ITO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTAT011.1
Sin,—I sincerely hope you will find time for a more careful criticism of my argument. No political or social question can be more important than one which touches so closely the principle of our Established Church ; and having studied it myself for some years, I desire nothing so much for it as calm and philosophical discussion. Of course, I have my own religious opinions, like the rest of us, and if I could not harmonise them with the existing Establishment, I should not belong to it. But I do not conceive that the religious question is the main or primary element in the controversy. As a system of doctrine and discipline, the Church exists, and no one dreams of establishing any other. Improve- ments in detail may be desirable and possible, but there can be no substantial change. When the religious differences amount to absolute incompatibility, the union of Church and State must be dissolved, and the Establishment will cease. To suppose that this catastrophe can be avoided by introducing constitutional changes into the Church itself, seems to me unpractical ; I cannot see that either party desires them, or has the means of effecting them.
Parliament is neither competent nor willing to frame articles of faith or formularies of worship, and Convocation is not qualified to advise it in so doing, because the Church, as a religious body, Sias not entrusted it with the authority, and is not likely to con- fide in its decisions. Your remark that in saying this I prove too much, rests on the common assumption that some change of the nature which I exclude is required to adapt the Church Establishment to present needs. This, however, appears to me the very point to be proved ; when it is proved, the verdict will be, not change, but Disestablishment. This is shown in the Irish precedent. The Irish Establishment was modified from time to time to the extent of the powers inherent in the union of Church and State. When more was judged requisite, the union was dis- solved. Parliament did not establish the Roman Catholic Church (though good reasons could have been given for that course from the political point of view), nor try to frame new rules of worship or doctrinal comprehension. It could abolish the Protestant Establishment,—it was beyond its power to devise a new one.
So it must be in England. It is the argument for Lay repre- sentation which " proves too much." In claiming the national Establishment for less than half the nation, it accepts the Irish position, and must abide the logical result, i.e., first Disestablish- anent, and then whatever Lay representation you like. I return, then, to the English problem,—Is it possible to prolong the Church Establishment with such improvements as are within the com- petency of Parliament and Convocation, or not? If not, it must fall ; nothing can come of reforming the representation either of clergy or laity, because it will be the nation itself that will have pronounced the decree, and representation can only register it. If the bulk of the English people were hostile to the Establishment, as in Ireland, we might prepare for the same result. The case is very different in a country where the great majority prefer the Established -Church to any other ecclesiastical organisation ; and the others, -whether divided into sects, or indifferent to all, occasionally make use of the National Establishment. In such circumstances, the Establishment may well stand, and grow stronger with the spread of religious knowledge, provided no attempt is made to go beyond the existing status to the prejudice of civil and religious liberty. Such an attempt is made, I think, in the project to give more vigour to the Church by placing it under the government of a laity representing less than half the nation. I do not believe that such a reform would give us more religious unity, and I am sure it would destroy the Establishment.
Nobody, I suppose, would expect any other result from the Public Worship Regulation Act, if it were understood to mean -what it says. In name it is an Act for the more effectual execution of the law, i.e., for the enforcement of the Rubrics "all round," a thing perfectly just in itself, and not unacceptable to the generality of the clergy, but the last thing intended by the Bishops and Laity who passed the Act ; what they rely upon is the provision for defeating the law by the intervention of the Bishop. Now I should have no objection to make the Bishop the Judge, with (or without) an appeal to the Crown, but this Parliament refused to do ; it would not trust the Bishop to decide on the law, but it has empowered him to judge the clergyman who can be got to submit to him against the law and without appeal. For the laity, and for the clergy who may defy the Bishop, there is a new Judge and a less costly appeal to the law. This appears to me hardly honest. To say that otherwise the Church would be scandalised by a flood of litigation was a good reason for not passing the Act; it is no -reason at all for passing a new law to enforce the old ones, and providing, at the same time, against their being enforced. It is not either a fair or hopeful course for Bishops and laity to pass an Act against the clergy, and then appeal to our good-sense 'to prevent the mischief of its operation. The inference is, what Lord Coleridge has since avowed, that under an ambiguous and -unpopular name, it is intended to suppress some portion of the acknowledged law ; and this is confirmed by calling on Convoca- tion to revise the Rubrics, with the view of altering the law before the Act to enforce it comes into effect. All this is too like Jedburgh justice to be ultimately satisfactory to any one ; it adds grievously to the complications of the position. I shall perhaps startle you when I add my conviction that the common notion which has brought us into all this muddle is a delusion. I do not believe a word of the alleged antagonism between lay and clerical opinion in the Church of England. Such an antago- nism is readily conceivable, either in the case of a celibate clergy under foreign rule, or of a stipendiary ministry paid and do- mineered over by their congregations. It would be an inex- plicable phenomenon, with a clergy like our own, married and living on their separate freeholds, without a vestige of pro- fessional union or class - interest, educated with the laity from their boyhood, and passing their whole existence in the closest possible contact with the several classes of society. There is not a clergyman in England that does not daily converse and concern himself with the affairs of the laity, while thousands rarely see another clergyman, and feel the slightest possible interest in his opinions. On religious questions especially, the whole business of the clergy is to understand and guide their people. The laity talk with their clergy on such subjects a great deal more than with each other; in fact, a diligent parson is vastly better acquainted, and more in harmony, with the general lay feeling on religious matters than the nobleman, the squire, or the farmer. No doubt there are class-feelings on this question, as on all others ; but the lines are not horizontal between the clergy and the laity, but vertical, through all the several strata of society. The clergy differ quite as widely from each other as from any portion of the laity, and there is no lay opinion on Church matters which does not find its exponent, and very often its creator and guide, in the ranks of the clergy. It is a pure delusion, then, to talk of the divergence of the laity from the clergy. There is no such cohesion in either body, and no such division between the two. A good deal has been done of late years to bring about such a division, by Prince Jerome Napoleon's policy of confining the priest to the sanctuary ; but the English Clergy are still in the full tide of the national life, intellectual, social, and religious ; and they are, moreover, as a rule, more tolerant, because of their wider responsibilities, than the lay agitators who seek to impress their own conflicting opinions on the National Church. The true want of the present time is greater unity among the clergy ; and to this the restoration of our Diocesan Synods would be far more effectual than enforcing old rubrics or making new ones. The action of such Synods with the lay Conferences recently adopted might enable Convocation to formulate such improvements as Parliament could be fairly expected to sanction. And if they should further promote greater unity among the Bishops (who at present seem to agree upon little else than that each shall do as he likes in his own diocese), there would be no reason to complain of any want of sympathy with the laity, or any incapacity to keep step with the progress of the age.—I am, Sir, &c.,
GEO. TREVOR.
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