case accord with such a reasonable

expectation. First, the Bishop is appealed to. He expresses his regret at the "exceptionable language" employed by Mr. Escott, and then refers the applicant to the Ecclesiastical Court for redress. Then the next officer of the Church volunteers his remarks on the case; but premises, that he has "had no per sonal communication" with the delinquent, and that the spiritual part of the subject is quite independent of all personal considerations. So, between the two functionaries, the offender escapes. Instead of a rebuke administered before all, that others might fear; instead of the advice given to the servant of the Lord, that he should not strive, but be gentle and patient even to his enemies; instead of the warning, that neither railers nor revilers shall inherit the kingdom of God; we have the expression of a hope, that the Vicar of Gedney may not suffer too severely in his pocket; and a subscription is recommended, in order that this worthy gentleman, whose four pieces of preferment produce, at least, eleven hundred pounds per annum, may not sink under the pecuniary liabilities he has incurred for the Church's sake. "What should be great is thus most effectually turned "to farce," to the real detriment of all true religion, no less than of the national Church.

"

Archdeacon Goddard is anxious to witness the exercise of discipline in the established Church; but he should begin with his Clergy, rather than with the Methodists,-with the living, not with the dead. He expends much learned labour in proving, that the Burial Service belongs only to those in communion with the Establishment; that the spirit of the Canon Law, and the ritual of the Church, both suppose a connexion between habitual communion and burial. Now, were such connexion practically observed, there are few, if any, Nonconformists who would wish to have it broken for their sakes. But when it is generally and notoriously disregarded, and scores of person's are

every week buried with the "rites of the Church," only because they were not known to be Dissenters; when "harlots, and publicans, and thieves" are unscrupulously committed to the earth, "in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life," and the connexion between habitual communion and burial is never pleaded in bar to their claims, it is but too obvious, that a properly spiritual discipline has no existence; and such an attempt to enforce it, as we now witness, is straining out a gnat, to swallow a camel.

There is much confusion in the views which our author entertains with reference to the primary intent of the Canons. He apprehends, that though the sixty-eighth Canon requires Ministers to bury any corpse that is brought to them, with one exception, the meaning must be limited to a corpse

"brought from among those who are of our communion, and, therefore, claim to partake with us in holy offices. exception is of persons excommunicated,

The

to which the rubric introduced after the Restoration adds, 'unbaptized;' and, in my judgment, neither of these exceptions can be construed fairly to relate to persons living habitually in separation, (for whose case others of our Canons provide,) but solely to those of our own Church, who, excommunicated, for whatever cause, have not been restored through penance; or to those who have undergone no form of baptism whatever, even by lay persons of our own communion, though they were nominally within its pale; or to those who have destroyed themselves, being of the same communion nor were our burial rites them

selves, in my opinion, designed for any but those who have lived and died in the communion of our Church, and have frequented, more or less, its services."

(Pages 30, 31.)

In opposition to this view, there is the indisputable fact, that, in a few months after this Canon was framed, a law was passed, compelling the burial of Papists in the church-yards, according to the laws ecclesiastical. The inference forces itself upon us, that the Canon never has been understood as Dr. God

"The abstract proposition deduced, and, as I think, correctly deduced, from our rubrics, and from the history of our Church, that it does not deny the validity of baptism, by whomsoever administered, so there be the proper matter and form, was never meant, as I conceive, to be brought to bear on Canon 68; so that, under favour of such generalities as the Canon contains, burial, according to our rites, should be construed to extend to all, the validity of whose baptism was not disputed. And, again, it does not follow that because the 'unbaptized' are not to be buried according to our ritual, that all who have been baptized, and have lived and died in whatever communion, are entitled to such burial; unless it can be made out that the limits usually, and with reason, admitted in the case of universal and indefinite propositions, such as Canon 68 presents, can have no plea [query, place] here."

(Pages 31, 32.)

We are glad to be able to put this passage on record, because the Archdeacon is an unwilling witness to the sense of the Church on what has all along been considered the vital point in the dispute. And it is not difficult to dispose of the objections raised against the common conclusion from our author's premises. First, as to the Canon: it is not, as the Archdeacon intimates, a universal proposition. There are two qualifications on the face of it. The corpse must be brought; if it is not, the Minister is under no obligation to bury it; and it must not be the corpse of a person dying under

the greater excommunication. There is no need to bring limits to assist in the interpretation of it; for they were fixed from the beginning. The ru bric extends them. And if Dr. Goddard's qualification of the rubric be admitted, it will follow, that the revisors of the Liturgy in 1661 were very incompetent to their task. A man may have been baptized, (say, by a layman, still Dr. Goddard would allow him not to be unbaptized,) and dying neither excommunicate, nor felo de se, may be brought for burial, and refused with propriety. He does not come within any of the excepted cases, and yet he is properly an exception to the rule! What kind of legislation does this suppose? While the exception was in framing, how easy would it have been to add the words which would have expressed Dr. Goddard's meaning, if such a meaning had been contemplated! For example: "This office is not to be used for any that die unbaptized, nor for any Dissenters or non-communicants." There are other absurdities arising from Dr. Goddard's restricted interpretation of the rubric. For, first, in making the Church to say, "This office shall not be used for any that die unbaptized in our communion, nor excommunicate from our communion," which is the sense he would affix to her words, he assumes that the unbaptized may be in some such sense within the Church, that she is entitled to make laws concerning them; which is altogether a new doctrine. If it be said, their being communicants has covered the defect of baptism, so that they are practically within the pale, notwithstanding such defect; then we reply, the defect of baptism ought not to exclude them from burial. If the lesser sacrament be, as some contend, included in the greater, surely the privilege of burial should not be withheld from ."unbaptized communicants," unless it shall appear that it is a greater privilege to be interred with the rites of the Establishment, than to receive the supper of the Lord: a doctrine which, we believe, Dr. Goddard would be among the last to main

tain. The phrase "excommunicate from our communion" is so manifest a solecism, that we need do no more than point it out in passing.

It is quite impossible to urge, with reference to the rubric, the remark which has sometimes been made concerning the Canon; namely, that at the time it was made there were no Dissenters in existence. The Nonconformists were a large and powerful body; and the Episcopalians, if they had conceived the design of excluding them from Christian burial, (of which there is not the shadow of evidence,) would scarcely have dared to broach it. And, as we know they did not entertain such a notion, we have no right to twist their words in order to favour it. The reason for the insertion of the term "unbaptized" in the rubric, was manifestly the

same with that which led to the com

pilation of the Office of Baptism for Adults, namely, the growth of Anabaptism during the Commonwealth; and when this restriction is pressed beyond the sense affixed to it by the popular mind, and sanctioned by the two decisions of the Arches Court, it will be found impossible to claim either common sense or common honesty for those by whom it was imposed.

We have said boldly, that no design was entertained by the revisors of the Liturgy of excluding Nonconformists from burial in the Church, and we will proceed to justify the assertion. Dr. Goddard, and some other writers on this subject, have been so imprudent as to represent that this demand, on the part of the Nonconformists, is a new one. Thus at pages 33-35 of the Charge before us we read,

"In 1712 Archbishop Sharp was at first opposed to a public declaration of the validity of lay-baptism, 'lest,' as he expressed himself, Dissenters should be encouraged in an uncanonical practice; and the lower House of Convocation, at the same period, objected to such declaration as striking at the dignity of the priesthood.' In neither of these instances, however, is any hint afforded from which we can collect that baptism, thus administered by Dissent

ers, was viewed in connexion with a claim for burial, according to our ritual, on behalf of those so baptized. Among 'the advantages' which, as Archdeacon Sharp speaks, might, it was feared, be taken by the Dissenters, or seem to be given to them,' by a public declaration of the validity of their baptisms, this, of their claiming in consequence to partake of our rights of burial, does not appear at that time to have been distinctly apprehended."

66

In one sense this is correct: no "claim" of the kind alluded to was made by the Dissenters in 1712; but, in the sense intended by the writer, it is utterly incorrect: the reason why no such claim was made being that it was unnecessary to make it, because Dissenters were buried in churches from the time when the new rubric was published, down to the time of which Archdeacon Goddard is writing, and below it. It is easy to frame theories like that put forward in the following

sentence:

"Those whom we bury are supposed to have given a pledge to our Church through baptismal sponsors, where the baptism was public; or if baptized privately, and they live, then the assumption is, that they have been personally received into the Church, a reception which extends to those baptized by laymen; and their bodies, accordingly, are brought into the material fabric, antecedently to interment, as a testimony of their having died in Church membership."

But writers who do this should ascertain how far the practice of the Church will bear them out when they set up these theories as the only correct exposition of her mind; and it happens unfortunately for them when, as in this instance, recorded facts are in flat contradiction to their notions. If ever there was a time when the intention of the Church to exclude Dissenters from burial with her offices might be expected to be made manifest, it was soon after the publication of the new rubric in 1662. What could have afforded a better opportunity for exemplifying such intention, had it but existed, than the death of an eminent Nonconformist Minister,

a leader of the schism at which High-Churchmen were, and still are, so angry; say, for instance, such an one as Baxter, or Manton. How fitting would have been the answer, framed on Dr. Goddard's principles, to an application to bury these men in the church: "We only give interment to those in our communion; but your deceased friends have been ejected therefrom, and are under an ipso facto excommunication. How then can you seek burial for them at our hands? If their bodies are brought into the material fabric, it will be a testimony of their having died in membership with the Church, which you know to be untrue." But, so far from being thus repulsed, these men found a grave, not in the churchyard, but in the "material fabric" itself. Baxter was buried, with great honour, in Christ-church, (the very place in which Laurence was afterwards schismatically rebaptized,) and Manton in the chancel of Stoke-Newington church. We have mentioned the names of these great men first, because they were both Commissioners for the Dissenters at the Savoy Conference, and their nonconformity was as notorious as the noon-day sun. Scarcely less so was that of Charnock, Howe, and Tuckney yet the first was buried at St. Michael's, Cornhill; the second, in All-Hallows, Bread street; and the third, in St. Andrew, Undershaft. Nor was the practice of burying Nonconformists in churches confined to London; and although it might reasonably be expected that less strictness would be observed in the provinces, it is obvious that when the instances are found all over the kingdom, there could not have been any general understanding among the Clergy, answering to the theory of Dr. Goddard. Accord ingly, we find Philip Henry buried in the church of Whitchurch, Salop; Mr. Cook, one of the boldest and most distinguished Nonconformists in Cheshire, buried in St. Michael's church, Chester; Mr. Ogden, of Derbyshire, in the church at Wirksworth; Mr. Ford, of Devonshire, in St. Lawrence, Exeter;

Mr. Lawrence, of Dorset, in Allhallows, Dorchester: and the reader, who will be at the pains to look through the works of Calamy and Palmer, will find many notices of this description, though we do not confine ourselves to these writers as authorities for the statements just made. Still further evidence that it was a common practice to inter Nonconformists with Church rites' is furnished, by the controversies which were carried on both at Exeter and elsewhere, in the early part of the last century, in consequence of the iteration of baptism by certain Clergymen. A Dissenting Minister of Exeter appeals to Mr. Walker, (the author of the well-known "History of the Sufferings of the Clergy,") who had stood sponsor for the person re-baptized, on the inconsistency of his conduct in assisting at the ceremony, while he constantly buried Dissenters as Christians. And Walker did not attempt to deny the statement. So likewise at Manchester, in a similar case. The clerical Anabaptists admitted the commonness of the practice of burying Dissenters with Church rites, though they denied its propriety.

If it should be objected, that the distinguished Nonconformists named above had received baptism in the established Church, and were, therefore, entitled to burial, (although such an objection could scarcely be urged by Dr. Goddard, and those who think with bim,-that the Church-Office of burial is only to be used for communicants,) the answer is at hand. Burial in the church has not been, in point of fact, confined to persons baptized in it. Mr. Matthew Henry's two children who died in infancy, were baptized, one by his father, the other by himself; but both were interred in Trinity church, Chester; where he also was buried, with great honour, in 1714, no less than eight of the Clergy of that city attending the funeral. We are persuaded, that these details need not be multiplied; the recorded facts at Chester, joined to the plain admissions at Exeter and at Manchester, show that, from north to south, another doctrine than that

of modern High-Churchmen regulated the practice of the Clergy. It is not the Dissenters who are the innovators in this particular; for they make no claim that the practice of the Church does not sanction; but the refusing Clergy, who withhold a right which the great majority of their predecessors recognised without dispute.

The Archdeacon proceeds

"If, from an observation_recently thrown out, that the case of Kemp v. Wickes, which occurred some thirty years ago, was the first of the kind that had presented itself, and that no other had been brought forward until the present moment, it should be inferred, that the Parochial Clergy at large have all along admitted the justice of the claim, now, for the second time, advanced in a court of law; the conclusion would, I am satisfied, be a mistaken one. Many causes may have concurred, and, among the rest, forbearance on the part of the Clergy, to produce this unfrequency of cases in which the law has been resorted to: but the main reason of all will be found in the simple fact, that, till of late years, Dissent had received no such positive encouragement, as should lead it to assume the determined attitude in which it now presents itself; and to armed with the threatenings of the law into our sanctuary, to enforce a combination of habitual baptism by Dissenting Teachers, whom our Church, if allowed to speak, would blame for baptizing at all, with Church-of-England burials." (Page 38.)

come

The drift of this passage is, to convey the idea that the Church is persecuted by Dissenters and Methodists; and, certainly, Dr. Goddard's description of her state is a moving one; and, upon the uninformed and unthinking, may be expected to produce an impression. The Clergy have shown great for bearance! The Church is not allowed to speak; and, meanwhile, Dissent, armed with the terrors of the law, invades the sanctuary and enforces its demands! But let the case be examined with care, and it wears a different aspect. What is the law with which the Dissenters arm themselves? Is it an Act of the Legislature, put in force by the

civil courts against the Church, as the Five Mile Act, and the Conventicle Act were, until a few years back, enforced against Dissenters? Let not the reader suppose anything of the kind. The law in question is the law of the Church itself; made by its spiritual rulers in Convocation assembled; and enforced by the spiritual head of the Church, the Primate of all England and Metropolitan, through his Official Principal. And the "forbearance" for which Archdeacon Goddard claims credit on behalf of the Clergy is, actually, that they have refrained from setting aside, of their mere will, the decision of one of their own lawfully-constituted and dulyauthorised Church courts! We could tell Dr. Goddard of another cause which he appears little to suspect, but which has operated, to our certain knowledge, very powerfully in producing "this unfrequency of cases in which the law has been resorted to;" and, that is, the forbearance of Dissenters. Years have rolled away since the decision in Kemp v. Wickes was given. When, during the interval, a refusal to bury has taken place, it has been common to direct the Clergyman's attention to this judgment; and, if he persisted in his refusal, to submit the case to his Diocesan. The Bishops have, we believe, uniformly used their influence in support of the law; but the cases are not a few in which the wish of the Bishop has been set at nought, and the rites of sepulture rudely refused to the last. Dissenters and Methodists have borne these indignities silently,—in some instances, because they had not pecuniary means to secure the expensive remedy which the ecclesiastical courts provide; and, in others, from the hope, that each case, as it occurred, would prove the last; for it seemed to them almost incredible, that the accumulation of authorities, by which such conduct was condemned, should not, at length, prove irresistible. other instances, they have published their wrongs, and left the offender to public opinion as his judge. But it is not to be expected that, with

In