Page:The "Conscience Clause" (Denison, 1866).djvu/13

9 founders of Church schools can only be free in the last way, and so if Parliament says that the Committee of Council is to have its way, which I do not believe it will say, they must incur the penalty of having a conscience. They can have nothing to do with the first way. If a Parish School be in union with the National Society, such school is expressly "for the education of the poor in the principles of the Established Church," and in no other principles, religious or secular. If a Parish School be not in union with the National Society, or if a school be a Church of England School and not a Parish School, and not in union with the National Society, the purpose, and function, and duty of such school is still the same. If it be any other, the school may indeed be called, but is not, a Parish School, or a Church of England School.

This position has been distinctly approved and recognised from the first so far as all arrangements have gone between the Committee of Council and the Committee of the National Society. This is one fact. It has been recognised since for all Church of England schools without exception by the construction of the Management Clauses. This is another fact. The principle of the two facts is the same, viz., that a "Conscience Clause" is not applicable to schools of the Church of England, however it may be applicable to other schools.

You find the "Conscience Clause" in the Management Clauses of some other schools^ as you find it in the Trust Deeds of 1840, It is there, as you would expect to find it there. Religionists whose religion is based upon private judgment of the Scriptures, and is as such subjective only, have, of course, nothing to say against a "Conscience Clause." It is an expression of their own principle. But the religion of the Church of England being based, not upon private judgment of the Scriptures, but on the judgment of the Church Primitive and Catholic, touching what is "read in," or "may be proved by," Holy Scripture, is primarily, not subjective, but objective. The Nonconformist says, "This is what I find in the Scriptures." The Churchman