CCXVI. TO JOHN PURSER, ESQ,

Stapleton, February 4, 1840.

The alarming danger now happily and for some time to come, blown over, that the Tories might come into power, had a main reference to the too probably dangerous consequences in Ireland. For the escape, the temporary escape of both countries, thanks to the Irish members of parliament, and to Dan. as their imperial chief. The high-sounding epithet is authorized by the plain fact that there is no individual, probably in the world, who, on the strength of what he is in his mere self, in the absence of all accessaries of office, rank, wealth, connexion, has so prodigious a power. We of the reforming (or call it radical) class, have exceptions and grave ones, to take against him, but on the whole are vastly glad to have him as the Achilles of our camp. We want every strong hand against the proud and powerful party arrayed in fierce opposition to every kind of national improvement. Do but look at their temper and purposes, more flagrantly manifested of late than ever before. Hatred of everything tending to favor and advance the interests of the people; hatred of popular education, on any other condition than that of vigorous subservience to the church; hatred of dissenters and their just claims; hatred of all attempts at the correction of old corrupted institutions; bigotry in all forms; and an immense quantity of the most loathsome hypocrisy under the pretence and boast of zeal for Protestantism; a furious bellowing kept up for the basest purposes by very many, who neither know nor care anything at all about real religion.

You advert to the "Oxford Tract" concern. It is curious enough that, just contemporaneously with the loudest burst of the cleric outcry about Protestantism, a section of them, rapidly extending as it is understood, are forswearing that same Protestantism, and veering far and fast toward Rome. I have road very little on the subject, not even Taylor's pieces,* ,* which however I do mean to read some time soon; very able and effective I hear ou all hands. It is but small interest that I feel about the whole affair, excepting in one point of view, its being a schism in the establishment, tending to confusion and dislocation, an intimation of rot and cracks in the timbers of the old pernicious edifice. On this account it pleases me much; for while it is too true that it is doing some injury to religion, I hope it will do much more damage to what has beer. and continues infinitely pernicious to Christianity, a state-established hierarchy.

All I have lived to see has confirmed me faithful to the principles of that early time which you well remember. I want, if I could, to repe. the suspicion, that my favorite early associate, friend, and-dare I say? -pupil, has somewhat deflected toward the more fashionable side.

* Ancient Christianity and the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the Times. By the Author of "Spiritual Despotism."

CCXVII. TO SIR C. E. SMITH, BART.

March 9, 1840.

DEAR SIR,-. . . . On supposition that you saw my letter to Dr. L., I shall not need to repeat in many words what I observed as to the position of writers in the controversy, that the work is most appropriately and advantageously in the hands of men vigilantly attentive to the contemporary movements; immediately apprised of the course of opinions ; habitually inspecting periodical publications; prompt to seize topics and occasions as they arise; men, who, in a phrase of the field, can shoot flying. Here specialities must make a large part of the service; for surely we are not now to be constantly repeating the common-places of the argument.

We cannot but believe that intelligent controversy will do some good in favor of truth. It will at least tend to give dissenters a better hold of their principles, of which the mass of them are very ignorant; and it may prevent some waverers from going over to the establishment—will it do much more? Do you expect that it will? Where are the proselytes from the adherents to the church? adherents confirmed such by either opinion or habit? With one or two exceptions, what clergyman (anything worth as an acquisition to us) has become a dissenter? and what laymen of any account have fallen into our ranks? My sphere of knowledge is extremely narrow; but I do not learn that even the extreme, and in many instances violent and outrageous bigotry of the clergy, so glaring in the present times, has had the effect of exciting in church-goers a disgust against the church itself. They cling to it in spite of any dislike or disapprobation (if indeed they feel it) of the spirit of so many of its ministers. It seems to be only on those who are adverse or indifferent to the church that this furious illiberality has the effect-the good effect I will call it-of creating or confirming an antipathy to the establishment. And is it not probable that this virulent bigotry will do ten times more for the cause of dissent in the way of consolidation among themselves, and of acquisition from the intelligent indifferents, if such there be, than all the theoretical argumentation? Argument will be but a subsidiary force; let it be added, however, as a sort of guide to the action of the stronger force.

Here occurs to me a consideration that strikes me very strongly. You wish the controversy to be carried on in an amicable manner; quite right for an intercommunication direct, and almost, as it were, personal, between the parties. But at the same time, in an interchange of reasonings on these terms, the dissenter is precluded from by far the most effective of his resources; I mean, an unqualified exhibition of the practical character of the hierarchy reviewed on the wider ground of history, or (more immediately available) as seen in our own history during the last few generations, and as manifested in the present times.

Look at the present state and temper of the church; the into

lerance of the most ostensible and prominent portion of it, acqaresced in by the main or whole body, or at least not protested against by any part of it;—the firm alliance with political corruption; the opposition to all sorts of reform; the identifying of Christianity with the establishment, or almost giving the precedence to the latter; the essentially worldly nature of the whole system of appointment by patronage, purchase at auction, &c., &c., and the melancholy and disastrous fact that a vast majority of the clergy teach a doctrine fatally erroneous, if the doctrine of the reformers be true. Now, all this belongs to the dissenters' argument, it is of the essence of their case, and without it they can do but very partial justice to that case. They have a right to insist on this as manifesting the essentially vicious nature of an established church; that these are not mere incidents, foreign and separable; if they had been so, in what country so likely as in England should they have been cleared off, leaving the establishment a pure Christian institution? Why do I trouble you to read this prolixity of sentences? it is to show that the dissenting principle cannot be asserted in the fulness of its legitimate argument in such a controversy as churchmen will admit to be amicable or even civil. They will require you to come away out of sight of all this, and to go quietly with them on some ideal ground of a plausible theory. They will talk to you (just as if the thing were not palpably Utopian) about a supposed ecclesiastical institution that should send throughout the country some dozen thousand pious, well-disciplined, diligent, exemplary instructors, vigilantly superintended by faithful, zealous, apostolic bishops, authorized and aided in every way by patrons and a government intent on the spiritual welfare of the people; and then they will challenge you with the question, " Would not this be an excellent thing, far better than leaving the important concern to voluntaryism, fanaticism, and chance?" To which the proper answer would be, “It is not worth making a question about so idle a fiction; wait till the government, the prelacy, and the body of aristocratic patronage shall consist at least of men decidedly religious; till the universities shall be 'schools of the prophets,' and till young men shall enter the church no longer as a mere profession, or in pursuit of the prizes, but from the serious desire to promote religion. Then bring the question into discussion. In the meantime we must be allowed to judge of an establishment according to its actual quality and working, as exemplified in such institutions, heretofore and at the present time, and not according to any fanciful and impracticable theory."

By all means, let the arguments of a mere theoretical kind, such as may be debated amicably with the better tempered of the opponents, and especially the scriptural one, so much insisted on by Dr. Wardlaw and others, be kept in action. They will be adapted to the small proportion of speculative thinkers. But for popular effect there is comparably greater power in an exhibition of the actual vices and mischiefs of establishments, and our own in particular. And the recent and present

spirit of the church is such as to deserve no forbearance of this mode of conducting the war-a defensive war as it is. But here I am reminded that I should not, before a further inspection of the papers in your volume, assume that you have wholly forborne the use of such ammunition. The Oxford party are working to good purpose-fast cutting away the old boasted ground of the establishment-its efficacy to maintain an uniformity of faith.

I am, dear Sir, yours, very respectfully,

J. FOSTER.

CCXVIII. TO SIR C. E. SMITH, BART.

April 9, 1840.

.

I most sincerely thank you for the gratification the book has afforded me, and I should add the valuable instruction-but for the misfortune of having about the worst memory of anybody in England, that is not absolutely in dotage. In strife against this sad grievance, I have read many of the papers two or three times.

All your readers, even your opponents, must have been ready to testify to the urbanity, or I should rather say, the Christian spirit, in which you have declared your opinions on both the ecclesiastical and political topics. I cannot add any expression of hope that those opponents will have admitted any conviction from your arguments, judicious as they are, and set forth in so excellent a spirit; for it is a fact, all the world over, that no opponent is ever convinced by controversy. I cannot recollect, that ever in my life I convinced any person, even in any degree, by opposition in argument. How happens it, that all the argument on the subject of religious establishments never has gained over an unit per thousand of some fifteen thousand clergymen, a tolerably considerable portion of them being, it may be presumed, men of conscience, and many of these being also men of large information and highly disciplined intellect? While you acknowledge yourself to be hopeless of the clergy, I am glad that you can see cause to be even sanguine" as to a portion of the gentry; since it is a judgment which you have the means of forming on an extensive acquaintance in the country and in London, with individuals and with the signs of movement and change in opinions. Within my most diminutive sphere of acquaintance I am not aware of any favorable indications.

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We shall look with much interest beyond mere curiosity to the consequences of the commotion in Scotland; for a better understanding of which I am much indebted to your papers on the subject. It was not till lately that it attracted much of my attention. Some well written letters, in one of the daily papers, within the last few months, drew my partiality towards the non-intrusionists. But I was taken considerably aback by the account of a late public meeting of dissenters in Edinburgh. . . . They said very justly, the movers of this tumult are after

all the determined maintainers of an establishment, and grossly inconsistent if not dishonest ones. . . . . They want to combine the privileges of dissenters (such as we maintain, at a great and voluntary cost) with the emolument and advantageous station of an establishment. They would repel and turn out the state, at one door, from claiming any interference in their self-authorized proceedings, and summon it in at another, to render them its humble services, and pay their stipends and all their expenses.

. . I attempted to read Mr. Alston's pamphlet; I mean to do it; but in the first trial I stopped short. In the first few pages I was dumbfounded at his ignorance in citing "the parable of the tares," and his outright assertion (an assertion however got quite in vogue) that personal wickedness is no disqualification for the ministry of religion. The grave avowal of this impious absurdity was not likely to allow my memory of facts a quiet sleep.

....

Your opponent F. H. (Dr. Arnold I believe) is evidently a very intelligent and a candid man. But what a plight such a man gets into, when he is to defend an establishment. His sixth letter for instance. It appears to me a piece of inextricable involvement; but indeed I had such difficulty to understand it, that I had not patience to make the competent trial. One needs no elaborate investigation to be very sure that all this business of arrangement, gradation, centralization, &c., has nothing to do with the plain, simple concern of teaching the Christian religion to the people.*

Yet it is necessary there should be some minds able and resolute to traverse every part of the debateable ground; and you have done your part most worthily thus far-as only an introduction, I trust, to a long sequel of valuable service; and while I am too old and frigid to be sanguine about anything but the coming of the millennium, at some distant period, I am glad you can be sanguine, as a necessary temper of mind for making zealous efforts. Are you able to extend the warm play of this feeling or temperament (if so, I should greatly envy you) to the political affairs of our country? We were in exuberant delight (vain dream!) at obtaining the Reform Bill. Even I was so foolish, in spite of my desperate conviction of the depravity of human nature. How confidently we specified the abuse it would sweep away; the beneficent measures, schemes, institutions, it would triumphantly carry into effect!

Well! we have had this grand panacea coming now on eight years, and through all this long trial its value and efficacy have been crumbling away under a powerful and unremitting process, so complete now in system, means, and agency, as to have produced a general conviction

* Vide DR. ARNOLD'S Miscellaneous Works. Letters to "Hertford Reformer." Letter 2, p. 436. Letter 5, p. 449. Letter 9, p. 466. Letter 10, p. 470. Letter 14, p. 486. Letter 17, p. 502. “Centralization," is discussed particularly in Letter 10.