The Sun.
London, England, 1853-11-14 00:00:00

THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF VERSUS TRE
WELSH PEOPLE.

TO THE RIGHT HON. THE LORD J. RUSSELL.
Mr LORD,—Dr. 011ivant being chiefly indebted to
your lordship for his present high position in the Welsh
Church, I would respectfull7 direct your attention to
the details of a public meeting lately held under his
auspices, and but too plainly declarative of that uncon-
ciliating and adverse spirit towards the Welsh people, of
which his previous conduct had afforded many indica-
tions.

The Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, of Oct. 8, con-
tains an authorised report of the annual meeting of the
Cardiff Auxiliary Branch of the Pastoral Aid Society,
held on Monday, Oct. 3, 1853—the Right Rev. the
Bishop of Llandaff, in the chair.
After having stated the general objects of the society,
and shown that the enormous increase of population in
certain parts of his diocese requires a proportionate
increase in the number of religious instructors, his
lordship proceeded to argue against the alleviating
suggestion that the defective action of the Established
Church is in any degree supplied by Dissenting teachers.
Alluding, as an instance in point, to the district of Hir-
waun, his lordship commended the Vicar of Aberdar for
having recently taken measures to provide a separate
church for about 3,000 persons inhabiting that portion
of his parish, and manifested great astonishment and
indignation at the protest which had been entered by a
writer in the " Diwygiwr" of Sept. 1853, against the
Vicar of Aberdar's collecting circular, which describes
Hirwaun to be lying " in a condition of barbarism and
pagan ignorance ;" and leaves utterly unnoticed the re-
gular chapel services, Sunday schools, and week-day
prayer-meetings, which constantly afford religious in-
struction to about 2,300 persons in that district.
Attempting to nullify this statement, and to prove
that the dissenting ministers alike of the diocese of
Llandaff, and of the whole principality, do not furnish
their respective congregations with the necessary means
of grace and salvation, the Bishop then produced from dif-
ferent Welsh publications of various dates, " certain selec-
tions," shadowing forth to his lordship's own view "the
condition of this countryas it is described by the Dissenters
themselves :" the extracts being translated from the
original Welsh. The Bishop's first quotation was made
from the " Drysorfa" of Sept., 1852, wherein the Rev.
D. Jenkins deplores that " the outward and circum-
stantial matters of religion seem to be in a flourishing
state, but the inward and spiritual matters are with-
ered," &c.
His second quotation was from the " Seren G-omer"
of March, 1852. It complains in the words of a Bap-
tist minister, that "there was no one who could boast
a great increase in numbers, and in consequence there
were many who sorely lamented their want of success,"
&a.

Were the clergy of the Established Church equally
alive to their position, its superior privileges and en-
hanced responsibilities, surely similar complaints would
well befit them.
The Bishop quoted, 3dly, from the " Diwygiwr," of
July, 1853, a passage in which the Rev. S. Griffiths
says :—" In spite of all the places of worship, schools,
ministers, preachers, deacons, Sunday-school teachers,
all the hundreds of crowded congregations and thousands
of communicants (q. communicants ?) or religious pro-
fessors, yet many are to be seen turning to Popery, yea
to different kinds of Popery," &c.
Here is a decisive testimony, inadvertently produced
by the Bishop himself, and establishing the very facts
which he denies.
Ist. That the necessary means of grace and salvation
abound among the Welsh Dissenters.
2d. That those means are attended upon by mul-
titudes of people.
As regards the alleged converts to " different kinds
of Popery" among the Welsh, few, indeed, will their
numbers appear when compared with the hosts of Eng-
lish Tractarians within the very pale of the Established
Church, and with the hosts of apostates who are daily
forsaking it for Rome.
His lordship's 4th quotation appears to have been
made merely as the occasion of a satirical allusion to
religious liberty, that conscientious "liberty of prophe-
sying" or preaching, for which the loyal Bishop, Jeremy
Taylor, so eloquently pleaded of old.
The fifth quotation, which is from the " Diwygiwr,"
of December, 1851, bears upon the recent perversion of
" hundreds, on thousands" to Mormonism, &c.
' Scrutinising malevolence alone could ever have at-
tached importance to a charge so futile and so indeter-
minate.
With weak and wearisome reiteration the Bishop re-
minded his hearers that these were the statements of
Dissenters, and that he would not answer for their
truth, adding—.
"I do not say whether they are or not, but I simply
ask, if they are true, is it not a call on you, on every
one ?" &c.
The Bishop next quoted from the " Diwygiwr," of
1952, p. 121, a passage tending to show that there exist
"in our works," where people of different races and
various creeds are assembled, some persons who deny
the existence of Satan. His lordship infers from this
that the whole or chief part of the population of those
districts are in a state of unbelief, and appeals to his
shocked and amazed auditory for assistance upon that
deceptive plea!
From a review in a Baptist magazine, the Bishop
then carefully cited exactly one line and a half, relating
to "the sceptical theology, or neology, as it is called, of
Germany," in order most distinctly to prove that "it is
probable that a little of this simoom has reached the
Welsh pulpit."
"It is quite certain," adds his lordship, "that it has
not reached the pulpit of the Established Church.
There is not a person living who can breathe such a
charge against the ministers of the Church of England.
We must therefore take it for granted that he means the
Dissenting pulpits."
This assertion is at once so daring, so false, and so
sophistical, that compassion mingles with surprise
while I endeavour to realise the depths and intricacies
of that mental and moral perversity which could suffice
to hide such fallacies from Dr. 011ivant himself.
Does Dr. 011ivant never read the Record newspaper ?
Has he never happened to see blazoned there the names
and words of many sceptical ministers of the Church of
England ? Can the Bishop of Llandaff be ignorant,
that not merely an ecclesiastical pulpit, but even the
episcopal throne of a neighbouring diocese has been pub-
licly denounced as a seat of "this moral and spiritual
pestilence ?"
" Is not Mr. Griffiths, of Aberdar, to build a church
for his people," exclaims the Bishop of Llandaff, " when
we are told that the simoom has reached the Welsh pul-
pit. Ido not say it has reached it, but this writer says
so, and his confession is enough," &c.
Thus did the Bishop of Llandaff pursue his peculiar
dialectic course, in apparent forgetfulness that the fatal
breath of this simoom has been perceived by many
orthodox churchmen to wither the theological works of
his cotemporary, the Bishop of St. David's.
Having cited a passage from the Metltodist Magazine,
and another from the Traethodydd, of 1852, p. 352, ex-
pressive of apprehension lest the elements of infidelity
should "after long working and breaking out create de-
struction in the camps of Zion," the Bishop said—
" But I have testimony to produce that many who
were hearers of the Word are actually becoming Pa-
gans.
His lordship followed up this startling announcement
by quoting from the "Drysorfa," of May, 1853, part of
the speech of a zealous minister, where, after declaring
that " every one has much to do, and he will do much
if he has but a heart to work," the orator applies the
strong epithet pagans to those persons who neglect at-
tendance upon public worship ; adding—
" They should be gone after, and every means used to
induce them to hear the Word of God, and to reverence
the ordinances of God."
Such passages as these the Bishop miscalls—
" The acknowledgments of Dissenters themselves, as
to the real condition of the country, and the result of
the means of instruction which actually exist."
" For my part," said his lordship, "I should be con-
tent to place my justification for any effort I have made
for church, extension on those statements alone, if neces-
sary.'
It is to be observed that the Bishop ceremoniously
compliments several of the Welsh ministers, whose pas-
' toral exhortations he had distorted into libels, and extols
their personal piety, while reckoning the congregations
which share their zealous and vigilant care among the
most abandoned and wretched dregs of society.
Concluding the Welsh people to be sunk in specula-
tive infidelity and pratical paganism, the bishop adduced a
passage from the in emoir of a pious minister (" Di wygi wr, "
1851, p. 273) showing that Thomas Howells had greatly
abhorred and deplored the sin of drunkenness.
His lordship afterwards brought forward a rule of the
Anglesea Society, framed by another zealous minister,
as a protest against vice and immorality.
His lordship closed his series of extracts by repeating
from a nameless magazine some of the grossest calumnies
contained in the Commissioners' Reports.
The statistics of the late J. Fletcher, Esq., giving
" View of the Moral and Educational Condition of
Eng-
land and Wales," afford the following results :--are
"Wales.—ln this district there is little
Welsh,rri
owing
an
Sunday-school instruction in the Bible,
in
to the obstacle of language.
" In Wales there are fewer illegitimate children than
in other parts of the kingdom, the
proportion being infi-
nitely less than in the northern and midland manufac-
turing mining counties. The amount of pauperism in
Wales is also considerably less than in most parts of
England, being 5.5, wheredaseiansteLronndaognricitulitsulra2l-sc,oaunncl.
in the south, midland, an
ties 39.5." ,
The criminal returns for Wales,itorgeelnoewouass
cciolamrpacatreerci,
with the average of th.etpriocptsulaotfihonom.
Everywhere, in districts
the more instructed appeared to have a much less
amount of depravity than the less instructed ; but there
were considerable deviations from this rule—the ignorant
Celtic regions of Cornwall and Wales standing in as
favourable a light as the most instructed counties of the
north. The most ignorant region of the whole kingd
was shown to be the eastern and midland en om
oui tales im-
mediately contiguous to the metropolitan
more uninstructed than Wales, with
all itsd;iffi)ceuinitgiesfaorf
poverty, language, and remoteness • and infinitely more
criminal, especially in serious offences against he per-
son, and malicious offences against property."—Vide
Athenwunt, 1549. No. 1,118.
Such is the impartial and drily official testimony ren-
dered by statistical documents to the character of the
Welsh people, and to the beneficial effects of S d
school instruction in the Welsh Bible. un ay-
To Wales, and to a Welsh Dissenter, Great Britain
, and the world stand indebted for the British and Foreign
Bible Society. The annual reports of its proceedings
show, that the contributions received by that institution