THE CHUHCH OF ENGLAND. 24l 



land will cease to be the impregnable bulwark of orthodoxy she has 

 has hertofore proved/' 



There is something so very gross in this, that one scarcely knows 

 how to grapple with it. Nor is it necessary that we should contro- 

 vert the position at any length. Not to talk of one's common sense, 

 there is something in every unsophisticated breast that rebels against 

 the doctrine that " orthodoxy" can only be upheld by lavishing year 

 after year some 10,000/. on an average, on each of twenty or thirty 

 "dignitaries," as the Scotch divine calls them, for doing little, so far 

 as the interests of religion are concerned, but a world of mischief to 

 the body politic ; while the thousands of inferior clergy, who labour 

 in their vocation " from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve,'' 

 scarcely get more remuneration than is received by mechanics for 

 their industry. That must be a suspicious " orthodoxy " which can 

 only be supported by so gross and perpetual an outrage on all one's 

 innate notions of moral right. 



We have said that Dr. Chalmers is a Clergyman of the Church of 

 Scotland. If his position be true, that the enormous revenues of the 

 Church of England which in the Reverend Gentleman's vocabulary 

 just means the bishops' fees are indispensable in their present un- 

 equally distributed state, for the maintenance of " orthodoxy, " then 

 it follows that there can be no such thing as "orthodoxy" in the 

 Church of Scotland, for she has no dignitaries, no bishops, within 

 her pale, while in the pay of her clergy there is no difference worthy 

 of the name, when the comparative cheapness of living on the dif- 

 ferent glebes is taken into account. Does the Doctor not see the 

 awkward predicament in which his arguments place both his Church 

 and his Country ? 



It were a bad look out for the " orthodoxy of England " if its ex- 

 istence depended on the bishops. Had it been left in their keeping, 

 had it depended either on their practical conduct or their e( ponderous 

 erudition/' to use Dr. Chalmers* expression, it would have been 

 numbered among the things that were long ago. The Rev. Thomas 

 Scott, the best part of whose life was spent in an obscure curacy, 

 worth liitle more than 50/. a year, has done more for the "orthodoxy'' 

 of England, in Dr. Chalmers' acceptation of the term, than all the 

 bishops that ever lived put together. 



The Scotch theologian not only defends, with knight-errant 

 temerity, the revenues or wealth of the Church of England, but he 

 vindicates, with equal boldness, in an after-part of the sermon, the 

 indolence, or, as he calls it, "the indulgence of our established digni- 

 taries/' If Dr. Chalmers be consistent, he must be very severe in 

 his condemnation of the Church of Scotland, inasmuch as she tole- 

 rates no idlers or drones among her clergy. And if he does blame 

 her for having no wealthy or lazy " dignitaries " within her pale, 

 why does he not at once come out from her, and join a church 

 which is so largely blessed in its idleness ? 



But we have not yet given the bishops credit for one half the 

 merit to which, in Dr. Chalmers' apprehension, they may lay claim. 

 Among other signal general services they have rendered the cause of 

 " orthodoxy," is the particular one of " keeping from the borders of 



M.M. No. 99. 2 I 



