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I have consorted too long with Aristotle and Machiavelli to find myself at home in the country of the Anglican Church and of Herbert Spencer." Here he paused, and seemed to hesitate, while we wondered what he could be leading up to. Then, resuming, "This may seem," he went on, "a long introduction; but it is not irrelevant; though I feel some hesitation in applying it.
We have heard the slave-code of the Anglican disciples of Jesus, the revolutionary carpenter; now let us hear the slave-code of his Roman disciples: Human society has its origin from God and is constituted of two classes of people, the rich and the poor, which respectively represent Capital and Labor.
Wildman then brought forward a counterproject, prepared by himself, which, if it had been adopted, would have disgusted all the Anglican clergy and four fifths of the landed aristocracy. The leading Whigs strongly opposed him: Russell in particular declared that, if such an insane course were taken, there would be an end of the coalition from which alone the nation could expect deliverance.
All this time they were walking briskly backward and forward before Tozer's open door, the Anglican, in his long black coat, following the lively movements of Tozer's granddaughter, only because he could not help himself. He was irritated, yet he was pleased. A young man is pleased to be thought of, even when the notice is but barely complimentary.
It is notorious that a large proportion of the most serious criticism, of the best periodical writing in England, is the work of Anglican clergymen.
It has, no doubt, been said with truth that Newman showed great dexterity in choosing opponents with whom to cross swords Kingsley, Pusey, Gladstone, and his old Anglican self. But this does not alter the fact that a man who must have been conscious of rare literary gifts made no attempt to immortalise himself by them. It was for the Church, and not for himself, that he wrote as well as lived.
So, when a new truth appears, the old organization rolls on like a Juggernaut car, and crushes the life, so far as it is possible, out of everything in its way. Take, for example, and note what a power it is and what an unconscious bribe it is to those who belong to it, the great Anglican Church.
He could overpower the Anglican Church only by forming against her an extensive coalition, including sects which, though they differed in doctrine and government far more widely from each other than from her, might yet be induced, by their common jealousy of her greatness, and by their common dread of her intolerance, to suspend their animosities till she was no longer able to oppress them.
For they had, though reasoning on premises which the Anglican divines regarded as heterodox, arrived, like the Anglican divines, at the conclusion, that no excess of tyranny on the part of a prince can justify active resistance on the part of a subject. No libel on the government had ever been traced to a Quaker. In no conspiracy against the government had a Quaker been implicated.
And it was this party which destroyed the domination of the little coterie of great planters by abolishing entail, disestablishing the Anglican Church, and proclaiming a state constitution founded, in theory if not altogether in fact, upon the principles of liberty and equality and the rights of man.
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