The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-29 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JULY 29, 1868.

HIE "CHURCH TIMES" ON SECESSION.

The Church nines, in an article on " Church
and State," says a that there are only two pos-
sible theories of Church and State in a country
where the Church is many centuries older than
the State. Either the State must accept the
Church as its ruler in all definitely spiritual
questions, as the body has to obey the soul,
and must do what it can to further the prose-
lytism of its theological guide, or, if it abandon
this view, as England has done now, it must
resign all claim to exercise any power over one
religious denomination which it does not exer-
cise over another. The " omnipotence " of
Parliament is much exaggerated. It may pass
any number of laws, of the most foolish and
arbitrary kind, but it cannot enforce them.
Force was tried in vain on Scotland in Charles
ll.'s days, and in our own time in the matter
of Crown patronage. Three hundred years
of penal laws did not Protestantize Ireland.
It must be remembered, that all Establishment
means now is that thirty clergymen sit in the
Upper House of Parliament, that a fraction of
Church property which the State did not give
has not yet been forcibly confiscated, and that
clergymen who are disloyal to every rule of
social or religious honour are kept by the
lawyers from the expulsion they merit, and
would suffer as officers, barristers, or physi-
cians. There can be no true union of Church
and State save where the latter, waiving all
attempt to regulate doctiine or worship, inde-
pendently of the orders of the former, is con-
tent to sit at the feet of her mistress to learn

the secrets of wisdom from her. Any other
view may lead to the overthrow of either
Church or State, as the case may be, for a State
without Christianity must sooner or later be a
prey to anarchy, and a Church without free-
dom must sink to the level of those unhappy
nursery governesses whose orders are never to
contradict, much less punish, little master or
miss, and to teach them only what and when
the ill-conditioned little tyrants please."
Is such a union, as the Church Times speaks
of, possible between the Anglican Church and
the State? Can we conceive the State of Eng-
land being " content to sit at the feet " of
such a body as the Anglican Church ? In fact
the positions are reversed. The Royal Supre-
macy proclaims the servitude of the Anglican
Church, and its only likely escape from such
a thraldom is disestablishment. This is the
end which sincere and clear-sighted Ritualists
must devoutly wish for. If what the Church
Times maintains to be the only true theory in
the relations between the Church and State is
repudiated with scorn by the people and by
Parliament, are the Ritualists prepared, sooner
than sacrifice essential independence in spiri-
tual matters and such dogmatic truths as they
are now legally entitled to profess, to secede
from the Establishment ? We think they are,
or soon will be. The increasing boldness and
outspokenness both on the side of Rationalism
and of the Ritualists, the public discussion of
questions touching the very foundation of
Christianity, cannot but lead to a disruption
of an Establishment, whose characteristic
strength has been in its capacity of holding
together believers in what really amounts to
a variety of creeds. But even for the elastic
faith of the Anglican Establishment, the ten-
sion is now becoming too severe. Perhaps the
Bishop of Oxford may possess the gift of elas-
ticity to such a degree as to enable him to
lengthen out in his own person this wonderful
capacity to a still greater extent than now
exists in the Church of England ; but the
Bishop of Oxford, as in so many other re-
spects, so in this, is, we believe, an exception
to the rule. At any rate, the Church Times is
prepared for the emergency. It says that the
" Catholic party" have nothing to gain by their
position within the Establishment, they will
not leave the Church of England, " because
they feel it their duty to remain by her in her
troubles, but to them " secession—if it were
only, lawful—would- be the greatest possible
gain."
It seems to us that it would not only be a
gain, but that it is a duty for the Ritualists,
without waiting to be ejected, to leave a Church
which denies by its living and ruling authori-
ties, and by common consent, dogmas which
the Ritualists hold to be of divine faith. Seces-
sion, then, is not merely a gain, but a duty.
and a duty of the highest character and of the
most immediate necessity. To threaten seces-
sion as a means of obtaining such latitude in
the Church as would tolerate the presence alike
of infidelity and of Catholic dogmas is merely
an attempt to prolong an evil existence, which
would too certainly end in obliterating from
the minds of the people all sense of dogmatic
truth. But if, as we believe, the Ritualists
are in earnest not to submit to the " fresh
legislation " which the Bishop of London and
the Times invoke for the effectual suppression
of the obnoxious belief and practices of Ritual-
ism, then the result is not difficult to foresee.
Men who make sacrifices, and remove in obe-
dience to a sense of duty obstacles from their
path, will not long remain in error. " More-
over," as the Church Times says, whether by
way of threat or in earnest, is not very clear,
" a body like the Anglo-Catholics, who are
sighing for reunion, would not long remain
in isolation ; and if they effected a fusion with
Rome, the result would be to make the Roman
Catholics the most numerous and powerful
religious party in the United Kingdom." The
fusion with Rome would, in reality, we take
it, but be the submission, one by one—or in
numbers, not as a body—of these seekers after
truth and unity, to the infallible teaching and
visible unity of the Catholic Church.—West-
ininster Gazette.

STATE-OMNIPOTENCE.

In a thoughtful article on the law of mar-
riage, which we reprint in another column, the
Pall Nall Gazette discusses the question—
which it justly calls the greatest question of
the day—of the relations between the Church
and the State. Everywhere, it says, the
Church and State are separating and confront-
ing each otherin an attitude which is, and
must be, essentially hostile, since they embody
diametrically different views of life, and claim
the loyalty of mankind upon different and in-
consistent principles.
The Pall Mall Gazette has long discarded
the impossible theory that the State, separated
from the Church, should concern itself only
with material Government, and regard moral
ideas as entirely out of its sphere. But the
mind of man is too important an empire for
the State to leave uncontrolled, or committed
to the guidance of a rival power like the
Church. Hence it follows, on the theory of
the Pall Mall Gazette, though not enunciated
in the particular article we are alluding to,
that, on the separation of Church and State,
the 'State must occupy the ground of the
Church as well as its own. It must subjugate
men's minds, and take their moral or spiritual
welfare under its own charge. To neglect
such an opportunity of governing and direct-
ing the growth or course of ideas-would be, on
this theory, for the State to neglect a primary
duty. To be careful aboutthe construction of
roads, or the building of harbours, and to over-
look the formation and guidance of moral
ideas, is to exchange a lofty work of almost
illimitable range for a local and circumscribed
task. That the Civil Power is called to this
nobler work of civilization we readily grant to
the Pall Mall Gazette, but that it must pro-
ceed in its appointed task under the direction
and with the co-operation of the Supernatural
Power is a fact still more certain. The theory
of the Pall Mall Gazette is based upon the
omnipotence of the State, and, consequently,
when at every important turn in man's life,
the Church, with her tribunals, her system of
laws, "independent of, and often conflicting
with the law of the land," confronts the State
intruding upon a province not its own, what
other result can be expected, than a conflict,
which will end, as the Pall Mall Gazette
observes, " either in subjugating the State. to
the Church, or in breaking up and destroying

the power of the clergy over men's minds, and
reducing all Churches to the position of philo-
sophical schools ?"
The triumph of State-omnipotence would
inevitably lead the world back to the position
it was in when Christianity first broke the
power of the Pagan State and emancipated the
minds of men from almost intolerable thral-
dom. By likening the Churches to philoso-
phical schools, the Pall Mall Gazette completes
the picture. But the (Ecumenical Council
will prove to the Rationalistic ad mirers of
Pagan State-omnipotence that Christianity is
not a philosophical school, but a wide-spread
kingdom, with tribunals of its own, and vast
systems of laws affecting the spiritual and
moral interests of every baptized man at every
turn of his life, from the cradle to the grave ;
and finally, that the empire over men's minds
belongs not the State, with its limited know-
ledge and. erroneous judgment, but to the
supernatural power of the infallible Church.—
Westminster Gazette.

previous British invasion under far more difficult
circumstances in proof of the ease of the enterprise,
merely observing in connection, " though afterwards
it did end in dis aster." Why, in such countries it
is in this " afterwards" wherein the danger always
lies. We have said that it would be easy to cap-
ture Cabul, Candahar, and Herat, but to take the
Affghan passes for the purpose of making Affghanis-
tan the field of battle appears to us in the highest de-
gree unadvisable. Far better to accept the alliance
urged by Bokhara, and to declare any further ad-
vance of Russia a cases Belli, when, instead of in-
vading India, Russia would be unable to maintain
her hold on Turkestan. The true English policy is
to continue the work of consolidating its power in
India by forming railroads and opening up the
rivers by steam, and the money wasted on an Aff-
ghan expedition might be sufficient to connect
Attock with Lahore by rail, strengthening the
Etnpirz more than would a strong force.