ARE NOT THE CLERGY ARRAYING THEMSELVES AGAINST CHURCH AND QUEEN? few London, December 6th, 1847. THE question that I have prefixed to these pages, is one that I have asked myself so often during the last week, and have found the answer so serious and startling, that I cannot refrain from setting it before others at the present moment, in the hope that there may be some, into whose hands these pages may fall, who may be led at least to reflect, and consider-and pause. An appointment has just been made by the Crown to the See of Hereford. I at once grant much to those who disapprove it. I grant them, that it is to be regretted; and that it must lead all Churchmen to wish that the First Minister of the Crown would always, in such matters, consult the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the time being. I grant them that it proves how needful it is that Convocation should at least recommend to the Crown those, from among whom the choice shall be finally made, so that at least every candidate for the office of Bishop, may be unexceptionable. All this I grant at once. But I cannot stop there. I must look a little further. The appointment has been made; deliberately; advisedly; and how can it be set aside? Those who are responsible for it, have considered that orthodoxy during ten years of public authority, have outweighed the errors of an earlier date: that it is unfair to throw those errors now in the face of one who would else be an obvious candidate for a Bishopric and that the University that once censured the ancient errors, has now tacitly withdrawn that censure by not repeating it. Such is the state of things under which large bodies of Clergy, in various parts of the country, come forward to fetter the choice and authority of the Crown. Let me beg them to look a little further. What can the end of it all be? If it all fails, then surely they have done nothing more than show up to a censorious world, the spectacle of a Church divided against itself. But, say they, we shall succeed. we shall succeed. How? Can the Minister of a great country openly declare that he makes his appointments so carelessly, that he can afford to un-make them? Impossible. Lord John Russell must stand by his appointment, or resign his own situation. Is that, then, what they wish? It is absurd to suppose the present proceeding a mere indirect attack upon a Government. Well, then, what is to happen? Are protesting Bishops to go to the Tower? or to die on the floor of the House of Lords? Really, it is difficult to see how it is to end. But, to take a more serious tone, it is not difficult to see, that the matter may come practically to a struggle between the Crown and the Clergy; and at this moment what could be more disastrous, whether the Clergy gain the day, or the Crown determine to disregard the voice of the Clergy? What can the issue be, but a fresh disunion between Church and State ?-another link broken, of that chain so rashly, so blindly despised by some; and of which we lost one link already, |