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wife: but this is the construction indecently and insidiously put upon the passage by the letter written in the Queen's name. "The separation," says this letter, "so far from being sought by me, was a sentence pronounced upon me, without any cause assigned, other than that of your own inclinations; which, as your Majesty was pleased to allege, were not under your controul." And, again, "The tranquil and comfortable society' tendered to me by your Majesty, formed in my mind but a poor compensation for the grief occasioned by considering the wound given to public morals in the fatal example produced by your Majesty's inclinations."

A more shameful perversion of another's meaning and expression, for the sake of an assault upon his quiet and his character, is not easy to be found. Nor can it escape notice, that this imports to be an answer to a letter written and answered above four and twenty years before. This is quite enough to fix upon this letter from the Queen its appropriate character, and to make it every good man's bosom-prayer, that, since the issue of the late trial before the Peers has been considered by the Queen. and her advisers as calling on her Majesty's part for a solemn thanksgiving, she may be made sensible of the deep importance of "studying to be quiet," and of making what is thus deemed the triumph of innocence an æra of repose to the King and to the nation from those troubles and inquietudes to which it is impossible that innocence can lend itself, and from which it is equally impossible that the Queen in any event can derive either honour or security. No convulsions of the country could shake out any benefit to the consort of the King. Their differences might be "reconciled in ruin;" but by no change or chance of revolutionary occurrence can these differences ever be decided, the situation of her Majesty improved, truth more satisfactorily developed, opinion rectified, or controversy composed.

The Liturgy question has been decided, and not a small part of the nation will think that in that decision the whole case of the Queen has been virtually comprehended. Though we shall not trouble our readers with our opinions at any length, on a subject so little to our taste, yet it would not consist with the character of our journal to let any momentous question, touching religion, lie in our path without attracting our regard. "That the order of council, for erasing the name of the Queen from the Liturgy appears to this House to have been ill-advised and inexpedient," was a motion in spirit and import miserably below the tone of the petitions to the House, and the general expectation excited by the challenges of her Majesty's champions. In proportion as it was calculated to give to the Queen the advantage of every shade and modification of opinion, it widened the basis of the argument afforded by its

failure. For our own parts we cannot understand how any of the arguments used to demonstrate the illegality of the rejection of the Queen's name can be regarded as applicable to the motion; for if the rejection was illegal, it seems strange in the extreme to our minds to bring into question its expediency;-what is in strictness illegal, may be supposed expedient, and what is legal, may very evidently be inexpedient; but we do not hear so often as to be reconciled to it, of an inexpedient breach of the law of the land. A man might as well complain that a soap manufactory had been set up in his neighbourhood, which was a great nuisance, and besides that not very agreeable. That the King, as head of the Church and head of his family, has the power of settling the form in which the members of his royal house shall be noticed in the public prayers of the church, we have never felt the possibility of doubting. Insertions, changes, omissions, and erasures, by the Sovereign's authority, are frequent enough before the act of uniformity, to show how the point was then, considered, and since that act they have been of such common occurrence, as to show that that statute was never held to take away the power before possessed, and often exercised by the King The principle of law requires, that for this effect there must be express words; which are so far from being found in that act, that the clauses bearing upon the point are declaratory and confirmatory of this natural and necessary branch of the kingly authority.

Whether the rejection of the Queen's name from the prayers of the church, leaving her to be included in the general description of the royal family, with that silent supplication of the heart which the Christian in spirit will be apt to frame for her Majesty's peculiar circumstances, was expedient or otherwise, we shall not consider more at large, than we have the legality of the measure; but we will, for we cannot help it, observe that such a question can never be properly discussed but by those who know something of "the spirit of prayer and supplication," of "the Spirit that maketh intercession," and of "the prayer of faith.” Those christians who think that the services of GOD, to be of any worth, must be spiritual, intellectual, holy, the incense of the heart's sacrifice, the fruit of Christian sorrow, hope, and thanksgiving, the earnest of an union with the Creator, and Redeemer, will not deem it a light matter to make our Liturgy the medium of official homage, or state formality, beyond the length to which it has already gone. We could well spare, though no one will suspect us of disloyalty, or of wanting homage for the Crown, all laudatory epithets, or what appear to be such, though perhaps susceptible of another interpretation, bestowed upon the King's Majesty in the prayers of our church; and we believe that if we prayed for him simply as our Sovereign Lord the King, an

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objection to our Liturgy, with which some good men feel strongly impressed, would. be removed, and equal honour would be indicated to the Sovereign.* To bring the Queen's name into the service as a special object of prayer, with the usual epithet of gracious,t an epithet unquestionably importing, at the time it was introduced, the communication or reception of Divine grace, according as it was applied to GoD or man, would at least, to say nothing more of it, be to increase that courtly formality which, in the minds of many, lower the sanctity, by lessening the sincerity, of our forms. Nothing should be made ostensibly the object of our prayers for which we cannot pray heartily; and heartily, we presume, every good man can pray for the family of the King, after praying for the Sovereign himself as God's special servant and instrument; for they are the patterns to which the manners of the country form and adjust themselves,-theysurround the throne like a luminous zodiac, or involve it in the darkness of an eclipse; but if, instead of a general prayer for the royal family, the name of one is distinguished as the special and cherished object of our supplications at the throne of grace, unless such peculiar interest in the person so selected is honestly felt, so to pray is little else than to flatter human greatness, and to mock the majesty of heaven. Such a habit of praying leads to that criminal lukewarmness so frequently condemned in Scripture; and beautifully compared by Taylor to the phantastic fires of the night, where there is light and no heat, and which therefore may pass on to the real fires of hell, where there is heat and no light.

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When the legality of his Majesty's interference with the Liturgy is the question, men with hard hearts and unholy bosoms may be qualified for the discussion; but, if the legality is conceded, and the expediency or propriety be the subject of consideration, it seems to us that politicians, and lawyers, the violent, the venal, the verbose, the men of "vain imaginations, vain affectations, vain altercations," should stand aloof, nor "touch the ark-of this magnificent and awful cause.' He alone is adequate to the topic, whose lips have felt something of the touch of the live coal from the altar. It is a question which that mind alone is upon a level with, that feels all the worth of that for which prayer must ask, if it asks aright, the purchase of the Saviour's blood, the effect of his intercession, the fruit of his sacrifice, the gift of his healing, the efficacy of his grace,-things greater than diadems, and all else that life can possess, and therefore not to be solicited for ourselves or others but with an earnestness

* We dare not hope that his Majesty will ever see this paper, but if he should he may cast perhaps, a reflecting eye upon this suggestion.

+ In the services of religion, and in the works of our old divines, as in the sermons of Jeremy Taylor throughout, this word is used as above stated.

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equal to the prize. Such and such only will feel all the reverence due to our holy and comprehensive Liturgy. He will see it, indeed, in connection with the state; but not as an engine of statepolicy. He will see in it a constitution agreeable to the earliest and purest standard; at once spiritually independent of the state, and practically maintaining with it a genuine alliance. He will see how it tempers freedom with obedience, and how beautifully in exchange for protection it casts over the civil institutions its warm investiture. He will deem it an unkind forgetfulness of this condition of mutual benefit, should the state, by its authority, make the services of our holy Church subservient to political arrangements, or arbitrarily inflict upon it the language of insincerity.

We cannot help yet further insisting upon the necessity of a certain frame and disposition of the heart to qualify for the question, whether any subject of supplication shall or shall not be introduced into the liturgy of our church. It is not for the "disputers of this world," for forensic wranglers, or trading politicians, or mere party-men, still less for the hierophants of sedition, and least of all for the encouragers of parodies upon the church service, to settle upon its true grounds a controversy of this kind. Our Liturgy throughout is full of spirituality and purity, and its stated as well as occasional services are all calculated to raise the mind to a holy and heavenly fervour: none can approach it duly and rightly but in a state of deep personal humiliation, or proceed in it to any good purpose without a sincere desire for an increase of grace to hear meekly HIS word, to receive it with pure affection, and to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. Those who thus come to the sanctuary, and who thus feel and think of its services, and those only, are the persons we are at all disposed to attend to, on this delicate question; the thing itself must first be sacred in our eyes before we can be fit judges of what ought to make a part of it. And with this observation we will dismiss the subject.

The pamphlet entitled, An Address from the King to his People, puts a language in some places into the mouth of the King, of which we do not altogether approve. It is defective in dignity. The habitual homage due to majesty demands that the King should never express himself to his subjects in the style of justification or apology, and still less, of familiarity, with respect to his domestic affairs. The King cannot with propriety or safety enter with his people into the details of his own conduct. And therefore a pamphlet assuming such a form ought to have proceeded with a proper regard to these considerations. We have also some doubt of the policy and utility of giving to a publication of this sort the semblance of having proceeded immediately from

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the King. It would certainly have been what the loyal subjects of his Majesty would have disapproved of, had he really written the address imputed to him; and for this reason we cannot but think that it was incorrect, to say the least of it, to put forth a semblance of what would have been wrong if real, and which probably has left the impression of a fact rather than of a fiction on the minds of many. But after these deductions on the score of propriety, it is due to this performance to say of it, that it contains as many well expressed and important truths on the subject, which has of late divided and agitated the nation, as any of the ephemeral publications to which that subject has given birth. We could select many interesting and well reasoned passages from it respecting the grounds of the unhappy separation of their Majesties, and of the consecutive treatment of the Queen; but we forbear to do so, from an apprehension that, as all these points have been so long and vehemently controverted, it would be hardly consistent with impartial justice to present one side of the case, without entering into the discussion of the opposite arguments and statements, whatever may be our own personal conviction. Besides which we are mindful of our resolution to avoid plunging into the vortex of the agitating and distressing question of the Queen's general guilt or innocence. Our readers will remember that, at the outset of this protracted paper, we announced our intention of confining ourselves to the considerations suggested by the ungenerous use which has been made by faction of this most afflicting case, and the attempts grounded upon it to bring the King's majesty and all the high constitutional authorities of the kingdom into contempt and odium by the most unwarrantable and shameless libels, calumnies, and caricatures, by which private peace and honour, or the solemn rights of public morality and opinion, have ever since the world began been invaded and violated. The extract which we now present from this pamphlet to our readers, appears to us to put many things well, fairly, and moderately.

"I proceed now to the offer of an ample allowance to the Queen, provided she continued to remain abroad in the retirement she had voluntarily adopted; and the alternative with which that offer was accompanied. I have pointed out this transaction, and the suspension in the Liturgy, as acts which may appear to have emanated more immediately from my own personal feelings.

"I have previously remarked, that from the period of my becoming Regent, the differences between the Princess and myself had assumed a political character, and been treated by many as a party question.

"The companions of my youth, and the distinguished characters with whom, in my earlier years, I had intimately associated, had created in the public mind a widely extended, and readily believed opinion, that when the sceptre of my father should descend to me, I

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