The New Zealand Evangelist

The National School Society

The National School Society.

In the Christian Times of September 29, is a letter addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and signed “Thomas Thompson.” The topics embraced in the letter are “The National School Society,” “Puseyism in the Church,” and the “Prospective Endowment of Romanism.” On the first of these, among other things, the writer says—

It is demonstrable, my Lord, that the management of this In- stitution is more than semi-Popish. It is Papal. Charges have been laid against it by competent witnesses, men of character and standing in your own church, which, so far as I know, have never been answered. In the Essex Standard, of Friday Oct. 29, 1847, there is reported a long and eloquent speech of the Rev. Francis Close, of Cheltenham, in which, among other things tending to expose the anti-Protestant character of the institution in question, he says,—“I do not wish to appear as the accuser of any institution whatever; but I feel bound, as an honest man, to say thus much for myself, that I would just as soon send a youth to be instructed in the Vatican at once, as to one of the National Society's training schools, to be instructed in the doctrine of the Church of England. That is my opinion; and if you doubt my authority, I may say that I am not singular in that opinion, but that a large portion of the clergy by whom it is entertained, have signified to the government that they will not have young men from St. Mark's as teachers in their school—nor send young men there.” In 1845 there appeared in the Record a full statement of the doctrines taught at St. Mark's Chapel, and at Christ's Church, Westminster. Among these doctrines we find the following:—“The first great benefit derived from baptism is the washing away of original sin.” “From the moment of baptism, children are justified, or counted righteous, and become acceptable in God's sight.” “Holiness will lead us, in the end, to attain to the Kingdom of God., The Bible is represented as “a very large book, difficult to understand, mysterious,” and so much so that “two persons beginning to study it with an honest desire to understand it, will come to very different conclusions.” These are but a few specimens of the education imparted in the normal schools of a Society which has nearly one million of the sons and daughters of protestant England under its superintendence, which is continually receiving from the Treasury large grants of public money, enabling it to poison the rising race and future generations with the rankest heresies of Romanism, and which has as its President the estimable Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, the Head under Her Majesty of the Protestant Episcopal Church of our beloved father-land. My Lord I beseech you to investigate the matter. To have the Well-head of religious instruction poisoned by the professed guardians of saving truth, under the presidency of the Bishops of the National Church, in the middle of the nineteenth century, and at the national expense, is a very serious matter.”