. Correspondence on church and religion of William Ewart Gladstone; . llowing free opinion, re-pressed licence as well as liberty, and prevented theprofession and extension of atheism in its now multi-tudinous forms. I have no doubt we have among us an idolatry of Church and State; and the idolaters, or some of them,would not scruple to say that what is barbarouslytermed voluntaryism, which is making progress, thoughslow progress, in the world, was Antichrist. Yet Isuppose it to be incredible that Apostles who wereteaching Christianity as (in this sense) a private opinion,against or in fear of
. Correspondence on church and religion of William Ewart Gladstone; . llowing free opinion, re-pressed licence as well as liberty, and prevented theprofession and extension of atheism in its now multi-tudinous forms. I have no doubt we have among us an idolatry of Church and State; and the idolaters, or some of them,would not scruple to say that what is barbarouslytermed voluntaryism, which is making progress, thoughslow progress, in the world, was Antichrist. Yet Isuppose it to be incredible that Apostles who wereteaching Christianity as (in this sense) a private opinion,against or in fear of the State, could have meant todescribe as Antichrist a full and free permission bythe State to teach. I suppose also that if communism or any of itskindred belong to Antichrist they belong to it conse-quentially; and that substantially, actually, anddirectly, it may mean the denial of God and setting uplaws and rules of action self-chosen, and other thanGod. It is not, I think, over forty-five years since Manningwas the first to point out to me that the Church was. Copyright, Gruphotome Co., Enjieid. MR. GLADSTONE, 1886. 1884] BISHOPS IN THE LORDS 181 passing back into the condition which it held beforeConstantine. It all shows as a vast, overpowering, and bewilder-ing Drama; but not without a key to its plan andmeaning. 93. To Lord Hartington. CooMBE Warren, March 21, 1884. . There are two matters of fact which may benoted. This [Bishops in the House of Lords] is oneof a knot of political questions in which the innovatingor reforming party have seemed to lose ground duringthe last forty-five or fifty years. The question of ShortParliaments and of abolishing capital punishment areother examples. When I began Parliamentary life,the motion against the Bishops was an annual a long time it has only been made once in five orten years. A second fact is that the attendance of Bishops inthe House of Lords, except upon Church and semi-Church questions, has immensely fallen off,
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