Church Reform: The Only Means to That End, Stated in a Letter to Sir Robert Peel, Bart., First Lord of the TreasuryCarlile, Richard
Religion
Church Reform: The Only Means to That End, Stated in a Letter to Sir Robert Peel, Bart., First Lord of the Treasury
Carlile, Richard
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Church and state -- Church of England; Rationalism
I am not insensible to the circumstance, that you have a difficult task
to perform, and I am not sure that you are equal to it: I hope you
are; that is, I would have you so, or any other who may be the King's
adviser, and the real head of the Church. Nothing is wanted for this
reform but honesty and moral courage. Where the will and the power
exist, the task is an easy one. _I desire to save the Church and its
property, and to annihilate the Dissenters_. I would have the present
dignities of the Church dignify themselves in a triumph over the
Dissenters. A collusion with the Dissenters will be a hugging of
pestilence and death to the bosom of the Church. There can be no
co-existence: there was proof enough of that in the seventeenth century,
and still in Scotland. A revolution in the affairs and manners of
the Church must take place, even by your own confession, in language
admitting of the inference; and I desire that good may be educed from
that revolution. I would make the Church triumph in the correction of
every mental error in the country, and noble would be that triumph!
You may ask, how is this to be done? I will tell you. Let the Church
become the oracle of truth, the fountain of knowledge, the mistress
and dispenser of all science. Let its ministers declare this great
truth:--_that, hitherto, the mystery of Christ has alone been taught in
the Church, without the revelation of that mystery; that the Church has
been the depository of that sacred mystery, until the fulness of time,
in which it is promised, that all people shall be prepared to partake of
the revelation; that the mystery has been kept up in outward form
and without any spiritual grace; that the spiritual grace and all the
pro-mises are to be fulfilled in the understanding of the revelation;
that the spirit or revelation has been buried in a resting on the letter
of the Sacred Scriptures; that Christ is only now risen or beginning to
rise, after thousands of years, we may say three thousand years, rather
than three days of crucifixion, death and burial_. In me, he has risen
indeed, as, in me, he has been last crucified; and I crave the pleasure
of seeing his principles rise in the Church; for that craving is the
nature of Christ. Let the Church declare _that the time is now come to
reveal the mystery of Christ_. Exhibition has not been revelation.
What, then, is the revelation of the mystery of Christ?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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