ablished Church
willingly, but an orthodox and numerous portion of the Church. Omitting
then the wound received by religion generally under Henry VIII., and the
shameless secularizations clandestinely effected during the reigns of
Elizabeth and the first James, I am disposed to consider the three
following as the grand evil epochs of our present Church. First, The
introduction and after-predominance of Latitudinarianism under the name
of Arminianism, and the spirit of a conjoint Romanism and Socinianism at
the latter half or towards the close of the reign of James I. in the
persons of Montague, Laud, and their confederates. Second, The ejection
of the two thousand ministers after the Restoration, with the other
violences in which the Churchmen made themselves the dupes of Charles,
James, the Jesuits, and the French Court. (See the Stuart Papers
'passim'). It was this that gave consistence and enduring strength to
Schism in this country, prevented the pacation of Ireland, and prepared
for the separation of America at a far too early period for the true
interest of either country. Third, The surrender by the Clergy of the
right of taxing themselves, and the Jacobitical follies that combined
with the former to put it in the power of the Whig party to deprive the
Church of her Convocation,--a bitter disgrace and wrong, to which most
unhappily the people were rendered indifferent by the increasing
contrast of the sermons of the Clergy with the Articles and Homilies of
the Church itself,--but a wrong nevertheless which already has avenged,
and will sooner or later be seen to avenge, itself on the State and the
governing classes that continue this boast of a short-sighted policy;
the same policy which in our own days would have funded the property of
the Church, and, by converting the Clergy into salaried dependents on
the Government 'pro tempore', have deprived the Establishment of its
fairest honor, that of being neither enslaved to the court, nor to the
congregations; the same policy, alas! which even now pays and patronizes
a Board of Agriculture to undermine all landed property by a succession
of false, shallow, and inflammatory libels against tithes.

These are my weighed sentiments: and fervently desiring, as I do, the
perpetuity and prosperity of the established Church, zealous for its
rights and dignity, preferring its forms, believing its Articles of
Faith, and holding its Book of Common Prayer and its translation of