look which they wear in the eyes of a zealous Churchman, disturbed both
by the shock given to his ideas of fitness and consistency, and by the
prospect of practical evils. It is a clergyman's view of the subject,
but it is not disposed of by saying that it is a clergyman's view. It
is incomplete and one-sided, and leaves out considerations of great
importance which ought to be attended to in forming a judgment on the
whole question; but it is difficult to say that, regarded simply in
itself, the claim that the Church should settle her own controversies,
and that Church doctrine should be judged of in Church courts, is not a
reasonable one. The truth is that the present arrangement, if we think
only of its abstract suitableness and its direct and ostensible claims
to our respect, would need Swift himself to do justice to its exquisite
unreasonableness. It is absurd to assume, as it is assumed in the whole
of our ecclesiastical legislation, that the Church is bound to watch
most jealously over doctrine, and then at the last moment to refuse her
the natural means of guarding it. It is absurd to assume that the
"spiritualty" are the only proper persons to teach doctrine, and then
to act as if they were unfit to judge of doctrine. It is not easy, in
the abstract, to see why articles which were trusted to clergymen to
draw up may not be trusted to clergymen to explain, and why what there
was learning and wisdom enough to do in the violent party times and
comparative inexperience of the Reformation, cannot be safely left to
the learning and wisdom of our day for correction or completion. If
Churchmen and ecclesiastics may care too much for the things about
which they dispute, it seems undeniable that lawyers who need not even
be Christians, may care for them too little; and if the Churchmen make
a mistake in the matter, at least it is their own affair, and they may
be more fairly made to take the consequences of their own acts than of
other people's. A strong case, if a strong case were all that was
wanted, might be made out for a change in the authority which at