Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Clergy -- England -- Biography; Smith, Sydney, 1771-1845
"Does he think that every sturdy Supralapsarian bullock whom he tries
to sacrifice to the Genius of Orthodoxy will not kick, and push, and
toss; that he will not, if he can, shake the axe from his neck, and
hurl his mitred butcher into the air? We know these men fully as well
as the Bishop; he has not a chance of success against them. They will
ravage, roar, and rush till the very chaplains, and the Masters and
Misses Peterborough, request his lordship to desist. He is raising a
storm in the English Church of which he has not the slightest
conception, and which will end, as it ought to end, in his lordship's
disgrace and defeat."
Then the reviewer goes on to urge that discretion and common sense, good
nature and good manners, are qualities far more valuable in bishops than
any "vigilance of inquisition." Prelates of the type of Bishop Marsh are
the most dangerous enemies of the Establishment which they profess to
serve.--
"Six such Bishops, multiplied by eighty-seven, and working with five
hundred and twenty-two questions, would fetch everything to the ground
in six months. But what if it pleased Divine Providence to afflict
every prelate with the spirit of putting eighty-seven questions, and
the two Archbishops with the spirit of putting twice as many, and the
Bishop of Sodor and Man with the spirit of putting forty-three
questions? There would then be a grand total of two thousand three
hundred and thirty-five interrogations flying about the English
Church, and sorely vexed would be the land with Question and
Answer.... If eighty-seven questions are assumed to be necessary by
one bishop, eight hundred may be considered as the minimum of
interrogation by another. When once the ancient faith-marks of the
Church are lost sight of and despised, any misled theologian may
launch out on the boundless sea of polemical vexation."
The Bishop's main line of defence, when challenged in the House of Lords,
was that he had a legal right to do what he had done. This was not
disputed. "A man may persevere in doing what he has a right to do till the
Chancellor shuts him up in Bedlam, or till the mob pelts him as he passes."
But the reviewer reminds him that he has no similar right as against
clergymen presented to benefices in his diocese. They are protected by the
patron's action of _Quare Impedit_; and all considerations of honour,
decency, and common sense should restrain the Bishop from "letting himself
loose against the working man of God," and enforcing against the curate a
system of inquisition which he dare not apply to the incumbent.--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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