The Truth about Church Extension / An exposure of certain fallacies and misstatements contained in the census reports on religious worship and education

Transcribed from the 1857 William Skeffington edition by David Price. Many thanks to the British Library for making their copy available.
AN EXPOSURE OF CERTAIN FALLACIES AND MISSTATEMENTS CONTAINED IN THE CENSUS REPORTS ON RELIGIOUS WORSHIP AND EDUCATION.
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LONDON: WILLIAM SKEFFINGTON, 163, PICCADILLY.
1857.
PRICE ONE SHILLING.
The entire absence of criticism on the decennial tables contained in the report of Mr. Horace Mann on the Census of Religious Worship has filled the writer with equal surprise and concern. For a period of nearly three years, hardly a week has passed without some injurious step on the part of the Government, some disastrous admission on the part of a friend, some daring rhodomontade on the part of a foe—all of which have owed their origin more or less directly to the false and mistaken view of the Church’s position engendered by the still more erroneous and misleading statistics so widely disseminated by the Census report. Nor is there any prospect that the evil will diminish—at least, until the next Census. On the contrary, the idea that the Church has proved a failure seems to gain strength, and the policy of friends and foes alike appears to shape itself with special reference to that assumed fact.
It is proper to add, in order to account for certain local illustrations, which it has been thought advisable to retain, that the substance of the following pages first appeared in a somewhat different form in the Nottingham Journal .
December , 1856.
Among the many changes which the present age has witnessed, none are more remarkable than those we have seen take place in the public mind with regard to the Church of this country.
Thirty or forty years ago, the popular estimate of what was called the Established Religion was as low as can well be conceived. The laity, for the most part, regarded Churchmanship as a mere empty tradition, or at best as a political symbol, and an excuse for lusty choruses in praise of “a jolly full bottle.” The Clergy, unless they were grievously maligned, had but two objects in life—the acquirement of “fat livings,” and the enjoyment of amusements not now considered clerical. Of course, there never was a time when there were not hundreds of exemplary persons in holy orders; but that the prevailing impression was wholly without foundation it would take a bold man to affirm. The worldliness of the Clergy of the eighteenth century has even left its mark on the language. The word “curate” literally means a “curé”—a person charged with the cure of souls, one that has the spiritual care of a parish. Such is its meaning in the Prayer Book, and such was its signification down to the last “Review”; but now it has come to mean only a hireling, or an assistant. In like manner, “Parson” was the most honourable title a parochial clergyman could possess; and that, no doubt, continued to be the case so late as the time of George Herbert. The beneficed Clergy under the Hanoverian dynasty, however, so conducted themselves, that the term is now never used, except by those who wish to speak disrespectfully of the profession, or of some individual belonging to it.