The theory of Bishop Warburton is open to far more serious objection. In that theory, the connexion between the church and the state, is contemplated as-" a political league and alliance, for mutual support and defence." Such “alliance” is made to pre-suppose 66 a free convention and mutual compact," of the contracting parties both of which are regarded, as in their original state distinct alike in their characters and objects. The conditions of compact

are:

(1.) A free maintainance of the clergy.

(2.) A share in the legislative body.

(3.) The right of veto on the part of the state on all ecclesiastical enactments.

The necessity of the union, Warburton traces up to the defect on the part of civil society of moral influences, and religious sanctions—and on the other hand, to a supposed defect on the part of the church of means and appliances adequate to its own preservation and protection. Then again, in the case of their being more than one such ecclesiastical body, the state, says the bishop, is to stipulate with that which is numerically the largest, and which, therefore, may be presumed to be politically the most influential—a principle of selection which would pre-suppose the most sordid and utilitarian views of duty whether in the sphere of politics or of religion.

Indeed to whatever provisions of the theory we turn, objection may be justly taken. Its defects moreover are as culpable as its errors. But both were incorporated into it from the political philosophy of Hobbes and of Locke,

The venerable Archdeacon Paley, in his "Moral and Political Philosophy," has concisely considered the question of religious establishments; and although he takes up a position favourable to the principle, he has nevertheless involved much that is incorrect and dangerous, in its discussion. Of course the extreme utilitarianism, which distinguished his ethical system, is imported into his statechurch theory. "The authority" he writes, "of a church establishment is founded upon its utility," a statement by the way embodying the pagan morality of an Epicurus or an Epictetus-and withal reminding us of the wellknown dictum of the last named philosopher-orov yap τὸ συμφερόν, εκεῖ καὶ τὸ ευσεβές. But, although his fundamental position was false and untenable, yet the general argument contains much that is suggestive and important. Paley utterly fails of establishing a duty. What he does establish is, the practicability and fitness of church establishments on the general principles of utility.

Coleridge in his work "On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the Idea of each," divides "the subjects of the state into two orders, the agricultural or possessors of the land; and the mercantile, manufacturing, distributive, and professional bodies, under the common name of citizens."* "The object,” adds Coleridge, "of the two former estates of the realm, which conjointly form the state, was to reconcile the interests of permanence with that of progression-law with liberty. The object of

* Church and State, p. 30, (Moxon's Edition.

the National Church, the third remaining estate of the realm, was to secure and improve that civilization, without which the nation could be neither permanent nor progressive."* This third estate or 66 clerisy of the nation" is made to comprehend "the learned of all denominations, the sages and professors of the law and jurisprudence, of medicine and physiology, of music, of military and civil architecture, of the physical sciences with the mathematical, as the common organ of the preceding; in short, all the so-called liberal arts and sciences, the possession and application of which constitute the civilization of a country as well as the theological."

It will be seen at once, that, as Dr. Wardlaw has justly remarked, "this is a Church in a sense of the ingenious author's own." As to the Christian Church, Coleridge remarks, that it "is not a kingdom, realm, (royaume) or state (sensu latiori) of the world......nor is it an estate of any such realm, kingdom or state, but it is the appointed opposite to them all collectively-the sustaining, correcting, befriending, opposite of the world." So that at the most, according to the theory of Coleridge, "the Christian Church" supervenes as a mere accident of the so-called "national clerisy."

According to Dr Chalmers the essential element of an established Church is "a sure legal provision for its ministrations." He demonstrates the necessity of establish

* Ib. p. 52.

+ Church and State, pp. 138, 139.

ments, among other things from the insufficiency of the voluntary system-and from the fact that Christianity is the only sure basis of social permanence and progression He advocates the parochial division of the national territory. He would limit the selection of the government to one given denomination, and make "evangelical" protestant ism the criterion of such selection.

The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone (Chancellor of the Exchequer) in his learned and eloquent work, entitled "the State in its relations with the Church," has gone into the subject with elaborate and decisive accuracy. The theory laid down is based upon the doctrine of the personality of nations. The idea was by no means novel; but perhaps by no other thinker has it been more felicitously and carefully expanded. Hobbes,* and after him, Pufendorf, defined a state as "a compound moral person persona moralis composita,"+ and Warburton considered society as an artificial man 66 a religious, a civil, and

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a rational animal."

Mr. Gladstone thus enunciates the general doctrine which lies at the foundation of his theory. "In national societies of men generally the governing body should, in its capacity as such, profess and maintain a religion according

* De Cive, cap v. § 9.

+ Pufendorf very correctly remarks-"Civitas ita constituta ad modum unius personæ concipitur, unoque nomine ab omnibus particularibus hominibus distinguitur, atque dignoscitur, habetque peculiaria jura ac res proprias." De officio, lib. II, cap. vi, § 10.

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to its conscience, both as being composed of individuals who have individual responsibilities to discharge, and individual purposes to fulfil, and as being itself, collectively the seat of a national personality, with national responsibilities to discharge, and national purposes to fulfil."* "There is" writes Mr. Gladstone, a real and not merely supposititious personality of nations, which entails likewise its own religious responsibilities. The plainest exposition of national personality is this-that the nation fulfils the great conditions of a person—namely, that it has unity of acting, and unity of suffering; with the difference that what is physically single in the one, is joint, or morally single in the other..........France is a person to us, and we to her. A nation then having a personality lies under the obligation, like the individuals composing its governing body, of sanctifying the acts of that personality by the offices of religion, and thus we have a new and imperative ground for the existence of a state religion."+

Thus much, then, for the theories of the most distinguished writers on this subject. The necessarily brief and cursory notice of them herein recorded, is intended only to indicate generally the course of thought which has been pursued from time to time, in the history of the state_ church controversy—and thus to furnish a sort of historical introduction to the arguments and principles which the subsequent pages may unfold. Suffice it to say, that the

* The State in its relations with the Church p. 26.

+ Ib. pp. 37, 38, 39.