Page:The Conscience Clause (Oakley, 1866).djvu/49

37 of attempted modification of the Church's teaching has never been, and I believe never will be, attempted—is certainly not claimed by the Conscience Clause. The spiritual responsibility of the Church has been recognised throughout the correspondence of the Committee of Council, and is asserted in Lord Granville's evidence before the recent committee, as unassailable. The proposed Conscience Clause guards and guarantees it in express terms. There is no interference with it at all; but in order to avoid such interference as might arise (say from having to allow an unbaptised or a lay-baptised child to omit such parts of the Catechism or other formularies as would be simply untrue in his particular case, or other discretionary modification at the instance of an individual objector), a simple demand is made for the exemption y in all cases, of such children from such instruction, if their parents desire it; and that in return for a definite money consideration, inalienably made for the benefit of all, religious differences notwithstanding.

2. "Because the Church may not help the State to occupy a position hitherto never occupied or pretended to be occupied in England by the civil power, one which belongs of God's gift and ordinance to the Church, and which does not belong to the civil power by any gift or ordinance either of God or man. I mean the position of defining and regulating the matter and the manner of Christian teaching in parish schools or in parish churches."

The State does not in the Conscience Clause ask the Church to help it to do anything of the sort. I pass by the statement that "the position of. defining and regulating the matter and manner of Christian teaching in parish schools and parish churches" " belongs of God's gift and ordinance to the Church." It is of course, in a certain general sense, true. But it is an oddly verbose amplification of the brief Divine precept—the single sentence of Christ's which is held to cover