Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

independence, and national honour of the United States are as safe in the hands of Episcopalians at least, as in those of any other class of religionists in that growing country; and the descendants of many a moody Covenanter, and of many a narrow-minded Puritan, are now the willing and well principled adherents of that communion which their intemperate and prejudiced forefathers abhorred, because they did not know, and would not learn, its sober principles and beneficent practice.

"I have made this reference in order to shew that Episcopacy, which we consider of apostolical, and, therefore of Divine institution and authority, is not necessarily confined to any country, nor necessarily incompatible with any form of government. It may subsist in dignified alliance with the state, as in England; under humbler attributes, but still established, as in Sweden and Denmark; on a footing of general equality with all other Christian communions, as in America; and in a state of persecution at one period, and of simple toleration, mixed with considerable neglect and enmity, at another, as in Scotland."

Bishop Low repeats, what we believe is no longer esteemed doubtful, that the change of religion at the Revolution was effected in Scotland by a small but turbulent minority, encouraged or connived at, by that numerous class of persons who had enriched their families by the plunder of the Church. As to the more active of the deluded people who ministered as the tools of faction, he justly observes that

"It has been common, both in poetry and in prose, to consider the Covenanters as the victims of religious persecution, and their cause as the cause of religious and political liberty, while the Episcopacy and the Episcopalians of Scotland are, without hesitation, accounted the support of despotism and the ministers of persecution. If the Covenanters were indeed persecuted, it was by the government, not by the church. But the truth is, however contrary the current of opinion may still run, that what they called persecution, their own writings prove to be rebellion. The very books which hold them up as martyrs prove them to be rebels, such as no government could tolerate, and to be sullen fanatics, not only intolerant, but exercising their intolerance, without scruple, in assassination. The Episcopal Church was as tolerant at least as any religious community of the same age, and was infinitely more so than the zealots by whom she was overturned, and who declared that to grant toleration to Episcopalians would be to establish inquity by a law!" P. 21.

"From contemporary authors, it appears plain that the events referred to were accomplished, not by a majority, but by a small minority of the population, and that too of the most antiepiscopal district in Scotland. However this may be determined, it is altogether incontrovertible that, north of the Tay, and throughout the Highlands, Episcopacy predominated almost without opposi

tion. Force was necessary in most parishes to effect the changes which the Revolution settlement rendered necessary; and the great mass of the people, including the higher classes, continued attached to the Episcopal clergy and to Episcopal principles.

[ocr errors]

"The two attempts made, in 1715 and in 1745, to restore the house of Stewart, contributed much more to ruin the Episcopal church than even the Revolution. King William latterly felt some compassion for the Episcopal clergy, and some indignation at the intolerant bigotry of their persecutors; while Queen Anne treated them with something like favour. The two events just mentioned exposed them afresh to the vengeance of government, and their church to still greater evils, by the joint influence of fear and of the selfish passions. The seeds of division were sown soon after 1715, by the establishment of qualified chapels. Still, immediately before the year 1745, the Episcopal clergy exceeded in number two hundred, and their congregations were numerous and respectable.

"The tenor and the tendency of the laws of 1746 and 1748 are well known, and it is indeed astonishing that a wreck of our Church survived their unexampled severity. The pretext was political; political delinquency, real or supposed, was the cause. The effect, however, was a religious persecution, the laws being enforced, in most instances, by the bigoted zeal of local religionists. The execution of those statutes had very pernicious effects. The political delinquency, even where it was real, was accidental; while the principle which, down to the year 1745, amid so many changes, and chances, and difficulties and discouragements, yet attached so many persons of all ranks, and in all parts of the country, to their native Episcopal ministers and communion, was evidently a princiciple of religious preference of the most decided nature. I repeat, that the laws to which I have referred did great and lasting mischief, and that they actually persecuted in Scotland the faith, and worship, and church discipline which were established in England, in Ireland, and in the colonies. They could not annihilate the principle, nor change at their bidding the religious profession which had survived so long, and was felt so forcibly. They prohibited the practice, and imposed on the public profession penalties which the clergy could not resist, and which men of rank and fortune could not venture to incur. The qualified chapels supplied the form to many, but could not satisfy those who were acquainted with and attached to church unity. In numerous instances, and in various districts, especially in the Highlands, where there were no such chapels, the Episcopalians, still attached to their own church, were deprived of all means of publicly professing their religion; and the consequences, though they have been rarely noted, were most injurious to individuals, families, and districts. Had it not been for this unparalleled persecution, the severest and the most insidious which was ever endured by a Christian community in a Christian country, our Church would at this day have been in a comparatively flourishing condition.

There is still in various places, and especially in the district to which we belong, an hereditary attachment to the principles and the forms of Episcopacy, which the disasters and derelictions of more than a hundred and thirty years have not been able to destroy. I am commenting on facts: I am not pleading for novelty. It is beyond dispute, that, for sixty years after the Revolution, Episcopacy was preferred by numerous congregations, in most parts of Scotland, to the religion established; nor was it for the advantage of the country, of sound religion, and of sober morality, that it was then subjected to such hardships as no zeal could surmount, and such as seriously injured, without tending to promote the influence of any other, a system of religion which was conscientiously preferred. In this extensive district, where the harvest is great and scattered, and the labourers are few, much good might be done, were we enabled, by a moderate grant, such as is bestowed, from year to year, on the dissenters in England, and on the dissenters, Protestant and Popish, in Ireland, to provide resident ministers in every place in which the people, who have not the means themselves of meeting the expense, would receive them with open arms. It is well known that better behaved citizens, and better instructed Christians, there are not generally in any community throughout the country, than those who are Episcopalians on principle. I plead for nothing but that which we fully merit. I maintain, without hesitation, that it is not for the benefit of the country, and of those whose stake in the country is greatest, to discourage that preference for Episcopacy, wherever it may subsist. We all know what Episcopalians have been, and what they are; whereas the periodical impulses of extraordinary zeal, which occasionally excite so much noise, and exhibit so much religious pretension, generally end in satiety and lukewarmness, and sometimes fill the ranks of Socinians, semi-infidels, and radicals."

P. 23.

The only other extract which we can afford to give, respects the aid and encouragement which the Highland District over which Bishop Low presides, has occasionally re ceived from the benevolence of an individual known to most of our readers, and from the Christian zeal of an Institution to which, we hope, few of our readers are strangers.

"You are all aware, my Reverend Brethren, of the very peculiar situation of this diocese; of the peculiar inconveniences and disadvantages under which it has laboured. Of the inconveniences and disadvantages which at present I have in view, one of great magnitude consists in a large proportion of its population being utter strangers to the English language, a circumstance which, I lament to say, must shut to them many avenues of knowledge and instruction, more especially of that knowledge which maketh wise unto salvation. Means of access to that knowledge have been happily and kindly supplied by the excellent, the meritorious Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; whose generous patronage of the institution at Arpafeelie, and Christian present of the Book of Com

[ocr errors]

mon Prayer, and of religious tracts, in the Gaelic language, have I doubt not, gladdened the bleak mountain, the sequestered glen, and the lonely islands of a stormy sea.

"And here I feel myself irresistibly called upon to offer a sincere, though very inadequate, tribute of esteem, to the memory of my venerable predecessor, under whose Episcopate measures so beneficial were adopted and partly carried into execution; but of whose pious undertaking it was not permitted him to see the final accomplishment.

"For another very important improvement in the situation of this diocese, partly manifested in the now increased number of your respectable body, we are indebted to the bounty of an illustrious individual, procured, as well as other distinguished favours, through the recommendation and good offices of a never slumbering, ever active friend of Scottish Episcopacy, whose praise is deservedly in all the churches, and with whose name and family are associated virtues that dignify and adorn human nature *. To all and each of these, to the venerable society, and to individuals, including the worthy representative of a family of distinction, and other benefactors whom you all know, the grateful acknowledgments of the Bishop and Clergy of this diocese are justly due, and are hereby offered; beseeching, as in duty bound, the Author of every good and perfect gift to shower down blessings on themselves and on their families, to reward them here and hereafter, for their eminent deeds of piety and charity." P. 31.

[ocr errors]

ART. VI. Journal of a Tour in France, in the Years 1816 and 1817. By Frances Jane Carey. 8vo. pp. 518. 14s. Taylor and Co. 1823.

ART. VII. London and Paris, or comparative Sketches. By the Marquis de Vermont and Sir Charles Darnley, Bart. 8vo. pp. 310. Longman and Co. 1823,

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

WE introduced our readers last month to a gentleman who travelled to the banks of the Wabash, in order to see how he liked the situation. We have now to notice a lady who made the tour of France with the same laudable object, and a gentleman who furnishes descriptions of London and Paris without stirring from his garret in Grub Street. The latter is un

John Bowdler, Esq., who, to the irreparable loss of our poor Church, departed this life on the 29th of June 1823, in the 79th year of his life, full of piety and good works. He is buried in Eltham church-yard, the parish where he latterly lived, near to his admirable friend Bishop Horne.-See Christian Remembrancer for August,

questionably the most patriotic of the three, seeing that he eats his bread and cheese at home, and wastes no portion of his substance upon foreigners. If his lucubrations were as valuable as those of the travelling tourists, he would be entitled to double praise: since his power of imagination, as well as narration, has been severely taxed. But in the instance before us, the palm must be awarded to the lady, who publishes an amusing volume, rather than to the commonplace Essayist, who wraps himself up under the dignified incognito of Marquis de Vermont, and Sir Charles Darnley.

The Marquis, as might be expected, writes bad French. The Baronet has never set his foot within the society which he affects to describe. Nothing is told us concerning London or Paris which has not been said twenty times in newspapers and magazines; and without troubling ourselves to bestow more castigation upon a writer who means well and does his best, we venture to warn him against the perils of book-making, and to request that when he writes again, he will take up a subject in which he is a little more at home, than in the manners of the fashionable world. An imaginative portrait of French society may go down smoothly enough. But it is rather too presuming to describe London to those who live in it, and give proofs in every page that the picture is not taken from life.

1

Mrs. Carey wisely contents herself with relating what she saw-and her talent for this sort of writing is very much above mediocrity. Her travels lasted about a year; namely, from the summer of 1816 to that of 1817. She passed the winter at Tours, visited the principal towns in France and Switzerland, and gives us a minute account of the recommendations and disadvantages of each. We select Marseilles as a fair specimen of the rest.

"There is something in the appearance of this ancient and celebrated city that makes a strong and uncommon impression on the mind. It is not, perhaps, so much from the beauty of its streets, the grandeur of its stately buildings, the extent and shade of its umbrageous walks, the capaciousness of its harbour, or the magnificence of its quays, as from novelty, the potent charm of novelty, which is thrown over the whole. The harbour is crowded with shipping, and many of the vessels are of a make peculiar to the navigation of the Mediterranean. Pleasure boats line the quays, and they have a form distinct from others, shaped like a walnut shell, and covered with square awnings of silk, of bright and gaudy colours. Though they may not be quite so gorgeous and splendid as the bark of Cleopatra, yet their gay and gallant trim has a pleasing influence on the fancy, and one might almost imagine

Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm.'

« ÎnapoiContinuă »