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nicious that can taint any scheme of ecclesiastical polity, and whose political injustice and corruption are such as to expose it to the scorn and censure of the world at large. Such is the mingled host-the banded array of those who, in the present melee of parties have nothing in common but living on the bounty of the state, and dealing denunciations of haughty malice against all who dissent from the principle, that the church of Christ can be strengthened by Act of Parliament, and that religion cannot flourish but in the breath of kings. This we call the war of parties, because it is community of secular interest, not identity of religious principle, which assimilates the combatants and cements their coalition. From this imputation of interested alliance and charge of partisanship, we hold that Dissenters are entitled to plead entire and unqualified exemption, inasmuch as their hostility to existing establishments arises from no ambition of those advantages which are supposed to constitute their special distinction; and, consequently, in the conflict that now rages, Dissenters stand on the high and hallowed ground of principle alonehaving no pelf to scramble for, and no spoil to divide.

When we turn from the war of parties to the war of opinions, what new combinations appear? The ecclesiastical corporations which, on every point affecting tithe and state-ascendancy, seemed compact as a phalanx, are seen in another point of view, broken up into scattered squadrons, with no badge of unity but the facings of a national uniform, and the receipt of public pay. Divided among themselves and against themselves, they appear as if dismembered and ready to disband. Popery, as it designates a system of belief, is about as genuine at Oxford as at Rome; and apostolical succession-the great talisman of attraction between the papacy and our Anglican prelatists-is the sword of division which cuts off the Scottish establishment from the list of churches. Moreover, if we look a little into the interior of our Presbyterian outcast, we find that with much of union, or at least of united effort to oppose the progress of dissent, there are even here those elements at work which tend still farther to embroil the war of opinions. Amidst the fiercest denunciations of the voluntary principle, the zealous supporters of the Establishment have had their eyes so well opened to the scriptural liberty of dissent, that they have raised a claim for the exemption of the church from state interference and control. We have thus the Establishment frowning on dissent because of the voluntaryism that pervades it; and the self-same Establishment, nourishing in its own bosom a premature ambition to acquire a like independence without the sacrifice of any of those worldly gains with which the state has endowed her. Within the national church herself, the spirit of dissent is ostentatiously avowed, dictating

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We strongly recommend the works under notice, and if any impulse shall have been given to the study of Comparative Philology by these remarks, our object in making them will have been answered.

Since the above paper was written, the author of the article language, in the Cyclopædia, has published an Essay on the Study of Comparative Grammar (in the third publication of the Central Society of Education), which we may here take the opportunity of recommending to our readers. We may further congratulate them on the election of the gentleman referred to, Mr. William Smith, as Classical Tutor at Highbury College. It is a favourable omen for the state of learning among Dissenters, that the services of so sound a scholar have been secured.

Art. VII. The Present Position of the Church of Scotland. Two Letters to George Cook, D.D. By JAMES BRYCE, D.D. Edinburgh. 1838, 1839.

NEVER at any former period of our ecclesiastical history was

the war of opinions so anomalously blended, and at the same time the war of parties more clearly defined. When before were the national churches of England and Scotland seen approaching each other on such terms of compliment, and with such proffers of co-operation, as have of late been exemplified in their common zeal to maintain their corporation rights against threatened aggression? As part and parcel of the common system, the Irish church has been taken under their sympathizing patronage; and on the north of the Tweed the spectacle has at length presented itself of a Presbyterian establishment, bound to endeavour the extirpa'tion of prelacy,' casting aside regard for the distinguishing principle on which the witnessing fathers of the Scottish church founded their claims to the confidence of the community, and joining in cordial league with a miscalled religious system whose errors are, on the principles of the covenant, among the most per

nicious that can taint any scheme of ecclesiastical polity, and whose political injustice and corruption are such as to expose it to the scorn and censure of the world at large. Such is the mingled host-the banded array of those who, in the present melée of parties have nothing in common but living on the bounty of the state, and dealing denunciations of haughty malice against all who dissent from the principle, that the church of Christ can be strengthened by Act of Parliament, and that religion cannot flourish but in the breath of kings. This we call the war of parties, because it is community of secular interest, not identity of religious principle, which assimilates the combatants and cements their coalition. From this imputation of interested alliance and charge of partisanship, we hold that Dissenters are entitled to plead entire and unqualified exemption, inasmuch as their hostility to existing establishments arises from no ambition of those advantages which are supposed to constitute their special distinction; and, consequently, in the conflict that now rages, Dissenters stand on the high and hallowed ground of principle alonehaving no pelf to scramble for, and no spoil to divide.

When we turn from the war of parties to the war of opinions, what new combinations appear? The ecclesiastical corporations which, on every point affecting tithe and state-ascendancy, seemed compact as a phalanx, are seen in another point of view, broken up into scattered squadrons, with no badge of unity but the facings of a national uniform, and the receipt of public pay. Divided among themselves and against themselves, they appear as if dismembered and ready to disband. Popery, as it designates a system of belief, is about as genuine at Oxford as at Rome; and apostolical succession-the great talisman of attraction between the papacy and our Anglican prelatists-is the sword of division which cuts off the Scottish establishment from the list of churches. Moreover, if we look a little into the interior of our Presbyterian outcast, we find that with much of union, or at least of united effort to oppose the progress of dissent, there are even here those elements at work which tend still farther to embroil the war of opinions. Amidst the fiercest denunciations of the voluntary principle, the zealous supporters of the Establishment have had their eyes so well opened to the scriptural liberty of dissent, that they have raised a claim for the exemption of the church from state interference and control. We have thus the Establishment frowning on dissent because of the voluntaryism that pervades it; and the self-same Establishment, nourishing in its own bosom a premature ambition to acquire a like independence without the sacrifice of any of those worldly gains with which the state has endowed her. Within the national church herself, the spirit of dissent is ostentatiously avowed, dictating

strange pretensions, creating unwonted divisions, and portending, if we mistake not, important and instructive results.

A brief review of the present position of the Church of Scotland in relation to the points referred to, will, we believe, be not without interest to our English readers. For one thing, the subject is well fitted to communicate more correct views of the real character of the Scottish Establishment, than commonly prevail. Our northern sister has been a vigorous boaster in her way; and of late years especially, has blown the trumpet in very great style. With the character of the Scottish national church there has consequently been associated, on this side of the Tweed, the idea of pious zeal, contented poverty, a working clergy, and a pure communion. Of many good natured mistakes of the kind, certain recent movements and the present position of the Scottish church will go far to disabuse the public mind in both parts of the island. The Scottish Establishment is like all other institutions of the kind, dependent on the hand that feeds her -servile to the secular powers when she has her own ends to gain-very mighty when her vested rights are, in her view, menaced or invaded in those points which most nearly concern the reputation and integrity of a spiritual body, viz., the creed that is taught and the government that is administered, she is as really at the dictation of the state as any church establishment is or may be, and the means she has employed to assert her spiritual liberties, and to maintain to the world the aspect of immunity from any authority save that of her Divine Head, prove on closer inspection, to be mere points of form-practically inept and futile -little more, in short, than the vapouring airs of a body who, feeling their bondage, and galled with the shame of it, submit to the yoke under protest, and thus labour to indemnify themselves by stout words of independence for the loss of intrinsic jurisdic

tion.

A summary retrospect of Scottish ecclesiastical history will show that the church's claim to independence in spiritual matters, and her acceptance of a legal establishment, proved the fruitful source, at one time, of collison with the secular powers, and at another, of the most tame and abject submission to the tyrannous patronage of the state. Stung with resentment of court interference and intrigue in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs, the fathers of the Scottish church nearly pushed their pretensions so far as to claim immunity from the civil power in any thing said or done by them in their ecclesiastical capacity, thus showing how little disposed they were in matters touching their immediate interest, to depart from the high ground of prerogative which the Popish clergy had maintained. Descending at length from this high position, they still pleaded the incompetency of the civil

courts of the realm to take cognizance in prima instantia, of words spoken in the pulpit; and thus advanced a plea which would have been easily convertible into a ground of exemption from that responsibility to civil government which cannot be safely conceded to any order of men, however sacred, and which no good subject should seek to establish. If the claim of exemption was understood by the church as referring strictly and solely to matters of doctrine, in the proper sense of the expression, then the ground which the Scottish reformers assumed, was lower than they were called on to take, for to whom is the church of Christ answerable, whether in the first instance or in the last resort, but to the supreme and sole Lord of conscience, for giving forth those truths of salvation which she is commissioned to declare in his name. If, however, matters of doctrine, and words spoken in the pulpit, were broad and sheltering phrases under which the politics of the individual or of the party, however seditious their tendency, might be vented without risk of challenge, till a tribunal of ecclesiastical compeers had passed judgment in the cause, such a claim, it is evident, involved a blending of interests that ought never to confounded, and the grasping of an impunity which no civil authority ought to concede.

These were the young and stout days of the Scottish church; yet even then the advocates of ecclesiastical privilege stooped to accept, and their descendants have been used to glory in, an act of the legislature (1592) as the Magna Charta of their national Sion, which establishes the Presbyterian polity in a very ample manner, but which embodies the principle of lay patronage in the settlement of vacant parishes. What meaneth this? Why, that such in the view of church and state alliance men, is the privilege of support by the secular arm, that to gain it, it is allowable, it is advantageous, to surrender to the civil power the liberty with which Christ made his people free.

By an Act of Parliament in 1690, patrons were deprived of the rights which they formerly exercised; but the nature and effect of the change was rather a transference than a repeal of the power of presentation. It was now provided that the right of nomination should be lodged in the hands of heritors and elders. The assent of the people was requisite to give it validity, and their refusal of the nominee was sustained when the grounds of rejection were such as to satisfy the ecclesiastical judicatories. In 1711, the patronage law was re-imposed in all its rigour. The grievance was not submitted to by the church without complaint and remonstrance; but he has read the history of church corporations to very little purpose who is not prepared to hear that resistance to this tyrannical infliction was confined to reclamations and protests, and that it was thought good to keep hold of state favour even at the price that was now demanded for it.

VOL. VI.

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