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of the principle in question. Of course it must be so extended. There is no reason whatever (none with even a show of reason, except that which would object to it as a piece of retrospective legislation—an objection which is soon disposed of) why the interests and rights of Nonconformists should not be guarded in schools already built as well as in those to be built hereafter. It is this which makes it so desirable that the National Society and the Church's authorities generally should agree with the Committee of Council in a form of stipulation to which our school managers can assent in a body, or at least in large numbers, and save the agitation of arguing with them and defeating them in detail. None who accept the principle of the clause can fail to wish to see it generally adopted at once,[1] for it will relieve the Church from the imputation of exclusiveness, or of want of zeal for education. It will remove the actual stimulus which the Church herself now gives to dissent by this grievance. And it will at least make clear for the future what the really distinctive doctrines of the Church of England are—Charity, Common Sense, and Education.
Reason 16.16. "Because to do all or any of these things is not to preserve and cherish, but to impair, and ultimately to destroy, the true relations of Church and State, and therein to mar their power and co-operation."
Answer.This is the most serious of all Archdeacon Denison's objections, and it is because I regard it as at once the most important and the most mistaken, that I have dealt with it at length elsewhere as well as here. I beg leave to offer the assurance of my sincere respect and gratitude to the venerable Archdeacon for the way in which he has, when others
- ↑ Mr. Melville, already referred to, says, "Because it is right, and in the interests of the Church herself, I would gladly see it everywhere … I regret … that a Church system with universal Conscience Clauses was not, rather than the Denomination^, the original system acted upon." (Pp. 15, 16.)
