the magistrate "to take order" that the church performs her part. Constituted judge of religious truth, the magistrate must at least have the power to watch over the church's ministrations, and to insist that in every thing pertaining to creed and government she shall keep to her bargain. What then is the power of the church? She cannot alter an iota of her public symbols, nor swerve from the prescribed mode of administering her affairs, without asking and obtaining the magistrate's consent. And why the necessity of asking leave? Simply because the state is a contracting party, and in this character claims the power of losing and binding the ecclesiastical partner in every thing that forms the subject of their joint convention.

It makes no difference in the merits of the case to represent the church as making the advance to the state with her creed in her hand-herself having chosen to say how she would govern the people, and what she would teach them; while the state was left to express acquiescence in the proposal, and thus to confer its sanction without presuming to dictate. Whether the state comes forward with a creed, and says to the church, will you engage to teach it? or the church proposes a creed, and says to the state, will you agree to pay for it? does not appear to us materially to alter the case as regards the church's position. She binds herself to the state; and after this it is affectation to exclaim, though hired I am free."

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That the king or legislature is head of the church, is a position which the independents of the Scottish establishment reject with indignation. Leave, say they, the foul imputation for the Church of England. We have no head but Christ; and have never 'owned another.' After all, however, what is this but to submit to the reality and to protest against the word? When the Church of England acknowledges the king as her head, she distinguishes between supremacy in spiritual and in temporal things. The distinction we know is futile, and the attempt to make and to maintain it is the vitiating element of our Anglican church. But whatever be the character and value of the distinction, it is all that the Church of Scotland really possesses, when she puts in a claim for an independence, peculiarly and specifically her own. While she spurns the name of a temporal head she admits the enormity. She concedes to the civil magistrate the power he wants on condition that she shall be at liberty to call the state her handmaid, not her head. The freedom of her constitution is gone; and her republican forms, which have ceased to be a safeguard, are but a poor compensation.

State churches, then, are by the necessity of the case, what Bishop Horsley called his own, parliamentary churches, not only created but coerced by statute laws. The Scottish Establishment forms no exception. Indeed, we are at a loss to discover

where the difference between the two churches, in point of internal jurisdiction, is to be found. And we are equally at a loss to account for the long continued, and still prevalent, but as we have seen groundless impression, that the Presbyterian establishment possesses a largeness of spiritual prerogative of which no similar institution can boast. Both are in bondage with their children. All the difference is, that enslaved episcopacy bears its master's name on its forehead; and enslaved presbytery rejoices in its

own.

Our readers, we suspect, are but little prepared to hear, what is clearly brought out in the investigation of the case, that the Church of Scotland has never been, at any period of her history, a full assertor of the scriptural liberties of the people. The first book of discipline is commonly appealed to in proof of the just views on this subject entertained by the fathers of the Scottish reformation. But this partly is a mistake. That performance does indeed declare strongly in favour of liberty of election; but it is not meant by this that the people should have an unfettered right to the choice of their pastors; for it is provided that if the congregation be found negligent therein, the space of forty 'days, the best reformed church, viz., the church of the superin'tendent, with his council, may present unto them a man whom 'they judge apt to feed the flock of Christ Jesus. If his doctrine

be found wholesome, and able to instruct the simple, and if the 'church justly can reprehend nothing in his life, doctrine, nor utterance, then we judge the church, if they refuse him, unrea'sonable; and they should be compelled, by the censure of the 'council and the church, to receive the person appointed.'*

Qualified as was this assertion of popular rights, the Kirk did not keep her ground. The first book of Discipline was not sanctioned by Parliament. Virtually, then, the Scottish legislature made the relinquishment of the above principle the condition of its alliance and support. The church, notwithstanding, accepted of the union,—a fact which signifies a great deal more than that unfettered popular election was not at that period a principle of the Scottish church; it implies that, limited as was the sense in which the founders of that church held the principle, they virtually relinquished it in their compact with the state, when presbyterianism became the national polity.

From an early period it was plainly the object of the church to possess herself of the power which she sought to extort from the patron. We have just adverted to the doctrine of the first book of discipline, regarding the ultimate authority in the settlement of parishes. In 1649, when the Scottish parliament abolished patronage, and recommended to the General Assembly

* First Book of Discipline-Fourth Head.

the settlement of parishes by election in its fullest and freest form, the church, meaning thereby the clergy and the eldership, ruled that the elders should nominate-the people choose; and that if these refused their assent, the presbytery should judge of their objections, and induct notwithstanding, if they found them to be causeless. The church has withheld from the people the privilege of free election when the state was willing to confer it. Indeed, a reluctance to lodge such power in popular hands would be more correctly styled the fundamental law of this church,' than the non-intrusive principle which the vetoists parade in the front of their famous manifesto. To confine the nomination to elders and heritors; and to judge of the grounds on which parishes rejected presentees, were powers which the ecclesiastics of the northern establishment were ever forward to assert and to exercise. And now under the operation of the boasted veto law, if the people should not within six months obtain a nominee to their liking, the right passes from them at once of saying yea or nay in the matter. The whole business then falls into the hands of the Presbytery, who arrogate its absolute disposal,—supplant the patron, choose for the people, and settle the whole matter themselves. Veto there is none. It is a good thing for a curb on the right of advowson; but that the church courts should place the yoke on themselves-who but a lover of simplicity could imagine such a thing. As to the rights of the people, we hear no more of them. Where, indeed, should they be, but in the keeping of their best friends the clergy? The power of presenting having now passed into infallible hands, it is provided that they shall exercise it without responsibility or control. This claim,-barefaced and unblushing we must call it, advanced as it is in the same breath with the rejection of the patron's privilege, is certainly one of the most singular specimens we have witnessed of clerical usurpation and cool audacity.

To every one who observes the signs of the times, it must appear a remarkable coincidence, that, at a period when the soundness of the principle on which all state churches are based is brought into keen and searching discussion, there should have arisen within the bosom of one of the national churches a case so very peculiar, and in its bearings so various, that, in the investigation of it, it is impossible to waive the very question which the dissenters with so much unanimity, and for some years past, have been pressing on the public mind. Shun it as they may, churchmen cannot, by all their management, evade the subject. Not only does it meet them in every point at which they come into contact with the interests of dissent, but it lifts its spectre form to startle and to challenge them in this Scotch case of Auchterarder. How any section of the church can accept of state maintenance, and preserve its spiritual liberties; how far the body spiritual can be compensated for the surrender of any of its

rights, by any endowment or distinction which the state can offer in return, are questions which must force themselves on every man within the pale of the northern establishment who is capable of thinking, and who is not stone deaf, or wilfully stupid, on every thing that touches the character, position, and efficiency of the Parliamentary Presbyterian Church. That any immediate good is to result from the discussion in the way of opening the eyes of the church's supporters, we have already hinted that we but faintly expect; but it will indeed not surprise us, if a movement thus begun shall work its way with less or more observation, till it prove itself to be the incipient impulse, and the distant indication of coming changes and events.

From this instructive but most humbling display of ecclesiastical bondage and prostration, how refreshing to turn to the condition of those churches who-seeking no state lucre and surrendering no spiritual privilege-stand fast in the liberty of the gospel. What the dignity, the independence, the elevation of their position, compared with the restraints and secularities of a church by law established.' The poorest conventicle within the broad borders of England possesses a freedom of spirit and of action, an immunity from secular dictation, to which pampered hierarchies and all state churches, whether rich and lazy or poor and proud, have not the most distant pretension. No intricacies arise to perplex them from confounding the things of Christ and of Cæsar from the interlacing of things temporal and spiritual, just because they seek no compact with the powers of the world, and the powers of the world have concern with them but to let them alone. They are free in their own sphere, because they keep to their own sphere. Without asking leave of prince or parliament, they follow the mind of Christ, because they are in no man's pay, and, therefore, call no man master. To teach the truth of God by permission of an earthly magistrate—to seek its 'establishment' or ratification' by any authority other than his own, and to be bound to teach what is thus established and ratified as the paid servants of the legislature-to act in the affairs of Christ's kingdom as the rulers of the world may direct, and to submit to be checked at every turn, and called to account by temporal superiors, and all this for nothing but the sake of being salaried out of the public funds instead of living by the altar,' exhibits a secularity and a subjection which the scriptural churches of Dissent may well be excused for regarding with wonder, and blame, and pity. Passing strange, that good men in the churches of the state, when they feel the ignominy of their position, should be so slow to discover that to shift their ground entirely is the

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sure method of redress.

Until such be the conclusion to which the church, as a body, is brought, she will never cease to be unhappy, and to feel dishonored. The clergy have shown a sense of the degradation of

lying under the dictation of the state. In proclaiming these views, they have only responded to public opinion in the northern part of the island. Nothing after this remains for them, but to continue to show their dependence by fretful, abortive efforts, to ease their yoke; or to sit down in sulky silence, a laughing-stock to all who have witnessed their lofty pretensions; or to take the high and honest ground of breaking their fetters, by giving up the bribe for which they have hitherto consented to wear them. Till then, the church's talked-of prerogative can only be matter of derision; her pedestal will be her pillory, and her boast of independence the proclamation of her shame.

Brief Notices.

The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith. In three volumes. 8vo. London: Longman and Co.

It would not be in character, not will it be expected, that we should say much respecting the contents of these volumes. The first two of them consist of articles reprinted from the Edinburgh Review, and are consequently without the scope of our literary province. We may venture, however, to observe, that while fully sensible of the cleverness and talent and humour displayed in many of these papers, we regret the anti-scriptural and irreligious cast of others. It is well known that the early volumes of the Edinburgh Review were marked by a decided hostility to evangelical religion, and those who were in the secret of such matters, have been accustomed to assign the authorship of certain papers deeply imbued with this spirit, to the Rev. Sydney Smith, a clergyman of the Church of England. We regret to find that this reference is fully borne out by the present publication. We should have rejoiced had it been otherwise, or in the absence of evidence to this effect, to have discovered some indications of an approach to more scriptural views of the religion which the author has undertaken to expound and enforce. So far, however, is this from being the case, that it now appears from the admission of the reverend author himself, that the papers which gave most offence at the time of their appearance, and which served most strongly to attach a suspicion of unfriendliness to the Christian faith to the Journal in question, were the productions of a writer solemnly pledged to the advancement of religious truth. It might have been hoped that time would have produced some change in the sentiments of the author on these points, but nothing of the kind is indicated. I see very little in my Reviews,' he remarks, to alter or repent of,' and the most bitter and anti-scriptural of them are consequently reprinted with every sign of continued approval. We regret this the more, as the

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