bethæ tempore. Nonne ea fuit vatum et carminum indoles, quæ ipsis, qui scribebant, ignaris, optime conveniret cum saniore de rebus divinis sententia, qualis erat in honore futura, regnante Carolo ? Quid? Shaksperus ille noster, deliciæ omnium, maxime Anglorum adolescentium, nihilne putandus est egisse, qui toties ridicule, toties acriter invectus est in illa præsertim vitia, quæ proxima ætate illatura erant reipublicæ nostræ tam grave detrimentum ? qui semper frui videtur aura quadam propria, et sibi quidem gratissima quoties vapulant sive pietatem simulantes, sive regiam minuentes majestatem? Quid? Spenserum qui juvenes assidue in manibus cum amore et studio habuerant, quo tandem animo prælium erant inituri cum illo hoste, cui solenne fuerit omni convicio lacessere nunc regias fœminas, nunc sacrorum antistites ?"

KEBLE, 'Prælectiones,' p. 812.

LECTURE VI.

OUR sketch of the English part of what I have called the religious movement of modern Europe has now arrived at the beginning of the seventeenth century. And I have said that the several parties as hitherto developed have been religious rather than political, but that they were soon to become political also. I have used these words "religious" and "political" in their common acceptation for the sake of convenience; but it is quite necessary to observe the confusions which attend this use of them, as well as of the kindred words "church" and "state," "spiritual" and "secular," confusions of no slight importance, and perpetually tending, as I think, to perplex our notions of the whole matter to which the words relate.

I have called the puritans in the sixteenth century a religious party rather than a political, because it was the government of the church and not of the state, to use again the common language, which they were attempting to alter; the government by bishops, archdeacons, &c., under the royal supremacy, not the government by king, lords, and commons. But if we examine the case a little more closely, we shall find that in strictness they were a political party, and that the changes which they wanted to introduce were political; political, it may be said, even more than religious, if we apprehend the distinction involved in these words more accurately than seems to be done by the common usage of them.

I shall not, I trust, be suspected of wishing merely to bring

forward a startling paradox, when I say that in speaking of Christianity the word "church" is rather to be used as distinct from religion than as synonymous with it, and that it belongs in great part to another set of ideas, relating to things which we call political. Religion expresses the relations of man to God, setting aside our relations to other men: the church expresses our relations to God in and through our relations to other men; the state, in popular language, expresses our relations to other men without reference to our relations to God: but I have always thought that this notion is in fact atheistic, and that the truer notion would be that the state at least expresses our relations to other men according to God's ordinance, that is, in some degree including our relation to God. However, without insisting on this, we will allow that the term religion may have a meaning without at all considering our relations to other men, and that the word state may have a meaning without at all considering our relations to God; not its perfect meaning, but a meaning; whereas the word "church" necessarily comprehends both: we cannot attach any sense to it without conceiving of it as related to God, and involving also the relations of men to one another. It stands, therefore, according to this view of it, as the union of the two ideas of religion and the state, comprising necessarily in itself the essential points of both the others; and as being such, all church questions may be said to be both religious and political; although in some the religious element may be predominant, and in others the political, almost to the absorption of the other.

Now questions of church government may appear clearly to be predominantly political; that is, as regarding the relations of the members of the church to one another, whether one shall govern the rest, or the few the many, or the many themselves: and the arguments which bear upon all these points in societies merely political might seem the arguments

which should decide them here. But two other considerations are here to be added; one, that in the opinion of many persons of opposite parties, all such arguments are barred by God's having expressly commanded a particular form of government; so that instead of the general question, what is the best form of government under such and such circumstances, we have another, what is the particular form commanded by God as the best under all circumstances. This is one consideration, and according to this, it might no doubt happen that persons of the most opposite political opinions might concur in desiring the very same form of church government, simply as that which God had commanded. This is possible, and in individual cases I do not doubt that it has often actually happened. But as the question, what is the particular form divinely commanded, is open to manifold doubts, to say nothing of the farther question, "whether any particular form has been commanded or no ;" so practically amongst actual parties, men's opinions and feelings, political and others, have really influenced them in deciding the question of fact, and they have actually maintained one form or another to be the form divinely commanded, according to their firm belief of its superior excellence, or their sense of the actual evils of other forms, or their instinctive feeling in favour of what was established and ancient. And so we really should thus far reclaim questions on church government to the dominion of political questions; political or moral considerations having really for the most part been the springs of the opinions of the several parties respecting them.

But I said that there were two considerations to be added, and I have as yet only mentioned one. The other is the belief entertained of the existence of a priesthood in Christianity, and this priesthood regulated by a divine law, and attached for ever to the offices which exercise government also. this priesthood being, according to the opinion of those who

And