N.B. The above is sent by a correspondent. Such documents are very valuable; and corrections of them, if incorrect, are most desirable, whether from 'friend or foe.

CHURCH MATTERS.

RELIGIOUS DESTITUTION OF GREAT CITIES.

INSTEAD of giving the second letter of "J." this month, the reader's attention is claimed to the following extracts from a Scotch Minister in Montrose, which speak the exact truth, and shew how the same difficulties beset all great cities:-

"What we have to lament is, that there are no churches to accommodate the people if they would come to church, or that there is no provision of cheap-enough and gratuitous sittings to accommodate the poor who can pay little or nothing for them; and that there are not ministers enough to overtake that constant frequent visitation of all the families which might be instrumental in restoring them to church-going habits, and in sowing and nourishing among them religious and moral principles. What we pray for is, that Government would aid in endowing new churches, so as to provide religious instruction and pastoral superintendence for those who have not the means or the disposition themselves to pay for these things! And in order that the bounty of Government may be made available for the supply of spiritual privileges to the poor, it has only to stipulate, that in return for its bounty a certain number of sittings shall be set aside on low terms, or gratuitously, for the poor. In this way, the proposed endowment would be, in regard to its principal feature, neither more nor less than a necessary and dutiful provision on the part of Government to meet the wants of the poorer portion of our great national family. Is that an object to awaken your opposition? Is it an object to awaken the opposition of any one who wants to be considered a friend of the people? Especially, is it an object against which the wrath of the poor should be awakened, the wrath of the very persons for whose benefit it is principally intended?"

"We crave that, in populous towns especially, there may be provided ministers to visit the outcast inhabitants, and churches into which to allure them; and we are willing to stake the existence of the Church, on its capability, if thus dealt with, of proving to all classes, from the highest to the lowest, a great-the greatest national blessing. You refuse this reasonable request: you insist that we shall make our Church, with its present means, a blessing to the people at large, although it has neither ministers to visit the people, nor places of worship into which they can be received. Sir, unless you unite the enlargement with the reformation of the Church, to talk of giving it a fair trial is just as if I were to talk of giving you a fair trial as a legislator, while yet I helped in preventing you from ever opening your mouth or setting your foot within the House of Commons, and from ever having, even by epistolary writing, any communication with your constituents.

VOL. VII.-June, 1835.

4 Y

"You suspect that the statistics of Dr. Chalmers' circular will be found exceed. ingly imperfect and fallacious.' You have not stated in what respects, and we are thus, for the present, left to conjecture. As, however, you have attempted to cast suspicion upon these statistics, the sooner you sift them, and let us know your judg ment respecting them, and the facts upon which it is founded, the better. From an expression that occurs about the middle of your letter, I am ready to suppose that one of the objections which you will urge against us is, that the churches which we have are not filled,' and that it will be time enough when they are filled to ask for more. I would, therefore, advert to the objection everlastingly urged against us about unlet and unoccupied sittings, of which, I am sorry to say, my church is a painful instance. Now, the following remarks may help to set this matter in a proper light. First, The Dissenters have as many unlet sittings in their churches as we have in ours: yet they think they have good reasons for building more-we may have, at least, as good reasons for a similar step. Secondly,-In such a church as St.John's, Montrose, built and maintained by private subscription,-in such a church as mine is, the price of seats is necessarily so high that a very numerous class of the poor, the proper objects of the care of a good man and of a good government, are vir tually excluded. Had the managers received from Government a small endowment, then they would have been enabled to let down the sittings, or even to give many gratuitously, instead of being obliged to give as few as possible at a low rate or for nothing, in order to be enabled to pay the minister's stipend, and other necessary expenses. And what ungrateful inconsiderate usage it is, to cause the price of seats to be raised or kept up, and the payment enforced-and then after thus producing unlet sittings, to reproach us with them!-In many cases, in which seats are offered to the poor, they are offered in such an inconvenient part of the church, or in a church were the chief care has been to collect such an array of wealth and fashion, that the poor are still really shut out. Fifthly, Even where there are sittings for the poor, suitable and unoccupied, it is of the last importance to remember and seriously consider that there are no ministers to visit them and allure them to church. What can a single minister do among five, ten, or fifteen thousand people? He looks with dismay or with utter despair on the work of visiting them as they ought to be visited, and of preparing, at the same time, for the ministrations of each returning Sabbath. And what does all this prove, but that it is nonsense to talk of unlet sittings, until not only sittings are provided in a suitable place and at a suitable price, but ministers also are provided to visit the people and persuade them to come to the sanctuary. Let a minister and a church be provided-say, for every two thousand souls, where thousands live together: let him be secured in a very moderate permanent income; let us suppose him to exercise a special care over all of that two thousand who go not to any other place of worship, over perhaps twelve or fifteen hundred of the whole number; let him ply them with his private visits and his public ministrations; let him prove the foster-guardian of their moral and spiritual, and indirectly, yet effectually, of their temporal interests; let an effort be made to bring the Church to some such state as this; and then let it be consumed if it do not prove its pre-eminent title to universal love and admiration. While the labours of ministers are, as at present, often rendered so unproductive by the extensiveness of the field over which they are scattered, it is only adding wrong to wrong to reproach them with unvisited families, and, therefore, unvisited sanctuaries. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

"Montrose, March 30, 1835."

*

WILLIAM NIXON, Minister of St. John's."

ROMAN CATHOLIC OATH.

IT is most satisfactory to find that the views taken in the last Number of the form of the Roman Catholic Oath have been confirmed to the fullest extent by no less an authority than Mr. Eneas M'Donnell, the agent to the Roman Catholics of Ireland from 1824 to the passing of the Relief Bill in 1829. Let the following extracts from his pamphlet be weighed :

"If I were one of the catholic members of either House, I should not feel myself at liberty to support, by vote or by speech, any resolution having for its declared ob

ject, or involving, in a manifold statement of principles, the severance of any portion of the church property for any purpose whatsoever whereas, on the other hand. if the King, Lords, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, were, without our interposition, to effect, by law, such severance, and to declare, by law, the property so severed to be available to the general purposes of the state; then, but not till then, should I feel warranted to assist in its appropriation, without violation of our oath, and our innumerable concurrent protestations and pledges, equally precise and positive, and scarcely less solemn or less binding than that outh.”

“It certainly was not intended that the Relief Bill of 1829 should provide new facilities for catholics to injure the church establishment. This will be admitted on all hands and yet is it not equally clear, that their admission to seats in the two Houses of Parliament would have provided such facilities, if some corrective had not been also embodied in the bill? Now, it is obvious that the only corrective provided by the bill is the oath. Again, no man will be found so rash as to contend that, if the minister who framed and proposed the oath in 1829 had openly stated to parliament and the protestant public, at the time, that its object was to recognise and establish the right of Roman Catholic members of both houses to legislate upon the rights and privileges of the church establishment, such form of oath, or any other form, accompanied by such an avowal of its object, would have been tolerated, for a moment, by the legislature. Surely, then, if the jealousy would have been so determined at that time, it cannot be deemed reasonable or just, at the present day, to attach to that oath a signification which would, confessedly, have ensured its rejection at the time of its formation. It will be seen, by-and-by, that those restrictive obli. gations are not only not opposed to the avowed principles and desires of the Roman Catholic community, but are, on the contrary, in strict and manifest accordance with their uniform declarations, during a long succession of years, without one single exception to that uniformity, that I can bring to mind; therefore, the limitation cannot be deemed so unreasonable, or so unexpected, as some persons would appear to consider it; and it is not unworthy of remark, that the disproportion between the numbers of Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, and also the amount of the revenues of the establishment, were, at least, as highly estimated when the oath was framed in 1829, as at the present day.

"It is not sufficient to resist my construction of the oath upon the ground that it would deprive the Catholic Representative and his constituents of the exercise of his talents and influence in the settlement or arrangement of an important subject. Such consequences may be deemed by some persons both annoying, unjust, and injurious; but what have we to do with consequences, when the question is about oaths? Moreover, the exceptions in the bill are not limited to members of parliament, but are, expressly, extended to Catholic members of corporate bodies, and others of the same communion, who are excluded from the exercise of those powers annexed to their respective offices and possessions which are connected with the administration of authority in matters affecting the interests of the church; and it may be added, that the limitation of the prerogatives of the legislator by the bill is not by any means so narrowed as the limitation of the prerogatives of the crown, in the selection of its servants, judicial, military, and political."

Mr. M'Donnell then goes on to enumerate all the pledges, oaths, &c., not inflicted by the Protestants, but volunteered by the Roman Catholics, from 1757 to 1829, all to the same effect, beginning thus:

"I proceed now to demonstrate, beyond the possibility of doubt. that the declaration of the noble writer of the above letter, and my construction of the obligations of the oath of 1829, are directly and entirely in strict accordance with the uniform pledges and protestations of the Roman Catholics of both islands for nearly seventy years."

One passage (from a petition of the Roman Catholics to the Irish parliament in 1792, repeatedly republished since, and referred to, circulated indeed in London by Mr. M'Donnell in his public character in 1825 and 1829) will be sufficient:

"We solemnly and conscientiously declare, that we are satisfied with the present condition of our ecclesiastical policy. With satisfaction we acquiesce in the establishment of the national church; we neither repine at its possessions, nor envy its dignities; we are ready, upon this point, to give every assurance that is binding upon man."

Having produced his long series of pledges and protestations given by Roman Catholics to satisfy Protestants, and declared his own conviction that they could be given for no other purpose, he concludes with a series of most formidable questions, the first of which it is enough to transcribe here:

"1st.-If those declarations of Catholics, collectively and individually, lay and ecclesiastical, commencing in the year 1757, and carried down uniformly till 1829, were not made for the purposes which I state- -Query, for what purposes were they made ?"

One word more.

Mr. Shiel, in a letter in the Easter recess, tried to overset all that has been said as to the Roman Catholic oath, by saying, that the Government, in 1829, resisted Sir R. Inglis's 'and Mr. Batley's motions, which wished for words more definitely mentioning the preservation of ecclesiastical property, and that consequently the Government could not mean to prevent Roman Catholics from voting away church property. Mr. M'Donnell meets this sophistry by anticipation, mentioning the fact, and adding Sir R. Peel's words on the one side, and Dr. Lushington's on the other, that the words used were such as gave ample security; that no one could doubt their meaning, either as a matter of law or of common sense, and that they were sufficient to all intents and purposes. Mr. Shiel's weapon, therefore, slays himself. No proof could be found more stringent than these declarations of the framers and proposers of the Relief Bill of their intention as to the oath; and will any Roman Catholic OPENLY declare that he will take an oath in a sense different from that in which it is offered to him?

In conclusion, let the reader take the following declaration from another Roman Catholic gentleman, Mr. Waterton, the traveller, in a letter to the "St. James's Chronicle," dated May 6th :—

"I can neither be a member of parliament, nor a magistrate;-for no entreaty, no power on earth, shall ever make me take Peel's oath. If I understand the English language (and I ought to understand it, for I was with the Jesuits till I was twenty years old), I say, that Peel's oath binds me before Almighty God, to abjure any intention to subvert the present church establishment. Now, I will do every thing in my power, fairly and honourably as a gentleman, to upset that church by law established, or, in gentler words, to sever church from state.'

These things are of far more weight than any original remarks on church matters.

A few words more on these subjects must, however, be added. Since Lord John Russell's defeat in Devonshire the most curious exhibition of folly imaginable has taken place. Previously to this, the radical and dissenting papers and parties have been declaring most triumphantly that all church influence was wholly over-that the farmers would no longer be led or driven by the parsons-that they hated and wished to get rid of them-that the wicked and stupid cry of "No Popery!" would never answer again-and that the church was all but gone. Now, these same papers declare that Lord John's defeat is wholly owing to the parson-ocrasy and the cry of "No Popery "" and that wise, Christian, and admirable paper the "Patriot," espe cially, gives a letter from an "esteemed correspondent," with his name, who is absolutely silly enough to say that he saw drores of

farmers and such people carried against their will to vote against Lord John, and preceded by the parsons in their carriages! Now which side of the question do these consistent persons wish to be taken? Have the parsons despotic power, or none at all? Do the farmers despise them, or tremble at them? Do men care for the cry of No Popery, or do they not? Of course, the fact is, that these writers neither know nor care for the truth in either case, but say what suits their passions. But do they expect that the falsehood of today shall make people forget that they told exactly the contrary falsehood yesterday?

THE DARK AGES.

THE editor cannot but take this opportunity of requesting particular attention to the truly valuable series of papers on the "Dark Ages." Deeply convinced as he is that divinity is best studied in church history, and that church history affords the best commentary on Scripture, by shewing the real effects of the scheme of God's providence and mercy as revealed to us in his word, he cannot but feel it a matter of the deepest and most bitter regret that church history is so shamefully neglected, and that if studied at all, it is studied only at second-hand, and in sources not entitled to confidence or respect. If the view here taken of the importance of church history as a study be correct, what can be said of those who are careless as to knowing the truth, and careless as to telling it? If we are content to take, as a picture of a former age, what is told us by one who has, perhaps, picked up his views from a second, who picked them up from a third, who mistook or perverted the sense of the original, what can be the consequence but this, that as we mistake the character of former ages, we misunderstand and misrepresent the workings of God's providence, and so mislead others and sit in darkness ourselves? Let any man who talks confidently, from Robertson or Ranken, or any such books, of the ignorance of the Dark Ages, &c., &c., ask himself this one questionHas he read one single writer of the ages of which he speaks? he know anything of them whatever except from a few hack quotations and hack stories which are in every writer? What will he say if most of the stories on which he has rested are utterly false, and if Robertson and Ranken, &c. &c., are not to be trusted. If any one can maintain Robertson's character after the present and last papers on the "Dark Ages," it is time he should begin.

Does

This, again, is a matter far exceeding in importance any temporary church matters. If history and antiquity were studied, understood, and loved, we should get rid of nine-tenths of modern theology, and all the mischiefs, low views, faint piety, and self-seeking, which arise from it.

OXFORD DECLARATION.

The following letter gives so good an account of a great church matter, that it will be acceptable to all readers.

Account of the late Convocation at Oxford.

(Communicated by a Non-resident M.A.)

The 20th of May, 1835, will long be memorable in the annals of Oxford. That day had been appointed by the Heads of Houses for the decision, by the Convocation,