The Sun.
London, England, 1836-10-22 00:00:00

Clergy from all participation in any future increase that
may talc place in the value of land, and fited them
down permanently to the litimblt atitl iticiagt'e pittAtice
Whi6 thq otive, poor hard-working, 1114 e.
gulled men—they arc much to be pitied ! The tenth
part of the produce raised or reared on the soil of all
Ebigianzl i; but as tale dust on the t3ttlancl; rompared
WilAl tli•eq' lint, remarks the
l3ishup, hda sitch- a horrid Bill as this been passed in
the reign of HENRY VIII, Sec what a state we should
have been in now ! " Instead of there being livings
worth 800/. or 1,0001. a year, they would have been
cstimated at forty quarters of wheat, which would
amount to no more than 80/." According to his view
of what is necessary for the support of a Christian
Minister, 80/. is something not far from a mocker.
Now, it has been stated that the duty of half the
livings in the diocese of Exeter (323) is performed by
Curates, and that the stipends of these Ministers
average exactly 80/. per annum, while the average
income of the Incumbents is 284/. ; according to which
statement each Incumbent, after paying his spiritual
journeymen, sacks rather more than 200/. a-year for do-
ing nothing, and a total amount of about 65,000/. in
one diocese is thus lost for every purpose, except that
of filling the pockets of a set of greedy Ecclesiastical
jobbers.

Other Bills then come under the Bishop's consi-
deration, and the clergy arc told with due pomp and
circumstance of all that their Diocesan did to defeat
them, though alas ! it all came to nothing. I did
this and I did that—the egomet ipse, so characteristic
of the man, offends you at every turn. The defeat
of the Irish Church Bill is gloated over with a fiend-
like pleasure, and the Catholic Members of Parlia-
ment are stigmatised with Christian meekness and
truly episcopal charity, as " a perjured and perfidious
faction." The system of education, observes the Bi-
shop, proposed under this Bill, " was fraught with
incalculable mischiefs to the Protestant religion, for it
was based upon morality without religion." And how
does this appear ? Mark—." for religion was to be
taught by a mutilation of the Scriptures !" Suitable
portions of Scripture are selected as school les-
sons, and this is what an English Bishop calls
mutilating the Scriptures, and teaching morality without
religion ! Will this angry polemic inform us how his
Church teaches religion but by mutilating the Scrip-
tures ? Does he or any of his cloth ever perform
morning or evening service without mutilating the
Scriptures, and, according to his logic, teaching mo-
rality without religion ? But we ought not to be
surprised at the irritation displayed on this subject by
the Bishop of EXETER. It is connected in his mind
with unpleasant associations. His back is still
smarting with the flaying he received from Lord
BROUGHAM, when he had the temerity to bring for-
ward some unfounded statements in the House of
Lords respecting the Irish schools.
The Marriage Bill, of course, does not escape-the
Charger's censure. It is " a disgrace to British legis-
lation" and so forth ; and as if to show that the doc-
trine of matrimony's being a sacrament is not peculiar
to the Roman Catholic Church, we are told that
" one of the sacred ordinances of the Church is de-
graded down to a mere civil contract, and a blow thus
struck against religion !" This, however, is not the
only passage in the " Charge" tending to show that if
the Bishop of EXETER has not a pope in his belly—
to use the words of a celebrated divine—he has at
least a hankering after popery. Towards the end of
the " Charge" we find the following emphatic instruc-
tion to the clergy :—" You should also strenuously up-
hold that, as Ministers of Christ's Church, power is
given to you to grant the absolution and remission of
the sins of those who should sincerely and truly re-
pent, &c." This truly valuable privilege the Bishop
asserts resides ex officio in all the Ministers of the
Church of England (a fortiori it must reside in the
ministers of the Church of Rome through whom they
derive), and he makes out his point by means of the
following syllogism :—Power was given to the apos-
tles to forgive sins ; ye are the successors of the apostles ;
ergo ye have power to forgive sins ;—which may be il-
lustrated and corroborated by a parallel syllogism :
Power was given to the apostles to work miracles ;
ye are the successors of the apostles ; therefore ye have
power to work miracles.—Q. E. D.