24 APRIL 1830, Page 6

p. CHURCH OF ENGLAND — THE EVANGELICAL PARTY. . RILAND, Curate of

Yoxall, in Staffordshire, has published a mien. volume on Church Reform ;* a subject which he has treated • Ecc lake Demo et Tatamen. By the Rev. J. Maud, litA. Published by Maialltoa. ch tomer, and with no inconsiderable elpgiielle should frot; hoWeVer, haVenoticed Mr..RitiirirrSIOrk; Of which our ordi nary studies do not render us very competent judges, had it not been intimated to us, that in the course of it he had done us the honour to embody a few thoughts of ours on the subject of the three great denominations of Christianity—the Roman Catholic, the Pres- byterian, and the Episcopalian—which appeared in our number of 14th November last. We believe that Mr. RILAND is a person of sincere piety, and we perceive him to be a man of talent ; and it is with regret, rather than any other feeling,, that we notice in him a want of that Christian charity which the Evangelical party of the Church are in general so loud to claim and so slow to practise. Mr. RILAND says it is obvious, as fur as internal evidence goes, that our article "could not have been compiled by a writer intimately ac- quainted with the genius and spirit of Christianity." We have re- pernsed it in consequence of its being again presented to our notice thus long after the occasion of its compilation, as Mr. RILAND calls it ; and, putting aside all other evidence but what' the words supply, we cannot perceive any just grounds for so serious a charge. Neither can we deem it fair to blame us for omittinglo state a circumstance that lay quite out of the way of our reinarks,—namely, that there was a certain party in the Church of England, whose high notions of Chris- tian diity led them to remedy, so far as they were concerned, the de- fects of the system with which they were connected. Mr. RmarnI quotes COWPER'S lines on WHITF1ELD,—a glowing, and in respect of GEORGE'S consistency, a deserved panegyric. If the Curate of Yoxall were as evangelical as the Apostle of the Methodists, he would find himself impelled, like him, to quit a church where evangelical doctrines receive so little countenance. Mr. RILAND tells us that the pastors of his way of thinking " question and severely scrutinize the faith of every man ;" "that they discover no neutral ground between light and darkness,"—and many more things. Mr. RILAND cannot have for- gotten certain laws, repealed but two sessions ago, one of whose enactments was, that persons taking office under Government should be compelled to receive the sacrament according to the form of the Established Church, as a test of their political fitness. Did the Evan- gelical doctors of the Church hesitate to administer the most holy of ` its rites to such persons until they had questioned their faith ? A few years ago, an act was passed, authorizing the ordination of Bishops for the Colonies only,—a law which, by a process the reverse of that which obtains in respect of the slaves of those colonies, left the anointed of the Church free and emancipated while he remained out of England, but loaded him with shackles the moment he returned. Did any of the Evangelical clergy protest against this law ? If they connived at and practised for so many years so gross a profanation of the sacrament as was directed by the Corporation and Test Acts— if they teeitly permitted and still permit the limitation by statute of thd. gift of the Spirit which is declared to accompany episcopal ordi- nation—do they think that they will successfully vindicate their claim to purer and more exalted notions of Christianity by nibbling at the discredited mysticism of the Athanasian Creed, or by denouncing the unresisting imbecility of Tobit ? Mr. RILAND recommends the reVIV4'.' sion of the Prayer-book, and points out (which is indeed no difficult task, and had been performed already by an eloquent writer in Black- wood's Magazine) numerous particulars in which it might be properly amended. But who are to carry those amendments into effect ? A Legislature that is composed in part not merely of sectarians, but of Catholics, and which, in another year, perhaps, will be composed in part of Jews ? A Legislature, from one portion of which clergymen are jealously excluded, and in another of which they are feebly and inadequately represented? Is it to such a body, mediately or imme- diately, that Mr. RILAND would leave the correction of the liturgy of the Episcopal Church, the amendment of its forms of service, and , the reform of its discipline ? People who wonder that the Episcopal 1 Church should be unpopular', do not stop to inquire into the obvious cause why it must ever be so—it has no power of adapting itself to the wants and wishes the people. It 'Mist be content to receive from a body over which it has no control, whatever form that body chooses to give it. The Presbyterians have their General Assembly, the Catholics have their Spiritual Father, while the different minis- ters of the Episcopal Church are left every man to do that which is right in his own eyes. Give the Episcopal Church authority, as every other church has, to frame its own laws and to administer them; re- store the Convocation, and enlarge its powers; and then the Church will be what it ought to be. Under its present circumstances, it bears a merely tolerated existence, to which an act of Parliament ./ might at any time put an end.