Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

In respect to the writers who asserted it, and generally in respect to every writer of their communion, in whom any objectionable tenet of any description could be found, the catholics adjured their adversaries to observe, in all their controversies with them, these rules,-" 1st, That no "doctrines should be ascribed to them as a body,

66

except such as were articles of faith;-2d That "the catholics deem nothing to be an arte of "their faith, unless it has been delivered by Divine "revelation, and propounded as such by the "church." They proclaimed, that, whatever other opinions could be adduced against them, though they were the opinions of the fathers of the church -still they were but matters of opinion, and that a catholic might disbelieve them, and yet continue catholic. They pointed out the works in which the articles of faith were to be found,-the Creed of pope Pius the fourth, the council of Trent, its Catechism, and Bossuet's Exposition.

These declarations made a considerable sensation in favour of the catholics. It was also afterwards favourable to them, that, in consequence of the act, which passed for their relief, in 1778, they mixed more with their protestant brethren, and, becoming better known to them, dissipated their anticatholic prejudices.

Still, to a certain extent,

Manserunt veteris vestigia ruris.

The effects of a defamation of two centuries could not be undone in a moment.

[blocks in formation]

LXXIX. 3.

Applications to Parliament for a Repeal of the Laws requiring Subscriptions of the Thirty-nine Articles.

IN July 1762, a point of extreme importance to the protestant dissenters, came on for trial at Guildhall. It has been shown, that the corporation act incapacitates dissenters refusing to qualify, in the manner which it prescribed, from holding offices in corporations: but the act did not prevent their eligibility to such offices. In some instances, dissenters were elected to them, and refused to serve in them, and therefore became liable to the penalty of a fine. The payment of it was sometimes dispensed with, but it was sometimes exacted.

At the time, of which we are now speaking, Mr. Allen Evans, having been chosen sheriff of the city of London, and having refused to serve, was fined; and, upon his neglecting to pay the fine, the city brought an action against him to recover it. The case was elaborately argued before lord chief baron Parker, Mr. justice Foster, Mr. justice Wilmot, and Mr. justice Bathurst. All of them were of opinion that, under the circumstances, in which the act had placed them, the dissenters were not eligible to the office. The case was heard on appeal, in February 1767, in the house of lords; and, on the motion of lord Mansfield, the cause was adjudged unanimously in favour of the dissenters.

This determination raised the hopes of the dissenters; but objections to the subscription of the

thirty-nine articles were not confined to them. In 1772, several clergymen, and some gentlemen belonging to the professions of the civil law and physic,-all members of the established church,— assembled at the Feathers tavern in Cheapside, and invited by public advertisement in the papers, all, who thought themselves aggrieved in the matter of subscription, to join them in an application to parliament for relief. The petition was respectably signed: two hundred and fifty of the petitioners were clergymen of the established church.

They represented in the petition, that it was one of the great principles of the protestant religion, that every thing necessary to salvation was fully and sufficiently contained in the holy scriptures; that christians have an inherent right, which they hold from God only, to make a full and free use of their private judgment in the interpretation of the scriptures; that, though these were the liberal and original doctrines of the church of England, and the grand principle upon which the reformation was grounded, still, there had been a deviation from them, in the matter of subscription, which deprived them of this invaluable right,-by obliging them to acknowledge, that certain articles and confessions of faith and doctrine, drawn up by fallible men, were, all and every of them, agreeable to the scriptures.

The petitioners particularly complained, that, at the first admission or matriculation, as it is termed, of scholars in the universities, they were obliged, at an age too immature for disquisitions and deci

sions of such moment, to subscribe their unfeigned assent to a variety of theological propositions, which they had not judgment to comprehend; and upon which it was impossible for them to form a just opinion.

The petition being presented, a motion was made for taking it into consideration: the house of commons divided seventy-one for it, two hundred and seventeen against it.

However unfavourable to the cause of the dissenters, this result appeared, they conceived the weight of argument to have been evidently so much on their side, that they procured a bill for their relief to be brought into the house of commons in the same sessions. A high church party opposed it with great earnestness; but the general sense of the house was so strong in favour of the dissenters, and an inclination to extend the blessings of toleration was so great on each side of the house, that the motion was carried without a division. But the house of lords was actuated by a different feeling,— there, the bill was thrown out by a great majority, twenty-nine lords supporting it, one hundred and two lords opposing it.

In 1789, the matter was again brought into the house of commons, by a motion of Mr. Beaufoy, "for a committee to take into consideration, so "much of the test and corporation acts as related "to protestant dissenters." On a division, one hundred and two votes were for the motion, one hundred and twenty-two against it.

The small majority on this division against the

dissenters could not but raise their hopes; but it equally increased the alarm and the activity of their opponents; and unfortunately the violence of some leading men among the petitioners furnished their adversaries with powerful arms against them.

On the 2d of March 1790, Mr. Fox brought the subject before the house of commons, at the fullest meeting of that house, which had, for some time, been assembled. The petition of the dissenters had been placed in his hands, and it is an important event in the history of the English catholics, that it was framed in terms, which embraced persons of their communion. This brought their grievances under the eye of the legislature. Mr. Fox displayed on this occasion, more than his usual powers of oratory; his motion was the same as that of Mr. Beaufoy; but he distinctly avowed that his object was to effect a total repeal both of the corporation and the test act, and he rested the merits of his cause on the broadest principles of religious liberty. He was seconded by sir Henry Houghton: Mr. Pitt opposed the motion by a long and able speech. It was reducible to a syllogism,-that it was equally the right and duty of the supreme power of the state to exclude any description of men, who were hostile to an essential part of the constitution, from those situations, which would enable them to give effect to that hostility; that the established church was an essential part of the British constitution, and that the dissenters were hostile to it:-therefore it was the right and duty of the state to exclude the dissenters from those situations, which would

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »