very numerous, but of considerable weight in the land, I have not hesitated to show them that those sacred oracles from which they derive the principles of their faith and practice, are in perfect consonance with the principles of the British constitution, and the doctrines of the Established Church: not that I doubt their loyalty or attachment to the State or the Church, but to manifest to men of these and future generations, the absolute necessity of holding fast that form of sound words which distinguishes our national Church, and ever connects the fear of God with honouring the king.'-vol. ii. p. 314.

In a communication which he makes to Lord Sidmouth, on the subject of a loyal address which the Methodist ministers proposed to send to King George IV. on his accession, he tells him— 'As they find that a deputation from the three denominations of Dissenters had been condescendingly received by his Majesty, these ministers, as not ranking under any of those denominations-standing nearer to the Established Church than any of the others-holding, without exception, all her doctrines, venerating her authority, and using her religious service and consequently, in their own apprehension, not justly denominated Dissenters, in any legal sense of the term humbly wished to be received also by deputation,' &c.—vol. iii. p. 279.

Then, with respect to his own practice, Adam Clarke admitted candidates to the ministry, according to the form of the Church in ordaining priests.-(iii. p. 67.) When he administered the sacrament of baptism, it was always more ecclesiae Anglicana;— (iii. 175, 395,) and when he buried the dead, it was apparently after her form too.-(iii. p. 200.) Confirmation he received himself at the hands of Bishop Bagot, after he had become a preacher, and he encouraged his people to resort to the church for the same rite.-(iii. p. 232.) He is most anxious that a new edition of the Polyglott should be undertaken; but he wants the bishops to stir in it- his heart's desire being that the honour should be with the British Church.'-(iii. p. 109.) He is found a hearer in a church -nay, in a cathedral-and partakes of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper at its altar.-(ii. p. 254.) He is solicitous to gather his children together once more, and, in company with them, to make a solemn covenant with God, cum Deo inire fædus; and the way. in which he proposes it should be done is, by repairing to the church, and there getting the clergyman to administer to them the communion, one and all; adding, as he imparts the proposal to his dear lads,' old Samuel Wesley's touching application of Scripture, on a somewhat similar occasion- With desire have I desired to eat this last passover with you before I die.'—(vol. ii. p. 409.) And to crown all, and to give a further pledge of his sincerity in these repeated avowals, both by word and deed, of his attachment to the establishment, he brings up one of his sons at Cambridge, and leads him to take orders in the church.

Such

Such were the sentiments of Adam Clarke on this great question ; a man in whom Wesley had such confidence, that he made him one of seven trustees of all his literary property, and as it thereby turned out, executors of his will.

We now hasten to the closing scene of his life. In the autumn of 1832, the cholera was spreading death and dismay far and wide throughout this land. Dr. Clarke appears to have had no personal fear of it. On the contrary, he made volunteer excursions into districts where it prevailed. He specially named it, however, in the morning and evening devotions which he offered up in his family, and prayed that each and all might be saved from its influence, or prepared for sudden death. He was engaged to preach at Bayswater, on Sunday, 26th August, and on the Saturday before he was conveyed there in a friend's chaise. He was cheerful on the road, but was tired with his journey and listless in the evening; and when a gentleman asked him to preach a charity sermon for him and fix the day, he made answer, I am not well; I cannot fix a time; I must first see what God is about to do with me.' He retired to bed early, not without some of those symptoms that indicated the approach of this awful disease, but which do not appear to have excited any suspicions in himself or in his friends. He rose in the morning ill, and wanting to get home; but before arrangements could be made for his removal he had sunk in his chair,-that icy coldness, by which the complaint was characterised, had come on,-and when the medical men arrived, they pronounced it a clear case of cholera. His wife, and most of his children, short as the summons was, gathered about him he had ever been the most affectionate of husbands and parents and his looks indicated great satisfaction when he had them by his side, nec desideraverunt aliquid oculi; but he was now nearly speechless. Am I blue?' however, he said to one of his sons, a question indicating his knowledge of the malady under which he was sinking; and without any effort of nature to rally, he breathed his last with a short sob, about the seventieth year of his age. 'The heart,' adds the biographer of his later days, 'knoweth his own bitterness, but what can equal the anguish of that emotion which first tells the wife that she is a widow, and the children that they are fatherless? They feel its pang once-to forget it no more for ever.'

It is clear that Adam Clarke considered the system of Methodism, with Wesley its founder, as a system supplementary to the Church Establishment, and no more. It was not by them intended to go alone. But others, wiser as they think, in their generation, have discovered in the success of this experiment, and of other experiments of a like kind, (all, however, made, it must

be

be remembered, in a country where a National Church was as yet standing and ministering to the great bulk of the inhabitants,) an argument against any Church Establishment at all; which, accordingly, they declare to be unlawful, inexpedient, and unnecessary. We know not how we can conclude a memoir like the present more appropriately than by a few observations in reply to these misstatements. We are of opinion, indeed, that the theory of our Church is fast working itself clear-that circumstances in our own times somewhat similar to those under which it took its shape, are beginning to teach us, a matter which we were in danger of forgetting, how that shape came to be what it is-as one who stands upon the same spot, and shoots a second arrow the same way, finds the first which he had lost. Well will it be if amongst those many points of resemblance of our own to former days, which are thus bringing out the principles on which our Church is constructed, the following character, sketched by the graphic pen of our great sarcastic divine, may not be discovered to have a place.

• There is one who lives by the altar, and turns his back upon it; one who catches at the preferments of the Church, but hates the discipline and orders of it; one who practises conformity, as papists take oaths and tests-that is, with an inward abhorrence of what he does for the present, and a resolution to act quite contrary when occasion serves; one who, during his conformity, will be sure to be known by such a distinguishing badge, as shall point him out to, and secure his credit with, the dissenting brotherhood; one who, in the midst of his conformity, thinks of a turn of State, which may draw on one in the Church too; and accordingly, is very careful to behave himself so as not to overshoot his game, but to stand right and fair in case a wishedfor change should bring fanaticism again into fashion; which it is more than possible that he secretly desires, and does the utmost he can to promote and bring about.

And, therefore, if there be any one who has the front to own himself a minister of our Church, to whom the foregoing character may be justly applied, howsoever such an one may for some time soothe up and flatter himself in his detestable dissimulation, yet, when he shall hear of such and such of his neighbours, his parishioners or acquaintance, gone over from the Church to conventicles; and when the noise of those national dangers which are every day threatening us, shall ring about his ears, let him then lay his hand upon his false heart, and with all seriousness of remorse, accusing himself to God. and his own conscience, say, I am the person, who by my conforming by halves, have brought a reproach upon the purest and best constituted Church in the Christian world.'

Now we would remind the objectors to an Established Church, that the principle was fully recognized under the Old Testament, and has never been cancelled under the New, and therefore cannot

be

be supposed to have anything in it essentially wrong; and if it be replied, as no doubt it will be, that our Lord's language is, 'My kingdom is not of this world,' we make answer,-true, but these words of Jesus to Pilate, who charged him with conspiring against Cæsar, are hardly to be understood as meaning that kings are not to build churches, or provide pastors for the people committed to them. And if it be further contended that kings are not in fact represented under the New Testament as nursing fathers of the Church, we again say-true, for a Tiberius and a Nero happened to be kings in those days, but that it is strange to argue from them to a George or a William in our own. Is it desirable that the Church should still suffer persecution in order that it may more closely resemble the primitive Church; and for the same reason, that the sovereign should blow the coals?

But why should a king, any king, every king, be supposed to know more about religion than his subjects-that he should be made the head of the Church? If the king undertook to teach the people himself there would be some room for the question; he only undertakes, however, to see that they be taught-taught by others called to the office originally by no authority of his, that so his subjects perish not for lack of knowledge ;-he is a Christian monarch, ruling over a Christian people, and he provides for them a Christian ministry. Is there anything so very monstrous in this? Must he of necessity be the best captain in his dominions because he looks to the national defence by granting commissions in the army; or the best lawyer, because he sees that persons shall not be wanting to administer the laws?

But the king may be the friend of religion, we are told-only he must patronise it' (that is the phrase) in the same way as he patronises any other good cause, and not establish it. Now, when he patronises other good causes, he often does so, argues a very clever Essayist on the Church,'* whose recent publication we have in our eye, by granting the parties charters of incorporation, bestowing on them crown lands, and recommending grants of money,-why may he not do the same for the best cause of all? But it is unjust that the Dissenter should pay to the support of a form of worship which he does not adopt? Strictly speaking, no man pays to its support;-it is upheld by possessions of its own; own by a title as indisputable, at least, as that by which any property whatever is held within the four seas. Even the semblance of hardship, however, can hardly attach to the Dissenter, for tithes are a rent-charge upon lands, and of the landowners is one in a hundred a Dissenter? But church-rates-is there not a hardship here, that men should be made to contribute to the maintenance of a fabric

* Essays on the Church.

its

which they never enter? No greater hardship than a thousand others, which a state of society (as opposed to a state of nature) involves. Individuals are constantly compelled to support institutions in which they have no direct interest themselves, but which the public good is understood to require. We pay our quota to a county rate for the erection of a mad-house which we shall never occupy, or of a bridge which we shall never pass; we are taxed for the maintenance of the soldier, though we may have serious scruples as to the lawfulness of the profession of arms, or political objections to a standing army.

But the Church of England is the creature of an act of parlia ment. And why should it not be? A certain form of worship is agreed upon in convocation, i. e., by a synod of the clergy and of the clergy only, after patient investigation, as having Scripture for its warrant; and then, being submitted to parliament, in order that the nation should signify its solemn assent to the same by the body which represents it, is acknowledged by parliament in the people's name. Where is the scandal in this? And if parliament further establishes such worship by the act of uniformity, it in like manner establishes (Lord Mansfield uses this very word in this very case*) the worship of the Dissenter by the act of toleration -so that both Church and Chapel may be said in this sense to stand upon act of parliament.

But the Church Establishment no longer represents the religious sentiments of the vast majority of the nation, as it once did, and therefore is no longer to be supported by the national government. We apprehend that its numerical majority is still great;-the children educated in the principles of the Church at the schools in connexion with the National Society only, which are by no means all that are so educated, are nine hundred thousand;—that in all country parishes it is very great; in the best educated and most intelligent, as well as the wealthiest classes, those therefore upon whom the burden chiefly falls, if burden there could be said to be, greatest of all. The true comparison, however, to institute is this:—what proportion do the members of the Church of England bear to those of any single body of Dissenters? Is there any single body that will admit of being named as its rival-we mean its rival in numbers? For to speak of the Dissenters as a community, in the same sense as we speak of the Church, is an abuse of language; the various sects into which they are split differing from one another at least as much as from the Establishment itself: in fact, holding nothing in common save jealousy of that, and a determination to combine for its overthrow. Besides, if the Church of England does not represent the vast majority of

* See Neal's Hist. of the Puritans, vol. v. p. 284.

the