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certain is it, that the popular taste cannot be the true test of Gospel truth. It is because we are corrupt and faulty creatures, that religion has so few charms for the multitude, and that of those who do embrace her, so large a portion go astray. Superstition and enthusiasm enter into the closest alliance with our corrupt hearts; and it is not more difficult to make men Methodists, than it is to make them profligates. The pure and unsullied doctrine of Jesus Christ, is hard to be received; the perversions of it are palatable, and will be greedily devoured. But to say, that the Clergy ought therefore to administer the poison, rather than the remedy; that they ought to fill their Churches at all events, and by any means; that nothing but the genuine Gospel can attract large congregations; and consequently, that wherever a large congregation is assembled, there the genuine Gospel is preached, this is the real drift of the reasoning before us, and it is as mischievous, and as absurd as can be imagined. Dr. Chalmers acknowledges, that the mob have their occasional, whims, and absurdities,' and are very squeamish in their dislike to what is very innocent,' especially to the Doctor's own laudable custom of preaching written sermons. (P. 182.) But then who is to decide, whether the mob is 'puling and fan. tastic, or whether it is only indulg ing the appetite of human nature, for a Scriptural administration of the Gospel? This is a delicate question, and is resolved with the Doctor's ordinary address. In Scotland, the decision is to rest with the Clergy, as witness the following extract. In England, the In England, the decision, we are told, has long rested with the very same tribunal; and it is this circumstance which is

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there are few belonging to our Church, who ever think of disputing the right of the patron to the nomination. But there seems to be a great diversity of underhis right from the right of the Church. standing about the line which separates He can nominate; but it would startle the great majority of our clergy, were they told, that the Church can, on any principle which scemeth to her good, arrest the nominee. The Church can, on any

ground she chooses, lay a negative on any man whom the patron chooses to fix upon. It is her part, and in practice she has ever done so, to sit in judgment over every individual nomination. There are a thonsand ways, in which a patron might, through the individual whom he nominates, throw corruption into the bosom of our Establishment; and we would give

up our best securities, we would reduce our office as constitutional guardians of the Church, to a degrading mockery, were we to act as if there was nothing for it, but to look helplessly on, and to lament that there was no remedy. The remedy is most completely within ourselves. We can take a look at the presentee; and if there be any thing whatever, whether in his talents, or in his character, or in his other engagements, or in that moral barrier which the general dislike of a parish would raise against his usefulness, and so render him unfit, in our judgment, for labouring in that portion of the vineyard, we can set aside the nomination, and call on the patron to look out for another presen tec. It is the patron who ushers the presentee into our notice; but the fitness of the person for the parish is a question which lies solely and supremely at the decision of the ecclesiastical courts." P. 225.

"The power of a veto on every prebar but that of public opinion, is by all sentation, and without responsibility at any law and practice vested in the supreme ecclesiastical court of this country. And in these circumstances, is it to be borne that, with a power so ample, we are tamely to surrender it to the single operation of another power not more firmly established, and not more uniformly indispensable than our own? Are we, whose business it is to watch over the interests of religion, and to provide for the good of edification, and who, if we would only make use of the rights with which we are invested, could, in fact, subordinate the whole machinery of the Establishment to our own independent views of expediency -are we, as if struck by paralysis, to sit helplessly down under the fancied omnipotence of a deed of patronage? So soon

as the majority in our Church shall revert to the principle of its not being generally for the good of edification, that a presentee, when unsupported by the concurrence of the parish, shall be admitted to the charge of it, there is no one earthly bar rier in the way of our nullifying his presentation, and making it as absolutely void and powerless as a sheet of blank paper. We are not now contending for the right and authority of a call from the people, but for the power of the Church to admit the will or taste of the people as an element into her deliberations on the question, Whether a given presentation shall be sustained or not? and of deciding this question just as she shall find cause. And therefore it is, that in the lengthened contest which has taken place between the rights of the patrons and of the people, the Church, by giving all to the former and taking all from the latter, and in such a way, too, as to establish a kind of practical and unquestioned supremacy to a mere deed of presentation, has, in fact, bartered away her own privileges, and sunk into a state of dormancy the power with which she herself is essentially invested, to sit as the final and irreversible umpire on every such question that is submitted to her. P. 230.

This is speaking to the purpose. The Church of which Dr. Chalmers is a member, is and ought to be the final and irreversible umpire' on every dispute between a patron and a parish. The Church which does not number Dr. Chalmers among her eloquent and argumentative sons, must never presume to take a look' at a candidate for preferment, or give our governors a hint in his fayour. We suppose, that the Doctor is not yet prepared to contend that our Bishops should be elected annually, by universal suffrage and ballot; but at all events, popularity is the grand criterion by which they are to be judged; and woe be to the unfortunate cabinet-minister, who has recourse to any other test. "Were the Church of England rightly extended and rightly patronized, there would be neither sedition nor plebeian infidelity in the land. And thus, in the eye of one who connects an ultimate effect with its real though unseen cause, the

whole host of Radicalism may have been summoned into being by the very Govern

"ment that sent forth her forces to destroy it; and fierce ministerial clergymen, though they mean not so, may, each from his own parish, have contributed his quota to this mass of disaffection; and, ascending from the men of subaltern influence, that Bishop, whose measures have alienated from the Church the whole popular feeling of his diocese, instead of a captain of fifties, may virtually though unwittingly be a captain of thousands, in the camp of that very rebellion which would sweep, did it triumph, the existence of his order from the kingdom; and, to complete the picture of this sore and infatuating blindness, if there be one individual in the Cabinet, whose pernicious ascendancy it is, that has diverted away the patronage of the Crown from the only men who can Christianise and conciliate the people, he, in all moral and substantial estimation, is the generalissimo in this treasonable warfare against the rights and the prerogatives of the monarchy." P. 243.

In preceding pages, (217 and 240,) we read of" the High Church intolerance, that so evidently scowls from the Episcopal Bench," and of "the fiery and alarmed bigots of our Establishment;" and in this last extract, we are told of "fierce ministerial clergymen." It is in these terms, that Dr. Chalmers thinks it becoming to talk of a Hierarchy and Priesthood, which he assures us, that he does not desire to destroy. For our own parts, we see no reason to conceal the sentiments, to which these and similar expressions have given birth; they compel us to think, that if the Doctor suffers our Establishment to survive,

his poverty and not his will consents, and that the Church of England will owe her safety to the impotence, rather than the regulation of his wrath. We trust also, that instead of there being one eminent individual in his Majesty's Cabinet, whom an evangelical jury may pronounce guilty of High Treason, there are at least enough to form a jury upon the evangelicals themselves; and to give a verdict in favour of the Church, as often as she is called

to their bar.

We here take our leave of Dr.

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Chalmers, and not without regret. For we assure our readers, that the Chapters which we have left untouched, are very nearly on a par with those from which our extracts have been taken; and on the ground that we have traversed, we have not started above half the game. There is an encomium upon evangelical senators, which is as fine as any thing in the volume. We are assured also, that the only hope of preserving the Church of England,

rests upon

the circumstance of let

ting the pews of the new Churches, and paying the ministers out of the rents. The days of triumphant Puritanism, the days of Peters, and Praise-God Barebones, are termed, the Augustan Age of Christianity in our island!' And the difference between an elder of the kirk, and a deacon of the kirk, and the great superiority (as far as the spiritual edification of the people is concerned) of an nnlearned man over a learned man, are set forth with great success.

But it is needless to

enlarge upon any of these topics. The idle, who are in search of amusement, may turn to the book itself, and will be repaid for their trouble. The busy must have long ago pronounced it a compound of solecisms in language, and contradictions in argument,-an amicable. contest between false grammar and false logic, conducted on both sides with so much skill, as to make it impossible to determine which has the best of the battle.

REVIEWERS REVIEWED. Edinburgh Review, March, 1821. No. 69. Art. III. Monthly Repository. Vol. 14.

IT is an event, which could not have been expected, that the writers of the Edinburgh Review have at length agreed to raise the cry which they have so often denounced, and to suggest to the notice of their rea.

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Though the Tweed shall not cease to flow, and the Cheviot Hills shall not be levelled with the plain, Presbyterianism shall transgress its local boundaries, and England shall have no Bishops and no Deans. England shall either have no Ecclesiastical establishment, or there shall be a revolution in her polity, from which Bishops and Deans shall be excluded. To many Clergymen of the establishment, who are acquainted with the records of ecclesiastical history, and are accustomed to contem. plate the signs of the times, this assertion may not appear so strange as the writers of the Edinburgh Review imagine, although it may excite their curiosity to know, for what purposes and with what intentions this intimation of their danger has been announced in the gude town of Edinburgh. The Presbyterians of Scotland might have been supposed to be little concerned in the circumstances of the English Church, and to have no jealousy of the Episcopal Establishment beyond the Tweed; nor is it very consistent with their hereditary prejudices and antipathies to anticipate the dangers of prelacy, and to prescribe the means of its renovation and support.

Such is nevertheless the liberality of these cosmopolites, whom it pleases to locate themselves at Edin burgh: they cannot suffer the danger, which they feign or find, to pass without recommending an antidote of sovereign power and efficacy.

"Now the receipt we would propose for the prolongation of the existence of this venerable system, is the diminution of

needless hostility, a display of good humour, liberality and condescension, and an habit of giving way in trifles in order to preserve essentials.""

These qualities would not have been recommended if it had not been supposed that they are wanting in the present administration of the English Church and the reader will determine whether it is just to impute either to the governors or mi. nisters of that Church, any excess of "needless hostility," any want of "good humour, liberality and condescension," any pertinacity in contending for "trifles" to the prejudice of " essentials." It is not easy to conceive what imputations have been brought upon the English Church by the writers of the Edinburgh Review, but as far as our own experience and observation extend, we confidently renounce the charge which these expressions imply. It is at the same time very possible, that we may misunderstand the expressions in which the charge is conveyed. "Needless hostility" may mean earnestness in maintaining the truth; "good humour, liberality and condescension," may signify facility in surrendering deep convictions and solemn engagements to popular clamour and prejudice; the doctrine of the Trinity may be a "trifle," and a marriage fee an "essential." If this be the meaning of the expressions of the Edinburgh Reviewer, it did not require his sagacity to discover these characters of the English Church and Clergy, which could not be removed, without destroying the constitution which it is insidiously and empirically intended to relieve.

This is not the only ambiguity or neglect of plain dealing which requires to be corrected and exposed. The running title of the article is "Dissenters Marriages." Now what are meant by " marriages," and who are included in the class of " Dissenters?" The words bear very different meanings in Edinburgh and in London and whatever be the de

fects of the English law, or doctrine,
or rites of matrimony, they can give
no offence in Scotland, for the law
does not extend to Scotland, the
doctrine does not prevail in Scot-
land, and the rites are not celebrated
in Scotland. It is not possible that
the celebration of marriages in the
English Church should offend Dis-
senters, except the Dissenters of
England. But here again is another
ambiguity. In common phrase, Dis-
senters is a generic term, including
all who dissent from the English
Church, and generally designated
under the three denominations of
the Presbyterians, the Independents,
and the Anabaptists. Now although
the general wish of Protestant Dis-
senters is assumed in the petitions
for relief from the obligations of the
Marriage Act, it is restricted by a
reference to their specific opinions
on the doctrine of the Trinity, and it
is a point, which will not be called
in question, that the petitioners con-
sist almost exclusively of the Unita-
rians, and that the chief and leading
objection on which they insist, and
from which they seek to be relieved,
is the recognition of the doctrine of
the Trinity, in the office of matri-
mony. This must be known to the
Edingburgh Reviewers for their ar-
gument is drawn from the Monthly
Repository, which is the Magazine
of the Unitarians. It is equally evi-
dent, that although the several de-
nominations of Dissenters have their
objections to the office of matri-
mony, and to every other office of
our Church, they have no objection
to the doctrine of the Trinity, and
they would think it the worst of ca-
lumnies, to be suspected of doubt.
ing or disbelieving that essential doc-
trine. This doctrine may be a trifle
in the estimation of an Edinburgh
Reviewer, but it is no trifle in the
judgment of the great body of the
English Dissenters, of the scholars
of Watts and Doddridge, and of the
principal dissenting writers from the
time of the Reformation.
If the
Edinburgh Reviewer had therefore

spoken of the offence which the ritual of marriage gives to the Unitarians, his language would have been unequivocal, the offence would have been admitted, the charge could not have been denied: but in entitling his argument "Dissenters' marriages" he has assumed a force and authority, which he has no ground to sustain, and has aggravated the complaint beyond the true

measure of the offence.

It is admitted that the order of the Church of England in requiring marriage to be performed "by the intervention of a Clergyman and the recital of appointed prayers," is wise, and as far as concerns the Members of the Church of England reasonable and decent. The propriety of some of the prayers is passed over as a subordinate question; the principal objection is the imposition of these rites upon the Dissenters. In support of this objection a very superficial view is taken of the state of the law of marriage, before the passing of the Marriage Act, and of the principal provisions of that act: and it is maintained, by one of those gratuitous and peremptory decisions, which on certain occasions form the manner. ism of the Edinburgh Review, that

"Before the Marriage Act the marriage of Dissenters in the face of their own congregations was good in law. Of this

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Thus the validity of the marriages of Dissenters in the face of their own congregations is made to depend on the Toleration Act, and the Unitarians are well aware, that they derive no benefit under that act. They

have also conceded that there was

then no essential difference in point of doctrine between the Dissenters and the Church, and consequently no ground of exception to the office of matrimony from its avowal of the doctrine of the Trinity. If the reader will turn to Burn's Ecclesiastical Law, he will find under the word marriage, various cases of marriage celebrated by Dissenters, or otherwise in contradiction of the Canon Law, and in arguing these

cases no reference is made to the

Act of Toleration. In the ease of Wigmore, who was an Anabaptist, and although he married his wife according to the forms of their religion, he nevertheless had a licence from the Bishop to marry; Holt, chief justice held, that they might be punished for not solemnizing the marriage according to the forms prescribed by law, but not so as to declare the marriage void. In the case of Middleton, who was married out of the canonical hours, Lord Chief Justice Hardwicke held, that although the Canons of 1603 did not bind the Laity, the former canon law and the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts were not superseded even by the statute 7 and 8 William, c. 35, s. 4. In the case of Haydon, in wich the parties were Sabbatarians, and married by one of their ministers in a Sabbatarian congregation, according to the ri "The marriages of Dissenters cele-tual, with the exception of the ring, brated in the face of their own congrega- not only was an attempt made to tions after the date of the Toleration Act, disturb the marriage in the ecclesiwere considered valid by our courts of law, although some attempts made to dis- astical courts; but after the decease turb such marriages in the ecclesiastical of the woman, the letters of admicourts, served to dispose the majority of nistration granted to her husband

faet there is no doubt. Whatever grievance they have to complain of, originated at that period. Their claim, or, if that is a more palatable word, their petition is to be restored to the situation they were in, as far as marriage is concerned, before the passing of this Statute."

This is a bold commentary on the opinion which the Unitarians have advanced in their petition to the Legislature: they argue, that

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