The British Critic, and Quarterly Theological Review (Volume 28) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: blishment of the Church, we shall find that the chance of suchi control is actually very much diminished by its being established. Dr. Chalmers, indeed, seems to think (p. 52) that endowments constitute an Established Church, and the notion seems common among the members of the Kirk. This is natural, because the Kirk originally received its endowments from the same acts of parliament by which it was established. We observe here a remarkable distinction between the English Church and the Kirk. It is notorious, and is denied, as far as we know, by no party in the Kirk, that whatever it has of secular advantages it has received by statute, as a boon from the state. This is expressly declared by the Lord President (Lethendy case), by the Dean of Faculty, by Dr.Chalmers, by Mr. Hamilton, and by Mr. Dunlop. The English Church, on the other hand, acknowledges, of course, that in one sense she owes her property to the civil power; because her rights of property, like those of the Methodist connection, or of any individual subject, are defended and preserved bv the power of the law; and she further admits that the legislature, having the physical power to take away all her property, as it has done in Scotland, and having taken away only the greater part of it, she may be said in another sense to be indebted to the legislature for her actual possession of the remainder. In the same sense, and with equal truth, it may be said that Mr. Hume has received his property from the state; and that the sheriff of Surrey owes his personal liberty to the House of Commons, which has as much power and right to lay hands on him as on his brother of Middlesex. The Kirk, on the other hand, obtained all its property by statute. It is not wonderful, then, that members of the Kirk should consider the essen...