The Principles and Objects of the Mediaval Party. 11

school was to be subjected to a purely spiritual power, of which the laity, if admitted to a nominal participation, were to be the submissive instruments. The civil power had no right, not merely to interfere with, but even to inspect schools. Its province was to be strictly limited to the duty of promoting by money1 grants the designs of the ecclesiastical authority. The diocesan boards were, by means of inspectors appointed by themselves, though paid by the State, to estimate in each diocese what was annually needed for building or repairing schools, for their annual support, for the maintenance of training schools, for the retiring pensions of

1 "They were anxious to affirm the great principle of the right of the Church to unconditional assistance in the matter of education, and he trusted that the Church was roused to a sense of its duty, and would never lay down its arms until it obtained the victory (Cheers)."—Joseph Napier, Esq., M.P., at Church Education Meeting, Feb. 12. 1850.

-

"CHURCH EDUCATION. -We have received the following outline of a plan of Church Education, which has been drawn up by the Rev. G. A. Denison. Extract: The principle of distribution would be, that grants be made to the several religious bodies, in proportion to their stated requirements, and to the amount of local contributions. To apply this principle to the case of the schools of the Church of England: — founders and supporters of schools throughout each diocese would, in each year, make their application for assistance, through the Diocesan Board of Education, to the bishop, and the bishop would make his representation to the government to the following effect:-That it had been certified to him that: 1. Certain schools were proposed to be built in the diocese, with the circumstances of each proposal, and with the amount of local contributions in each separate case. 2. That certain other schools, specifying the circumstances in each case, were in want of annual assistance of various kinds, including augmentation of salaries of masters and mistresses, retiring pensions, &c. &c. This class would comprise the schools of the union poor houses, 3. That a certain sum in aid was required for the maintenance of training schools, whether situate in, or established in connection with, the diocese. 4. That a certain sum in aid was required for the purpose of maintaining an efficient diocesan inspection.

"The proper business of the department of government, to which the distribution of the educational grant was entrusted, would be simply to meet this representation by an annual grant of money to the bishop, to be transmitted to the several parties through the Diocesan Board of Education, to such an extent as would be consistent with a regard to the claims of other dioceses, and with a regard to the claims of other religious bodies.

"An annual return to Parliament of the moneys granted and applied, with the several modes of application, and the annual certificate of the diocesan inspector as to the efficiency of each school, would be the guarantees for the due application of the public money.'"- Morning Paper, 1849.

12 The Nonconformist School and Church are distinct.

masters, for the charges of the diocesan inspection, and generally for the improvement and extension of education. This estimate was to be forwarded through the Bishop to the Privy Council, who, after having granted the money thus declared to be necessary, were to report what had been done to Parliament. But the scheme reserved neither to the Executive Government nor to Parliament any power to reject the demand, limiting their authority solely to the adjustment of the proportionate claims of different dioceses and different religious bodies.

Both parties forgot some great truths. The Dissenters did not remember that, ever since the Commonwealth, they had required the protection of the civil power, without which, they would have been trodden under foot. They failed to perceive, what need the scattered fragments of their several communions in remote and thinly peopled districts had of the vindication of their civil rights. They over-estimated the relative strength of parties (even in towns) when not merely numbers, but wealth was thrown into the scale. In their repudiation of the interference of the civil power in education, they confounded what was purely religious, both in its origin and its issues, with what was largely secular, though it had sprung from religious zeal. They ought to have been foremost to declare, that the school was not the Church, though, considering that all learning is the handmaid of religion, it might be regarded as the nursery of the Church or the congregation. For Nature is but another page of Revelation, and the training of the intellect is inseparable from the preparation of the immortal spirit for a more effectual worship. They ought therefore to have been on their guard against a sophism which, in their own congregations, might have prepared a new usurpation substituting the Church for the Priest - and establishing a tyranny over souls, more dire even than the ghostly

Constitution of Schools since the Reformation.

13

despotism of Rome-a republic of despots, for one tyrant of the conscience. While they contended for the government of the school by the minister, elders, deacons, and other members of their congregations, they should have carefully avoided restricting its relations to so narrow a circle. They should as citizens have acknowledged their duties to the poor, without the fold of faith; they should have offered their allegiance to the State, maintaining the independence of freemen,— yielding none of the rights of conscience, but giving their most earnest help to perfect the work of a Christian Government and people, in elevating the poorest to the enjoyment of their privileges as Christians.

On the other hand, those Churchmen, who deluded themselves with the notion that they could usurp for the Church the authority of the Civil Government in education, forgot that the stream of events had, through the entire progress of our history, flowed in an opposite direction. The Reformation itself was, in the first instance, a successful act of resistance of the monarchy to spiritual usurpation. Its purer development by Cranmer, in the reign of Edward VI., established in England the great principles for which Luther and Melancthon had contended on the Continent of Europe. The schools of the Reformation formed in the reigns of Edward VI., Elizabeth, and even of Charles I., were not confided to the clergy, or subjected to the visitation of the bishop. Successive decisions of our courts of law had declared that the canons of 1603 were not binding on the laity. Neither by the common nor by the statute law, had the visitatorial power of the prelates been extended to any class of schools. Any attempt, therefore, to establish such visitatorial power in parish schools was contrary to the principles which had governed the civil courts; to the spirit of all legislation during the past two centuries; and to the will of Parliament. Moreover, in this period, Non-conformity, springing from the fertile seed of the blood of the Lollards, had grown into a

14 The Influence of Puritanism in Public Policy.

formidable power, which had once been the chief instrument in resisting the tyranny of the Stuarts. In the struggle it had overturned the monarchy, and had even transformed the Church by a Puritan leaven which had expelled the nonjurors. By the force of opinion it had protected the scattered ministers who refused obedience to the Act of Uniformity. At length the principles of civil and religious liberty gradually asserted their triumph in the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. All these events were, to the mediæval party in the Church, as though they had not been.

The claim of an exclusive authority to teach, advanced by this party, was based on the assumption, either that the Church had no mission to those who had not been received within her pale by the rite of baptism1, or that, if such a mission were admitted by the servants of that Master who directed them, when the bidden guests excused themselves, to go forth to the way sides and hedges, and compel the outcasts of the world to His Feast, then, it was contended, that the Church could not neglect to teach her whole doctrine to those who accepted any part of her instruction.2 Consequently, the

1 "What he contended for was nothing else than this :-The birthright of the children of God to be trained up in an atmosphere of truth, not an atmosphere of conflicting creeds and varieties of opinion."-The Hon. J. C. Talbot, Q.C., at Church Education Meeting, Willis's Rooms, Feb. 12. 1850. "All church education depends upon, and flows from the Catholic doctrine of regeneration in baptism (loud and tremendous cheering).” — Rev. G. A. Denison, at the same Meeting.

"I cannot take one step in educating a child who has not either received, or is not, if of such an age as to admit of previous teaching, in a definite course of preparation, for holy baptism, and in the latter case I should not admit the child into the school until holy baptism had been received.”—A Reply to the Committee of the Promoters of the Manchester and Salford Education Scheme, by Rev. G. A. Denison, 1851, p. 32.

"Under no circumstances whatsoever could I consent to admit a single child to a school of which I have the control and management, without insisting most positively and strictly, on the learning of the catechism and on attendance at church on Sunday."-Correspondence of Rev. G. A. Denison, April and May, 1847.

2 "The Church could not force its teaching on any one, but the teaching it furnished for those who chose to partake of it should be consistent with the

The Refusal of Toleration in certain Schools. 15

children of a Romanist, a Jewish, or a Dissenting family, inhabiting a parish, in which there was no other than

principles and discipline of the Church, (cheers).”—Joseph Napier, Esq., M.P., Church Education Meeting, Feb. 12. 1850.

"Have the Committee of Council ever read the Ordination Service, in which we promise to set forth, with all diligence, the doctrine, the sacraments, the dogmatic teaching, and even the discipline, of Jesus Christ; and to do our utmost that the people committed to our care may shape their lives accordingly? (Hear, hear.) To go a little further. Do they know that we have bound ourselves by the most solemn obligations to drive away all false and erroneous doctrine? If they did, would they call upon us to receive into our schools any sort of erroneous doctrine, with which the child may have been inoculated, either by his parents, or by the teaching of the sect to which they belong? (Hear, hear.) Would they tell us, that we are not to lift a finger to raise this child from error, or to lead him in the right way? I say, that a greater tyranny than this was never imposed on this country."-The Rev. Mr. Barter, the Warden of Winchester College, at the Church Education Meeting, February 12. 1850.

"Now, it is not only a 'principle' of 'the Established Church,' that all children in her schools shall be taught and instructed in the Catechism of the Church, but the Catechism is, itself, the exponent of the 'principles' of the Church as applied to the education of the young.

"Wherefore the Committee of the National Society, in whom the government of the Society is vested by the charter, is not competent - allowing, for argument's sake, that it were so disposed-to so much as entertain the formal consideration of the rescinding or setting aside, in any case whatsoever, the rule in question (whereby all children who are scholars of schools in union with the Society, are required to be taught and instructed in the Catechism of the Church of England'), such rule being simply the carrying out of one of the most manifest principles of the Church of England, in which principles, and in none other, the Committee is bound by the charter to promote the education of the poor.'"-A Reply to the Committee of the Promoters of the Manchester and Salford Education Scheme, by George Anthony Denison, 1851, p. iv.

In the Manchester and Salford Education Bill it is provided "that no child shall be required to learn any distinctive religious creed, catechism, or formulary, to which the parents, or those having the maintenance of such child, shall in writing object." On this, Archdeacon Denison remarks, even when it is regarded as a rule to meet a special case: "The simple truth is, that one such special case' in a school is fatal to the character of that school as a 'Church school.' If the Committee are not aware of this fact, I must take leave to bring it under their notice."— Ibid. p. 10.

"It is not a RULE of the National Society, but of the CHURCH, respecting the teaching of the Catechism to all children, without exception, who are the scholars of schools in connection with the Society.

"I will simply say here, that if the Committee of the NATIONAL SOCIETY

FOR PROMOTING THE EDUCATION OF THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR IN THE

PRINCIPLES OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH, shall either abandon the rule, or allow it to be set aside in any case, when it shall be in their power to