"O that our Clergy did but know and see that their tithe s and glebes belong to them as officers and functionaries of the Nationalty, as clerks, and not exclusively as theologians, and not at all as ministers of the Gospel;- but that they are likewise ministers of the Church of Christ, and that their claims and the powers of that Church are no more alienated or affected by their being at the same time the Established Clergy, than by the common coincidence of their being justices of the peace, or heirs to an estate, or stock-holders! The Romish divines placed the Church above the Scriptures: our present divines give it no place at all. "But Donne and his great contemporaries had not yet learnt to be afraid of announcing and enforcing the claims of the Church, distinct from, and coordinate with, the Scriptures. This is one evil consequence, though most unnecessarily so, of the union of the Church of Christ with the National Church, and of the claims of the Christian pastor and preacher with the legal and constitutional rights and revenues of the officers of the National Clerisy. Our Clergymen, in thinking of their legal rights, forget those rights of theirs which depend on no human law at all."-Literary Remains, vol. iii. p. 119. PREFACE TO THE CHURCH AND STATE. A RECOLLECTION of the value set upon the following little work by its Author,* combined with a deep sense of the wisdom and importance of the positions laid down in it, will, it is hoped, be thought to justify the publication of a few preliminary remarks, designed principally to remove formal difficulties out of the path of a reader not previously acquainted with Mr. Coleridge's writings, nor conversant with the principles of his philosophy. The truth is that, although the Author's plan is well defined and the treatment strictly progressive, there is in some parts a want of detailed illustration and express connexion, which weakens the impression of the entire work on the generality of readers. "If," says Mr. Maurice, "I were addressing a student who was seeking to make up his mind on the question, without being previously biassed by the views of any particular party, I could save myself this trouble by merely referring him to the work of Mr. Coleridge, on the Idea of Church and State, published shortly * See Table Talk, 2nd edit. p. 5, note. |