and another its annual assembly, and another its independency, without any molestation. Who then would molest the English church because it prefers the government of bishops and deacons to any other? Is it meant that the doctrines of * Dr. Howley, Bishop of London: Charge, 1814, p. 25. Moral Sketches, 3d edit. p 90. CHAP. 15.] no. "THE CHURCH IS IN DANGER." 371 the church are endangered, or that its liturgy will be prohibited? Surely While every other church is allowed to preach what doctrines it pleases, and to use what formularies it pleases, the liberty will not surely be denied to the episcopal church. If the doctrines and government of that church be Christian and true, there is no reason to fear for their stability. Its members have superabundant ability to defend the truth. What then is it that is endangered? Of what are those who complain of danger afraid? Is it meant that its civil immunities are endangeredthat its revenues are endangered? Is it meant that its members will hereafter have to support their ministers without assistance from other churches? Is it feared that there will cease to be such things as rich deaneries and bishoprics? Is it feared that the members of other churches will become eligible to the legislature, and that the heads of this church will not be temporal peers? In brief, is it feared that this church will become merely one among the many, with no privileges but such as are common to good citizens and good Christians?—These surely are the things of which they are afraid. It is not for religious truth, but for civil immunities: it is not for forms of church government, but for political pre-eminence: it is not for the church, but for the church establishment. Let a man, then, when he joins in the exclamation, The church is in danger, present to his mind distinct ideas of his meaning, and of the object of his fears. If his alarm and his sorrow are occasioned, not for religion, but for politics-not for the purity and usefulness of the church, but for its immunities-not for the offices of its ministers, but for their splendours-let him be at peace. There is nothing in all this for which the Christian needs to be in sorrow or in fear. And why? Because all that constitutes a church as a Christian community, may remain when these things are swept away. There may be prelates without nobility; there may be deans and archdeacons without benefices and patronage; there may be pastors without a legal provision; there may be a liturgy without a test. In the sense in which it is manifest that the phrase, "the church is in danger," is ordinarily to be understood, that is-"the establishment is in danger"-the fears are undoubtedly well founded: the danger is real and imminent. It may not be immediate perhaps; perhaps it may not be near at hand; but it is real, imminent, inevitable. The establishment is indeed in danger; and I believe that no advocacy however zealous, that no support however determined, that no power however great, will preserve it from destruction. If the declarations which have been cited in this chapter be true-if the reasonings which have been offered in this and in the last be just, who is the man that, as a Christian, regrets its danger, or would delay its fall? He may wish to delay it as a politician; he may regret it as an expectant of temporal advantages, but as a Christian he will rejoice. Supposing the doctrines and government of the church to be sound, it is probable that its stability would be increased by what is called its destruction. It would then only be detached from that alliance with the state which encumbers it, and weighs it down, and despoils its beauty, and obscures its brightness. Contention for this alliance will eventually be found to illustrate the proposition, that a man's greatest enemies are those of his own household. He is the practical enemy of the church who endeavours the continuance of its connexion with the state: except indeed that the more zealous the endeavour the more quickly, it is prob 372 CONCLUSION [ESSAY III. able, the connexion will be dissolved; and therefore, though such persons mean not so, neither do their hearts think so," yet they may thus be the agents in the hand of God of hastening the day in which she shall be purified from every evil thing; in which she shall arise and shine, because her light is come, and because the glory of the Lord is risen upon her. Let him, then, who can discriminate between the church and its alliances consider these things. Let him purify and exalt his attachment. If his love to the church be the love of a Christian, let him avert his eye from every thing that is political; let his hopes and fears be excited only by religion and let his exertions be directed to that which alone ought to concern a Christian church, its purity and its usefulness In concluding a discussion in which it has been needful to utter, with plainness, unwelcome truths, and to adduce testimonies which some readers may wish to be concealed, I am solicitous to add the conviction, with respect to the ministers of the English church, that there is happily a diminished ground of complaint and reprehension-the conviction that while the liturgy is unamended and unrevised, the number of ministers is increased to whom temporal things are secondary motives, and who endeavour to be faithful ministers of one common Lord: the conviction too, with respect to other members of the church, that they are collectively advancing in the Christian path, and that there is an "evident extension of religion within her borders." Many of these, both of the teachers and of the taught, are persons with whom the writer of these pages makes no pretensions of Christian equality-yet even to these he would offer one monitory suggestion:-They are critically situated with reference to the political alliance of the church. Let them beware that they mingle not with their good works and faith unfeigned, any confederacy with that alliance which will assuredly be laid in the dust. That confederacy has ever had one invariable effect-to diminish the Christian brightness of those who are its partisans. It will have the same effect upon them. If they are desirous of superadding to their Christianity the privileges and emoluments of a state religion-if they endeavour to retain in the church the interest of both worlds-if, together with their desire to serve God with a pure heart, they still cling to the advantages which this unholy alliance brings, and, contending for the faith contend also for the establishment-the effect will be bad as the endeavour will be vain bad, for it will obstruct their own progress and the progress of others in the Christian path; and vain, for the fate of that establishment is sealed. In making these joyful acknowledgments of the increase of Christianity within the borders of the church, one truth however must be added; and it is a solemn truth-The increase is not attributable to the state religion, but has taken place notwithstanding it is a state religion. I appeal to the experience of good men: has the amendment been the effect of the establishment as such? Has the political connexion of the church occasioned the amendment, or promoted it? Nay-Has the amendment been encouraged by those on whom the political connexion had the greatest influence? No: the reader, if he be an observer of religious affairs, knows that the state alliance is so far from having effected a reformation, that it does not even regard the instruments of that reformation with complacency. CHAP. 16 LEGAL PROVISION FOR CHRISTIAN TEACHERS 373 CHAPTER XVI. OF LEGAL PROVISION FOR CHRISTIAN TEACHERS. OF VOLUNTARY PAYMENT AND OF UNPAID MINISTRY. If some of the observations of the present chapter are not accurately classed with political subjects, I have to offer the apology that the intimacy of their connexion with the preceding discussion appears to afford a better reason for placing them here than an adherence to system affords for placing them elsewhere. "The substance of method is often sacrificed to the exterior show of it."* LEGAL PROVISION By one of those instances which happily are not unfrequent in the progress of human opinion from error to truth, the notion of a divine right on the part of any Christian teachers to a stated portion of the products of other men's labours is now nearly given up. There was a time when the advocate of the claim would have disdained to refer for its foundation to questions of expediency or the law of the land. And he probably as little thought that the divine right would ever have been given up by its advocates, as his successors now think that they have fallacious grounds in reasoning upon public utility. Thus it is that the labours of our predecessors in the cause of Christian purity have taken a large portion of labour out of our hands. They carried the outworks of the citadel; and while its defenders have retired to some inner strong-hold, it becomes the business of our day to essay the firmness of its walls. The writer of these pages may essay them in vain; but he doubts not that before some power their defenders, as they have hitherto retired, will continue to retire, until the whole fortress is abandoned. Abandoned to the enemy? On no-He is the friend of a Christian community, who induces Christian principles into its practice. In considering the evidence which Christianity affords respecting the lawfulness of making a legal provision for one Christian church, I would not refer to those passages of Scripture which appear to bear upon the Bishop Warburton. + Yet let it not be forgotten that it is upon this exploded notion of the divine right that the legal right is founded. The law did not give tithes to the clergy because the provision was expedient, but because it was their divine right. It is upon this assumption that the law is founded. See Statutes at Large: 29 Hen. VIII. c. 20. Mem. in the MS. "The whole was received into a common fund, for the fourfold purpose of supporting the clergy, repairing the church, relieving the poor, and entertaining the pilgrim and the stranger.""The payment of tithes had at first been voluntary, though it was considered as a religious obligation. King Ethelwolf, the father of Alfred, subjected the whole kingdom to it by a legislative act."-Southey's Book of the Church; c. 6. Mem. in the MS. Wickliffe's followers asserted "that tithes were purely eleemosynary, and might be withheld by the people upon a delinquency in the pastor, and transferred to another at pleasure." -Brodie's History of the British Empire. Introduction. Mem. in the MS. 374 COMPULSORY PAYMENT. [ESSAY III question whether Christian ministrations should be absolutely free: partly, because I can add nothing to the often-urged tendency of those passages, and partly because they do not all concern the question of legal provision. The man who thinks Christianity requires that those who labour in the gospel should live of the gospel, does not therefore think that a legal provision should be made for the ministers of one exclusive church. One thing seems perfectly clear-that to receive from their hearers and from those who heard them not a compulsory payment for their preaching, is totally alien to all the practices of the apostles and to the whole tenor of the principles by which they were actuated. Their one single and simple motive in preaching Christianity was to obey God, to do good to man; nor do I believe that any man imagines it possible that they would have accepted of a compulsory remuneration from their own hearers, and especially from those who heard them not. We are therefore entitled to repeat the observation, that this consideration affords evidence against the moral lawfulness of instituting such compulsory payment. Why would not, and could not, the apostles have accepted such payment, except for the reason that it ought not to be enforced? No account, so far as I perceive, can be given of the matter, but that the system is contrary to the purity of Christian practice. An English prelate writes thus: "It is a question which might admit of serious discussion, whether the majority of the members of any civil community have a right to compel all the members of it to pay towards the maintenance of a set of teachers appointed by the majority to preach a particular system of doctrines."* No discussion could be entertained respecting this right, except on the ground of its Christian unlawfulness. A legislature has a right to impose a general tax to support a government, whether a minority approves the tax or not; and the bishop here rightly assumes that there is an antecedent question,-whether it is morally lawful to oblige men to pay teachers whom they disapprove? It is from the want of taking this question into the account that inquirers have involved themselves in fallacious reasonings. It is not a question of the right of taxation, but of the right of the magistrate to oblige men to violate their consciences. Of those who have regarded it simply as a question of taxation, and who therefore have proceeded upon fallacious grounds, the author of "The Duties of Men in Society" is one. He says, "If a state thinks that national piety and virtue will be best promoted by consigning the whole sum raised by law to teachers of a particular description, it has the same right to adopt this measure as it would have to impose a general tax for the support of a board of physicians, should it deem that step conducive to national health." Far other-No man's Christian liberty is invaded, no man's conscience is violated, by paying a tax to a board of physicians; but many a man's religious liberty may be invaded, and many a man's conscience may be violated, by paying for the promulgation of doctrines which he thinks Christianity condemns. Whither will the argument lead us? If a papal state thinks it will pro * See Quarterly Review, No. 58: "There was a party in the nation who conceived that every man should not only be allowed to choose his own religion, but contribute as he himself thought proper towards the support of the pastor whose duties he exacted. The party however does not appear to have been great. Yet let us not despise the opinion, but remember that it has been taken up by Dr. Adam Smith himself as a sound one, and been acted upon successfully in a vast empire. the United States of America."-Brodie's History of the British Empire, v. iv. p. 365 Mem in the MS. |