The Grand Old Man by Richard B. Cook
page 97 of 386 (25%)
page 97 of 386 (25%)
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Mr. Gladstone very pertinently asked how the education of the Jewish
people, who considered the New Testament an imposture, was "to be sedulously connected with a due regard to the Holy Scriptures," which consisted of the Old and New Testaments? To oblige the Jewish children to read the latter would be directly contrary to the views of the gentlemen on the other side of the House. He would have no child forced to do so, but he protested against paying money from the treasury of the State to men whose business it was to inculcate erroneous doctrines. The debate was concluded, and the government carried its motion by a very small majority. Two years later, when the Jews' Civil Disabilities Bill was before Parliament, Mr. Gladstone again took the unpopular side in the debate and opposed the Bill, which was carried in the House of Commons but defeated in the House of Lords. Mr. Gladstone published, in 1840, another work, entitled "Church Principles Considered in their Results." It was supplementary to his former book in defense of Church and State, and was written "beneath the shades of Hagley," the house of Lord and Lady Lyttelton, and dedicated "in token of sincere affection" to the author's life-long friend and relative, Lord Lyttelton. He dwelt upon the leading moral characteristics of the English Episcopal Church, their intrinsic value and their adaptation to the circumstances of the times, and defined these characteristics to be the doctrine of the visibility of the Church, the apostolic succession in the ministry, the authority of the Church in matters of faith and the truths symbolized in the sacraments. In one chapter he strongly attacks Rationalism as a reference of the gospel to the depraved standard of the actual human natures and by no means to its understanding properly so called, as its measure and criterion. He says: "That therefore to rely upon the understanding, |
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