Archdeacon Denison is getting on. He has long been quite
convinced that the Church was being persecuted by the State, but he is now evidently on the verge of the conviction that in the nature of things the Church ought to prevail over, and if 'seed be, persecute the State. In a Charge delivered at Taunton on Tuesday, he said that the present strained relations of Church and State dated "from the admission into the Legislature of persons not members of the Church of England. Whether it be not socially just that in a country which comprehended all manners of Christian belief and of no Christian belief at all, the Legislature should be co-extensive with the belief or no-belief, was perhaps a question, though he did not think it a question to be solved 'after the rudiments of the world,' in the glib end self-complacent fashion so common with his countrymen." Evi- dently that last remark indicates the deepest doubt whether Parliament should represent- any but members of the Church of England ; and if so, we conclude that those members of the Church of England who constituted Parliament would be bound to express the "mind of the Church" even in Parliament,—and if that meant Archdeacon Deni- son's mind, we would not give much for the liberty of the Dissenters. Not but what the worthy and venerable Archdeacon luau Englishman every inch of him, and as much addicted to "glib and self-complacent" solutions of political problems as any man among us. He would be a freak, courageous, tolerable aort - of religious tyrant enough ; but a very positive religious tyrant, for all that.
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