A HINT TO BISHOPS.
SURELY the Bishops of the Established Church might have chosen a season less unfavourable than the present to make so general a display of episcopal authority in a state of debility ?
We can scarcely blame Henry of Exeter, since he does not usually labour to make prudence and discretion conspicuous among his good qualities ; he would scout the notion of expediency; and he is only in his vocation when urging the authority of the Church to extremes, against adverse authorities and in adverse seasons. Dr. Phillpotts has opened a new Gorham case ; having refused to license a Mr. Cod- nor as curate, on the same grounds respecting baptismal regeneration as those which occasioned the dispute with Mr. Gorham. If the new recusant is as well off as the other, or as well supported, we may have the whole affair over again, with its heartburning-s, its dragging of sacred things through the mud, its lame and impotent conclusion ; just repeating that disastrous blow to episcopal author- ity. But Dr. Phillpotts is "in the right," and he will not swerve. Nor can we blame the Bishop of Chichester, who appears as mediator between one of his High Church clergy and certain injured parishioners, though in vain. Mr. Kenrick is rector of a sub-deanery at Chichester; he entertains very high notions on the subject of burial, by force of which he has lately refused to bury a respectable Dissenting minister for whose body a resting- place was sought in the parochial churchyard, or to read the service over a girl who had killed herself in a fit of" temporary insanity." Dr. Gilbert expressed his disapproval of the spiritual discourtesy shown to the Dissenter, but avowed that he possessed no power to compel the refractory priest. Personally, the Bishop cuts a good figure in the affair, as a gentleman of Christian spirit; but offi- eially he is constrained to show his total want of authority. It is the Bishop of London who revels in the exposure of his powerless condition. Catechized by Lord Robert Grosvenor, who calls his attention to rubrical grievances like those which had ul- timately led to Mr. Bennett's resignation, Charles Tames declares that he has done his best to cheek them, and that in some cases his " wishes " have been obeyed : but it is evident that the obe- dience is "quite optional" ; for in one instance Dr. Blomfield's "earnest and affectionate entreaties" met with "unqualified refu- sal"; and in another, with an aggravation of contumacy, the obe- dience at first tendered was formally withdrawn. Episcopal au- thority appears to be little respected in Dr. Blomfield's diocese. In one instance where it has taken effect, the result is not ad- vantageous to the Bishop. The Reverend Thomas Harvey, who has filled various clerical posts among English residents abroad, fell under the displeasure of Dr. Blomfield some years ago, and was deprived of employment. Mr. Harvey has since importuned the Bishop with claims to be heard, judged, and reinstated ; the Bishop has virtually admitted that he was wrong, by licensing Mr. Harvey to preach ; but the retractation was imperfect and not gracious, and Mr. Harvey continues his complaints for redress. He is neither silent nor concealed ; his story is incessantly before the world ; and unless something is suppressed in his account, he is an injured man, the Bishop not having the heart to avow it. Dr. Blomfield ought to know that his character and his moral authority are suffering under the charges of his nomadic accuser. The very Primate of all England does not exert a more digni- fied power than his brother Prelates. Nearly a quarter of a mil- lion of clergy and laity ask for his intervention to check the Tract- alien practices within the Church : his reply, couched in terms of more formal decorum than Dr. Blomfield's, amounts to an admis- sion that Tractaiianism is leading numbers of the clergy over to Rome, but that the law will not "permit" him to prevent it; he can only " discountenance " the practices, and " thank " the zea- lous multitude for their address. So that, after all, the archiepis- copal authority depends upon the force of Dr. Bird Snmner's countenance!
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