TO THE CLERGY WITHIN THE PECULIAR JURISDICTION OF THE DEANERY OF SARUM. MY REVEREND BRETHREN, The delay in complying with your request for the publication of the following Charge, has been occasioned by the suspension of the Bill for abolishing peculiar jurisdictions, to which the first part of it refers. It was generally expected that it would ere this have been again introduced into Parliament; but as the session is now far advanced, I am unwilling any longer to defer inscribing to you the address which you so kindly received. Though the measure in question has been postponed, there is every reason to believe that it will be renewed. The observations which I thought it right to make upon it can scarcely, therefore, be deemed unseasonable. In the mean time, every subject connected with our church establishment has derived fresh interest and importance. A second Bill for the commutation of tithe has been submitted to the House of Commons, divested of one material objection noticed in the following Charge, with respect to that which was introduced last year; and several other measures deeply affecting our ecclesiastical polity, are in different stages of progress in Parliament. Upon these, as being at present imperfect and incomplete, I shall not offer any remark. I would only observe that what I took occasion to advance upon similar topics a few months since, has been strongly confirmed by subsequent events. The intention is now openly and strenuously avowed, of endeavouring to effect a separation between the church and state; or, in other words, of overthrowing the established religion of the empire. design is so inconsistent with the principles of divine revelation, and so opposed to the dictates of sound wisdom, and the uniform results of ex This perience, that it can scarcely, I think, succeed. The position so confidently assumed by our enemies is, I am persuaded, utterly untenable, and will, I trust, ere long, be abandoned. I would only take this occasion earnestly to reiterate my exhortation and my prayer, that in this crisis of the existence and welfare of the established church, we may prove ourselves not unworthy of the privileges and the responsibility with which the providence of God has invested us; anxious, above all, for the purity and efficiency of the sacred community to which we belong, as the instrument of maintaining and diffusing the genuine religion of the gospel, and thus of promoting the temporal and eternal happiness of mankind. |