We have discussed so fully elsewhere what the Archbishop of
Dublin is pleased to call his reasons against the disestablishment of the Irish Church, that we need only add hero that in his charge, delivered on Thursday week, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, he insisted pathetically on the destitution of Ireland, if it should no longer have a Church to put forth officially " the national petitions for deliverance from disaster, or for blessings and mercies from Heaven." Really the worthy Archbishop seems to be lapsing here into a very eccentric form of heresy,—a sort of belief that State machinery has an advantage over mere unestab- lished Churches in securing a more favourable answer from Heaven,—that it has a power in itself, or, as the Roman Catholics say of the acts done by their sacerdotal order, ex opere operato, quite apart from the fervour of the individual worshipper, which is only an additional grace ex opere operantis. Does Dr. Trench, then, really suppose, that if all the same worshippers as before put up precisely the same prayers in an unestablished Church, the nation would yet incur some mysterious loss of spiritual advantage by the disestablishment ?
