a member of a Commission which goes to destroy forcibly the sacred system on which the Church of England was endowed, is manifestly at variance with the principles of the English Church; and that to give power to Her Majesty's Secretary of State to nominate two other members of such Commission, is to deprive the Clergy and their churches of those rights which are secured to them in the Coronation Oath, especially as that oath is to be interpreted by the oath taken by the sovereigns of England previous to 1688, and in which express mention was made of the laws of Edward the Confessor. That your petitioner earnestly entreats your Right Honourable House not to be misled by the apathy and silence of the Bishops and the other Clergy, but carefully, deliberately, and impartially, to examine the merits of this petition, and to judge of it by the authorities which your petitioner has adduced, and to show, either by the immediate dissolution of the Tithe Commission, or by some such substantive enactment, that your Right Honourable House, acting upon precedents of a thousand years' duration, neither abandons, nor calls upon others to abandon, that sacred system of Church endowment to which the Bishops and the other Clergy owe the revenues of their bishoprics and livings, and which, if duly developed, will produce funds for the Propagation of the Gospel in every corner of the British Empire. And your petitioner will ever pray. Harlow Vicarage, April, 1844. CHARLES MIller. KING EDGAR'S PROCLAMATION. "Here is manifested in this writ, how King Edgar considered what might be for a remedy, in the pestilence that greatly harassed and diminished his people widely through his kingdom. "This is then, first, what he and his witan thought, that this unfortunate state of things was earned by sins, and by disobedience to God's commandments; and chiefly by the subtraction of the bounden tribute which Christian men should yield to God in their tythe-payments. He bethought and considered the divine course by that of the world. If any agricultural tenant neglect his lord's tribute, and render it not to him at the right appointed time, one may think, if the lord be merciful, that he will forgive the neglect, and take his tribute without punishing him. If he then, frequently, through his messengers, admonish him of his tribute, and he then hardeneth himself, and thinketh to hold it out, one may think that the lord's anger will wax to such a pitch, that he will allow him neither property nor life. So, one may think, our Lord will do, through the boldness with which common men resist the frequent admonition which our teachers have given about our Lord's bounden tribute, which are our tythes and church-shots. Then bid I, and the archbishop, that ye provoke not God, nor earn a sudden death in this present life, nor, what is worse, a future one in everlasting hell, by any subtraction of God's rights: but let every one, whether poor or rich, who has any cultivated land, render to God his tythes, with all pleasure and liberality, as the act teaches, which my witan enacted at Andover, and now again at Wihtbordestane with a pledge confirmed. Moreover, I bid my reeves by my friendship, and by all that they possess, that they punish every one of those who pay not this, and break the pledge of my witan with any prevarication, even as the foresaid enactment teaches; and in the punishment let there be no forgiveness. Whether a man may be so poor as to be tempted into encroachments upon that which is God's, to the ruin of his soul, or so hasty-tempered as to think little of that which he does not consider as his own, that surely must be more his own which lasts for ever, if it be done with a truly cheerful mind. Then will I that God's rights stand everywhere alike in my dominions; and that God's servants, who receive the payments that we make to God, should live clean lives, that they should through their purity intercede for us to God. And I and my thanes enjoin our priests what is taught us by the pastors of our souls, that is, our bishops, whom we should never fail of hearing in any of the things that they teach us for God, that we, through the obedience that we yield to them for God, may earn the everlasting life which they persuade us to by teaching, and by the example of good works."-Soames' Anglo-Saxon Church, 3d ed., p. 305. KING'S OATH. Episcopus.-"Sir, will you grant and keep, and by your oath confirm to the people of England, the laws and customs to them granted by the kings of England your lawful and religious predecessors, and, namely, the laws, customs, and franchises granted to the Clergy by the glorious King Saint Edward, your predecessor, according to the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel established in this kingdom, and agreeable to the prerogative of the kings thereof, and the ancient customs of this realm? Rex.-"I grant and promise to keep them." Episcopus." Sir, will you keep peace and godly agreement entirely (according to your power) both to God, the Holy Church, the Clergy, and the people?" Rex.-"I will keep it." Episcopus.-"Sir, will you (to your power) cause law, justice, and discretion, in mercy and truth, to be executed in all your judgements?" Rex.-"I will." Episcopus.-"Sir, will you grant to hold and keep the laws and rightful customs, which the commonalty of this your kingdom have; and will you defend and uphold them to the honour of God, so much as in you lieth ?" Rex.-"I grant and promise so to do." Then one of the Bishops reads this admonition to the King, before the Bishops, with a loud voice : "Our Lord the King, we beseech you to pardon, and to grant and to preserve unto us, and to the Churches committed to our charge, ALL CANONICAL PRIVILEGES, and due law and justice; and that you will protect and defend us, as every good king ought to be protector and defender of the Bishops and the Churches under his government." The King answereth, "With a willing and devout heart I promise and grant my pardon, and that I will preserve and maintain to you, and to the Churches committed to your charge, all canonical privileges, and due law and justice; and that I will be your protector and defender to my power, by the assistance of God, as every good king in his kingdom in right ought to protect and defend the Bishops and the Churches under their government." Then the King ariseth, and is led to the Communion-table, where he makes a solemn oath, in sight of all the people, to observe the premisses, and, laying his hand upon the book, saith, THE OATH. "The things that I have here promised I shall perform and keep, so help me God, and the contents of this book." This oath is to be found in the records of the Exchequer, and is published in his (King Charles) Majesties answer to a Remonstrance of the 26th of May, 1642. The same oath, for matter, you may read in an old manuscript book, containing the form of coronation, &c., in the Public Library at Oxon.-Extract from Basire on Sacrilege, p. 170. London, 1668. The following vow, made by Charles I., concerning the restoring the Church Lands, is extracted from Nelson's "Address to Persons of Quality and Estate," (Appendix 6, 1715) by a correspondent in the British Magazine :— "I, A. B., do here promise, and solemnly vow, in the presence, and for the service of Almighty God, that if it shall please His Divine Majesty, of His infinite goodness, to restore me to my kingly rights, and to re-establish me in my throne, I ll wholly give back to the Church all those impropriations which are now held by the Crown; and what lands soever I now do, or should enjoy, which have been taken away, either from any Episcopal see, or any cathedral or collegiate church, from any abbey, or other religious house; I likewise promise, for hereafter, to hold them from the Church, under such reasonable fines and rents as shall be set down by some conscientious persons, whom I promise to choose with all uprightness of heart, to direct me in this particular. And I most humbly beseech God to accept of this my vow, and to bless me in the designs I have now in hand, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Charles R. Oxford, 13 Ap. 1646."-The Progress of the Reformation in England, by the Rev. Francis Fulford, pp. 26, 27 (a note). Rivingtons, 1844. Right views of tithes expired with the non-jurors. Queen Anne's churches were built and endowed by a tax upon coals. The Church in Canada was endowed with reserved lands, which, from want of cultivation, have been called reserved wildernesses. Guinea subscriptions and casual donations are but developments of the voluntary principle; and until we can learn that the payment of tithes is a positive duty, there can be no hope whatever of any effectual propagation of the Gospel. Happily, on the principles of the constitutional law of England, the Tithe Commutation Act is not worth more than a piece of waste paper, though it serves as a veil to intercept from our eyes the brightness of truth. The obvious course for the Clergy is, to protest and to petition; on no account to avail themselves of any award of the Commissioners, but to appeal to the consciences of Englishmen, and to the ancient laws of England. The Church is here forsaken by her Bishops. It is melancholy, indeed, that the Primate should be seeking for contributions for foreign missions, while he is sanctioning a Commission which is sapping the foundation of Church endowment at home. But notwithstanding these untoward circumstances, the English Church and Constitution are provided with weapons to meet existing evils. Time will develope what Bishops and Clergy have been tempted by modern prejudice to suppress. Truth will avenge herself, and put those to the blush who have dared to compromise that sacred system of Church Endowment which was universally adopted through ancient Christendom, and which it was the glory of the English Constitution to uphold. C. M. coe, R....... (St. Lawrence, Nor-Norwich.... Lord Chancellor wich, R. ........... Carlisle...... Trustees Darell, W. L....... Fretherne, R............... G. & B...... Rev. R. C. Christie...... 282 242 G. & B...... D. & C. of Gloucester... Norwich..... Duchy of Lancaster..... Everard, E. ..... Bishop's Hull, P.C....... Hutton, C. G....... Jackson, T. Jeune, Dr. Jones, C. W. J. ...... w. G. & B...... D. & C. of Gloucester... Lamb, T............. St. Mary, Preston, P.c.. Chester...... Trustees............... P.C.. Longlands, W. D. Gerrans, R........ (St. Andrew's, Man-) Lincoln P.C. of Prince's Risboro' Norwich.... Bishop of Norwich. Readcomb, R............. G. & B...... J. Pitt..... Phillips, J. B... Pitt, J. Powell, R Bury, v.......... Richardson, B..... Robinson, T. Chichester.. Lord Chancellor Egton, P.C.................. York......... Archbp. of York......... Woodgate, G. S... Pembury, V. ......................................... Rev. S. Woodgate Bailey, J., Ceylon. CLERGYMEN DECEASED. Buckoll, J., Vicar of Great Limber. Dineley, G., B.D., Rector of Churchill, Worcestershire. Garnett, W., of Barbadoes. Kendall, J., Vicar of Budbrooke, Warwickshire, & Master of the Earl of Leicester's Hospital. Kendall, N., M. A, Vicar of Talland. Leighton, Sir John H., Bart., of Trinity Coll., Cambridge. Powell, J., Vicar of Bitteswell, Leicestershire. Syer, B., Rector of Kedington, Suffolk. PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. INCORPORATED SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING THE ENLARGEMENT, BUILDING, AND REPAIRING OF CHURCHES AND CHAPELS. REPORT read at the Annual General Court, May 21st, 1844, being the Sixteenth after its incorporation, and the Twenty-sixth from its formation. His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury in the chair: In presenting to the General Meeting of the Society the Report for the past year, the Committee desire, in the first place, to mention, with deep regret, the severe sufferings, and fatal termination of them, by which the Society has been deprived of its late Secretary, the Rev. William Johnson Rodber. They cannot omit the opportunity of expressing to the members of the Society at large a feeling, in which they are convinced all will share, of grateful remembrance of the assiduity and single-heartedness with which he laboured in the service of the Society from its first establishment, for a period of nearly six-and-twenty years. From paying this tribute, most justly due, to the faithful and devoted service of one who had deeply at heart the Society's interest, and gave his best exertions to its cause, the Committee will proceed to report the operations of the past year, and to state the present circumstances and prospects of the Society. The number of applications received in the course of the year ending March 31, 1844, was 201, a number greater by 43 than the applications made in the preceding year; and greater also, with a single exception, than the number of cases brought before the Society in any one year since its institution; the number of applications in 1840 having alone exceeded those of the present year by 4. The number of Grants made during the past year is 119, exceeding by 23 those of last year, which, however, from several causes, explained in the Report, were below the usual average. Of the Grants made during the past year, there have been for building additional Churches and Chapels, 49; for enlarging or otherwise increasing the accommodation in existing Churches and Chapels, 47; and for rebuilding, with enlargement, 23. The number of additional Churches towards the building of which Grants have been made during the past year exceeds by 6 those of the year preceding; which again exceeded those of any former year. And this is a circumstance to which the Committee cannot but call attention. During the first ten years of the Society's operations, the number of new Churches for which application was made never exceeded 2 in any year; in some years there was not one within the last seven years it has risen from 15 to 28, the number reported last year (27) equalling, as was observed in the Report, the total number during the first six years of the Society's existence. It must never be forgotten that, in the first institution of the Society, as indeed its very name bears witness, it was the "enlargement of existing Churches that was chiefly contemplated, and that the growing necessity, and the conviction of that necessity, which have led to the efforts to build new Churches in so many populous districts, while it is a most gratifying and encouraging fact to those who have at heart the interests of their country and of religion, entails at the same time heavier charges upon a Society like this, |