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DUTY OF SUPPORTING THE CHURCH.

remove them. Even as an establishment, while it fulfils the duties of its office as an instructress of the people I do not fear its overthrow. I believe that this measure will expose it to dangers and trials, which, however, I trust that, under the protection of Providence, it will be enabled to surmount. When the storm which has been occasioned by these discussions shall have subsided, the clergy will look with confidence to your Lordships, under increased difficulties, for that protection and support which they are entitled to expect, while they are faithful to their The Church, my Lords, which is now to be deprived of one security, may justly call upon you to increase her means of doing good; to arm her with the power of internal discipline; to give her additional opportunities of fulfilling her duties, by providing the means of joining in her worship for all who desire it. If this be done, I confess that although I look forward to the certainty of perilous trials and conflicts, I do not despair of her final stability, but believe that she will survive them all.”

trust.

Powerful as some of the arguments which he addressed to the House in opposition to the measure were, the Bishop appears himself to have been dissatisfied with them, and to have considered the subject as far from being exhausted. But he felt that it would be useless to insist on them any further; being well aware that all arguments were powerless to prevent the passing of the measure, and that the only purpose they could serve was that of a protest, so that Parliament and the country should not, without due warning given them of the consequences, make so serious a change in the Constitution. With this conviction on his mind, he spoke as one that was prepared to acquiesce in an inevitable result; and he assigned this expressly as the reason why he thought it better to refrain from some topics which he feared might produce an irritating effect. "Between the danger of admitting Presbyterians," he said,-in answer to those who

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JUDICIAL BLINDNESS OF THE NATION.

75

appealed to the Presbyterian establishment in Scotland, and to the toleration recently extended to dissenters,― or any other Protestant sect whatever, into power, and that which will follow from the admission of the Roman Catholics, there is no comparison, no analogy at all; and that for reasons sufficiently obvious, into which, however, I am not now about to enter in detail, being desirous, in the present state of the question, of avoiding such topics as may serve to exasperate feelings which, if this Bill should pass into a law, it will be our duty to mitigate and allay. It is the probability, now amounting nearly to certainty, that such will be the issue of this debate which leads me to abstain from the discussion of many other reasons by which I am compelled to withhold even a reluctant assent from what I consider to be a fearful and hazardous experiment."

The misgivings expressed by the opponents of the measure, the warnings addressed to Parliament and the nation against the sin it involved and the dangers with which it was fraught, were all in vain. The Bill which broke down the constitutional safeguard against the intrusion of the Papal jurisdiction and of the ecclesiastical militia of the Papacy into the kingdom, was passed by a large majority of the House of Peers, and received the reluctant assent of the King on the 13th of April, 1829; leaving those who had sufficient discernment to penetrate the designs of the Romanists, to mourn over the fatal, and in some sense judicial, blindness with which the Legislature and the country, rulers and people, were struck. Nothing now remained to be done by the Bishops of the Church, but to seek to fulfil, as best they might, the duty indicated in Bishop Blomfield's remarks,-that of endeavouring to mitigate and allay the feelings excited during the struggle, by recommending, to the clergy especially acquiescence in the law which, in an evil hour, the nation had imposed upon itself. But even this recommendation

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COUNSELS AND WARNINGS.

could not, consistently with a faithful discharge of their office, be given, without being accompanied with exhortations to increased activity and vigilance against the designs of the enemy. This Bishop Blomfield felt; and in his primary charge to the clergy of the diocese of London, in the summer of the following year, he thus adverted to the subject:-"The repeal of those laws which were long considered to be indispensable to the safety of the Established Church, if it is no just cause of alarm, at least places us in a new position, compels us, for the future, to depend more entirely upon our internal resources, and will be a test of their sufficiency. Let us not, however, suppose, that the concessions which have been made to the Roman Catholics, will diminish the activity, or weaken the influence, of those who are continually on the watch for opportunities of enlarging the boundaries of their Church, and who seek to infuse into the minds of the people a doubt as to the validity of our ministerial commission."

འ༧༡

CHAPTER V.

Spiritual condition of the Diocese of London-Desecration of the Lord's Day-Pastoral Letter on the Subject-Causes of Profanation among the Lower Orders-Ungodly Habits of the Higher Classes-Sunday Dinner Parties-Sunday Card Parties-The Gaming Houses-Importance of a Public Observance of the Lord's Day-Sanctity of the Christian Sabbath-Sensation Caused by the Pastoral-Resentment of the Public Press-The "Times," The "John Bull"-The " 'Morning Post"-Reaction in the Public Mind-Salutary Efforts of the Pastoral-The Uses of Unpopularity.

O the task of strengthening the Church by increasing her internal efficiency, it had from the first been Bishop Blomfield's determination to apply himself; and he lost no time in making himself acquainted with the condition and the spiritual wants of his diocese; an indispensable preliminary to useful action, which, in his case, was greatly facilitated by his previous connexion with the diocese, and by the knowledge which, as the chaplain of his predecessor and patron, Dr. Howley, he had already had ample opportunity of acquiring. Among the obstacles which presented themselves to his mind, as calculated seriously to obstruct whatever measures might be devised for the spiritual improvement of the population under his charge, the all but universal neglect of the Lord's Day occupied a prominent place; and with a view to check this evil, as far as lay in his power, he addressed, in May 1830, to the inhabitants of London and Westminster “ A letter on the present neglect of the Lord's Day."

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PASTORAL ON THE LORD'S DAY.

Of the considerations which induced him to take this somewhat unusual, though not altogether unprecedented,* step, he himself gave the following account:-" When an evil of great and crying magnitude threatens the well-being of religion amongst us, and that evil is most conspicuous and formidable in this metropolis; when the number of the parochial clergy, whose special duty it is to watch and to oppose its progress, is notoriously and lamentably inadequate to the extent of the province entrusted to them; and when the nature of the evil is such as to require a speedy, a zealous, and a general resistance on the part of all sincere Christians; it seems to me that I cannot justly be accused of forwardness, if I raise the voice of authority in the cause of God and of His Gospel; especially when it is considered that the more unusual such a warning is, the more likely it is to meet with attention. The evil of which I speak, is the profanation of the Christian Sabbath; an evil which has often been noticed and deplored by good and pious men at different times within the last hundred years, but which now bids defiance to remonstrance and authority, and seems to threaten the destruction of all religious habits in the lower classes of society."

While thus pointing out the religious condition of the masses as the great object of his pastoral solicitude, the Bishop took care to have it clearly understood, that it was not so much to them as to their superiors in rank and station that his remonstrance was addressed. The lower orders would probably not even obtain cognizance, except through indirect channels, of the fact of his having lifted up his voice against the profanation of the Lord's Day; and they might be left more properly to be remonstrated with by the ministers of their several parishes. But there was

* Bishop Porteus had issued a Pastoral on the profanation of the Lord's Day; but his was addressed to the Clergy, and not, as that of Bishop Blomfield, to the Laity.