THE CHRISTIAN OBSERVER, CONDUCTED BY Members of the Established Church, FOR THE YEAR 1833, BEING THE THIRTY-THIRD VOLUME. LONDON: PRINTED BY ELLERTON AND HENDERSON, GOUGH SQUARE: PUBLISHED BY J. HATCHARD AND SON, PICCADILLY. MDCCCXXXIII. PREFACE. in We have written so much in the course of our present volume upon most of the topics which occur to our minds as pressingly important, that we shall not dwell upon them in this brief address. Most of them, and especially those connected with the prospects of that Apostolical Church which God hath been pleased to establish among us, will probably recur with increased urgency our next volume. We lament to hear the ominous notes of preparation for a party-spirited collision, the effects of which, unless wiser counsels prevail to check the evil, may be most injurious to our National Church, and with it to the best interests of Christianity in the land. On the one side we see ranged a new and active sect, composed chiefly of Dissenters who agree with the Church of England in her leading doctrinal tenets, but avowing themselves her enemies as an Established Church, and combining with Infidels, Radicals, and Socinians, to raze her foundations. On the other side we see a Society formed at Oxford, the members of which, professing themselves to be the most orthodox upholders of the Church, have begun to scatter throughout the land publications which, for bigotry, Popery, and intolerance, surpass the writings even of Laud and Sacheverell. Between two such milstones the Church of England might be ground to powder, were there not a large and increasing body of men on both sides who strongly disapprove of the proceedings of their respective brethren; the great body of pious and moderate Dissenters believing the Church of England, whatever its faults, to be an instrument of spiritual benefit to the land, and holding themselves as far aloof from the violent proceedings of politicoreligious unions as the great body of the Clergy and Laity of the Establishment do from the ultraism of political High-churchism; and both wishing that our communion should be purified from abuses, but not weakened or subverted. With this vast preponderance even yet, as we trust, of pious and moderate Dissenters, |