SUBSCRIPTION TO THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES.
This subject again occupied the attention of parliament in this session. A bill, more generally conceived than the last, was brought into the commons for the relief of Protestant Dissenters. Upon this occasion the Wesleyan methodists, now a numerous and powerful body, made common cause with the church, and denounced any change or innovation in the Act of Toleration, as dangerous. Petitions were sent up to parliament by them against the relief prayed for by the dissenting body, although they were, in point of fact, themselves dissenters. Burke supported the bill, and his eloquence and powerful reasoning had a great effect upon the house. But his exertions this time were scarcely needed, for Lord North himself, and other ministers gave the bill their warmest support, and it passed the commons by large majorities. In the house of lords, it was strongly opposed, and rejected by a majority of 102 against 29. In the debate upon it, the bill was defended by the Earl of Chatham, who in his speech did not even spare the right reverend bench. In the debate, Dr. Drummond, Archbishop of York, had called the dissenting ministers “men of close ambition.” In reply to this, Chatham observed:—“Whoever brought such a charge against them defamed them. The dissenting ministers are represented as men of close ambition. They are so in some respects. Their ambition is to keep close to the college of fishermen, not of cardinals; and to the doctrine of the inspired apostles, not to the decrees of interested and aspiring bishops. They contend for a spiritual creed and a spiritual worship: we have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy.” At a later period of the session a motion was made in the commons by Sir William Meredith, for abolishing the subscription to the thirty-nine articles at the time of matriculation, but this was rejected.