The Express.
London, England, 1851-04-10 00:00:00

dons of thought. the full exercise of the intellectual
faculties, and with the civil liberty which springs
therefrom. The departure of such men, however to
be regretted on personal grounds, is therefore quite
as much a testimony in favour of the protestant
church as it can he construed to be in favour of the
ltomish communion ; for it is some evidence that the
former does not possess that fundamental error which
has beguiled Mr. Hoer, out of it; and this con-
stant secession from it on the ground of its want
of catholicity ought to lead 1)r. PCSET, Mr.
GLADSTONE, and those who act and think
with them, seriously to reconsider their position to •
the church; and it• they resolve still to remain 11
therein, to st,te plainly and distinctly the reasons on
which they do au. For to them this aeries of practi-
cal abnegations of their distinctive view of the
church of England by their old friends is both logi-
cally and religiously a serious and awful warning.
Leeds, too, has lately witnessed a deplorable scene.
Nothing less than the public and ostentatious pro-
fession of Itomunism by several of the clergy and
some of the laity of St. S.lviour's in that town—a
church built and endowed with tractarian funds, and
in the gift of Dr. l'l'sEY and Mr. NI %Raton. At
this ceremony, Father Newseve, not unappropri-
ately, perhaps, preached to or addressed the
assemblage ; and the burthen of his discourse
was, that each individual secession from the Eng-
lish to the Itomish church was a miracle ;
that, consequentl, the Rotnish communion in Eng-
land was miraculously supported and must ulti-
mately prevail ; whereas, argued the late fellow of Oriel,
the English church rested altogether on the tem-
poral power; "take that away and it goes;" and
that whenever abandoned by the state it would be
ahundoned by Gone and crumble to pieces. Though
bow long the state would uphold it, the Father did
not condescend to predict; and, failing to do so, left
the term of its future existence conveniently uncer-

tarn.
We must, of course. be prepared for Romish con-
gratulations and rejoicings over such secessions as
these; to hear theta attributed to divine agency,
and accepted a- indications of the greater things vet
to corms But a lit n Father NEwssex goes further than
such enthusiasm ought fairly to carry him, and treats
each separate ease as a positive miracle, it is just as
well to remind him, that he may find this doctrine
of miraculous agency in, or rather of the miraculous
character of doss conversions, dangerous and in-
convenient. The Father is now a member of a
church claiming as a whole infallibility; but that
church has not assigned to its priestly units sepa-
rately the pessession of any such power; and, when
the Pother asserts that a miracle has been wrought
in his person. and in the persons of each of his co-
pe-everts. we base only his oven word for it; and
that his own prey jou, curter has shows to be very
weuk. and changeable. So, if he can clothe
the ordinary es. tits of life—the legitimate results of
premises Cork argued out to their natural con-
clusions if Euth. r NEM MAN chooses in his ent Int-
airson to say on his own authority that they are
miracles, he must not be surprised if other
people, (nuttily rush and exultant, follow this
example. and el • for their changes and
variations of 'pillion a miraculous character also.
The Father calls, of rause, his conversion a miracle,
because it was to what he deems to be truth. But
JOE SMITH amid his disciples think Mormonism to be'
the truth ; and they are just as much entitled because
of that peroutsion and belief to ascribe miraculous
agency to the steps by which they reached their
truth. as the Father is to that chain of sequences from
catholicity. by a hick he at lust got to his truth. And
so, if religions sects get into the habit of discovering
miracles in the ordinary vacillations of human in-
tellect and opinion. and of announcing them to the
world as such on their own authority without any of
the preternatural evidence% of miraculous occur-
rences, the age of miracles will quickly be re-
&torsi ; and. stimulated by the example of Ito-
monism, tither men its Father NEW M sS;
will attribute variations in their views and midi-
menfis not to the groa th, the exercise, or to the
weakness of their mental faculties, but to divine
agency manifested and exercised in their separate
and individual welfare. And that, we submit to
Father Nswet vv. in pus lessexcited moments, :could
not be a state of things calculated to advance true
religion, to promote civil government, ur to matte
men good eitizeo- or prosperous members of society.
It is, of course, possible that in the goodness and
mercy of the AlAiltiliTV the present age may be
bless.ed and fasoured with mirack%; but that is a
porstihility so remote, so improbable, so inconsistent
with the course of religious occurrences for fifteen
centuries, is. awful in its considerations, and so fur
beyond all human anticipation, that rational men,
with all the ordinary agency for the propagation of
true religion already vouchsafed to them, do not rely on
mirachs for the advents-mem of what they hold to be
religions truth. And when they hear a miraculous
diameter claimed for events for which they can find
severely logical causes, they cannot have much IN'
evict for the church on behalf of which it is made.
If the Romish church he so obviously the only true
church- -if it be the only communion in which men
can certainly find rest and peace, and faith and
hope, and assurance, it can hardly require the
perpetual succession of miracles that is put forth
for its glorification. And the effect of true miracles
on men being so inssistible, if those occurrences to
which it assigns sup ernatund causation were really
the violent interference of the I leity on its behalf,
the aisle Christian world would long ago have been
re. •ted to the ]tannish church. When, then,
Father NSWat ‘N has recourse to this statement, he
rents to prove either too little or too much—either
that his so-called miracles arc works of supereroga-
tion, or that they do not produce the ordinary TV-
milts or effects of the character he assigns to them.
Not content. however, with giving to his new
church a miraculous reputation derived from his own
entry into it. Father Nswu 1X will have it that his
old church is altogether temporal, that without state
support it would crumble into dust. But, admitting
for a moment that such would be the ease, that
which mould fall would be the framework of an
ecclesiastical organisation, not the protestant religion
itself; not the Bible, not the faith handed down to
us from the Saints. The Father. in his new develop-
ment. can neither Ace nor imagine any religion but
that in the hands of a great incorporation of priests,
with popes and hierurehs, and bishopm and patri-
archs at their head; he has no notion that men can
be saved a ithout such agency. Ile overlooks the
exilltenee of religion in Scotland; he cannot cast his
eves across the Atlantic: ; and he obliterates the success
of protestant nonconformity front his knowledge of
English history. And, having done this, he infers
that the withdrawal of state support from the
English church would be the ruin of protestantism
in this country ; and, of course, lead to the supremacy
of popery.
The state then in the Father's opinion is the main-
stay
of protestantism in England. Be it so: but in
that event the Father cannot object to our remarking
how overwhel • g a motive the !tarnish church must
have to disturb, perplex, and overthrow the state
here in England. If the state he the great obstacle
to its success by upholding the Euglitth church, the
readiest mode of removing all impediments to its ,
progress is, of course. to get rid of the state as now I
constituted. When, then, the Father enters into I
such a train of reasoning, he gets into an argument'
not calculated to give high impressions of the
loyalty to the English state of the Romish priesthood.
Fhr suggests a reason why he and his brother
ecclesiastics cannot love the °English state, cannot
desire its permanence. Father Newsisst ought to
be more cautious in hi. enthusiasm.
As to the consequences which he would ascribe to
a separation of church and state, they arc little to
be dreaded, because of the- improbability of the sepa-
ration. even if it would produce such consequences.
Rut that it would. is exactly what the Father fails
to prove. And at the very time he is making that
assertion as to the results of separation, it is [oleo-
cated by a party in the church, with a view of in-
creasing the religious power of the church; and by
dissenters, to remove what they think is the great
obstacle to the spread of protestantitim.

SEICTDE BY PRUSSIC AClD.—Yeaterday • long I
inquiry was gone into before Mr. W. Carter, the
coroner, at the Marlborough Arista Tavern, Westmoreland-
place, Cambt tar, H, into the circumstances connected with
the death of Mr. William Augustin Dubourg, chemist,
aged 29, who de4royed himself, as was demonstrably
proved, by taking pru••ic acid. The unfortunate man Ic
behind him several lett, rs, one soldrocied to the coroner,
assigning di.tress of mind as the reason of the terrible act
he was alsent to commit. The jury returned • verdict of
temporary