currents that agitate the lower region of the political atmosphere. Accordingly, on a change of dynasty they bound the person, who had accepted the crown in trust,-bound him for himself and his successors by an oath to refuse his consent (without which no change in the existing law can be effected) to any measure subverting or tending to subvert the safety and independence of the National Church, or which exposed the realm to the danger of a return of that foreign usurper, misnamed spiritual, from which it had with so many sacrifices emancipated itself. However unconstitutional therefore the royal veto on a Bill presented by the Lords and Commons may be deemed in all ordinary cases, this is clearly an exception. For it is no additional power conferred on the King; but a limit imposed on him by the constitution itself for its own safety. Previously to the ceremonial act, which announces him the only lawful and sovereign head of both the Church and the State, the oath is administered to him religiously as the representative person and crowned majesty of the nation. Religiously, I say;-for the mind of the nation, existing only as an idea, can act distinguishably on the ideal powers alone that is, on the reason and conscience.

It only remains then to determine what it is to which the Coronation oath obliges the conscience of the King. And this may be best done by considering what in reason and in conscience the nation had a right to impose. Now that the nation had a right to decide for the King's conscience and reason, and for the reason and conseience of all his successors, and of his and their counsellors and ministers, laic and ecclesiastic, on questions of theology, and controversies of faith,—for example, that it is not allowable in directing our thoughts to a departed Saint, the Virgin Mary for instance, to say, Ora pro nobis, beata Virgo, though there might, peradventure, be no harm in saying, Oret pro nobis, precor, beata Virgo; whether certain books are to be holden canonical; whether the text, They shall be saved as through fire, refers to a purgatorial process in the body, or during the interval between its dissolution and the day of judgment; whether the words, This is my body, are to be understood literally, and if so, whether it is by consubstantiation with, or transubstantiation of, bread and wine; and that the members of both Houses of Parliament, together with the Privy Councillors and all the Clergy, shall abjure and denounce the theory last mentioned-this I ut

terly deny. And if this were the whole and sole object and intention of the oath, however large the number might be of the persons who imposed or were notoriously favorable to the imposition, so far from recognizing the nation in their collective number, I should regard them as no other than an aggregate of intolerant mortals, from bigotry and presumption forgetful of their fallibility, and not less ignorant of their own rights than callous to those of succeeding generations. If the articles of faith therein disclaimed and denounced were the substance and proper intention of the oath, and not to be understood, as in all common sense they ought to be, as temporary marks, because the known accompaniments, of other and legitimate grounds of disqualification; and which only in reference to these, and only as long as they implied their existence, were fit objects of political interference; it would be as impossible for me, as for the late Mr. Canning, to attach any such sanctity to the Coronation oath as should prevent it from being superannuated in times of clearer light and less heat. But that these theological articles, and the open profession of the same by a portion of the King's subjects as parts of their creed, are not the evils which it is the true and legitimate purpose of the oath to preclude, and which constitute and define its obligation on the royal conscience; and what the real evils are, that do indeed disqualify for offices of national trust, and give the permanent obligatory character to the engagement —this,—in which I include the exposition of the essential characters of the Christian or Catholic Church; and of a very different Church, which assumes the name; and the application of the premisses to an appreciation on principle of the late Bill, now the law of the land,-will occupy the remaining portion of the volume.

And now I may be permitted to look back on the road we have passed in the course of which, I have placed before the reader a small part indeed of what might, on a suitable occasion, be profitably said; but it is all that for my present purpose I deem it necessary to say respecting three out of the five themes that were to form the subjects of the first part of this little work. But let me avail myself of the pause to repeat my apology to the reader for any extra trouble I may have imposed on him, by employing the same term, the State, in two senses; though 1 flatter myself I have in each instance so guarded it as to leave

scarcely the possibility that a moderately attentive reader should understand the word in one sense, when I had meant it in the other, or confound the State as a whole and comprehending the Church, with the State as one of the two constituent parts, and in contra-distinction from the Church.

BRIEF RECAPITULATION.

First then, I have given briefly, but, I trust, with sufficient clearness, the right idea of a State, or body politic; the word State being here synonymous with a constituted realm, kingdom, commonwealth, or nation; that is, where the integral parts, classes, or orders are so balanced, or interdependent, as to constitute, more or less, a moral unit, an organic whole; and as arising out of the idea of a State, I have added the idea of a Constitution, as the informing principle of its coherence and unity. But in applying the above to our own kingdom (and with this qualification the reader is requested to understand me as speaking in all the following remarks), it was necessary to observe, and I willingly avail myself of this opportunity to repeat the observation, that the Constitution, in its widest sense as the constitution of the realm, arose out of, and in fact consisted in, the co-existence of the constitutional State (in the second acceptation of the term) with the King as its head, and of the Church, that is, the National Church, with the King likewise as its head; and lastly of the King, as the head and majesty of the whole nation. The reader was cautioned therefore not to confound it with either of its constituent parts; that he must first master the true idea of each of these severally; and that in the synopsis or conjunction of the three the idea of the English constitution, the constitution of the realm, will rise of itself before him. And in aid of this purpose and following this order, I have given according to my best judgment, first, the idea of the State in the second or special sense of the term; of the State-legislature; and of the two constituent orders, the Landed, with its two classes, the Major Barons, and the Franklins; and the Personal, consisting of the mercantile, or commercial, the manufacturing, the distributive and the professional; these two orders corresponding to the two great all-including interests of the State,-the Landed, namely, to the permanence,-the Personal to the progression.

The possessions of both orders, taken collectively, form the Proprietage of the realm. In contra-distinction from this, and as my second theme, I have explained (and it being the principal object of this work, more diffusely) the Nationalty, its Nature and purposes, and the duties and qualifications of its trustees and functionaries. In the same sense in which I at once oppose and conjoin the Nationalty to the Proprietage; in the same antithesis and conjunction I use and understand the phrase, Church and State. Lastly, I have essayed to determine the constitutional idea of the Crown, and its relations to the nation, to which I have added a few sentences on the relations of the nation to the State. To the completion of this first part of my undertaking, two subjects still remain to be treated of and to each of these I shall devote a small section; the title of the first being, "On the idea of the Christian Church;" that of the other, "On a third Church;" the name of which I withhold for the present, in the expectation of deducing it by contrast from the contradistinguishing characters of the former.

* To convey his meaning precisely is a debt which an Author owes to his readers. He therefore who, to escape the charge of pedantry, will rather be misunderstood than startle a fastidious critic with an unusual term, may be compared to the man who should pay his creditor in base or counterfeit coin, when he had gold or silver ingots in his possession, to the precise amount of the debt; and this under the pretence of their unshapeliness and want of the mint impression.

IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

"We (said Luther) tell our God plainly: If he will have his Church, then he must look how to maintain and defend it; for we can neither uphold nor protect it. And well for us, that it is so! For in case we could, or were able to defend it, we should become the proudest asses under heaven. Who is the Church's protector, that hath promised to be with her to the end, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her? Kings, Diets, Parliaments, Lawyers? Marry, no such cattle."-Luther's Table Talk with additions.-Ed.

THE practical conclusion from our inquiries respecting the origin and idea of the National Church, the paramount end and purpose of which is the continued and progressive civilization of the community (emollit mores nec sinit esse feros), was this: that though many things may be conceived of a tendency to diminish the fitness of particular men, or of a particular class, to be chosen as trustees and functionaries of the same; though there may be many points more or less adverse to the perfection of the establishment; there are yet but two absolute disqualifications: namely, allegiance to a foreign power, or an acknowledgment of any other visible head of the Church but our sovereign lord the King; and compulsory celibacy in connection with, and dependence on, a foreign and extra-national head. I now call the reader to a different contemplation, to the idea of the Christian Church.

Of the Christian Church, I say, not of Christianity. To the ascertainment and enucleation of the latter, of the great redemptive process which began in the separation of light from Chaos (Hades, or the indistinction) and has its end in the union of life with God, the whole summer and autumn and now commenced winter of my life have been dedicated. Hic labor, hoc opus est, on which alone I rest my hope that I shall be found not to have lived altogether in vain. Of the Christian Church only, and of this no further than is necessary for the distinct understanding