On this page

• Text (3)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    rage who went forth to conquer principalities ' in the eleventh century , did not limit themselves to Italy , Sicily , Syria , or Greece ; but one of them , with a bar sinister indeed over his escutcheon , yet attended by a large retinue of high-born soldiers , sought to establish a principality in another country , England . Louis Napoleon has said before the French peers , that he represents " a name , a principle , and a

    defeat "—the name Napoleon , the principle the Sovereignty of the people , the defeat "Waterloo . Waterloostandsbefore Frenchmen , on the declaration of Louis Napoleon , as the defeat to be redressed : the conquest of William the Norman would be a congenial example . At all events , we are approaching the close of one of the Napoleonic chapters , and we await the opening of the next .

    Untitled Article

    CHURCH POLITY versus CHURCH POLITICS . Me . Gladstone is again one of the sitting Members for the University of Oxford . He has polled sixteen more votes than he polled in July , and he has defeated the tool of the unnatural alliance , whose main object was , and is , " to worry Mr . Gladstone out of his seat , " by the respectable majority of one hundred and twentyfour . Personal hatred , shabby trickery , honest intolerance , and shameless desertions , have failed to deprive the University of her ablest

    representative since the days of Robert Peel . The dreary purblind Convocation House is closed ; the last special train , the last lingering omnibus , has set down the last reluctant voter . There is quiet in Broad-street , and peace in Magdalen Hall . The weary , the disappointed , the exasperated , the successful champions on either side have gone home . Mr . Archdeacon Denison has retired to his parochial duties at East Brent , not , however , without inditing another letter .

    William Beresford and " C . Lempnere can sit in the shades of the Carlton and the Temple , and strive to drown the memory of defeat , or plan new wiles and stratagems to trouble honest men over the bottle . The glistening Isis rolls along , unmindful of the moodiness of College Dons conning the lesson of failure on its banks ; and the most interesting city in the kingdom is again ostensibly devoted to the education of the select of Young England . And this fierce combat in the halls of Oxford

    has not been in vain . Day by day the great fact was becoming clearer to the eyes of the farsighted observer , that discord and disunion prevailed in the so-called church of England ; but few were prepared for the coalition of antagonisms which this election has thrown into high relief . The line of demarcation between Church Politics and Church Polity has been drawn , however faintly ; and although we have not seen the last 01 the former , we have aeon the beginning of the latter . Church politics expelled Robert Peel in 1821 ); but the same power lias

    not yet been able to oxpel Mr . Gladstone in 1853 . This is a testimony to the spread of liberal views which we must not undervalue , and it carries us some way out of the old entanglement , which knotted up together the State religion and the Tory party . The Nineteenth Century has invaded and conquered even Oxford ; and henceforth nlie enters on a new phase . If it wore only the revolution in the tutorial body which it has disclosed , the strong desire to purify , extend , and strengthen the great English Beminary , tho contest would have for us an incalculable value . But it lias torn a still wider

    rent iu tho curtain which veils tho future , and given us a glimpse- of vast eventualities yet to bo workod out . The Church of England is not now what it once was , when dissent was penal in all its forim —when , it had no legal political existence , nnd free discussion was sedulously repressed . The Church of England is not now the National church , whatever it may have boon when bolstered up by penal codes and disabilities . The Church stato countenance

    is now a sect supported by , shackled with stato fetters , amenable to Stato control . When Convocation was stifled , tho Church became a mere spiritual police establishment , as far as the Stato was concerned ; and what Henry tho Second began , and Henry tho Eighth ho much advanced , George the Firat comploted . And what ruined her P Politics . She grouped at , political pre-eminence , not content ¦ frith spiritual supremacy ; her abbots woro Xiorda of Parliament ; her bishops become X ^ oors "' '¦ " , -V . .

    of Parliament ; her clergy Jacobite leaders . She abandoned the strong ground of faith—the sword of the spirit—and clutched at the sword of the flesh . She failed , and deservedly . Her error was the error of Rome . Disobeying the precept of her founder , she tried to serve God and Mammon—the spiritual and the temporal ; she aspired to rule in Church and State , to enforce conviction at the point of the sword . She failed , and always will fail . And' the result was that famous Compromise which Lord Derby and Mr . Denison so harmoniously approves .

    But Compromise , in a matter so awful and so vital , is a disease which is fatal to its advocates . Cromwell crushed it ; Charles II . and William III . patched up the fragments ; George I . hammered it together with no gentle hand ; and it sheltered the parsons of the eighteenth century well enough . But the Church P Oh , she had become " the cloth , " a " liberal profession , " a tavern toast ; a convenient lodgment for cadets ; a " vested interest . " In a negative way this made up a National Church , because dissent was fenced off with penalties , and the mother Catholic fkith was placed on the level of felony .

    But those external conditions , lapped in which the Church quietly slumbered , broke down in 1825 and 1829 . Dissent was recognised—was legal . To a certain extent the State ceased to acknowledge the Church of the Compromise as the sole Church , at least in secular matters . The State agreed to ignore religious opinions in some of its constituent members ; Catholics and Quakers were admitted to civic and parliamentary offices ; and from that time the Compromise became an impossibility to honest conscientious mftTi . The disease broke out with virulence .

    Tractarianism arose , to which the Compromise was of necessity unendurable ; and following in its train came the great sections of Evangelicals , Puseyites , Gorhamites , Seceders , [ Rationalists , Via Media men , all kinds of professions . The iniquity of all these parties taking pay for ostensibly professing one faith was felt by all honest men . The common sense of the nation revolted ; and all the vices , and abuses , and crimes of the Church were raked up and gibbeted with " tremendous cheers . " It was not only seen by

    Radicals and no-churchmen , but by the masses , rough or cultured , that the Establishment was , in the main , a political machine ; that her members were more politicians than priests ; and that they guarded their own . secular emoluments and the political privileges of their patrons , while they trenched on the spiritual and temporal liberties of the people . As a political body , the last act of the clergy was to hoist the Conservative party into power , in 1841 , —for what P to

    preserve the Corn-laws ! And as if this deliberate Mammon-worship , and its inevitable effects , were not a lesson sufficiently fatal , a portion of the clergy madly plunged into the political contest just brought to a close . Arc we then to suppose that political parsoncraft is inevitable P It would seem so . Indeed , it is a question whether political clnirchmanship be not an inseparable accident from a political church . The oracle of East Brent , in his latest

    letter which wo have seen , confirms this view . Although Mr . George Anthony Donison concurred a fortnight back in the maxim that a " Churchman should have no politics , " he now reverses his belief . Replying to a clerical friend , anxious for tho Archdeacon's reputation , Mr . Denison deliberately assorts that " in a country which has an Established Church , and where ' liberal' polities aro more or loss identified with dissent , Churchmen must always have politics . " These emphatic italics are his own . How' then can ho consistently assert in the same epistle that " I made my move against Mr . Gladstone upon considerations apart from , and superior to ,

    considerations of personal adherence or party politics P" How can he who so ostentatiously supported the Derbyito candidates in'July , deny that ho is , and was a political agitator , who has " ^ pnfidonoo in Lord Derby P" The fact is that Mr . Denison lias deliberately adopted Church polities , and abandoned Church polity ; that is , lie clings to politics and submission to the State , in preference to no polities and tho chance of independence . The correspondent who drow from him the Erantian avowal , that he adheres to the Stato and ToryiHin , because liberal polities aro identified with dissent ( an assertion by the by "which iH untrue ) has formed a justor estimate of the impending crisis in church lnattort ) . Tho Rovcrond E . A .

    Ommaney , of Chew Magna , expresses his views in preferring this request to the political archdeacon : — "In behalf of many who , like myself , have been for years associated with you in the great struggle for the liberties of the Church of this land , I write to ask whether it be not-desirable to give some public assurance that questions of merely secular policy have not influenced our discussions or proceedings , that we have cautiously avoided identifying ourselves with any party in the State , and that in endeavouring to maintain Church principles we have looked for success to the justice and sacredness of our cause rather than to the support of this or that cabinet ?"

    Mr . Denison's answer is that which we have quoted above . In our opinion Mr . Ommaney has shown a true appreciation of the position of the Church . He embraces what we call Church polity in preference to Church politics . He seems disposed to rely on " the justice and sacredness" of his cause ; and we believe that reliance on that alone affords a " chance" of escape for the Church from , her false position . It is not for us to decide . The Establishment must " gang its ain gait . " One thing is clear ; matters will not be allowed to remain as they

    are . The time is coming when no " vested interest will be tolerated ; when the legal State will be less purely Church of England even than it now is ; when Church abuses , least of all , will be able to resist destruction ; when political parsons will find their influence gone ; and when the growing question , as to whether the connexion between the Church and the State shall be maintained , will press for decision . We leave those to answer who are interested ; but whether would it be better that the Church should base her future existence on a purely Church polity .

    totally abandoning politics ; or that she should abide by the maxim that a " churchman must always have politics / ' and act on that principle in the spirit of a partisan ? If the former course be adopted , independence and security may follow ; but if the latter be acted on , servile submission , at least , is inevitable— destruction may be . Let no one underrate the importance of the Church ' s future . Her present false position is a national evil . Public safety demands the application of powerful remedies either from within or from without . It is impossible to calculate the immoral effect upon the community at largo

    of tho present state of forced dishonesty in which churchmen exist . Simony , preferments from political motives , nepotism , abuse of charities , the awful amount of doctrinal antagonism professedly in one and tho same Church—all these things tell on tho national character to an unimaginable extent . If Church politics be maintained these must be maintained ; if a wise and generous polity , purely ecclesiastical , be adopted , these things must vanish . But that polity must be concurrent with religious equality , the fullest freedom of discussion , and the unquestioned right of all men and all serious opinions to an unrestricted development . ,

    There is a promise of this in the result of tho University election ; and that promise , much more than tho return of a Minister , or the defeat of a political faction , forms its value in our eyes .

    Untitled Article

    I It I S H P O L I T I C S . It is in a Dublin edition of Mr . Joseph Miller ' s work , that tho story occurs of the sailor rebufling tho ostler , who had suggested that a horso must not bo mounted right leg first , by tho inquiry , " How do you know that 1 wasn ' t going to ride with my face to the tail P" Only six weeks ago we were complimenting tho Irish party on their improved tone and bettered tactics ; but our congratulations were premature . We did not know that the Irish party could ride with its face to the tail . All was then order , compactness , hope . Now all is confusion , despair . Let us endeavour to point the melancholy moral .

    The " Irish party , " as it appeared in the short session preceding Christmas , was a noble confederation . It was Kent to Parliament by the Irish people , at enormous individual and general sacrifices , in the face of unparalleled landlord intimidation , and despite the most reckless effort at corruption on tho part of the then Government and the Orange faction , to forward two grand principled—TenantItight and Religious Equality . The death of O'Connoil , tho failure of tho Young irelaiidei'H , had , together , destroyed the popular parties in tho country ; and concurrently arrived

    Untitled Article

    * » i 84 T H E LEADER . [ Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 22, 1853, page 84, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1970/page/12/