The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-08-24 00:00:00

Ebt Etbetwol gPtanbarl3.

TUESDAY MORNING, AUGUST 24, 1841.

The conference of the preachers will, we have no
doubt, be of use, but in a way different from what was
intended ; it will be of use, not to Dissent, but to the
Church—not to the cause of foreign trade and Liberal-
ism, but to that of home trade and Conservatism. The
actual exhibitions at the council have in no degree im-
proved the anticipations which every reasonable person
must have formed concerning an assembly so consti-
tuted and so convened. It cannot tend to exalt the
characters of any of the congregated parties in the
opinion of their congregations, that they had, in obe-
dience to a knot of political agitators calling themselves
the Anti-Corn Law League, thrown off the character
of Christian ministers, and figured upon the stage as
gladiators in a contest from which both the name and
the observances of religion were alike excluded. It has
been a favourite doctrine with the members of this mi-
nisterial parliament, that the State has nothing to do
with Religion, nor Religion with the State; but their
practice in this instance demonstrates how ready they
would be to mould the state according to their religious
notions, and to accommodate their religion itself to the
taste of any ordinary politicians. One of their orators,
the chairman indeed of the day, said, on Friday, "that
their meeting was one of the happiest unions of the
Church and State"—Dissent being " the Church," and
the Anti-Corn Law League, headed by Alderman
O'Cobden, the State ! And just so it would be if these
ridiculous parties had the power ; but, fortunately, that
is not the case at present, and most devoutly is it to be
wished that it never may be ; for millocracy legislation
and all-denominations churchmanship would surely be
an order of things quite too much for common mortals
to endure.

But the conference ended, as for the present it is,
what, we ask, will be the feeling and sentiment of the
people towards those faithless, expediency ministers
who sacrificed their duty to God rather than lose the
favour of an upstart convention—their prayers rather
than their pay—and for sake of keeping the workmen
together at their Babel tower, and carrying on a com-
bination heterogeneous beyond all power of descrip-
lion, in effect renounced that ministerial character for
the supposed weight attached to which they had re-
ceived their cards of invitation from the Anti-Corn
Law League ? The Established Church has no need
to recur to those high pretensions claimed for it by the
Oxford Tractarians to stand in sublime contrast with
anything which Dissent, in any one or in all its multi-
farious forms, can offer. Its ministers do not indeed
renounce their rights as citizens, nor decline on proper
occasions, and in a becoming manner, to exercise
them ; but neither do they, or would they, we trust, on
any account, as a body, consent to waive their apostolic
mission, lay aside their ministerial character, and com-
promise their testimony to divine truth. Their influ-
ence with the people is great, because their character is
unimpeachable ; and when they do use it politically, it
is on the side of order and established institutions.
Such an exercise of power is laudable, and tends to
exalt, and not to degrade the ATE v. And then as to
the Church itself as it exists in doctrine, forms, and
discipline, what have the " all-denominations" to offer
which one might collate therewith ? She challenges
inquiry, for she has everything to gain and nothing to
lose by investigation. The Puseyites, indeed, dwell
much upon antiquity, apostolical succession, tradition,

and the fathers—upon an outward church in fact—but
they are no more than a sect in the Church of Eng-
land, and not a very large one either, more learned too,
to our thinking, than wise. We would give the Dis-
senters all the advantage they could possibly derive
from the rejection of Puseyism, and at the same time
challenge all their denominations to afford us any
scheme of churchmanship which would bear compari-
son with that of the Church by law established. The
Dissenting political conference naturally brings us to
such questions, and we rejoice at their being raised.
We desire to pass no sweeping censure on seceders
from the national worship; but we say that it is a la-
mentable evidence of backsliding and decline in reli-
gious profession, when the teachers of congregations
descend into the arena of politics stripped of every
pretence to an apostolic mission, and renouncing every
form which could impart sanctity or solemnity to their
proceedings. The following remark, which we borrow
from an excellent article in the present number of the
Churchman's Monthly Review—(a well-conducted Lon-
don periodical, published by Messrs. Seely and Burn-
side)—comes exactly to our purpose :
:ytiinfr , w
wieceared more for party interests," says the writer,
for the growth of spiritual religion among our coun-
should rejoice at the course which a large pro-
portion of the dissenters have lately taken. It has acted,
and continues to act, as a perpetual blight upon their con-
,gregations. Their
missionary efforts decline ; and instead
of raising, as they did twenty
ntyyears since, almost as many
new chapels as members
erecting the
on establishmentenew
edificecou ld
wbhuei
rl de
churches, they are not, DO
the church erects ten.