[ 176 J [FEB. 



THE ENGLISH AND IRISH CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 



THAT some changes in church matters are brewing, we suppose no 

 man who has his senses can doubt. What the nature of the changes 

 may be, is still in the bosom of those gentlemen who have so handsomely 

 vindicated to themselves the title of the " Inscrutables ;" nor are we at 

 all inclined to approach the depths of their mystery. We have no fear 

 that the matter will sleep ; nor that, when all is ripe, there will be any 

 great modesty of concealment. The Whitehall preachers are gone ; a 

 very proper performance, for anything that we can venture to say. The 

 Commission for altering the Ecclesiastical Laws, may be moving with 

 the deliberate majesty of church work ; or sweeping on with the brilliant 

 rapidity of the pas de charge. But of this, too, we say nothing. The order 

 for the return of all the members of all the multifarious sects that " rave, 

 recite, and madden through the land," is in full action ; and we shall, of 

 course, have it on the table of Parliament, and a formidable muster-roll 

 it will be ! All those things may be among the most innocent casualties 

 imaginable ; but their coincidence is curious. Yet, however, as premises 

 may be harmless, conclusions may be the contrary, we leave the draw- 

 ing of them to those whom it may concern. 



Our present employment is to give some of the facts touching the 

 present state of the livings, patrons, and appointments, of the Church. 



The use of an Establishment for Religion, depends upon the obvious 

 grounds, that religion is essential to the good order of a state. Its value 

 to the individual is a different consideration, and a higher one, as con- 

 nected with the hope of futurity. But the public value of religion 

 consists in its rendering the governed properly subordinate to the gover- 

 nors in its extinction of turbulence, rapacity, and bloodshed and its 

 general disposal of the people to live peaceably, and be content with 

 their own. 



As it is to be presumed that the legislator chooses for the best, he 

 will not select a bad religion where he may have the power to select a 

 good one ; or he will select that for his establishment which is already 

 the religion of the intelligent majority, and which is therefore likely to 

 be the one best suited, at least in its forms, to the habits and minds of 

 the nation, or perhaps the only one which they will receive. To perpe- 

 tuate the religion, he gives it " an Establishment," or regular form and 

 substantial system of offices, duties, and income ; thereby providing for 

 the rising up of a succession of ministers, and pledging the power of the 

 state to its protection and permanency. 



The more detailed uses of church establishments (and we do not limit 

 the term to the Church of England) are to be found, 

 In the protection which their creeds and authenticated forms of doc- 

 trine, and the necessary education, decorum, and public responsibility 

 of their ministers, provide against the extravagancies of fanaticism ; a 

 service of singular value, when we recollect that fanaticism has had fre- 

 quently the power of throwing whole communities into the most fatal 

 confusion, besides plunging multitudes of bewildered men into the great- 

 est spiritual blindness and temporal misfortune. 



In their provision for religious instruction ; a most important task, 

 which cannot be safely left to the rude hands that would otherwise be 

 ready to make it an instrument of evil ; nor to the casual benevolence, 

 which, however copious for a time, is so sure to run dry. 



