these consequences has your centralizing policy produced? Oh! Sir James Graham, remember the nightly roits in Wales, and the glare of incendiarism in Suffolk, and beware, ere it is too late!

The

We record, with exultation and joy, our firm belief, gathered from the facts we have recorded, that the Church is now awake to the necessity of action, as regards the poor, both for her own sake and for the sake of the State. We record with exultation these proofs that she is exerting herself to right good purpose; and we warn statesmen in general, and Sir James Graham in particular, that if the State will not or cannot assist her efforts, it should be cautious how it obstructs or impedes them. Church has not of late years been popular, and perhaps Governments think they can take advantage of that circumstance. Let it be remarked, however, that she is daily obtaining greater power that in every part of England the people are exhibiting the interest they take in her welfare-in the preservation of her discipline, and the purity of her observances. A time promises to come, and that speedily, if things pursue their present course, when the Church, purified by the fire through which she has passed, shall appear in all her majesty when she shall be the popular, and the State the unpopular, power-when the poor will flock to her as to a nursing mother, raising the cry of "sympathy" versus "system"-a cry for sympathy with their individual woes (such as the Church affords) in lieu of the cold, calculating, systematic treatment of poverty as a plague, and the poor as a tainted flock, which is the principle of that legislation of which the new Settlement Bill is a specimen. Let statesmen beware that, when such a day comes, the Church is shorn of none of her power to succour and assist the State.

In pursuing the present system towards the poor, the State is pressing a principle which even its advocates admit to have its limits, and which the sense of the nation undoubtedly considers to have been pushed far enough. We do not ask the State to undo, hastily, what has already been done; but we do demand that the principle on which she is acting be not extended to the Church's detriment. Sympathy, as we have before remarked, is now demanded rather than principle. Leave it to the Church, if you please, to act upon that principle in her treatment of the poor, single-handed and unassisted by the State; but refrain from interfering with her blessed privilege and duty, by measures which detract from her authority, and tend to limit the sphere of her usefulness.

ART. XI.-A History of the Nonjurors: their Controversies and Writings; with some Remarks on the Rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer. By THOMAS LATHBURY, M.A., Author of "A History of the Convocation," &c. Pickering.

1845.

WE had thought that the Nonjurors and Jacobites were all dead and buried that the questionable point which called the faction into existence fell into nonentity with the last Pretender, and was laid in his grave; and we are both surprised and grieved that this defunct squabble should be revived, fearing that it may add both complication and bitterness to the contentions now on foot, and which are already sufficiently deplorable. But we must take facts as we find them. Mr. Lathbury confesses that his sympathies are, to a great degree, enlisted on the side of the nonjurors, and his book shews that his partialities are greater than he suspects; probably owing to the circumstance of a nonjuror's library having fallen into his possession, which, while it has furnished him with abundant materials for a defence of the nonjurors, would contain little on the other side. "A collection of the works of the nonjurors (is) in my possession, which was once the property of (one) in the county of Somerset," &c. (p. 134). And as it is remarked that the opinions of the nonjurors found supporters in the West of England long after they had become extinct in other parts of Britain, so it may be possible that some of the disgraceful scenes which have occurred in the diocese of Exeter are only the ebullitions, under another form, of the same wilful, unsubdued spirit.

"I have been informed by a gentleman, residing in the West of England, that a nonjuring clergyman was living so late as the year 1815."......" Some objected altogether to the worship of the national Church, on the ground of what were termed immoral prayers: others, like William Law, although they could not take the oaths, were content to communicate with the Church of England as private individuals. There were others who, though they attended their parish churches, probably because they were not sufficiently numerous to form a separate congregation with a clergyman of their own, took with them a separate prayer-book, printed before the Revolution, in order that they' might not join in the prayer for the reigning sovereign. This probably was not an uncommon practice. A gentleman in the West of England-a district in which many nonjurors resided, and in which they lingered longer than in any other part of the country-informs me that this practice was adopted by several of his ancestors."—(412-413.) ·

Such conduct as this appears to us far more dishonest, and more offensive to God, and more subversive of morality, than

anything which the nonjurors have imputed to those who took the oaths of allegiance; and it was the more dangerous to morals from being all done under the notion of loyalty and regard to conscience. Yet, leaving each man at liberty to determine for himself to whom he owes allegiance, and by what laws he is bound in Church and State, we do not deny the piety of the great majority of the nonjurors, and acknowledge the learning and talents of many of the leaders of the party; but these qualities may be found in persons who have a very small share of common sense, and of this latter quality we can find very little indication among the nonjurors. There are, we confess, rather a large number of bishops to whom we are imputing some lack of this vulgar acquirement; but the defective among the clergy were not so numerous in proportion. Mr. Lathbury expresses surprise that so large a number as four hundred should have refused the oath." (p. 107.) We do not consider five per cent. in any body of men as a surprisingly large proportion of individuals who are "no conjurors."

Self-preservation is the first dictate of common sense, in the largest meaning of the word; temporal as well as eternal safety is what all men first think of; and in endeavouring to secure themselves, and obtain permanent safety, common sense next dictates that we should judge of the future by the past: and as men have acted before, so we should expect the same men to act again under similar circumstances. Common sense required the Church of England to regard self-preservation as her first duty; and as every act of James's life had shewn that he had resolved to destroy the Church of England, and substitute Romanism instead, common sense required that he should be set aside by the Church of England, if she herself were any longer to subsist-if she would not commit suicide. The nonjurors said Nay: we can keep James on the throne, and make William regent: that is, give William the power to coerce James, and uphold the Church of England against the King and the Romanists. This idea really appears to us fraught with absurdity on its very surface; contrary to all experience of human nature, and to all the course of history; and subsequent events have shewn that it could only have issued in another civil war, or the re-enactment of the horrors of the reign of Mary, with no Elizabeth for a successor.

The nonjurors themselves, with Archbishop Sancroft at their head, had found it necessary to resist the measures of James, and seven bishops were sent to the tower in consequence. "Sancroft, with his brethren, united (also) with the temporal lords in beseeching the Prince (William) to adopt measures for

the safety of the kingdom. There was no reluctance on the part of the archbishop and bishops in begging the Prince to act: but they did not contemplate his accession to the throne." (p. 27.) "The bishops and clergy had no wish to see James restored to power: but they conceived that every purpose connected with the safety of the country would have been answered by a regency......Sancroft and his brethren would have cordially concurred in such a settlement; and the peace of the Church would have been unbroken." (p. 33.) The question is, not whether the clergy would concur in such a settlement, but whether anybody else would ?-whether there was the least ground for expecting that James would?-whether William could be induced to undertake such a regency?-and whether the people would concur, and would not rather insist upon a definite settlement-insist upon James's abdication, and William's ascending the throne? We know, from subsequent experience, that such would have been the case; but we say that common sense would suggest these objections at the time, and that it shewed very little common sense in the nonjurors to entertain any idea of such a settlement.

Charles and James seem to have learned no lesson of morality or wisdom by the troubles which brought their more worthy sire to the grave, and brought back less of principle than had formerly belonged to the Stuarts, and a degree of profligacy unknown to their ancestors, and foreign to England before the times of the Restoration. James, in principle, was almost as corrupt as Charles; but he was of a more phlegmatic temperament: we believe that to both brothers, however, it was the palliation and easy remission of sin, which the Roman Church held out, that gave that communion favour in their eyes. But from whatever cause, James had become a determined Romanist, and would not have rested until he had brought England again under the power of the Pope. And this he esteemed so meritorious an act that he was willing to hazard his crown in the attempt; and did not swerve from his purpose in any extremity, and used Romanists on all occasions as his most trusty agents. Under such circumstances, it was senseless infatuation in the nonjurors to imagine that James could be restrained by a regent; and neither William, nor any one with a grain of sense, would ever have undertaken so hopeless, so absurd a charge. What!-be king, and in full possession of his senses, and yet have a regent over him! It was as desperate a course as abdication, with the absurdity of not attaining its end, but being certain of leading to an abdication or something worse. But they said that they were bound by their oaths to James,

and this is a scruple which should always be treated with respect. Yet it is obvious that all such oaths are of the nature of a public compact, and imply conditions on both sides, the breach of which by one party loosens the bond of the other party; and, in extreme cases, may entirely annul it. This was one of those cases, England had repudiated Romanism; none but Protestant institutions were legal; and of the highest of these institutions it was especially and emphatically true, that Protestantism was the indispensable condition; a Protestant king was the lawful king of England; to such a king Protestant England had pledged its allegiance; James ceasing to be Protestant was no longer, in a legal sense, king of England, James certainly was a thorough-going Romanist, and we have no doubt that this was the main-spring of all his actions. His descendants seem to have ascribed all his misfortunes to his deserting the national faith; and either from this cause, or from better motives, had Protestant chaplains, and were permitted to have them even at Rome. Wagstaffe was one of them, the author of "A Defence of the Eikonbasilike;" and afterwards a nonjuror (229). It is even reported that "Charles Edward formally renounced Romanism in 1753, at the New Church in the Strand" (409). It is said that, on one occasion, while witnessing a procession at Rome, he exclaimed to a Roman Catholic peer, "Oh, that our family should deprive themselves of three kingdoms for such nonsense!" (410).

There seems to have been something cranky and conceited about the nonjurors before they were thus brought into prominence, and became distinguished as a party; since Dodwell, one of the most eminent among them for his writings, had refused to take orders at Trinity College, Dublin, on some scruple of conscience, in 1666, though Jeremy Taylor, who esteemed him, endeavoured to remove his difficulties. And they afterwards divided and subdivided, splitting hairs with each other, till there were almost as many sects of non-jurors as there were congregations or companies so called, No reason or principle can be found to justify the deprived bishops in constituting others with the title of bishops as any of their numbers died off, and their correspondence with James on the subject, and through him with the Pope, rendered it a treasonable act, as well as in the highest degree absurd. Sancroft was even so ignorant of Church principles as to draw up an instrument delegating his archiepiscopal authority to Lloyd, the deprived Bishop of Norwich; and the whole party were so silly as to act upon this instrument of imbecility, as though it had been a codicil to a will, and the archbishopric had been a farm or a patrimony,