658 THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE DISSENTERS. 



still to preserve religion, and yet admit students of all persuasions 

 we fear it is practically, is morally impossible. 



We commenced this article with professing our attachment to the 

 established church ; we shall conclude with a quotation from Mr. 

 Wordsworth's pamphlet, which contains truths we feel to be irresis- 

 tible. This shall be our apology, should we be accused of illiberality 

 of sentiment. If the universities are thrown open, we peril the ex- 

 istence of our national church ; and if the church should fall, we have 

 nothing left but national irreligion we dare not risk the experi- 

 ment nor can the Dissenters themselves, if we trust their own decla- 

 ration, expect more than we would concede them. They have wealth, 

 let them establish their own colleges. They have talent, let them be 

 the foremost in the honourable contests ofliterary, scientific, and reli- 

 gious exercises. They are valuable members of the state, let them 

 show their love to their couutry, to their own body, not by stirring 

 up dissension, but by promoting peace 



" On the consequent and inevitable modification of the present academic 

 system of religious instruction but few observations are requisite. The 

 case is analogous to that of religious worship, and the simple objection to 

 these theories, when translated into practice, is that they are impossible. 

 We are told that religious instruction may be given without reference to 

 controversy, or, in plainer terms, without a recognition of any on6 charac- 

 teristic and essential feature of Christianity. And this is called religious 

 instruction ! But we have not been told what honest man would give, or 

 what pious man would receive such religious instruction as this. Still, if 

 the thing were possible, this, truly, is the relief which with such ostenta- 

 tious condescension we vouchsafe the dissenters ! to starve their children 

 on the beggarly elements of a negative and deistical Christianity ! My 

 Lord, if dissenters are to be recognised as dissenters, if they are to have a 

 voice in the government of the university, and a share in the collegiate 

 endowments and this our concession involves they must also and ought 

 to be educated as Dissenters. They would indeed have achieved a splendid 

 conquest, if their triumph should consist in this that their right of con- 

 science should be violated ! No, my Lord, their children must now be 

 educated, and educated in dissent : and not merely so educated, but edu- 

 cated also by Dissenters. 



" And thus we are brought to suppose, as in active and practical exist- 

 ence, what we just now deprecated as too appalling to be possible. A few 

 moments ago, we should as soon have expected a Dissenter " to ask for a 

 rectory, as to obtain or seek a fellowship." Here, however, he now pre- 

 sents himself to us, uninvited and unexpected, and not merely invested 

 with the preliminary attributes of a fellowship, but exercising the functions 

 of an instructor, which by our very constitution suppose him to be enjoying 

 a fellowship, though not implied in its enjoyment. 



Encouraged by this favourable result of an inauspicious prophecy, arid 

 having sought arid obtained what seemed incredible, he will now proceed 

 boldly on his career, and when arriving at the brink of his statutable super- 

 annuation, he will seek to qualify himself, by receiving ordination from 

 some peculiar and appropriate authority, to demand a continuation of this 

 his collegiate privilege ; and when the lapse of years, and the opportunities 

 of his position, shall have made it more expedient, he will then be prepared 

 to denounce the inconsistent and intolerable iniquity, by which he is ex- 

 cluded from the ecclesiastical patronage of a college, in which he has been 

 engrafted and incorporated as a member ?" 



