|
ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH AND STATE, ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH; WITH AIDS TOWARD A RIGHT JUDGMENT ON THE LATE CATHOLIC BILL |
|
|
PARAGRAPH THE SECOND. As a natural consequence of the full development and expansion of the mercantile and commercial order, which in the earlier epochs of the constitution, only existed, as it were, potentially and in the bud; the students and possessors of those sciences, and those sorts of learning, the use and necessity of which were indeed constant and perpetual to the nation, but only accidental and occasional to individuals, gradually detached themselves from the nationalty and the national clergy, and passed to the order, with the growth and thriving condition of which their emoluments were found to increase in equal proportion. Rather, perhaps, it should be said, that under the common name of professional, the learned in the departments of law, medicine, &c., formed an intermediate link between the established clergy and the burgesses. This circumstance, however, can in no way affect the principle, nor alter the tenure, nor annul the rights of those who remained, and who, as members of the permanent learned class, were planted throughout the realm, each in his appointed place, as the immediate agents and instruments in the great and indispensable work of perpetuating, promoting, and increasing the civilization of the nation, and who thus fulfilling the purposes for which the determinate portion of the total wealth from the land had been reserved, are entitled to remain its trustees, and usufructuary proprietors. But, remember, I do not assert that the proceeds from the nationalty cannot be rightfully vested, except in what we now mean by clergymen, and the established clergy. I have everywhere implied the contrary. But I do assert, that the nationalty cannot rightfully, and that without foul wrong to the nation it never has been, alienated from its original purposes. I assert that those who, being duly elected and appointed thereto, exercise the functions, and perform the duties, attached to the nationalty -- that these collectively possess an unalienable, indefeasible title to the same -- and this by a Jure Divino [Google translate: divine law], to which the thunders from Mount Sinai might give additional authority, but not additional evidence. COROLLARY to Paragraph
II. -- During the dark
times, when the incubus of superstition lay heavy
across the breast of the living and the dying, and
when all the familiar "tricksy spirits" in the service
of an alien, self-expatriated and anti-national priesthood were at work
in all forms, and in all directions,
to aggrandize and enrich a "kingdom of this world,"
large masses were alienated from the heritable proprieties
of the realm, and confounded with the
Nationalty under the common name of church property. Had every rood, every pepper-corn, every stone,
brick, and beam, been re-transferred, and made
heritable, at the Reformation, no fight would have
been invaded, no principle of justice violated. What
the state, by law -- that is, by the collective will of
its functionaries at any one time assembled -- can do
or suffer to be done; that the state, by law, can undo or inhibit. And
in principle, such bequests and
donations were vitious ab initio, [Google translate: vicious from
the beginning] implying in the
donor an absolute property in land, unknown to the
constitution of the realm, and in defeasance of that
immutable reason, which in the name of the nation
and the national majesty, proclaims; -- "The land
is not yours; it was vested in your lineage in trust
for the nation." And though, in change of tunes and
circumstances, the interest of progression, with the means and motives
for the same -- Hope, Industry, Enterprize -- may render it the wisdom of the state to facilitate the
transfer from line to line, still it
must be within the same scale, and with preservation
of the balance. The most honest of our
English historians, and with no superior in industry
and research, Mr. Sharon Turner, has labored successfully
in detaching from the portrait of our first
Protestant king the layers of soot and blood, with
which pseudo-Catholic hate and pseudo-Protestant candour had coated it. But the name of Henry
VIII would outshine that of Alfred, and with a splendor, which not even the ominous shadow of his
declining life would have eclipsed -- had he retained
the will and possessed the power of effecting, what
in part, he promised and proposed to do -- if he had
availed himself of the wealth, and landed masses that
had been unconstitutionally alienated from the state, i.e. transferred from the scale of heritable lands and
revenues, to purchase and win back whatever had
been alienated from the opposite scale of the nationalty. Wrongfully alienated: for it was a possession,
in which every free subject in the nation has
a living interest, a permanent, and likewise a possible
personal and reversionary interest! Sacrilegiously alienated: for it had
been consecrated
If, having thus righted the balance on both Sides, HENRY had then directed the nationalty to its true national purposes, (in order to which, however, a different division and subdivision of the kingdom must have superseded the present barbarism, which forms an obstacle to the improvement of the country, of much greater magnitude than men are generally aware of) -- if the Nationalty had been distributed in proportionate channels, to the maintenance, -- 1, Of universities, and the great schools of liberal learning: 2, Of a pastor, presbyter, or parson [1] in every parish: 3, Of a school-master in every parish, who in due time, and under condition of a faithful performance of his arduous duties, should succeed to the pastorate; so that both should be labourers in different compartments of the same field, workmen engaged in different stages of the same process, with such difference of rank, as might be suggested in the names pastor and sub-pastor, or as now exists between curate and rector, deacon and elder. Both alike, I say, members and ministers of the national clerisy or church, working to the same end, and determined in the choice of their means and the direction of their labours, by one and the same object -- namely, in producing and re-producing, in preserving, continuing, and perfecting, the necessary sources and conditions of national civilization; this being itself an indispensable condition of national safety, power and welfare, the strongest security and the surest provision, both for the permanence and the progressive advance of whatever (laws, institutions, tenures, rights, privileges, freedoms, obligations, &c. &c.) constitute the public weal: these parochial clerks being the great majority of the national clergy, and the comparatively small remainder, being principally [2] in ordine ad hos, Cleri doctores ut Clerus Populi. I may be allowed to express the final cause of the whole by the office and purpose of the greater part -- and this is, to form and train up the people of the country to obedient, free, useful, organizable subjects, citizens, and patriots, living to the benefit of the state, and prepared to die for its defence. The proper object and end of the National Church is civilization with freedom; and the duty of its ministers, could they be contemplated merely and exclusively as officiaries of the National Church, would be fulfilled in the communication of that degree and kind of knowledge to all, the possession of which is necessary for all in order to their CIVILITY. By civility I mean all the qualities essential to a citizen, and devoid of which no people or class of the people can be calculated on by the rulers and leaders of the state for the conservation or promotion of its essential interests. It follows therefore, that in regard of the grounds and principles of action and conduct, the State has a right to demand of the National Church, that its instructions should be fitted to diffuse throughout the people legality, the obligations of a well-calculated self-interest, enlivened by the affections and the warrantable prejudices of nationality. At least, whatever of higher origin and nobler and wider aim the ministers of the National Church, in some other capacity, and in the performance of other duties, might labour to implant and cultivate in the minds and hearts of their congregations and seminaries, should include the practical consequences of the legality above mentioned. The state requires that the basin should be kept full, and that the stream which supplies the hamlet and turns the mill, and waters the meadow-fields, should be fed and kept flowing. If this be done, the State is content, indifferent for the rest, whether the basin be filled by the spring in its first ascent, and rising but a hand's-breadth above the bed; or whether drawn from a more elevated source, shooting aloft in a stately column, that reflects the light of heaven from its shaft, and bears the "Iris, Coeli decus, promissumque Iovis lucidum," [Google translate: Iris, glory of heaven, full of light promissumque of Jupiter] on its spray, it fills the basin in its descent.
In what relation, then do you place Christianity to the National Church? Though unwilling to anticipate what belongs to a part of my subject yet to come, namely, the idea of the Catholic or Christian church, yet I am still more averse to leave this question, even for a moment unanswered. And this is my answer. In relation to the National Church, Christianity, or the Church of Christ, is a blessed [3] accident, a providential boon, a grace of God, a mighty and faithful friend, the envoy indeed and liege subject of another state, but which can neither administer the laws nor promote the ends of this State, which is not of the world, without advantage, direct and indirect, to the true interests of the States, the aggregate of which is what we mean by the world -- i.e. the civilized world. (What we ought to mean, at least: for I blush to think, current as the term is among the religious public in consequence of its frequent occurrence in the New Testament, how many discourses I have heard, in which the preacher has made it only too evident that he understood by the term the earth which turns round with us, the planet TELLUS of the astronomers!) As the olive tree is said in its growth to fertilize the surrounding soil, and to invigorate the roots of the vines in its immediate neighbourhood, and improve the strength and flavour of the wines -- such is the relation of the Christian and the National Church. But as the olive is not the same plant with the vine, or with the elm or poplar (i.e. the State) with which the vine is wedded; and as the vine with its prop may exist, though in less perfection, without the olive, or prior to its implantation -- even so is Christianity, and a fortiori any particular scheme of Theology derived and supposed (by its partizans) to be deduced from Christianity, no essential part of the Being of the National Church, however conducive or even indispensable it may be to its well being. And even so a National Church might exist, and has existed, without, because before the institution of the Christian Church -- as the Levitical Church in the Hebrew Constitution, the Druidical in the Celtic, would suffice to prove. But here I earnestly intreat, that two things may be remembered -- first, that it is my object to present the Idea of a National Church, as the only safe criterion, by which the judgment can decide on the existing state of things; for when we are in full and clear possession of the ultimate aim of an institution, it is comparatively easy to ascertain, in what respects this aim has been attained in other ways, arising out of the growth of the Nation, and the gradual and successive expansion of its germs; in what respects the aim has been frustrated by errors and diseases in the body politic; and in what respects the existing institution still answers the original purpose, and continues to be a mean to necessary or most important ends, for which no adequate substitute can be found. First, I say, let it be borne in mind, that my object has been to present the idea of a National Church, not the history of the Church established in this nation. Secondly, that two distinct functions do not necessarily imply or require two different functionaries. Nay, the perfection of each may require the union of both in the same person. And in the instance now in question, great and grievous errors have arisen from confounding the functions; and fearfully great and grievous will be the evils from the success of an attempt to separate them -- an attempt long and passionately pursued, in many forms, and through many various channels, by a numerous party, that has already the ascendancy in the State: and which, unless far other minds and far other principles than the opponents of this party have hitherto allied with their cause, are called into action, will obtain the ascendancy in the Nation. I have already said, that the subjects, which lie right and left of my road, or even jut into it, are so many and so important, that I offer this epistolary pamphlet but as a catalogue raisonne of texts and theses, that will have answered their purpose if they excite a certain class of readers to desire or to supply the commentary. But you, Sir! are no stranger to the ways, in which my thoughts travel: and a few jointless sentences will possess you of the chief points that press on my mind -- to show "the burden of the valley of vision, even the burden upon the crowned isle, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers the honourable of the earth; who stretcheth out her hand over the sea. and she is the mart of nations!" (Isaiah, xxm.) The National Church was deemed in the dark age of Queen Elizabeth, in the unenlightened times of Burleigh, Hooker, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Lord Bacon, A GREAT VENERABLE ESTATE OF THE REALM; but now by "all the intellect of the kingdom," it has been determined to be one of the many theological sects, churches or communities, established in the realm; but distinguished from the rest by having its priesthood endowed, durante bene placito, by favour of the legislature -- that is, of the majority for the time being, of the two Houses of Parliament. The Church being thus reduced to a religion, Religion in genere is consequently separated from the church, and made a subject of parliamentary determination, independent of this church. The poor withdrawn from the discipline of the church. The education of the people detached from the ministry of the church. Religion, a noun of multitude, or nomen collectivum, expressing the aggregate of all the different groups of notions and ceremonies connected with the invisible and supernatural. On the plausible (and in this sense of the word, unanswerable) pretext of the multitude and variety of Religions, and for the suppression of bigotry and negative persecution, National Education to be finally sundered from all religion, but speedily and decisively emancipated from the superintendence of the National Clergy. Education reformed. Defined as synonimous with instruction. Axiom of Education, so defined. Knowledge being power, those attainments, which give a man the power of doing what he wishes to obtain what be desires, are alone to be considered as knowledge, or to be admitted into the scheme of National Education. Subjects to be taught in the National Schools: Reading, writing, arithmetic, the mechanic arts, elements and results of physical science, but to be taught, as much as possible, empirically. For all knowledge being derived from the Senses, the closer men are kept to the fountain head, the knowinger they must become. -- POPULAR ETHICS, i.e. a Digest of the Criminal Laws, and the evidence requisite for conviction under the same: Lectures on Diet, on Digestion, on infection, and the nature and effects of a specific virus incidental to and communicable by living bodies in the intercourse of society. N. B. in order to balance the interests of individuals and the interests of the State, the Dietetic and Peptic Text Books, to be under the censorship of the Board of Excise. Shall I proceed with my chapter of hints? Game Laws, Corn Laws, Cotton Factories, Spitalfields, the tillers of the land paid by poor-rates, and the remainder of the population mechanized into engines for the manufactory of new rich men -- yea, the machinery of the wealth of the nation made up of the wretchedness, disease and depravity of those who should constitute the strength of the nation! Disease, I say, and vice, while the wheels are in full motion; but at the first stop the magic wealth-machine is converted into an intolerable weight of pauperism! But this partakes of History. The head and neck of the huge Serpent are out of the den: the voluminous train is to come. What next? May I not whisper as a fear, what Senators have promised to demand as a right? Yes! the next in my filial bodings is Spoliation. -- Spoilation of the NATIONALTY, half thereof to be distributed among the landowners, and the other half among the stockbrokers, and stockowners, who are to receive it in lieu of the interest formerly due to them. But enough! I will ask only one question. Has the national welfare, have the wealth and happiness of the people, advanced with the increase of its circumstantial prosperity? Is the increasing number of wealthy individuals that which ought to be understood by the wealth of the nation? In answer to this, permit me to annex the following chapter of contents of the moral history of the last 130 years. A. Declarative act, respecting certain parts of the constitution, with provisions against further violation of the same, erroneously entitled, "THE REVOLUTION of 1688." B. The Mechanico-corpuscular Theory raised to the title of the Mechanic Philosophy, and espoused as a revolution in philosophy, by the actors and partizans of the (so-called) Revolution in the state. C. Result illustrated, in the remarkable contrast between the acceptation of the word, Idea, before the Restoration, and the present use of the same word. Before 1660, the magnificent SON OF COSMO was wont to discourse with FICINO, POLITIAN and the princely MIRANDULA on the IDEAS of Will, God, Freedom. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, the star of serenest brilliance in the glorious constellation of Elizabeth's court, communed with SPENSER, on the IDEA of the beautiful; and the younger ALGERNON -- Soldier, Patriot, and Statesman -- with HARRINGTON, MILTON, and NEVIL, on the IDEA of the STATE: and in what sense it may be more truly affirmed, that the people (i.e. the component particles of the body politic, at any moment existing as such) are in order to the state, than that the state exists for the sake of the people. Dr. HOLOFERNES, in a lecture on metaphysics, delivered at one of the Mechanics' institutions, explodes all ideas but those of sensation; and his friend, DEPUTY COSTARD, has no idea of a better flavored haunch of venison, than he dined off at the London Tavern last week. He admits (for the Deputy has travelled) that the French have an excellent idea of cooking in general; but holds that their most accomplished Maitres du Cuisine have no more idea of dressing a turtle, than the Parisian Gourmands themselves have any real idea of the true taste and colour of the fat. D. Consequences exemplified. State of nature, or the Ouran Outang theory of the origin of the human race, substituted for the Book of Genesis, ch. I. -- X. Rights of nature for the duties and privileges of citizens. Idealess facts, misnamed proofs from history, grounds of experience, &c., substituted for principles and the insight derived from them. State-policy, a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the back of the head! Our measures of policy, either a series of anachronisms, or a truckling to events substituted for the science, that should command them: for all true insight is foresight. (Documents. The measures of the British Cabinet from the Boston Port-Bill, March 1774; but particularly from 1789, to the Union of Ireland, and the Peace of Amiens.) Meantime, the true historical feeling, the immortal life of an historical Nation, generation linked to generation by faith, freedom, heraldry, and ancestral fame, languishing, and giving place to the superstitions of wealth, and newspaper reputation. E. Talents without genius: a swarm of clever, well-informed men: an anarchy of minds, a despotism of maxims. Despotism of finance in government and legislation -- of vanity and sciolism in the intercourse of life -- of presumption, temerity, and hardness of heart, in political economy. F. The Guess-work of general consequences substituted for moral and political philosophy, adopted as a textbook in one of the Universities, and cited, as authority, in the legislature: Plebs pro Senatu Populoque; the wealth of the nation (i.e. of the wealthy individuals thereof, and the magnitude of the Revenue) for the well-being of the people. G. Gin consumed by paupers to the value of about eighteen millions yearly. Government by journeymen clubs; by saint and sinner societies, committees, institutions; by reviews, magazines, and above all by newspapers. Lastly, crimes quadrupled for the whole country, and in some counties decupled. Concluding address to the parliamentary leaders of the Liberalists and Utilitarians. I respect the talents of many, and the motives and character of some among you too sincerely to court the scorn, which I anticipate. But neither shall the fear of it prevent me from declaring aloud, and as a truth which I hold it the disgrace and calamity of a professed statesman not to know and acknowledge, that a permanent, nationalized, learned order, a national clerisy or church, is an essential element of a rightly constituted nation, without which it wants the best security alike for its permanence and its progression; and for which neither tract societies, nor conventicles, nor Lancastrian schools, nor mechanics' institutions, nor lecture-bazaars under the absurd name of universities, nor all these collectively, can be a substitute. For they are all marked with the same asterisk of spuriousness, shew the same distemper-spot on the front, that they are empirical specifics for morbid symptoms that help to feed and continue the disease. But you wish for general illumination: you would spur-arm the toes of society: you would enlighten the higher ranks per ascensum ab imis. You begin, therefore, with the attempt to popularize science: but you will only effect its plebification. It is folly to think of making all, or the many, philosophers, or even men of science and systematic knowledge. But it is duty and wisdom to aim at making as many as possible soberly and steadily religious; -- inasmuch as the morality which the state requires in its citizens for its own well-being and ideal immortality, and without reference to their spiritual interest as individuals, can only exist for the people in the form of religion. But the existence of a true philosophy, or the power and habit of contemplating particulars in the unity and fontal mirror of the idea -- this in the rulers and teachers of a nation is indispensable to a sound state of religion in all classes. In fine, Religion, true or false, is and ever has been the centre of gravity in a realm, to which all other things must and will accommodate themselves. The deep interest which, during the far larger portion of my life since early manhood I have attached to these convictions, has, I perceive hurried me onwards as by the rush from the letting forth of accumulated waters by the sudden opening of the sluice gates. It is high time that I should return to my subject. And I have no better way of taking up the thread of my argument, than by re-stating my opinion, that our Eighth Henry would have acted in correspondence to the great principles of our constitution, if having restored the original balance on both sides, he had determined the nationalty to the following objects: 1st. To the maintenance of the Universities and the great liberal schools. 2ndly. To the maintenance of a pastor and schoolmaster in every parish. 3rdly. To the raising and keeping in repair of the churches, schools, &c., and, Lastly: To the maintenance of the proper, that is, the infirm, poor whether from age or sickness: one of the original purposes of the national Reserve being the alleviation of those evils, which in the best forms of worldly states must arise and must have been foreseen as arising from the institution of individual properties and primogeniture. If these duties were efficiently performed, and these purposes adequately fulfilled, the very increase of the population, (which would, however, by these very means have been prevented from becoming a vicious population) would have more than counterbalanced those savings in the expenditure of the nationalty occasioned by the detachment of the practitioners of law, medicine, &c., from the national clergy. That this transfer of the national reserve from what had become national evils to its original and inherent purpose of national benefits, instead of the sacrilegious alienation which actually took place -- that this was impracticable, is historically true; but no less true is it philosophically that this impracticability, arising wholly from moral causes -- that is, from loose manners and corrupt principles -- does not rescue this wholesale sacrilege from deserving the character of the first and deadliest wound inflicted on the constitution of the kingdom: which term constitution in the body politic, as in bodies natural, expresses not only what has been actually evolved, but likewise whatever is potentially contained in the seminal principle of the particular body, and would in its due time have appeared but for emasculation or disease. Other wounds, by which indeed the constitution of the nation has suffered, but which much more immediately concern the constitution of the church, we shall perhaps find another place to mention. _______________ Notes: 1. i.e.
Persona
2. Considered, I mean, in their national relations, and in that which forms their ordinary, their most conspicuous purpose and utility; for Heaven forbid, I should deny or forget, that the sciences, and not only the sciences both abstract and experimental, but the Literae Humaniores, the products of genial power, of whatever name, have an immediate and positive value, even in their bearings on the national interests. 3. Let not the religious reader be offended with this phrase. The writer means only that Christianity is an aid and instrument, which no State or Realm could have produced out of its own elements -- which no State had a right to expect. It was, most awfully, a GOD- SEND!
|
