Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/603

1760 George III. William, though he achieved the toleration, never could, as we have seen, reform the state church.



In fact, all history testifies to the great fact, that a state church never can remodel itself; a fact which is every day now rendering more and more of the members of an Anglican establishment desirous that their church should be freed from the trammels of the state. They begin to perceive that a state requires the church it patronises to support its own measures, right or wrong, rather than to support Christianity; and that, to flourish fully, a church must be free. They see that a state church, once organised, can never undergo any change, except that which time ploughs upon it, in bringing it to the earth. Like those tabernacles and towers which bear its own name, amid the everlasting freshness and vitality of nature, it grows grey, and crumbles piecemeal to the dust. Around it the elements of free mind, the winds of discussion, the dews of pure and heartfelt sentiment, the fructifying seas of knowledge, nay, the very thunder and blackness of opposition, keep the whole world beautiful in perpetual youth; whilst over its walls creep grey lichens of age, humid mosses of superstitious stagnation; the worm and the weather work faster than hands which dare not renew, lest they endanger, and the whole huge fabric stands a venerable ruin! In our own time, in consequence, how many of its best sons and daughters behold with consternation the rents, and schisms, and struggles, which are going on in its interior, whilst, bound by political chains, it knows not how to cast out its sorrows. William's intended reforms were a vain attempt to escape from this ancient law of establishments; the only consequence of which was to rouse the elements of antagonism against him. Anne was a Stuart and a tory, and, no sooner was she on the throne, than the whole brood of church absolutists raised their heads, and endeavoured to revoke the Act of Toleration. They sought to do this by the Occasional Conformity Act—an attempt to crush opinion instead of influencing understandings; to convict where they could not proselytism; to swell the nominal numbers of churchmen with slaves and hypocrites. Three times was this infamous bill introduced, in still fresh shapes, and three times, though passed by the commons, rejected by the lords, where still sate the liberal bishops, created by William. This defeat roused the old cry of "the church is in danger!" Bishop Burnet, who, whilst he never failed to stand firm for religious liberty, and to whom the people of England are, and ever will be, indebted for his liberal acts and counsels, and for his faithful record of the civil and ecclesiastical transactions of his time, was always, at the same time, watchful for the real wants of his own church. Seeing now the destitute condition of many of the small livings, he prayed the queen to bestow on these the tenths and first-fruits, which at the time amounted to sixteen thousand pounds a year. It was hoped that this would soothe the angry spirit of the high churchmen; "but," says Burnet, "the clergy took it, and scarcely showed themselves thankful for it." The benefit, in fact, did not fall to the rich pluralists who were making all the riot, but to the humble and quiet portrait of the clergy.

Oxford fanned the flame of party conflict which raged for