The Sun.
London, England, 1845-01-13 00:00:00

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NATIONAL rnrCAT/ON.—PROTEST Or TIM
BISHOPS.
The following protest has been issued by the Primate,
Lord John Beresford, and eight other prelates of the
Est. bushed Church in Irelied. Ir is really aer ;
against the course adopted by Sir R. Pe I aud his G.-
vernment on the queetion of National Education.
" We, the undersigned prelate. of the United Chtirce
of England and Ireland, have judged it to be our duty.
upon some former occasions, to address those members
of the Church who are directly committed to our care
and government, and all others who are disposed to look
to us fir conned and support concerning the question of
the education of the poor in Ireland. And as there are
various particu'ars in the actual state of that question,
which appear to make a similar address from us pecu-
liarly needful at the present time, we proceed once more
to the discharge of this anxious, arid in some respects
painful, though, as we cannot but feel, clear and most
important duty, in humble reliance upon the guidance
and blessing of Almighty God.
" Upon the,former occasions to which we have referred,
we felt constrained to make known the very unfavourable
judgment which we had formed of the national system of
education for this country—distinctly declaring that we
could not approve of it, or assist in the management of it,
or recommend to the patrons or superintendents of schools
that they should place them in connexion with it.
Baaolguul
against
tnluehtslt
a'nha
osipgotlwhabi
ntlei reluctancelitrtgheeodrmdffuetur3etei.donhcugoedniNale.tci
oldeclare
eesso
oa bdalienscdi
ceirdeedgal
>rnedt
andtmh t we
y
is
int
publiclyn e feltd
by the State, to which we owe, and are ready to render,
iptehllteldiautswtohiecxhprwe'essotah•uestpolaGinoldy.
and strongly our disapprobation and distrust of' this sys-
tem ; and we lament that it does not now permit us to
retract, or to soften, those declarations of our opinion.
We consider it to be the more necessary to state this ex-
plicitly, because it is conceived by some persons that
certain modifications of its rules, from time to time intro-
duced by the Commissioners of National Education, have
done much to remove the objections on which it has
been from the beginning opposed and rejected by the
greater portion of the members of the Established
Church ; and as we are unable to form the same opinion
of these changes, we deem it our duty to obviate the mis-
apprehension to which our silence might give rise, by
stating distinctly that we cannot discern in them any
sufficient reasons for withdrawing or qualifying the con-
demnation which we have deliberately and repeatedly pro-
nounced.
" When the Government first announced its determi-
nation that this system should supersede those to which
the State had before given support, it was very generlly
opposed by the clergy and the laity of our Church. The
grounds on which this opposition were made to rest were
various. The undue prominence given to secular to the
depreciation of religious instruction; the disregard shown
to the position and claims of the clergy of the Estab-
lished Church, tending to throw the direction of national
education into the hands of the priesthood of the Church
of Rome; and other defects and evils, both of the system
itself in the machinery by which it was to be worked,
were urged as grave objections against the proposed plan
of education. While its opponents differed as to the im-
portance which was to be assigned to some of those ob-
jections, there was one, upon the paramount importance
of which all were agreed. The rule by which the Holy
Scriptures were to be excluded from the schools during
the hours of general instruction was treated by all as so
fundamentally objectionable, that while this should con-
tinue to be the principle of the system, they could not
conscientiously connect their schools with it, even though
all the other grounds of opposition were taken away.
" In the former societies for the education of the poor,
with which the clergy were connected, they had, in ac-
commodation to the unhappy divisions of this country,
consented to forbear from any attempt to teach the for-
mularies of our Church to the children of Dissenters,
Protestant or Roman Catholic, who attended the schools
of which they had the superintendence. But they did
not judge themselves at liberty so to deal with the Word
of God. There was in every school a Bible class, and in
every school to read the Bible was a part of the daily
business ; and all the children in attendance, of whatever
religious communion, took their places in this class, as
soon as their proficiency enabled them to profit by the
reading of the Holy Scriptures. But the distinction of
the new system was that it placed the Bible under the
same rule with books of peculiar instruction in religion,
and excluded it, with them, from the hours of general
education. And, moreover, this great change was
avowedly made as a concession to the unlawful authority
by which the Church of Rome withholds the Holy Scrip-
tures from its members.
" It could not have been expected that the clergy of
our Church, who are bound by obligations so sacred to
resist spiritual tyranny sand to oppose the errors of
the Church of Rome, would join in a system of educa-
tion, of which the distinctive claim to acceptance and
support was the aid which it gave to one of the most
violent exercises of this tyranny—that which is, in fact,
the strength and protection of its worst errors. It was
not merely a question of the amount of good which was
to be done by retaining the Bible in its proper place in
the education of the poor—though it would have been
painful to give up this means of doing so much good to
the Roman Catholic children, to whom (commended as
they are in so many ways to their sympathies) the
clergy, in general, have the power of doing so little;
but there was still a graver question of the amount of evil
which would result from the change, and the part which
the clergy were to take in effecting it. The principle of
the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures,' as it is main-
tained by our Church, is a fundamental principle of the
most momentous importance. It is by means of it that
truth has been guarded and handed down to us by those
who have gone before us. And it is by means of it we
are to preserve this deposit of truth, and to defend and
transmit it, pure and unmutilated, to those who are to
come after us. While, on the other hand, it is by re-
jecting this principle that the Church of Rome is able
to retain and to defend its errors, its superstitions, and
its usurpations. It is well known that our Church exacts
from all its ministers an express declaration of their
belief of this great doctrine, and a solemn promise that
they will regulate their ministrations in conformity with
it. And th steady maintenance of it is still further
bound upon our clergy, when they are, by God's Pro-
vidence, placed in circumstances in which they have to
carry on a continual contest for the truth—not merely
for the deliverance of those who are in error, but for the
preservation of those who are more immediately com-
mitted to their care—and in which it is plain that their
prospect of success in either object depends altogether
upon their adherence to this principle, and that when it
is in any degree allowed to become obscure or doubtful,
in the same degree the cause of truth is weakened, and
that of error strengthened in the land. And they could
not doubt that if they connected their schools with the
national system, and thereby entered into a compact to
dispossess the Bible of the place which it had hitherto
occupied in them, they would be, in the eyes of the
young and the old of both communions, practically ad-
mitting the false principles of the Church of Rome, and
submitting to its tyranny, and abandoning the great prin-
ciple of their own Church, concerning the sufficiency and
supremacy of God's Holy Word.
" It would seem that the board,'to which the manage-
ment of national education is committed, has not been
insensible to the force of this grand and primary objec-
tion. It changed the offensive, but true ground, on
which the exclusion of the Scripture, from its schools
was originally placed, for another which was more spe-
cious and popular ; and parental authority was brought
in to occupy the post at first assigned to the authority of
the Church of Rome. Those who were acquainted with
the state of the country knew that there was no real
abjection on the part of Roman Catholic parents, speak-
ing generally, to read the Bible themselves, or have it
read to their children, but the contrary. And, in fact,
when ecclesiastical authority was first exerted to put
down scriptural education in the country, it had to en-
counter very stubborn resistance from parental autho-
rity—a resistance whieh undoubtedly would have been
successful, if it had been aided, as it ought to have been,
by the State. But a renewal of this:struggle was not to
be looked for. However true it be that Roman Ca-
tholics in general would pi der that their children were
taught the Bible, this desire is seldom so enlightened or
so strong as of itself to arouse them to a contest with
the authorities of their Church. Under former
systems they resisted the despotic power which
forbad their children to read the Bible, chiefly
because their submission to it would have involved
the loss of an improved method of secular educa-
tion. But when, in consequence of the establishment
of the National System no such loss could ensue, it was
not to be expected that any considerable number would
persist in opposing the mandates of the clergy, or that
the latter would find any difficulty in constraining the
parents, from whom they were able to withhold the
Bible, to forbid the use of it to their children. This
be
fieiantigo
utsh e case,which
taken
be felt
hauteia, in the
en drreul alle, t
the
heemmuot ti-
t matte
soupormom e prominently, is
remait.ed in substance and fact unaltered an that the
, exercised
their children.
on and through the parents of
really
yntathl
eauatuhtohroirtlytywehfichthies
like civil and ecclesiastical, and
CPuhturfcotrith of
all other
"It is still further to be considered, etuli.at parental
authority,_
and therefore can
_possess none, when is
lawful authority, derives all its force from the authori•
of God ;
din opposition to the Divine authority which
it rests. An although a child, who, from tettdery
or false training, is unable to see clearly the opposietiaorsn
efra<t in releasing him
which may exist between his parent's 'ill and the will
is not to be instructed
forfomGodth,
eorduttoy auptpsruehhmenidssiet
or encouraged to resist the authority of his parent,
even when it
has no rightthis to require others, who clearly
hinstruments pi
no s
ei tni of
unie
ianngd
aunn due
nr sl taawnfduits
xeeffree
st se ,
ofhbi
his
perceivel
is
over his
haueethumoreilykios iusmchild s
n;and
such
otherscase. haveTh
The
distinction
warrant tos
obvious. Our clergy would, and ought to abstain from
anyldirect efforts ito excite resistance,:or even to en-
courage it on the part of a child, until they had good
grounds for regarding that resistance as intelligent and
conscientious. But they could not recognise such an
exertion of parental authority, as if it were lawful, and
lend their assistance in enforcing it. So that, even if it
were voluntarily exerted in forbidding the Bible to be
read, our clergy could not consent to bind themselves to
aid in giving effect to such an unlawful command.
But when they regard the parent as himself in bondage
to the usurped authority of the Church of Rome, and as
not exercising his own free will, but obeying as a pas-
sive agent, in binding the same yoke upon his children,
the duty of refusing to co-operate with him is
clearer. The clergy may be able to do but little
towards delivering their Roman Catholic country-
men from such bondage, but they can at least keep
themselves free from the guilt of becoming instruments in
rivetting tits chains upon' them ; and this, accordingly,
they resolved to do in which resolution—as in all that
they have done in this matter—they had the full con-
currence and support of the lay members of the Church.
" The exclusive appropriation of the Parliamentary
rants g for education having left the Church destitute of
structiou of the children of
its accustomed aids for the in