and learned, and religious foundation, worthy of the munificence of a crowned head; and the grave historian (Lord Clarendon himself does so) chose a text in his Bible as a motto for his chapter on politics; and religion, in short, reached unto every place, and, like Elisha stretched on the dead child, (to use one of Jeremy Taylor's characteristic illustrations,) gave life and animation to every part of the body politic. But years rolled on; and the original impulse given at the Reformation, and augmented at the Rebellion, to undervalue all outward forms, has silently continued to prevail, till, with the form of godliness, (much of it, no doubt, objectionable, but much of it wholesome,) the power in a considerable degree expired too. Accordingly, our churches are now closed in the week-days, for we are too busy to repair to them; our politicians crying out, with Pharaoh, Ye are idle, ye are idle; therefore would ye go and do sacrifice to the Lord.' Our cathedrals, it is true, are still open; but where are the worshippers? Instead of entering in, the citizen avails himself of the excellent clock which is usually attached to them, sets his watch, and hastens upon 'Change, where the congregation is numerous and punctual, and where the theological speculations are apt to run in Shylock's vein pretty exclusively. If a church will answer, then, indeed, a joint-stock company springs up; and a church is raised with as much alacrity, and upon the same principles, as a play-house. The day when the people brought their gifts is gone by. The solid temples,' that heretofore were built as if not to be dissolved till doomsday, have been succeeded by thin emaciated structures, bloated out by coats of flatulent plaster, and supported upon cast-metal pegs, which the courtesy of the times calls pillars of the church. The painted windows, that admitted a dim religious light, have given place to the cheap house-pane and dapper green curtain. The font, with its florid reliefs and capacious crater, has dwindled into a miserable basin. Sermons have contracted with the buildings in which they are delivered, consisting, like them, of less massive materials than formerly, and having for their title (if it is meant they should be taking) short discourses.' The clerical dress has accommodated itself to the sermons-Virgil's motto for his heifer, 'omnia magna,' in all things reversed the skull-cap gone-the shovel-hat going-the cassock, which almost in the memory of man lingered amongst a few ancients, shrunk into the unmeaning apron of the Bishop and Dean,the flowing bands, which it was heretofore the pride and pleasure of many a Mrs. Primrose to adorn with needlework, dwindled into two puny labels. All these are indications, (many of them trifles, indeed,) that the age of forms is gone by, and of something better B 2 than than forms, for they are the straws which point to the quarter from which the wind has been long setting in. To those who seek for other and graver signs, we would say, Look at the number of churches erected, by the piety of our ancestors, within the city' of London, and compare them with those at the west end; or take any town of modern growth, and contrast it, in this particular, with one of other times. The population of Cheltenham, for instance, says Mr. Yates,* a dozen years ago was about equal to that of Gloucester; and what was the relative proportion of the places of worship? Gloucester had ten churches, besides the cathedral; Cheltenham had a single one. Again, at what period before our own was any serious attempt made to separate education from religion-to let loose upon society the intellectual strength of its members, with nothing whatever to direct that strength to beneficent or even to innocent ends? Let it be asked whether, on the supposition that our law-proceedings were to be re-constructed, the judges would in these days be recommended to go to church before they go to court, or whether to do so would not be voted a waste of time? Whether, on a like supposition with regard to our parliament, the Houses of Lords and Commons would be instructed to begin their deliberations with prayers to God to bless them, or whether the practice would not now be considered obsolete? Whether, in the plan of a modern mansion, there would be found the chapel of the king's old courtier,' or the billiard-room of the king's young courtier'? Whether, on building a poor-house, the parish-officers would now think of inscribing over the door, Deo et pauperibus'? Whether, on a reproduction of our Liturgy, prayers would be found in it for deliverance from plague, pestilence, and famine, or whether such petitions would not be thought reflections upon the state of philosophy amongst us, when political economy, and medical police, and agricultural meetings, are understood by so many thinking persons to render a superintending Providence of comparatively little consequence? All these things, it cannot be denied, are against us. But, on the other hand, if forms are now nothing, forms were heretofore every thing; and accordingly, when the tide set against them, there was not reasonableness enough in some of them to resist such rough assailants as Luther or Calvin, for they were ridiculed by those who were not prepared to go any such lengths as either of them-by noue more than Erasmus. Down, therefore, they went at once, under the strong blows of the reformer, and shamed their worshippers. But now, whatever of vital religion there is in the country, is founded upon evidence; and Vide his Letter to Lord Liverpool, entitled The Church in Danger? › whatever whatever of the form is retained, is founded upon expediency, (though expediency 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 had,) 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 |