Page:The "Conscience Clause" (Denison, 1866).djvu/17

13 a new "Conscience Clause." I have not got it here, but when I saw it, I said, why this is only making ambiguous what was plain. It does not get rid of a single iota of the difficulty of principle. Now let me say that there could be few things more unbecoming or more unhappy than that this House should deal with a matter of principle as if it was a matter of detail, as if the difference between Committee of Council and Committee of National Society were a difference not of kind, but of degree only. The Rev. M. Morris, again, who has kindly sent me his pamphlet, won't touch the "Conscience Clause," but wants to alter the National Society's terms of union by leaving out "Catechism," or adding some words to signify that the discretion of the parochial clergy for the time being is to be the rule. The first proposition, I am quite sure, upon reconsideration, he will see has nothing to recommend it, and everything against it. The other is wholly needless, because it is understood upon all hands to be the rule already.

We must have no tampering with the Parish School. For what is the Parish School? It is the nursery of the Parish Church. It is the place where the parish priest is to teach the children of the parish, as he is sworn to do in his ordination, "The Doctrine of the Sacraments, and the Discipline of, as the hath commanded, and as this Church and Realm hath received the same, according to the commandments of ." This is the primary and normal work of a Parish School. Again, it may be lawfully used, as it is used by many, for carrying out the missionary work of the Church of England in teaching the children of the Sects, or in preparing them to be taught, the Faith of the Church. But at this point its legitimate uses cease. It is not a place for secular teaching apart from the religion of the Church, nor again for what the Committee of Council appear to think is all that is wanted to make school teaching to be, not secular but