(NO. 210.) SECOND READING. (Hansard, 26 July 1870)

LORD HOUGHTON

, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time said, the object of the measure, which had met with very slight opposition in the other House, was to enable clergymen of the Church of England to relinquish all rights, privileges, advantages, and exemptions attached to the office of minister in the Church; and under certain conditions to resume them. This was not the first time the subject had been brought under the consideration of the Legislature. As long ago as 1862 the subject was discussed by a Committee of the House of Commons, of which Committee he (Lord Houghton) had the honour to be a Member. By that Committee some conclusions had been approached, but none were quite arrived at, owing to difficulties which then prevailed in public opinion on the subject. Ordination was regarded as a sacrament by the Church of Rome, as well as, he believed, by the Greek Church; but the Fifth Article of the Church of England took a different view, and the very canon which the Bill sought to repeal treated the indelibility of Orders as a question merely of discipline. It was true that a respectable section of the Church took a different view, but Luther and Calvin might be quoted against them. The proposed mode of relinquishing the clerical status was that the clergyman, after having resigned the preferments held by him in the Church should execute a deed of relinquishment, to be enrolled in the Court of Chancery, an office copy of it being delivered to the Bishop of the diocese in which he last held preferment, and by notice to the Archbishop. At the expiration of six months a person who had complied with these conditions would become to all intents and purposes a layman. He trusted that this principle would be acceptable to the House, for it could not be to the advantage of the Church to retain unwilling members, who could not conscientiously perform their duties, 927 and were likely to be a scandal rather than a benefit to it. Not that the large proportion of those whom the Bill would relieve were likely to occasion scandal, for there were men of great eminence who had abandoned the clerical calling, but were under a great social disadvantage and were debarred from the performance of other duties. The Bill would allow them to become members of municipal bodies and of the House of Commons, a provision which might not in itself be very advantageous; but it would be difficult to show upon what principle clergymen of the Church of England were excluded, seeing that Dissenting ministers were eligible. Indeed, in the course of his own experience in the House of Commons he had known many Dissenting ministers in that House, who were not only very useful Members, but he had remarked the invariable respect with which they were treated. The Bill, however, did not affect Roman Catholic priests, whose disqualification being connected with the Emancipation Act might be mixed up with political considerations, and had better therefore be treated separately. The latter part of the Bill enabled a person, under certain conditions, to resume his status as a minister of the Church of England on executing a deed of revocation, if the Archbishop chose to re-admit him; but he would not be capable of holding any preferment until two years after such revocation. Now, he admitted the undesirableness of persons becoming by turns clergymen and laymen; but there would be a hardship in disabling a man who had relinquished the clerical status from ever resuming it; for, in a recent case, a clergyman who joined the Church of Rome, thereby losing his sacerdotal status, as that Church did not recognize English Orders, had returned to the Church of England. He did not, however, consider this a very material point to insist on, although the mental struggles and experience of such a clergyman might be of great service to the Church if he were re-admitted.

THE BISHOP OF LONDON

said, it would probably make very little difference to the future of the Church of England whether the Bill were passed or rejected. If it had interfered with the 928 indelibility of Orders, it would have been viewed with great dislike by a large number of its members; but it simply removed the disabilities, mostly imposed by statute law, for secular employments. Seeing that men who had been ordained might afterwards make the terrible discovery that they had mistaken (heir calling, and that they were unfitted for it by abilities, acquirements, or habits of life, it might possibly be to the advantage of the Church that they should be relieved from their sacred duties and betake themselves to other callings. Occasionally, doubtless, men of a higher class, owing to intellectual difficulties or hesitation in accepting particular doctrines, wished to be relieved from obligations they could no longer fulfil. The Bill, on the other hand, would diminish, to a certain extent, the caution with which such obligations should be undertaken; for if a man might regard Holy Orders as a mere experiment, to be renounced, perhaps, after two or three years, he might deceive himself and take the most solemn of all vows in an unsuitable frame of mind. There was thus a danger of the introduction of a lower class of minds into the Church. The difficulties on both sides were not enough to oblige him to oppose the Bill, but would console him if the House should not think proper to pass it. He objected to the power given for resuming the clerical status; for though men of high character, ability, and goodness had left the ranks of the Church and had afterwards desired to return to it, there had been no difficulty in the way; nor would any arise under this Bill unless, in order to enter some trade or profession, they had executed a deed of relinquishment. It was not desirable that persons who had entered the Church as an experiment, and had afterwards failed in secular occupations, should be allowed, under the influence of a fresh disappointment, to re-enter the Church as, after all, the best mode of getting a living. It was true that the Bishop's or Archbishop's sanction would be required; but in all such cases the friends of the applicant would testify to his character and exert a moral pressure which it would be difficult to resist. In his opinion clergymen who had once abandoned their sacred character in order to pursue some other calling, should not, in the interest of the Church, be per- 929 mitted to return. With this view when the Bill got into Committee he should move the omission of the clauses which gave that permission.