Page:A charge delivered at the ordinary visitation of the archdeaconry of Chichester in July, 1843.djvu/21

17 less so, perhaps, with few exceptions, in this country than any other. Still it seems certain that the relation in which the Spiritualty of England stands to the Temporal Legislature at this day, differs from its relation under the Tudors and the Stuarts. Since the time of Elizabeth dissent has become an established ingredient in the country, and now of the legislature. This change of relation appears to be the design of God's Providence, and no doubt is so ordered for wise purposes, as yet unfolded only in part. It may be the essential condition of our extension as a church of many nations, that the rigid character of our national system should be relaxed, and of our greater internal power of self-expansion that the restricting protection of other days should be withdrawn. There can be no doubt that this alteration of our state was precipitated by the changes in the law in 1828 and 1829; by the sympathetic action of ecclesiastical questions in Ireland upon this country; by the unsettlement of the oldest consecrated property in England; and by the suspension of the powers by which the Church, as a church incorporated with the state, enforced her own order and discipline. I am not speaking of these as desiring to reverse acts that are past, but to illustrate the change which is passing upon our condition, and thereby to show the line in which the Church will probably henceforward advance, and the duties which consequently lie upon ourselves.