The Sun.
London, England, 1844-11-20 00:00:00

altlt

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1844

It has in all times been the fate of our " Reformed
Anglican Church as by law Established" (for it is
necessary to be very precise in her designation, in
these days of petty polemics and small Tractarian
criticism), to be vexed with some troublesome and
ill-conditioned ministers, whose follies and imperti
nences have wrought grievous scandals on her fair
reputation as a holy peace-maker, inculcating the
noble doctrine of " good-will among men." Faith-
fully, and piously, and efficiently as she has been re-
presented by some of her mitred servants, by others
her Christian humility has bean outraged, in their as-
sumption of a tone and deportment of arrogant world-
liness,— covetous of wealth, grasping at power, greedy
of distinction, prone to indulge in pomp and display.
insolent in the exercise of their own authority, obse-
quious and servile to that of higher places ; deferen-
tial to all above, overbearing to any below them. If
she has had her Primates and Bishops, whose learn-
ing, and piety, and teaching have deservedly been
ranked among the brightest ornaments of one age.
she has also had her Bishops and Primates whose
ambition and avarice ; whose turbulence and vanity ;
whose efforts to raise her clergy, or that section of it
at least which comprises her hierarchy, above the laity
in civil as well as spiritual station, have proved the
disgrace and affliction of another. Our Church has
boasted its TILLOTSONS, but it has produced its
LAUDS. If among its priests we can still honour the
apostolic simplicity and almost Divine charity of
BERNARD GILPIN,-a name which might shed lustre
on the less peaceful glories associated with the reign
of ELIZABETII,—We must be prepared to find many
High Church and State SACIIEVERELLS, whose ob-
trusive and unconstitutional career may suffice
almost to dim the renown that still attends the
recollections of ANNE. The present principal vexa-
tion of this Church is, beyond all question, the pre-
sent Bishop of LONDON. lle really is not a much
less monster grievance to ourselves. The Right
Reverend Prelate will put himself in ugly dilemmas,
in spite of all the frequent remonstances which former
indiscretions have brought down upon him ; and we
must, therefore, continue to discharge our duties of
animadversion on his pertinacious wrong-headedness.
Our readers cannot have forgotten the cases of
Ware and Hoddesdon, to which we have from time to
time called their attention; the complaints of whole
congregations against the Pusey.ite pantomime intro-
duced by their ministersthe celebration
of certain portions of the Chulutroch ice, under
and
the assumed sanction of obsolete
ploded directions comprised in long-fo:r -forgotten
and corners of the Rubric. They:will me:
ber the respectful memorials addressed to the Dioce-
san ; the petulant replies of that Right Reverend
Father; the rude communications of the Episcopal

secretary to the churchwardens; the defection, or
rather desertion, of the flock which used to assemble
in the parish church ; their subsequent meetings for
prayer and worship in Dissenters' chapels and other
places—from their just and natural resolution not to
be present at ceremonials, their objections to
which had been so haughtily overruled by
the Bishop, and challenged by the contuma-
cious perseverance of the incumbents. It will
be seen, from a perusal of the proceedings that have
ately taken place in the parish of Tottenham, and
which we record in another part of our paper, that
the Bishop of LONDON is again encouraging his clergy
in their resolution to annoy their fellow-parishioners,
by the revival of another of the obselete and offen-
sive forms enjoined by the letter of the !Rubric ;
namely, the offertory, or Sunday collection of alms
in the church, from pew to pew, parishioner to pa-
rishioner. The treasurer of a handsome building fund
which had been collected for the purpose of erecting
one of the three churches of the Establishment in
Tottenham, and several other of the most wealthy and
influential inhabitants of the parish, members of the
Establishment, addressed a very temperate but im-
pressive note to the minister of Trinity Church,
against "certain material alterations in the course
and order of the service as heretofore conducted,"
which the subscribing parties, instructed by the fearful
results that had followed similar changes in other and
neighbouring parishes, were of opinion " would be
calculated materially to prevent that success in the
preaching of the Gospel, as well as that good under-
standing between the minister and his people, so much
to be desired ;"—they, therefore, " earnestly hoped that
in consideration of such* opinion the order of the
service might be allowed to remain unaltered."
Now really if the diocesan of the Reverend
Mr. TWINING had been a Pope, and of as boundless
notions of pontifical infallibility and supremacy as an
ADRIAN, or a Junius, or an ALEXANDER, instead of a
sleek every-day Prelate, such as we are wont to
imagine a CHARLES JAIIES, Bishop of London, to be '
•
such a note as this could have given no offence, and
would not have been misunderstood. But, in the first
place, the incumbent, borrowing a little of the de
haul en Gas tone (not, we willingly believe, the pre-
sumption) of his diocesan, is pleased to call this paper
a " petition l" A " petition" from the gentry and
landed proprietors of Tottenham to the minister of
the parish church ! The Rev. Gentleman replied
in effect, that he would not recede from the
objectionable forms which he had introduced,
after very grave deliberation, and not with-
out' previous self-communing " and prayer." This
reply was addressed to Mr. MUSHET, the gen-
tleman whose name had appeared first among those
subscribed to the representation forwarded to the
Rev. Mr. TWINING. Mr. MUSUET'S rejoinder to the
minister deserves our especial notice and thanks. It
is as manly, rational, and dispassionate, and even pious
an exposition of the whole merits of these Tractarian
innovations on the customary celebration of Divine
iervice in our Church, under colour of enforcing the
letter of the rubrical directions which are now so
convuls:.^q the peace of her flock, as could have been
..xpected fromthe most orthodox controversialist in
truly something much better.
holy orders. It :Is
Of any meely polemical
Going far beyond the Li.‘.46'et
struggle—it is a sound lay s-s7rmon on the infinite
superiority of the great essentials C'Christian doc-
trine to all purely ecclesiastical forms or vites, and
the paramount and absorbing duty of teaching .‘ad
upholding peace and unity, and reciprocal good-will
between all the members of a flock, in preference to
chat of vindicating or enforcing particular ceremonials,
however high the human authority which may have
prescribed them. Mr. MUSUET'S fellow-parishioners
.vould do well to reprint and circulate his letter as
An antidote " in all cases of incipient Puseyism."
Well : our Right Rev. Father was next appealed to
by a deputatian of the parishioners, and by the per-
tinacious minister; and his Lordship held, after
throwing out a cunning, but vague and empty rebuke
it Puseyism in the abstract, that the minister was
justified in the (Tractarian) innovations complained
if. Finally, a compromise was proposed, at the
absurdity of which even the disciplined self-pot-
session of the imperious Bishop must hare chuckled

A. previous proposition was agreed to—namely, that
the offensive forms should be suspended for a year.
Ile Bishop having consented, this arrangement, after
1, stormy meeting between the two Rev. Gentlemen,
,apostles of " the Rubric, the whole Rubric, and
nothing but the Rubric," at Tottenham), and the sub-
icribing remonstrants, was formally announced to the
parish. Now this is a pleasant dilemma—but a pitiful
~xhibition, and a disastrous one too—for the Church
Lnd its Tottenham fold. The remonstrants are
wrong, or the incumbent is wrong ; he cannot be in '
the right if they are ; they cannot be in the right if
he is. For a twelvemonth, therefore, if the forms
night to be observed, the incumbent has consented to,
knd the Bishop has sanctioned, their suspension. If
they ought not, then the complaining parishioners
lave voluntarily made themselves parties to the estab-
lishment of what they conscientiously believe to be
.vrongful, a year hence. Is this the sort of logic

which the Bishop of LONDON commits himself to P—ls
:his the simple truthfulness which the Churchmen

arofess themselves bound to vindicate ? Does CIIABLES
JAMES claim a dispensing power to release for a season
pis clergy from the binding force of what they de-
_dare to be obligations on their conscience, as if he
lated from the Vatican, instead of the " Palace,

Fulham," and signed " GREGORY XVL"i instead of
C. J. London ?"

This is ridiculous, painful, curious enough. But
,he history of the squabble displays the BLOMFIELD
diosyncracy (one little compatible with even the
•onventional, much less the personal dignity of the
gelac.y), in a still more remarkable manner. In

order to overawe or intimidate the contumacious

mrishioners, he told the deputation, among other
hings, " that he would not preach in any

hurch in his diocese where the ceremonii

-egarding the offertory was not adopted."
[n vain this Bishop is told that with a

:ompulsory poor-law, which was not in existence
when the offertory form was devised, or was pre-
icribed in the Rubric, an offertory enforced, as it
were, publicly in churches on Sunday, is incom-
?atible;—that it is an absurdity to compel the
ayment of poor-rates by law and " exact" vo-
luntary contributions (the contradiction is his

Lordship's, not ours) by the argumentum ad verecun

than: administered, at pew-doors, in the shape of beg.
_ _ _ _ _

,ling-boxes. The Right Reverend Lord will have
the offertory observed. If not, hear it and

'noun], churches of all his diocese, old or new, with
free sittings or without them, CHARLES JAMES will

lot preach in you. He will not confirm in you. He
will not administer baptism in you. You shall never
hear his mellifluous voice, nor gaze with reve•
.-ential awe on his patriarchal demeanour ! That
.he Bishop was a rash, headstrong, mischievous,
Ind meddling servant of the Church whose interests he
is driving to destruction (in our view), instead of up-
holding, we have long been clearly of opinion. That
he was really susceptible of personal vanity in so in-
tense and dandyfied a degree we did not surmise.
What possible detriment can he suppose it will prove
to any of his churches never to hear him preach, who
has done so much to disturb the doctrine of peace.

Abuses, which are offensive to the feelings and
opinions, and even hostile to the rights and liberties of
the great bulk of a community, may, occasionally,
maintain themselves for lengthened periods of time,
against all calculation of the probability of their ex-
tinction, founded on their intolerable and vexatious
character. Long prescription may give to them a
species of sacredness in the eyes of some ; others may
be deterred by a sickly dread of innovation, under
any circumstances, from attempting their remedy or
their removal. A still larger class will apathetically
endure the very evils which they denounce, rather
than put themselves forward in the business of
achieving their own object, on the principle that
that which is everybody's business Is not theirs." But
after making every allowance for the influence of these
unworthy considerations, in general cases, we cannot
repress our astonishment that the Game-laws, on their
present footing, should have been so long tolerated
and administered in a free country like our own.
Where institutions have been so long established,
which distinctly ascertain and solemnly guarantee the
inviolability of personal rights and property, in almost
every other case, it is a social anomaly of the most
et
ixotnr oorfd itnhae inr y
oksint kind that
haatainwsohloelnet, and
codeotfycralansnsoluegsisla
na-
ture, should not merely be tolerated on our Statute-
book, but notoriously and daily administered, with