THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
10th October 1849. SIR—It appears to me that the discussion opened in your last number between yourself and your correspondent M. D. S. involves nearly the whole question of Church Establishments and of Religions Toleration. May I be permitted to make a few remarks, as briefly as possible, on some of the points suggested by the letter of M. D. S. and your answer? Undoubtedly, as you say, "the Church is not absolute or single in this island"; and equally undoubtedly, as your correspondent says, "the Church, if she would hold her ground at all, must adapt herself to the requirements of the age." T.he inference I make is, that she can do this by being freed from certain legislative shackles entirely belonging to another age.
The ecclesiastical law, framed in an age when such was really the case, does regard the Church as "absolute and single in this island "—as invested not only with that inherent Divine power which she claims, and which every other religious body, to justify its own position, claims or ought to claim, but also with a direct coercive power, capable of being exercised by constraint on the unwilling, and of course derived from the State. That is, spiritual censures are attended with temporal punishments. Whether this was ever desirable, even over members of the Church, may be doubted, (though it is always well not to be rash in deciding what was or was not desirable in ages widely different from our own); but when it comes to be exercised over persons external to the Church, it dearly amounts to persecution. These powere in theory still remain: the Church is still regarded as the Church of the whole country ; a Dissenter is as amenable as a Churchman to the Ecclesias- tical Courts, and thereby to sentences touching property and liberty. What is the result ? Such powers, in this age may exist by law, but cannot be practically exer- cised in this age. One reason for the desuetude into which ecclesiastical discipline has fallen, is clearly the fact of its being clogged by temporal penalties, onemellY designed as an aid and protection, but now only serving as an impediment.
This temporal sanction given to the Church's decrees appears to me to contain more of the essence of the "union of Church and State" than any other feature. It is not the most prominent or palpable, but it is the most real. Church ender- ments are not State grants: held by the sufferance of the State, and liable to its legislative enactments, they only differ from other property in that the very nature of corporate or trust property at once lays it more open to State interference than that of individuals. But the abstract power of the State over private propertY can hardly be denied; the very right of taxation proves it. The power of testa: mentary dispositions is clearly derived from the State. A man beg no natrus1
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right over his property when he hi dead, even if he had any while he was alive'
his right to bequeath it to his children, or to alienate it in mortmiin, are both penally derived from the State, and may be regulated or taken away by it. 'consequently, endowments, unless they directly proceed from the State, are no sign' of connexion. Dissenting bodies are, and in this age ought to be, as capable receiving endowments as Church bodies. With the exception of Parliamentary ants which have been made to both, and which are of comparatively small ex- gr tent, the property of all religious sects rests on the same ground—the permission but not the direct grant of the State.
But a compulsory payment for the benefit of the Church extorted from all by a State enactment is another matter. Inexpedient for many reasons even with re- gard to Churchmen, with regard to Dissenters it is clearly unjust; it is a violation of conscience. Two things seem at first to be liable to this charge,—tithes, and chinch-rates. But tithes are not strictly a payment: the tithe, a fixed propor- tion' now a fixed sum, never was the tithepayer's; all that he really does is to act as a now of gratuitous collector for the tithe-owner. Part of the tithe-owner'e income goes through the tithe-payer's pocket without ever being really his pro- perty. It is a slight burden, as Involving trouble, but is no real pecuniary exac- tion. Tithes in their origin were rather a State sanction than a State grant. The Church preached the duty of their payment; the State sanctioned it by legislative enactments. But their nature is now quite changed: when tithes were made capable of being held by laymen, they at once became as far as the State is concerned, like any other property, and rest on the same eenure. Hardly any one could ven- ture to propose the abolition of ecclesiastical and the retention of impropriate tithes, San, LS tithes, though not really a payment, do look very like one, any arrangement is desirable which substitutes for this, land or other endowments of a less invidious air.
Church-rates, on the other hand, are a direct payment. I am aware that nearly the same argument which I have used with regarde to tithes is usually brought forward in defence of them,—that property is bought and inherited subject to them, &c. But the church-rate is paid out of the rate-payer's own income in a sense in which the tithe is not; it is not a fixed amount which he may consider as never having been his own, but an occasional and fluctuating sum paid out of what cer- tainly - tainly s his own. And as a direct tax for a particular use, it can never be looked npon as property in the same way as the tithe. It is clearly a grievance to the Dissenter, and a source of discredit and odium to the Church. While every good citizen must deprecate any factious resistance to its payment so long as it continues to be enjoined by law, every Churchman, as much as every Dissenter, ought to use his most strenuous efforts, in every legal and peaceable way, to obtain its utter abolition.
The Bishop's seat in Parliament can hardly be separated from the property of the Church. It is an accident of the feudal tenure, unless we except those sees founded by Henry the Eighth. How far its effect on the Church is most for good or for evil, is a question which admits of much being said on both sides; but formally viewed, it can hardly be regarded as =ecclesiastical privilege. The State summons the Bishops to Parliament, either in consequence of their tenures, or be- cause it considers their counsel desirable: but the Church, if it gains indirectly, loses directly; while the State is employing the Bishops as senators, the Church is deprived of their services in their dioceses. Such is State favour at present. State protection extends to Church property a certain amount of security; State favour seems to consist only in temporal sanc- tions to certain ecclesiastical decrees and exactions. I believe both of these, now at least, whatever they may have been in past ages, to be simply pernicious; but even if they were benefits, how dearly are they purchased ! Though no such compact between Church and State as some have dreamed of ever historically took place, yet history shows that State favour has always tel to State interference. Con- stantine and Charlemagne, the greatest benefactors, in the ordinary sense, that the Church ever had, with their favours assumed an ecclesiastical authority, which an indifferent government—the United States for instance—never could assume. How this authority has grown, how much the Church is now positively enslaved and crippled by the State, I need not show; and the worst feature is, that, through constitutional changes, the supremacy once conferred personally on the Sovereign —who, as being necessarily a member of the Church, and bound by solemn per- sonal obligations to her, might more reasonably be accepted as an ecclesiastical ruler—is practically transferred to a Minister, not so bound, and not necessarily a Churchman.
In fact, one or two odious apparent privileges are purchased by an entire sacri- fice of liberty. Even in the case of property, the power of the State, which I do not attempt to deny in the abstract, receives an unfair aspect because similar in- terference does not take place with the property of other religious bodies. If by the separation of Church and State is meant that the Church should sur- render those apparent privileges and receive liberty instead, none can object. Let the Church be raised to the political level of other sects. For legislative inde- pendence and the choice of her rulers, power enjoyed by every other sect, she ought willingly to surrender any imaginary privilege. Let the Dissenter, exempt from the grievence of church-rates, no longer retain those claims which, while they exist, can hardly be denied him. As the Churchman is never Deacon of a Dissenting congregation, nor can vote in its assemblies, nor make any claim on it for admission to its fabric alive or dead, let the Dissenter no longer claim Church-seats or Church-burial, or exercise the functions of Churchwarden or of Vestryman in any ecclesiastical matter. Let all be equal. Church property, I have endeavoured to show, rests on the same grounds as Dissenting property : the only difference is, that the Church, as the oldest and most numerous body, has the most extensive possessions; aud it should be borne in mind, what a vast amount has been confiscated, and that what remains is subject to a control from which Dissenting property is practically exempt. But I am not sure that freedom would be too dearly purchased by the sacrifice of all endowments, unjust as would be the requirement of such a condition.
1 have gone on to a great length; but even thus I have omitted many parts of the subject, and have been obliged to take for granted several disputed points, my own views of which I could easily defend by argument had I space to do so. bly aim in calling your attention to these matters is this, to show that a high view of the Church's spiritual power is not inconsistent with, but rather harmonizes with, real liberal politics. The fault of the Church for a long thnehas been, to be too exclusive and aristocratic: socially, her prelates have become temporal peers, her rectors country squires ; politically, it has been the fashion to rest on the broken reed of the State, and to regard test acts, church-rates, and other such half- persecuting measures, as supports instead of hinderances to her efficiency. The Church, to grapple with the age, must become popular; and it is those who hold the highest views of her powers who most labour to make her so. The old- fashioned Lord Eldon sort of Churchmanship is positively inconsistent with a high view of the Church: the higher we believe her powers lobe, the less shall we rest on such miserable supports. All that her truest defenders ask is fair play; power to cast away the real fetter of apparent privileges, and to meet other Dodies on equal terms, both labouring to persuade, neither wishing to coerce. For this she requires no political or even social preeminence; such apparent honours are only real disadvantages.
Finally, I fully agree with you, that even were all temporal sanction removed, as it ought to be, from spiritual censures, still, in the present state of things, great caution and delicacy are required in their exercise. Having been converted from engines of reformation into engines of oppression, people are naturally jealous of them, and often morbidly so. What will happen in the Preston case— whether any law compels people to be confirmed, and visits them with any tem- poral penalty if they do not—I am not canonist enough to say; but it is very easy to imagine the state of mind in which persons so coerced would approach that rite. All that will be gained by what you rightly call a "spiritual bravado,' will be the bringing extreme discredit on the Church and one of her chief ordi- nances.
I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant, E. A. F.
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