The Bishop of Salisbury, who is both an amiable and
sincere man, but not even wise enough to put what he means in its least alarming form, frightened his clergy a little and his church- wardens more last Thursday week, by his visitation charge at Bridport. When he got to the power of "expressing" to peni- tents the pardon granted to their sins, and had unfortunately remarked that there was a time to keep silence and a time to speak, and he believed the time to be outspoken had arrived in his dio- cese, the Rev. W. C. Templer, Rector of Burton Bradstock, and we conclude Evangelical, broke out rather melodramatically, "I believe that there is a time to speak and a time to be silent ; let those that are on the Lord's side follow me." One church- warden rose to the occasion, and followed the Rector of Burton Braclstock ;—the clergy and churchwardens remaining, being apparently, in Mr. Templer's opinion, on the Devil's side,—or rather on the side of English gentlemen, who do not see that a radical difference of opinion need involve untimely theatrical displays. Other churchwardens ultimately deserted,—not wholly perhaps from orthodox horror, for the Bishop's charge was very tedious, and fills twenty-two columns of the Guardian,—and all thirty-four churchwardens afterwards signed a protest against the Bishop's Romanizing doctrines. After all, Dr. Hamilton's doctrines are not so very Roman. Expressed by the Bishop of Oxford, they would have passed muster well enough. But this good Bishop puts a half-and-half confusion as if it were the extreme thing itself.
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