Sittings per Provided by By Dissent. Total.
1,000 of Church.
population
required.
1801 580 287 177 464
1811 580 257 183 441
1821 580 225 199 424
1831 580 214 212 426
1841 580 229 209 438
1851 580 270 203 473
Church loss since 1801, 17; Dissenting gain, 26: total Church loss, 43.
Church gain since 1831, 56; Dissenting loss, 9; total Church gain, 65.
This, then, is really the rate at which each body “is advancing in the
path of self extension;” and the best proof of its accuracy is, that it
exactly tallies with what one would have expected beforehand. Mr. Mann’s
tables, on the contrary, are absolutely incredible. We must never
forget, that during the Great Rebellion, Puritanism was actually the
dominant faction; and even at the Restoration it cannot be supposed that
the Dissenters were a small or an uninfluential class. In 1662 no fewer
than 2,000 ministers were ejected under the new Act of Uniformity; and as
at the last census there were only 6405 professional Protestant
Ministers, it will be seen that the ejected preachers alone formed a
larger body, in comparison with the existing population, than the
Protestant Dissenting Ministry does now. It cannot be doubted that every
one of those men had a greater or less following; and it must be
remembered that in the days of the Commonwealth there was always a rabble
of sects who might even then be called Dissenters. It is true that,
after the Restoration, Nonconformity was subjected to severe repressive
laws, but those laws were not enforced with unvarying rigour. In 1672
there was the Indulgence, and in 1681 the House of Commons passed a
strong resolution against the prosecution of Protestant Dissenters.
Besides, after all, the Conventicle Acts only continued in force about 23
years—not much longer, in fact, than Episcopacy had been proscribed by
law. The natural result which would follow the famous proclamation of
James II., and the subsequent passing of the Toleration Act, would be a
great and sudden revival of Dissent. How small was the church-feeling of
Parliament at the Revolution may be gathered from a curious fact
mentioned in Mr. Macaulay’s third volume. It was proposed that the
Commons should sit on Easter Monday. The Churchmen vigorously protested
against the innovation; but they did not dare to divide, and the House
did sit on the festival in question. Without at all straining the
inference to be drawn from this incident, it would be difficult, indeed,
to suppose that Churchmen had matters their own way. Even under the
penal laws, the Dissenters must have been a large body; for James the
Second’s scheme for forming a coalition of Roman Catholic and Protestant
Dissenters against the Establishment would have been stark folly unless
the two bodies, when combined, would have made up, at least, a powerful
minority. From the Revolution to 1801 the Dissenters had more than a
century to increase and multiply; and all the circumstances of the case
were in their favour. Worn out by the political struggles of a century
and a half, during which she had been made the tool of contending
factions; deprived of her Legislative powers; silenced and frowned upon
by the powers that were, the Church had sunk into that fatal lethargy
from which the present generation has only just seen her awake. During
that long and dreary period, all the prominent theologians, with a few
bright exceptions, were either Dissenters or inclined to Dissent. The
eighteenth century, too, was the golden age of popular Nonconformist
preachers. Not to mention a host of smaller names, Wesley and Whitfield
both rose, flourished, and died before its close. And yet, if we are to
believe Mr. Mann, the Dissenters in 1801 were a much smaller body,
compared with the whole population, than they were under the penal laws!
{25} On the other hand, all who remember the obloquy and contempt under
which the Church continued until the passing of the Reform Act, will
reject, without a moment’s hesitation, the notion that, in 1831, she
actually possessed more accommodation, in proportion to the population,
than at the present day. The change which has taken place in the popular
sentiment towards her has not been caused by any document like this
Census report, which suddenly appeared and disabused the public mind of
its preconceived ideas. It has, on the contrary, been brought about by
the silent influence of those spectacles of zeal and self-denying
liberality which have been witnessed in every corner of the land. The
Church has, in fact, lived down her traducers. A hundred proverbs bear
witness to the vast amount of good deeds which are required to remove an
evil reputation; and yet Mr. Mann calls upon us to believe that the
Establishment has achieved this, although, with all her numbers and all
her wealth, she has not, since 1831, done so much as the Wesleyan sects
alone, towards supplying the people with the means of religious
instruction and worship! One has no language to characterize such a
daring attempt on the public credulity. The most charitable hypothesis
will be to conclude that Mr. Mann, though an arithmetician by his office,
knows nothing about arithmetic; and so remit him to the consideration of
Mr. Roebuck and the Administrative Reform Society. {26}
THE inquiry through which the reader has been invited to travel will
probably suggest several considerations; and first of all the importance
of putting a stop to the statistical nuisance which has of late years
flourished with so rank a growth. Surely it is time that members of both
Houses of Parliament, who resent so jealously any attempt on the part of
Government officials to exceed or fall short of the precise instructions
given them, in making returns, should raise their voices against the
system of publishing with official statistics the crude, and, as it has
been seen, the nonsensical but pernicious theorizings of the persons
entrusted with the task of compiling reports. Like Mr. Mantalini, the
majority of persons never trouble themselves to examine a numerical
process, but content themselves with simply asking what is the total; and
it therefore becomes the duty of Parliament to see that the unsuspecting
confidence of the public is not abused. The reader must not suppose that
the Report on Religious Worship is the only recent one which is open to
objection. The Census Report on Schools is just as full of fallacies;
and it has certainly been one of the strangest phenomena ever witnessed
in the history of public discussion, that the schemes of Lord John
Russell and Sir John Pakington, assailed as they were on every side,
should have escaped what would, after all, have been the most effective
blow that could have been aimed against them—the simple but conclusive
fact, so easily deducible from the premises of the Report on Schools,
that nearly as many children were under education as could be induced to
attend unless they were driven to the class of the teacher by the
policeman’s staff. {27}
Again, the inquiry will probably satisfy the reader that the anti-Church
legislation of the day ought to proceed no further. It is easy to assign
the cause which in the first instance gave it birth. Most statesmen, it
may be presumed, will be ready to adopt, with regard to the multifarious
sects of modern Christianity, the last clause, at least, of Gibbon’s
famous dictum respecting the ancient religions of Pagan Rome—“to the
people equally true, to the philosopher equally false, to the magistrate
equally useful.” Persons who profess with sincerity almost any form of
Christian doctrine are comparatively easy to govern; they throw but a
light burden upon the poor-rate and they cost nothing at all in the shape
of police. A statesman, then, might dislike Dissent, but what was he to
say to a state of things like that revealed in the Census report? The
Church, according to Mr. Mann’s tables, could not, by dint of the utmost
exertions she is ever likely to put forth, find accommodation for half
the souls who are year by year added to the population. On the other
hand the Dissenters, who are far less wealthy, and have few endowments,
provide without difficulty and without fuss more than twice the amount of
new accommodation supplied by the Church. The irresistible inference in
the mind of a mere statesman would be that Dissent ought to be aided and
encouraged. But if it turns out that the facts are precisely the reverse
of what has been represented—if in reality Dissent is making no progress,
while the Church is providing new accommodation sufficient for the whole
of the new population—why should the Legislature go out of its path to
foster mere religious discord, and to impede the spread of what the
country has, after all, long since recognised as the “more excellent
way.” Why, for instance, should Churchrates be abolished? If they were
right in 1831, when there were more Dissenters and fewer Churchmen, why
are they wrong now? If Parliament has conferred upon parishes, _as a
boon_, the right to tax themselves (if a majority of the ratepayers think
fit) for the purpose of building and maintaining public baths, museums,
and libraries, why should parishes now be deprived of a right which they
possessed before there was a Chancellor of the Exchequer or a
budget—before the Norman set foot upon our shores, or there was a House
of Commons worthy of the name—the right to tax themselves in order to
maintain edifices which may be museums second in interest to none, and
which may have been centres of enlightenment long before the days of
Caxton and Guttenberg?
There is another view of the case which ought not to be overlooked by
statesmen who regard a religious Establishment as a mere matter of
police. Granting that Dissent teaches men to be neither drunkards nor
thieves, is it calculated to make them as good citizens and as good
neighbours as the Church? The answer must surely be a negative. The
common consent of mankind has pronounced the famous descriptions of the
old Puritans in “Hudibras” to be almost as applicable to modern
Dissenters as to their ancient prototypes. Nor, indeed, would it be
easy, if they were not, to account for the popularity of Butler’s
oft-quoted lines; for even just satires, to say nothing of unjustifiable
lampoons, rarely survive the persons against whom they are directed. Of
course, men are often much better than the system to which they belong.
There are hundreds—nay, thousands—of Dissenters whose Dissent is a mere
accident of birth and education, and who are truly catholic at heart; but
of Dissent in the abstract, no one who has either studied its history or
is acquainted with its practical working will deny the applicability to
it not only of Butler’s portraiture, but of another yet more famous
description, qualified in the latter case, however, with the insertion or
omission throughout of the important word—“not.” Dissent suffers not
long, and is not kind—Dissent is envious—behaves itself unseemly—vaunts
itself, and is puffed up—seeks every tittle of its “rights”—is easily
provoked—thinks evil—gloats over every slip on the part of its
opponents—attributes what is good in them to a wrong motive—will bear
nothing of which it can rid itself by agitation or clamour—will put a
good construction upon nothing when an evil one is possible—hopes
nothing—endures nothing. If this were not so, how would it be possible
to account for its inveterate propensity to internal schism? The
scriptural account of the Kingdom of Heaven is that it should grow as
from a seed; but Dissent is propagated chiefly by _cuttings_. It is not
yet two hundred years since the Kirk was established in Scotland, and yet
there are no fewer than six sorts of Presbyterians. The case of
Wesleyanism is still worse. Within sixty years after the death of its
founder it had split into seven antagonistic sects. Whitfield himself
quarrelled with Wesley, and his followers have, since his death,
separated into two bodies. There are four sorts of Baptists. Of the
Independents, Mr. Mann speaks with refreshing innocence as forming “a
compact and undivided body.” It would be nearer the truth to say that
they consist of nearly as many sects as there are meeting-houses. Nearly
every congregation is of volcanic origin, and every one contains within
it elements which might at any moment explode and shatter the whole
concern.
That the writer may not be thought to be unsupported by facts, he will
here summarize the history of Anabaptistic and Congregational Dissent in
the first town to the annals of which he has ready access—Nottingham, his
authority being Mr. Wylie’s local history, published in 1853.
Nottingham, however, is a remarkably good example for the purpose. It
has a manufacturing population of 57,000, having doubled itself since
1801. It is almost at the head of those places in which Dissent is most
rampant, and the Church most depressed. It possessed, according to Mr.
Mann’s table K, 35.2 Dissenting sittings to every hundred inhabitants,
the only other places equal or superior to it in that respect being
Merthyr Tydvil (52.4), Sunderland (35.2), Rochdale (36.5), and Swansea
(42.8). It boasts of 74.1 per cent. of the whole religious accommodation
within its boundaries, the only places having more being Merthyr (89.7),
and Rochdale (78.7).
About the middle of the last century, then, the Presbyterian
congregation on the High Pavement adopted Socinian tenets; and many
families thereupon left it and joined a small congregation of
Calvinistic Independents in Castle-gate. Their meeting-house was
immediately enlarged, and it has ever since been considered the
leading Dissenting place of worship. In 1761, a second secession
from High Pavement, this time of Sabellians, built themselves a new
meeting-house in Halifax-place. In 1801, they erected themselves a
new building in St. Mary’s-gate, which has long since been closed.
In 1798, a third swarm, again Calvinistic Independents, left High
Pavement, and settled in the Halifax-place meeting-house, vacated by
their Sabellian predecessors. In 1819, they built themselves a new
meeting-house, called “Zion Chapel,” in Fletcher-gate, the old one
being now a school. In 1822, a secession from Castle-gate built a
new meeting-house in St. James’s-street; and six years later a
secession from St. James’s-street built a meeting-house in
Friar-lane. In 1804, a secession from Zion Chapel erected “Hephzibah
Chapel,” which being in debt, was sold to the Universalists in 1808,
and was soon afterwards converted into a National School. In 1828,
another secession from “Zion Chapel” erected a meeting called
“Bethesda Chapel.”
The General Baptists at first met in a disused Wesleyan
meeting-house, called “The Tabernacle,” which has long since been
pulled down. In 1799 they built themselves a place in Stoney-street.
In 1817 a quarrel arose between Mr. Smith, the senior pastor, and his
junior, of whose pulpit talents he was said to be jealous. The
congregation dismissed them both, and appointed a Mr. George. On
Sunday, the 3rd of August, in the same year, there was a personal
conflict after the Donnybrook manner, between the partisans of Smith
and George. The friends of Smith being beaten drew off, and built
themselves a meeting-house in Broad-street. In 1850 there was
another secession from Stoney-street, who built themselves a
meeting-house on the Mansfield-road.
The Particular Baptists originally occupied an ancient meeting-house
in Park-street: but in 1815 they built themselves a larger place in
George-street. In 1847 there was a secession of extra-Particulars.
These met first in a room in Clinton-street, then in an old building
which had been disused by the Quakers, and finally, in a splendid
gothic edifice, which they built for themselves on Derby-road. The
old meeting-house in Park-street fell into the hands of a
congregation of the Scotch variety of the sect, whose peace has only
been disturbed by the Bethesdians, who joined them in 1828, until
they decided upon setting up for themselves.
Thus it will be seen that of the nine new congregations enumerated above,
not one was originated without a quarrel—a quarrel, too, of the worst
kind, a personal one. Nobody can study the history of religious polemics
without perceiving that the root of all that bitterness which has made
the _odium theologicum_ a proverb, is to be found in the tendency there
is in men to transfer the indignation they might reasonably feel against
error, from the error itself to those who hold it. If people would only
consent to forget history and would conduct the argument upon purely
abstract principles, even the Roman controversy might be made instructive
and edifying; but somehow, before long, the debate wanders away from the
truth or falsehood of the creed under discussion to that most irrelevant
of all issues, the virtues or failings of those by whom it is professed.
What shall we say, then, of a system which gives rise to controversies
which, from their commencement to their close, are purely personal? Lest
it should be supposed that the case of Nottingham is an isolated
instance, here is an extract on which the writer stumbled the other day
in a tract written in praise of Congregationalism, and stated on the
title page to be “commended by J. Bennett, D.D.” It appears to be quoted
from a work called “The Library of Ecclesiastical Knowledge,” and the
scene of the incident is stated to be “one of the principal cities of the
United States:”—
A Baptist congregation, originally small, had increased so rapidly
that an enlargement of the chapel became necessary. It was
immediately effected. The congregation still continued to increase,
and a second time it became necessary to enlarge. Everything still
going on prosperously, a third enlargement, some time after, was
proposed. The noble-minded pastor, however, thinking that he had
already as much on his hands as any mere mortal could conscientiously
discharge, with a generous contempt for his own interests, opposed
this step, and suggested that they should exert themselves to raise a
new interest, entirely independent of the old one. The people
entered cheerfully into his design; nay, they made a nobler sacrifice
than that of their money. For as soon as the new building was
finished, one of the deacons, with a few of the most respectable
members of the old church, voluntarily separated from it, and
proceeded to form the infant _colony_ that had branched off from the
mother church. What is still more delightful, the two churches
formed a common fund for the erection of a third chapel. This was
soon accomplished. In a short time a large and flourishing church
was the result; and, at the time our informant related this fact, all
three churches were actually subscribing towards a fourth chapel.
This is noble conduct. Who can tell how soon cities and towns might
be evangelised, if this principle were sternly (!) acted upon? A
somewhat similar fact has, we understand, been recently witnessed in
a city of our own country, where some congregational churches have
imitated their Baptist brethren of America. When will all ministers
“go and do likewise?”
This is truly edifying and amusing. First of all, mark the _habitat_ of
this Nonconformist phœnix, a congregation which has actually given birth
to another without a preliminary quarrel. We must actually cross the
Atlantic, and seek the phenomenon in the land where the penny-a-liner
places his sea-serpents, and his other choicer wonders. To increase
without envy, hatred, and uncharitableness is, it seems, to a Dissenter,
something inexpressibly “noble”—and brotherly love is something that must
be “sternly” acted upon! We may be quite certain that it is something
the congregational sects very rarely see, or it would not throw them into
such lamentable, and yet, in some sense, ludicrous contortions of
surprise.
Perhaps some Dissenter will be whispering, after the manner of Mr.
Roebuck, the three words, Gorham, Liddell, Denison; but the _tu quoque_
wholly fails. In the first place, it is the surprising peculiarity of
the present Church controversies that the noisiest, if not the
weightiest, disputants are not Churchmen at all. In the next place,
those who are Churchmen, and enter with any bitterness into the strife,
are remarkable neither for their number nor their influence. The great
party in the Church of England is, after all, the middle party; and
however fierce the cannonade which the extreme left, and its allies
outside the pale, may direct against the extreme right, their missiles
fly harmlessly over the vast body which lies between. The truth is, the
recent outburst of controversy, so far as the Church herself is
responsible for it, is nothing but the natural recoil of that
conservative sentiment which must always be a powerful feeling in a
religious community, from doctrines and usages which had become
unfamiliar. As the unfamiliarity passes away, the controversy will also
gradually cease. Already the doctrines and usages in question have been
unconsciously adopted by many of those who fancy themselves most opposed
to them; and, indeed, if our doughtiest combatants would only take pains
to understand what it is their antagonists really hold, they would often
find that they are fighting against mere shadows. The recent suits in
the ecclesiastical courts cannot but open the eyes of Churchmen to the
extreme tenuity of the points in dispute. Take the S. Barnabas case.
Everybody will remember the language which was applied to the “practices”
revived by Mr. Bennett. “Popish,” “histrionic,” “mummery,” were the
mildest terms in the repertory of that gentleman’s assailants. Those
“practices” remain to this day—if anything, they have been elaborated
rather than subjected to any mitigating process. Messrs. Westerton and
Beal bring the matter before the proper tribunal; but what are the only
issues they can find to raise? Such notable questions as whether the
cross, which glitters on the crown, the orb, and sceptre of the
Sovereign, which glows on the national banner, which crowns almost every
church gable in the land, with which every Churchman is marked at his
baptism, which the very Socinians place upon their buildings, is,
forsooth, a lawful ornament?—whether a table ceases to be a table by
being made of stone?—whether the altar which has never been moved these
two hundred years, and which nobody wants to move, must nevertheless be
movable?—whether the altar vestments and the “fair linen cloths” used
during Communion time, may have fringes, or must be plain-hemmed? Even
if Dr. Lushington’s judgment should eventually be confirmed, if in this
age of schools of design, Mr. Westerton’s crusade against art should
prove successful, the alterations that would be made at S. Barnabas would
be discernible by none out the keenest eyes—so little can there be found
in matters ritual to fight about. Even in the Denison case the points of
difference are almost as infinitesimal. It is true that under the
revived act of Elizabeth—compared with which the laws of Draco seem a
mild and considerate code—the Archdeacon has been sentenced to lose his
preferments; but his doctrine on the Real Presence has, in sober fact,
never been so much as challenged. His opponents, passing over all that
was material in his propositions, have only attacked a _quasi_ corollary
which he has added to his main position, but which is, in reality, a
complete _non-sequitur_. Whether Dr. Lushington is right or wrong, it is
clear that a person holding the dogma of transubstantiation itself might,
with perfect logical consistency, accept the ruling of the Court.
The differences between the highest and the lowest schools being so
impalpable, it would seem absurd to suppose that the present
controversies can have a much longer continuance. But whether that be so
or not, there is a very important distinction (and one that is well worth
the notice of statesmen) between the extension of the Church and the
spread of Dissent. Church extension, as far as it goes, tends to compose
differences. The consecration of a new church is almost invariably
regarded as an occasion when party differences should be laid aside—the
opening of a new meeting-house is too commonly the crowning act of an
irreparable schism.
Another lesson which the report of Mr. Mann ought to teach Churchmen is
the necessity there is for insisting upon the next religious census being
made a complete and accurate one. The next religious census ought to
include all such institutions as colleges, workhouses, hospitals, and the
like—it ought to be enforced by the same penalties as the civil census;
and it ought to be understood that all the returns would be printed in a
blue book. With these precautions the Church need not fear the result.
Even if the census of 1861 should prove no more trustworthy than that of
1851, it will remove a great deal of the misconceptions to which the
latter has given rise. As far as one may judge, the work of church
extension is progressing just as rapidly now as it was ten years ago; the
number of the clergy is just as rapidly augmenting; {33} and as all
additional clergymen have now to be supported on the voluntary principle,
we may presume that they follow the ordinary laws of supply and demand.
We may, therefore, confidently expect that the number of church sittings
open on the census morning in 1861 will not be fewer than six millions;
and if there be an average attendance (which there was not on the last
occasion) the number of persons present will be about three millions and
a half. That the Dissenters will be able to open any more sittings than
in 1851, is doubtful; for it must be remembered that since 1841 the
Church has been annually absorbing a population equal to the entire
yearly increase. But allowing them the same increase as has been
assigned to them for the decade 1841–51, they will not be able to open
more than four million sittings, and they will not have more than two
millions and a half of attendants. This estimate is formed on the
supposition that the next census will be made on the voluntary principle
like the last. If a more complete and accurate account is taken, the
result may be very different. It is quite within the bounds of
possibility that the number of church attendants may turn out to be near
four millions, while that of the Dissenters may not much exceed two.
Looking at all the facts of the case, there is every reason why the
Church should take courage. Never since the Reformation has she had so
much real power for good—never has she been so free from abuses. Each
year sees thousands returning to the fold from which they or their
parents had strayed; each year sees her enemies more and more “dwindle,
peak, and pine.” Everything, too, points to a daily acceleration of the
process. At the very time that Convocation is resuming its functions,
the Non-conformist Union is compelled by internal dissentions to abandon
their yearly meeting. What Mr. Miall calls “the dissidence of
dissent”—that is to say, all in it that is pre-eminently narrow-minded,
ignorant, and infected with bigotry—is concentrating itself, and is thus
getting free the more respectable elements of modern non-conformity.
Meanwhile the better class of Dissenters are doing all in their power to
cut the ground from under their own feet. They are building
“steeple-houses,” inventing liturgies, and adopting even choral services;
in other words they are expressing in the most emphatic manner their
opinion that the whole theory of dissent is wrong. For a short time a
Brummagem ecclesiology may satisfy them; but in the end they will no
doubt rank themselves amongst the best sons of the Church. The truth is,
there is no other religious community at the present day which can bid so
high for the reverent attachment of Englishmen. Whatever the claims of
Rome—her antiquity, her catholicity, her apostolicity—they are equally
the Church of England’s. Her succession of bishops is the same, her
regard for the primitive church greater, her conception of Christendom
far more grand. The glories of the ancient rituals belong equally to the
Book of Common Prayer. It contains nothing material which was not in
them, there was nothing material in them (save only certain invocations
and legends of the saints) which is not in it. The Prayer Book is, in
fact, nothing but a translation (magnificently done) of the older
offices, a little compressed and simplified. The structure is the
same—the mode of using it the same; and if it has lost somewhat of the
multiplied ceremonies which were anciently observed, it has gained far
more in the majesty and breadth which it has acquired from its thoroughly
congregational character. Besides, it is throughout a reality, whereas
the office books of the Latin Communion have, to some extent at least,
become a sham. Thus the Breviary has long since been practically
abolished as a public form of prayer, and even as a manual of private
devotions for the clergy, that which forms its staple, the Book of
Psalms, has been virtually reduced to a fourth its bulk. In nearly a
thousand churches belonging to the Anglican communion the whole Psalter
is publicly recited every month, and in twenty times that number it is
said through twice every year.
If Protestant Dissenters boast of their enlightenment or of their
reverence for Scripture, the Church may meet them on that ground likewise
with the utmost confidence. The Prayer-book scarcely recognises a person
to be a Churchman if he cannot read; and she directs some forty psalms
and some thirty chapters of the Bible to be gone through every week. In
a word, approach the Church of England from the most opposite points, and
she will be found to possess exactly that attribute which a person might
think is most admirable. The man who reverences antiquity—who has a
taste for art—who has a passion for ritual—who would have everything
“understanded of the people,”—he who insists upon ranks and orders—and he
who stands up for popular rights, will equally find in the Church of this
country the very quality which he deems important. Never was there any
institution so “many-sided;” never one that became with so much success
“all things to all men.” How she could ever have lost her hold on the
affections of Englishmen is indeed wonderful; but, in truth, until
lately, she has never had a chance of making herself understood. _Now_,
for the first time, her theory is beginning to be appreciated; and the
success which has attended her, wonderful as it has been, is probably but
the foretaste of a future more brilliant than anything of which we can
now form an idea.