§ 202.1. The Episcopal State Church.—The two opposing parties of the state church corresponded to the two political parties of Tories and Whigs. The high church party, which has its most powerful representatives in the aristocracy, holds aloof from the dissenters, seeks to maintain the closest connexion between church and state, and eagerly contends for the retention of all old ecclesiastical forms and ordinances in constitution, worship, and doctrine. On the other hand the evangelical or low church party, which is more or less methodistically inclined, holds free intercourse with dissenters, associating with them in home and foreign mission work, etc., and with various shades of differences advocates the claims of progress against those of immobility, the independence of the church against its identification with the state, the evangelical freedom and general priesthood of believers against orthodoxy and hierarchism. From their midst arose a movement in 1871, occasioned by the Oxford “Essays and Reviews” and the works of Bishop Colenso, which resulted in the publication, under the authority of the bishops, of the “Speaker’s Commentary,” so-called because suggested by Denison, who had long been speaker of the House of Commons. It is a learned, thoroughly conservative commentary on the whole Bible by the ablest theologians of England. On the revision of the English translation of the Bible see § 181, 4. Besides these two parties, however, there has arisen a third, the broad church party. It originated with the distinguished poet and philosopher, Coleridge (died 1834), and includes many of the most excellent and scholarly of the clergy, especially those most eminent for their acquaintance with German theology and philosophy. They do not form an organized ecclesiastical party like the evangelicals and high church men, but endeavour not only to overcome the narrowness and severity of the former, but also to secure a broader basis and a wider horizon for theology as well as for the church.557—The struggle for the legalizing of marriage with a deceased wife’s sister has been energetically pressed since 1850, but though the House of Commons has repeatedly passed the bill, it has been hitherto by small majorities, under the influence of the bishops, rejected by the House of Lords.—A non-official Pan-Anglican Council of English bishops from all parts of the world, excluding the laity and inferior clergy, with pre-eminently anti-Romish and anti-ritualistic tendencies, was held in London in 1867 (cf. § 175, 5). When it met the second time in 1878, it was attended by nearly one hundred bishops, one of them a negro. Of the three weeks’ debates and their results, however, no detailed account has been published.

§ 202.2. The Tractarians and Ritualists.—The activity of the dissenters and the episcopal evangelical party’s attachment to them stirred up the adherents of the high church party to vigorous guarding of their interests, and drove them into a one-sided exaggerated accentuation of the Catholic element. The centre of this movement since 1833 was the university of Oxford. Its leaders were Professors Pusey and Newman, its literary organ the Tracts for the Times, from which the party received the name of Tractarians. This was a series of ninety treatises, published 1833-1841, on the basis of Anglo-Catholicism, which sought, while holding by the Thirty-nine Articles, to affirm with equal decidedness the genuine Protestantism over against the Roman papacy, and, in the importance which it attached to the apostolical succession of the episcopate and priesthood and the apostolical tradition for the interpretation of Scripture, the genuine Catholicism over against every form of ultra-Protestantism. In this way, too, their dogmatics in all the several doctrines, as far as the Thirty-nine Articles would by any means allow, was approximated to the Roman Catholic doctrine, and indeed by-and-by passed over entirely to that type of doctrine. Newman’s Tract 90 caused most offence, in which, with thoroughly jesuitical sophistry, it was argued that the Thirty-nine Articles were capable of an explanation on the basis of which they might be subscribed even by one who occupied in regard to the church doctrine and practice an essentially Roman Catholic standpoint. The university authorities now felt obliged to declare publicly that the tracts were by no means sanctioned by them, and that especially the application of the principles of Tract 90 to the conduct of students in the matter of subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles is not allowable. Bishop Bagot of Oxford, hitherto favourable to the tractarians, refused to permit the continued issue of the tracts. The other bishops also for the most part spoke against them in their pastorals, and a flood of controversial pamphlets roused the wrath of the non-Catholic populace. But on the other hand tractarianism still found favour among the higher clergy and the aristocracy. In 1845 Newman went over to the Catholic church, and has since led a retired life devoted to theological study. Pius IX. paid him no attention, but in 1879 Leo XIII. acknowledged and rewarded his services to the Catholic church by elevating him to the rank of cardinal. The majority of the tractarians disapproved of Newman’s step and remained in the Anglican church. Thus acted Pusey (died 1882), the recognised leader of the party, after whom they were now called Puseyites. Many, however, followed Newman’s example, so that by the end of 1846 no less than one hundred and fifty clergymen and prominent laymen were received into the widely opened door of the Catholic church.558—The following twelve years, 1846-1858, were occupied by two dogmatico-ecclesiastical conflicts vitally affecting the interests of the tractarians.

1. The Gorham Case. The Thirty-nine Articles took essentially Lutheran ground in treating of baptism, recognising it as a vehicle of regeneration and divine sonship, and the tractarians laid uncommonly great stress upon this article. So also the Bishop of Exeter, Dr. Philpotts, refused to institute the Rev. Cornelius Gorham because of his views on this subject. Gorham accused him before the Archbishop of Canterbury, but the Court of Arches decided in favour of the bishop. The Court of Appeal, however, the judicial committee of the Privy Council, annulled the episcopal judgment, and ordered that Gorham should be installed in his office. In vain did Philpotts, by a protest before the Court of Queen’s Bench, and then before the Court of Common Pleas, against the jurisdiction of the Privy Council in this case, in vain, too, did Blomfield, Bishop of London, insist upon the revival of Convocation, which for one and a half centuries had been inoperative as a spiritual parliament with upper and lower houses, and in vain did a tractarian assembly of more than 1,500 distinguished clergymen and laymen lodge a solemn protest. The judgment of the Privy Council stood, and Gorham was inducted to his office in 1850. Many of the protesters now went over to the Catholic church, and about 600 others, like the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers 230 years before (§ 143, 4), under ecclesiastical oppression, emigrated to New Zealand.
2. The Denison Eucharist Case.—The Puseyite Archdeacon Denison of Taunton, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, had in 1851 in open defiance of the Thirty-nine Articles, which represent Calvin’s views of the Lord’s Supper, affirmed in preaching and writing that unbelievers as well as believers eat and drink the body and blood of the Lord. Over this he was involved in a sharp discussion with a neighbouring clergyman called Ditcher. In 1854 Ditcher accused Denison before his bishop, who, after vain efforts to reconcile the parties, referred the matter to the Court of Arches, which sought, but in vain, to end the strife by compromise. Ditcher now in 1856 brought his complaint before the Queen’s Bench, which obliged the archbishop to take up the matter again. A commission appointed by him declared that the complaint was quite justifiable, and threatened Denison, when he refused any sort of retraction, with deposition. But the Court of Appeal in 1858 stayed the judgment on the ground of a technical error in procedure, and Denison remained in office.

§ 202.3. From the middle of 1850 the tractarians, who had hitherto confined themselves to the development of the Romanizing system of doctrine, began to apply its consequences to the church ritual and the Christian life, and so won for themselves the name of Ritualists, which has driven out their earlier designation. Wherever possible they showed their Catholic zeal by introducing images, crucifixes, candles, holy water, mass dresses, mass bells, and boy choristers, urged the restoration of the seven sacraments, especially of extreme unction, auricular confession, the sacrificial theory and Corpus Christi day, of prayers for the dead and masses for souls, invocation of saints and the blessed Virgin; they also praised celibacy and monasticism, etc. Ritualism has from the first shown singular skill in party organization. The English Church Union, founded in 1860, has now nearly 200,000 members, of these about 3,000 clergymen and 50 bishops, and it embraces 300 branches over the whole domain of the Anglican church. Numerous brotherhoods and sisterhoods, guilds and orders, organized after the style of Roman Catholic monasticism, promote the interests of ritualism, and zealously prosecute home and foreign mission work. The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament originated in 1862, was able in 1882 to celebrate Corpus Christi day in 250 churches along with the Romish church, dispensing only with the procession. The Society of the Holy Cross, founded in 1873 consists only of priests, and forms a kind of directory for all branches of the ritualistic propaganda. The English Order of St. Augustine has a threefold division, into spiritual brothers who are preparing for priests’ orders, lay brothers who are being qualified as lay preachers, both under the strictest vows, and a sort of tertiaries, who are free from vows. Among the sisterhoods which already supply nurses to all the great hospitals of the capital, the most important is that called “by the name of Jesus.” They take, like the Beguines of the middle ages, the three vows, but not as binding for life. By the ultra high church party the genuine apostolic succession of the ordination of the first Protestant archbishop, Matthew Parker, and so the genuineness of all subsequent ordinations going back to him, were doubted; three Anglican bishops are said to have had episcopal consecration anew conferred on them by a Greek Catholic bishop. The reckless and wilful procedure of the ritualists in imitating the Roman Catholic ritual in public worship called forth frequent violent disturbances at their services, and noisy crowds flocked to their churches. Most frequent and violent were the riots in 1859 and 1860 in the parish of St. George’s, London, where scarcely any service was held without disgraceful scenes of hissing, whistling, stamping, and cries of “No popery.” The offscouring of all London flocked to the Sunday services as to a public entertainment. Instead of hymns, street songs were sung, instead of responses blasphemous cries were shouted forth, while cushions and prayer-books were hurled at the altar decorations, etc. These unseemly proceedings were caused by the ritualistic rector, Bryan King, who had introduced the objectionable ceremonial, and obstinately continued it in spite of the decided opposition and protests of his colleague, Mr. Allen. King’s removal in 1860 first put an end to these disturbances, which police interference proved utterly unable to check. The ritualistic Church Union, called into existence by these proceedings, was opposed by an anti-ritualistic Church Association, and from both multitudes of complaints and appeals were brought before the ecclesiastical and civil tribunals. The first case they brought up was that of Rev. A. H. MacConochie, of Holborn, who, having been admonished by the ecclesiastical courts on account of his ritualistic practices in 1867, appealed to the Privy Council. And although this court decided in 1869 that all ceremonies not authorized by the prayer-book are to be regarded as forbidden, he and his followers continued to act on the principle that whatever is not there expressly prohibited ought to be permitted. The Public Worship Regulation Bill, introduced by Archbishop Tait, and passed by Parliament, which legislatively determined the procedure in ritualistic cases, did not prevent the constant advance of this movement. The Court of Arches now issued a suspension against the accused, and condemned them to prison when they continued to officiate, until they declared themselves ready to obey or to demit their office. Tooth of Hatcham, Dale of London, Enraght of Bordesdale, and Green of Miles Platting were actually sent to prison in 1880. But the first three were soon liberated by the Court of Appeal finding some technical flaw in the proceedings against them, while Green, in whose case no such flaw appeared, lay in confinement for twenty months. The ritualists still persistently continued their practice, and their opponents renewed their prosecutions; these were followed by appeals to the higher courts, presenting of petitions to both the Houses of Parliament, addresses with vast numbers of signatures for and against to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to Convocation which had meanwhile been restored, to the Cabinet, to the Queen, etc. The result was that many cases were abandoned, some obnoxious parties transferred elsewhere, and a very few deposed.

§ 202.4. Liberalism in the Episcopal Church.—The more liberal tendency of the broad church party had also many supporters who scrupled not to pass beyond the traditional bounds of English orthodoxy. In opposition to the orthodoxy zealousy inculcated at Oxford, rationalism found favour at the rival university of Cambridge, and vigorous support was given to the views of the Tübingen school of Baur in the London Westminster Review. And even in high church Oxford, there were not wanting teachers in sympathy with the critical and speculative rationalism of Germany. Great excitement was caused in 1860 by the “Essays and Reviews,” which in seven treatises by so many Oxford professors contested the traditional apologetics and hermeneutics of English theology, and set a sublimated rationalism in its place. In Germany these not very important treatises would probably have excited little remark, but in the English church they roused an unparalleled disturbance; more than nine thousand clergymen of the episcopal church protested against the book, and all the bishops unanimously condemned it. The excitement had not yet subsided when from South Africa oil was poured upon the flames. Bishop Colenso of Natal (died 1883), who had zealously carried on the mission there, but had openly expressed the conviction that it is unwise, unscriptural, and unchristian to make repudiation by Caffres living in polygamy, of all their wives but one, a condition of baptism, had occasioned still greater offence by publishing in 1863 in seven vols. a prolix critical disquisition on the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua, in which he contested the authenticity and unconditional credibility of these books by arguments familiar long ago but now quite antiquated and overthrown in Germany. During a journey to England undertaken for his defence he was excommunicated and deposed by a synod of the South African bishops in Capetown. The Privy Council, as supreme ecclesiastical court in England, cleared him, as well as the authors of the Essays, from the charge of heresy. An important aid for the dissemination of liberal religious views is afforded by the Hibbert Lectureship. Robert Hibbert (died 1849), a wealthy private gentleman in London, assigned the yearly interest of a considerable sum for “the spreading of Christianity in its simplest form as well as the furthering of the unfettered exercise of the individual judgment in matters of religion.” The Hibbert trustees are eighteen laymen who dispense the revenues in supplementing the salaries of poorly paid clergymen of liberal views, in providing bursaries for theological students at home and abroad, and in other such like ways, but since 1878 especially, by advice of distinguished scholars, in the endowment of annual courses of lectures, afterwards published, on subjects in the domain of philosophy, biblical criticism, the comparative science of religion and the history of religion. The first Hibbert Lecturer was the celebrated Oxford professor, Max Müller, in 1878. Among other lecturers may be named Renan of Paris in 1880; Kuenen of Leyden in 1882; Pfleiderer of Berlin, in 1885. The battle waged with great passionateness on both sides since 1869 for and against the removal of the Athanasian Creed, or at least its anathemas, from the liturgy has not yet been brought to any decided result.

§ 202.5. Protestant Dissenters in England.—Down nearly to the end of the eighteenth century all the enactments and restrictions of the Toleration Act of 1689 (§ 155, 3) continued in full force. But in 1779 the obligation of Protestant dissenters to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles was abolished, and the acknowledgment of the Bible as God’s revealed word substituted. The right of founding schools of their own, hitherto denied them, was granted in 1798. In 1813 the Socinians were also included among the dissenters who should enjoy these privileges. After a severe struggle the Corporation and Test Acts were set aside in 1826, affording all dissenters entrance to Parliament and to all civil offices. The necessity of being married and having their children baptized in an episcopal church was removed by the Marriage and Registration Act of 1836 and 1837, and divorce suits were removed from the ecclesiastical to a civil tribunal in 1857. In 1868 compulsory church rates for the episcopal parish church were abolished. Lord Russell’s University Bill of 1854, by restricting subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles to the theological students, opened the universities of Oxford and Cambridge to dissenters, while the University Tests Bill of 1871 made the adherents of all religious confessions eligible for all university honours and emoluments at both seminaries. Thus one restriction after another was removed, so that at last the episcopal church has nothing of her exclusive privileges left beyond the rank and title of a state church, and the undiminished possession of all her ancient property, from which her prelates draw princely revenues.

§ 202.6. Scotch Marriages in England.—The saints of the English Revolution had indeed resolved in 1653 to introduce civil marriage (§ 162, 1). But the reaction under Cromwell set this unpopular law aside, and the Restoration made marriage by an Anglican clergyman, even for dissenters, an indispensable condition of legal recognition. But in no country, especially among the higher orders, were private marriages, without the knowledge and consent of the family, so frequent as here, and clergymen were always to be found unscrupulous enough to celebrate such weddings in taverns or other convenient places. When an end had been put to such irregularities on English soil by an Act of Parliament of 1753, lovers seeking secret marriage betook themselves to Scotland. In that country there prevailed, and still prevails, the theory that a declaration of willingness on both sides constitutes a perfectly valid marriage. The Scottish ecclesiastical law indeed requires church proclamation and ceremony, but failure to observe this requirement is followed only by a small pecuniary fine. Fugitive English couples generally made the necessary declaration before a blacksmith at Gretna-Green, who was also justice of the peace in this small border village, and were then legitimately married people according to Scottish law. Only in 1856 were all marriages performed in this manner without previous residence in Scotland pronounced by Act of Parliament invalid.

§ 202.7. The Scottish State Church.—The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, from the beginning strictly Calvinistic in constitution, doctrine and practice, has, generally speaking, preserved this character. Only in recent times has the endeavour of the so-called Moderates to introduce a milder type of doctrine won favour. The Established Church, as a national church properly so-called and recognised by law, dates from the political union of England and Scotland in the kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, and the Anglican Episcopal Church there was then reduced to a feebly represented dissenting denomination. Patronage, set aside indeed in the Reformation age, but restored under Queen Anne in 1712, and since then, in spite of all opposition from the stricter party, continued, because often misused to secure the intrusion of inacceptable ministers upon congregations, gave occasion to repeated secessions. Thus the Secession Church broke off in 1732, and the Relief Church in 1752, the latter going beyond the former’s protest against patronage by unconditional repudiation of Erastianism, i.e. the theory of the necessary connection of Church and State (§ 144, 1), and the assertion of the spiritual independence of the church, and expressed firmly the principles of Voluntaryism, i.e. the payment of all ecclesiastical officers, etc., by voluntary contributions. Both parties united in 1847 in the United Presbyterian Church, which now embraces one-fifth of the population.—Twice that number joined the secession of the Free Church in 1843. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland granted to congregations in 1834 the right of vetoing presentations to vacancies. The civil courts, however, upheld the absolute right of patrons, and at the Assembly of 1843 about two hundred of the most distinguished ministers, with the great Dr. Chalmers (died 1847) at their head, left the state church, and, as Non-Intrusionists, founded the Free Church of Scotland, which at its own cost formed new parishes and distinguished itself by Christian zeal in every direction. It differs from the United Presbyterian Church in restricting its opposition to the abuse of patronage, without repudiating right off every sort of state aid and endowment as unevangelical. But even to it the law passed in 1846, granting to all congregations the right of veto, seemed now no longer a sufficient motive to return to the state church. Even when in 1874, parliament, at the call of the government, formally abolished the rights of patronage through all Scotland and gave to the congregations the right of choosing their own ministers, the General Assembly of the Free Church by a great majority refused to reunite with the state church brought so near it, because it conceded to the civil courts unwarrantable interference with its internal affairs, especially the right of suspending its clergy.559

§ 202.8. Scottish Heresy Cases.—The Glasgow presbytery lodged before the United Presbyterian Synod in Edinburgh of 1878 a charge against the Rev. Fergus Ferguson of heresy, because his teaching was in conflict with the church doctrine of the atonement in saying that sinners, apart from Christ’s intervention, would not suffer eternal punishment but extinction, and that the same fate still lay before unbelievers and the impenitent. After five days’ violent discussion, the majority of the synod, while strongly dissenting from his views and urging him to avoid it in his preaching and catechising, resolved to retain him in office as having proved his adherence to the orthodox doctrine of the atonement. But when, at next year’s synod, the Rev. D. Macrae of Gourock asserted that, in spite of the Westminster Confession, it was allowable for ministers to deny the eternity of punishment, and would not promise to preach otherwise, he was unanimously deposed.—Far more exciting and long continued were the proceedings begun in the Free Church in 1876, against Professor Robertson Smith of Aberdeen, who was charged before his presbytery with offensive statements about angels, but especially with contradicting the inspiration of Scripture by contesting the Mosaic authorship of Deuteronomy. After various proposals of deposition, suspension, rebuke, acquittal, had been made, the General Assembly of 1880, after much deliberation and discussion, by a majority found the charge of heterodoxy not proven, but earnestly exhorted the accused to greater circumspection and moderation, and the decision was greeted with thundering applause from the students and waving of handkerchiefs from the ladies present. But when, very soon after this acquittal, several other contributions by him appeared in the Encyclopædia Britannica, on the Hebrew Language and Literature, and Haggai, in the spirit of the Wellhausen criticism (§ 182, 18), as also an article on Animal Worship among the Arabians and in the Old Testament, in the Journal of Philology, the Commission sitting in Edinburgh reinstituted proceedings against him. In October, 1880, Smith vindicated before that court his scientific attitude toward the Old Testament, maintaining that a moderate criticism of the biblical books was reconcilable with the maintenance of their inspired authority. The majority of the Commission, however, voted for his expulsion from his chair. Smith protested both against the competence and against the judgment of the Commission, but declared himself ready to submit to the judgment of the General Assembly. Meanwhile he accepted an invitation from Glasgow to deliver public lectures there on the Old Testament, which were received with extraordinary favour. This course was published under the title: “The Old Testament in the Jewish Church.” The General Assembly of May, 1881, now decided by a large majority to remove him from his academical chair, with retention of his license and his professor’s salary, which latter, however, Smith declined. But his numerous sympathizers presented him with a scientific library worth £3,000, and promised an annual stipend equal to his former salary. In 1883 he received the appointment as Professor of Arabic in Cambridge and the large revenues of that office allowed him to decline the offer of his friends.560

§ 202.9. The Catholic Church in Ireland.—The Catholic inhabitants of Ireland under Protestant proprietors, and forced to pay tithes for the support of the Protestant clergy, were always deprived of civil rights. In 1809 O’Connell (died 1847), an agitator of great popular eloquence, placed himself at the head of the oppressed people, in order in a constitutional way to secure religious and political freedom and equality. At last, in 1829, the Emancipation Bill, supported by Peel and Wellington, was passed, which on the basis of the formal declaration of the whole Catholic episcopate that papal infallibility and papal sovereignty in civil matters was not part of the Catholic faith nor could be joined therewith either in Ireland or anywhere else in the Catholic world, gave to Catholics admission to parliament and to all civil and military appointments. But the hated tithes remained, and were enforced, when refused, by military force. After long debates in both houses of parliament, the Tithes Bill was adopted in 1838, which transferred the tithe as a land-tax from tenants to proprietors, which, however, was only a postponing of the question. It was thus regarded by O’Connell. He declared that justice for Ireland could only be got by abolishing the legislative union with Great Britain existing since 1800, and restoring her independent parliament. For this purpose he organized the Repeal Association. In 1840 another no less powerful popular agitator arose in the person of the Irish Capuchin, Father Mathew, the apostle of temperance, who with unparalleled success persuaded thousands of those degraded by drink to take vows of abstinence from spirituous liquors. He kept apart from all political agitation, but the fruits of his exertions were all in its favour. O’Connell in 1843 organized monster meetings, attended by hundreds of thousands. The government had him tried, the jury found him guilty, but the House of Lords quashed the conviction and liberated him from prison in 1844. The Peel ministry now sought to soothe the excitement by passing in 1845 the Legacy Act, which allowed Catholics to hold property in their own names, and the Maynooth Bill, by which the theological seminary at Maynooth received a rich endowment from the State. Continued famine, and consequent emigration of several hundreds of thousands to America and Australia, relieved Ireland of a considerable portion of its Catholic population, while Protestant missions by Bible and tract circulation and by schools had some success in evangelizing those who remained. On November 5th, 1855, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, the Redemptorists at Kingstown, near Dublin, erected and burnt a great bonfire in the public streets of Bibles which they had seized, and the primate archbishop of Ireland justified it by reference to the example of the believers at Ephesus (Acts xix. 19).

§ 202.10. The Fenian movement, originating among the American Irish, which since 1863 created such terror among the English, was the result of political rather than religious agitation. Although this movement failed in its proper end, namely the complete separation of Ireland from England, it yet forced upon the government the conviction of the absolute necessity of meeting the just demands of the Irish by thorough-going reforms and putting an end to the oppressions which the native farmers suffered at the hands of foreign landowners, and the grievances endured by the Catholic church by the maintenance of the Anglican church established in Ireland. The carrying out of these reforms was the service rendered by the Gladstone ministry. By the Irish Land Bill of 1870 the land question was solved according to the demands of justice, and by the Irish Church Bill of 1869, which deprived the Anglican church in Ireland of the character of a state church and put it on the same footing as other denominations, the church question was similarly settled. The dignitaries of the Anglican church thus lost their position as state officials and their seats in the House of Lords. The rich property of the hitherto established church was calculated and applied partly to compensating for losses caused by this reform, partly to creating benevolent institutions for the general good. But neither the Church Bill, nor the Land Bill, nor the Universities Bill, which in 1880 founded by state aid a Catholic university in Dublin, secured the reconciliation of the Irish. “Eternal hatred of England” was and is the battle cry; “Ireland for the Irish, and only for them,” is their watchword. In order to carry out this scheme an Irish “National League” was formed, and innumerable secret “Moonlighters,” under the supposed leadership of “Captain Moonshine,” committed atrocities by burning farm steadings and mutilating cattle, murdering and massacring by dagger and revolver, petroleum and dynamite, and directed their operations against the representatives of the government, against proprietors who sought rent, against tenants who paid rent, against officials who endeavoured to enforce it, and against everything that was, or was called, English. In order to cut at the root of this lawlessness, which by proclamation of a state of siege was only restricted, not overthrown, the government of 1881 passed further agrarian reforms: All tenant rights were to be purchased by the surplus of the fund formed by the disestablishment of the Irish church, and where this did not suffice, by state grants, and the right to conclude contracts for rent and to determine its amount was transferred from the proprietors to a newly-constituted land court, without whose permission, after the lapse of the fifteen years’ term, no rent contract could be made. But even this did not stop almost daily repeated murders and acts of destruction. The government now sought the aid of the pope through the mediation of a Catholic member of parliament on a visit to Rome; but these merely confidential negotiations led to no considerable result. In May, 1883, the curia, on the occasion of a collection promoted by the National League as a magnificent national present to the great (Protestant) leader of the agitation, Mr. Parnell, in a circular letter, forbad “proprio motu,” the bishops in the strictest manner taking any part in the movement, and urged them to dissuade their members from doing so. But only Archbishop McCabe of Dublin (died 1885), from the first an opponent of the League, issued a pastoral against it to be read in all the pulpits of his diocese. The other bishops ignored the papal command, and among the Catholic people the opinion obtained that they owed to the pope obedience in spiritual but not in political matters. The collections for the Parnell fund were continued with redoubled zeal. The attempts of dynamitards, supplied with materials by their American compatriots, and other agrarian offences have not yet been finally stopped.

§ 202.11. The Catholic Church in England and Scotland.—The Emancipation Act, passed mainly for the relief of the Irish, naturally also benefited English Catholics, who in 1791 had been allowed to hold Catholic services. Led by the numerous accessions of Puseyites to entertain the most extravagant hopes, Pius IX. in 1850 issued a bull, by which the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England was reinstituted with twelve suffragan bishoprics under one archbishop of Westminster. The bull occasioned great excitement in the Protestant population (Anti-Papal Aggression), and the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill forbade the use of ecclesiastical titles not sanctioned by the law of the land. After the first excitement had passed, the Catholic bishops, at their head the learned and brilliant and zealous ultramontane Cardinal Archbishop Wiseman (died 1865), and his successor, surpassing him, if not in genius and learning, at least in ultramontane zeal, the Puseyite convert Manning, made a cardinal in 1875, used with impunity their condemned titles, until in 1871 the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was formally revoked by act of parliament. Conversions in noble families were particularly numerous in the later decades. Since 1850 the number of Catholics in England and Scotland has quadrupled. This has been caused in great part by Irish emigration, for the middle and lower ranks of the English have scarcely been affected by the conversion fever, which as the latest form of the fitful humour of the English had so rich a harvest in the families of the nobility. In 1780 all London had only one Catholic place of worship, the chapel of the Sardinian embassy, which on June 2nd of that year was wrecked and burnt by a raging mob. Now the English capital has two episcopal dioceses, ninety-four Catholic churches and chapels (besides about 900 Anglican churches) with 313 clergymen, and forty-four cloisters. In the House of Lords sit twenty-eight Roman Catholic peers, and in both countries there are forty-seven Catholic baronets. Since 1847 England has a specifically Catholic university at Kensington, under the episcopate, and with the pope as its supreme head, which, however, with its poor staff of teachers and its expensive course attracts but a few of the Catholic youth of England. Since the Anti-Papal Aggression of 1850 failed, the Protestant people have shown themselves comparatively indifferent to such assumptions of the papacy.—In the Act of Union of 1707 (§ 155, 3), Scotland was guaranteed the absolute exclusion of every sort of Roman Catholic hierarchy for all time to come. But in recent times the number of its Catholic inhabitants so greatly increased, that Pius IX. in his last years, not unaided by the English government, eagerly urged the re-establishment of the hierarchy, and Leo XIII. was able at his first consistory of the college of cardinals in March, 1878, to make appointments to the two newly-erected archdioceses and their bishoprics. On the following Easter Sunday the allocution relating thereto was read in all Catholic churches in Scotland. The restoration was thus carried out in spite of all protests and demonstrations of Scottish Protestants.

§ 202.12. German Lutheran Congregations in Australia.—Besides the dominant Anglican church, emigration has led to the formation of a considerable number of German Lutheran congregations, which are distributed in three synods.

1. The Victoria Synod was founded in 1852 by pastor Göthe. It adopted at first the union platform, but subsequently attached itself more decidedly to the Lutheran confession.
2. Pastor Karch, who in 1830 emigrated with a number of Prussian Lutherans, in order to avoid the union, laid the foundation of the Immanuel Synod. Since 1875 it has been supplied with preachers from the missionary institute of Neuendettelsau. It is distinguished by its missionary zeal for the conversion of the natives, pursues with special interest the study of the prophetic word, and makes chiliasm an open question which need not rend the church.
3. The South Australian Synod, on the other hand, is the decided opponent of any sort of chiliasm, and has assumed an attitude of violent antagonism to the Immanuel Synod.