The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-05-12 00:00:00

THE ANTI-REFORMATION PARTY

We cannot refrain from noticing the unequivocal and
almost declared opposition of Sir R. Peel to those violent
and uncatholic views usually designated Tractarianism in the
course of the Church Extension debate on Friday night.
When Mr. Plumptre very justly observed, " with regard to
the doctrines of the Tractarians, who,' according to the ideas
of some, exercised so powerful an agency for good in stimu-
lating the zeal of churchmen, he, for his part, scrupled not
to affirm his belief that the uncompromising and unqualified
nature of the pretensions which they set up with respect to
ecclesiastical power, were calculated to obstruct instead of
furthering the progress of true religion, and that the expres-
sion of sentiments, for example, so uncharitable and un-
scriptural as those involved in leaving all that differed from
them to what they call the • uncovenanted mercies of God,'
tended to inflict deeper injury on the church than any thing
that could be imagined," we find that loud cries of " hear,
hear," proceeded from every part of the house, and that the
moat prominent applauder of this just and true statement
was Sir Robert Peel.

In order to render his demonstration of applause as signi-
ficant as possible, the right. hon. baronet thus expressed
himself in his reply :—" I certainly entertain a strong opi-
nion on the points referred to. It is possible I may have
implied what that opinion is." We rejoice at this manifes-
tation of English and Protestant feeling on the part of the
Prime Minister of England. Delicate and discriminating as
his allusions were to the painful position taken up by so
many of the Oxford divines, they were yet worthy of the
man and the place of power and dignity to which, in the
Providence of GOD, he has been elevated by a people, who
believe he wall lend his great gifts to the maintenance, in all
its purity, of the church of their fathers—a church, retrieved
from papal error by the tears, and sufferings, and life-blood
of sainted martyrs, of whom the world was not worthy. We
regard this manifestation of the sentiments of Sir R. Peel as
possessed of greater value, and likely to accomplish more
extensive good, than even the allocation of £QOO,OOO to pas-
toral and parochial purposes. It extinguishes the effort that
has been vigorously, and we fear, in some instances, success-
fully made, to identify the great cause of conservatism with
the pernicious heresies of The Tracts for the Times, and
shows that the good old-fashioned churchmanship—the
churchmanship of Hooker, Hull, and Usher—which we have
ever advocated and upheld as the strength of the throne and
the glory of our altars, is the creed of Sir Robert Peel. We
are confident that it is the creed and the consolation of tha
great mass of the English people to whom the Gospel is
known. The opposite views, advocated by Mr. Newman,
Mr. Palmer, Mr. Percival, and others of the same school,
are alien to the spirit, and incompatible with the action, of
English conservatism. The advocates of Tractarianism aim
at the triumphs of a power essentially popish. They would
make the state the drudge, not the supreme supporter of the
church—the mere executor of the decisions of ecclesiastics,
instead of being the defender of their constitutional rights,
and the repressor of their arrogant and unjust pretensions.
The theory of our constitution is that of the state recogni-
sing, endowing, and fixing the church within her spiritual
and proper jurisdiction ; Tractarianism would be the church
absorbing the state, and attaching to herself all powers and
privileges. In fact, if the powers assumed for the church by
the Tractarian party be demonstrably divine, England ought
to be at this moment, not under Queen, lords and commons,
but under a theocracy ; and the opinions of the episcopal
bench ought not only to be unanimous, but in every instance
infallible and inspired.' Now, ardent and enthusiastic as is
our attachment to the church of our fathers—firmly as we
believe her to be the ark in which are the living elements of
England's freedom, and life, and peace—we dare not so far
forget her teaching as to raise her, in our conception, to the
level of her LORD, or to regard the doctrinal decisions of her
wisest and holiest prelate as equivalent to those of St. Paul.—