similar, but unestablished. Law is the highest of human authorities: thus he is taught to obey and to revere, the essential and first conditions of our wellbeing. The proportion of the single person to the mass is smaller as the aggregation is more extensive: therefore, and in the same ratio, the spirit of self is more repressed in the nation than it would be in some voluntary association carved out from the larger body.

104. Again not only is the numerical importance (so to speak) of the individual less in proportion as the society is large, but his temptations to self-sufficiency and pride are likewise liable to be curtailed in proportion as the society is permanent. The more permanent the society, the greater becomes the authority attached to it; the minds of men are predisposed to submission, and the notions of domineering will are in a commensurate degree repressed. Now the State as such is less permanent in its nature than the Church, but more so than any scheme of individual device and thus again nationality, perpetuating as well as conspicuously exhibiting the body of a public religion, gives it the aid of all the venerable associations which it commands, and affords another emphatic contradiction to the exorbitant pretensions of self-will.

105. While, then, the noblest form of religion, and the authenticated form of Christianity, is presented in the Catholic Church, whether it does or does not occupy the vantage-ground of legal establishment, it yet appears that the instrument next in point of efficacy for the propagation, the perpetuation, and the

custody of religion, is that nationality which, among the uncertain conditions of our human state, embodies what has least of uncertainty.

106. Thus much upon the broad and general question. When we regard more specifically the case of England, where the Church claims catholicity, and realises accordingly the hereditary principle even more perfectly than the State, it may seem incongruous to ascribe to her legal incorporation those beautiful characteristics in her offices of religion which belong more properly to her divinely-written charter. And the more so, because the particular conditions of our nationality have never yet been carefully and permanently adjusted since the reform of religion. I do not now speak of the difficult questions which arise in mixed matter between the Church and the State, but there can surely be no doubt in the mind of any man who has reflected with care and candour on the question, that some powers, most naturally and indefeasibly inherent in the ecclesiastical body, are at present heavily and unduly fettered, either by acts or through omissions of the State. The discipline of this Church appears to require more than executive diligence and wisdom can supply: an efficient reorganisation, and a development of principles which, in the long continuance of lax and vicious practice, have almost escaped from our view. Legal recognition, however, neither according to its idea ought to be, nor in point of fact always has been, adverse to efficiency and vigour in the internal government of

the Church who, then, will deny, that these great objects are yet attainable, and that we may live to see greater accessions of strength derived from actual experience to the argument of these pages, that the nationality of religion is favourable alike to its quality and its general extension? Nor will I deny, that even at the present moment the Church derives much of strength not only from the more palpable provisions of the law, but from those ancestral associations of immemorial date, with which she is inseparably bound in the minds of Englishmen.

107. Those who dwell most fondly upon the spiritual prerogatives of the Church, considered as she is Catholic, will, nevertheless, do well to remember, that the promise of perpetuation, which is absolute to the body at large, is, to the members in particular, conditional and contingent. It is, therefore, not too much to say, that the nationality may materially contribute to the permanency, and thus to the general power of any given branch of the Church. Supposing her unjustly robbed of her secular patrimony, it might be that danger would accrue to her from pecuniary dependence; the necessity of eleemosynary support might preclude her from occupying a position of sufficient dignity and authority towards her own members. Except possibly in such a case as that of Romanism, which so commonly founds its peculiar action upon the spirit, if not literally on the dogma of sheer spiritual slavery, I can scarcely believe that it would, at least in these times, be possible to preclude

the use of undue influence upon a clergy sustained by what is termed the power of the purse; the Church might thus, whether by a slower or more rapid, a direct or indirect process, be starved into heterodoxy.

108. It has now been attempted to take a view of the question of connection between Church and State, which, though very incomplete, inasmuch as it looks to consequences alone, and further, only to a part of the consequences belonging to that union, is nevertheless full of interest, because it touches vital considerations, which are decisive, if determined against us, of the whole matter at issue. For if religion be injured by the national establishment of the Church, it must forthwith and at whatever hazard be disestablished; but if not, we need be little moved by the taunts of those who reproach us with being of a "law Church." The Church in England is a law Church: we rejoice in the fact: but how? Just as by the sovereign's proclamation against vice, the morals of the nation are crown morals. The law in one case, the crown in the other, adopts and attests the truths of God, and does them homage.

109. For we have found the supposition, that religion is secularised by contact with the State, to be fallacious. We have found, that the most devoted piety enjoys in an Established Church a climate not less genial than elsewhere; it might perhaps be said, more so: that in respect of liberal views of smaller peculiarities, and of discouragement to individual egotism, a national Church has, as such, especial advantages for elevating

and purifying personal religion: that she has a great and appropriate work, particularly in exercising a partial dominion over the indifferent and even the ungodly, by bringing to bear upon them, in favour of the gospel, and of their own happiness, a great force of human and secondary motives; and that, from the comparative independence of her position, she is also peculiarly adapted for the permanent conservation of Divine truth. If these things be so, we must get rid of that superficial impression, unfavourable to the nationality of the Church, which arises upon the first view of the very mixed character of her component parts, and must remember that, in containing together the good and the bad, in tolerating the hypocrite while she nourishes the saint, she is fulfilling, for the time of her dispensation, the clear intentions of that Lord whose coming she awaits with joy.

VOL. 1.

T