ON THE CONSTITUTION OF CHURCH AND STATE [THIRD EDITION] LAY SERMONS [SECOND EDITION] BY S. T. COLERIDGE I ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH AND STATE ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH II LAY SERMONS I. THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL II. "BLESSED ARE YE THAT SOW BESIDE ALL WATERS" BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE EDITED FROM THE AUTHOR'S CORRECTED COPIES WITH NOTES "O that our Clergy did but know and see that their tithes and glebes belong to them as officers and functionaries of the Nationalty, as clerks, and not exclusively as theologians, and not at all as ministers of the Gospel;- but that they are likewise ministers of the Church of Christ, and that their claims and the powers of that Church are no more alienated or affected by their being at the same time the Established Clergy, than by the common coincidence of their being justices of the peace, or heirs to an estate, or stock-holders! The Romish divines placed the Church above the Scriptures: our present divines give it no place at all. "But Donne and his great contemporaries had not yet learnt to be afraid of announcing and enforcing the claims of the Church, distinct from, and coordinate with, the Scriptures. This is one evil consequence, though most unnecessarily so, of the union of the Church of Christ with the National Church, and of the claims of the Christian pastor and preacher with the legal and constitutional rights and revenues of the officers of the National Clerisy. Our Clergymen, in thinking of their legal rights, forget those rights of theirs which depend on no human law at all."-Literary Remains, vol. iii. p. 119. C. WHITTINGHAM, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE. |