it may safely be applied. The question of the expedient is pertinent only when justice and Scripture withhold their decisions. That injustice and sin are folly,' is one of the earliest lessons of human and of inspired wisdom: Plato taught it, and a greater than Plato. But when either justice or Scripture speaks, we know immediately what is the expedient; and our duty is unhesitating compliance. We hold, therefore, though not unwilling to meet our opponents on this ground, that there is a previous question, and that this question is answered, and, therefore, the question of the expedient along with it-by the decisions of common reason, which holds it unjust to force a man to support a religious system which confers no religious advantage, and which his conscience condemns-and by the decisions of Scripture, which teaches that all is to be done from love, nothing from force, and that the support of the ministers of the gospel is to come from those that 'receive them.'

But even upon these questions of expediency we are prepared to join issue with the advocates of a state-church.

State ecclesiastical establishments, it is held, improve the morals of the people. They prevent what laws can only punish; and surely prevention, as all must allow, is better than punishment. But what establishment is it that is to secure this delightful result? Is it the establishment of error or of truth? Of truth doubtless. Who, then, is to be judge? The magistrate or the masses of the people? If the magistrate, what security have we, that they to whom, in the language of our own Milton, 'truth is 'rarely known, and more rarely welcome,' will select 'truth, the 'whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" If the people, what reason have we to believe that the preferences of unsanctified human nature will select religion 'pure and undefiled' as the bride of the state? Paley makes the question a calculation of chances, and the probabilities are as millions to one, that in any one case error and not truth will be endowed.

But still it will be replied, truth is endowed in this country, so that the establishment of the English Church ought at least to receive the sanction of all Christians, from the improvement it has introduced into the moral character of the nation. But has it improved it? What say the last pages of the History of Ireland? What the riots of Birmingham and the north? What the calendars of Assize for the last twenty years? Why, just what might have been expected. The practice of legalized murder and legalized theft on the part of the state has been found but a very ineffective means of diminishing illegal murder and illegal theft on the part of the people. To think of teaching men honesty by annual state robberies, is a system of moral instruction reserved for the wisdom of these later times.

But establishments are necessary to preserve uncorrupted and

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unchanged the creed of our fathers. The analogy of faith' is a phrase that has no meaning in the practice of sects, and can be illustrated only from the history and oneness of the church. Now though we have no great predilection for an entailed faith, we are willing to give this objection all the weight it deserves. Let it be taken, then, at its full worth. Suppose an inquirer is anxious to understand what this analogy of faith means, and that he is directed to seek its meaning in the history of the English Establishment. How long,' is his first question, has this creed been held by the Church, how extensively, and by how many of its 'members in the same sense? Semper, ubique, et ab omnibus? Has it ever been its creed?' Semper? Why no, says his teacher, for it happens unfortunately that though it has been framed only some three hundred years, it has been changed at least six times during that period, or on an average, once every fifty years. But has it been held very generally within the bounds of the Church? Ubique? Not exactly; is the teacher's reply, for Scotland has rejected it; the Canadas have rejected it; Ireland has rejected it; whilst the greater portion of Christian Europe has repudiated it as eminently heretical. But I suppose that at 'least,' adds the inquirer, the good Churchmen of England have ⚫ understood it in the same sense as they all swore they did when 'they entered the Church? Ab omnibus? Not just so, once more rejoins his instructor. Take your Prayer Book, and jot down for the encouragement of free inquiry, the different views that have been taken of its Articles. These first on the Trinity were not held in the orthodox sense by Samuel Clarke, nor yet by the Petitioners of the time of Lord Sidmouth. On this sixth article, Mr. Newman and Baptist Noel are by no means agreed. On the ninth, Romaine and Whately are unhappily divided. The tenth is a good Calvinistic creed, signed by an Arminian clergy. The eleventh, on justification, is very important, but interpreters are not unanimous. On the authority of the Church and of tradition, Dr. Pusey, and Mr. Gladstone, and a large party think one thing, and most Churchmen another. The twenty-fifth article, on sacraments, is lamentably sectarian say some; eminently rational and consistent say others. On baptism, and baptismal regeneration, the Rubric and Articles are divided: as were Van Mildert and Faber, and as is now, the Bishop of Exeter and his clergy. The article on the Lord's Supper is quoted for Mr. Newman and against him; it is on the whole happily doubtful.' The thirty-first, on the mass, is 'rash and hasty. On the duties of the magistrate the Presbytery and the convocation are at war; though to make up for these divisions, they all agree in the last two-that oaths may be taken with a safe conscience, and that Christian men's goods are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same.' So

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much for the unity of the Church. Practically it is found that the doctrines which are preached by the Church in three thousand of the parishes of this country, are contradicted by the doctrines preached in the other eight. But is it not important that the ministry should be independent of the changes of fickleness of the popular mind? and if so, where can you secure that independence but in the Church? Doubtless it is important; but the Church has never secured it. Of all classes of men, an endowed priesthood has ever been the most truculent and submissive, not to Christians, in which case their submission might have done less harm, but to the ruling power, whether the people or the aristocracy. An endowed ministry independent! Why both Whately and Guizot have shown, the one in his Essays on Romanism, the other in his History of Civilization, that the corruptions of Popery were owing mainly to the power of the people over the creed and practices of the church; and even the Bishop of London allows that the English Establishment can stand only so long and only in such a form as the opinions of the people of England allow. Popular sanction is the very breath of its nostrils, and yet men talk of the independency of the Church.

But has not the Church educated the people? Regarding it as a scheme of instruction, as Paley did, you must allow it has been eminently successful. Eminently successful! Why it has proved, as every one knows, a signal failure. The best educated of the three kingdoms is Scotland, where the Establishment is poorest; the second in point of education is Ireland, where the children of the poor are dependent mainly on voluntary instruction; the least educated is England, where the Establishment is wealthiest. Incomparably greater than in any of them is the prevalence of education in the American States, where there is no ecclesiastical establishment at all.

On the influence of this system on the activity of Christians, the following remarks are lamentably consistent with facts.

The principle of the machinery of an establishment is to provide every thing for the people. Under it they are recipients, never agents. Creed, ritual, and teachers, and the money that feeds and moves all, are supplied by the providence of one age to all succeeding ages, who find themselves placed under a system which more jealous of their supineness than confiding in their virtuous energy, guards against the ill effects of the former by means that are suppressive of the latter. Its doctrines and ritual being decreed by parliament, its whole framework upheld by means of art and compulsion, its official men of all classes chosen, deposed, shifted, and girded by an authority above their influence, they feel themselves to resemble spectators and listeners in a theatre where the display being gratuitous, the performers are at liberty to despise both the censure and applause of their audience. upon them has descended any of the religious fervour, which ani

. . . .

If

mating their ancestors, employed itself in the creation of an establishment, they look round and search in vain for it within that institution. There every thing is supplied-every thing fixed-to innovate is forbidden-to add is discouraged. Confining the people to the mere hearing of doctrines and precepts unfolded, and requiring of them no outward services beyond the observance of a few forms, it gives little exercise to the intellect and less to their active faculties, or rather it throws them both into inaction and repose.'-pp. 153, 154.

This passage serves to illustrate what Southey in his Colloquies calls in his secular language, an imperfection of the Establishment, in having no channel open for enthusiasm.' It is essentially a system of repose. It illustrates, too, the well-known expression of Robert Hall, that endowments are a curse,' soothing down into indifference, the moral and religious energies of the people that possess them. One of the worst uses to which property can be devoted, is to leave it for the perpetual maintenance of the favorite worship of its owner. Such endowments differ no doubt very materially from the endowments of the state, as they involve neither injustice nor persecution, but still they inflict all their practical evils. They are impious attempts to immortalize the divisions and listlessness of the Church. How much better would it be for wealthy and liberal Christians to bequeath their spirit, by extending the present labors of the missionary institutions, and thus making it incumbent upon posterity to maintain them!

Of the effects of establishments on the political institutions of a country history abounds with illustrations. They have favored alternately tyranny and rebellion, as the ruling power admitted or rejected their usurped claims; and their tendency is to promote them both. Founded on injustice, a regular course of injustice is essential to their continuance. Tyranny is one result on the part of the government; rebellion another on the part of the people. The natural results,' to adopt the language of our author, in both ways have been fully developed in our own 'day; the public councils are perplexed, and the public safety endan'gered by differences among religious men, who under a wiser 'policy would have been living in peace.'

One word in conclusion on the expectations and wishes of Dissenters. It is imagined by some that their hostile feelings 'towards an establishment are not unappeasable. Tracing it in 'part to a remembrance of cruelties suffered by their ancestors, and partly to the sense of present wrongs, arising from an in'complete system of toleration, they expect that it will subsidet through time, and that when all the inconveniencies' of a state of dissent are as far as possible removed, Dissenters themselves will acquiesce in the propriety of an established religion.'

Utterly visionary are all such imaginings. Dissenters object neither to the abuses of state-churches, nor to their creeds, nor to the amount of their revenues, nor to their forms, but to the principle of them-a principle that maintains the right of one man to impose his faith upon the conscience of another, or to compel him to support it. They demand perfect religious equality-that is, civil equality independent of their religious faith, and they will be contented with nothing less.

Art. VI. A Summer in Andalucia. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Bentley. 1839.

WE have read the volumes before us with much pleasure; and

in proof of our assertion, shall devote a few pages of our invaluable space to the author's memorials of an interesting expedition. It was our first intention to dismiss them with a cursory notice-commendatory of course-for which we should have earned small thanks from the writer, whoever he may be; and not conferred any other favor on the gentle reader than that which he must always attach to our sententious lucubrations. We should have given the author the benefit of a curt, grave, and dogmatic note of approbation. Nor would that note of approbation have been altogether palateable to the tourist-short it might have been but not altogether sweet. We should have felt it to be our duty, in the exercise of the stern prerogative wherewith the common consent of all intelligent persons hath invested us, to administer a slight reproof to the anonymous author, on account of his keeping the public so long out of this account of his trip; and we bring this charge against him now, lest we should forget it. Perhaps he may deem the remark rather complimentary than otherwise; but we shall quickly disabuse our Andalucian Anastasius, when we maintain, in the first place, that all our remarks are complimentary-surely he will not deny that any 'notice' of him, or his works, must be so-and when, in the second place, we protest on principle, against trip-takers and memorandizers in strange lands, keeping their rough notes by them for so many years, it is to be hoped he will see we are in earnest. Any one must at once admit the force of our objection. He undertakes a short and merry excursion to 'lovely Spain ! ' renowned, romantic land,' in the year of grace 1836, and not till the year 1839, does he send forth his Summer in Andalucia.' The necessary consequence has been, that we have a large book, but we pledge our word as critics, it is none the better for that.