CHURCH GOVERNMENT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 68, 24 April 1852, Page 5

CHURCH GOVERNMENT.

Our readers will find in another page an extract of a letter written by the Archbishop of Canterbury in reply to the minutes published by the Australasian Bishops at their meeting in the year, 1850. Our own files of the Sydney papers being incomplete, we have been unable to find the letter in the Sydney Morning Herald, and only quote the extract from the Wellington Spectator. It is possible, therefore, that the rest of the document may in some measure alter the unsatisfactory complexion which the extract wears. His Grace asserts in plain language the Royal Supremacy, and the illegality of a synod called other than by royal authority; and suggests the remote and hopeless remedy of a plan to be agreed on by the Colonial Bishops, submitted to the approval of the Colonial Secretary and sanctioned by Parliament.

If this be the idea prevalent in England, ,' we fear it will obtain little respect here. It -betokens a sad- ignorance of the wants and of the Colonial Churches. Is it

not monstrous to suppose that young, lusty,

energetic, busy, communities will submit to Vgo' on without any government at all, either in Church and State ? and that out of complaisance to legal forms and ideas, incompatible enough with the present circumstances of the country to which they refer, but absurdly foreign to all the requirements of a new community. The idea of a union between Church and State is one belonging to the last generation of English History. The admission of dissenters and papists to a participation in the government of the State, has upset the old system; because if Church and State be one, papists and dissenters may

partake in the Government of the Church, which is absurd. The result is, that the State in England is choking the Church under the pretence of supporting it. But, however this may be at home, the idea of Church and State in union has never been introduced into a colony. The State has done nothing for the Church; it has not endowed it ; it has entrusted it with no power, invested it with no privilege, adorned it with no honors; nor has the Church, on the other hand, made any compact with the State or resigned to it any of the rights and privileges which are inherent in it as an independent corporation, and which it possesses in common with all other bodies of men who have engaged in voluntary association for particular objects.

We are quite aware that as a matter of law the Archbishop is supported by some high authorities. Mr. Gladstone is of opinion that the Church in the colonies requires to be released from some supposed disabilities under which she may be supposed to labour in consequence of her connection with the Church in England. But recent proceedings in the colonies shew that the tendency of Churchmen in the Colonies is to ignore the whole idea; and whilst the authorities at home are disputing what laws are requisite, the Church in the colonies will have solved the difficulty by asserting its independence of the English Church, by recurring to the example of the apostolic times, and constituting itself a society on the principle of voluntary organization.

After all, is not this Church question but one phase of the great struggle going on between the mother-country and the colonies, a struggle for local self-govern-ment.