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take upon themselves to propose any change, but to leave it open to consideration whether some improvement was not desirable, in bona fide concurrence with the ministers of the Church.

Mr. B. JOHNSTONE, speaking from recent experience at the University, asserted, from his own knowledge, that young men were deterred from taking Holy Orders on account of the rigidity of the Subscription. He admitted that it was impossible to trust to law; that there must be tests, and rigid tests; but all that was asked was a relaxation of the present Subscription. At present the Church of England incurred the danger of losing its hold on the educated mind of the country. The Subscription had been imposed by Parliament, which was, therefore, the most appropriate authority to relax its rigidity.

Lord R. CECIL said he could not understand the scruples of the young men who had been referred to, unless, as he believed, the objection was not to Subscription to the Articles, but to the Articles themselves, against which there was a movement. If the concession asked for were made, there would be further demands hereafter. Mr. B. Johnstone had said that the reason why Subscription to the Articles was more burdensome now than it had been during the last 200 years was, that this was an age of ecclesiastical trials. Ecclesiastical trials were not produced by subscriptions, nor would the abolition of subscriptions put an end to such trials. But no doubt the hon. gentleman pointed to the real source of the evil. If they wanted to attract to the Church the young men who now declined it, they must get rid of the law under which these trials were held. The foundations of faith were shaken, and men's minds were casting about for something to believe. It was on that account, as much as on any other, that difficulty had been found in introducing the higher intellects of the day into the service of the Church; and, if they wanted to remove that difficulty, they must go much further than this motion. They must abolish not only Subscription, but all the legal penalties for heresy. They must open wide the gates of the Church, and let into it every species of believer. They must close the doors to none. The day was past when they could keep out the Unitarian and let in the Calvinist. It was now a question of all the deepest and widest elements of their faith, and if they wished to remove the grievances which had arisen, there was nothing left for them but to admit each man to the pulpit to preach, not what his Church maintained, but precisely what he liked, to the congregation. That he apprehended to be the real grievance; that he believed was the only remedy. It was said that the forms of Subscription were a tyranny. He believed that they were a safeguard against tyranny. The mover of this Resolution forgot that if you took away the tests which existed by law, the officers of the Church would take measures to protect themselves. The Bishops could refuse ordination to any man they liked. They could close the doors of the Church as narrowly as they pleased. Hitherto they had abstained

from taking such a course; but as soon as the legal guarantee was gone, and they knew that the necessity for ordination was the only check which prevented the pulpits of the Church being occupied by persons who absolutely disagreed with its doctrines, they would set up checks and tests of their own far more rigid than those which it was proposed to abolish.

The feeling which had grown up in the present day against these tests was not to be regarded as a settled or permanent one. For two centuries these tests had been cheerfully and honestly subscribed by successive generations of clergymen. And from the fact that for 200 years the Church had flourished under the system which they desired to abolish, could they not draw the conclusion that the present melancholy state of things was only transitory? However bad it was, however disgraceful it might seem, however much they might desire to remedy it, there was, it seemed to him, ample comfort in the facts before them. They knew that human nature did not change so much, that the spirit which had reigned before would reign again, and that in future, as in past years, they would see men of deep piety and fervent devotion able to spend a life of usefulness in the service of the Church, and able to accept these tests without reluctance, and without the slightest tampering with their consciences, just as they had been able to do through the years which had been the glory and the fame of the Church of England.

Mr. DISRAELI said it was contemplated two centuries ago that there should be a standard of religious truth established by the State; but we were now to have a new system, which was to bring on a state of affairs more comprehensive. But he doubted whether this was a sound system. A Church might be so comprehensive that nobody knew what it comprehended. There was nothing new and nothing alarming in the periodical appearance of a particular branch of literature, to render it necessary that there should be an alteration of the Act of Uniformity. There was nothing in this phase of opinion that required Parliament to revise the great title-deed of the Church of England. He had not heard any argument against the wisdom of maintaining the Church of England; and how could we have a Church without a Creed, Formularies, and Articles? If there was to be a Church, it must have symbols of union among those who were in communion with it. He believed there was no ground for the course recommended by Mr. Buxton; but if the House was of opinion that the title-deed of the Church ought to be revised, the inquiry should not originate in the House of Commons, but should come from the temporal head of the Church--the Queen, by a Royal Commission. But he preferred to stand as we

were.

The previous question having been put and carried in the negative, Mr. Buxton's Resolution fell to the ground.

The object of the Bill which Mr. E. P. Bouverie obtained leave

to introduce, was to repeal a particular clause in the Act of Uniformity, which required several classes of persons to make a declaration of conformity to the Liturgy of the Church of England, and which operated as a barrier against Nonconformists, otherwise qualified to obtain fellowships and other academical rewards at the Üniversities.

The motion was opposed by Mr. Walpole, Sir W. Heathcote, and Lord Robert Cecil. It was objected to as involving the principle, that the government of the Universities and Colleges and the endowments might be acquired and held by persons not members of the Church of England; which principle had been twice deliberately considered by the House and negatived. If this alteration was made, every member of the Universities might have his own religion or no religion at all, and the very foundation of those institutions would be shaken.

Lord STANLEY supported the motion, believing that there would be left ample security, after this test had been abolished, for the rights and privileges of the Universities. Lord Palmerston expressed a reserved assent to the introduction of the Bill, which he did not pledge himself to support, but he thought that full time ought to be given to the consideration of the question. Leave was given to bring in the Bill after a division of 157 in its favour against 135, but no practical result followed its introduction. Towards the end of June, Mr. Bouverie finding, as he said, no prospect of obtaining sufficient time for the consideration of his Bill-which had in the mean time been threatened with serious opposition, petitions from both Universities having been presented against it-requested leave to withdraw it for the present year, with the intention of introducing it anew early in the ensuing Session. After a protest against the principle of the measure from Mr. Walpole and Sir W. Heathcote, it was accordingly withdrawn.

Upon another motion made by Lord Ebury in the House of Lords, in favour of altering the Act of Uniformity by repealing the clause which required from the Clergy of the Church of England a declaration of their assent and consent to every thing contained in the Book of Common Prayer, a very interesting discussion took place. It was argued by Lord Ebury that the law in its present state was neither a benefit nor a safeguard to the Church, but pressed heavily on the consciences of many who had subscribed to the declaration, and prevented many hundreds of young men from entering the clerical profession. In laying his case in favour of a diminution of the tests now exacted before their lordships, the noble lord said, he thought he could not better describe the system which he desired to modify, than to trace a candidate for Orders at the University of Oxford through his career of oaths, affirmations, and subscriptions, from his taking his Master's degree to the end of his life. Upon taking his Master's degree, he must subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles according to

the enactments of the 13th of Elizabeth, together with the Three Articles of the 36th Canon, the first of which is the oath of allegiance and supremacy; the second, a declaration that the Prayer Book does not contain any thing contrary to the Word of God; the third, that every one of the Thirty-nine Articles is agreeable to the Word of God. Having complied with these forms, he became, if otherwise eligible, a Master of Arts, and proceeded to the bishop for ordination as deacon, possibly, only a few days after, when he was compelled to make the whole of these declarations over again, with the addition of another-the oath of supremacy and allegiance required by the 1st of Elizabeth. By this time they might have supposed that this candidate for the ministry might be entitled to be considered a safe man. Not so, however; for so jealously did the Church guard the portals of its ministry from the possibility of even the slightest entrance of error, that when, probably, the following year, he asked for Priest's Orders, the whole of these declarations and subscriptions had again to be gone through before he could obtain his wishes; and, not content with this, lest any slippery heterodox fish should escape through the meshes of this orthodox net, should he obtain a benefice, again must the whole ceremony be performed, with two additional declarations enjoined by the Act of Charles II.-one, that he would conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England, the other, that he gives his unfeigned assent to all and every thing contained in and prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer; and, whenever, during the remainder of his life, he moved from one living to another, the same series of oaths, declarations, and subscriptions must be renewed, so that, however faithfully he might have delivered the Gospel message, nothing but the grim hand of death itself could free him from the requirements of the law. He remembered now, however, that so far from having over-stated the case he had under-stated it, for he had omitted two oaths, one of canonical obedience to the bishop, the other against simony, which must be added to this intricate list, not to mention a string of queries, involving subjects of a like nature, put by the bishop to the candidate and responded to in terms prescribed by authority. Thus, then, they had six declarations of assent to the Prayer Book, seven oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and nine assents to the Articles, besides the other oaths. This was swearing with a vengeance, exacted of those who were the elite of morality and religion in the community. If Parliament should assent to his proposal, and repeal the obnoxious clause of the Act of 1662, there would remain still required by law the oaths of supremacy and allegiance, a subscription to the Articles in the terms of the 13th of Elizabeth, and a declaration of conformity to the Liturgy required by the Act of Charles II.; and he thought, if these declarations and subscriptions were required once in a clergyman's life, all would be performed which the most timid need require. If the present system of subscriptions had been merely redundant

and useless, he should not have troubled their lordships on this occasion; but when he found that it was at this time rending the Church in pieces and steadily undermining her foundations, and when the country was scandalized at the sight of men, all making the same solemn asseverations, yet preaching antagonistic doctrines and mutually casting imputations at one another, it was high time to inquire into the policy of maintaining these stringent tests, which, while they kept great numbers of conscientious men out of the pale of the Church, had produced within her fold neither peace nor unity, nor even a barren uniformity of doctrine.

The motion was opposed on various grounds. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who took the lead, did not deny that the declarations now required might be simplified, but the real point at issue was, whether clerical subscriptions should be required, or not, to her doctrines? The terms of Subscription required a clergyman to declare his assent and consent to every thing contained in the Prayer Book; but there was good reason for believing, with many learned and distinguished divines, that, according to the Act of Uniformity, the Subscription was merely a subscription to the use of the Liturgy. No one, it was true, with a safe conscience, could use the language of the Prayer Book without believing it; and here he must say that he could not conceive how the proposed change could give any real relief to a well-informed conscience. If a clergyman promised to "conform " to the Liturgy, he must mean, of course, not only that he would read it, but that he believed it to be Divine truth. He could not conform to it in any other sense, unless he was prepared to say that he would read that which he did not believe. The declaration had been in force for 200 years, yet it was only within a very recent time that the paucity of candidates for Holy Orders had been experienced. There were other causes which would account for this circumstance: such as the alteration in the relative value of this and other professions which had taken place, and the opening of new careers in commercial and other pursuits. On the whole, he did not think that in the present instance relief was called for, or that it would be afforded by the proposal now made.

Similar grounds of objection were taken by the other peers who opposed Lord Ebury. Lord Lyttelton thought they should look into the purpose with which the present alteration was proposed, and to the opinions of the majority of members of the Church of England on the question. After the experience which they had of the latitude of opinion which clergymen of the Church of England possessed, and when they knew that many of the clergy conformed to the Church while holding opinions quite different from her teaching, he thought it would be unwise to make the alteration proposed.

The Bishop of OXFORD took a distinction between the declaration which it was proposed to repeal and the declaration which would still remain in force if this were removed. The one implied

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