Page:The Church of England, its catholicity and continuity.djvu/226

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210
Growth of Church Life

as they of this sin. We saw in what way Cartwright, the Protestant of Protestants in England, would have been a persecutor. We saw what the Puritans' persecution did for England. And surely it is a form of persecution, if not something worse, that Dissenters, the Protestants of today, should wish to deprive the Church of its rights and endowments.

I should like to digress a moment here to speak of the subject of endowments. Many Dissenters believe that they have a right to them, for they say—Is not the Church a national Church? It is true that it was the national Church, and we hope it will be the national Church in the future. But it must be remembered that our endowments were given to the Church, at least, the greater part of them, when the nation had only one faith, one belief, one baptism, when no Dissenters existed. And these endowments were given to uphold this belief, this faith, and not to spread the principles of Dissent. The money that was given in those days long ago has been handed down for the same purposes by the successive generations. Dissenters can still enjoy this money, if that be their wish, if they profess the faith which it was originally left to maintain. If they dissent from that faith they are quite at liberty to form congregations of their own. We can respect them for their sincerity; but if they demand that the Church's wealth should be taken away and be devoted to other purposes than those for which it was originally given, for this we could not respect them. We should look on this as nothing short of robbery, and we should consider that Dissenters have no more right to misappropriate the Church's endowments than we have to ask