Mr. Thomas Hughes delivered an admirable lecture on Mon- day
evening at Norwich on the advantages of an Established Church. He showed very powerfully the tendency to infinite subdivision which goes on amongst Dissenters, and goes on, no doubt, as one amongst his audience seemed to boast., by virtue of the very scruples of conscience which, when. harshly treated, first caused dissent. Its showed also by very interesting quotations how the great patriarchs of the Dissenters disapproved and altogether disavowed the new Nonconformist creed, that religion should have no connection with the State, and even maintained the contrary prin- ciple with great force. And he showed that what the scrupulosity of modern Nonconformity really ends in, is an attempt to pull up heterodox tares before the harvest, and the pulling of a good deal of wheat with it. Our own belief is that if the fathers of Noncon- formity had lived in our days of Church comprehension, no one would make lighter of the " sacredness " of the Nonconformist cause than they. They would just as soon try to " liberate " reli- gion from what is called " State control," as to liberate the State from religious control ; they would think the one attempt as foolish and mischievous as the other. Mr. Hughes is doing good service by his eloquent efforts to counteract the effect of the political Nonconformists' propaganda.
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