Again,--

“_National will and agency are indisputably one, binding either a

dissentient minority or the subject body, in a manner that nothing but

the recognition of the doctrine of national personality can justify.

National honour and good faith are words in every one’s mouth. How do

they less imply a personality in nations than the duty towards God, for

which we now contend? They are strictly and essentially distinct from

the honour and good faith of the individuals composing the nation.

France is a person to us, and we to her. A wilful injury done to her

is a moral act, and a moral act quite distinct from the acts of all the

individuals composing the nation. Upon broad facts like these we may

rest, without resorting to the more technical proof which the laws

afford in their manner of dealing with corporations. If, then, a nation

have unity of will, have pervading sympathies, have capability of

reward and suffering contingent upon its acts, shall we deny its

responsibility; its need of a religion to meet that responsibility?....

A nation, then, having a personality, lies under the obligation, like

the individuals composing its governing body, of sanctifying the acts of

that personality by the offices of religion, and thus we have a new and

imperative ground for the existence of a state religion_.”

A new ground we have here, certainly, but whether very imperative may

be doubted. Is it not perfectly clear, that this argument applies with

exactly as much force to every combination of human beings for a common

purpose, as to governments? Is there any such combination in the world,

whether technically a corporation or not, which has not this collective

personality, from which Mr. Gladstone deduces such extraordinary

consequences? Look at banks, insurance offices, dock companies, canal

companies, gas companies, hospitals, {132}dispensaries, associations

for the relief of the poor, associations for apprehending malefactors,

associations of medical pupils for procuring subjects, associations

of country gentlemen for keeping fox-hounds, book societies, benefit

societies, clubs of all ranks, from those which have lined Pall-Mall and

St. James’s Street with their palaces, down to the Free-and-easy which

meets in the shabby parlour of a village inn. Is there a single one of

these combinations to which Mr. Gladstone’s argument will not apply as

well as to the State? In all these combinations, in the Bank of England,

for example, or in the Athenæum club, the will and agency of the society

are one, and bind the dissentient minority. The Bank and the Athenaeum

have a good faith and a justice different from the good faith and

justice of the individual members. The Bank is a person to those who

deposit bullion with it. The Athenaeum is a person to the butcher and

the wine-merchant. If the Athenaeum keeps money at the Bank, the two

societies are as much persons to each other as England and France.

Either society may pay its debts honestly; either may try to defraud

its creditors; either may increase in prosperity; either may fall

into difficulties. If, then, they have this unity of will; if they

are capable of doing and suffering good and evil, can we, to use Mr.

Gladstone’s words, “deny their responsibility, or their need of a

religion to meet that responsibility?” Joint-stock banks, therefore,

and clubs, “having a personality, lie under the necessity of sanctifying

that personality by the offices of religion;” and thus we have “a new

and imperative ground” for requiring all the directors and clerks of

joint-stock banks, and all the members of clubs, to qualify by taking

the sacrament.

The truth is, that Mr. Gladstone has fallen into an {133}error very

common among men of less talents than his own. It is not unusual for

a person who is eager to prove a particular proposition to assume a

_major_ of huge extent, which includes that particular proposition,

without ever reflecting that it includes a great deal more. The fatal

facility with which Mr. Gladstone multiplies expressions stately and

sonorous, but of indeterminate meaning, eminently qualifies him to

practise this sleight on himself and on his readers. He lays down

broad general doctrines about power, when the only power of which he is

thinking is the power of governments, and about conjoint action when the

only conjoint action of which he is thinking is the conjoint action of

citizens in a state. He first resolves on his conclusion. He then makes

a _major_ of most comprehensive dimensions, and having satisfied himself

that it contains his conclusion, never troubles himself about what else

it may contain: and as soon as we examine it we find that it contains

an infinite number of conclusions, every one of which is a monstrous

absurdity.

It is perfectly true that it would be a very good thing if all the

members of all the associations in the world were men of sound religious

views. We have no doubt that a good Christian will be under the guidance

of Christian principles, in his conduct as director of a canal company

or steward of a charity dinner. If he were, to recur to a case which we

have before put, a member of a stage-coach company, he would, in that

capacity, remember that “a righteous man regardeth the life of his

beast.” But it does not follow that every association of men must,

therefore, as such association, profess a religion. It is evident that

many great and useful objects can be attained in this {134}world only

by co-operation. It is equally evident that there cannot be efficient

co-operation, if men proceed on the principle that they must not

co-operate for one object unless they agree about other objects. Nothing

seems to us more beautiful or admirable in our social system than the

facility with which thousands of people, who perhaps agree only on a

single point, can combine their energies for the purpose of carrying

that single point. We see daily instances of this. Two men, one of

them obstinately prejudiced against missions, the other president of

a missionary society, sit together at the board of a hospital, and

heartily concur in measures for the health and comfort of the patients.

Two men, one of whom is a zealous supporter and the other a zealous

opponent of the system pursued in Lancaster’s schools, meet at the

Mendicity Society, and act together with the utmost cordiality. The

general rule we take to be undoubtedly this, that it is lawful and

expedient for men to unite in an association for the promotion of a good

object, though they may differ with respect to other objects of still

higher importance.

It will hardly be denied that the security of the persons and property

of men is a good object, and that the best way, indeed the only way

of promoting that object, is to combine men together in certain great

corporations which are called States. These corporations are very

variously, and, for the most part, very imperfectly organized. Many of

them abound with frightful abuses. But it seems reasonable to believe

that the worst that ever existed was, on the whole, preferable to

complete anarchy.

Now, reasoning from analogy, we should say that these great corporations

would, like all other associations, {135}be likely to attain their end

most perfectly if that end were kept singly in view; and that to refuse

the services of those who are admirably qualified to promote that end,

because they are not also qualified to promote some other end, however

excellent, seems at first sight as unreasonable as it would be to

provide that nobody who was not a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries

should be a governor of the Eye Infirmary; or that nobody who was not a

member of the Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews should

be a trustee of the Literary Fund.

It is impossible to name any collection of human beings to which Mr.

Gladstone’s reasonings would apply more strongly than to an army? Where

shall we find more complete unity of action than in an army? Where else

do so many human beings implicitly obey one ruling mind? What other

mass is there which moves so much like one man? Where is such tremendous

power intrusted to those who command? Where is so awful a responsibility

laid upon them? If Mr. Gladstone has made out, as he conceives, an

imperative necessity for a State Religion, much more has he made it out

to be imperatively necessary that every army should, in its collective

capacity, profess a religion. Is he prepared to adopt this consequence?

On the morning of the thirteenth of August, in the year 1704, two great

captains, equal in authority, united by close private and public ties,

but of different creeds, prepared for a battle, on the event of which

were staked the liberties of Europe. Marlborough had passed a part

of the night in prayer, and before daybreak received the sacrament

according to the rites of the Church of England. He then hastened to

join Eugene, {136}who had probably just confessed himself to a Popish

priest. The generals consulted together, formed their plan in concert,

and repaired each to his own post. Marlborough gave orders for public

prayers. The English chaplains read the service at the head of the

English regiments. The Calvinistic chaplains of the Dutch army, with

heads on which hand of Bishop had never been laid, poured forth their

supplications in front of their countrymen. In the mean time, the Danes

might listen to their Lutheran ministers; and Capuchins might encourage

the Austrian squadrons, and pray to the Virgin for a blessing on the

arms of the Holy Roman Empire. The battle commences. These men of

various religions all act like members of one body. The Catholic and the

Protestant general exert themselves to assist and to surpass each other.

Before sunset the Empire is saved: France has lost in a day the fruits

of eighty years of intrigue and of victory; and the allies, after

conquering together, return thanks to God separately, each after his

own form of worship. Now is this practical atheism? Would any man in

his senses say, that, because the allied army had unity of action and a

common interest, and because a heavy responsibility lay on its Chiefs,

it was therefore imperatively necessary that the Army should, as an

Army, have one established religion, that Eugene should be deprived

of his command for being a Catholic, that all the Dutch and Austrian

colonels should be broken for not subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles?

Certainly not. The most ignorant grenadier on the field of battle would

have seen the absurdity of such a proposition.

“I know,” he would have said, “that the Prince of Savoy goes to mass, and

that our Corporal John cannot abide it; but what has the mass to do with

the taking {137}of the village of Blenheim? The Prince wants to beat the

French, and so does Corporal John. If we stand by each other we shall

most likely beat them. If we send all the Papists and Dutch away,

Tallard will have every man of us.” Mr. Gladstone himself, we imagine,

would admit that our honest grenadier would have the best of the

argument; and if so, what follows? Even this; that all Mr. Gladstone’s

general principles about power, and responsibility, and personality, and

conjoint action, must be given up, and that, if his theory is to stand

at all, it must stand on some other foundation.

We have now, we conceive, shown that it may be proper to form men into

combinations for important purposes, which combinations shall have

unity and common interests, and shall be under the direction of rulers

intrusted with great power and lying under solemn responsibility, and

yet that it may be highly improper that these combinations should, as

such, profess any one system of religious belief, or perform any joint

act of religious worship. How, then, is it proved that this may not be

the case with some of those great combinations which we call States? We

firmly believe that it is the case with some States. We firmly believe

that there are communities in which it would be as absurd to mix up

theology with government, as it would have been in the right wing of the

allied army at Blenheim to commence a controversy with the left wing, in

the middle of the battle, about purgatory and the worship of images.

It is the duty, Mr. Gladstone tells us, of the persons, be they who they

may, who hold supreme power in the state, to employ that power in order

to promote whatever they may deem to be theological truth. Now, surely,

before he can call on us to admit this proposition, {138}he is bound

to prove that these persons are likely to do more good than harm by

so employing their power. The first question is, whether a government,

proposing to itself the propagation of religious truth as one of its

principal ends, is more likely to lead the people right than to lead

them wrong? Mr. Gladstone evades this question; and perhaps it was his

wisest course to do so.

“_If,” says he, “the government be good, let it have its natural duties

and powers at its command; but, if not good, let it be made so.... We

follow, therefore, the true course in looking first for the true [Greek]

or abstract conception of a government, of course with allowance for the

evil and frailty that are in man, and then in examining whether there be

comprised in that [Greek] a capacity and consequent duty on the part of

a government to lay down any laws, or devote any means for the purposes

of religion,--in short, to exercise a choice upon religion_.”

Of course, Mr. Gladstone has a perfect right to argue any abstract

question, provided that he will constantly bear in mind that it is only

an abstract question that he is arguing. Whether a perfect government

would or would not be a good machinery for the propagation of religious

truth is certainly a harmless, and may, for aught we know, be an

edifying subject of inquiry. But it is very important that we should

remember that there is not, and never has been, any such government

in the world. There is no harm at all in inquiring what course a stone

thrown into the air would take, if the law of gravitation did not

operate. But the consequences would be unpleasant, if the inquirer, as

soon as he had finished his calculation, were to begin to throw stones

about in all directions, without considering that his conclusion rests

on a false hypothesis, and that his projectiles, instead of flying away

through infinite {139}space, will speedily return in parabolas, and

break the windows and heads of his neighbours.

It is very easy to say that governments are good, or if not good, ought

to be made so. But what is meant by good government? And how are all

the bad governments in the world to be made good? And of what value is

a theory which is true only on a supposition in the highest degree

extravagant?

We do not, however, admit that, if a government were, for all its

temporal ends, as perfect as human frailty allows, such a government

would, therefore, be necessarily qualified to propagate true religion.

For we see that the fitness of governments to propagate true religion is

by no means proportioned to their fitness for the temporal end of their

institution. Looking at individuals, we see that the princes under whose

rule nations have been most ably protected from foreign and domestic

disturbance, and have made the most rapid advances in civilisation, have

been by no means good teachers of divinity. Take, for example, the

best French sovereign, Henry the Fourth, a king who restored order,

terminated a terrible civil war, brought the finances into an excellent

condition, made his country respected throughout Europe, and endeared

himself to the great body of the people whom he ruled. Yet this man was

twice a Huguenot, and twice a Papist. He was, as Davila hints, strongly

suspected of having no religion at all in theory, and was certainly not

much under religious restraints in his practice. Take the Czar Peter,

the Empress Catharine, Frederic the Great. It will surely not be

disputed that these sovereigns, with all their faults, were, if we

consider them with reference merely to the temporal ends of government,

above the average of merit. Considered as theological guides, {140}Mr.

Gladstone would probably put them below the most abject drivellers of

the Spanish branch of the house of Bourbon. Again, when we pass from

individuals to systems, we by no means find that the aptitude of

governments for propagating religious truth is proportioned to their

aptitude for secular functions. Without being blind admirers either of

the French or of the American institutions, we think it clear that the

persons and property of citizens are better protected in France and in

New England than in almost any society that now exists, or that has ever

existed; very much better, certainly, than in the Roman empire under the

orthodox rule of Constantine and Theodosius. But neither the government

of France, nor that of New England, is so organized as to be fit for the

propagation of theological doctrines. Nor do we think it improbable

that the most serious religious errors might prevail in a state which,

considered merely with reference to temporal objects, might approach far

nearer than any that has ever been known, to the idea of what a state

should be.

But we shall leave this abstract question, and look at the world as we

find it. Does, then, the way in which governments generally obtain

their power make it at all probable that they will be more favourable

to orthodoxy than to heterodoxy? A nation of barbarians pours down on a

rich and un warlike empire, enslaves the people, portions out the land,

and blends the institutions which it finds in the cities with those

which it has brought from the woods. A handful of daring adventurers

from a civilised nation wander to some savage country, and reduce the

aboriginal race to bondage. A successful general turns his arms against

the state which he serves. A society, made brutal by oppression, rises

madly on its masters, sweeps away all {141}old laws and usages, and,

when its first paroxysm of rage is over, sinks down passively under any

form of polity which may spring out of the chaos. A chief of a party,

as at Florence, becomes imperceptibly a sovereign, and the founder of a

dynasty. A captain of mercenaries, as at Milan, seizes on a city, and

by the sword makes himself its ruler. An elective senate, as at Venice,

usurps permanent and hereditary power.

It is in events such as these that governments have generally

originated; and we can see nothing in such events to warrant us in

believing that the governments thus called into existence will be

peculiarly well fitted to distinguish between religious truth and

heresy.

When, again, we look at the constitutions of governments which have

become settled, we find no great security for the orthodoxy of rulers.

One magistrate holds power because his name was drawn out of a purse;

another, because his father held it before him. There are representative

systems of all sorts, large constituent bodies, small constituent

bodies, universal suffrage, high pecuniary qualifications. We see that,

for the temporal ends of government, some of these constitutions

are very skilfully constructed, and that the very worst of them is

preferable to anarchy. We see some sort of connection between the very

worst of them and the temporal well-being of society. But it passes our

understanding to comprehend what connection any one of them has with

theological truth.

And how stands the fact? Have not almost all the governments in the

world always been in the wrong on religious subjects? Mr. Gladstone, we

imagine, would say that, except in the time of Constantine, of Jovian,

and of a very few of their successors, and occasionally in England since

the Reformation, no government {142}has ever been sincerely friendly

to the pure and apostolical Church of Christ. If, therefore, it be

true that every ruler is bound in conscience to use his power for the

propagation of his own religion, it will follow that, for one ruler who

has been bound in conscience to use his power for the propagation of

truth, a thousand have been bound in conscience to use their power for

the propagation of falsehood. Surely this is a conclusion from which

common sense recoils. Surely, if experience shows that a certain

machine, when used to produce a certain effect, does not produce that

effect once in a thousand times, but produces, in the vast majority of

cases, an effect directly contrary, we cannot be wrong in saying that it

is not a machine of which the principal end is to be so used.

If, indeed, the magistrate would content himself with laying his

opinions and reasons before the people, and would leave the people,

uncorrupted by hope or fear, to judge for themselves, we should see

little reason to apprehend that his interference in favour of error

would be seriously prejudicial to the interests of truth. Nor do we,

as will hereafter be seen, object to his taking this course, when it is

compatible with the efficient discharge of his more especial duties. But

this will not satisfy Mr. Gladstone. He would have the magistrate

resort to means which have a great tendency to make malcontents, to

make hypocrites, to make careless nominal conformists, but no tendency

whatever to produce honest and rational conviction. It seems to us quite

clear that an inquirer who has no wish except to know the truth is more

likely to arrive at the truth than an inquirer who knows that, if he

decides one way, he shall be rewarded, and that, if he decides the

other way, he shall be punished. Now, {143}Mr. Gladstone would have

governments propagate their opinions by excluding all dissenters from

all civil offices. That is to say, he would have governments propagate

their opinions by a process which has no reference whatever to the truth

or falsehood of those opinions, by arbitrarily uniting certain worldly

advantages with one set of doctrines, and certain worldly inconveniences

with another set. It is of the very nature of argument to serve the

interests of truth; but if rewards and punishments serve the interests

of truth, it is by mere accident. It is very much easier to find

arguments for the divine authority of the Gospel than for the divine

authority of the Koran. But it is just as easy to bribe or rack a Jew

into Mahometanism as into Christianity.

From racks, indeed, and from all penalties directed against the persons,

the property, and the liberty of heretics, the humane spirit of Mr.

Gladstone shrinks with horror. He only maintains that conformity to the

religion of the state ought to be an indispensable qualification for

office; and he would, unless we have greatly misunderstood him, think

it his duty, if he had the power, to revive the Test Act, to enforce

it rigourously, and to extend it to important classes who were formerly

exempt from its operation.

This is indeed a legitimate consequence of his principles. But why stop

here? Why not roast dissenters at slow fires? All the general reasonings

on which this theory rests evidently lead to sanguinary persecution. If

the propagation of religious truth be a principal end of government, as

government; if it be the duty of a government to employ for that end

its constitutional power; if the constitutional power of governments

extends, as it most unquestionably does, to the making of laws for the

burning of heretics; if burning {144}be, as it most assuredly is, in

many cases, a most effectual mode of suppressing opinions; why should

we not burn? If the relation in which government ought to stand to

the people be, as Mr. Gladstone tells us, a paternal relation, we are

irresistibly led to the conclusion that persecution is justifiable. For

the right of propagating opinions by punishment is one which belongs to

parents as clearly as the right to give instruction. A boy is compelled

to attend family worship: he is forbidden to read irreligious books: if

he will not learn his catechism, he is sent to bed without his supper:

if he plays truant at church-time a task is set him. If he should

display the precocity of his talents by expressing impious opinions

before his brothers and sisters, we should not much blame his father for

cutting short the controversy with a horse-whip. All the reasons which

lead us to think that parents are peculiarly fitted to conduct the

education of their children, and that education is a principal end of

the parental relation, lead us also to think that parents ought to be

allowed to use punishment, if necessary, for the purpose of forcing

children, who are incapable of judging for themselves, to receive

religious instruction and to attend religious worship. Why, then, is

this prerogative of punishment, so eminently paternal, to be withheld

from a paternal government? It seems to us, also, to be the height

of absurdity to employ civil disabilities for the propagation of an

opinion, and then to shrink from employing other punishments for the

same purpose. For nothing can be clearer than that, if you punish at

all, you ought to punish enough. The pain caused by punishment is pure

unmixed evil, and never ought to be inflicted, except for the sake of

some good. It is mere foolish cruelty to provide penalties which torment

{145}the criminal without preventing the crime. Now it is possible, by

sanguinary persecution unrelentingly inflicted, to suppress opinions. In

this way the Albigenses were put down. In this way the Lollards were put

down. In this way the fair promise of the Reformation was blighted in

Italy and Spain. But we may safely defy Mr. Gladstone to point out a

single instance in which the system which he recommends has succeeded.

And why should he be so tender-hearted? What reason can he give for

hanging a murderer, and suffering an heresiarch to escape without even

a pecuniary mulct? Is the heresiarch a less pernicious member of society

than the murderer? Is not the loss of one soul a greater evil than the

extinction of many lives? And the number of murders committed by the

most profligate bravo that ever let out his poniard to hire in Italy, or

by the most savage buccaneer that ever prowled on the Windward Station,

is small indeed, when compared with the number of souls which have

been caught in the snares of one dexterous heresiarch. If, then, the

heresiarch causes infinitely greater evils than the murderer, why is

he not as proper an object of penal legislation as the murderer? We can

give a reason, a reason, short, simple, decisive, and consistent. We do

not extenuate the evil which the heresiarch produces; but we say that

it is not evil of that sort against which it is the end of government

to guard. But how Mr. Gladstone, who considers the evil which the

heresiarch produces as evil of the sort against which it is the end

of government to guard, can escape from the obvious consequence of his

doctrine, we do not understand. The world is full of parallel cases. An

orange-woman stops up the pavement with her wheelbarrow; and a policeman

takes her into custody. A miser who has {146}amassed a million suffers

an old friend and benefactor to die in a workhouse, and cannot be

questioned before any tribunal for his baseness and ingratitude. Is

this because legislators think the orange-woman’s conduct worse than the

miser’s? Not at all. It is because the stopping up of the pathway is one

of the evils against which it is the business of the public authorities

to protect society, and heartlessness is not one of those evils. It

would be the height of folly to say that the miser ought, indeed, to

be punished, but that he ought to be punished less severely than the

orange-woman.

The heretical Constantius persecutes Athanasius; and why not? Shall

Caesar punish the robber who has taken one purse, and spare the wretch

who has taught millions to rob the Creator of His honour, and to bestow

it on the creature? The orthodox Theodosius persecutes the Arians, and

with equal reason. Shall an insult offered to the Caesarean majesty be

expiated by death; and shall there be no penalty for him who degrades

to the rank of a creature the almighty, the infinite Creator? We have a

short Answer for both: “To Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.

Caesar is appointed for the punishment of robbers and rebels. He is not

appointed for the purpose of either propagating or exterminating the

doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son.”

“Not so,” says Mr. Gladstone. “Caesar is bound in conscience to

propagate whatever he thinks to be the truth as to this question.

Constantius is bound to establish the Arian worship throughout the

empire, and to displace the bravest captains of his legions, and

the ablest ministers of his treasury, if they hold the Nicene faith.

Theodosius is equally bound to turn out every public servant whom

his Arian predecessors have put in. But if {147}Constantius lays on

Athanasius a fine of a single _aureus_, if Theodosius imprisons an

Arian presbyter for a week, this is most unjustifiable oppression.” Our

readers will be curious to know how this distinction is made out.

The reasons which Mr. Gladstone gives against persecution affecting

life, limb, and property, may be divided into two classes; first,

reasons, which can be called reasons only by extreme courtesy, and which

nothing but the most deplorable necessity would ever have induced a

man of his abilities to use; and, secondly, reasons which are really

reasons, and which have so much force that they not only completely

prove his exception, but completely upset his general rule. His

artillery on this occasion is composed of two sorts of pieces, pieces

which will not go off at all, and pieces which go off with a vengeance,

and recoil with most crushing effect upon himself.

“_We, as fallible creatures,” says Mr. Gladstone, “have no right, from

any bare speculations of our own, to administer pains and penalties to

our fellow-creatures, whether on social or religious grounds. We have

the right to enforce the laws of the land by such pains and penalties,

because it is expressly given by Him who has declared that the civil

rulers are to bear the sword for the punishment of evil-doers, and for

the encouragement of them that do well. And so, in things spiritual,

had it pleased God to give to the Church or the State this power, to be

permanently exercised over their members, or mankind at large, we

should have the right to use it; but it does not appear to have been so

received, and consequently, it should not be exercised._”

We should be sorry to think that the security of our lives and property

from persecution rested on no better ground than this. Is not a teacher

of heresy an evildoer? Has not heresy been condemned in many countries,

and in our own among them, by the laws of the land, {148}which, as Mr.

Gladstone says, it is justifiable to enforce by penal sanctions? If a

heretic is not specially mentioned in the text to which Mr. Gladstone

refers, neither is an assassin, a kidnapper, or a highwayman: and if the

silence of the New Testament as to all interference of governments to

stop the progress of heresy be a reason for not fining or imprisoning

heretics, it is surely just as good a reason for not excluding them from

office.

“_God,” says Mr. Gladstone, “has seen fit to authorise the employment

of force in the one case and not in the other; for it was with regard

to chastisement inflicted by the sword for an insult offered to

himself that the Redeemer declared his kingdom not to be of this

world;--meaning, apparently in an especial manner, that it should be

otherwise than after this world’s fashion, in respect to the sanctions

by which its laws should be maintained_.”

Now here Mr. Gladstone, quoting from memory, has fallen into an error.

The very remarkable words which he cites do not appear to have had

any reference to the wound inflicted by Peter on Malchus. They were

addressed to Pilate, in answer to the question, “Art thou the King

of the Jews?” We cannot help saying that we are surprised that Mr.

Gladstone should not have more accurately verified a quotation on which,

according to him, principally depends the right of a hundred millions of

his fellow-subjects, idolaters, Mussulmans, Catholics, and dissenters,

to their property, their liberty, and their lives.

Mr. Gladstone’s humane interpretations of Scripture are lamentably

destitute of one recommendation, which he considers as of the highest

value: they are by no means in accordance with the general precepts or

practice of the Church, from the time when the Christians became strong

enough to persecute down to a very recent period. A dogma favourable to

toleration is {149}certainly not a dogma _quod semper, quod ubique, quod

omnibus_. Bossuet was able to say, we fear with too much truth, that on

one point all Christians had long been unanimous, the right of the civil

magistrate to propagate truth by the sword; that even heretics had been

orthodox as to this right, and that the Anabaptists and Socinians were

the first who called it in question. We will not pretend to say what is

the best explanation of the text under consideration; but we are sure

that Mr. Gladstone’s is the worst. According to him, government ought to

exclude dissenters from office, but not to fine them, because Christ’s

kingdom is not of this world. We do not see why the line may not be

drawn at a hundred other places as well as that which he has chosen. We

do not see why Lord Clarendon, in recommending the act of 1664 against

conventicles, might not have said, “It hath been thought by some that

this classis of men might with advantage be not only imprisoned but

pilloried. But methinks, my Lords, we are inhibited from the punishment

of the pillory by that Scripture, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’”

Archbishop Laud, when he sate on Burton in the Star-Chamber, might have

said, “I pronounce for the pillory; and, indeed, I could wish that all

such wretches were delivered to the fire, but that our Lord hath said

that his kingdom is not of this world.” And Gardiner might have written

to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire; “See that execution be done without fail

on Master Ridley and Master Latimer, as you will answer the same to

the Queen’s grace at your peril. But if they shall desire to have some

gunpowder for the shortening of their torment, I see not but you may

grant it, as it is written, _Regnum meam non est de hoc mundo_; that

is to say, My kingdom is not of this world.” {150}But Mr. Gladstone

has other arguments against persecution, arguments which are of so much

weight, that they are decisive not only against persecution but against

his whole theory. “The government,” he says, “is incompetent to exercise

minute and constant supervision over religious opinion.” And hence he

infers, that “a government exceeds its province when it comes to adapt

a scale of punishments to variations in religious opinion, according

to their respective degrees of variation from the established creed. To

decline affording countenance to sects is a single and simple rule. To

punish their professors, according to their several errors, even

were there no other objection is one for which the state must assume

functions wholly ecclesiastical, and for which it is not intrinsically

fitted.”

This is, in our opinion, quite true. But how does it agree with Mr.

Gladstone’s theory? What! the government incompetent to exercise even

such a degree of supervision over religious opinion as is implied by

the punishment of the most deadly heresy! The government incompetent

to measure even the grossest deviations from the standard of truth!

The government not intrinsically qualified to judge of the comparative

enormity of any theological errors! The government so ignorant on these

subjects, that it is compelled to leave, not merely subtle heresies,

discernible only by the eye of a Cyril or a Bucer, but Socinianism,

Deism, Mahometanism, Idolatry, Atheism, unpunished! To whom does Mr.

Gladstone assign the office of selecting a religion for the state, from

among hundreds of religions, every one of which lays claim to truth?

Even to this same government, which is now pronounced to be so unfit for

theological investigations {151}that it cannot venture to punish a man

for worshipping a lump of stone with a score of heads and hands. We do

not remember ever to have fallen in with a more extraordinary instance

of inconsistency. When Mr. Gladstone wishes to prove that the government

ought to establish and endow a religion, and to fence it with a Test

Act, government is [Greek] in the moral world. Those who would confine

it to secular ends take a low view of its nature. A religion must be

attached to its agency; and this religion must be that of the conscience

of the governor, or none. It is for the Governor to decide between

Papists and Protestants, Jansenists and Molinists, Arminians and

Calvinists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Sabellians and Tritheists,

Homoousians and Homoiousians, Nestorians and Eutychians, Monothelites

and Monophysites, Pædobaptists and Anabaptists. It is for him to rejudge

the Acts of Nice and Rimini, of Ephesus and Chalcedon, of Constantinople

and St. John Lateran, of Trent and Dort. It is for him to arbitrate

between the Greek and the Latin procession, and to determine whether

that mysterious filioque shall or shall not have a place in the national

creed. When he has made up his mind, he is to tax the whole community in

order to pay people to teach his opinion, whatever it may be. He is

to rely on his own judgment, though it may be opposed to that of

nine-tenths of the society. He is to act on his own judgment, at the

risk of exciting the most formidable discontents. He is to inflict,

perhaps on a great majority of the population, what, whether we choose

to call it persecution or not, will always be felt as persecution by

those who suffer it. He is, on account of differences often too slight

for vulgar comprehension, to {152}deprive the state of the services

of the ablest men. He is to debase and enfeeble the community which he

governs, from a nation into a sect. In our own country, for example,

millions of Catholics, millions of Protestant Dissenters, are to be

excluded from all power and honours. A great hostile fleet is on the

sea; but Nelson is not to command in the Channel if in the mystery of

the Trinity he confounds the persons. An invading army has landed in

Kent; but the Duke of Wellington is not to be at the head of our forces

if he divides the substance. And after all this, Mr. Gladstone tells us,

that it would be wrong to imprison a Jew, a Mussulman, or a Budhist, for

a day; because really a government cannot understand these matters,

and ought not to meddle with questions which belong to the Church. A

singular theologian, indeed, this government! So learned that it is

competent to exclude Grotius from office for being a Semi-Pelagian, so

unlearned that it is incompetent to fine a Hindoo peasant a rupee for

going on a pilgrimage to Juggernaut.

“_To solicit and persuade one another,” says Mr. Gladstone, “are

privileges which belong to us all; and the wiser and better man is bound

to advise the less wise and good: but he is not only not bound, he is

not allowed, speaking generally, to coerce him. It is untrue, then, that

the same considerations which bind a government to submit a religion to

the free choice of the people would therefore justify their enforcing

its adoption._”

Granted. But it is true that all the same considerations which would

justify a government in propagating a religion by means of civil

disabilities would justify the propagating of that religion by penal

laws. To solicit! Is it solicitation to tell a Catholic Duke, that he

must abjure his religion or walk out of the {153}House of Lords? To

persuade! Is it persuasion to tell a banister of distinguished eloquence

and learning that he shall grow old in the stuff gown, while his pupils

are seated above him in ermine, because he cannot digest the damnatory

clauses of the Athanasian creed? Would Mr. Gladstone think that a

religious system which he considers as false, Socinian for example, was

submitted to his free choice, if it were submitted in these terms?--“If

you obstinately adhere to the faith of the Nicene fathers, you shall not

be burned in Smithfield; you shall not be sent to Dorchester gaol; you

shall not even pay double land-tax. But you shall be shut out from

all situations in which you might exercise your talents with honour to

yourself and advantage to the country. The House of Commons, the bench

of magistracy, are not for such as you. You shall see younger men, your

inferiors in station and talents, rise to the highest dignities and

attract the gaze of nations, while you are doomed to neglect and

obscurity. If you have a son of the highest promise, a son such as other

fathers would contemplate with delight, the development of his fine

talents and of his generous ambition shall be a torture to you. You

shall look on him as a being doomed to lead, as you have led, the

abject life of a Roman or a Neapolitan in the midst of the great English

people. All those high honours, so much more precious than the most

costly gifts of despots, with which a free country decorates its

illustrious citizens, shall be to him, as they have been to you, objects

not of hope and virtuous emulation, but of hopeless, envious pining.

Educate him, if you wish him to feel his degradation. Educate him, if

you wish to stimulate his craving for what he never must enjoy. Educate

him, if you would imitate the barbarity of that Celtic tyrant, {154}who

fed his prisoners on salted food till they called eagerly for drink,

and then let down an empty cup into the dungeon, and left them to die of

thirst.” Is this to solicit, to persuade, to submit religion to the free

choice of man? Would a fine of a thousand pounds, would imprisonment in

Newgate for six months, under circumstances not disgraceful, give Mr.

Gladstone the pain which he would feel, if he were to be told that he

was to be dealt with in the way in which he would himself deal with more

than one half of his countrymen?

We are not at all surprised to find such inconsistency even in a man

of Mr. Gladstone’s talents. The truth is, that every man is, to a great

extent, the creature of the age. It is to no purpose that he resists

the influence which the vast mass, in which he is but an atom, must

exercise on him. He may try to be a man of the tenth century: but he

cannot. Whether he will or not, he must be a man of the nineteenth

century. He shares in the motion of the moral as well as in that of the

physical world. He can no more be as intolerant as he would have been in

the days of the Tudors than he can stand in the evening exactly where

he stood in the morning. The globe goes round from west to east; and he

must go round with it. When he says that he is where he was, he means

only that he has moved at the same rate with all around him. When he

says that he has gone a good way to the westward, he means only that

he has not gone to the eastward quite as rapidly as his neighbors. Mr.

Gladstone’s book is, in this respect, a very gratifying performance. It

is the measure of what a man can do to be left behind by the world. It

is the strenuous effort of a very vigorous mind to keep as far in the

rear of the general progress as possible. And yet, with the {155}most

intense exertion, Mr. Gladstone cannot help being, on some important

points, greatly in advance of Locke himself; and with whatever

admiration he may regard Laud, it is well for him, we can tell him,

that he did not write in the days of that zealous primate, who would

certainly have refuted the expositions of Scripture which we have

quoted, by one of the keenest arguments that can be addressed to human

ears.

This is not the only instance in which Mr. Gladstone has shrunk in a

very remarkable manner from the consequences of his own theory. If there

be in the whole world a state to which this theory is applicable, that

state is the British Empire in India. Even we, who detest paternal

governments in general, shall admit that the duties of the government of

India, are, to a considerable extent, paternal. There, the superiority

of the governors to the governed in moral science is unquestionable. The

conversion of the whole people to the worst form that Christianity

ever wore in the darkest ages would be a most happy event. It is not

necessary that a man should be a Christian to wish for the propagation

of Christianity in India. It is sufficient that he should be an European

not much below the ordinary European level of good sense and humanity.

Compared with the importance of the interests at stake, all those Scotch

and Irish questions which occupy so large a portion of Mr. Gladstone’s

book, sink into insignificance. In no part of the world since the

days of Theodosius has so large a heathen population been subject to a

Christian government. In no part of the world is heathenism more cruel,

more licentious, more fruitful of absurd rites and pernicious laws.

Surely, if it be the duty of government to use its power and its revenue

in order to bring seven millions of Irish Catholics {156}over to the

Protestant Church, it is _a fortiori_ the duty of the government to use

its power and its revenue in order to make seventy millions of idolaters

Christians. If it he a sin to suffer John Howard or William Penn to

hold any office in England because they are not in communion with the

Established Church, it must be a crying sin indeed to admit to high

situations men who bow down, in temples covered with emblems of vice, to

the hideous images of sensual or malevolent gods.

But no. Orthodoxy, it seems, is more shocked by the priests of Rome

than by the priests of Kalee. The plain red brick building, the Cave of

Adullam, or Ebenezer Chapel, where uneducated men hear a half-educated

man talk of the Christian law of love and the Christian hope of glory,

is unworthy of the indulgence which is reserved for the shrine where the

Thug suspends a portion of the spoils of murdered travellers, and

for the car which grinds its way through the bones of self-immolated

pilgrims. “It would be,” says Mr. Gladstone, “an absurd exaggeration to

maintain it as the part of such a government as that of the British

in India to bring home to the door of every subject at once the

ministrations of a new and totally unknown religion.” The government

ought indeed to desire to propagate Christianity. But the extent to

which they must do so must be “limited by the degree in which the people

are found willing to receive it.” He proposes no such limitation in the

case of Ireland. He would give the Irish a Protestant Church whether

they like it or not. “We believe,” says he, “that that which we place

before them is, whether they know it or not, calculated to be beneficial

to them; and that, if they know it not now, they will, know it when it

is presented to them fairly. Shall we, then, purchase their applause at

the {157}expense of their substantial, nay, their spiritual interests?”

And why does Mr. Gladstone allow to the Hindoo a privilege which he

denies to the Irishman? Why does he reserve his greatest liberality for

the most monstrous errors? Why does he pay most respect to the opinion

of the least enlightened people? Why does he withhold the right to

exercise paternal authority from that one government which is fitter to

exercise paternal authority than any government that ever existed in the

world? We will give the reason in his own words.

“_In British India,” he says, “a small number of persons advanced to a

higher grade of civilization, exercise the powers of government over an

immensely greater number of less cultivated persons, not by coercion,

but under free stipulation with the governed. Now, the rights of a

government, in circumstances thus peculiar, obviously depend neither

upon the unrestricted theory of paternal principles, nor upon any

primordial or fictitious contract of indefinite powers, but upon an

express and known treaty, matter of positive agreement, not of natural

ordinance._”

Where Mr. Gladstone has seen this treaty we cannot guess; for, though

he calls it a “known treaty,” we will stake our credit that it is quite

unknown both at Calcutta and Madras, both in Leadenhall Street and

Cannon Row, that it is not to be found in any of the enormous folios

of papers relating to India which fill the book-cases of members of

Parliament, that it has utterly escaped the researches of all the

historians of our Eastern empire, that, in the long and interesting

debates of 1813 on the admission of missionaries to India, debates of

which the most valuable part has been excellently preserved by the

care of the speakers, no allusion to this important instrument is to

be found. {158}The truth is that this treaty is a nonentity. It is

by coercion, it is by the sword, and not by free stipulation with the

governed, that England rules India; nor is England bound by any contract

whatever not to deal with Bengal as she deals with Ireland. She may

set up a Bishop of Patna, and a Dean of Hoogley; she may grant away the

public revenue for the maintenance of prebendaries of Benares and canons

of Moorshedabad; she may divide the country into parishes, and place

a rector with a stipend in every one of them; and all this without

infringing any positive agreement. If there be such a treaty, Mr.

Gladstone can have no difficulty in making known its date, its terms,

and, above all, the precise extent of the territory within which we have

sinfully bound ourselves to be guilty of practical atheism. The last

point is of great importance. For, as the provinces of our Indian empire

were acquired at different times, and in very different ways, no single

treaty, indeed no ten treaties, will justify the system pursued by our

government there.

The plain state of the case is this. No man in his senses would dream

of applying Mr. Gladstone’s theory to India; because, if so applied,

it would inevitably destroy our empire; and, with our empire, the best

chance of spreading Christianity among the natives. This Mr. Gladstone

felt. In some way or other his theory was to be saved, and the monstrous

consequences avoided. Of intentional misrepresentation we are quite

sure that he is incapable. But we cannot acquit him of that unconscious

disingenuousness from which the most upright man, when strongly attached

to an opinion, is seldom wholly free. We believe that he recoiled from

the ruinous consequences which his system would produce, if tried in

India; but that he did not like to {159}say so, lest he should lay

himself open to the charge of sacrificing principle to expediency,

a word which is held in the utmost abhorrence by all his school.

Accordingly, he caught at the notion of a treaty, a notion which must,

we think, have originated in some rhetorical expression which he has

imperfectly understood. There is one excellent way of avoiding the

drawing of a false conclusion from a false major; and that is by

having a false minor. Inaccurate history is an admirable corrective of

unreasonable theory. And thus it is in the present case. A bad general

rule is laid down, and obstinately maintained, wherever the consequences

are not too monstrous for human bigotry. But when they become so

horrible that even Christ Church shrinks, that even Oriel stands aghast,

the rule is evaded by means of a fictitious contract. One imaginary

obligation is set up against another. Mr. Gladstone first preaches to

governments the duty of undertaking an enterprise just as rational as

the Crusades, and then dispenses them from it on the ground of a treaty

which is just as authentic as the donation of Constantine to Pope

Sylvester. His system resembles nothing so much as a forged bond with a

forged release indorsed on the back of it.

With more show of reason he rests the claim of the Scotch Church on a

contract. He considers that contract, however, as most unjustifiable,

and speaks of the setting up of the Kirk as a disgraceful blot on the

reign of William the Third. Surely it would be amusing, if it were not

melancholy, to see a man of virtue and abilities unsatisfied with

the calamities which one Church, constituted on false principles, has

brought upon the empire, and repining that Scotland is not in the same

state with Ireland, that no Scottish agitator is {160}raising rent and

putting county members in and out, that no Presbyterian association

is dividing supreme power with the government, that no meetings of

precursors and repealers are covering the side of the Calton Hill, that

twenty-five thousand troops are not required to maintain order on the

north of the Tweed, that the anniversary of the Battle of Bothwell

Bridge is not regularly celebrated by insult, riot, and murder. We could

hardly find a stronger argument against Mr. Gladstone’s system than that

which Scotland furnishes. The policy which has been followed in that

country has been directly opposed to the policy which he recommends. And

the consequence is that Scotland, having been one of the rudest, one of

the poorest, one of the most turbulent countries in Europe, has become

one of the most highly civilised, one of the most flourishing, one of

the most tranquil. The atrocities which were of common occurrence while

an unpopular church was dominant are unknown. In spite of a mutual

aversion as bitter as ever separated one people from another, the

two kingdoms which compose our island have been indissolubly joined

together. Of the ancient national feeling there remains just enough to

be ornamental and useful; just enough to inspire the poet, and to kindle

a generous and friendly emulation in the bosom of the soldier. But for

all the ends of government the nations are one. And why are they so? The

answer is simple. The nations are one for all the ends of government,

because in their union the true ends of government alone were kept in

sight. The nations are one because the Churches are two.

Such is the union of England with Scotland, an union which resembles the

union of the limbs of one healthful and vigorous body, all moved by one

will, {161}all co-operating for common ends. The system of Mr. Gladstone

would have produced an union which can be compared only to that which

is the subject of a wild Persian fable. King Zohak--we tell the story as

Mr. Southey tells it to us--gave the devil leave to kiss his shoulders.

Instantly two serpents sprang out, who, in the fury of hunger, attacked

his head, and attempted to get at his brain. Zohak pulled them away, and

tore them with his nails. But he found that they were inseparable parts

of himself, and that what he was lacerating was his own flesh. Perhaps

we might be able to find, if we looked round the world, some political

union like this, some hideous monster of a state, cursed with one

principle of sensation and two principles of volition, self-loathing and

self-torturing, made up of parts which are driven by a frantic impulse

to inflict mutual pain, yet are doomed to feel whatever they inflict,

which are divided by an irreconcilable hatred, yet are blended in an

indissoluble identity. Mr. Gladstone, from his tender concern for Zohak,

is unsatisfied because the devil has as yet kissed only one shoulder,

because there is not a snake mangling and mangled on the left to keep in

countenance his brother on the right.

But we must proceed in our examination of his theory. Having, as he

conceives, proved that it is the duty of every government to profess

some religion or other, right or wrong, and to establish that religion,

he then comes to the question what religion a government ought

to prefer; and he decides this question in favour of the form of

Christianity established in England. The Church of England is, according

to him, the pure Catholic Church of Christ, which possesses the

apostolical succession of ministers, and within {162}whose pale is to

be found that unity which is essential to truth. For her decisions he

claims a degree of reverence far beyond what she has ever, in any of her

formularies, claimed for herself; far beyond what the moderate school

of Bossuet demands for the Pope; and scarcely short of what that school

would ascribe to Pope and General Council together. To separate from

her communion is schism. To reject her traditions or interpretations of

Scripture is sinful presumption.

Mr. Gladstone pronounces the right of private judgment, as it is

generally understood throughout Protestant Europe, to be a monstrous

abuse. He declares himself favourable, indeed, to the exercise of

private judgment, after a fashion of his own. We have, according to him,

a right to judge all the doctrines of the Church of England to be sound,

but not to judge any of them to be unsound. He has no objection,

he assures us, to active inquiries into religious questions. On the

contrary, he thinks such inquiry highly desirable, as long as it does

not lead to diversity of opinion; which is much the same thing as if he

were to recommend the use of fire that will not burn down houses, or

of brandy that will not make men drunk. He conceives it to be perfectly

possible for mankind to exercise their intellects vigorously and freely

on theological subjects, and yet to come to exactly the same conclusions

with each other and with the Church of England. And for this opinion

he gives, as far as we have been able to discover, no reason whatever,

except that everybody who vigorously and freely exercises his

understanding on Euclid’s Theorems assents to them. “The activity of

private judgment,” he truly observes, “and the unity and strength of

conviction in mathematics {163}vary directly as each other.” On this

unquestionable fact he constructs a somewhat questionable argument.

Everybody who freely inquires agrees, he says, with Euclid. But the

Church is as much in the right as Euclid. Why, then, should not

every free inquirer agree with the Church? We could put many similar

questions. Either the affirmative or the negative of the proposition

that King Charles wrote the _Icon Basilike_ is as true as that two

sides of a triangle are greater than the third side. Why, then, do Dr.

Wordsworth and Mr. Hallam agree in thinking two sides of a triangle

greater than the third side, and yet differ about the genuineness of

the _Icon Basilike_? The state of the exact sciences proves, says Mr.

Gladstone, that, as respects religion “the association of these two

ideas, activity of inquiry, and variety of conclusion, is a fallacious

one.” We might just as well turn the argument the other way, and infer

from the variety of religious opinions that there must necessarily be

hostile mathematical sects, some affirming, and some denying, that the

square of the hypothenuse is equal to the squares of the sides. But we

do not think either the one analogy or the other of the smallest value.

Our way of ascertaining the tendency of free inquiry is simply to open

our eyes and look at the world in which we live; and there we see that

free inquiry on mathematical subjects produces unity, and that free

inquiry on moral subjects produces discrepancy. There would undoubtedly

be less discrepancy if inquirers were more diligent and candid. But

discrepancy there will be among the most diligent and candid, as long

as the constitution of the human mind, and the nature of moral evidence,

continue unchanged. That we have not freedom and unity together is a

very sad thing; and so it is that we have {164}not wings. But we are

just as likely to see the one defect removed as the other. It is not

only in religion that this discrepancy is found. It is the same with

all matters which depend on moral evidence, with judicial questions, for

example, and with political questions. All the judges will work a sum

in the rule of three on the same principle, and bring out the same

conclusion. But it does not follow that, however honest and laborious

they may be, they will all be of one mind on the Douglas case. So it

is vain to hope that there may be a free constitution under which every

representative will be unanimously elected, and every law unanimously

passed; and it would be ridiculous for a statesman to stand wondering

and bemoaning himself because people who agree in thinking that two and

two make four cannot agree about the new poor law, or the administration

of Canada.

There are two intelligible and consistent courses which may be followed

with respect to the exercise of private judgment; the course of the

Romanist, who interdicts private judgment because of its inevitable

inconveniences; and the course of the Protestant, who permits private

judgment in spite of its inevitable inconveniences. Both are more

reasonable than Mr. Gladstone, who would have private judgment without

its inevitable inconveniences. The Romanist produces repose by means of

stupefaction. The Protestant encourages activity, though he knows

that where there is much activity there will be some aberration. Mr.

Gladstone wishes for the unity of the fifteenth century with the active

and searching spirit of the sixteenth. He might as well wish to be in

two places at once.

When Mr. Gladstone says that we “actually require discrepancy of

opinion--require and demand error, {165}falsehood, blindness, and plume

ourselves on such discrepancy as attesting a freedom which is only

valuable when used for unity in the truth,” he expresses himself with

more energy than precision. Nobody loves discrepancy for the sake of

discrepancy. But a person who conscientiously believes that free inquiry

is, on the whole, beneficial to the interests of truth, and that, from

the imperfection of the human faculties, wherever there is much free

inquiry there will be some discrepancy, may, without impropriety,

consider such discrepancy, though in itself an evil, as a sign of good.

That there are ten thousand thieves in London, is a very melancholy

fact. But, looked at in one point of view, it is a reason for

exultation. For what other city could maintain ten thousand thieves?

What must be the mass of wealth, where the fragments gleaned by lawless

pilfering rise to so large an amount? St. Kilda would not support a

single pickpocket. The quantity of theft is, to a certain extent, an

index of the quantity of useful industry and judicious speculation. And

just as we may, from the great number of rogues in a town, infer that

much honest gain is made there; so may we often, from the quantity of

error in a community, draw a cheering inference as to the degree in

which the public mind is turned to those inquiries which alone can lead

to rational convictions of truth.

Mr. Gladstone seems to imagine that most Protestants think it possible

for the same doctrine to be at once true and false; or that they think

it immaterial whether, on a religious question, a man comes to a true

or a false conclusion. If there be any Protestants who hold notions so

absurd, we abandon them to his censure.

The Protestant doctrine touching the right of private {166}judgment,

that doctrine which is the common foundation of the Anglican, the

Lutheran, and the Calvinistic Churches, that doctrine by which every

sect of dissenters vindicates its separation, we conceive not to be

this, that opposite doctrines may both be true; nor this, that truth

and falsehood are both equally good; nor yet this, that all speculative

error is necessarily innocent; but this, that there is on the face of

the earth no visible body to whose decrees men are bound to submit their

private judgment on points of faith.

Is there always such a visible body? Was there such a visible body in

the year 1500? If not, why are we to believe that there is such a body

in the year 1839? If there was such a body in the year 1500, what was

it? Was it the Church of Rome? And how can the Church of England be

orthodox now if the Church of Rome was orthodox then?

“In England,” says Mr. Gladstone, “the case was widely different from

that of the Continent. Her reformation did not destroy, but successfully

maintained the unity and succession of the Church in her apostolical

ministry. We have, therefore, still among us the ordained hereditary

witnesses of the truth, conveying it to us through an unbroken series

from our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles. This is to us the ordinary

voice of authority; of authority equally reasonable and equally true,

whether we will hear, or whether we will forbear.”

Mr. Gladstone’s reasoning is not so clear as might be desired. We have

among us, he says, ordained hereditary witnesses of the truth, and

their voice is to us the voice of authority. Undoubtedly, if they are

witnesses of the truth, their voice is the voice of authority. Rut this

is little more than saying that the truth is the {167}truth. Nor

is truth more true because it comes in an unbroken series from the

Apostles. The Nicene faith is not more true in the mouth of the

Archbishop of Canterbury, than in that of a moderator of the General

Assembly. If our respect for the authority of the Church is to be only

consequent upon our conviction of the truth of her doctrines, we come

at once to that monstrous abuse, the Protestant exercise of private

judgment. But if Mr. Gladstone means that we ought to believe that

the Church of England speaks the truth because she has the apostolical

succession, we greatly doubt whether such a doctrine can be maintained.

In the first place, what proof have we of the fact? We have, indeed,

heard it said that Providence would certainly have interfered to

preserve the apostolical succession in the true Church. But this is

an argument fitted for understandings of a different kind from Mr.

Gladstone’s. He will hardly tell us that the Church of England is

the true Church because she has the succession; and that she has the

succession because she is the true Church.

What evidence, then, have we for the fact of the apostolical succession?

And here we may easily defend the truth against Oxford with the same

arguments with which, in old times, the truth was defended by Oxford

against Rome. In this stage of our combat with Mr. Gladstone, we

need few weapons except those which we find in the well-furnished and

well-ordered armoury of Chillingworth.

The transmission of orders from the Apostles to an English clergyman

of the present day must have been through a very great number of

intermediate persons. Now, it is probable that no clergyman in the

Church of England can trace up his spiritual genealogy from {168}bishop

to bishop so far back as the time of the Conquest. There remain many

centuries during which the history of the transmission of his orders is

buried in utter darkness. And whether he be a priest by succession from

the Apostles depends on the question, whether during that long period,

some thousands of events took place, any one of which may, without any

gross improbability, be supposed not to have taken place. We have not a

tittle of evidence for any one of these events. We do not even know the

names or countries of the men to whom it is taken for granted that these

events happened. We do not know whether the spiritual ancestors of any

one of our contemporaries were Spanish or Armenian, Arian or Orthodox.

In the utter absence of all particular evidence, we are surely entitled

to require that there should be very strong evidence indeed that

the strictest regularity was observed in every generation, and that

episcopal functions were exercised by none who were not bishops by

succession from the Apostles. But we have no such evidence. In the first

place, we have not full and accurate information touching the polity of

the Church during the century which followed the persecution of Nero.

That, during this period, the overseers of all the little Christian

societies scattered through the Roman empire, held their spiritual

authority by virtue of holy orders derived from the Apostles, cannot

be proved by contemporary testimony, or by any testimony which can be

regarded as decisive. The question, whether the primitive ecclesiastical

constitution bore a greater resemblance to the Anglican or to the

Calvinistic model has been fiercely disputed. It is a question on which

men of eminent parts, learning, and piety have differed, and do to this

day differ {160}very widely. It is a question on which at least a full

half of the ability and erudition of Protestant Europe has, ever since

the Reformation, been opposed to the Anglican pretensions. Mr. Gladstone

himself, we are persuaded, would have the candour to allow that, if

no evidence were admitted but that which is furnished by the genuine

Christian literature of the first two centuries, judgment would not go

in favour of prelacy. And if he looked at the subject as calmly as

he would look at a controversy respecting the Roman Comitia or the

Anglo-Saxon Wittenagemote, he would probably think that the absence of

contemporary evidence during so long a period was a defect which later

attestations, however numerous, could but very imperfectly supply. It

is surely impolitic to rest the doctrines of the English Church on a

historical theory which, to ninety-nine Protestants out of a hundred,

would seem much more questionable than any of those doctrines. Nor is

this all. Extreme obscurity overhangs the history of the middle ages;

and the facts which are discernible through that obscurity prove that

the Church was exceedingly ill-regulated. We read of sees of the highest

dignity openly sold, transferred backwards and forwards by popular

tumult, bestowed sometimes by a profligate woman on her paramour,

sometimes by a warlike baron on a kinsman still a stripling. We read of

bishops of ten years old, of bishops of five years old, of many popes

who were mere boys, and who rivalled the frantic dissoluteness of

Caligula, nay, of a female pope. And though this last story, once

believed throughout all Europe, has been disproved by the strict

researches of modern criticism, the most discerning of those who reject

it have admitted that it is not intrinsically improbable. In {170}our

own island, it was the complaint of Alfred that not a single priest

south of the Thames, and very few on the north, could read either Latin

or English. And this illiterate clergy exercised their ministry amidst a

rude and half-heathen population, in which Danish pirates, unchristened,

or christened by the hundred on a field of battle, were mingled with

a Saxon peasantry scarcely better instructed in religion. The state of

Ireland was still worse. “Tota ilia per universam Hiberniam dissolutio

ecclesiasticæ disciplinas, illa ubique pro consuetudine Christiana sæva

subintroducta barbaries,” are the expressions of St. Bernard. We are,

therefore, at a loss to conceive how any clergyman can feel confident

that his orders have come down correctly. Whether he be really

a successor of the Apostles depends on an immense number of such

contingencies as these; whether, under King Ethelwolf, a stupid priest

might not, while baptizing several scores of Danish prisoners who had

just made their option between the font and the gallows, inadvertently

omit to perform the rite on one of these graceless proselytes;

whether, in the seventh century, an impostor, who had never received

consecration, might not have passed himself off as a bishop on a rude

tribe of Scots; whether a lad of twelve did really, by a ceremony

huddled over when he was too drunk to know what he was about, convey the

episcopal character to a lad of ten.

Since the first century, not less, in all probability, than a hundred

thousand persons have exercised the functions of bishops. That many of

these have not been bishops by apostolical succession is quite certain.

Hooker admits that deviations from the general rule have been frequent,

and with a boldness worthy of {171}his high and statesmanlike intellect,

pronounces them to have been often justifiable. “There may be,” says

he, “sometimes very just and sufficient reason to allow ordination made

without a bishop. Where the Church must needs have some ordained, and

neither hath nor can have possibly a bishop to ordain, in case of such

necessity the ordinary institution of God hath given _oftentimes_, and

may give place. And therefore we are not simply without exception to

urge a lineal descent of power from the Apostles by continued succession

of bishops in every effectual ordination.” There can be little doubt,

we think, that the succession, if it ever existed, has often been

interrupted in ways much less respectable. For example, let us suppose,

and we are sure that no well-informed person will think the supposition

by any means improbable, that, in the third century, a man of no

principle and some parts, who has, in the course of a roving and

discreditable life, been a catechumen at Antioch, and has there become

familiar with Christian usages and doctrines, afterwards rambles to

Marseilles, where he finds a Christian society, rich, liberal, and

simple-hearted. He pretends to be a Christian, attracts notice by his

abilities and affected zeal, and is raised to the episcopal dignity

without having ever, been baptized. That such an event might happen,

nay, was very likely to happen, cannot well be disputed by any one

who has read the Life of Peregrinus. The very virtues, indeed, which

distinguished the early Christians, seem to have laid them open to those

arts which deceived

“Uriel, though Regent of the Sun, and held

The sharpest-sighted spirit of all in Heaven.”

Now this unbaptized impostor is evidently no successor {172}of the

Apostles. He is not even a Christian and all orders derived through

such a pretended bishop are altogether invalid. Do we know enough of the

state of the world and of the Church in the third century to be able

to say with confidence that there were not at that time twenty such

pretended bishops? Every such case makes a break in the apostolical

succession.

Now, suppose that a break, such as Hooker admits to have been both

common and justifiable, or such as we have supposed to be produced by

hypocrisy and cupidity, were found in the chain which connected the

Apostles with any of the missionaries who first spread Christianity in

the wilder parts of Europe, who can say how extensive the effect of

this single break may be? Suppose that St. Patrick, for example, if

ever there was such a man, or Theodore of Tarsus, who is said to have

consecrated in the seventh century the first bishops of many English

sees, had not the true apostolical orders, is it not conceivable that

such a circumstance may affect the orders of many clergymen now living?

Even if it were possible, which it assuredly is not, to prove that the

Church had the apostolical orders in the third century, it would be

impossible to prove that those orders were not in the twelfth century so

far lost that no ecclesiastic could be certain of the legitimate descent

of his own spiritual character. And if this were so, no subsequent

precautions could repair the evil.

Chillingworth states the conclusion at which he had arrived on this

subject in these very remarkable words: “That of ten thousand probables

no one should be false; that of ten thousand requisites, whereof any

one may fail, not one should be wanting, this to me is extremely

{173}improbable, and even cousin-german to impossible. So that the

assurance hereof is like a machine composed of an innumerable multitude

of pieces, of which it is strangely unlikely but some will be out of

order; and yet, if any one be so, the whole fabric falls of necessity to

the ground: and he that shall put them together, and maturely consider

all the possible ways of lapsing and nullifying a priesthood in the

Church of Rome, will be very inclinable to think that it is a hundred

to one, that among a hundred seeming priests, there is not one true one;

nay, that it is not a thing very improbable that, amongst those many

millions which make up the Romish hierarchy, there are not twenty true.”

We do not pretend to know to what precise extent the canonists of Oxford

agree with those of Rome as to the circumstances which nullify orders.

We will not, therefore, go so far as Chillingworth. We only say that

we see no satisfactory proof of the fact, that the Church of England

possesses the apostolical succession. And, after all, if Mr. Gladstone

could prove the apostolical succession, what would the apostolical

succession prove? He says that “we have among us the ordained hereditary

witnesses of the truth, conveying it to us through an _unbroken_ series

from our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles.” Is this the fact? Is there

any doubt that the orders of the Church of England are generally derived

from the Church of Rome? Does not the Church of England declare, does

not Mr. Gladstone himself admit, that the Church of Rome teaches much

error and condemns much truth? And is it not quite clear, that as far as

the doctrines of the Church of England differ from those of the Church

of Rome, so far the Church of England conveys the truth through a broken

series? {174}That the founders, lay and clerical, of the Church of

England, corrected all that required correction in the doctrines of the

Church of Rome, and nothing more, may be quite true. But we never

can admit the circumstance that the Church of England possesses the

apostolical succession as a proof that she is thus perfect. No stream

can rise higher than its fountain. The succussion of ministers in the

Church of England, derived as it is through the Church of Rome, can

never prove more for the Church of England than it proves for the Church

of Rome. But this is not all. The Arian Churches which once predominated

in the kingdoms of the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the

Vandals, and the Lombards, were all episcopal churches, and all had

a fairer claim than that of England to the apostolical succession,

as being much nearer to the apostolical times. In the East, the Greek

Church, which is at variance on points of faith with all the Western

Churches, has an equal claim to this succession. The Nestorian, the

Eutychian, the Jacobite Churches, all heretical, all condemned by

councils, of which even Protestant divines have generally spoken with

respect, had an equal claim to the apostolical succession. Now if, of

teachers having apostolical orders, a vast majority have taught much

error, if a large proportion have taught deadly heresy, if, on the other

hand, as Mr. Gladstone himself admits, churches not having apostolical

orders, that of Scotland for example, have been nearer to the standard

of orthodoxy than the majority of teachers who have had apostolical

orders, how can he possibly call upon us to submit our private judgment

to the authority of a Church on the ground that she has these orders?

Mr. Gladstone dwells much on the importance of unity {175}in

doctrine. Unity, he tells us, is essential to truth. And this is most

unquestionable. But when he goes on to tell us that this unity is the

characteristic of the Church of England, that she is one in body and

in spirit, we are compelled to differ from him widely. The apostolical

succession she may or may not have. But unity she most certainly has

not, and never has had. It is matter of perfect notoriety-, that her

formularies are framed in such a manner as to admit to her highest

offices men who differ from each other more widely than a very high

Churchman differs from a Catholic, or a very low Churchman from a

Presbyterian; and that the general leaning of the Church, with respect

to some important questions, has been sometimes one way and sometimes

another. Take, for example, the questions agitated between the

Calvinists and the Arminians. Do we find in the Church of England, with

respect to those questions, that unity which is essential to truth? Was

it ever found in the Church? Is it not certain that, at the end of

the sixteenth century, the rulers of the Church held doctrines as

Calvinistic as ever were held by any Cameronian, and not only held them,

but persecuted everybody who did not hold them? And is it not equally

certain, that the rulers of the Church have, in very recent times,

considered Calvinism as a disqualification for high preferment, if

not for holy orders? Look at the questions which Archbishop Whitgift

propounded to Barret, questions framed in the very spirit of William

Huntington, S. S. (1) And then look at the eighty-seven questions which

Bishop

(1) One question was, whether God had from eternity

reprobated certain persons; and why? The answer which

contented the Archbishop was “Affirmative, et quia voluit.”

{176}Marsh, within our own memory, propounded to candidates for

ordination. We should be loth to say that either of these celebrated

prelates had intruded himself into a Church whose doctrines he abhorred,

and that he deserved to be stripped of his gown. Yet it is quite certain

that one or other of them must have been very greatly in error. John

Wesley again, and Cowper’s friend, John Newton, were both Presbyters of

this Church. Both were men of ability. Both we believe to have been men

of rigid integrity, men who would not have subscribed a Confession of

Faith which they disbelieved for the richest bishopric in the empire.

Yet, on the subject of predestination, Newton was strongly attached to

doctrines which Wesley designated as “blasphemy, which might make the

ears of a Christian to tingle.” Indeed, it will not be disputed that the

clergy of the Established Church are divided as to these questions,

and that her formularies are not found practically to exclude even

scrupulously honest men of both sides from her altars. It is notorious

that some of her most distinguished rulers think this latitude a good

thing, and would be sorry to see it restricted in favour of either

opinion. And herein we most cordially agree with them. But what

becomes of the unity of the Church, and of that truth to which unity

is essential? Mr. Gladstone tells us that the _Règium Donum_ was given

originally to orthodox Presbyterian ministers, but that part of it is

now received by their heterodox successors. “This,” he says, “serves to

illustrate the difficulty in which governments entangle themselves, when

they covenant with arbitrary systems of opinion, and not with the Church

alone. The opinion passes away, but the gift remains.” But is it not

clear, that if a strong Supralapsarian had, under {177}Whitgift’s

primacy, left a large estate at the disposal of the bishops for

ecclesiastical purposes, in the hope that the rulers of the Church

would abide by Whitgift’s theology, he would really have been giving his

substance for the support of doctrines which he detested? The opinion

would have passed away, and the gift would have remained.

This is only a single instance. What wide differences of opinion

respecting the operation of the sacraments are held by bishops, doctors,

presbyters of the Church of England, all men who have conscientiously

declared their assent to her articles, all men who are, according to

Mr. Gladstone, ordained hereditary witnesses of the truth, all men whose

voices make up what, he tells us, is the voice of true and reasonable

authority! Here, again, the Church has not unity; and as unity is the

essential condition of truth, the Church has not the truth.

Nay, take the very question which we are discussing with Mr. Gladstone.

To what extent does the Church of England allow of the right of private

judgment? What degree of authority does she claim for herself in virtue

of the apostolical succession of her ministers? Mr. Gladstone, a very

able and a very honest man, takes a view of this matter widely differing

from the view taken by others whom he will admit to be as able and

as honest as himself. People who altogether dissent from him on this

subject eat the bread of the Church, preach in her pulpits, dispense her

sacraments, confer her orders, and carry on that apostolical succession,

the nature and importance of which, according to him, they do not

comprehend. Is this unity? Is this truth?

It will be observed that we are not putting cases of {178}dishonest men

who, for the sake of lucre, falsely pretend to believe in the doctrines

of an establishment. We are putting cases of men as upright as

ever lived, who, differing on theological questions of the highest

importance, and avowing that difference, are yet priests and prelates

of the same Church. We therefore say, that on some points which Mr.

Gladstone himself thinks of vital importance, the Church has either not

spoken at all, or, what is for all practical purposes the same thing,

has not spoken in language to be understood even by honest and sagacious

divines. The religion of the Church of England is so far from

exhibiting that unity of doctrine which Mr. Gladstone represents as her

distinguishing glory, that it is, in fact, a bundle of religious systems

without number. It comprises the religious system of Bishop Tomline, and

the religious system of John Newton, and all the religious systems which

lie between them. It comprises the religious system of Mr. Newman, and

the religious system of the Archbishop of Dublin, and all the religious

systems which lie between them. All these different opinions are held,

avowed, preached, printed, within the pale of the Church, by men of

unquestioned integrity and understanding.

Do we make this diversity a topic of reproach to the Church of England?

Far from it. We would oppose with all our power every attempt to

narrow her basis! Would to God that, a hundred and fifty years ago, a

good king and a good primate had possessed the power as well as the

will to widen it! It was a noble enterprise, worthy of William and of

Tillotson. But what becomes of all Mr. Gladstone’s eloquent exhortations

to unity? Is it not mere mockery to attach so much importance to unity

in form and name, where there is {179}so little in substance, to shudder

at the thought of two churches in alliance with one state, and to endure

with patience the spectacle of a hundred sects battling within one

church? And is it not clear that Mr. Gladstone is bound, on all his own

principles, to abandon the defence of a church in which unity is not

found? Is it not clear that he is bound to divide the House of Commons

against every grant of money which may be proposed for the clergy of the

Established Church in the colonies? He objects to the vote for Maynooth,

because it is monstrous to pay one man to teach truth, and another to

denounce that truth as falsehood. But it is a mere chance whether any

sum which he votes for the English Church in any colony will go to the

maintenance of an Arminian or a Calvinist, of a man like Mr. Froude,

or of a man like Dr. Arnold. It is a mere chance, therefore, whether

it will go to support a teacher of truth, or one who will denounce that

truth as falsehood.

This argument seems to us at once to dispose of all that part of Mr.

Gladstone’s book which respects grants of public money to dissenting

bodies. All such grants he condemns. But surely, if it be wrong to

give the money of the public for the support of those who teach

false doctrine, it is wrong to give that money for the support of the

ministers of the Established Church. For it is quite certain that,

whether Calvin or Arminius be in the right, whether Laud or Burnet be in

the right, a great deal of false doctrine is taught by the ministers

of the Established Church. If it be said that the points on which the

clergy of the Church of England differ ought to be passed over, for the

sake of the many important points on which they agree, why may not the

same argument be maintained with respect to other {180}sects which

hold in common with the Church of England the fundamental doctrines

of Christianity? The principle that a ruler is bound in conscience to

propagate religious truth, and to propagate no religious doctrine which

is untrue, is abandoned as soon as it is admitted that a gentleman

of Mr. Gladstone’s opinions may lawfully vote the public money to a

chaplain whose opinions are those of Paley or Simeon. The whole question

then becomes one of degree. Of course no individual and no government

can justifiably propagate error for the sake of propagating error. But

both individuals and governments must work with such machinery as they

have; and no human machinery is to be found which will impart truth

without some alloy of error. We have shown irrefragably, as we think,

that the Church of England does not afford such a machinery. The

question then is this; with what degree of imperfection in our machinery

must we put up? And to this question we do not see how any general

answer can be given. We must be guided by circumstances. It would, for

example, be very criminal in a Protestant to contribute to the sending

of Jesuit missionaries among a Protestant population. But we do not

conceive that a Protestant would be to blame for giving assistance to

Jesuit missionaries who might be engaged in converting the Siamese to

Christianity. That tares are mixed with the wheat is matter of regret;

but it is better that wheat and tares should grow together than that the

promise of the year should be blighted.

Mr. Gladstone, we see, with deep regret, censures the British government

in India for distributing a small sum among the Catholic priests who

minister to the spiritual wants of our Irish soldiers. Now, let us put

a {181}case to him. A Protestant gentleman is attended by a Catholic

servant, in a part of the country where there is no Catholic

congregation within many miles. The servant is taken ill, and is

given over. He desires, in great trouble of mind, to receive the last

sacraments of his Church. His master sends off a messenger in a chaise

and four, with orders to bring a confessor from a town at a considerable

distance. Here a Protestant lays out money for the purpose of causing

religious instruction and consolation to be given by a Catholic priest.

Has he committed a sin? Has he not acted like a good master and a

good Christian? Would Mr. Gladstone accuse him of “laxity of religious

principle,” of “confounding truth with falsehood,” of “considering

the support of religion as a boon to an individual, not as a homage

to truth?” But how if this servant had, for the sake of his master,

undertaken a journey which removed him from the place where he might

easily have obtained religious attendance? How if his death were

occasioned by a wound received in defending his master? Should we not

then say that the master had only fulfilled a sacred obligation of

duty? Now, Mr. Gladstone himself owns that “nobody can think that

the personality of the state is more stringent, or entails stronger

obligations, than that of the individual.” How then stands the case

of the Indian government? Here is a poor fellow, enlisted in Clare

or Kerry, sent over fifteen thousand miles of sea, quartered in a

depressing and pestilential climate. He fights for the government; he

conquers for it; he is wounded; he is laid on his pallet, withering

away with fever, under that terrible sun, without a friend near him. He

pines for the consolations of that religion which, neglected perhaps

in the season of health and vigour, {182}now comes back to his mind,

associated with all the overpowering recollections of his earlier days,

and of the home which he is never to see again. And because the state

for which he dies sends a priest of his own faith to stand at his

bedside, and to tell him, in language which at once commands his love

and confidence, of the common Father, of the common Redeemer, of the

common hope of immortality, because the state for which he dies does not

abandon him in his last moments to the care of heathen attendants, or

employ a chaplain of a different creed to vex his departing spirit with

a controversy about the Council of Trent, Mr. Gladstone finds that India

presents “a melancholy picture,” and that there is “a large allowance of

false principle” in the system pursued there. Most earnestly do we hope

that our remarks may induce Mr. Gladstone to reconsider this part of

his work, and may prevent him from expressing in that high assembly, in

which he must always be heard with attention, opinions so unworthy of

his character.

We have now said almost all that we think it necessary to say respecting

Mr. Gladstone’s theory. And perhaps it would be safest for us to stop

here. It is much easier to pull down than to build up. Yet, that we may

give Mr. Gladstone his revenge, we will state precisely our own views

respecting the alliance of Church and State.

We set out in company with Warburton, and remain with him pretty

sociably till we come to his contract; a contract which Mr. Gladstone

very properly designates as a fiction. We consider the primary end of

government as a purely temporal end, the protection of the persons and

property of men.

We think that government, like every other contrivance {183}of human

wisdom, from the highest to the lowest, is likely to answer its main

end best when it is constructed with a single view to that end. Mr.

Gladstone, who loves Plato, will not quarrel with us for illustrating

our proposition, after Plato’s fashion, from the most familiar objects.

Take cutlery, for example A blade which is designed both to shave and to

carve, will certainly not shave so well as a razor, or carve so well as

a carving-knife. An academy of painting, which should also be a bank,

would, in all probability, exhibit very bad pictures and discount very

bad bills. A gas company, which should also be an infant school society,

would, we apprehend, light the streets ill, and teach the children ill.

On this principle, we think that government should be organized solely

with a view to its main end; and that no part of its efficiency for

that end should be sacrificed, in order to promote any other end however

excellent.

But does it follow from thence that governments ought never to pursue

any end, other than their main end? In no wise. Though it is desirable

that every institution should have a main end, and should be so formed

as to be in the highest degree efficient for that main end; yet if,

without any sacrifice of its efficiency for that end, it can pursue any

other good end, it ought to do so. Thus, the end for which a hospital is

built is the relief of the sick, not the beautifying of the street. To

sacrifice the health of the sick to splendour of architectural effect,

to place the building in a bad air only that it may present a more

commanding front to a great public place, to make the wards hotter or

cooler than they ought to be, in order that the columns and windows

of the exterior may please the passers-by, would be monstrous. But if,

without any sacrifice of {184}the chief object, the hospital can be made

an ornament to the metropolis, it would be absurd not to make it so.

In the same manner, if a government can, without any sacrifice of

its main end, promote any other good work, it ought to do so. The

encouragement of the fine arts, for example, is by no means the main end

of government; and it would be absurd, in constituting a government,

to bestow a thought on the question, whether it would be a government

likely to train Raphaels and Domenichinos. But it by no means follows

that it is improper for a government to form a national gallery of

pictures. The same may be said of patronage bestowed on learned men, of

the publication of archives, of the collecting of libraries, menageries,

plants, fossils, antiques, of journeys and voyages for purposes of

geographical discovery or astronomical observation. It is not for these

ends that government is constituted. But it may well happen that a

government may have at its command resources which will enable it,

without any injury to its main end, to pursue these collateral ends far

more effectually than any individual or any voluntary association could

do. If so, government ought to pursue these collateral ends.

It is still more evidently the duty of government to promote, always in

subordination to its main end, every thing which is useful as a means

for the attaining of that main end. The improvement of steam navigation,

for example, is by no means a primary object of government. But as steam

vessels are useful for the purpose of national defence, and for the

purpose of facilitating intercourse between distant provinces, and of

thereby consolidating the force of the empire, it may be the bounden

duty of government to encourage {185}ingenious men to perfect an

invention which so directly tends to make the state more efficient for

its great primary end.

Now on both these grounds, the instruction of the people may with

propriety engage the care of the government. That the people should be

well educated, is in itself a good thing: and the state ought therefore

to promote this object, if it can do so without any sacrifice of

its primary object. The education of the people, conducted on

those principles of morality which are common to all the forms of

Christianity, is highly valuable as a means of promoting the main object

for which government exists, and is on this ground well deserving the

attention of rulers. We will not at present go into the general question

of education; but will confine our remarks to the subject which is more

immediately before us, namely, the religious instruction of the people.

We may illustrate our view of the policy which governments ought to

pursue with respect to religious instruction, by recurring to the

analogy of a hospital. Religious instruction is not the main end

for which a hospital is built; and to introduce into a hospital any

regulations prejudicial to the health of the patients, on the plea of

promoting their spiritual improvement, to send a ranting preacher to a

man who has just been ordered by the physician to be quiet and try

to get a little sleep, to impose a strict observance of Lent on a

convalescent who has been advised to eat heartily of nourishing food,

to direct, as the bigoted Pius the Fifth actually did, that no medical

assistance should be given to any person who declined spiritual

attendance, would be the most extravagant folly. Yet it by no means

follows that it would not be right to have a {186}chaplain to attend the

sick, and to pay such a chaplain out of the hospital funds. Whether it

will be proper to have such a chaplain at all, and of what religious

persuasion such a chaplain ought to be, must depend on circumstances.

There may be a town in which it would be impossible to set up a good

hospital without the help of people of different opinions: and religious

parties may run so high that, though people of different opinions are

willing to contribute for the relief of the sick, they will not concur

in the choice of any one chaplain. The high Churchmen insist that, if

there is a paid chaplain, he shall be a high Churchman. The Evangelicals

stickle for an Evangelical. Here it would evidently be absurd and cruel

to let an useful and humane design, about which all are agreed, fall to

the ground, because all cannot agree about something else. The governors

must either appoint two chaplains, and pay them both; or they must

appoint none; and every one of them must, in his individual capacity,

do what he can for the purpose of providing the sick with such religious

instruction and consolation as will, in his opinion, be most useful to

them.

We should say the same of government. Government is not an institution

for the propagation of religion, any more than St. George’s Hospital is

an institution for the propagation of religion: and the most absurd and

pernicious consequences would follow, if Government should pursue, as

its primary end, that which can never be more than its secondary

end, though intrinsically more important than its primary end. But a

government which considers the religious instruction of the people as

a secondary end, and follows out that principle faithfully, will, we

think, be likely to do much good and little harm. {187}We will rapidly

run over some of the consequences to which this principle leads,

and point out how it solves some problems which, on Mr. Gladstone’s

hypothesis, admit of no satisfactory solution.

All persecution directed against the persons or property of men is,

on our principle, obviously indefensible. For, the protection of the

persons and property of men being the primary end of government, and

religious instruction only a secondary end, to secure the people from

heresy by making their lives, their limbs, or their estates insecure,

would be to sacrifice the primary end to the secondary end. It would be

as absurd as it would be in the governors of a hospital to direct that

the wounds of all Allan and Socinian patients should be dressed in such

a way as to make them fester.

Again, on our principles, all civil disabilities on account of religious

opinions are indefensible. For all such disabilities make government

less efficient for its main end: they limit its choice of able men for

the administration and defence of the state; they alienate from it the

hearts of the sufferers; they deprive it of a part of its effective

strength in all contests with foreign nations. Such a course is as

absurd as it would be in the governors of a hospital to reject an able

surgeon because he is an Universal Restitutionist, and to send a bungler

to operate because he is perfectly orthodox.

Again, on our principles, no government ought to press on the people

religious instruction, however sound, in such a manner as to excite

among them discontents dangerous to public order. For here again

government would sacrifice its primary end to an end intrinsically

indeed of the highest importance, but still {188}only a secondary end of

government, as government. This rule at once disposes of the difficulty

about India, a difficulty of which Mr. Gladstone can get rid only by

putting in an imaginary discharge in order to set aside an imaginary

obligation. There is assuredly no country where it is more desirable

that Christianity should be propagated. But there is no country in which

the government is so completely disqualified for the task. By using our

power in order to make proselytes, we should produce the dissolution of

society, and bring utter ruin on all those interests for the protection

of which government exists. Here the secondary end is, at present,

inconsistent with the primary end, and must therefore be abandoned.

Christian instruction given by individuals and voluntary societies may

do much good. Given by the government it would do unmixed harm. At

the same time, we quite agree with Mr. Gladstone in thinking that the

English authorities in India ought not to participate in any idolatrous

rite; and indeed we are fully satisfied that all such participation is

not only unchristian, but also unwise and most undignified.

Supposing the circumstances of a country to be such, that the government

may with propriety, on our principles, give religious instruction to a

people; we have next to inquire, what religion shall be taught. Bishop

Warburton answers, the religion of the majority. And we so far agree

with him, that we can scarcely conceive any circumstances in which

it would be proper to establish, as the one exclusive religion of the

state, the religion of the minority. Such a preference could hardly be

given without exciting most serious discontent, and endangering those

interests, the protection of which is the first object of government.

{189}But we never can admit that a ruler can be justified in helping to

spread a system of opinions solely because that system is pleasing to

the majority. On the other hand, we cannot agree with Mr. Gladstone,

who would of course answer that the only religion which a ruler ought

to propagate is the religion of his own conscience. In truth, this is an

impossibility. And as we have shown, Mr. Gladstone himself, whenever he

supports a grant of money to the Church of England, is really assisting

to propagate, not the precise religion of his own conscience, but

some one or more, he knows not how many or which, of the innumerable

religions which lie between the confines of Pelagianism and those

of Antinomianism, and between the confines of Popery and those of

Presbyterianism. In our opinion, that religious instruction which the

ruler ought, in his public capacity, to patronise, is the instruction

from which he, in his conscience, believes that the people will

learn most good with the smallest mixture of evil. And thus it is not

necessarily his own religion that he will select. He will, of course,

believe that his own religion is unmixedly good. But the question which

he has to consider is, not how much good his religion contains, but how

much good the people will learn, if instruction is given them in that

religion. He may prefer the doctrines and government of the Church

of England to those of the Church of Scotland. But if he knows that a

Scotch congregation will listen with deep attention and respect while

an Erskine or a Chalmers sets before them the fundamental doctrines of

Christianity, and that a glimpse of a surplice or a single line of a

liturgy would be the signal for hooting and riot, and would probably

bring stools and brick-bats about the ears of the minister, he acts

wisely if he conveys religious {190}knowledge to the Scotch rather by

means of that imperfect Church, as he may think it, from which they will

learn much, than by means of that perfect Church from which they will

learn nothing. The only end of teaching is, that men may learn; and it

is idle to talk of the duty of teaching truth in ways which only cause

men to cling more firmly to falsehood.

On these principles we conceive that a statesman, who might be far

indeed from regarding the Church of England with the reverence which Mr.

Gladstone feels for her, might yet firmly oppose all attempts to destroy

her. Such a statesman may be too well acquainted with her origin to

look upon her with superstitious awe. He may know that she sprang from

a compromise huddled up between the eager zeal of reformers and the

selfishness of greedy, ambitious, and time-serving politicians. He may

find in every page of her annals ample cause for censure. He may feel

that he could not, with ease to his conscience, subscribe all her

articles. He may regret that all the attempts which have been made to

open her gates to large classes of non-comformists should have failed.

Her episcopal polity he may consider as of purely human institution.

He cannot defend her on the ground that she possesses the apostolical

succession; for he does not know whether that succession may not be

altogether a fable. He cannot defend her on the ground of her unity; for

he knows that her frontier sects are much more remote from each other,

than one frontier is from the Church of Rome, or the other from the

Church of Geneva. But he may think that she teaches more truth with

less alloy of error than would be taught by those who, if she were

swept away, would occupy the vacant space. He may think that the effect

produced by her beautiful services and by her {191}pulpits on the

national mind, is, on the whole, highly beneficial. He may think that

her civilising influence is usefully felt in remote districts. He may

think that, if she were destroyed, a large portion of those who now

compose her congregations would neglect all religious duties, and that

a still larger portion would fall under the influence of spiritual

mountebanks, hungry for gain, or drunk with fanaticism. While he would

with pleasure admit that all the qualities of Christian pastors are

to be found in large measure within the existing body of Dissenting

ministers, he would perhaps be inclined to think that the standard of

intellectual and moral character among that exemplary class of men may

have been raised to its present high point and maintained there by

the indirect influence of the Establishment. And he may be by no means

satisfied that, if the Church were at once swept away, the place of our

Sumners and Whateleys would be supplied by Doddridges and Halls. He

may think that the advantages which we have described are obtained,

or might, if the existing system were slightly modified, be obtained,

without any sacrifice of the paramount objects which all governments

ought to have chiefly in view. Nay, he may be of opinion that an

institution, so deeply fixed in the hearts and minds of millions, could

not be subverted without loosening and shaking all the foundations

of civil society. With at least equal ease he would find reasons for

supporting the Church of Scotland. Nor would he be under the necessity

of resorting to any contract to justify the connection of two religious

establishments with one government. He would think scruples on that head

frivolous in any person who is zealous for a Church, of which both

Dr. Herbert Marsh and Dr. Daniel Wilson have been bishops. Indeed he

{192}would gladly follow out his principles much further. He would have

been willing to vote in 1825 for Lord Francis Egerton’s resolution, that

it is expedient to give a public maintenance to the Catholic clergy of

Ireland: and he would deeply regret that no such measure was adopted in

1829.

In this way, we conceive, a statesman might on our principles satisfy

himself that it would be in the highest degree inexpedient to abolish

the Church, either of England or of Scotland.

But if there were, in any part of the world, a national church regarded

as heretical by four-fifths of the nation committed to its care, a

church established and maintained by the sword, a church producing twice

as many riots as conversions, a church which, though possessing great

wealth and power, and though long backed by persecuting laws, had,

in the course of many generations, been found unable to propagate its

doctrines, and barely able to maintain its ground, a church so odious,

that fraud and violence, when used against its clear rights of property,

were generally regarded as fair play, a church, whose ministers were

preaching to desolate walls, and with difficulty obtaining their lawful

subsistence by the help of bayonets, such a church, on our principles,

could not, we must own, be defended. We should say that the state which

allied itself with such a church postponed the primary end of government

to the secondary: and that the consequences had been such as any

sagacious observer would have predicted. Neither the primary nor the

secondary end is attained. The temporal and spiritual interests of the

people suffer alike. The minds of men, instead of being drawn to the

church, are alienated from the state. The magistrate, after sacrificing

order, {193}peace, union, all the interests which it is his first duty

to protect, for the purpose of promoting pure religion, is forced, after

the experience of centuries, to admit that he has really been promoting

error. The sounder the doctrines of such a church, the more absurd

and noxious the superstition by which those doctrines are opposed, the

stronger are the arguments against the policy which has deprived a good

cause of its natural advantages. Those who preach to rulers the duty

of employing power to propagate truth would do well to remember that

falsehood, though no match for truth alone, has often been found more

than a match for truth and power together.

A statesman, judging on our principles, would pronounce without

hesitation that a church, such as we have last described, never ought

to have been set up. Further than this we will not venture to speak for

him. He would doubtless remember that the world is full of institutions

which, though they never ought to have been set up, yet, having been

set up, ought not to be rudely pulled down; and that it is often wise in

practice to be content with the mitigation of an abuse which, looking at

it in the abstract, we might feel impatient to destroy.

We have done; and nothing remains but that we part from Mr. Gladstone

with the courtesy of antagonists who bear no malice. We dissent from

his opinions, but we admire his talents; we respect his integrity and

benevolence; and we hope that he will not suffer political avocations so

entirely to engross him, as to leave him no leisure for literature and

philosophy.