The Sun.
London, England, 1822-11-09 00:00:00

usurpation and despotism ; new tests of faith are
imposed, incumbents deprived of their assistants,
Curates dismissed from their cures—the people
robbed of their spiritual treasures, and an iron
yoke of bondage placed on the neck of " them
that are quiet in the land," and all this for no
crime, no cause, but that the Bishops will have
it so ; there needs no prophet to predict the re-
sult, " the mitre and the crown will fall together !"
and all this crash and ruin of Church and State—
this more than Egyptian bondage upon the meek
and quiet in the land—this sacrilege upon the
poorer people, and oppression of their Minis-
ters and the sons of the Church, is all to happen
forsooth, because a Bishop steps forth by virtue
of his office to do his duty, and exerts himself,
with tile vigour and activity for which he is re-
nowned,to keep up to the spirit as well as the let-
ter of the canons by which he is sworn. These
very men who are so loud in their exclamations
from the pulpit and the press against the indo-
lence of the Clergy, are the first to exclaim
against one of their venerable heads—in whom
they cannot find this fault at least, and therefore
they run riot into the other extreme—and scan-
dalise him, Ivith more than even their accustomed
venom, for his extraordinary exertion, forgetting
that they of old were the first to suffer from the
lire which they had heated seven times more than
it was wanted to be heated. Is this the time, say
they, when the ground, by intestine commotion,
is ready to heave under our feet, and the moun-
tains to shake over our heads ; when the whole
moral and domestic, religious and political secu-
rity of the island, threatens to sink in one vol-
canic and revolutionary deluge ; is this the tune
for the chief Ministers of the Peace to become
despotic—to assume the office or exercise the
authority of the dictator—to irritate the people—
to insult and trample upon the Clergy, and set at
nought the counsel of ancient times!! ! What rea-
sons they may have, beside their delight in scandal,
for so unmercifully scandalising the times,
may he best known to themselves, but we who
are not in the secret, are under no such appre-
hension of a revolutionary deluge, &c. and if we
are treading upon sulphureous mines and vol-
canoes, we are in perfect ignorance of any such
snares, and have been sometimes rather inclined
to presume, from the good sober sense of the
country, and the melancholy experience of its
devastations in another, that the spirit of revolu-
tion will be very long indeed before it can thrive
and flourish among us, though we bow with de-
ference to the superior information of these mob
Orators—who, as they have more interest and in=
fluence in that iluarter, and are continually aim-
ing at still greater by their vehemence, some-
times secret, and at others public enough, against
the church, may have been able to tell to a man
as accurately as Mr. Hunt himself, how many
thousands and tens of thousands they are able to
bring into the field against the State.
But bpfore these pernicious dictators in Church
and State, so arrogantly boast, let them call to
mind the fate of Pompey ; when he stampt with
his all-powerful foot—did the Legions come ?
and don't let them so implicitly depend upon the
legions of evil spirits at their command, in a
country where the Bible of peace and order has
been so generally propagated among the lowest
of the people, with proper Notes and Illustra-
tions to secure even Holy Writ from the errors of
texts taken in the letter, which is so profitable to
the cause of the conventicle, out so pernicious to
the church and the cause of Truth itself. And it
is chiefly because the Bishop wishes to give the
same security to its articles, that all this mighty
stir is made, and serious offence is taken ; and
because they can no longer shelter their designs
under the cover of literal " sense" which they
seem to forget must be " grammatical" as well
as literal, and taken also in the plain and full
meaning, of which the Bishop must be at least a§
good a judge as any that come before him, they
complain bitterly of a want of toleration; they alone
are to determine what shall be the sense of the
articles, and if the Bishop dare to demand any
thing but assent and subscription, they entreat
him to beware. If our Prelates subvert the
Church, who is to uphold it ? with what face or
prospect of success can he exhort his Clergy to
contend earnestly for the faith delivered to the
Saints, and for the perpetuity of our laws both
in Church and State, who has himself introduc-
ed his Clergy into the Church by a dereliction
of that very faith, and by an implied subversion
of the very laws he exhorts them to uphold ? Is
our Government aware that such treachery is
the sure way to ruin both the Church and the
Crown ? What Member of Parliament, what
Judge, or Magistrate,—yea, what man, may not
after such example, swear to defend the Consti-
tution in its integrity, and after all, put whatever
interpretation he pleases upon it, and call that,
the Constitution, and then propagate and esta-
blish a system as opposed to the true one, as
darkness is to light. I have given here their
sentiment at full length, in their own words—
nought extenuating or setting down aught in '
malice'—this, now I read it again, may appear
malicious; as I think to any reasonable inquest or
jury sitting on the case, there could not be pre-
sented a more satisfactory evidence of suicido in
argument; but we trust to their mercy, they will
bring it in lunacy, and not find the fault in the
heart, but only in the brain. For what com-
parison can there be, in the name of common
sense and reason, between the Judge and the
Parliament man who forswears himself and
makes his own private opinion the standard of
the laws, 'and not the laws the standard of his
opinion, and calls that the Constitution which is
only the offspring of his own prepossession, and
as opposite to the true British Constitution as
light and darkness ; and the Bishop, who acts
entirely up to the
.spirit of the, letter of the Ec-
clesiastical Canons, by which he has sworn, in
examining the candidates, as he is then ordered
in these articles, which are the only test which he
applies to them, in the questions which are built
upon them, and so far from being as opposed
to them as light and darkness, are eminently
calculated to throw what might be in the shades
of darkness, and by the course of time might ap-
pear to the tyro in divinity obsolete and obscure,
into the clearer and more perfect light ; and be-
cause he has endeavoured to do this, for the sake