r; as a church, she claims, and
has always exercised, a right of reforming whatever appeared amiss in
her doctrine, her discipline, or her rites. She did so, when she shook
off the Papal supremacy in the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was an
act of the body of the English Church, as well as of the State (I don't
inquire how obtained). She did so, when she twice changed the Liturgy in
the reign of King Edward, when she then established Articles, which were
themselves a variation from former professions. She did so, when she cut
off three articles from her original forty-two, and reduced them to the
present thirty-nine; and she certainly would not lose her corporate
identity, nor subvert her fundamental principles, though she were to
leave ten of the thirty-nine which remain out of any future confession
of her faith. She would limit her corporate powers, on the contrary, and
she would oppose her fundamental principles, if she were to deny herself
the prudential exercise of such capacity of reformation. This,
therefore, can be no objection to your receiving the petition.

In the next place, Sir, I am clear, that the Act of Union, reciting and
ratifying one Scotch and one English act of Parliament, has not rendered
any change whatsoever in our Church impossible, but by a dissolution of
the union between the two kingdoms.

The honorable gentleman who has last touched upon that point has not
gone quite so far as the gentlemen who first insisted upon it. However,
as none of them wholly abandon that post, it will not be safe to leave
it behind me unattacked. I believe no one will wish their interpretation
of that act to be considered as authentic. What shall we think of the
wisdom (to say nothing of the competence) of that legislature which
should ordain to itself such a fundamental law, at its outset, as to
disable itself from executing its own functions,--which should prevent
it from making any further laws, however wanted, and that, too, on the
most interesting subject that belongs to human society, and where she
most frequently wants its interposition,--which should fix those
fundamental laws that are forever to prevent it from adapting itself to
its opinions, however clear, or to its own necessities, however urgent?
Such an act, Mr. Speaker, would forever put the Church out of its own
power; it certainly would put it far above the State, and erect it into
that species of independency which it has been the great principle