In assuming that this is not the path of wisdom, we have high authority. In May 1840, thirty-six clergymen, who saw the evil in its true light, and it is now immeasurably increased, signed a Petition to the House of Lords requesting attention to the subject. It was presented by His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin to a full house. Twenty-two Bishops were present. His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury concurred in the propriety and necessity of some interpreting power. So also did the Bishops of London, and Lincoln, and Norwich, and upon this point there was no dissenting voice.
8. The present state of Subscription is also discreditable to the English Church when we consider the position in which it leaves the Bishops. Whoever wishes well to the institutions of his country, and desires to promote the peaceful happiness of the people, will watchfully cherish respect for all who are in authority. The Christian is taught to consider them as ministers of God to us for good; and the clergy are bound, not only by this universal sanction but also by their Ordination vows, to reverence the Bishops of the Church; and any circumstance which occasions a breach in this duty ought to be to them a cause for regret.
There is a popular error that a clergyman, when in doubt upon any question of Christian faith or practice, has only to apply to his Bishop, and that he has authority to settle the question. Some recent writers have helped perhaps to foster this notion by their ill-considered professions of entire deference to episcopal authority. No circumstance has contributed so largely to expose the very limited extent of it as the controversies of the present day. A Bishop, in fact, has scarcely any discretionary power amongst the greater part of the clergy as to questions of doctrine. He can refuse ordination to a candidate, or a license to a curate, subject, however, to an appeal. If he should refuse institution to a benefice, the civil courts would demand the reason. He may institute a suit for heresy; and this must be proved by a reference to the Scriptures and four general councils, not to the Articles or Book of Prayer. Yet of late great deference to episcopal authority has been expressed, and the Charges of Bishops have been anxiously looked for. The manner in which they have been received by some exposes the hollowness of the deference professed, the absence of the power supposed, and the true reason for the anxiety to receive them. They are estimated as the works of partizans in a controversy, not of judges in a cause. They are extolled by those to whose opinions they lean; they are criticized without reserve, and sometimes with very little respect, by any who are dissatisfied with them. The truth is shown in all its nakedness, that Bishops have no more _power_ on such questions than other men, and less influence perhaps than some other writers.