The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-11-05 00:00:00

have far outgrown the ordinary means of church mi-
nistration, and this one fact alone would suffice to ac-
count for the latter circumstance. The contest be-
came unequal in respect of numbers, and Conservatism
was thus for a time overpowered. The Radical philo-
sophers used to infer that Conservativism could not
bear the collision of mind—the investigation of intel-
lect, and that it fled at the approach of the Mechanics'
Institute, and the awe-inspiring lecturer, the newspa-
per, and the Penny Cyclopzedia; but it seems they
were mistaken. We have often spoken in this journal
of a Conservative democracy, and got laughed at for
so doing ; but we have lived to see a good specimen of
the reality in our own good town, and some of our ad-
versaries laughing with the other side of their mouth.
Soon we shall have the argument altogether with us,
that Conservatism is quite as intellectual an affair as
Radicalism any day in the year—the argument, we
mean, of number, as well in town as in country—and
every man who pretends to the smallest grain of phi-
losophy, intellect, or common sense, ashamed to say
that he is not a Conservative.

It gives us some idea of the veneration in which
some men hold a certain boundary line, real or imagi-
nary, of episcopal jurisdiction, to find the proposed or-
dination of an English bishop, to take charge of the
church and reside at Jerusalem, objected to as an in-
fringement of Catholic discipline. The proposition is
one which has given much satisfaction to the friends
of the Church of England generally, and those who

think that, by her orderly ministrations, the work of
reviving ancient churches, which have fallen into de-
cay, or of gathering in infidels to the Christian fold,
can best be carried on. It afforded a pleasing proof
that the heads of our church have begun to identify
themselves with a large body of her more zealous mem-
bers, and that the propagation of religious truth would
no longer be left to unauthorised individuals, or to vo-
luntary associations, having no power to send forth
emissaries, or conduct their missions rightfully in the
name of the Church of England. Their proceedings,
in the absence of all episcopal authority, could not be
said to be carried on according to the discipline of a
church which is strictly episcopal, and they conse-
quently lost that weight and those facilities which such
a sanction would have imparted to them. The con-
templated ordination of a bishop, to take oversight of
a Christian congregation at Jerusalem, was therefore a
subject of much congratulation, both on its own ac-
cmint, and as an evidence that the Church of England
would no longer confine its charities, as a church,
within the shores of our island, or withhold them from
any part of the world, however distant, where they
could be brought to bear, with any prospect or proba-
bility of useful results.
That such a step would be opposed by men who
cordially hate both the Church of England and her
doctrine—called in question as a matter of right, or

treated with ridicule—we might easily have foreseen
and expected. On such opposition It would scarcely
be worth while to waste a word ; but it was not per-
haps anticipated that those who pretend to be animated
with a zeal for the church beyond all other men, would
have been foremost to raise a cavil at a step which, to
ordinary members appears so well calculated to exalt her
name and do her honour. Such, however, is the fact.
There are those who profess to be actually shocked at
so violent a departure from tradition, and exclaim that
it is a deed without precedent—an infraction of catholic
discipline—an intrusion upon the bishopric of the
Greek patriarch, the legitimate successor of St. James;
and they contend that it is an act of evil example.
Discipline, discipline, is their grand cry ;—yea, disci-
pline before religion itself; the form in preference to
the substance. The Christian people in Syria, or at
Jerusalem, would apply in vain to such parties to come
over and help them. Their answer would be, "We
cannot ; the Patriarch of Constantinople is your bishop
in the due order of succession; we durst not usurp his
place, or intrude upon his territories; discipline forbids
it, and constitutes an insuperable obstacle to your
wishes; therefore we must leave you to him.
Two sets of answers might be given to this objection,
first, the corrupt state of the Greek church, and
secondly, the miserably feeble and oppressed state of the
eastern bishops under Turkish tyranny. Dr. Clarke
in his travels in Russia, speaking of the Greek church
in that country, says, "All that has been said or
written of Roman Catholic bigotry, affords but a feeble
idea of the superstition of the Greek church. It is
certainly the greatest libel upon human reason, the
severest scandal upon universal piety, that has yet dis-
graced the annals of mankind." And adverting to the
state of religion in the Holy Land, he says, " Unar the
name of Christianity, every degrading superstition and
profane rite, equally remote from the enlightened tenets
of the gospel of Christ, every where the herald of
civilisation and of science, is almost as little known in
the Holy Land as in California or New Holland. A
series of legendary traditions, mingled with remains of
Judaism, and the wretched phantasies of illiterate
ascetics, may now and then exhibit a glimmering of
heavenly light ; but if we seek for the effects of Chris-
tianity in the Land of Canaan, we must for that period
when the desert shall blossom as the rose, and the
wilderness become a fruitful field."
" I have often reflected," says Burckhardt, in de-
scribing the dishonest conduct of a Greek priest in the
Hauran, (but in words that admit of too general an
application,) " that if the English penal laws were
suddenly promulgated in this country, there is scarcely
any man in business, or who has money dealings with
others, who would not be liable for transportation be-
fore the end of the first six months." It would be easy
to fill whole columns with descriptions such as these of
the wretched state of the church and people, who are
said to be under the apostolic jurisdiction of the
eastern patriarch, and for the preservation of whose
authority intact, our domestic disciplinarians are so
extremely concerned ; but it would be superfluous so
far as our readers are concerned, and there would be
no hope that any thing of the sort would make an im-
pression on the worshippers of mere precedent and

tradition. The question then arises, is there any
weight, any validity in the objection which they have
raised to the proposed appointment ? We answer that

there is not, unless the upholding of a mere theory be
of more consequence than the Christian welfare of a

people,—the imaginary jurisdiction of a supposed suc-
cessor of the apostles, of greater moment than the
actual condition of his alleged subjects. The objection
has been met, however, in detail, and most conclusively
by a writer, signed Anglo-Catholicus, whose reply at
length appeared in The Times of the 20th ult.
We shall conclude with an extract or two. After
shewing that the intended mission is no act of hostility
to the eastern church, but one of friendship and pro-

tection, he proceeds to say :
" If, then, the act of sending a Bishop of Jerusalem be in-
tended as one of friendship, and not of hostility, why, you
will ask, has the assent of the eastern Bishops not been ob-
tained for it? I reply, because they are not in a condition
to grant it, if they would. It might be made a pretext for
their degradation at any moment. Within the last two years
two Patriarchs of Constantinople (one since the unhappy act
of Lord Ponsonby) have been summarily degraded. The
Armenian Patriarch is momentarily expecting the same fate.
It is not uncommon for a Patriarch, at his appointment, to
stipulate what rank he shall hold upon his degradation. The
late Patriarch is accordingly a simple metropolitan. Under
these circumstances, when the Church is overridden by an
infidel power, ready at any moment to degrade or bowstring
her chief governors, thus depriving them in great part of their
free agency, is any one prepared to say that Catholic princi-
ples in their utmost rigidity, without any reference to exist-
ing difficulties, are to be followed by our Bishops to their
extremest result ? Are they not to consider the secret
wishes, together with the helpless condition, of their eastern
brethren? May they not aid them in the way they know
would be most effective, in the way that is most desired,
though it could not be openly requested, or even sanctioned ?
Are they to stand by and see the ancient and orthodox Church
of the East sink beneath the treachery and corruptions of
Rome, though she call on them for aid, and be ready to em-
brace them open-armed, lest Rome, and those who would
crouch to Rome, and be spurned for their pains, should
charge them with schism ?"

Next he shews, that, according to the ancient law of
the church, and the opinions of the ablest writers,
there will be no act of " schism" in the contemplated
mission. He quotes Bingham for the doctrine that,
"in case of pressing necessity, when the interest of
God was to be served, every bishop had power to act
in any part of the church; for, though all bishops had
their particular churches to officiate in, and were not
ordinarily to exceed their own bounds, yet the love of
Christ was a rule abpve all ; and therefore men were
not barely to consider the thing that was done, but
the circumstances of the action, the time, the Manner,
the persons for whose sake, and the end for which it

was done." " From all. this, it appears that every
bishop was as much an universal bishop, and had as
much the care of the whole church, as the Bishop of

Rome himself ; there being no acts of the episcopal