means you have taken to establish and maintain your fancied rights. If you felt yourself oppressed, and were denied redress, why did you disguise yourself and circumstances under a mask that presents the multitudinous and borrowed features of others; why did you not boldly appeal, in your own person, to Parliament, at once? Was it because it would have been indecent in a petition to the legislature, to speak of the " despotism involved" in one of its own acts? Or was it, that the shade is more convenient for the nature of your warfare; and more envenomed weapons may be used when you stab your superiors in the dark? In the first section of your third chapter, I can see nothing in the evidence you would adduce from scripture to prove that "the spirit of the Curates' Act is at variance with the first principles of revelation," or that it militates against the institution of episcopacy. I cannot join in the abhorrence you express at the "excision and exclusion of the Curates' Act," since there is nothing therein contained which cuts off a curate, as I have before remarked, from the common privileges of a British subject; nor does the exclusion you complain of extend farther than a single parish. As to the real or avowed reasons for the revocation of your licence, the public are left to form their own conjectures: you do not pretend that the monition you have received from your superior tends to silence you, or even to prevent the exercise of your holy function within the diocese. Surely it never can be fairly considered tyranny to remove a curate from a parish, where his residence promotes discord among the parishioners, and still to allow him to serve any other cure he can get. You must not complain that I fancy an extreme case, and imagine faults and consequences that have no existence. You have not told us the extent, or the nature of the accusation against you; or the grounds on which the bishop acted. That you have been removed from your curacy is plain; that you are exceedingly sore in consequence is undeniable; and it is equally manifest that you are determined to move Acheron in your behalf: but in furtherance of this desire apply not to your Bible; you can adduce no evidence that will warrant indiscriminate censure on a sacred function, charges of tyranny on a recent law, or a railing accusation against the practice and discipline of the Church. What more could be said against it by its most avowed and inveterate enemies, than the charges you have with diligence collected, and with such acrimony published, it may not be easy to determine. The clergy, in general, are actuated by other motives; and are aware, that their most amiable characteristic, as well as the professed aim and end of their preaching, is peace. He, therefore, that assumes to himself the credit and weight due to half the order, and boldly avers that the law which was enacted to preserve unity, to correct abuses, and to defend the clergy from the sly and insidious traps of the common informer, is a "bad law," can neither be considered mild nor harmless. His temper must be violent, (remember the publication is anonymous, and that I can have no personal resentment to gratify) his passions warm and impetuous; and his remarks, and the language in which he clothes them, are calculated unquestionably to do incalculable harm. How the "origin of a sacred function" can be affected, or its truth and credit compromised, by the character and novel conduct, as you assert, of a few individuals, (supposing their character impaired, and their conduct improper, which I by no means admit,) must be left to the decision of others. Our articles, to which you appeal with such confidence, tell us, the unworthiness of the minister hinders not the effect of the sacraments: neither can the execution of the authority with which the law invests bishops, (even if it were unduly invested) be justly considered as a dereliction of those duties which are manifestly required at their hands." You invite us to "compare the evidence of scripture with the measures now pursued by our Christian fathers," and affirm, we shall perceive a painful contrast between them, and shall be struck with the alarming deviation from both the theory and practice of the Bible." The theory of the Bible, I believe, is not to be learnt from the scanty records, or rather scattered evidences, (and we could expect no other) which are to be found in scripture, of the discipline and practice of the primitive Church. The epistles, which are admitted into the sacred canon, were written after the ascension of our blessed Lord; they are wisely limited to a very small number, and give a very confined insight into the usage and ordinances of the early Christians. They inform us, indeed, that the Apostles exercised authority over the Churches they had planted; and when their duty called them into distant regions, they left successors, as were Titus and Timothy, who might ordain, and execute every function which belonged to the superintendence of the Church. But what was their particular practice, or the theory, as you term it, by which they were actuated, no one, out of the scriptures, has ever attempted to explain. I have little doubt, that if their characters had been attacked so rudely, and the due exercise of their functions had been so unequivocally called in question, as have been those of their successors at the present hour, those who libelled them would have been removed from their stations, and that their licence to preach would have been revoked. Of this, I think, we have pretty clear evidence, in what is recorded of St. Paul's conduct towards Hymeneus and Alexander, a case to which you yourself refer, though I can discover no trace of any forensic proceedings; nor do I believe the Apostle's conduct was ever considered arbitrary, unjust, or tyrannical. Though the punishment was rather more severe, and its consequences more lamentable, than the removal of a stipendiary curate. I readily admit, that "St. Paul would not have spoken so openly and so severely of these bad men, if his own conduct towards them had not been free from the attacks of reproach and reprehension:" nor can I believe, that among "the numerous cases of clergy dismissed by our spiritual governors," that these spiritual governors would "state by name, in their official and public ministrations, the curates whom they had banished from their dioceses," unless they too had been convinced, that their own conduct towards these curates had not been free from the merited attacks of reproach and reprehension. Where these numerous cases are to be found, it would have been candid and charitable in you to have told us. They have not occurred within my own observation, nor do I find them in the public prints. We in this neighbourhood thought, and do still think, (for we are not inclined to alter our opinions upon anonymous information) that the affairs of the Church are well conducted; and also, that the number of Church people is as great now as it ever was. We do not deny that there are more dissenters; but whoever reflects on the vast increase of our population, and the want of provision for this increase in our Churches, till very lately, will not be surprised that their ranks have increased. Few pious churchmen would entertain much apprehension from dissenters, however widely they may differ from them in sentiment, if their dissent were not occasionally blown into hatred by the pestilential breath of false brethren in the Church. If the Church falls, it will be by mines which have been constructed by her own professed members; by the weakness which profligacy, scandal, and mortified pride, simultaneously produce. Nothing seems to offend you more strongly than the "singular inconsistence," as you call it," of the clause of the Act of Parliament affecting curates with the provision of the same Act relative to incumbents." You aver," that the provision relative to the incumbent is at perfect antipodes with the clause affecting curates; and that this difference is truly astonishing." I think I need not go so far as the antipodes to prove, that the Act of Parliament, in this respect, is framed in the spirit of justice. Nor do 1 feel any astonishment, that there should be some difference as to the mode of removing a curate from a stipendiary office which he obtained by the appointment of the incumbent, and which he will find little difficulty in resuming elsewhere; and a deprivation from a benefice, which would strip a clergyman of his bread and character, and form an insuperable bar to his obtaining preferment during the rest of his life. This surely affords some reason why a "premonition should be required to a rector, and not to the curate." Notwithstanding your shrewd sarcasm with respect to residence, and that you "especially" remark that "the nonresident violates an express Act of Parliament, knowingly and designedly;" which you would have us believe, I suppose, is "mild and harmless," and by no means intended to paralyse our answer, and to overwhelm the employers of stipendiary curates with the current of public opinion, and to pour on them vulgar contempt, Pray, if there were no non-resident incumbents, where would be the curates? And how would deserving young men, without interest, ever get into the Church? Your cause must be poor, indeed, if you are compelled to apply to the fashion of the times, and re-echo the hollow clamor, which has been insidiously raised, and ignorantly supported, with respect to non-residence. That man's mind must be cast in no common mould who is nonresident by choice and if he were, the difficulties of obtaining a licence are, by the law which you term arbitrary, unjust, and tyrannical, so numerous, as in most cases to present an insurmountable obstacle to his wish. But this remark aptly follows, and is framed in the same spirit of liberality as the assertion, for which I, from my heart, believe there is not the smallest ground: "We have known various cases of rectors (who did not like to reside, and could not well frame an adequate plea for a licence,) wherein the bishop has actually volunteered his kind services, and offered to levy the penalties incurred, and return the money, for the sake of preventing prosecutions by other persons." Can this naked, unsupported, and libellous affirmation, proceed from a man who appeals to incumbents as his brethren who "looks up to bishops as his advisers, protectors, and friends!!!" You more than once desire us to pause, and reflect on the substance of your pamphlet. Here I am compelled. I cannot, at once, recover the concern and astonishment with which I have been struck, at the lamentable perception, that there exists a brother, who has been so lost in the maze of his own passions, as to suppose that the public would give credence to a nameless charge, which affects the character, and would destroy the usefulness of his own order, and break down the reliance, which every good citizen puts on the provisions of the legislature, the laws of the kingdom, and the credit of the state. The contents of your fourth chapter are presumed to establish the position, that "the execution of the Curates' Act is contrary to the acknowledged ends of punishment." This is the first time I have ever met with the assertion, that the Curates' Act formed part of our penal code. I had supposed it had been enacted for bettering the condition of the curates. We all know, that since it has become a statute, their stipends have been in many cases trebly increased. I cannot find that their punishments, (if the word must be used, though the infliction and the desert of punishment is rare,)-I cannot find that punishment is severer than before. The punishment you complain of is a summary dismissal from their cures at the will of the diocesan. You must be young, indeed, not to be aware, that previous to this "tyrannical law," as you term it, a curate's condition was much more unstable. Before the late statutes were enacted, curates were seldom licensed. They were removed, as they were appointed, by the incumbents: and were paid, not by stipends fixed by parliament, but by the best bargain they could make. Far am I from maintaining the justice or propriety of this practice; I only mention it to prove, that the condition of the curates is much ameliorated'; and that the legislature designed as a favor the clause which prevents their removal without the consent of the diocesan. Nor is their removal always to be regarded as a punishment; in many cases it operates to their advantage. For no one can be said to be advantageously situated, where a party is formed against him, or where his residence creates or foments discord and hate. You yourself will own, that a parish priest can do little good where the parishioners are divided, and where his conduct, his preaching, or his opinions, form a line of separation. A clergyman should be a peace-maker, and should willingly forego any emolument, rather than present an obstacle to reconciliation: above all, he should not promote faction. Most men of meek and gentle tempers would keep out of the way of contention, and would be glad that they had the power to change their residence, which is privilege allowed to a curate, which an incumbent has not. But even admitting that the removal of a curate, by the bishop, is a punishment; to what does it amount? A curacy is never considered a permanent station. The world is all before him. And while there are "knowingly and designedly violators of an express Act of Parliament," as you charitably term non-resident incumbents, he will never want employment: especially if he be, as are the clergymen in whose case you take such fraternal, I will not say selfish, interest, "endowed with every adequate requisite that can furnish the understanding, and every qualification which can adorn the character or grace the profession of a minister of Christ, and of the Church of England." Poor priests, if you become bishops, or even incumbents, how are you changed! I should not do justice to the contents of your fourth chapter, if I were to pass over the glaring placard, which has not less dazzled my eyes by the manner and size in which it is printed, than it has startled my understanding, and done violence to the reverence with |