Intelligence.-Parliamentary. All the other Bishops of the Church of England examined as well as he, (the Bishop of Peterborough,) and his questions could no more be called tests than theirs. In doing what in this instance was the subject of complaint, he had only performed a very important part of his duty, in the best manner he could. This brought him to state simply the facts of the case, on which a charge of harshuess and severity had been founded. Last autumn the petitioner applied to him (the Reverend Prelate) to liceuse a curate for a parish of which he is Rector. He required that, before license, the proposed curate should be examined as to the Articles; and as he resided in the bishopric of Norwich, he (the Bishop of Peter borough) transmitted him a list of questions to which he requested answers. If a bishop was not allowed to proceed thus far on his own discretion, it would be better to abolish Episcopacy at once, and, instead of the Episcopal order appointed, to establish another Assembly of Divines at Westminster. What did this curate do in consequence of his receiving these questions? He returned answers not plain, short, and direct as he ought, but intricate, controversial and unintelligible, When he was expected to be most explicit, he was most obscure, and one of his dissertations occupied ten folio pages closely written, where a few words would have best suited the purpose. Such a paper was no answer to his questionsit was an attempt rather to evade their object, and to insult their author, than to state the opinions of the writer, or to satisfy the mind of the examiner. If he (the Bishop of Peterborough) had a right to put any questions at all, he had a right to see that their purpose was not defeated by the use of evasive terms, or by wrap ping the answers in a mass of controversial matter, which rendered them unintelligible. Finding that the object of this person was to conceal and disguise his opinions rather than to express them, he (the Bishop of Peterborough) sent him another set of questions. (A laugh.) To these he sent no distinct answer, but referred to his former dissertations, saying, that he had already answered them. In these circumstances he could not do otherwise than refuse to license him. He could not certify the soundness of his doctrines without knowing what they were; and he could not know what they were when he would not give intelligible answers to the questions which were intended to ascertain them. He (the Reverend Prelate) came now to another point of the noble Lord's speech, in which he stated a circumstance that, without explanation, would place him in an invidious light with respect to his brethren— he meant that in which it was said that he paid no attention to testimonials from another diocese. This was not correct: he paid all the attention to testimonials which could be required of him. These testimonials merely purported that he who signed them believed the person to whom they referred to possess a good character, and to entertain orthodox opinions. But there were so many different ideas about orthodoxy, (hear, hear,) that a bishop would not do his duty if he did not satisfy himself of the doctrines of those who applied to him for license. He therefore had resolved to judge for himself in this inatter, through a direct examination by question and answer. He (the Bishop of Peterborough) came now to consider the allegations in the petition, on the truth or falsehood of which the application must stand or fall. The first allegation was, that he (the Bishop of Peterborough) had introduced new tests into the Church, and refused licenses or ordinations till he was satisfied that they were complied with. Now this he had no hesitation to say was false. He examined by question and answer. He had a right to do so, and when he put an intelligible question, he was entitled to an intelligible answer. If he examined with undue severity-if he made his own opinion the standard of truth—and allowed no difference even in matters on which the Articles did not decide, then he might justly incur the charge brought against him in the petition. But he denied that he had examined with severity: he only put questions and required intelligible answers, and he never rejected any application where the answers were intelligible, and the doctrine stated in them conformable to the Articles. The peti tioner had said that he had added thirtysix new articles to the former eightyseven. The fact was, that the thirty-six questions were a substitute for the eightyseven, instead of being an addition to them. The Reverend and learned Prelate said, that the best answer he could give to the charge of severity was, that in the course of five years, in an extensive diocese, only three applications had been rejected. He then went over all the other allegations of the petition, either denying their truth or explaining away their force. The point at issue was simply this-whether a bishop had a right to examine on the Articles in his own diocese. If. this was admitted, then the mode of examination must be left to the examiner himself. That such a right existed was plain from the forty-eighth canon, which required every candidate for orders to give an account of his faith. Such an account could not be obtained by an examination of proficiency alone; therefore the bishop was authorized by this canon to examine in the Articles. The petition concluded by praying their Lordships to address the Crown to enforce the Royal declaration. That Royal declaration he (the Bishop of Peterborough) had been endeavouring to support in the conduct which was the subject of complaint. If, therefore, they were to address the Crown, it should be, not in a prayer to enforce the Royal declaration, but in a recommendation to issue the Royal mandate to prevent the Bishop of Peterborough from examining by question and answer. If such a mandate were issued, he should obey it; but the previous question was, should the Crown be petitioned to suspend the laws of the State? He (the Reverend Prelate) now examined in obedience to, and in conformity with, these laws, and a law could not be abrogated by one branch of the legislature only. He used no authority to which he was not fairly entitled; he was not conscious of having abused any of his rights, though, like other men, he was liable to errors. He had proved that the petition was founded on false allegations, and he called upon the House to pause before they acquiesced in an application supported on sophistry and fallacy. He left the matter entirely in the hands of their Lordships; he had no personal interest to serve; he should suffer no personal loss by being debarred from a mode of examination of the propriety and utility of which an experience of five years had convinced him. (Hear, hear.) Lord HOLLAND began by stating, that he disapproved of the language which the Right Reverend and Learned Prelate had employed in speaking of the petitioner such language was harsh in itself, and not becoming the quarter whence it proceeded. With regard to the defence of the Right Reverend Prelate to the charge of the petition, it was the most complete instance of ignorantia elenchi which he had ever heard. The question to be ultimately considered and decided was this-whether the Learned and Reverend Prelate was justified in putting his questions. If he had that right, no man could doubt that he had also the right to choose his own mode of examination; but it was first necessary to determine whether the matter, substance, object and principle of the examination were warranted by the law of the land, and by expediency and prudence. He (Lord Holland) would broadly assert, that it was ambiguous and doubtful, whether by law he had a right to do so; and whether he did or did not possess it, it had always been thought most imprudent and improper in the Right Reverend Prelate to assert it. With regard to the canons, when he heard the Right Reverend Prelate speak of them in a tone of such authority, he (Lord Holland) could not help at least hinting a doubt whether those canons were, in truth, any part of the law of the land, for they had never received the sanction of Parliament, like the Liturgy, the Articles or the Ho. milies. The 48th canon was the only one on which the claim now set up could be rested: but even this (and his Lordship read the words of it to illustrate his position) was liable to two interpretatious. It was not to be disputed that the petitioner had subscribed the Thirtynine Articles, and that act hitherto had been considered a sufficient test. Looking at the history of these Thirty-nine Articles, he found that they had been put into their present shape at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth, in the year 1562; and with reference to their doctrines, he must say, that from the period of the Reformation down to the time of that good man Hooker, and even of that bad man Laud, the principles of Arminianism were unknown to the Church of England. Before he sat down, he would undertake to prove that one of the greatest ornaments of the Bishops' Bench had said that those Thirty-nine Articles contained opinions on which a clergyman of the Church of England ought not to be examined. Was the Right Reverend Prelate quite sure that such men as Parker and Sanderson could have satisfactorily answered his questions? Was he quite sure, even that all of those by whom he was now surrounded, scrupulous and conscientious men, if they chose to embody their opinions, and reply to his eighty-seven questions, thereby giving some four thousand odd hundred answers, could do so without offending against some doctrinal point, which the Right Reverend Prelate held so necessary to true religion and virtue? Was he quite sure that not one of the four thousand answers would be such as to have induced him, if any member of the Bench of Bishops had been a candidate for holy orders in his diocese, to have rejected his claim? It was not to be denied that the Thirty-nine Articles were drawn up by persons whose opinions tended more to Calvinism than to Arminianism; but, as Bishop Horsley had correctly said, they were intended to admit Intelligence.-Parliamentary. Peterborough Questions. both within the pale of the church; they were articles of peace and union, and observed a perfect and judicious neutrality. Whitgift had endeavoured to add six articles wholly Calvinistic, but for the reason stated they were rejected. Down to the reign of William III., that "discreet laxity" of which Fuller spoke in his Church History, had always been allowed regarding the Articles. Coming down to a later date, he arrived at the great authority of Archbishop Wake upon this subject-an authority to which he had before alluded. The injunctions he promulgated related solely to the testimonials and to the morality of the candidate for a curacy or for holy orders, but said not a syllable regarding rejection on points of doctrine. He had held correspondence with the Protestants of Geneva and Bern; and in one of his letters to the latter, he had thus spoken of the Thirty-nine Articles :-" I have never, to any man or men, given my opinions upon that subject, and I am determined never to do it ;" and further on, he had thus decisively expressed his opinions:-"It has always been the policy of the Church of England, and I trust in God it will always remain so, to require nothing more than the mere subscription of the Articles." Thus it was evident, that Archbp. Wake could never have entitled himself to a curacy in the diocese of the Right Reverend Prelate. He, one of the lottiest and ablest dignitaries of the church, must be abandoned by those who thought with the present Bishop of Peterborough, as a republican-as one who - would be willing to bring his sovereign to the block, and as meriting all the reproaches and epithets which the Right Reverend Prelate, in his truly Christian spirit, had heaped upon the petitioner. He (Lord Holland) hoped that some of his learned brethren of the bench would favour the House with their opinions, and state the nature and object of their examinations. He had heard that some of the candidates to whom licenses were refused from the see of Peterborough had obtained them elsewhere in other dioceses, without the lengthy examinations now the subject of complaint. He had read the answers to the eighty-seven questions, and he could find no ground at least for the charge of artifice, brought forward by the Right Reverend Prelate. Had artifice been necessary, it would have been displayed in a different way; the object of the petitioner was to gain the curacy, and but for his honest scruples of conscience he might have obtained it. He (Lord Holland) now came to the topic of expediency, and he must observe 653 that if the practice of the Right Reverend Prelate could be justified by strict law, it was in itself a tremendous grievance, and a most cruel power, the exercise of which ought to be controuled. The hardship in a case like that of the petitioner was extreme. By the resolutions in the case of Horne Tooke it had been settled, that when once a man was a deacon, he could look for advancement in no profession but the church. A man might be able to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles with the latitude hitherto allowed, and an opportunity of preferment in the diocese of Peterborough occurring, he might have reasonably expected that no obstacle would have been presented to his obtaining it. But no: the Bishop stepped in, and put him to a new test by his eighty-seven questions, some of them of no easy solution, and such as Archbishop Wake himself could not have answered. Still, answered they must be; and if it could not be done without it, the candidate must read over the Right Reverend Prelate's long controversial work for his instruction. He had no choice — extinctæ corpus non utile dextræ ; and if he did not give satisfactory replies upon all the doctrinal points, he must be content to be a beggar all his life. It might be true that only three had been rejected by the Right Reverend Prelate, but could he say how many had been deterred from seeking advancement through such an ordeal? There was one remark which he (Lord Holland) would not have made but for the charge of artifice which had been made against the petitioner. He observed that the eighty-seven ques tions were only propounded to young, iuexperienced men-to candidates for cura. cies or holy orders; but they were never put to beneficed clergymen who might be supposed to be more competent to reply. The truth was, that in such cases third persons were interested-the lay patron-perhaps the crown; and if objections were made to the interrogatories, the matter could be carried to another jurisdiction. He did not say that it was so, but it looked very much as if the Right Reverend Prelate was resolved to go so far as he could without (to use a familiar phrase) being hauled over the coals. By a practice like this, each separate diocese would be converted into a separate church, and divisions and sects would be endless. But since the Church of England was part of the law and constitution, Parliament was bound to interpose in cases of necessity to preserve its peace: he did not put it on the miserable ground of property, but for the sake of the interests of religion, the House was called upon to interfere and to take care that the basis of the church was as broad and solid as duty to God and the welfare of the state would allow. The Right Reverend Prelate had done what, till his time, had not been attempted since the Reformation. He strove to straiten and narrow the basis of the church, and the speech he had made shewed that those who wished for the peace and security of the country, ought either to put an end to the practice he had begun, or at least to institute au inquiry into its legality and policy. The Right Reverend Prelate objected to the extraordinary interference of the House, yet he himself, day after day, had sat with exemplary patience to support a Bill of Pains and Penalties against the first subject of the realm, on the ground that the ordinary law did not reach the case. Here the ordinary law did not reach the case, yet he contended that there was no remedy but through a Convocation. As to the power of Convo cation, it was unquestionably a very pretty power to be read of in books; but God forbid that he (Lord Holland) or any man should live to see the day when it should be again exercised in this kingdom. Lord CALTHORPE contended that the mode of proceeding adopted by the Right Reverend Prelate closed all those openings in the Thirty-nine Articles purposely left for the scruples of conscientious minds. He thought it most desirable for the welfare, and most essential to the peace, of the country and the interests of the clergy, that this House should express its decided reprobation of the course which had been pursued by the Right Reverend Prelate. (Hear.) He did hope, that their Lordships by their vote of that evening, whatever it might be, would make it clearly understood that they would not lend their high sanction to a proceeding, more menacing and more fatal to the prosperity of the church, than any which had ever been ventured on by any other Prelate, since the period at which the reformation of our religion was effected. (Hear.) The Earl of HARROWBY said, that as he had, on the last occasion of this subject's being agitated, voted that the petition should not be laid upon the table, he felt anxious now to explain the grounds upon which he should now be disposed to give a contrary vote. The allegations which the petition contained appeared to he of the gravest character; and, looking to the high and important interests which might be in some sort affected by them, he did think that some further inquiry ought to be instituted into the matter. He was satisfied, in regard to the church and its welfare, that to narrow the base was not the best method of securing the superstructure. The categories (as we understood his Lordship) of the Right Reverend Prelate, he considered to be clearly most impolitic. While he (Lord Harrowby) was disposed to vote for the reading and laying on the table of the petition, he was far from pledging himself to support the proposed address. The LORD CHANCELLOR thought it would be a most extraordinary course for their Lordships to take, to refuse to allow the petition to lie on the table, and yet not to reject it, but permit it to be read. If the noble Earl who had spoken last saw nothing in this petition which made it improper to be received, or to be allowed to lie upon the table, (taking it to be a general representation of the sentiments entertained by the gentlemen who had signed it,) it appeared to him (the Lord Chancellor) that it ought to be permitted so to be read and laid on the table, whether their Lordships should choose to found any ulterior measure upon it or not. And such a proposition he was himself inclined, therefore, to support. But if it was intended, by laying the petition on their table, to imply any censure on the Right Reverend Prelate, whose conduct it called in question, he (the Lord Chancellor) would vote against it, even in that stage of the question. He could not see how the Right Reverend Prelate, indeed, could go on to the subscription, without previous examination. In voting that the petition should lie on the table, he (the Lord Chancellor) desired not to be understood as imputing any blame to the Right Reverend Prelate. The petition was then read, and ordered to lie on the table. Lord DACRE then observed, he had intended to have followed up the last motion, by moving an address to the Crown on that subject; but from what the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, and other learned Lords, had said, it was clear that he (Lord Dacre) should find much difficulty and opposition if he persevered in his intention. He was therefore inclined to substitute for it a motion “ that this petition be referred to a Committee to consider the matter thereof." The LORD CHANCELLOR having explained the terms on which he would consent that the petition be laid ou the table, would only say that he could not consent to this motion. The question being put, The Earl of CARNARVON could not re Intelligence.-Parliamentary. Marriage Act. press his astonishment on finding, that when so important a subject as this was brought before the house, the bench of Right Reverend Prelates had not declared in words-no, nor by a nod-nor even by a gesture, whether they meant, to a man, to sanction or condemn the conduct of their Right Reverend Brother. (Hear, and a laugh.) Usually those Reverend Prelates were not backward in expressing their opinions on subjects comparatively unimportant. They had long been in the habit of attending, and very regularly, the discussions of their Lordships; but whether for mere ornament and appearance, or for any more useful purpose, their conduct on this evening might possibly decide. Could their Lordships see with indifference a Bench of Bishops thus sitting in timid silence? Was it not almost a desertion of those whom it was the bounden duty of those Right Reverend Prelates to instruct ? On any great constitutional question, particularly a year or two ago, they formerly could not complain that either the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, or those Right Reverend Prelates, were slow to give the House the benefit of their wisdom and experience. But here, on a question of church policy, both were silent. That the Right Reverend Prelates had come down to vote one way or other, was evident enough; but the grounds upon which their votes were to proceed, their Lordships were not to learn. What would the public think, when it was informed, that of the very many Reverend Prelates who had come down that night to the House, not one was to be found who had a single word to offer upon the subject before their Lordships? (Hear.) Strangers were then excluded from below the bar. On our re-admission, we found the numbers to be (on the question of referring the petition to a Committee)— Contents, 19; Non-coutents, 58. Majority against the motion, 39. [The above subject has been introduced into the House of Commons also, as appears from the following paragraph in the Times of Friday, June 28:"We understand that, after a division which took place in the House of Commons on Wednesday night last, and before the readmission of strangers into the gallery, Mr. FoWELL BUXTON stated, that he had been desired some time since to present two petitions from very respectable clergymen of the diocese of Peterborough, complaining of the conduct of their Bishop, with respect to the eighty-seven questions which that Right Reverend Prelate had 655 prepared. Mr. Buxton added, that wishing, if possible, to avoid introducing the discussion of such a subject into the House of Commons, he had not yet complied with the request of these two gentlemen. He had felt desirous, also, that their petitions should be considered in the first place, in the House of Lords, where the Right Reverend Prelate might have the opportunity of vindicating himself from the allegations they contained. That discussion having since come on, he (Mr. Buxton) did hope that what had been said by their Lordships might have the effect of inducing the Bishop to reconsider the subject in question, and to return to that which had now for so long a period been the practice of the Established Church. If, however, the conduct of the Right Reverend Prelate should disappoint these hopes, Mr. Buxton said, he should consider it his duty to call the attention of the House to this matter at an early period of the next session."] HOUSE OF COMMONS, JULY 31, 1822. Marriage Act. Mr. BUTTERWORTH wished to call the attention of an honourable and learned Member (Dr. Phillimore) to a clause in the new Marriage Act, which seemed to him to involve considerable difficulty. There were sects of Dissenters who did not baptize their children until they became adult, and in fact there were probably a great many persons in the country who, acting under their peculiar principle, were never baptized at all. Now such individuals would be placed in a situation of great inconvenience by that part of the new Marriage Act which went to provide that no person should be married without producing a register of his baptism. Dr. PHILLIMORE begged to be distinctly understood as having had nothing to do with the clause to which the honourable Member adverted. The clause had been inserted in the Upper House: if he (Dr. Phillimore) had framed it, it certainly would not have stood in its present shape. For the benefit of such persons as were unable to produce registers, there was, however, a saving provision in the Act: where it appeared that the register of baptism could not be obtained, the Surrogate might be satisfied by an affidavit from any sufficient person, that the party unregistered was really twenty-one years of age. That provision he (Dr. Phillimore) apprehended was enough to remove the difficulty which the honourable Member (Mr. Butterworth) complained of; but he personally knew nothing of |