all evil principles, should be waiting to be itself rectified by the action of extrinsic causes; that is to say, causes which, having, independently of it and even under its opposition, accomplished a great work which it ought to have effected, shall rectify it in addition. The church shall in time become purely, faithfully, efficaciously evangelical. In what time, and by what means? Obviously, when the divers and strongly-combined authorities which exercise the ascendancy over it shall have first become so. When the heavenly fire shall have descended on the high places of the land-when courts, and statesmen, and the chief ecclesiastical dignitaries, and universities, and title patrons, and opulent proprietors, and traders in advowsons-when these shall have become very generally the spiritual, humble disciples of the school of Christ, then at length the church will attain its evangelical purity. This will, indeed, be coming to its duty rather of the latest. In the comparatively smooth service it will then have on its hands (for the people, too, cannot have remained far behind in such a change), it may calmly rejoice to see already performed, by some extraneous agency, the mighty operation for the achievement of which its own powers and privileges had been conferred; and truly munificent must the nation be, to reward it by a confirmation of those privileges for what it has not done, and has not to do. But you may say that, as you are promising yourselves a progressive evangelization of these authorities ascendant over the religious character of the church, you may fairly calculate on a contemporary and at least equal progress in the renovation of the church itself, with a consequent efficacy in corresponding proportion. Be it so; but what will you be thinking all the while of the contrary and counteracting effect of the spiritually dead condition (your own phrase) of the un-evangelized portion of the church, which will for a long time, at all events, retain you in the hapless condition of the captives of Mezentius? any rapid progress in the hoped for change in the disposition of the chief patronage, it would seem to me that you have little cause to be so sanguine. What, for example, have you to expect from the superior personages in the state, even such of them as are supposed to be not altogether As to ignorant or careless of religion? I remember when some of you looked with considerable hope and confidence to that very respectable premier and churchman, the late Lord Liverpool. When, however, after a period of delay and expectation, a representation was conveyed to him by Mr. Wilberforce, complaining that the evangelical clergy were neglected in the dispensation of patronage, he replied that it was on principle that the patronage was so withheld, for that he considered the evangelical party to be doing great mischief in the community. That you do, notwithstanding all the adverse influences, obtain here and there the introduction of an evangelical minister, in succession to one who was perhaps violently in opposition, may well be very gratifying to you. And indeed this gratification has often so strong an expression, as to afford a significant indication of your own estimate of the state of the church. For it seems to be regarded almost as a God-send, that, under such auspices, there should have come into, or come forth in, the church, yet one more such minister as you say all the thousands of them ought to be. On such a survey of the ecclesiastical system, I hope you will pardon an old observer for presuming to dissuade you of the evangelical party from joining chorus in the language, which profanely affects to identify the fate of Christianity with the stability or fall of an institution which, by your own declaration, unites the Manichæan principles-but without their equality. Mr. Editor, I am more ashamed than I can express, to have encroached on your page to so unconscionable a length; and faithfully promise never to obtrude the subject on you again. Yours, &c. 6 A QUIET LOOKER-ON.* "Who told you of my two letters '-meaning, I suppose, in the Morning Chronicle. Whoever wrote them, I approve them enough to be pleased that you also approve them. The writer would, I dare say, be curious to see by what wriggles the 'evangelicals' would get out of the corner-out of the cleft-stick. But how strange, that instead of such wriggling, hardly a man of them of any account has the honesty to come manfully out of the corrupt institution. With one or two exceptions, all who have of late years come out have left anything they were ever worth behind them."-Mr. Foster to the Rev. Josiah Hill, Nov. 1, 1834. "Some one naming himself 'Philalethes' has written in the Morning Chronicle against the thing, and threatens another column or two. I have no disposition to say anything to him. He is one of those who have no notion of the business as a matter of religion-religion by and for itself; and he makes, as coolly as possible, some monstrous false assumptions of fact in favour of the [Established Church],-assumptions which prove that there is no talking to him to any purpose."-Mr. Foster to B. Stokes, Esq., Oct. 28, 1834. |