The Sun.
London, England, 1822-09-10 00:00:00

THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH.

REMARKS on a SECOND ATTACK on the BISHOP of
PETERBOROUGH in tit 11013sli of LORDS, June 7,
1822.

[Conti/11.rd from THE SUN of yesterd4.]

These are not times to cast the ecclesiastical
net into the sea and take " what first cometh up." We live
in an age full of what these Whig declaimers call a progressive
knowledge, but what sober people will be. inclined, more cor-
rectly perhaps, to term a wide spread of infidelity and dis-
loyalty. The Church of England, if it can be supported at
all, must be upheld by a strict conformity in all its Members,
and especially in its Clerical Members, to the generally receiv-
ed sense of its Articles, its Liturgy, and its Homilies; those
accredited standards, so far as wise and grind men have been
able to render them such, of what is emphatically termed the
Doctrines of that Church. And Bishop Marsh has rendered
a valuable service to the Christian community, by so framing
the greater part of his questions, that the enemy may be quietly
detected and dismissed before he enters the pale of the esta-
blishment, who is scarcely ever to be dispossessed after he has
once legally fixt himself, let him act, and pray, and preach, as
dissonantly and reprehensible as he will. The Church of Eng-
land must now have a strictly orthodox Clergy, or either it must
perish, or must cease to be such a Church as it was when Esta-
blished. And let me know what better means could be devised
for the accomplishment- of such an end than those which the
Bishop has adopted. If the faith of his candidates be set right,
they will have nothing to apprehend from his Lordship's exa-
minations, which are not intended to seduce the unwary, but
to guard the well disposed against any admixture with those
who are very differently disposed towards our Communion, as
well as our Constitution. •

That which Lord Holland alledges against the operation
of these questions, is, in my opinion, their primary claim
upon our approval. "It might be true that only three had
been rejected by the Right Rev. Prelate, but could he say how
many had been deterred from seeking advancement through
such an ordeal" ?::: The probability perhaps is, that many
have been deterred ; and happy is it for the Church of Eng-
land, if we are to continue to have an established religion, that.
they were so. These disappointed disciples of Calvin and his
many-coloured Crew, must-now bend their steps towards other
Diocesses, before they can take authority to go forth and darken
the land of Egypt with their sorceries and incantations.
But why, may I be permitted to ask, why, in this imputed
violation of statutes and canons, has no allusion been made to
another Right Rev. Prelate, who is reported not only to have
" proposed unusual questions,"§ but questions which go
further probably in " recruiting for dissent"§ than any
" striving to straighten and narrow the basis of the
Church"§ by the examinations of Dr. Marsh ? I repeat, why
has no allusion been made by these whig cleansers of the
augean stable (if such report be accurate) to this far more re-
prehensible nuisance ? If the Bishop of Peterborough's ques-
tions are to be considered as a disparagement " to the Statue of
Elizabeth, the Canon Law, and the Royal Declaration which
preceeds the Articles,"§ (though ,wiser heads than any lay
controvertists in this debate have thought otherwise) in what
light are we to contemplate the unobstrusive interogatories of
the Bishop of Gloucester, which with much more reason, I un-
derstand, may all be said to be " leading questions"§ and " to
suggest their own answers ?"§ If the former of these Prelates
is to be condemned for a departure from the usual mode of ex-
amining candidates, shall the latter be indulged in a similar
offence and drawing after it a deeper injury ? But I suppose
with certain of our half infidel, halt conventicle senators it may
be a greater indecorum to shut the doors of the Church against,
than to throw them wide open to those who are tilled with a
proper Evangelical spirit. It may be more in conformity with.
their liberal policy to see an Ecclesiastical Establishment_dis-
turbed in her rites and ceremonies by crafty adversaries, than
harmonized in her doctrines by sincere friends. The Bishop of
Gloucester may therefore, by his self-interpreting written
queries, continue to make as many lukewarm members of the
Hierachy as he pleases • but one orthodox member of the
Church of England, let die Bishop of Peterborough, with his
printed drculars, make at his peril !
Leaving, however, this evident partially to speak for itself, I.
proceed to observe that Dr. Marsh need not tremble for Isis re-
putation from such adversaries and such rebukes as he was here
called upon to encounter. His reply as given in the public
prints is certainly not a strictly logical, but still a sufficient one
to such incorrectly stated and poorly maintained allegations as
were there embodied against hum. It constituted no inadequate
proof that " Bishops had, in their own diocesses, the right of
examiningthe candidates for Holy Orders in their own way" 11.
that he (Dr. -Marsh) had not " made his own opinion the
standdrd of truth," and that "he had not rejected any an-
swer, unless it was opposed to the principles of the thirty-nine
Articlei, or the Liturgy," IF and so grossly, I take for granted,
opposed, that it required little deliberation to determine that
such caindhlate, entertaining such opinions, never could become
an orthodox member of the Church of England.
I see not much to admire in the spirit, or in the eloquence of,
any of these Noble Lords who have thus signalized their zeal
for our Ecclesiastical Establishment by " twice trying, on the
same charge for the same offence," one of its ablest and most
correct supporters. But whatever may he the figure they cut
with the public, they have apparently suceeded, as they gene-
rally do, in gaining their own admiration ; since their former.
defeat, decisive as it was, does not, in any measure, seem to
have intimidated them in their present exertions.
One Lord takes up the mutilated accusation, where, in all its
insolence and impotency, his predecessor left it; and another.
again goes over the ground of illegality and contumacy, as if
these charges had never been refuted and met by their dignified
rebuke. What the Noble Mover has here advanced against
the Bishop, he.has (unconsciously, I do believe) so advancd as
scarcely to render a reply necessary; and what his magnani-
mous seconder, a sort of general trader in ecclesiastical censures,
my Lord Holland has added, Falnila nullius veneris sine
ponnere et arte, serves only to strengthen our opinion of the
soundness of Dr. Marsh's conduct and of the weak and conse-
quential flippancy of his own.
Of this Whig nobleman, it is not too much, .perhaps,
to say, that his diiinity, like his politics, of the true time-.
serving cast, for it serves the purposes of the present inflamed
state of society, whether he be aware of it or not, and worse
purposes it is hardly possible to serve. He and Earl Grey may
go hand in hand in their contempt and abuse of some of the
best members of the Establishment. But let me tell these
fancied " Lords bf the Ascendant," who appear to take every
opportunity of plucking the Clergy as bare as they can, that
they will never be able to show them up in half the nakedness
and deformity that, on the boards of their noisy radical theatres,,
they unblushingly hesitate not to show :heti/wives up. The
Northumberland County Meeting that witnessed the virulent
attack of Earl Grey upon our Established Clergy has stamped
the value of his attachment to our Established Church. I wish
it may not have done more; that it may not have evinced the
degree of his respect towards something even dearer than our
Established Church. What a mortification is it to the pride of
the Clergy—to their !eonest, manly, dignified pride—to behold
the censure of some of the brightest ornaments of their order. at
the disposal of such overgrow;; bloated, adversaries these,—
men who permit their minds to flourish in so perpetual a scorn
and bitterness, that they can: let no one pass without reprehen-
sion, and least of all an orthodox' Bishop and Clergy of the
Church of Englan.a.
To render the point of their censure, in the Present instance,
more severe, these casuists of the Whig school have ventured
to assimilate Bishop Marsh's labours for the ben.-fit of the
Church witlithose of Archbishop Laud in the unhappy reign
of Charles I. In taking this ground, they but too well know
the ground they do take. Without much acquaintance with
the rules of logical precision, we may very .safely conclude, that
if the past exertions of one prelate lost him his head, the pre-
sent conduct of the other will not, by such an implication on the .
return of such times, much contribute to preserve it. The Bi-
shop's, reply to this unworthy assimilation (in its motive un-
worthy) evinces, at once, his spirit as a man and his duty as a
Chri!Aian. He does not endeavour. he doer not even wish, to
free himself from the imputation. On the contrary, he des
dares, in the very front of this cowardly menace, that "hefelt.
the parallel (rid him honour." 11 It certainly does do him lio-
nour,. and high honour, though his enemies have insisted
upon it fur a far different purpose. Laud was a great man—
occasionally, an inconsiderate man. He had about him the ma-
terials of an honest, honourable, intelligent mind ; a mind that
travelled the straight forward course and, was neither to be
threatened, nor deluded, unto the right hand or to the left. All