“It is an insidious plan;—it is a plan fit for a society with shabby, party, and sectarian designs, but not for a society with simply and singly Church views. It places the Society above the Bishops and Archbishops,” &c.
Page 14, he had remarked—
“I will not affirm that the rule was designed to be the instrument of a shabby and crooked policy; but I will affirm, that if it had been so designed, it could not have been better contrived.”
The insinuation here conveyed is that amplified, as we have seen, in the very next page, by which we may judge at what rate Dr. Molesworth travels.—Page 20, he feels shy of saying that this rule is the instrument of “a dangerous and double-faced policy;” whilst he does not hesitate to style (p. 23) those who have the working of the rule, “despotic, and irresponsible” (!) managers.—The Secretary of our Society (the Rev. E. B. Were) had wound up an unpleasant correspondence (for it is always unpleasant to tell a man he will not do) with a layman (Mr. Briarly Browne), whose friend, the Rev. Mr. Clark, had sought for him a grant from the Society, upon which Mr. Briarly Browne was to be ordained; brooding all the while, and hardly suppressing, considerable ill-will to the Society in their hearts. The endeavour on the part of our Secretary to expose this unhandsome proceeding is stigmatized as “a poor shuffling attempt” (p. 24). Previously, Dr. Molesworth had admitted (p. 18) that this was done “with some, but rather severe, justice.” I pass by another charge, in the same page, of more serious and offensive character, which Dr. Molesworth greedily catches up from a Letter of Mr. Clark; intending to return to it by and by. But after all, nothing of this kind comes up to the appendix:—he has bade adieu to the Bishop, and has got a little out of sight;—and now hear him:—what was but the lion passant guardant before, is become truly the lion rampant now. “The Society” (he says, p. 36), “in the plenitude of their super-papal authority, have thought fit to declare!!!”—and at the end of the next extract—“Is not this monstrous?” “Are these Church principles?” “Is such a tribunal of intolerance and sectarianism!! to stand forth and collect money, and to be advocated in our pulpits as a Church Society?”
And now, friends and supporters of the Church Pastoral-Aid Society, are you willing to be tried by Dr. Molesworth, or are you convinced that he has made up his mind before you come into Court? If the Society, or the Committee it appoints as among its most responsible members, be deserving of such rank abuse as this, where is the need of inquiry? Bad indeed must the Society be decided to be;—bad in its principles, bad in its management, bad in its officers; in short, all bad together. Why, then, does Dr. Molesworth dwell so tamely, at the outset, upon “questionable appearances which require vindication”? Wherefore does he affect to call for “a clear and explicit understanding upon the character and designs of the Society.” (P. 7, and Letter to the Manchester Courier.)
If the matter needs no inquiry, why does Dr. Molesworth make a show of demanding it? And if it does, why does he approach the question in such a predetermined spirit of hostility as to make the proposal, in his case, a deception; shewing that he at least has settled the question before (as he admits) he has heard it.
There is no disguising it—Dr. Molesworth’s objection lies far deeper: this will be seen, as we enter further into the consideration of his attack. The ostensible grounds of objection shift about. The employment of Lay agents is now the minor matter (pp. 18 and 19). It was the major, onewhile; but the Society having suffered as much loss as the urging and mis-stating of that objection could inflict, and having happily survived the injuries, the major point sinks, and becomes the minor (as you perceive), and the minor is now the major, and so on; for reproach will never be wanting against a Society founded, supported, and (under God) successfully worked by those whose religious sentiments Dr. Molesworth treats with undisguised aversion. Else why that strange loathing of the very word “spiritually-minded”; so that he has actually clipped it of a full syllable? It is a curious fact, that the Rev. Doctor has quoted this word (in allusion to the Letter of the Rev. Mr. Were, Secretary to the Society), but always writing it thus, “spiritual-minded,” no less than eleven times in twenty pages, and evidently in a tone of derision. Now, when a Doctor of Divinity takes up a Scriptural term only to disparage it, and others by it; and actually mistakes the orthography of the word, as though it were quite new to him, and foreign to his taste; it is high time we should quote him the passage at length wherein it occurs, and then leave it with him:—Rom. viii. 6: “To be carnally-minded is death, but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace.”
Dr. Molesworth can do justice to the Society in nothing; he cannot even allow it its real title: yet one would think, that the good he is forced to admit, to a certain extent, that the Society has done in the Church, and not out of the Church, might, in a lesser sense at least, and putting aside all courtesy to his clerical brethren in the Society, entitle it to be called a “Church Pastoral-Aid Society.” Not so, for (p. 25) the Society is a “Lay Society”! What Dr. Molesworth does with the ten Bishops, so high a Churchman as he would be thought, I marvel: when they are treated thus, his 1400 brethren of the Clergy will, of course, go for nothing! The title given us of “Lay Society,” however, is adopted from the Letter of Mr. Briarly Browne; a layman himself, be it observed, but who (proh pudor!) will not bestow the name of Churchman upon Bishop or Archbishop, Dignitary or Parish Priest, so long as they remain connected with this Society! Might it not have served his turn to have denounced the Society as a mixed Society of Lay and Clergy, an unauthorised Society, or any thing more offensive that he pleased, which would at least have spared the Church Dignitaries attached to the Society the insult of being reckoned as laymen, or nothing; and by which this layman would not have set his clerical champion the bad example he was not slow to follow, of casting contempt (as I cannot but consider it) upon the highest authorities of the Church.
Another, and the most unmeasured of all their charges against the Society, is likewise adopted by the Doctor from the Letter of Mr. Clark, that of “raising money upon false pretences!!!” This, in other terms, accuses the Society of swindling; and to this no defence will be conceded on my part. If the authors of the charge can believe it, I pity them: in my judgment, it refutes itself. Nevertheless, as an offence cognisable by our laws,—they will pardon me the suggestion,—it will afford them the very opportunity they appear to seek, of exposing, as well as annoying, the Committee of the Society in open court; provided only the proofs are at hand.
Little as I am disposed to bandy words, I might ask, if a Society, having fully, fairly, and publicly declared its principles, (and I believe there never was a Society which carried the practice to a greater extent,) and had thereby published upon what terms its money was subscribed and its grants made, so that there could be no mistake; and if others, knowing and hating its principles equally, had, notwithstanding, proposed themselves as parties to benefit by its funds whilst they eluded its principles; who would be raising money upon false pretences, in that case?