ON THE

ORIGIN AND EFFECTS

OF THE

ESTABLISHED CHURCH

IN ENGLAND.

BY

JONATHAN DYMOND.

LONDON:

SOCIETY FOR THE LIBERATION OF RELIGION FROM STATE PATRONAGE AND CONTROL, 2, SERJEANTS' INN, FLEET STREET,

AND

ARTHUR MIALL, 18, BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE present Publication, forming part of MR. JONATHAN DYMOND'S "Essays on Morality," is now republished, with permission.

2, SERJEANTS' INN,

April, 1867.

ON THE ORIGIN AND EFFECTS OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH IN ENGLAND.

Ir will now become our business to enquire how far the disadvantages which are incidental to Religious Establishments actually operate in our own, and whether there subsist any additional disadvantages resulting from the peculiar constitution or circumstances of the English Church.

We have no concern with religious opinions or forms of church government, but with the church as connected with the state. It is not with an episcopalian church, but with an established church, that we are concerned. If there must exist a religious establishment, let it by all means remain in its present hands. The experience which England has had of the elevation of another sect to the supremacy, is not such as to make us wish to see another elevated again.* Nor would any sect

"*

* The religious sect who are now commonly called Puritans, "prohibited the use of the Common Prayer, not merely in churches, chapels, and places of public worship, but in any private place or family as well, under a penalty of five pounds for the first offence, ten pounds for the second, and for the third a year's imprisonment. These men did not understand, or did not practise the fundamental duties of toleration. For religious liberty they had still less regard. "They passed an ordinance by which eight heresies were made punishable with death upon the first offence, unless the offender abjured his errors, and irremissibly if he relapsed. Sixteen other opinions were to be punished with imprisonment, till the offender should find sureties that he would maintain them no more." And they quite abolished the episcopal rank and order, as if each church might not decide for

*Southey's Book of the Church.

+ Id.

which takes a just view of its own religious interests desire the supremacy for itself.

The origin of the English establishment is papal. The political alliance of the church is similar now to what it was in the first years of Henry VIII. When Henry countenanced the preachers of the reformed opinions, when he presented some of them with the benefices which had hitherto been possessed by the Romish clergy; and when at length these benefices and the other privileges of the state religion were bestowed upon the "reformed" only-no essential change was effected in the political constitution of the church. In one point indeed the alliance with the state was made more strict, because the supremacy was transferred from the pope to the monarch. So that the same or a kindred political character was put in connection with other men and new opinions. The Church was altered but the establishment remained nearly the same: or the difference that did obtain made the establishment more of a state religion than before. The origin therefore of the English establishment is papal. It was planted by papal policy, and nurtured by pervading superstition and as to the transfer of the supremacy, but little credit is due to its origin or its motives. No reverence is due to our establishment on account of its parentage. The church is the offspring of the Reformation-the church establishment is not-It is not a daughter of Protestantism but of the Papacy-brought into unnatural alliance with a better faith. Unhappily, but little anxiety was shown by some of the reformers to purify the political character of the church when its privileges came into their own hands. They declaimed against the corruptions of the former church, but were more than sufficiently willing to retain its profits and its power.

The alliance with the state of which we have spoken, as

itself by what form its discipline should be conducted! To have separated the civil privileges from the episcopal order was within the province of the Legislature, and to have abolished those privileges would, we think, have been wise.