Book Description

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: THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, This Essay is extracted from the Edinburgh Review, for Scptcmbor, 1826; in which it originally appeared us the critique upon a volume entitled Letters To Ah ErucopALJAN ] We have been suspected, we know, of being unfriendly to the Church of England. But we are not?at least on the present occasion. The causes which led to her great Reformation, we think indeed should still reform her more; and, with the fullest sense of the general soundness of her doctrines, and the benefits which her establishment has conferred on the community, it is impossible to look back to the history of that reformation, or round to the spread of sectarianism, and the infinite changes which have since been wrought on the whole frame of our society, without feeling that things may then have been necessary which are now prejudicial?and that much might be adopted in a hurried experiment which it would be improper to retain in a mature institution. The subject is familiar enough in the mouths both of capable and incapable talkers: ?but in reality it is little in their thoughts?nor do we hesitate to say, that we do not know any other, of nearly equal importance, on which the public mind is so ill informed, or to which it has been so little accustomed to direct a calm and scrutinizing attention, as the constitution of the Church of England, by law established. The author of the work before us is entitled therefore to our best thanks, for the vigorous effort which he has made to arouse this indifference, and to enlighten this ignorance. He has spoken out boldly, but yet temperately; and although we are far from agreeing with all his doctrines, we think that both the ability and the good spirit with which he writes are excellently fitted to open, with the happiest omens, that dis...