The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1867-12-17 00:00:00

efflesiastiall hittßival.

HIGH CHURCH PRINCIPLES.

Tee public have lately beets (avowed with sem*
..coartable entail's from aerials peesees, who
to thnowilves to be authorities on *burr&
have Ir. fore us letters from A rob-
Denieon and poor silly Lord Denbigh,
to me 8 rocked, and one from the Bishop of
1....f0twt to Dean Stanley. They amtein among
hem pleaty of matter for our consideration at the
Learnt time. In a letter dated Dec. 4, the Archdeacon,
cl
n 4 against Lord Russell*, education propose's,
crows
r ••:..amcda of the church, whether Anglo Catholic
"4- Catholic, have it in shame to teach all the or Knoll°
shildren in the 'school out of certain prescribed formula.
ea collected by the Church of Sot ipture." Here the
„nib's individual speaks of his o•n Church and the
(torch of Rome as "the Church." On the very day
that this letter of the Arehdeacon's appeared in the •
stoe,med, Lord Denbigh was writing an epistle to the
journal. explaining the words that be need at the ,
owmog of the Pope's servants; in iondon, "1 me an
I.:„.l,ehman, bet • Catholic firse," by saying that he ,
Catholic sod Christian, ea eoevertible terms."
Ey Osthol a, his lordship mesas Roman Catholic, and
coneigne kichd•aeon Denison to the plum of the inddel .
nue heretic. l'ruly these iiiigh Churchmen are • model
of niceknear. Never were men treated with greater
romempt and .0.411 than they have been by the Church •
of Some, and ,it they persist in forcing them/elm. upon •
that apostate chorale es brethren. But how does the ,
Archdeacon treat the Nonconformists? As having no
forma:arise, and apparently no conscience. He &aye
ro the Nonconformist such imposition (of • couseienoe
deem.) is /warn, ; to the chureinnan it is much." It
metea to he a judicial blindness on the part of these
Angitcan Papists, still to be courting • power that
despises them ; and at the sametime to delight in irritaL
log therm who might be must important friends of the
chtirell, and /certainly would be no despicable enemies,
t•hardy, meekness, longeufering, to the apostasy;
all insolenoe and bullying to their Prot's/dant note!).
her• It is not hard to anticipate the end of mob
madness. Strong as the Church of England is in the
Attachment 1 the people., each &emerge as these would.
i.e priesti are parenting, must inevitably bring her to
nsin, orders they are arrested, and that speedily. At •
re...nylon rsountry laughs at their vain protestor and
alieurti vagaries ; the moment they become formidable •
they well fed their position changed. The worst is that
-they may dreg down with them unto rain many honest
113,41, wto have protested, but in rain, egetaat their
lake nod treasonable proceedings.
But not sontent with his lime letter, the Archdeacon
•of ttunton comes forth the next day with another on •
the SAMS subject. If he did not like Lord Huseell's
propositions. he was not better pleased with the Duke of
Mcrlborough's reply. He says, "The principle upon
which the ohm set in admitting Nonconformist's
children into their schools is the Missionary principle
doing what ran be dose towards bringing such
children to be Charch children. In this view they re-
serve to themselves atm Iris freedom in reseed of the
matb• and mosey, of the religion/ teaching of tIIS
sehonl."kA more audacious mis-statement, or one more
discreditable to the writer, or to the clergy, whom he
pretends to represent, was never pennon. There are
hundreds of schools in the land where all children are
admitted on the express understanding that there shall
be no proselytising at all; hundreds of schools which
have been thus conducted for years, without a simpleton
of any ouch underhand Intentions or practices on the
part of the allergy. Many are supported by landowners
on these express 'auditions, and we wonder that these
clerryinen term sot protected against the Arohdearson's
misrepresentations. No orthodox Dimenter objects to
any of the•eseential truths which our Protest/ant Church
teaohes4 they may object to Nome matters of minor
importance, but M• school which is avowedly Intended
for all denominations, these miner matters may well
be reserved for the Sunday school. It will be an evil
day for the allergy when they begin to be suspected ci
,0011111 OA dishonest sa the Archdeacon represents them,
and we are glad to see that one clergyman has in the
--Stamford protested against Arehdeseosi 's peony
And unscrupulous views.

But we have al.o he,. much edified by the °errs&
'pondenoe of Dean Stanley. and the American Bishop of
Vermont. The Dean having most properly, on public
grounds, declined to let the Pan-Angliesn Synod display
itself in Westminster Abbey, at therms time, ea an
En4lich gentleman, wee anxious WOO.. refusal should
not be attrilseted to personal motives, and therefore, wrote
a most courtsou, letter to the said Bishop of Vermont.
The answer which he received will give us a fair idea
of what advantage our church is likely to receive from '
Pan-Anglican Synods and American bishop.. Cambia-
Ise apparently in his own character all the worst
peculiaritiee of an American republic, and an arbitrary
prelate, Bishop Hopkins evidently availed himself of
the opportunity of insulting a man, who, like Dean
:Stanley, is {dandy his superior in every respect. He has
taken him to task for his want of respect to the bishops.
H. seems to be utterly unaware that the amembly of
bishop. was unauthorised, if not illegal ; that be him-
self was only invited to attend, in order to carry out
the plans of one eeryjwticione member of that &monthly ,•
and that his insolent reply to Dean Stanley has excited
Ike ridicule of the people of England in general, and of
sot a few in America itself. English bishops will not
c ninth to the estimation of the educated people in
Zeeland, by aseoeiating themselves with snob men as
Bishop Hopkins. There are good men among the
American bishops, but they for the most part kept Away
drum that wretched attempt at sell-glorification. Dean
Stanley has the satisfaction of knowing that in what
be has done he is thoroughly supported by the country
at large. The Bishop of Vermont is an oftloer of a
voluntary church, and therefore may do what he likes
with his own. In England every beneficed clergyman
&as legal rights, on which no bishop can trench ; and
Bishop Hopkins's ideas on episeopal right., ought to
•open our eyes to what would become at our church, if
certain pereee. had their way and *mild sI hoe out of
the hands of the State into their own power, and this is
the great end and object of this Pan-Anglican Synod.
'The effects, and the incidents of that synod, are daily
showing themselves ; the reports of the committee on
the 'Thurch of Natal are only • development of the
en,bitious scheme of those who planned the synod it-elf.
They recommend that the South African Bishop.
should do what the Archbishop of Canterbury dare not
do, namely, consecrate a bishop to exercise hie olioe
In the diocese of Natal, and that without any reference
to Her Ifsjeety. Will Lord Derby's Government
submit to that' Use, it ceases to deserve the confidence
'of any honest churchman. Is the Colonial Church to
be made the lever by which oar church is to be forced
from the State and left at the mercy of the bishop'?
We can well judge what would follow : the proposed
Episcopal Court of Final Appeal and the erasure of the
word Protestant from the Resolutions of the Synod,
and the stylng the Greek Church Orthodox, show
what kind of church it would moon become, • mere
appendage, ones more, to the Church of Rome.
It is satisfactory to know that these ambitions
schemes and devices of certain ambition, prelates are
alarming the moderate High Churchmen through the
sad; men who, unlike Lord Denbigh, are Englishmen
brut and then churchmen, whose devotion to the
bishop does not lead them to ignore their duty to their
Queen and country. These organs are beginning to
ery out. The meetings at Willis's rooms of all
Protestant Churchmen has called their attention to the
eeriousness of the present juncture, and we really
believe that when they have got over their jealousy
of Protestantism and their long-eberisbed prejudice
against evangelical principles, they will be found by
our tide in resisting the two great dangers of the
present day, Episcopal aggression and Anglican
Ritualism ; both connected in principle, both shortly
to be united in practice, anima stopped by the
indignant protest of a patient but not unobservant
people. Every day brings new encouragement to those
who love the Reformation and are determined to
tappert and defend it. The well attended meeting of
the Dorset Church Association. the fact that it was
.considered worthy of being watched, the rapidity with
which the guarantee fund is being filled up in the
county as well as elsewhere, show that these gentlemen,
whether bishops in Pan Anglican Synods, or priests at
St. Albans and From*, are not going to have it all their
own way, and may furnish the Bishop of Salisbury
the next time he defends himself in the House of
Lords with additional evidence of the "dutiful
affootion" of 64 diocese.