The Sun.
London, England, 1839-12-27 00:00:00

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/72-

EDITION.
SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE MORNING PAPERS OF THIS DAY.
Laity and
the Morning Chronicle.)
Laity and clergy now unite to reprobating the con-
duct of the Bishop of Exeter. In the Times of Thurs-
day appeared a letter on Church Discipline, under the
its imputed
force ou account of
is confidently
signature of Nestorides, which we have copied into this
bduayt'salCsohroofn
Chronicle, , not
merely
ciotsnfin mdeerittls;
assigned to no less a personage than the Bishop of
London. The nature of several of the Bishop of
Exeter's opinions is roundly characterized as Popish by
his Lordship of London, more particularly his notion
respecting the power of the keys; and he condemns
his carriage towards the head of the Church and his
brethren of the Bench as unseemly, and of most perni-
cious example. " For ages, I had almost said," observes
Nestorides, "has that fearful, but absurd and Popish
expression. 'the power of the keys,' been lost sight
of." The Bishop of Exeter has revived it ; and the
riter proceeds to show that the absolute power over
the eternal destiny of men, claimed by Dr. Phillpotts,
is without justification in scripture, and at variance with
the opinions of the best Reformers. We have always
understood that it was the peculiar feature of Protes-
tantism that a man's acceptance or reprobation should
not depend on the fiat of any priest ; and that the mi-
nistration of the clergy was only to be considered as
a means to enable their flocks to fight the good fight
with the advantage which their. care and instruc-
tion can give. To commit the fate of the laity to the
determination of the priests is considered by Protestants
to strike at the very root of religion, by destroying the
motives for incessant vigilance, wich necessarily follows
from self-responsibilityl Nestorides, in passing some
severe strictures on the censure of the opinion of fhe
Bishop of Hereford on the Archbishop of Canterbury's
Bill, frankly tells Dr. Phillpotts, " I see what you
mean ; you want to be at' your clergy' with suspension,
deposition, excommunication ; you would beggar and
ruin, and that in the midst of simpers and smiles,
whilst others are content with the' more dilatory pro-
cess of = admaaishing„ reproving, perhaps 'velortning."
But-the most remarkable part of this letter, supposing
it the production of a Bishop, is the severe censure
passed upon the Bench of Bishops, and the admission
that, at a trying conjuncture, they were preserved in
their places, not by their own merits, but by the good
character of the parochial clergy :
What are the offences and crimes," he exclaims, "of
Dr. Fry, a half crazy creature, in their moral effect,
compared to those which have been committed by the
Bishops themselves? I should wish these personages on
the Bench to feel as they ought, that they have recently
(when they were almost treated as in the days just pre-
ceding the Protectorate)—that they have recently, I say,
been preserved in their places, and that with much
difficulty, by the general character and efforts of the
parochial clergy, over whom they accidentally preside.
Is not the Church at this moment stuffed with the sons
and other undeserving connections of three different
shops, whose letters can hardly follow them with sufficient
rapidity from preferment to preferment, to be answered
within the time that courtesy requires? Yet I do not
see in any of the schedules of Bills for enforcing
Church discipline, not even in that of the ever-respected
Primate, any clause against nepotism on the Bench. It
was also asserted in this Journal, and never, that I could
obserese, contradicted, that there is another Bishop still
living, whose son, positively a boy at Eton, has been by
his father appointed Registrar of the Diocese! Surely
Church discipline should begin here."
These are home thrusts. For the three dead Bishops.
and their worthless connections, pass as, the French
say, but who is the living bishop who has so scanda-
lously abused his trust as to make his school-boy son a
registrar? If this language continue to be held, the
observation of Dr. Law, Bishop of Elphin, to Dr. Por-
ter, that he had heard he was worth a hundred thousand
pounds, but it must be a calumny, for no Christian
Bishop could be rich, would be realized in the Church,
which will become as pure as the army. Every one has
heard the anecdote of Major Honeyman, the son of
Lord Armadale, a Judge of the Court of Session. A
noise in the nursery having been heard, the maid was
asked the cause of it, when she answered, " Naething—
it's only the Major who winna sup his parritch." We
suspect equally disgraceful misapplications of Episcopal
patronage are by no means unfrequent. Nestorides
plainly tells the Bishop of Exeter that his studies and
acquirements by no means fit him to sit in judgment on
the Oxford Tracts ; and that the opinion expressed by
him, that, till the Church herself pronounces an opinion
to be heresy, no private man can without presumption
do so, would condemn Barrow and Hooker, " who
often pronounced many opinions of the Church of
Rome to be heretical, which the Church to which
they belonged had never solemnly pronounced to be
such." From the language of the Bishop of London
addressed to the Bishop of Exeter in his place in the
House of Lords, we were quite aware that he held that
doughty polemic in very low esteem ; but we confess
we were hardly prepared for the furious onslaught on
which we have been commenting. But the Bishop of
London is in the right. The Church of England will
best make head against Popery by casting aside its
trappings. If the Church of Rome be making pro-
gress in the country; at the present time, which we do
not believe, it cannot be from the goodness of the
cause, but the superior zeal of the instruments. To at-
tribute to the appointment of three Popish Privy
Councillors any advantage to the Catholic Church,
is paying a poor compliment to the Protestant cause,
and the Protestant Clergy. Secularity has always-
been the bane of the Church ; and we must look
to a man like Baptist Noel, who despises worldly
wealth, and looks to the Gospel as a rule
of life, and not as a repertory for theological controversy,
or for texts to twist into arguments for persecution, if
we wish to point out an example of signal success in
bringing sinners within the fold, and leading aright thou,
who have gone astray. We rejoice to see the Bishop
of London also fighting the good fight against Popery.
The cause which cannot be maintained without persecu-
tion—the cause which must be supported by penal
statutes and exclusion from political equality of one-
third of the subjects of the United Kingdom—cannot
be the cause of Christ.
(From the Morning Advertiser.)
After the occurrences of last May, Sir Robert Peel's
lotlalty is, we must confess, a subject of which we should
as little have expected to hear as his consistency. Not
so, however, thinks our intrepid Contemporary, the
Standard. When a statesman wants a day's defence,
or Tory envy holds a whole week's war with the nation's
common sense, it is ever ready to undertake the task,
and spin tie self-pleasing thread anew, unshook, though
peals of laughter break around. In its attempts to re-
concile its readers to the cheerless prospect of a farther
indefinite exercise of the virtue of patience, it has the
incredible boldness to put forward as a reason why, after
all their loud professions, the Conservatives are still to
continue in the ranks of the Opposition, Sir Robert
Peel's gentlemanlike and loyal consideration for the feel-
ings of the Queen ! What ! Does our Contemporary
imagine that Stoiltdale's verdict extends to protect Peel
from the publication of his own words in the Parliamen-
tary debates, or that the people of England have lost all
memory of events which occurred less than eight months
ago ? Where was the Conservative statesman's loyal
and gentlemanly consideration for the feelings of the
Sovereign, when, on the resignation of the Melbourne
Ministry, he took advantage of this situation to press
upon the Queen arrangements unsanctioned by consti-
tutional usage, destructive of the happiness of her do-
mestic circle, and in the highest degree repugnant to
her known sentiments and feelings ? What sort of
loyalty shall the man pretend to who dared to ask his
Sovereign to act a lie for his benefit in the eyes of the
people of England—a lie we say—for stripped of the
pompous phraseology in which that accomplished actor
of what Wordsworth calls—
" The smooth and solemnized complacencies
With which in Christian lands, from age to age,
Professions mocks performance"—
knows SO well bow to disguise his real meaning—what
else was the demand made by Sir Robert Peel to his
Sovereign in May last but this—that she should cheat
the people of England into a belief that she regarded
him, Sir Robert Peel, with a degree of confidence which
he, better than any one, knew she did not really feel
The moral, religious, and right-thinking portion of the
community, will not soon forget the unparalleled ob-
tuseness of moral feeling displayed by his conduct on
that memorable occasion. The open and rampant dis-
loyalty of the Robys and Bradshaws is almost a relief
after the sickening lip loyalty and hypocritical preten-
sions of a man who could thus act without the slightest
particle of regard for his Sovereign's rights and feelings.
(From the Morning Post.)
It is a curious and pleasing illustration of the force
of calm, scholar-like, earnest argumentation, accom-
panied with great personal respectability on the part
of the arguers, that the Oxford defenders of the Catho-
lic Anglican Church are manifestly looked upon with
great fear by the abettors of political misrule—the
advocates of liberalism and of Romanist wiles.
The High Churchmen of Oxford go very calmly
upon their way, never interfering in political dis-
putation, nor taking the slightest notice of the
gross nonsense and ignorant misrepresentations with
which they are assailed by the violent, the un-
thinking, and the undutiful on all sides. They go
on minding their own business and maintaining the
principles of the Catholic Church against the en-
croaching corruptions of Romanism and the loosen-
ing latitudinarianism of vain Dissenters, whose own
judgment is the object of their idolatry. Still we find,
every now and then, the most violent attacks made
upon them from quarters where political Popery or
Protestant fanaticism are in the ascendant, showing
abundantly that the dignified truth and lofty sobriety
of their cause are making that steady way which is
much better than hasty and violent progress. 1 bus
does experience • exemplify that which Mr. Newman,
one of the most earnest of the Oxford High.Churchreen,
has said, that " Truth has the gift of overcoming the
human heart, whether by persuasion or compulsion,
whether by inward acceptance or by external constraint."
" It'," says lie, " what we preach be truth, it must be
natural, it must be seasonable. "It—Will End its own.
As Line goes on, and its sway extends, those who
teought its voice strange and harsh at first will won-

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