any change be constitutionally made which affects the National Church; since her existing system is the result of the joint assents of the clergy, the laity, and the Crown of England.

All this had possessed long the minds of many who were content to prepare cautiously the way and wait with patience for what they had resolved to gain. They strove hard to win the mind of Bishop Blomfield to their view; but here again his foresight failed him. In 1827 he wrote to Bishop Monk, who had preached to the Convocation against its revival. 'I like your oratiuncula greatly. It. . . . touches upon a variety of important topics with propriety and good sense, particularly upon the inexpediency of an operative Convocation.'

Again, in 1832 he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury, 'We do not wish for a Convocation;' and in 1833 to a clergyman, 'I am much inclined to doubt whether it be expedient to revive the ancient functions of Convocation as at present constituted' (Life, 162).

It was nearly ten years later, and not until the victory was already won by the Archbishop having consented to hold a regular session and to permit petitions to be presented and received, so awakening the venerable Synod from its long and occasional dreams, that Bishop Blomfield joined the conquering side. Then with his wonted generosity of spirit he entered at once into the movement, no lingering jealousy of its having been begun by others finding place in his mind, but for the future working freely with it as if it had from the first been his own conception.

We have said, we believe, enough to satisfy justice and the claims of just criticism on this less pleasing side of the picture, and we gladly let the curtain fall. To one act, indeed, of his expiring episcopate we must allude, but it shall only be to say that we do not believe that if sickness had not already bowed the strong man, he would ever have acquiesced in that resignation of the See, the Bill for effecting which his son says 'was opposed by such Churchmen as Mr. Gladstone, the Bishop of Oxford, and Sir William Heathcote' (Life, ii. p. 244). We are not sure whether this is not uttered in a tone something like ironical complaint. But of this we entertain no doubt, that posterity will most assuredly ratify the wisdom of their opposition to the Bill. It was undoubtedly a startling proposition to make two great exceptions to the universal rule of the Church of England: suffering two great Prelates to resign their sees and retain for life a large share of their endowments, when any private compact to allow a beneficed clergyman the same licence would be Vol. 114.-No. 228. voided

2 P

voided by the statute against simony. Its provisions never have been, and we trust and believe never will be, repeated in any other instance.

We have sought to set fairly before our readers these three indicative lives. Not only from our estimate of their great intrinsic interest, but because we believe them to contain richly the materials from which the religious character and prospects of our own time are to be gathered. For in these Memoirs the history of our Church in these latter days is not indistinctly written. We hope that our readers will not have failed to trace the golden thread through our own pages. It cannot, we think, be doubted that it is a record of progress of real and important progress; perhaps we may even say of progress in every direction. The Church has far more completely than heretofore learned to realize her own principles and position, and this in great measure by the curative and healthful processes of honest and laborious action. Many mists have been swept away; many questions solved; a far higher sense of duty become general; the idea of worship has revived; preaching instead of being undervalued has risen in general estimation; witness the nave services in our Cathedrals, and the leading articles of our newspapers; and yet it has taken far more its true second place in our ideas of worship, not because it has sunk, but because prayer has risen in our ordinary estimation. With far less tendency to the corruptions of Rome, we have put forth more abundantly at home the blessed shoots of a loving charity. Our churches have been restored, in some dioceses even marvellously; larger provision has been made for works of charity; sisterhoods have been founded and matured, in which the quick energies of Christian women, wedded to a life of devotion, can be combined and regulated; associations have risen on every side for increasing Church accommodation, the ministry of the Word and Sacraments, and the education of all orders and degrees amongst us. Coeval with these signs of life, there may be traced on all sides more unity, diminished suspicion, amongst those who have not yet learned to feel aright the degradations of party designations within the Church Catholic, and this with no repression of the open avowal of legitimate differences; with the laity taking more share than they ever did before in all Church matters; with Convocation sitting regularly, and discussing freely every Church question; and daily more and more referred to both in and out of Parliament as the proper exponent of the views of the Clergy of England.

Moreover, as the vitality of the Church has been quickened, the strength of the Establishment has been found greater. Far

sighted

sighted politicians have discerned that the time has passed when she was to be esteemed as a poor relation whom it was not reputable to disavow nor possible to acknowledge without certain loss; and merely worldly men have wondered at the strange revival of what they had come to esteem a doomed cause, and whisper that after all it is the strongest institution in the country. The change in the votes of the same House of Commons on such questions as the incestuous Marriage Bill and the Church Rate Bill is strongly indicative of the altered tone of public feeling and opinion.

To all this appearance of good there is undoubtedly a reverse side. The light would not be the light of Heaven if it did not deepen the shadows of earth. There is the active stirring amongst us of a spirit of scepticism. Having dealt expressly with this elsewhere, we do but touch upon it here. It is probably an inevitable concomitant of our progress and our circumstances. The rising of the Sun draws up the mists which it is gathering its strength to dissipate. It is a far healthier state to have differences declared and difficulties stated, than to stagnate in an enforced acquiescence in what the intellect disavows and the heart rejects. Amongst ourselves we have little fear of the issue. If the Church be true to herself, and if evil councils in the State do not precipitate dangers by forcing into her highest posts men who are either the feeble echoes of its own vacillation, or who are false to the truths and principles to keep and proclaim which their office was founded, or who are distrusted by the clergy of the body they have to govern, all will speedily be well, and the sky the clearer for the clouds which have swept over it.

In such a time of coming strength the difficult questions yet before us may perhaps be dealt with safely. They are political rather than religious, and yet they touch to the quick the national religion. They have relation to the mode in which the result of that concordat between the Church Catholic and this realm, which we commonly designate as the Established Church, can without compromise be maintained, and yet the perfect liberty— political, social, and religious—of the surrounding sects be established. They relate to the increase of and the appointments to the episcopate; to the measures and degrees of self-government to be allowed or encouraged in the Church; with all the other questions this involves, of reformed Canons for her discipline and new or adapted Services for her need. In the face of her recent progress, her growing unity, her enlarged efficiency, and her widened basis of general esteem, we doubt not that the good time

580

The Church of England and her Bishops.

will come when through the co-operation of her highest prelates (appointed for their strength rather than for their weakness), with statesmen of honesty and character, who belong in truth to her communion, the difficulties of her position may be contemplated with wisdom, encountered with courage, and arranged with justice and success. Come when it may, we are firmly convinced that the way for its happy arrival was in good measure prepared, if not by the far-sighting sagacity, yet by the honest, hearty, self-denying labours and nobly disinterested liberality of the late Bishop Blomfield.

ERRATUM TO VOL. 113.

P. 527, 1. 13, for "Montauban," read "Montmartre."

At the request of Captain Jesse, whose account of what he saw in Paris, in December, 1851, is noticed in the passage above corrected, we add that in the remarks which we then made, and which are entirely general in their nature, we had no intention to impugn the courage or the veracity of that gentleman. Captain Jesse is the author of 'Notes of a Half-pay in Search of Health,' which was reviewed in Vol. 69, of the Quarterly Review.

INDEX

TO THE

HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH VOLUME OF THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.