I should be sorry, indeed, my Lord, if it could be thought from my deprecating the proposed abolition of Subscription, that I regard the condition of the Church among us as a normal or satisfactory one. But I feel, as thousands do, that whatever changes may lie before us, they should be towards increased _organization of_ our Body; while the present proposal would disorganize us at once, and break away the traditions by which, in an undisciplined age, Providence protected us. This proposal, I am aware, unhappily falls in with the spirit of our times—a spirit of independence and freedom, rather than of holiness and faith, and therefore I fear that it will find a wide advocacy among those who desire not the maintenance of our Church’s distinctive position among the Churches of Europe. Your Lordship’s eloquent hope—admirable and strong—that we may yet “maintain that Eternal Truth of which the Church is the depository, and that Form of sound words in which that Eternal Truth has been handed down,” I fain would share. But I stand in doubt. I feel very much like one who is asked to take leave of a peaceful abode—a haven of long Providential refuge; and I take, perhaps, a partial, because parting look at the solid advantages hitherto secured—the homely, perhaps, but very real blessings of a Fixed Faith for our people in general, with Means of Grace, capable of enlargement everywhere according to our need, venerable Traditions protecting our noble English Bibles, our glorious English Offices, our restored English Churches. The thought of turning one’s back on all, and pushing out on the boundless ocean of opinion, may well fill the heart with foreboding—if not for oneself, yet for others!
A solemn future, it may be, is before us as a Church. You have come, my Lord, to the government of this great central Diocese at a crisis unparalleled in our history. The eighteenth century was a great truce of principles. The truce was probably broken in 1829; efforts were made to re-establish the truce once more, but not with much success. The Established Church, seemed hastening to become an established theory only. But new life from God entered into her. She again delivered her message to the growing masses of the people,—and with an energy before but rarely known. True, our “Discipline” is not restored; but the voice of Worship is heard rising anew on every hand.—True, there is no startling growth of Sanctity—(the special token of a Church’s life!); but there is a very real zeal to do a work for CHRIST on earth. With all the experience of an eventful Past to warn us, and the vast range of Sacred Ministrations still remaining, might it not be the glorious distinction of your Lordship’s Episcopate, that it gathered together all the remaining elements of our Spiritual System, so that “nothing was lost,”—and saved for posterity the grandest fabric of Faith and Truth among the nations of Christendom?—