be distributed throughout the country, so as not to leave even the smallest integral division without a resident guide, guardian, and teacher, diffusing through the whole community the knowledge indispensable for the understanding of its rights, and for the performance of the correspondent duties. But neither Christianity, nor a fortiori, any particular scheme of theology supposed to be deduced from it, forms any essential part of the being of a National Church, however conducive it may be to its well being. A National Church may exist, and has existed, without, because before, the institution of the Christian Church, as the Levitical Church in the Hebrew, and the Druidical in the Keltic, constitutions may prove.

VI. But two distinct functions do not necessarily imply or require two different functionaries : on the contrary, the perfection of each may require the union of both in the same person. And in the instance now in question, as great and grievous errors have arisen from confounding the functions of the National Church with those of the Church of Christ, so fearfully great and grievous will be the evils from the success of an attempt to separate them.

VII. In process of time, however, and as a natural consequence of the expansion of the mercantile and commercial order, the students and professors of those sciences and sorts of learning, the use and necessity of which were perpetual to the Nation, but only occasional to the Individuals, gra

dually detached themselves from the National Clerisy, and passed over, as it were, to that order, with the growth and thriving condition of which their particular emoluments were found to increase in equal proportion. And hence by slow degrees the learned in the several departments of law, medicine, architecture and the like, contributed to form under the common name of Professional, an intermediate link between the national clerisy and the simple burgesses.

VIII. But this circumstance cannot alter the tenure, or annul the rights, of those who remained, and who, as members of the permanent learned class, were planted throughout the realm as the immediate agents and instruments in the work of increasing and perpetuating the civilization of the nation; and who, thus fulfilling the purposes for which the Nationalty was reserved, are entitled to remain its usufructuary trustees. The proceeds of the Nationalty might, indeed, in strictness, if it could ever be expedient, be rightfully transferred to functionaries other than such as are also ministers of the Church of Christ. But the Nationalty itself cannot, without foul wrong to the nation, be alienated from its original purposes; and those who being duly appointed thereto, exercise the functions and perform the duties attached to the Nationalty, possess a right to the same by a title to which the thunders from Mount Sinai might give greater authority, but not additional evidence.

IX. Previously to the sixteenth century, large b

masses were alienated from the heritable proprieties of the realm, and confounded with the Nationalty under the common name of Church property. At the period of the Reformation a re-transfer of these took place, and rightfully so: but together with, and under pretext of, this restoration to the State of what properly belonged to it, a wholesale usurpation took place of a very large portion of that which belonged to the Church. This was a sacrilegious robbery on the Nation, and a deadly wound on the constitution of the State at large. The balance of the reserved and appropriated wealth of the Nation was deranged, and thus the former became unequal to the support of the entire burthen of popular civilization originally intended to be borne by it.* Barely enough-indeed, less than enough-was left for the effectual maintenance of that primary class of the Clerisy, which had not fallen off into separate professions, but continued to be the proper servants of the public in producing

"Give back to the Church what the Nation originally consecrated to its use, and it ought then to be charged with the education of the people; but half of the original revenue has been already taken by force from her, or lost to her through desuetude, legal decision, or public opinion: and are those whose very houses and parks are part and parcel of what the Nation designed for the general purposes of the Clergy, to be heard, when they argue for making the Church support, out of her diminished revenues, institutions, the intended means for maintaining which they themselves hold under the sanction of legal robbery?" Table Talk, Pref. p. xvi. 2nd edit.

and reproducing, in preserving, promoting and perfecting all the necessary sources and conditions of the civilization of the Nation itself.*

X. Though many things may detract from the comparative fitness of individuals, or of particular classes, for the trust and functions of the Nationalty, there are only two absolute disqualifications; -allegiance to a foreign power, or the acknowledgment of any other visible head of the National Church but the King;-and compulsory celibacy, in connection with, and dependence on, a foreign and extra-national head.

XI. The legitimate objects of the power of the King and the two Houses of Parliament, as constituting the State, in its special and antithetic sense, comprise, according to the idea, all the interests and concerns of the Propriety, and rightfully those alone.

XII. The King, again, is the Head of the National Clerisy, and the supreme trustee of the Nationalty; the power of which in relation to its proper objects is rightfully exercised, according to the idea, by the King and the two Houses of Convocation, and by them alone. The proper objects of this power are mentioned in No. V.

XIII. The Coronation Oath neither does, nor can, bind the conscience of the King in matters of

See an approach to an expression of the Author's idea of the National Church thus regarded, in the Bishop of London's late Charge, Oct. 1838, p. 2, &c.

faith. But it binds him to refuse his consent (without which no change in the existing law can be effected) to any measure subverting or tending to subvert the safety and independence of the National Church, or which may expose the realm to the danger of a return of that foreign Usurper, misnamed spiritual, from which it has with so many sacrifices emancipated itself. And previously to the ceremonial act which announces the King the only lawful and sovereign head of both the Church and the State, this oath is administered to him religiously as the representative person and crowned majesty of the Nation;-religiously;-for the mind of the Nation, existing only as an idea, can act distinguishably on the ideal powers alone,-that is, on the reason and conscience.

The several other points comprised in the remainder of this work, though of great interest and importance, require neither analysis nor comment for their perfect comprehension. But it will naturally occur to the reader to consider how far the idea of the Church and of its relation to the State presented in these pages coincides with either of the two celebrated systems, those of Hooker and Warburton, which, under one shape or another, have divided the opinions of thinking persons up to the present day.

According to Hooker, the Church is one body, -the essential unity of which consists in, and