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said before, or that our readers will be at the pains to peruse? If however any ten, or six, authors will tell us that they concur in the same solution, we will gladly review their cluster of publications. We never write on it, or insert the papers of our correspondents upon it, without provoking shoals of controversial replies, which we are obliged to refrain inflicting upon our readers. This is a mournful state of things; but we see no immediate remedy.

A RUSTIC RECTOR will find such reply to his inquiry as we are able to give, anticipated in our remarks upon the State-Prayers in our December Number. The question whether a clergyman is legally bound to use those offices, has never been judicially decided; but we think, for the reasons we have there The question was once nearly ripe for judicial decision, stated, that he is so. but it stopped short by the submission of the accused party. And who was this party? It was the celebrated John Johnson, the Non-juror, Rector of Cranbrook, Kent, author of "The Propitiatory Oblation in the Eucharist," "The Unbloody Sacrifice, and Altar Unveiled," and other publications, which have rivetted him as one of the strongest links in the Oxford-Tract catena; but, what is more to our present purpose, he was author of "The Clergyman's Vade Mecum;""The Ancient and Present State of the Church of England;" and "A Collection of all the Laws, Canons, Answers, or Rescripts of the Government and Worship of the Church of England." When George the First came to the Crown, he refused to read the service for his Majesty's Accession, in consequence of which he was cited before the Archbishop of Canterbury. He defended himself zealously, which his line of reading enabled him to do with great ability; and he was also supported by his friend Dr. Hickes and the strength of the Non-juring and anti-Hanoverian parties; skill, money, zeal, and the best legal advice were not wanting; but before judgment was pronounced, he found it prudent to submit, though most reluctantly; which it is impossible to believe he would have done if he had not felt convinced that the decision would have been against him.

We have confined ourselves to our correspondent's inquiry, without now going into collateral questions as to the expediency or otherwise of these offices, or of some things in them, upon which matters we have touched in our paper The chief difficulty, to our minds, is that which arises above referred to. from the subscription required in the thirty-sixth Canon of 1603, by which use the form in the said book (the every clergyman pledges himself to Book of Common-Prayer,) prescribed in public prayer, and administration We have always great reluctance in of the Sacraments, and none other." entering upon questions of casuistry; but in the complicated intercourse of human life occasions arise in which it is necessary to reconcile apparent difficulties, so as to adhere to truth and keep a good conscience. The present is no new question. From the time of the passing of the above Canon, our bishops, clergy, and civil rulers, have practically declared their opinion that the subscription required by it does not apply to the particular case in question. Alterations were made in the Prayer-book in the time of James I., of Charles I., and of Charles II. The subscription required by the Canon of 1603 of course does not bind us to the Prayer-book as it then was; it binds us to the book as we now have it; and we have no greater difficulty than our forefathers had even in the days of James the First; for the clergy were then astricted to use the "said book so authorized by Parliament in the fifth and sixth year of King Edward VI. ;" and none other, or otherwise;" so that when changes were made at the Hampton Court Conference, "This was the occasion" (to use the words of Dr. Nicholls,) "of different speculations in those times. The Puritans, for whose sake those alterations were made, did not think them founded upon sufficient authority; and Bishop Cosins, who was no friend to the Puritans, but had a great zeal for Parliamentary right, was of the same opinion." But in those very days the Gunpowder-Plot service was introduced and universally used; and there have been hundreds of occasional forms of Prayer and Thanksgiving before and since that time, on occasion of births, marriages, harvests, wars, defeats, victories, death, and pestilence; and these were regarded by the whole stream of bishops, clergymen, civilians, senators, and rulers, as not contravening the subscription under the thirty-sixth Canon. It would be a horrible conclusion, that all our clergy, for nearly three hundred years, have foresworn themselves. The Act of Uniformity of Elizabeth, as well as that of Charles the II., enacted that no other forms than those in the Prayer-book should be used; yet such occasional forms as those above noticed were not objected to as thereby prohibited. is verbal discrepancy; but there seems from the first to have been a common

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understanding of what was intended. The Non-jurors and those modern Tractarians who refuse to read the November 5. service, are zealous for that of January 30, which, if Canon 36 apply at all, is as much excluded as the other, or as any form issued on occasion of a royal birth or marriage. All or none, is the only just alternative; for a clergyman is not to pick and cull what he pleases; or to say that one form or passage passed Convocation, another did not; that a Bishop or Archbishop enjoins, or does not enjoin, this or that;—the words of the Canon and of the Acts of Uniformity are not thus conveniently elastic.

Our Right Reverend Fathers might, either collectively or individually, bring this question to a judicial issue; and that they have not done so long ago, may be variously accounted for. In the first place, their attention may not have been urgently directed to the subject, and they have enough to do, with their arduous labours, without becoming volunteer busy-bodies. Again, there might be much expence, personal vexation, delay, invidious controversy, and uncertainty of issue, in bringing the matter to an ultimate decision; though the episcopal bench, or some individual prelate, might be disposed to encounter these difficulties, if the proceeding were considered desirable. Further, there has always been a difference of opinion among our prelates themselves, as well as among the subordinate clergy, upon the de jure, whatever may be the de facto, law of the Church and the State, touching questions of rival or concurrent jurisdiction. But lastly, our prelates, whether inclining to Erastian or to Altitudinarian views, probably consider that much inconvenience might arise from judicially mooting this many-sided question. If the decision were that the subscription required by the thirtysixth Canon and the Acts of Uniformity, (from that of 2, 3, Edward VI., to that of Charles the Second, by which we are now bound) in forbidding all forms of prayer and thanksgiving, except those in the Book of Common Prayer, include within the range of prohibition the four State-offices, and by consequence all services ordered by the sovereign in council, upon occasion of births, deaths, or marriages, war or peace, dearth or plenty, fire or pestilence, humiliation or thanksgiving; then all our bishops and clergy, (we believe without exception), from the days of the Reformation to the present moment, have violated the law and their own subscription; all our sovereigns and privy councils have acted illegally; both our Houses of Parliament have shared in the offence; and the great body of the people during nearly three ceuturies have been implicated. The circumstance that this or that form was enjoined on a clergyman by his Ordinary, or had passed Convocation, does not alter the case; for the Acts of Uniformity, and the subsbription required under the thirty-sixth Canon, make no exception for Ordinaries or Convocation, any more than for Sovereigns in Council.

But if, on the other hand, it was judicially decided that the Sovereign in Council has a legal right, either by statute or prescription, to order such occasional offices, a door would be opened which could not be shut, but which might let in far more than was desirable. We should be henceforth called not an Act-of-Parliament Church, but an Order-in-Council Church; the Church's prerogative of selfgovernment would be infringed upon; the compact which the State made with her upon the covenant of the Book of Common Prayer would be violated; and what remedy, it might be asked, would there be if a prime-minister were to procure an Order in Council to enjoin forms the most unscriptural and anti-Anglican? This being ruled as the law by which Church and State are bound together, many, upon the judicial assertion of that law, would feel constrained (we fear we might be among the number) in conscience to quit the Establishment.

This alternative our Prelates have never been anxious to provoke. They have seemed to think it best to leave the matter where usage, prescription, and utility have left it; giving up nothing upon principle, but yielding something to mutual understanding; and thinking it time enough to litigate abstract questions, when there arises some great practical inconvenience from their conventional adjustment. But not so some zealous spirits among us, who appear determined to pursue the very course which Dr. Candleish and others have pursued in Scotland. They covet the dominancy which the Church of Rome asserts; they are bent upon breaking up our present National Ecclesiastical Establishment, upon the ground, as they say, that Cranmer "Erastianized" it (it must have been by anticipation of that worthy's birth); and they appear vexed that Bishops will not accept their overtures to become martyrs.

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