The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1846-02-17 00:00:00

AN INDEPENDENT CHURCII.

We last week noticed the proceedings now going on in
the Swiss Canton of Vaud, arising out of an attempt of a
large number of the ministers of the Evangelical Church,
there constitutionally established, to render that institu-
tion independent of the State. From one of the numerous
documents, in French, handed to us, and from which we
derived our information, we translate the following pas-
sages on the necessity of an Established Church, con-
tained in replies from M. Druey, the President of the
Council of State, to letters from certain of the clergy who
had withdrawn from the State Church, cr contemplated
to to do, and refused to comply with its behests. The
argument, coming from a member of a body which styles
itself a "democratic republic," is on that account ad-
ditionally valuable.
After stating that religious liberty is permitted to all
denominations in the Gunton, M. Drney proceeds :
" But religious liberty is not more unconditional than the
other liberties of man • the interests of society, and those
of religious liberty itself, impose upon it inevitable limits.
This is shown in every country, in every age, and under
every system of government. Unlimited liberty no more
exists in places of worship called " free " or "indepen-
dent," than- in churches owning subordination to the
State. Lest every one be left to act as he pleases, and
which would bring about complete anarchy, and, by re-
action, the most dreadful despotism, there has always been
an organisation—a ruling power—composed of men on
whom devolved the framing of las, and the issuing of
orders and prescriptions." And aga;n,—
, " If the Church were rendered independent of the
State, would her ministers be in reality more free than at
present? Would they even be so free? The superior
authority of such a church, composed of laymen and
clergy, or of 0-e or other of these classes, would not be
less a human authority. Their laws, their regulations,
and their other decisions, would become binding on the
minority and the ministers, even whet e they were opposed
to them, and that, too, conscientiously. There was no-
thing to prevent such laws from becoming arbitrary—nay,
tyrannical,—of which the history of the Christian Church,
end that of the Protestant Church in psrtimilar, furnished
examples. In order to escape trona this despotism, there
would be no other resource but new ahruptions, separa-
tions without end, or a return to the protective authority
of the State. The province of the State is not, therefore,
to sanction ptopositions which, especially in the actual
condition of souls, cosld only further embarrass or-render
wc,rre the state of affairs, and precipitate the church into
a crisis whit h would not permit its ministers to perform
in peace their important functions. The hue liberty of
the Evangelical minister consis's less in certain adminis-
tea icc forms of the church than in the free 'preaching
and free r xereise of his pastoral functions within the
church—a- liberty fully enjoyed by the clergy of the
national church. Christian life may flourish in the
churches regulated and pri tccted by the State as well as
in those that are sepatioed from it, in the same manner
I as atheism and immoraiity can lay waste the latter as
much as the termer. The main gr• nod, iu the position
of tt,ines, e.usht, therefore, to be put above mere external
forms."

BUCK W H EAT.— Au itcroratirn of this wheat—we
believe the ft: Et has been ntaee by Mr. 11,1.' Henry, whose
advettisen.. nt eon ars in our paler of to-eay ; ,nd from
the !act, that although comparatively cheap, it i:- highly
esteemed in Ametici, we have no daub; that when once
known, it will. be-come an ankle of viirral ;nTortation.
Buck wheat rakes ate, in fact, delicious, snd .no (otelli
-rlifferent in flavour to anything English, that no words
can describe their peculiar excellence.