uthern, be thought a punishment and
degradation? Thus, "not only has equal protection,--for God forbid that
we should ever repine at equal protection,--but equal encouragement been
given by government to every description of religious faith, and every
denomination of professing Christians, in some of the most important
dependencies of the British crown."[214] Is not this, it may be asked,
the very course which a mild and tolerant _heathen_ government would
pursue? And is the same policy, which would probably be followed by
heathen rulers, either right or expedient in rulers professing
themselves to be Christians?

[214] Bishop of Exeter's Charge in 1837.

Certainly, whatever other arrangements might have been adopted, those
that have been made are faulty in principle; and this is true, although
it be confessed that some good has arisen from them, since through them
an increased supply of religious teaching has been afforded to the
colonists, however reluctantly wrung from the government in behalf of
the Church of England. The faultiness of principle in these arrangements
is thus stated by the present Bishop of Australia, a man well fitted to
the responsible station which he fills in Christ's Church. "By the
government plan of aid," he observes, "encouragement is given to the
lax and dangerous opinion, that there is in religion nothing that is
either certain or true. The government virtually admits that there is no
divinely-instituted form of church-membership, or of doctrine, otherwise
that one would in preference receive its support. The consequence is
that the most awful truths of Christianity, which have been acknowledged
and preserved in the Church from the beginning, are now frequently
spoken of as merely sectarian opinions, to which no peculiar respect is
due."[215] The Roman Catholics hailed this measure with delight, for
what to them can be a greater triumph or a more gratifying spectacle
than to behold a great Protestant nation, inquiring, as Pilate did,
"What is truth?" The Presbyterians, likewise, and Protestant Dissenters,
were not behind their brethren of Rome (though there were fewer voices
to join the shout) in greeting so exquisitely liberal a measure, which
is actually founded upon some of their favourite notions respecting the
harmlessness of divisions, the total invisibility of the Church, and the
hatefulness of "a dominant episcopacy." The rejoicings which were to be
heard in quarters apparently s