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Art. IV. Thoughts on the Rule of Conscientious Subscription. By

the Rev. F. D. MAURICE, A.M. 8vo. London. It is one of the effects of a highly advanced state of civilization, that it breaks up society, almost without end, into classes and groups.

Each of these circles becomes a world in itself, and is often strangely ignorant of what is doing in its neighbour world. Science and art, wealth and poverty, professions, politics, religion -all contribute to segregate the great multitude after this manner; and these separate vortices, in which the great majority of men are ever floating their little round, are the never failing conservators of sectional prejudices and of bad passions. Protestant dissenters, for example, as the result of their peculiar principles and preferences, have their place considerably apart from the general community in this country. The usual consequence has followed. Multitudes who live all their days on the borders of dissent, know scarcely more of its real character than of the character of sects belonging to the most remote times, or to the most distant nations. What they know, or think they know, is purely from hearsay. Everything is seen through a distant, false, or distorted medium. Chance becomes their instructor. Nothing, accordingly, can be more preposterous than the misconceptions which generally ensue. We have reason to think that our pages pass into the hands of some readers of this description; and it is no more than justice towards such persons, to suppose that they do not wish to be deceived—that they desire to obtain trustworthy information on this subject. We therefore venture to solicit the candid attention of this class of persons, while we attempt to meet their wishes in this particular. It is by no means our intention to pronounce an unmixed eulogy on dissent. We wish to deal faithfully with its good, and not less so with the evil to which that good is incident. Our aim, in fact, will be twofold -to furnish information to those who need it, with regard to the real nature of the affair which comes before them under the name of dissent; and to stimulate dissenters themselves to the amendment of some things in respect to which it is only too manifest that they still fall somewhat short of perfection.

We scarcely need say, that character belongs to classes no less than to individuals, and to religious sects no less than to tribes and nations. No sect has exclusive possession of the virtues. Every sect has its particular forms of weakness. Moreover, there is commonly a natural relationship between the truth maintained by any body of religionists, and the errors observable in their history. "Improbable as it may seem, the former is often as parent to the latter. Every virtue has its neighbour vice. Every strong element in character is in danger of filling more than its due space, and of becoming error from excess. Clemency soon degenerates into weakness, and a spirit of inflexible rectitude is ever verging towards undue severity. It is so with all our good. The balance of power—the wise regulation of checks, is of as great moment to the world within a man's own breast, as to the world without. English nonconformity has its strong distinctive sentiments; but these all bring their particular forms of danger; and that man deserves to be ranked among its best friends, who, while careful to sustain its high and generous elements, is no less careful to guard against the extremes to which these very excellencies naturally tend.

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One ohvious characteristic of dissent is, that it should partake of the nature of a PROTEST.

Dissent is a relative term, and supposes something from which it is severed, and to which it is opposed. Such is the relation of English dissent to our established church. And its protest against that church is twofold; partly against some things which are peculiar to it, and partly against the great principle common to it with all civil establishments of religion.

The history of the church of England is such as to warrant the presumption that it must include very much to which a thoughtful and conscientious mind may well take exception. Henry VIII. was not a monarch to become the founder of a church that should leave little to be supplied in the way of amendment by those who should come after him. Nor was such an achievement to be expected from the short ascendancy of protestant courtiers under Edward VI., nor from the long ascendancy of that imperial lioness, Elizabeth. James I. settled all church affairs in the spirit of the maxim, “no bishop, no king;' and the parties who entered upon their doomsday labours after the Restoration, concluded everything in accordance with that orthodox and courtly rule. The deep repugnance to change, which, in the times of the Puritans, and afterwards in the times of the nonconformists, became only the more fixed the more change was demanded, served to perpetuate the old forms, even the most objectionable of them; and they have thus descended, with little abatement, to our own time. Thus the mind of the nineteenth century is required to adjust itself to a condition of thought which has long since passed away. Bacon complained of this in his day, lamenting that while the state was subjected to repairs every year, the church was allowed to remain stereotyped as at the beginning. It avails nothing to say that the beginnings of change are dangerous. Such considerations must have their limits, if old institutions are not to be destroyed by the very conservatism which is put forth in their defence.

From these causes it has come to pass that the men of our own age are required to content themselves with the same slight modifications of popish and middle-age forms, that were deemed sufficient when the first move from Romanism was made some three centuries since. The fruit of this policy, in 1642, was the commencement of the civil war; in 1662, it led to the ejectment of some two thousand ministers from their livings; and its effect since that time has been, not only to perpetuate, but to augment, a vigorous dissent over the whole land. Now, there are many considerations which have led to this result on the part of nonconformists which have ceased to be of such weight as formerly, and which with multitudes who are still dissenters have ceased to be of any weight at all. Such considerations, we inean, as relate to priestly vestments, to liturgical services, to particular postures in worship, to the general ceremonial of worship, or even to episcopacy itself, in some shape considerably different from that seen in St. Stephen's. Even subscription to a creed is not, or at least should not be, a great difficulty with the modern nonconformist; seeing that every dissenting church has virtually its creed, and its edifice for worship enrolled in chancery as a property to be identified with that creed. But in the absence of general exception on these grounds, there is cause enough for exception remaining.

Every clergyman is required to take the book of Canons as his rule of ecclesiastical obedience, in all cases in which the said canons are 'not contrary to the laws and customs of the land.' At his ordination, he is farther required to subscribe willingly and er animo,' That the Book of Common Prayer, and of ordering of bishops, priests, and deacons, containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word of God.'. He is obliged to express himself to the same effect concerning the Thirty-nine Articles; and it is solemnly laid upon him that he shall not put bis own sense or comment to be the meaning of the article (in any instance), but shall take it in the literal and grammatical sense.'

Now, it is not necessary that we should determine at this point whether the opinion be a just one or not, but certainly it is the opinion of nonconformists, that the natural tendency and the actual result of these requisitions is, to ensnare men into false utterances, to cause them to utter manifest untruth, and this at the threshold of their priesthood, and as the condition of being recognised as the Ministers of Truth.

The book of Canons, along with many other strange things, requires the man taking it as his ecclesiastical guide, to account

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all persons chargeable with the following offences as excommunicate, that is, as persons without the pale of holy church, and consequently without the pale of salvation,-viz., all persons questioning the doctrine of the queen's ecclesiastical supremacy; the true apostolical character of the Church of England; the scriptural authority of anything set forth in the Book of Common Prayer, or in the Thirty-nine Articles; or who shall declare any part of the rubric of the church to be superstitious' or 'repugnant to the word of God.' In short, if a clergyman be faithful to his vows, he must leave all nonconformists, Romanists, and Protestants-full half the empire-to the uncovenanted mercies of God. In many respects, these monstrous canons of 1604 have been virtually repealed by the subsequent laws of the state; but this sentence of excommunication has not been meddled with by the civil power, except in so far as to rescue the subject from the civil penalties which originally attached to it. In all cases where the law of the land does not interfere, this canonical law is the rule to which the churchman should hold himself bound to do homage. Now, in the view of the Nonconformist, every clergyman is thus placed as between the points of a frightful dilemma:-not to act in the spirit of these canons is to forfeit his claims to consistency and veracity, for he has pledged himself so to do, and to act in the spirit of them, in our day, would be to proclaim himself a merciless bigot!

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We may pass from the canons to the rubric, but the change brings no amendment. Take the following words, as uttered by the bishop in the ordination of a priest: Receive the Holy Ghost 'for the office and work of a priest in the church of God, now com'mitted unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou 'dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, 'they are retained.' When the priest thus ordained visits the sick, he is required to address the sick man thus: Our Lord 'Jesus Christ, who has left power to his church to absolve all 'sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy 'forgive thee thine offences; and by his authority committed to me "I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost! In baptism, also, the priest is required to say, 'We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy 'Spirit, to receive him for thine own child by adoption, and to 'incorporate him into thy holy church. And we humbly beseech 'thee to grant, that as he is Now made a partaker of the death of 'thy Son, so he may,' &c. Then, at the grave, the priest has to express his confidence that God has taken the soul of our dear brother here departed unto himself,' and to commit his ashes ac

cordingly to the dust, “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.'

Now, do all Christian men believe in this supposed communication of the Holy Ghost in ordination-in this supposed power of the priest to absolve from sin-in this doctrine of baptismal regeneration or in this assumption, that every profligate, even though known to have died in the midst of his profligacy, whose body is brought to be interred in consecrated ground, should be judged as having passed into a state of blessedness ? Fewvery few men, now-a-days, believe in any of these things. What, then, are the men to do who cannot so believe? Such men feel that for them to become clergymen would be not only dishonest, but impious; nor can they consent, if they are men of sound moral feeling, to remain churchmen in any capacity. It may

be said that these are old objections, worn threadbare by iteration. It may be so; but in the view of the nonconformist they are moral objections, and as such, can lose nothing of their force by time. Sincerity-veracity—change not with circumstances or centuries. It is true, great effort has been made to explain away these formidable difficulties. But, in the judgment of the nonconformist, every attempt of that nature has been a sorry business—a sad exhibition of special pleading. He cannot look to the articles and rubric of the Church of England, in their 'literal and grammatical sense,' and call to mind the state of opinion existing in that church, without feeling confident that every clergyman subscribing to these symbols, to whichever section of the church he may belong, must have so done with large mental reservation-imposing a non-natural sense on many things which he at the same time professed to receive without equivocation, and ex animo. Suppose the man, in whose view these proceedings in the Church of England have all this appearance, to be somewhat in error on this point; nevertheless, so long as this shall be his judgment, his course is plain. If disposed to become a minister, he cannot be a minister of that church; and if he be a layman, he must cease to be connected with a system which, in his view, aims at ends professedly religious by means which are clearly both irreligious and immoral.

Nor must it be supposed that these are the only objections to which the system of our established church is exposed. The great inequality observable in the distribution of its wealth; the secular duties assigned to its chief ministers; the law of patronage; the total absence of ecclesiastical discipline; and the consequent indiscriminate mixture of persons in the communion service-these are all serious grounds for dissatisfaction and complaint, and might warrant separation. But the exaction