on, by
the Right Hon. W.E. Gladstone, M.P. for the University of Oxford.
_Guardian_, 10th July 1850.
Mr. Gladstone has not disappointed the confidence of those who have
believed of him that when great occasions presented themselves, of
interest to the Church, he would not be found wanting. A statesman
has a right to reserve himself and bide his time, and in doubtful
circumstances may fairly ask us to trust his discretion as to when is
his time. But there are critical seasons about whose seriousness there
can be no doubt. One of these is now passing over the English Church.
And Mr. Gladstone has recognised it, and borne himself in it with a
manliness, earnestness, and temper which justify those who have never
despaired of his doing worthy service to the Church, with whose cause
he so early identified himself.
The pamphlet before us, to which he has put his name, is the most
important, perhaps, of all that have been elicited by the deep interest
felt in the matter on which it treats. Besides its importance as the
expression of the opinion, and, it must be added, the anxieties of a
leading statesman, it has two intrinsic advantages. It undertakes to
deal closely and strictly with those facts in the case mainly belonging
to the period of the Reformation, on which the great stress has been
laid in the arguments both against our liberty and our very being as a
Church. And, further, it gives us on these facts, and, in connection
with them, on the events of the crisis itself, the judgment and the
anticipations of a mind at once deeply imbued with religious
philosophy, and also familiar with the consideration of constitutional
questions, and accustomed to view them in their practical entanglements
as well as in their abstract and ideal forms. It is, indeed, thus only
that the magnitude and the true extent of the relations of the present
contest can be appreciated. The intrinsic greatness, indeed, of
religious interests cannot receive addition of dignity here. But the
manner of treating them may. And Mr. Gladstone has done what was both
due to the question at issue, and in the highest degree important for
its serious consideration and full elucidation, in raising it from a
discussion of abstract principles to what it is no less--a real problem
of English constitutional law.
The following passage will show briefly the ground over which the
discussion travels:--
The questions, then, that I seek to examine will be a
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