Item 177 - Letter from Connop Thirlwall

Thanks WW for his Additional Remarks ['Additional Remarks on some parts of Mr Thirlwall's Two Letters on the Admission of Dissenters to Academical Degrees', 1834]: 'I am sorry to say that I do not think the pamphlet in general likely to promote the cause of truth, and that there are passages in it which have very disagreeably perplexed and surprised me'. Beneath the rhetoric of the Master's letter CT interpreted to be this: 'I would deprive you of your Fellowship, if I could: I can deprive you of your Lectureship, and I do'. CT accordingly treated it as a command. However, he has subsequently learnt from the best authority 'that what I took for a command, was indeed meant to produce upon me the effect which actually resulted from it, but to other persons it was designed to present a different aspect, and to be regarded, not as an act of authority, but as an extra-official declaration, coming indeed from a person whose judgement might be supposed to have great weight, but still leaving me to my own free choice, so that I might not be said to have been turned out of my office, but to have resigned it, and the necessity of the change was not imposed upon me, but resulted from my own reflections and consciousness. Though I am aware how often a large share of petty cunning is to be found in very narrow and muddy intellects'. CT does suppose that WW knew 'of this piece of duplicity' but he finds WW's 'language so ambiguous as equally to suit either supposition'. WW never made it clear what exactly their differences of opinion were to which he attached so much weight. Hence CT neither knows whether they are closer in opinion than before or not: 'I am not conscious of having taken a single step from my original ground, nor do I see that you have abandoned any of your positions'. Besides which the reader will not be any the wiser with regard to understanding the real state of the question: 'The real difference of opinion between us turned simply on the value of our Chapel service, in a religious point of view: you rated it very high, I very low'. However, instead of confining the discussion at this level as CT intended, WW 'treated my remarks on the chapel service as if they had been deduced from a general observation, if employed to decide the question about the College chapel, might be applied to the destruction of all religious institutions'. Religion cannot be instilled into men against their will - 'voluntary exercises of religion tend to promote it: If then I condemn prescribed exercises, it must be because they are not voluntary; but I cannot be supposed to disapprove of those which are prescribed in accordance with the will, or to contend that an exercise must needs be contrary to the will, if it is prescribed, which would imply the absurdity, that a religious person can never be inclined to pay deference to the judgement of others, in any matters connected with religion'. An exercise of religion prescribed against or without the will is not an act of religion, but rather 'it kills religion or religious feeling, which may not exist in this case, as that its natural tendency is to produce a state of mind very adverse to religious feeling - a fact which seems sufficiently proved by the history of all attempts made to effect conversion by violence'. Giving rewards for religion is absurd - 'when the desire of these advantages is the sole motive of action, there can only be an outward shew of religion without any of the substance, and that such an outward shew is most detrimental to real religion'. The principle - no religious observances can be useful to the person engaged in it, if his will has no part in it - 'does not even exclude the exertion of authority to enforce religious observances in a society of men where the observances themselves are in harmony with the general will of the society, and where the exertion of the authority is acknowledged to be necessary in order to convey that will into effect'. This depends on the condition of society and the nature of the ordinances themselves. CT is upset at the way WW has twisted his meaning. The case is as follows: there has always been a class at Trinity 'who have distinguished themselves from the mass of the young men by their religious fervour. Till lately this class has met with a great many discouragement's, not only from their fellow students of a different character, but also from their elders'. However their numbers have increased and this is reflected in the chapel service: 'these persons are serious and earnest everywhere, they are so in chapel, and consequently there is an increase of seriousness and earnestness in the congregation...The main point is that there is not the shadow of reason for ascribing it to our chapel system, though it has taken place under, or notwithstanding, the system'. WW sets out in his 'Additional Remarks' by repeating an erroneous statement of CT's opinion: 'treating my impression as to the pernicious nature of all restraint with regard to religious observances. You then proceed to draw a picture of the consequences which would endue, if all such restraint was abolished among us; consequences, as you apprehend, full of dishonour to the governing part of the society, and of detriment to the governed. With regard to the former you seem to me to have committed a most glaring fallacy in supposing it would follow that we must be utterly inactive and silent if no such restraint was employed. Surely if the matter was left open to our choice, and we did not choose to enforce our observances, we should not thereby preclude ourselves from inviting to them; and even those who might think us mistaken in our judgement could not reasonably charge us with insincerity because we preferred the one method to the other; more especially as the great object of the invitation, the religious practice of the observances, is one which is wholly out of our power to enforce'. The precise area in which they differ is 'whether the observances are indispensable to religion , or whether they are clearly the most efficacious means of promoting it'. WW thinks 'that a young man's religious feelings, acquired by education in a well-ordered family, must suffer a severe shock, if when he comes to college he finds himself left to his own discretion as to religious observances. I can see no reason for imagining that such an effect would ever be produced'. CT thinks the opposite is the case. He gives a history of public worship from one day a week to everyday from the third century. CT's opinion was founded 'on the actual operation of the system , so far as I could judge of it. And if the question is made to rest on these grounds, then with regard to the tendency of the system it may be of great importance to consider what aspect the ordinance presents to those who are enjoined to attend it: whether it is one for which they may be supposed to come so far prepared that it finds a hold on their feelings and judgement, or whether it is likely to appear to them strange and startling at first, and afterwards as a practice, which, if it had any merit, would be a work of supererogation'. CT thinks the latter is the case with the great majority. It is difficult to conceive it as a family service when one considers the form of prayer. Even more removed from the family service is evening service: 'I cannot help thinking therefore that a comparison between our service and family worship must fail for all practical purposes'. Further, 'notwithstanding the excellence of our liturgy, I believe it is a notorious fact, that, by itself, particularly when divested of the charm of music, it is everywhere found to exert a very feeble attraction, which cannot be supposed to be stronger here than elsewhere'. For instance although the chapel is open to the public the only day in which they come is Sunday and that is due to an 'obvious motive'. These are some of the reason CT does not rate their daily service as an instrument of promoting religion. Neither does he think the difference is that great between their views: ''for at p.7 you admit that it is true to a considerable extend that our institutions do not operate as we wish in fostering devotional feelings'. What has grieved CT the most in WW's 'Additional Remarks' is the way WW has magnified their differences. WW lays 'great stress on the evil and the scandal that would ensue to us, if any of our pupils should be permitted to live here without joining in any service'. But it is precisely this class which get nothing out of the service and therefore it simply begs the question. 'The chapel service has been represented as an institution of great importance, and it was conceived that there would be a difficulty in reconciling its advantages with the admission of Dissenters'. CT sees no such problem. He also claims that the 'if the naked Liturgy is not found to exert a stronger attraction elsewhere, there seems a very faint prospect of its exciting increased interest here. And indeed, as long as we merely adhere to our present system, it is difficult to conceive from what quarter such a change is to arise'. CT and WW differ on this point since the latter sees a prospect of continual improvement which CT is unable to discover. CT thinks one weekly service and sermon should substitute the daily services. WW likes the idea of a weekly service but not the abolition of the daily service. WW's pamphlet, 'so conveyed, imports a stigma , which I can scarcely hope ever to efface. You have indeed rendered an immense service to my adversaries: one which they could have received from no other person. For it required, not only your great abilities, and eminent reputation, but also the neutral ground on which you professed to stand, and the friendship which you avowed for me'. WW's assertions concerning CT's view of Dissenters are 'utterly groundless, and directly contrary to a fact which appears on the face of my first pamphlet. The abolition of the daily worship was proposed by me long before the question about the admission of Dissenters had been raised, and before it either did or could occur to my mind. And as to the endowments of the University, the very point of your complaint, as far as I understand it, is that I have made no proposal at all. I am quite at a loss to conceive what can have led you to make such a charge against me, which is calculated to produce the impression that I am a covert enemy to the Church, who is willing to sacrifice its independence and its highest interests to those of the Dissenters'. Although WW's 'last pamphlet goes to do me deep and almost irreparable injury, it has not raised in my mind the slightest suspicion of your truth and honour, and of the sincerity of your goodwill toward me'.

CT had produced a pamphlet entitled 'A Letter to the Rev. Thomas Turton on the Admission of Dissenters to the University of Cambridge', 1834, as a response to the House of Lords rejecting a Bill to abolish tests and to Thomas Turton's, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, defence of religious disqualification's in his 'Thoughts on the Admission of Persons, without regard to their Religious Opinions, to Certain Degrees in the Universities of England', 1834.