BISHOP OF LINCOLN'S CHARGE.* (E. REVIEW, 1813.) A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Lincoln, at the Triennial Visitation of that Diocese in May, June, and July, 1812. By George Tomline, D.D. F.R.S. Lord Bishop of Lincoln. London. Cadell and Co. 4to. Ir is a melancholy thing to see a man, clothed in soft raiment, lodged in a public palace, endowed with a rich portion of the product of other men's industry, using all the influence of his splendid situation, however conscientiously, to deepen the ignorance, and inflame the fury, of his fellow creatures. These are the miserable results of that policy which has been so frequently pursued for these fifty years past, of placing men of mean, or middling abilities, in high ecclesiastical stations. In ordinary times, it is of less importance who fills them; but when the bitter period arrives, in which the people must give up some of their darling absurdities; when the senseless clamour, which has been carefully handed down from father fool to son fool, can be no longer indulged; when it is of incalculable importance to turn the people to a better way of thinking; the greatest impediments to all amelioration are too often found among those to whose councils, at such periods, the country ought to look for wisdom and peace. We will suppress, however, the feelings of indignation which such productions, from such men, naturally occasion. We will give the Bishop of Lincoln credit for being perfectly sincere; we will suppose, that every argument he uses has not been used and refuted ten thousand times before; and we will sit down as patiently to defend the religious liberties of mankind, as the Reverend Prelate has done to abridge them. We must begin with denying the main position upon *It is impossible to conceive the mischief which this mean and cunning prelate did at this period. which the Bishop of Lincoln has built his reasoning The Catholic religion is not tolerated in England. No man can be fairly said to be permitted to enjoy his own worship who is punished for exercising that worship. His Lordship seems to have no other idea of punishment than lodging a man in the Poultry Compter, or flogging him at the cart's tail, or fining him a sum of money;; just as if incapacitating a man from enjoying the dignities and emoluments to which men of similar condition, and other faith, may fairly aspire, was not frequently the most severe and galling of all punishments. This limited idea of the nature of punishment is the more extraordinary, as incapacitation is actually one of the most common punishments in some branches of our law. The sentence of a court-martial frequently purports, that a man is rendered for ever incapable of serving his Majesty, &c., &c.; and a person not in holy orders, who performs the functions of a clergyman, is rendered for ever incapable of holding any preferment in the church. There are indeed many species of offence for which no punishment more apposite and judicious could be devised. It would be rather extraordinary, however, if the Court, in passing such a sentence, were to assure the culprit, that such incapacitation was not by them considered as a punishment; that it was only exercising a right inherent in all governments, of determing who should be eligible for office and who ineligible. His Lordship thinks the toleration complete, because he sees a permission in the statutes for the exercise of the Roman Catholic worship. He sees the permission but he does not choose to see the consequences to which they are exposed who avail themselves of this permission. It is the liberality of a father who says to a son, 'Do as you please, my dear boy; follow your own inclination. Judge for yourself, you are free as air. But remember, if you marry that lady, I will cut you off with a shilling.' We have scarcely ever read a more solemn and frivolous statement, than the Bishop of Lincoln's antithetical distinction between persecution and the denial of political power. Per 'It is sometimes said, that Papists, being excluded from Power, are consequently persecuted; as if exclusion from Power and religious Persecution were convertible terms. But surely this is to confound things totally distinct in their nature. secution inflicts positive punishment upon persons who hold certain religious tenets, and endeavours to accomplish the renunciation and extinction of those tenets by forcible means: exclusion from Power is entirely negative in its operation - it only declares that those who hold certain opinions shall not fill certain situations; but it acknowledges men to be perfectly free to hold those opinions. Persecution compels men to adopt a prescribed Faith, or to suffer the loss of liberty, property, or even life exclusion from Power prescribes no Faith; it allows men to think and believe as they please, without molestation or interference. Persecution requires men to worship God in one and in no other way: exclusion from Power neither commands nor forbids any mode of Divine Worship it leaves the business of religion, where it ought to be left, to every man's judgment and conscience. Persecution proceeds from a bigoted and sanguinary spirit of Intolerance; exclusion from Power is founded in the natural and rational principle of self-protection and selfpreservation, equally applicable to nations and to individuals. History informs us of the mischievous and fatal effects of the one, and proves the expediency and necessity of the other.'(pp. 16, 17.) We will venture to say, there is no one sentence in this extract which does not contain either a contradiction, or a mis-statement. For how can that law acknowledge men to be perfectly free to hold an opinion, which excludes from desirable situations all who do hold that opinion? How can that law be said neither to molest, nor interfere, which meets a man in every branch of industry and occupation, to institute an inquisition into his religious opinions? And how is the business. of religion left to every man's judgment and conscience, where so powerful a bonus is given to one set of religious opinions, and such a mark of infamy and degradation fixed upon all other modes of belief? But this is comparatively a very idle part of the question. Whether the present condition of the Catholics is or is not to be denominated a perfect state of toleration, is more a controversy of words than things. That they are subject. to some restraints, the Bishop will admit: the important question is, whether or not these restraints are necessary? For his Lordship will of course allow, that every restraint upon human liberty is an evil in itself; and can only be justified by the superior good which it can be shown to produce. My Lord's fears upon the subject of Catholic emancipation are conveyed in the following paragraph: It is a principle of our constitution, that the King should have advisers in the discharge of every part of his royal functions and is it to be imagined, that Papists would advise measures in support of the cause of Protestantism? A similar observation may be applied to the two Houses of Parliament: would Popish peers, or Popish members of the House of Commons, enact laws for the security of the Protestant government? Would they not rather repeal the whole Protestant code, and make Popery again the established religion of the country?' (p. 14.) - And these are the apprehensions which the clergy of the diocese have prayed my Lord to make public. Kind Providence never sends an evil without a remedy and arithmetic is the natural cure for the passion of fear. If a coward can be made to count his enemies, his terrors may be reasoned with, and he may think of ways and means of counteraction. Now, might it not have been expedient that the Reverend Prelate, before he had alarmed his Country Clergy with the idea of so large a measure as the repeal of Protestantism, should have counted up the probable number of Catholics who would be seated in both Houses of Parliament ? Does he believe that there would be ten Catholic Peers, and thirty Catholic Commoners? But, admit double that number (and more, Dr. Duigenan himself would not ask,) will the Bishop of Lincoln seriously assert, that he thinks the whole Protestant code in danger of repeal from such an admixture of Catholic legislators as this? Does he forget, amid the innumerable answers which may be made to such sort of apprehensions, what a picture he is drawing of the weakness and versatility of Protestant principles ? that a handful of Catholics, in the bosom of a Protestant legislature, are to over power the ancient jealousies, the fixed opinions, the inveterate habits of twelve millions of people? — that the King is to apostatize, the Clergy to be silent, and the parliament be taken by surprise?—that the nation are to go to bed over night, and to see the Pope walking arm in arm with Lord Castlereagh the next morning? -One would really suppose, from the Bishop's fears, that the civil defences of mankind were, like their military bulwarks, transferred, by superior skill and courage, in a few hours, from the vanquished to the victor that the destruction of a church was like the blowing up of a mine-deans, prebendaries, churchwardens and overseers, all up in the air in an instant. Does his Lordship really imagine, when the mere dread of the Catholics becoming legislators has induced him to charge his clergy, and his agonized clergy, to extort from their prelate the publication of the Charge, that the full and mature danger will produce less alarm, than the distant suspicion of it has done in the present instance? — that the Protestant writers, whose pens are now up to the feather in ink, will, at any future period, yield up their Church, without passion, pamphlet, or pugnacity? We do not blame the Bishop of Lincoln for being afraid: but we blame him for not rendering his fears intelligible and tangible—for not circumscribing and particularising them by some individual case-for not showing us how it is possible that the Catholics (granting their intentions to be as bad as possible) should ever be able to ruin the Church of England. His Lordship appears to be in a fog; and, as daylight breaks in upon him, he will be rather disposed to disown his panic. The noise he hears is not roaring -but braying; the teeth and the mane are all imaginary; there is nothing but ears. It is not a lion that stops the way, but an ass. One method his Lordship takes, in handling this question, is, by pointing out dangers that are barely possible, and then treating of them as if they deserved the active and present attention of serious men. But if no measure is to be carried into execution, and if no provision is safe in which the minute inspection of an ingenious |