ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH AND STATE, ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH. CHAPTER I. Prefatory remarks on the true import of the word, Idea; and what the Author means by the expression, "according to the idea." THE Act lately passed for the admission of Roman Catholics into the Legislature* comes so near the mark to which my convictions and wishes have through my whole life, since earliest manhood, unwaveringly pointed, and has so agreeably disappointed my fears, that my first impulse was to suppress the pages, which I had written while the particulars of the Bill were yet unknown, in compliance with the request of an absent friend, who had expressed an anxiety" to learn from myself the nature and grounds of my apprehension, that * 10. G. IV. c. 7. " An Act for the relief of His Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects."-Ed. the measure would fail to effect the object immediately intended by its authors." In answer to this I reply that the main ground of that apprehension is certainly much narrowed; but as certainly not altogether removed. I refer to the securities. And, let it be understood, that in calling a certain provision hereafter specified, a security, I use the word comparatively, and mean no more, than that it has at least an equal claim to be so called, with any of those that have been hitherto proposed as such. Whether either one or the other deserve the name; whether the thing itself is possible; I leave undetermined. This premised, I resume my subject, and repeat that the main objection, from which my fears as to the practical results of the proposed Bill were derived, applies with nearly the same force to the Act itself; though the fears themselves have, by the spirit and general character of the clauses, been considerably mitigated. The principle, the solemn recognition of which I deem indispensable as a security, and should be willing to receive as the only security-superseding the necessity, though possibly not the expediency, of any other, but itself by no other superseded-this principle is not formally recognized. It may perhaps be implied in one of the clauses (that which forbids the assumption of local titles by the Romish bishops*); * See ss. 24-5-6, prohibiting under a penalty the assumption of the titles of the bishoprics and other ecclesiastical but this implication, even if really contained in the clause, and actually intended by its framers, is not calculated to answer the ends, and utterly inadequate to supply the place, of the solemn and formal declaration which I had required, and which, with my motives and reasons for the same, it will be the object of the following pages to set forth. But to enable the reader fully to understand, and fairly to appreciate, my arguments, I must previously state (what I at least judge to be) the true idea of a Constitution, and, likewise, of a national Church. And in giving the essential character of the latter, I shall briefly specify its distinction from the Church of Christ, and its contra-distinction from a third form, which is neither national nor Christian, but irreconcileable with, and subversive of, both. By an idea I mean (in this instance) that conception of a thing, which is not abstracted from any particular state, form, or mode, in which the thing may happen to exist at this or at that time; nor yet generalized from any number or succession of such forms or modes; but which is given by the knowledge of its ultimate aim. Only one observation I must be allowed to add ; dignities and offices; the exhibition of the insignia of Romish priesthood, and the performance of any part of Romish worship or religious service, elsewhere than in the usual chapels. These enactments have been openly violated with impunity from the passing of the Relief Act to this day. -Ed. that this knowledge, or sense, may very well exist, aye, and powerfully influence a man's thoughts and actions, without his being distinctly conscious of the same, much more without his being competent to express it in definite words. This, indeed, is one of the points which distinguish ideas from conceptions, both terms being used in their strict and proper significations. The latter, that is, a con ception, consists in a conscious act of the understanding, bringing any given object or impression into the same class with any number of other objects or impressions by means of some character or characters common to them all. Concipimus, id est, capimus hoc cum illo;-we take hold of both at once, we comprehend a thing, when we have learned to comprise it in a known class. On the other hand, it is the privilege of the few to possess an idea of the generality of men, it might be more truly affirmed that they are possessed by it. What is here said, will, I hope, suffice as a popular explanation. For some of my readers, however, the following definition may not, perhaps, be useless or unacceptable. That which, contemplated objectively (that is, as existing externally to the mind), we call a law; the same contemplated subjectively (that is, as existing in a subject or mind), is an idea. Hence Plato often names ideas laws; and Lord Bacon, the British Plato, describes the laws of the material universe as the ideas in nature.* Quod in natura naturata lex, in natura naturante idea, dicitur. By way of illustration take the following. Every reader of Rousseau, or of Hume's Essays, will understand me when I refer to the original social contract, assumed by Rousseau, and by other and wiser men before him, as the basis of all legitimate government. Now, if this be taken as the assertion of an historical fact, or as the application of a conception, generalized from ordinary compacts between man and man, or nation and nation, to an alleged actual occurrence in the first ages of the world; namely, the formation of a first contract, in which men should have covenanted with each other to associate, or in which a multitude should have entered into a compact with a few, the one to be governed and the other to govern under certain declared conditions; I shall run little hazard at this time of day in declaring the pretended fact a pure fiction, and the conception of such a fact an idle fancy. It is at once false and foolish.t For what if an original contract had * Hæ autem (divinæ mentis idea) sunt vera signacula Creatoris super creaturas, prout in materie per lineas veras et exquisitas imprimuntur et terminantur. Nov. Org. P. II. 124. - Ed. + I am not indeed certain that some operatical farce, under the name of a social contract or compact, may not have been acted by the Illuminati and constitution-manufacturers at the close of the eighteenth century; a period which how far it deserved the name, so complacently affixed |