This question it
decided emphatically in the affirmative. Faithful to logic and to its
theory, the book did not shrink from applying them to the external case
of the Irish Church. It did not disguise the difficulties of the case,
for the author was alive to the paradox which it involved. But the one
master idea of the system, that the State as it then stood was capable
in this age, as it had been in ages long gone by, of assuming
beneficially a responsibility for the inculcation of a particular
religion, carried him through all. His doctrine was that the Church, as
established by law, was to be maintained for its truth; that this was
the only principle in which it could be properly and permanently upheld;
that this principle, if good in England, was good also for Ireland; that
truth is of all possessions the most precious to the soul of man; and
that to remove this priceless treasure from the view and the reach of
the Irish people would be meanly to purchase their momentary favor at
the expense of their permanent interests, and would be a high offense
against our own sacred obligations."
We quote also from the opening chapter of the second volume of this
work, which treats of the connection subsisting between the State of the
United Kingdom and the Church of England and Ireland, and shows Mr.
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