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 Dissent, in its relation to the Church o 
 
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 / 
 

 THE 
 
 BAMPTON LECTURES 
 
 FOR M.DCCC.LXXI. 
 
DISSENT. 
 
 D>" ITS 
 
 RELATIOX TO THE CHURCH OF EXGLAXD. 
 
 EIGHT LECTURES, 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE UXnrERSITV OF OXFORD, 
 IX TECE YEAR 
 
 1S7I. 
 
 ox THE FC'UXDATIOX OF THE LATE RI^". JOHN EAMPTC'N M A. 
 CAX;K of i^USBITRY: 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE HERBERT CURTEIS, M. A, 
 
 EaZ£ Fei^rii and Suh-Rectcr of Exeter C'Uege; 
 
 Pr-innfaJ of tht LichKeld T^iei>logica2 Cj-Z^c^e, and P-^cr-c^Sjz-rj, of L :'.-'. zeU Ci^'^r^'-^.' - 
 
 Rect-DT of T'W7i-<rT:-^.. Btccks.. 
 
 M A C M I L L A N AND C O. 
 
 1S72 
 
 V 
 
/\.(?ya 33 
 
 -:^.-,v^_.^ 
 
 OXFORD; 
 
 By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner, and E. Tickfird Hall, 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
EXTRACT 
 
 FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTA:MEXT 
 
 OF THE LATE 
 
 REV. JOHN BAMPTON, 
 
 CAXOX OF SALISBURY. 
 
 " I give and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the 
 
 " Chancellor, IMasters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford 
 " for ever, to have and to hold all and singular the said Lands 
 " or Estates upon trust, and to the intents and purposes herein- 
 " after mentioned; that is to say, I will and appoint that the 
 " Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford for the time 
 " being shall take and receive all the rents, issues, and profits 
 " thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations, and necessary deduc- 
 " tions made) that he pay all the remainder to the endowment 
 " of eight Divinity Lecttu-e Sermons, to be established for ever 
 " in the said University, and to be performed in the maimer 
 " following : 
 
 " I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in Easter 
 " Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads of Colleges 
 " only, and by no others, in the room adjoining to the Printing- 
 " House, between the hours of ten in the morning and two in 
 " the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity Lecture Sermons, the 
 " year following, at St. Mary's in Oxford, between the com- 
 " mencement of the last month in Lent Term, and the end of 
 " the third week in Act Term. 
 
 " Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinity Lecture 
 
VI 
 
 EXTRACT FROM CANON BAMPTON's WILL. 
 
 " Sermons shall be preached upon either of the following Sub- 
 "jects— to confirm and establish the Christian Faith, and to 
 " confute all heretics and schismatics— upon the divine autho- 
 " rity of the holy Scriptures — upon the authority of the writings 
 " of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and practice of the 
 " primitive Church — upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour 
 "Jesus Christ — upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost— upon 
 " the Articles of the Christian Faith, as comprehended in the 
 " Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. 
 
 " Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lec- 
 " ture Sermons shall be always printed, within two months after 
 " they are preached; and one copy shall be given to the Chan- 
 " cellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of every 
 " College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of Oxford, 
 " and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library ; and the 
 " expenses of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of 
 " the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture 
 " Sermons ; and the preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled 
 " to the revenue, before they are printed. 
 
 " Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be qualified 
 " to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken 
 " the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Uni- 
 " versities of Oxford or Cambridge ; and that the same person 
 " shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons twice." 
 
-A » . 
 
 ^^ T C , . 
 
 TT ]N.V-~H ?r?,i-~y-_i 7.i>rM5s --_sr H~^r 
 
 i»L~rr is:k rKS 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ' Benevolentia etiam gladium iracundice extorquere consuevit. Benevo- 
 lentia facit, ut amici vulnera utilia magis quarn voluntaria inimici oscula 
 sint. Benevolentia facit, ut unus fiat ex pluribus . . Advertimus etiam, 
 correptiones in amicitiS, gratas esse, — quae aculeos habent, dolorem non 
 habent.' (St. Ambrose, de Officiis Ministrorum, lib. i. cap. 34.) 
 
 THE purpose of Canon Bampton in founding this 
 Lectureship seems to have been twofold. He 
 first required that the Lectures should be delivered 
 orally before the University : and next, he stipulated 
 that they should be given, in a printed form, to the 
 public. The double obligation thus imposed upon his 
 Lecturers is one which is by no means easy of fulfil- 
 ment. The celebrated saying of Charles Fox at once 
 occurs to one's memory ; that if a speech be orally 
 effective, it cannot possibly be effective in print, — and 
 vice versa. 
 
 The only way therefore in which a Bampton Lec- 
 turer can hope to fulfil the intentions of the Founder, 
 and to acquit himself loyally of the important trust 
 committed to him by the electors, is (I think) after 
 oral delivery of the Lectures at Oxford, to spare no 
 pains in endeavouring to make of them a volume 
 useful and interesting to persons of average intellectual 
 culture, not only at the University, but elsewhere. And 
 this can best be done, by slight expansions or abridge- 
 ments of the spoken text, and by appending footnotes, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 appendices, and other aids towards facility and com- 
 pleteness of apprehension. 
 
 This task I have honestly laboured to fulfil. And 
 if, in fulfilling it, I have trespassed too much upon the 
 patience of the University, — which (in ordinary cases) 
 may fairly expect a diligent and speedy compliance 
 with the conditions laid down by the Founder, — I ven- 
 ture to plead, in my defence, a- simultaneous occupation 
 of very unusual urgency and weight. The sole charge 
 of an important Theological College, numbering from 
 thirty to forty students, leaves a smaller margin of spare 
 time than were desirable. But besides deficiency of 
 time, I am too painfully aware of other deficiencies. 
 And therefore I do not hope to have escaped some 
 unintentional errors and mis-statements. Indeed, the 
 subjects here passed in review are so numerous and 
 varied, and are so historically intricate, that an apology 
 seems rather needed for venturing on such a line of 
 inquiry at all, than for attaining a very imperfect 
 degree of success in following it out. 
 
 The subject, however, seemed demanded by the 
 necessities of the Church of England at the present 
 moment. And to strengthen her position in this 
 country, to point out the true meaning of her con- 
 nexion with the State, and (if possible) to conciliate 
 by explanations those who are conscientiously — but, I 
 think, under endless misapprehensions — endeavouring 
 to subvert her influence and to destroy her vantage- 
 ground for doing good, such a task appeared to me a 
 privilege of the very highest order, and an opportunity 
 to be (at all hazards) accepted. For, as Gregory Nazi- 
 anzen said of Constantinople, 1500 years ago, so an 
 English Churchman may with still greater reason say 
 of his own country at the present day : Ei yup ro -nokiv 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 T^y otKOU/j.eyr)s 6(p6a\ixov, yr]s km Oakarrris KpariaTov, ewas 
 re Koi kanepiov Xi^^eMS olov (TvvhicTp.ov, . . fl to ravTrjV arrj- 
 pi^ai T€ /cat crdivSicTai roi? vyiaivovm Aoyois, rSy oti fxiyaXMv, 
 — (T)(oXfj y' ay aAA.o rt (paviirj jxeya Koi airovhrji a^wv. {Oral. 
 32 : torn. i. p. 517, ed. 1690.) 
 
 Indeed, the growth, culmination, and present decline 
 of Puritanism in this country forms of itself a highly 
 interesting subject of historical study. For 300 years 
 this highly unimaginative form of religious character 
 has predominated in England. The discoveries of the 
 fifteenth century had set every mind thinking, that 
 could think at all. And the awakened intellect was 
 not to be diverted from its new and delightful path, 
 by any Papal Indices of prohibited books, or prohibited 
 thoughts. Symbols, legends, images, and all similar 
 ' books for the unlearned,' might therefore be dispensed 
 with for a time. Had not learning revived .'' And was 
 there not in the air an enthusiasm for the Uteres hunia- 
 niores, — i. e, for Classics, History, and the science of 
 ' Humanity ' as distinguished from ' Divinity,' — such as 
 may be illustrated, but has certainly not been rivalled, 
 by our modern enthusiasm for ' Physical Science ' .■' And 
 so even Art, with her untold treasures of imaginative 
 representation, was suddenly cast aside, and held of 
 little account. Smitten, as if by a stroke of palsy, the 
 life that seemed ever at work in developing her beau- 
 tiful creations abruptly stood still. The window-sills of 
 ' Becket's Crown ' at Canterbury Cathedral were laid ; 
 but their lintels were never completed. In a word, the 
 bare prosaic Intellect had awoke from its long slumber ; 
 and would, for a time, suffer no rival near it. 
 
 It is in this way that the sudden, and otherwise unac- 
 countable, upgrowth of Puritanism in the sixteenth cen- 
 tury can best be accounted for. It is not that the germs 
 
xii PREFA CE. 
 
 of Puritanism have not existed in every age. We can 
 see them even in the Montanism, the Novatianism, and 
 the Donatism, of the ante-Nicene epoch. And probably 
 the Dissenting historians are not far wrong, who discover 
 a stunted and unkindly growth of opinions analogous to 
 their own, in the Paulicians, Manichees, Albigenses, 
 Hussites, and Lollards. These form (as it were) a 
 catena to connect the earlier ultra-spiritual conceptions 
 of Christianity with their later and fuller developments, 
 amid the more congenial atmosphere and favourable 
 circumstances of the last 300 years. 
 
 But that this long reign of Prose is now drawing to an 
 end, no observant person can well entertain a doubt. 
 And if it be drawing to an end, it is equally certain 
 that Puritanism (at least in its present forms) is also 
 drawing to an end. Indeed, every indication points 
 the same way. The very restlessness and spasmodic 
 ' energy which now pervades the whole Puritan camp, 
 and which has succeeded in drawing over to its side — 
 marvellous to relate — for a final struggle against the 
 Church of England, those very Denominations (the 
 Quakers, the Unitarians, and the Wesleyans) whose first- 
 principles are in the most direct and positive contra- 
 diction of its own first-principles, — this too arises from 
 the same cause ; viz. a conviction that the time for 
 action against the Church is drawing to a close, and 
 that the assault must be made now, or not be made 
 at all. 
 
 Whatever the result may be, however, of the approach- 
 ing conflict, one thing is absolutely certain, — that the 
 victory will not remain with Puritanism ; nor with any 
 Denomination of which Puritanism forms the life and 
 the essential doctrine. Putting aside the merely nega- 
 tive protests against a supposed over-externalism in 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 the Church, its positive tenets are simply these two ; 
 (i) the absolute supremacy of the mere letter of ScnJ'tiin' 
 over the conscience and reason of mankind : [2) the 
 doctrine of E!L\-tio)i, — by which is involved the concep- 
 tion of God as a Being, whose character is so entirely 
 incommensurate with our own, that He can bring into 
 existence, and even seem to welcome within the arms of 
 His mere}-, millions of human beings, whom He has all 
 along predestined, without any possibility of escape, to 
 a never-ending eternit}" of excruciating torments. That 
 either of these two conceptions will form any part of 
 the Religion of the future, it is quite impossible to 
 believe. AVould that it were equally impossible to 
 believe, that the fanarical Lama-ism' of modern Rome, 
 and the sceptical materialism of modem Paris, will 
 share the future bet^veen them, and draw asunder into 
 two great hostile camps the slaves of mere Sentiment 
 and the slaves of undisciplined and im-moral Reason. 
 
 Between these two \-iolent and enormous extremes, 
 there is only one power, so far as we can see at 
 present, which possesses the smallest chance of main- 
 taining the world in equilibrium ; and which offers 
 points of transition and reconciliation to both sides alike. 
 
 ^ That extraordinary* pnnillelism sist:! guore pendant longtemps qu'en 
 between the ceremonies, the history, im privilege de preseance. 11 n'etait 
 and even (in some respects'' the doc- encore que le premier parmi les 
 trines of Budhism and Romanism, egaux. Mais . . . le pouvoir spirituel 
 ■which has be^n the de<rc.:r of some aspire ti la domination supreme . . . 
 Romanists. ^F. Schlegel ascribed it " Quand le Lama enseigrie et con- 
 to demoniacal agency. "i and the ro/t- sacre, il a tm siege plus tleve. que 
 of others. ^Pere Hue longed to e.x- celui de I'Empereur".. .La fonne 
 hibit the ri\-al attractions of ' the monarchique se fortifia d.ins I'Eglise 
 pompous festivals ot Catholicism :' buddhique, et le dergo se soumit en 
 Tmici's. ii. 194,) has now, at length, general a la juridiction sv.prime d'un 
 received its completion by the act Grand Lama.' \Rc~-\/ GiTr:a".:-!,e. 
 of the late Vatican Council. — 'La vol. xii. p. 450.) 
 supnmatie du Grand L.ima ne con- 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 And that power is one which is growing perceptibly 
 before our eyes, which every day is taking better shape, 
 coming to a clearer consciousness of its own latent forces 
 and of the vast issues committed to its loyalty and 
 courage. It is (to use Dean Milman's phrase) THE 
 Church of the Teutonic Race. In Europe, in 
 America, in Africa, in Asia, in Australia, that Race has 
 now estabhshed its supremacy. And what outward 
 shape and organization its Church — i. e. its embodiment 
 of religious ideas — shall take, is just at this juncture one 
 of the most momentous questions of the day. 
 
 It is momentous for a great many reasons. But 
 among the rest, for this reason : that the two other 
 immediately important races in the world, — the Latin, 
 and the Slavonian races, — have already each of them a 
 fixed type of Episcopal Church-organization. And unless 
 therefore our own branch of the great human family 
 is prepared to forego all hope of eventual combination 
 and reunion with these other branches,^is prepared, 
 that is, to fail on the grand scale, — this generation of 
 Englishmen, Americans, and Germans must take care 
 that they lay out their ecclesiastical plans accordingly ; 
 and that they spoil not a magnificent future, by reck- 
 less and unintelligent confusions now. 
 
 Looking around then, what schemes are at the pre- 
 sent moment presented to our choice, whereby the effort 
 shall be made to organize Teutonic Christendom } Two 
 only are in view : and they are these, (i) the scheme of 
 ' the Evangelical Alliance :' (2) the scheme of ' the Old- 
 Catholic Church.' The first scheme has certain advan- 
 tages. It proposes to leave all Denominations free to 
 exist and multiply to any conceivable extent. It offers 
 a liberty of ecclesiastical action theoretically complete, — 
 however practically self-destructive. And it presents. 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 in the great variety and eager competition of its various 
 communions, the best possible guarantee against the 
 return of that, which, however — outside of Romanism 
 — is a mere chimaera, that never can take real shape 
 again, viz. hierarchical tyranny, priestcraft, the relega- 
 tion of all the powers and functions of the Christian 
 brotherhood into the hands of an official clergy. 
 
 But, on the other hand, its perils and disadvantages 
 infinitely outweigh all that can be said in its favour. It 
 begins by despairing of agreement and unity, even in 
 matters which its own axioms confess to be matters 
 of indifference and of a purely secondary interest. By 
 this fatal concession, that men no longer ought even to 
 try and combine in one broad polity, it gives the reins 
 over to self-will. It leaves the spirit of secession and 
 of (what St. Paul calls) hixo-TTaiyia absolutely without 
 rebuke. And so encouraging every one to ' stand upon 
 his rights,' instead of ' bending to his duties,' it endea- 
 vours to form a confederation of peace and harmony 
 ■with unlimited interior rights of ' private war :' while, by 
 its own limiting epithet of ' Evangelical,' it at once opens 
 a question which no man can close, — what is it precisely 
 to be 'Evangelical'.'' Who are thereby excluded.'' and 
 by what authority ? 
 
 These objections seem of themselves conclusive 
 against the ' Evangelical Alliance' scheme. But they 
 are strengthened a hundred fold by the consideration, 
 that hereby would be sanctioned and consecrated, as if 
 in full accordance with the mind of Christ, a scheme for 
 the continuance and extension of His kingdom, involv- 
 ing such waste of power, such mutual obstruction, such 
 a reticulated and mutually-contradictory aspect ' toward 
 them that are without,' — as to render Christendom (far 
 more than it is at present) a scandal and an object 
 
xvi PREFACE. 
 
 of ridicule to the Heathen. It would make Missionary 
 success in future absolutely hopeless ; and all such con- 
 ception of 'the Church and Family of Jesus Christ' as 
 might enkindle men's imagination and engage their love, 
 once and for ever out of the question. 
 
 And again, what can be said of a scheme, which pro- 
 poses to break up, in front of the deep and serried phalanx 
 of Rome, the whole opposing army into a mere cloud of 
 skirmishers ; to abandon interior discipline and subordi- 
 nation, just at the moment when the enemy has con- 
 centrated all his powers in one man's hand ; to create 
 a multitude of independent and infinitesimal commands, 
 — with endless chances of misunderstandings, of cross 
 purposes, of jealousies, bickerings, and loss of all ' soli- 
 darity,' — precisely at the hour when the whole vast 
 Roman communion has surrendered itself, ^ permde ac 
 cadaver^ to the guidance of the General of the Jesuits ; 
 and has become travestied from a Church into a military 
 ' company,' who march (it almost seems as if they cared 
 not whither) at the word of Papal command. This 
 were indeed to throw away victory out of our hand, 
 and to abandon those very 'spiritual weapons of our 
 warfare' — obedience, self-control, and unanimity — 
 by which alone the strongholds of darkness can be 
 overcome. 
 
 Happily, however, another alternative presents itself, 
 from which almost all these fatal conditions of failure 
 are absent ; and that is, the Old-Catholic system of the 
 Church. Here the watchword is not 'independence,' 
 but ' unity.' Here each man and each congregation are 
 called upon to sacrifice some portion of their private 
 liberty, for the common benefit. The one normal type, 
 both of organization and of ritual, is loyally maintained ; 
 but, at the same time, free play is allowed for local 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 preferences and national characteristics. Power, energy, 
 and momentum, are engendered^by clerical synods, 
 and by mixed congresses, conventions, and conferences 
 — among the lower orders of the Christian ' polity ; ' and 
 edge, efficiency, and concentration are supplied by a 
 graduated hierarchy, of which the uppermost ranks (arch- 
 bishops and patriarchs) form centres and guarantees of 
 unity, but are not invested with any considerable power ; 
 while the lower (bishops, rectors, &c.) are entrusted with 
 practical and executive authority. According to this 
 theory, as the Bishop of Rome is the Patriarch of the 
 Latin Church (De Marca, de Concord, i. 2. 7), and the 
 Bishop of Constantinople is the Patriarch of the Eastern 
 Church, so the Archbishop of Canterbury is the Patriarch 
 of (at least) the English-speaking Churches, — if he may 
 not fairly claim the Presidency of the whole Teutonic 
 Church, which owes its foundation mainly to English 
 missions. 
 
 And if it be objected that this description idealizes, 
 rather than depicts ; the answer is, that in all such cases 
 the highest and truest truth is not arrived at by mere 
 statistics. There are always too many near-sighted 
 people in the world, who ' cannot see the wood for the 
 trees.' And as no one could love, or feel any en- 
 thusiasm for, or could even grasp as a conception, an 
 'Evangelical Alliance' presented from the side of its 
 discordances, its mistakes in detail, the weaknesses and 
 platitudes of its orators and defenders, — so in presenting 
 the counter-portraiture of the ' Old-Catholic Church,' 
 it is essential not to allow its beauty and effectiveness 
 to be frittered away in detail, nor to claim men's admi- 
 ration for a mere rough-hewn block of marble without 
 describing the latent statue which at present (it may 
 be) the sculptor's chisel has only half revealed. 
 
 b 
 
XVIU PREFACE. 
 
 Without therefore for a moment denying, or wishing 
 to conceal, the many great imperfections and short- 
 comings of that presentation of the ' Old-CathoHc ' 
 system, which now exists in the National Church of 
 England ; and still less desiring to disparage or obscure 
 in any way whatever the advantages that belong to 
 certain Dissenting schemes and the eminent virtues and 
 talents that adorn many who at the present day support 
 these schemes ; I have endeavoured in the following 
 Lectures simply to accomplish three things : — 
 
 First, I have aimed to show those (and they are 
 neither few nor unworthy of attention) who are in de- 
 spair at the present divided aspect of Christendom, that 
 from the Apostles' time downwards there has never been 
 an age of the Church without similar internal conflicts : 
 that by certain well-tried methods and on certain well- 
 known principles, these dissensions may be successfully 
 kept within bounds, and made to minister to the life 
 and movement of the whole polity : but that, ill-managed 
 and suffered to run beyond the just limits of reason and 
 good sense, they are always liable to become a wasting 
 fever instead of a healthy warmth, a conflagration instead 
 of a means of motion, and may even reach at last the 
 absurdity of nullifying, by mutual jealousy and friction, 
 the very purposes for which the Christian society was 
 instituted. 
 
 Secondly, I have laboured to present, as far as my 
 knowledge would allow, materials by which my fellow- 
 Churchmen might be aided in forming an intelligent and 
 candid judgment as to what precisely these Dissenting 
 denominations, of which we hear almost to satiety, really 
 are ; what it is they do, and what they claim to teach ; 
 and why it is that, — with an acrimony so absolutely 
 unaccountable to us, who know what she really is, — they 
 
PREFA CE. xix 
 
 are now combining to bring the Church of England, 
 if possible, to the ground. 
 
 Thirdly, my hope is — if I should have the good for- 
 tune to find any readers among Nonconformists them- 
 selves — to be permitted to point out some few indications, 
 such as may at least awaken farther inquiry, of the 
 wonderful and every way deplorable misapprehensions, 
 which have clothed the Church of England to their eyes 
 in colours absolutely foreign to her true character ; have 
 ascribed to her doctrines absolutely contrary to her 
 meaning ; and have interpreted her customs in a way 
 repellent to the Christian common-sense of her own 
 people. I do not disguise from myself, or from others, 
 that these misapprehensions have arisen in great measure 
 from the ineffective, and sometimes distorted, presenta- 
 tion of these things given by her own clergy ; nor do I 
 acquit her bishops and leading men in times past, and 
 especially amid the confusions which inevitably followed 
 upon the Reformation in the sixteenth century, of acting 
 occasionally a most unworthy part and preparing the 
 way for the present — contemptible, if it were not also 
 treasonable — internecine war. But it is surely high time 
 that these things were condoned. It is surely high time 
 that religious men, and men who aim at truth, should 
 take some pains, should welcome some self-denial, should 
 be prepared (on both sides) to make some concessions 
 and some acknowledgments of error, — in the interests, 
 not of their own, but of their Master's cause. 
 
 For that cause is nothing less than the cause of Ve- 
 racity, and Justice, and Charity, and Peace upon Earth. 
 And it is threatened, now-a-days, by an imposing and 
 accumulating force of all the Antichristian powers of 
 ignorance, superstition, audacious intellectual pride, and 
 an equally audacious intellectual despair, — a despair, 
 
 b2 
 
XX PREFA CE. 
 
 which would fain put out the eyes of men and cripple 
 their limbs, lest they should undergo the dangers in-, 
 cident to walking alone, and should take upon them 
 to dispense with artificial assistance. 
 
 Earnestly trusting that, — in spite (no doubt) of many 
 unintentional mistakes which I have lacked the means 
 of correcting, and of many slips and omissions and ob- 
 scurities of which I am too painfully conscious, — these 
 Lectures may be kindly judged by those to whom they 
 were originally addressed, and taken as at least an 
 honest attempt at 'explanation' by others into whose 
 hands they may come, — I will borrow, in conclusion, 
 the words of one of our most eloquent and lucid writers 
 in quite another branch of study : ' I speak with more 
 than the sincerity of an advocate, when I express my 
 belief that the case against us has entirely broken down* 
 The cry for Reform which has been raised, is needless ; 
 inasmuch as we have long been reforming from within. 
 . . And the critical examination of the grounds upon 
 which these very grave charges . . have been brought 
 against us, rather shows that we have exercised a wise 
 discrimination in decHning, for the present, to meddle 
 with our Foundations ^.' 
 
 '' Prof. Huxley, Lay Sermons, &c. (Geological Reform), p. 279. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 DISSENT IN GENERAL. 
 
 Matt. xiii. 3, 4. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A sower went forth to sow : and as he sowed, some fell ly the 
 way side ......... i 
 
 Appendix A. List of the more important ' dissensions ' 
 within the Church ; from a.d. 30 to the present time . 34 
 
 LECTURE n. 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. 
 
 Ephes. V. 21. 
 Submitting yourselves one to another, in the fear of God . 37 
 
 Appendix B. The Presbyterian ' Confession of Faith ' .121 
 
 Appendix C. The Independent ' Declaration of Faith, 
 Church Order, and Discipline ' . . . . -125 
 
XXU COjVTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE ROMANISTS. 
 I Peter v. 3. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Neither as being lords over God's heritage; but being en- 
 samples to the flock . . . . . . .131 
 
 Appendix D. The Romanist Confession of Faith (or the 
 ' Creed of Pope Pius IV.' A. D. 1564) .... 202 
 
 Appendix E. The Canons passed at the Latin Council of 
 the Vatican, a.d. 1870 203 
 
 Appendix F. ""A Syllabus of the principal errors of our 
 time, — which are stigmatised in the Allocutions, &c. of 
 our most holy Lord, Pope Pius IX.' .... 207 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 Matthew xiii. 47. 
 
 The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a net, which was cast 
 into the sea, and gathered of every kind . . . .209 
 
 Appendix G. The Baptist Confessions of Faith . . 242 
 
CONTENTS. XXlil 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE QUAKERS. 
 
 r Cor. xiv. 32. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The spirits 0/ the prophets are subject to the prophets. For 
 God is not the author of confusion, but of peace . -245 
 
 Appendix H. ' The chief principles of the Christian reli- 
 gion, as professed by the people called Quakers ' . . 280 
 
 LECTURE VL 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 I Cor. iii. 18. 
 
 If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let 
 him become a fool, that he may be wise .... 285 
 
 Appendix L The metaphysical language of the Church . 335 
 
 LECTURE VIL 
 
 THE WESLEYANS. 
 
 Rom. xii. 16. 
 
 Mind not high things : but condescend to men of low estate . 337 
 
 Appendix K. The special doctrines of the Wesleyans . 390 
 
 Appendix L. Extracts from three important documents of 
 Wesleyanism . . . . . . . -392 
 
xxiv CONTENTS. 
 
 m 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Numbers xxiv. 5, 6. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 How goodly are thy tents, Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O 
 Israel! As the valleys are they spread forth, as gardens 
 by the river's side, as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord 
 hath planted ........ 395 
 
 Appendix M. The Organization of the Church of England 433 
 Appendix N. The Endowments of the Church of England 440 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 DISSENT IN GENERAL. 
 
 ' Even in the best state which Society has yet reached, it is lamentable 
 to think how great a proportion of all the efforts and talents in the world 
 are employed in merely neutralizing one another. It is the proper end of 
 government to reduce this wretched waste to the smallest possible amount." 
 (Mill, Political Economy, bk. v. ch. xi. § i6.) 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 DISSENT IN GENERAL. 
 
 ' A sower went forth to sow : and as he sowed, some fell by the way side.' 
 Matt. xiii. 3, 4. 
 
 NO thoughtful man can possibly contemplate the his- 
 tory of the Church of Christ, without the keenest 
 sense of disappointment. That man's work should fail, 
 and be impaired by loss and waste, would be but little 
 matter of surprise. That God's work should be thus 
 impaired and obstructed, is indeed — at first sight — asto- 
 nishing. And yet our Lord, in the words which I have 
 just quoted in the text, distinctly recognizes this fact ; 
 and His words ought to have prepared our minds to 
 receive it. Nay, ordinary observation too should come 
 to our aid. For it corroborates beyond all question the 
 truth, that the Almighty has not chosen to shield even 
 His own works from the operation of the causes which 
 produce loss and waste ; nor (in other words) thought 
 fit so far to subordinate all other considerations to the 
 carrying out of some one leading idea, that no unem- 
 ployed material shall be left for fulfilling the collateral 
 purposes of His providence. If then in the Church itself 
 — which the Christian believes to be the special object 
 of God's care, and to which the promise belongs, ' Lo, I 
 
 B 2 
 
DISSENT m GENERAL. [lECT. 
 
 am with you always, even unto the end of the world i' a 
 strange waste of power is visible, and a friction of contend- 
 ing forces which sometimes brings the machine almost to 
 a stop, there is no reason after all to feel much surprise. 
 For, in fact, the world is full of what we call 
 ' waste ;' and the ideas of God never seem to gain their 
 victory without loss. Jesus Himself only triumphed 
 through temporary defeat and death. ' The Son of Man 
 must needs suffer.' And even in the material world, the 
 Manichees perhaps were not far wrong in seeing every- 
 where the same phenomenon — a Jesus patibilis strug- 
 gling out of bondage into freedom, out of darkness into 
 light. Thus, when the mineral constituents of the earth 
 had been sorted and rearranged by chemical and me- 
 chanical forces — then plant-life, like the bright dawn of 
 a new and Divine idea, irradiated them and raised them 
 to a higher power ^ And yet, down to this very day, 
 vast wastes of torrid sand and ice-bound zones of deso- 
 lation keep almost all plant-life at bay, and defy every 
 effort of the vegetable world to get a footing there. 
 And so again, when plants had spread and clothed the 
 earth with marvellous beauty — then animal life, like yet 
 a new idea, appeared among them, to transmute matter 
 still higher into sense and motion ^. And yet among 
 animals and plants alike what enormous waste and loss 
 
 ' Matt, xxviii. 20. which are simpler — all the pro- 
 
 ^ ' In our atmosphere floats car- toplasm which keeps the animal 
 
 bonic acid gas. .. The sunlight [by world agoing." (Prof. Huxley, ;6ic(.) 
 
 the shock of its vibrations] loosens ' When all is on the verge of final 
 
 the molecules of the carbonic acid ; decomposition into the elementary 
 
 and incipient disunion being thus gases, and so returning from the 
 
 introduced, the carbon of the gas is organic to the inorganic world, these 
 
 seized upon by the leaf and appro- invisible police [the Infusoria] are 
 
 priated,— while the oxygen is dis- everywhere ready to arrest the fugi- 
 
 charged into the atmosphere.' (Prof, five organic particles, and turn them 
 
 TyndaU,i?o«7i.i?fw™, Feb. 1,1869.) back into tlie ascending stream of 
 
 " ' Thus the vegetable world builds organic life.' (Prof. Owen, ap. Somer- 
 
 up from these forms— and from some ville's Molecular Science, ii. p. 80.) 
 
I.] ' WASTE' IN NATURE AND GRACE. 5 
 
 is every moment occurring. The spotted orchis produces 
 (it is computed) some 180,000 seeds each summer: yet 
 frequently not one of them germinates *. The white ant 
 is said to lay, at certain periods, 80,000 eggs a day : but 
 the young are destroyed by tens of thousands as soon as 
 they are hatched '. And so it is, once more, when man 
 appears upon the scene. Waste and loss invariably ac- 
 company all he is and does, — even when he associates in 
 churches, under the direct command and for the special 
 purposes of his Maker. 
 
 Instead therefore of indulging ourselves in wonder 
 and disgust (as we are tempted to do), at the confused 
 aspect and abortive efforts which meet our eye every- 
 where — even within the Church of God — the part of 
 wisdom surely is, to acknowledge that God's ways are 
 not as our ways, to believe that this confusion may have 
 a meaning to His eye which it has not to ours, and to try 
 and enter into that meaning and recognize with humility 
 that higher order which to us at first seemed chaos. 
 
 In the hope of being serviceable in this direction to 
 some, who are (it may be) perplexed and in despair 
 at the strange ecclesiastical confusions of our times, 
 I have ventured to take for the subject of these eight 
 Lectures the difficult, yet surely pressing, question of 
 Dissent, especially as it now appears in England. I 
 am well aware how impossible it is to say anything new 
 upon so well-worn a theme. Nor do I expect to be of 
 the slightest use to any but to those, whose engagements 
 
 * ' I took a ripe capsule of Cephal- chids are sparingly distributed.' 
 
 anthei'a grandiflora . . The four cap- (Danvin, Ferdlizalion of Orchids, p. 
 
 sules on this one plant contained 344). See Bp. Butler's well-known 
 
 24,000 seeds. Orchis maculata observations on the same subject, 
 
 186,300.' At this rate, 'the great .<l«n/. part i. cap. v. 
 
 grandchildren of a single plant would 'See Hardwicke's Science Gossip, 
 
 clothe the entire land throughout the No. 73 (Jan. 1871). 
 globe . . Yet it is notorious that or- 
 
DISSENT IN GENERAL. [lect. 
 
 in quite other directions lead them to feel the need of 
 common information on a dark and perplexing subject. 
 For I well know how repulsive a topic this is to ordinary 
 men ; how impatiently its dry details and apparently 
 senseless polemics are thrown aside e. And I also know 
 with what a strange unconscious dishonesty the facts 
 of history are perpetually distorted or obscured, even 
 by well-meaning writers, to serve a purpose. 
 
 In dealing with this subject then, I shall endeavour, 
 in the first Lecture, to give (as clearly and briefly as I 
 can) a general view of the whole question ; and by a 
 rapid examination of the phenomena attending upon 
 schisms, and of the methods taken to heal them, during 
 the centuries preceding the Reformation, I shall seek to 
 arrive at some principles which may guide us in study- 
 ing the modern and English forms of Dissent, with 
 which we are all more or less acquainted. In the fol- 
 lowing six Lectures, I shall take six of tlie leading 
 English denominations for a more special study. And 
 in the last Lecture, I shall conclude with a review of 
 the condition and prospects of our own Church, with 
 relation to these surrounding bodies, which are exercis- 
 ing such an important influence upon her path. 
 
 And may it be our earnest endeavour to seek for 
 nothing but the truth : may we recognize thankfully, 
 
 ^ No one can be surprised to find in Australia^ p. TI2.) But if Mr. 
 that this is the case among politicians, Binney is ' tired,' what does he think 
 journalists, and men of the world, that Churchmen feel, who were tired 
 when we find an able and vigorous of Puritan contentions already three 
 leader of Dissent making the follow- hundred years ago ? ' Far more com- 
 ing confession : ' I am as tired as fort were it for us (so small is the 
 any man of Sect-life ; of this and the joy we feel in these strifes) to labour 
 other portion of the body becoming under the same yoke ■ . rather than 
 a separated limb ; men combining in such dismembered sort to spend 
 together on this and the other point our few and wretched days in a tedi- 
 or points, one or five as the case may ous prosecuting of wearisome con- 
 be .. I am tired of all this and have tentions.' (Hooker, Eccles. Pol., 
 long been so.' (Binney, Church Life Preface, sub fin.) 
 
I-] WHA T IS DISSENT? 
 
 wherever we shall find it, every trace of zeal and love 
 and of the Holy Spirit's working : and both say and feel, 
 with the noble liberality of a St. Augustine, 'Quisquis 
 bonus verusque Christianus est, Domini sui esse intel- 
 ligat ubique invenerit veritatem ?.' 
 
 I. What then is 'Dissent?' It has been the fashion 
 to confuse this subject. And no doubt, in far distant 
 times, quite other forms and denominations prevailed 
 than those to which we are accustomed ; and rude fierce 
 ages of delirious controversy branded every opponent 
 on every side of every question with the very harshest 
 names that tongue could frame. ' Heresy and schism,' 
 ' madness,' ' impiety,' ' blasphemy,' and so forth, were 
 some of the lighter and more courteous missiles thought 
 good enough to employ in religious warfare. But we 
 are learning, I suppose, at last a better and more Chris- 
 tian system of managing our controversies. We are 
 no longer unwilling to be taught two great maxims, 
 one of which was often in the mouth of Dr. Arnold of 
 Rugby 8, and the other is due to Bishop Dupanloup of 
 Orleans ^ : viz. first, that the true way of disarming error 
 is by a diligent teaching of the correlative truth ; and 
 secondly, that it is not worth while to convert merely 
 family disputes into questions of life and death. Passing 
 by therefore, as unworthy of attention, both the hostile 
 
 ' Aug. de Doctr. ii. 1 8 : (cf. (if I can help it) against Newmanism, 
 
 Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 46 : Clem, but for the true Church and Christi- 
 
 Alex. Strom, vii. 3, 20, &c., &c,) anity.' (Stanley's Life of Arnold, i. 
 
 Has not this noble breadth and 149, first ed.) So Dean Stanley 
 
 freedom been the true characteristic himself, The Apostolical Age, p. 201 ; 
 
 of the Catholic Church in all ages ? and Bp. Jebb, Pastoral Instructions, 
 
 It is a thing totally distinct both p. 26. 
 
 from eclecticism and from indiffer- ' ' Chretiens ! aimez toujours, par- 
 
 ence to truth. donnez toujours . . Ne changeons pas 
 
 ' ' Nothing can or ought to be en questions vitales les querelles de 
 
 done by merely maintaining nega- menage.' {Discourse on Education, at 
 
 tives. I will neither talk nor write Malines, Aug. 1864, p. 85.) 
 
DISSENT IN GENERAL. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 and the complimentary systems of nomenclature and 
 seeking nothing but clearness and truth, we find the facts 
 to be simply these : (i) that in all ages and countries 
 where the Christian Church has found a footmg, there 
 have always (from the very construction of the human 
 mind) arisen parties in opposition to the prevailing and 
 authorized methods, both of doctrine and of discipline : 
 (2) that this opposition and its resulting conflict is, in 
 the ecclesiastical as well as every other kind of polity, 
 the essential condition of vitality and movement : (3) but 
 that, while ' dissension ' is both healthy and inevitable, 
 yet when it runs out into extreme forms, becomes exas- 
 perated by mismanagement or poisoned by the admix- 
 ture of hatred, jealousy, and selfwill, it then becomes a 
 dangerous and chronic disease '^^ ; it has grown into 
 something which cannot easily be cured ; a chasm has 
 opened, which renders re-absorption very difficult ; and 
 dissension (in one word) has ripened into ' Dissent.' 
 
 ' Dissent,' then, is the ripened or chronic form of a 
 thing which in itself is often both natural and right, 
 viz. dissatisfaction with the existing doctrines or prac- 
 tices of the Church. If doctrine were mainly in question, 
 it was usual in past times to call this kind of Dissent 
 by the name of ' heresy.' If discipline and practical 
 order were mainly in question, another title was em- 
 ployed, viz. ' schism ^1.' But the two things are, essen- 
 tially and at bottom, the same, 
 
 '° ' A spirit of " watchful jea- ye not carnal f . . Therefore, says he, 
 
 lousy" is as much a spiritual hin- "I exhort you by the name of our 
 
 drance, — nay, in the view of Chris- Lord Jesus Christ that ye all speak 
 
 tianity it is even a more direct spirit- the same thing, and that there be not 
 
 ual hindrance, — than drunkenness or divisions among you." ' (M. Arnold, 
 
 loose living. Christianity is, first St. Paul and Protes/antism, p. xnii.) 
 and above all, a temper, a disposi- " ' Cum " schismaticus" sis sacrilega 
 
 tion.. Where there is jealousy and discessione, et "hfereticus" sacrilego 
 
 strife among you, asks St. Paul, ore dogmate." (Aug. c. Goadcnftum, ii. 9.) 
 
I.] IS DISSENT LEGITIMATE ? 9 
 
 II. And now let us cast our eyes over the broad field 
 of Church history, and ask two or three important and, 
 I think, not uninteresting questions. First, inasmuch as 
 this phenomenon of 'Dissent' seems always to have 
 accompanied the life of the Church, did it or did it not 
 form part of the original Idea of the Church in the mind 
 of our blessed Lord .' Because, if it did, it is legitimate ; 
 if it did not, it is illegitimate, and must be wrong, how- 
 ever common and (humanly speaking) inevitable it may 
 be. For things do not establish a right to exist, by 
 existing. War exists, slavery exists, ignorance exists. 
 But we are not pantheists, so as to recognize everything 
 that exists, as divine ; nor probably if we were, should 
 we feel ourselves, in practice, precluded from doing all in 
 our power to abate these fearful scourges, lest perchance 
 we should be ' found fighters against God.' No ; the 
 faith of mankind has not so far evaporated into sen- 
 timent, but that we find courage to do battle in God's 
 name against terrible evils that afflict us ; evils that, we 
 are sure, are contrary to His will and out of keeping 
 with the Ideal which (if we may so say) floats before 
 His mind, even though they do by His permission 
 exist. 
 
 And so it is in the present case. 'Dissent' exists; 
 but it does not therefore follow that it ought to exist, 
 until we have ascertained the mind of Christ. And to 
 ascertain that, we must go to the best and purest sources 
 accessible to us ; viz. the only extant relics of His life 
 and teaching, contained in the writings of His apostles. 
 And what do we find there that our blessed Lord and 
 Saviour said about the Church .-' 
 
 I have heard people reply — and it surely is a most 
 curious instance how entirely the eye is dependent upon 
 previously acquired powers of seeing — that there is 
 
10 DISSENT IN GENERAL. [leCT. 
 
 almost absolutely nothing about the Church in all the 
 recorded words of our Lord ^^ ! Can anything be more 
 strange ? First of all, what (let us ask) was the employ- 
 ment and purpose of His whole three years' ministry ? 
 Was it to preach the Gospel m person to every creature? 
 We know that it was not. His Gospel is for all the 
 world ; yet He never Himself overstepped the borders 
 of Palestine. ' There is no man that doeth anything in 
 secret' (said His unbelieving brothers), 'and yet he 
 himself seeketh to be known openly.' Quite true ; 
 and if, therefore, Jesus hid Himself, forbade His dis- 
 ciples to speak of His claims, and declared His 'hour 
 was not come' till the very eve of His departure, at 
 Gethsemane, it is clear He was not seeking to be known 
 openly. 
 
 Was it, then, to bequeath a Book to the world that 
 His efforts were directed .' Not so. He neither wrote 
 one single line Himself, nor ever mentioned in any of 
 His recorded sayings so much as one word about the 
 subject ; nor was one letter of the New Testament ever 
 set down on paper till some twenty years or more 
 after His Ascension. 
 
 But, perhaps, He desired to complete a Theological 
 system, and to leave (what may be called) a regular 
 religion in the world } This is a thing quite possible 
 to do. It had been done before our Lord's time by 
 Buddha and Zoroaster. It has been done since our 
 
 ^ ' Christ's spirit, Christ's virtue on earth of those who profess and 
 
 is the only essential thing. ... In the call themselves Christians, and they 
 
 Sermon on the Mount Jesus said know of an innumerable company 
 
 nothing about the Church.' (Chan- who are citizens of the heavenly 
 
 ning, Worlts, i. 26.:;.) ' Noncon- Jerusalem. But of that metaphysical 
 
 formists reply, that they know nothing abstraction which is called by some 
 
 of that corporate entity suspended by " the Church," they find no record 
 
 theological theorists between heaven in Scripture.' {Religious Republics, 
 
 and earth. They know organizations p. 227.) 
 
I.] OUR LORD'S 'IDEA' OF HIS CHURCH. ii 
 
 Lord's time by Mahomet, and by Joseph Smith, and by 
 Comte. But then there is not the smallest indication 
 of any such attempt in the Gospels. Whatever else 
 may be there, we find at least no dogmatic system there 
 unfolded ; no Creeds, no Articles, no 'Catechisms,' longer 
 or shorter, no 'Summa Theologix,' no 'Body of Di- 
 vinity.' All is divine and pregnant chaos, awaiting the 
 movement of the Spirit upon the waters. 
 
 But there is one more alternative. Perhaps it was a 
 Sentiment that He left behind ; a pleasing and soothing 
 remembrance of One who had walked this world in peace 
 and benevolence and calm union with the will of God, 
 and had succumbed at last to an agonizing death and 
 to the same tremendous mystery which overpowers us 
 all, viz. the superiority of the physical to the moral on 
 this globe : — succumbed without a murmur, but without 
 an explanation ! Surely I need not say, if this were all, 
 that not only may other idyllic poets and stoical philo- 
 sophers sustain fair claims to competition, but also, that 
 large portions of the Lord's acts and words remain thus 
 entirely unaccounted for. His greatest efforts seem then 
 to have been wasted ; and those things which evidently 
 lay nearest His heart were just the things which have 
 since appeared to be useless, or even pernicious, to the 
 Idyll 'K 
 
 '^ Observe how, in that most contrast between the stage-grandeur 
 
 elaborate of all the mere artistic of the Master and the bucolic sim- 
 
 perversions of the Gospel, the Vie de plicity of the disciples is exaggerated. 
 
 "jesui, by M. Renan, the artist would Art, in short, wili all its ' fonction 
 
 willingly rid himself, if he could, religieuse superieure k celle du theo- 
 
 of some of our Lord's great miracles, logien,' (Renan, Etudes, p. 430,) can- 
 
 of the Resurrection, of His frequent not by itself compass the setting 
 
 announcements of the second advent, forth of the Gospel. And M. Renan's 
 
 While, on the other hand, the part irpSiTov ipdSos is fatal to his whole 
 
 borne by the Blessed Virgin and by work, viz. that ' la beaufi vaut pres- 
 
 other female characters is overdravm, que le bien et le vrai.' 
 the scenery overcoloured, and the 
 
niSSEN-T IN GENERAL. [leCT. 
 
 No ; these explanations of His life and work on earth 
 will satisfy no candid inquirer. It was something else 
 that He was doing. It was some better shrine and casket 
 that He was preparing, to bear and radiate forth His 
 Holy Spirit among men, than any of these mere human 
 and often tried contrivances. And so when, with hum- 
 bler and more docile eyes, we turn once more to the 
 portraiture of that Divine Life, we find new things un- 
 dreamed of hitherto in man's philosophy. We see, for 
 background of the portrait, a world grown old in iniquity, 
 a moral chaos of despair and effete mummery. We see 
 a tiger-king deluging Palestine with seas of blood, the 
 civil wars of Rome setting every man's hand against 
 his brother, the Empire stamping out everywhere the 
 last sparks of national life, a Cicero smiling at his brother 
 augurs, a Lucretius preaching earnest atheism, a Horace 
 gaily singing that the gods lived easy lives and cared 
 not for men, and temples (accordingly) being built up 
 in every land, not by piety to God, but by flattery and 
 hypocrisy to Cssar. 
 
 And now amid this dismal scene, behold — like yet 
 a ray of new-creative light from heaven — a lovely fresh 
 Ideal, descending down from God upon earth. No 
 human eye had ever yet beheld the way in which 
 God interferes in the world that He has made, when 
 He intends to create a new beginning. But here the 
 mystery was actually before men's eyes, although they 
 knew it not. In stillness and in secret it stole into the 
 world. A Child was born at Bethlehem. And for thirty 
 years none but she who 'kept all His sayings and 
 pondered them in her heart,' seemed to have much idea 
 that here was the ripe fruit of all the ages, here the 
 teeming germ of all the future. Yet so it was. And 
 a ministry of three short years sufficed to prepare all 
 
I.] THE CHURCH AN ORGANIZED SOCIETY. 13 
 
 the means that were necessary for the expansion of the 
 germ, for the communication of new life gradually 
 throughout the world, and for inundating with a flood 
 of the noblest ideas — of courage before God, of brother- 
 hood with man, of fearlessness before nature ^^ — the 
 tide-forsaken shores of humanity. 
 
 How was it prepared ? What was the potent in- 
 strument which the Lord left on earth, for embodying 
 and giving tangible effect to His Holy Spirit's presence 
 in the world after His own Ascension ? It was simply 
 that wonderful, elastic, undying, expansive thing which 
 we in England know so well, which we use ourselves 
 with such exceptional vigour and skill — a polity, a 
 SOCIETY, a united brotherhood, a 'kingdom of heaven' 
 among men. 
 
 Yes ; it was to the training and preparation of an 
 evangelizing society that the whole of His short ministry 
 seems to have been devoted. 'Follow Me,' said He on 
 first gathering to Him a knot of disciples, ' and I will 
 make you fishers of men ^^ :' ' Go ye,' were His last 
 
 " What the need of some re- eaten by tigers, 158 by crocodiles, 
 assurance must have been in times 72 were crushed by rhinoceroses, 
 past, we may judge not only from 22 died by serpents. The thun- 
 the myths and histories which have ders of heaven too joined in this 
 come down to us, but from what is earthly battue, and destroyed 493 
 being suffered by Asiatics and felt human beings.' (Marq. de Beau- 
 by Europeans even at the present voir's Voyage round the World, ii. 
 moment. 'A very singular report 141.) 'Should it ever be your mis- 
 has been recently issued by the fortune to see a Christian gentleman, 
 Gazette of India upon the number your friend and equal, pulled down 
 of deaths from the attacks of wild by a fierce brute mad with famine, . . 
 beasts. . . A man-eating tiger creates though you may have the luck to 
 such terror in a district, that whole slay the slayer, still a bewildering 
 villages are depopulated. The ag- horror will chill the triumph of your 
 gregate number of deaths by the vengeance, and you will be furnished 
 onslaught of wild beasts, for three with something to wonder over and 
 years, amounts to 12,554. The think about for the rest of your days.' 
 deaths from snake-bite come up to (Major Holland, in Science Gossip, 
 25,664.' (i3ai7y iVews, Nov. I, 1 871.) Dec. 1871.) 
 Take another Eastern country : ' In '" Mall. iv. 19. 
 1863 [in Java], 273 people were 
 
14 
 
 DISSENT IN GENERAL. [-Lmr. 
 
 instructions, ' into all the world, and preach the Gospel to 
 every creaturei^:' here, then, we have the end and object 
 of His society set forth. 
 
 'And when He had called His twelve disciples, He 
 gave them power . . . and sent them forth i'',' adding a 
 long instruction as to their conduct on this trial mission : 
 ' And the Apostles, when they were returned, told Him 
 all that they had done; and He took them and went 
 aside privately into a desert place ^* :' ' And with many 
 parables spake He the Word unto them ... and when 
 they were alone. He expounded all things to His dis- 
 ciples ".' Here, it is beyond question, that He was en- 
 gaged in training the officers of His future Church. 
 
 And what was that Church to be like f Parable after 
 parable, and discourse after discourse are taken up with 
 a full explanation of this matter. 'The kingdom of 
 heaven'— such was its title on His lips, borrowed from 
 the prophecy of Daniel — ' is like unto mustard seed : 
 there are its small beginnings. ' The kingdom of heaven 
 is like unto leaven :' there is the secret chemistry of its 
 working. ' The kingdom of heaven is like unto a field,' 
 where tares are mingled with the wheat, and are not to 
 be separated until the harvest-day : ' The kingdom of 
 heaven is like unto a net,' which gathered of every kind, 
 both good and bad alike ^^ : The kingdom of heaven is 
 like unto a wedding-feast, to which people of all sorts 
 were invited, and where some were present, even till the 
 coming back of the king, without the wedding gar- 
 ment ^^: there is its tolerance of sinners, its breadth, its 
 noble fearlessness of infection in carrying out His work 
 of redeeming mercy. 'Whatsoever ye shall bind on 
 
 " Mark xvi. 15. " Matt. x. i. '» Luie x. 10. 
 
 '» Mark iv. 34. M Matt. xiii. 31-50. ^i jj,-^^ ^xii. 2. 
 
!•] DESCRIPTION OF THE CHURCH. 15 
 
 earth, shall be bound in heaven 2- :' ' If a man hear not 
 the Church, let him be to thee as a heathen man and 
 a pubHcan^^:' there is its authority. 'I pray that they 
 all may be one in Us ; that the world may believe that 
 Thou hast sent Me^* :' there is its unity. Such was our 
 Lord's description of His Church. 
 
 It seems impossible then, to come to any other con- 
 clusions than the following : — First, that what our Lord 
 intended to leave in the world was a society ; beginning 
 from a small germ and developing itself far and wide ; 
 commissioned expressly to take the largest possible 
 sweep for embracing multitudes of every kind, whoever 
 could any way be persuaded to come in ''■•' ; and with 
 the distinct function assigned it, of gathering in the 
 weak, the young, the ignorant, — rather than of forming 
 any sort of privileged club, from which all such imper- 
 fect persons were to be excluded. 
 
 Secondly, that it was to be no chaos, but an organized 
 society. The incarnate order and reason of the uni- 
 verse was not likely (we may be sure) to bequeath to 
 us an anarchy. And we have seen how He Himself 
 carefully selected and personally commissioned the first 
 
 ^' Matt. xvi. 1 9. Baptist Confession of Faith, Spurgeon's 
 ^^ Ihid. xviii. 17. edition, p. 28.) The columns of the 
 ^* John xvii. 21. daily newspapers, indeed, not unfre- 
 ^ And yet, in the face of our quently corroborate this statement ; 
 Lord's own description of His own and, so far, bear out the Church's doc- 
 Church, Calvinists can venture to use trine on this subject, as it is laid down 
 such language as the following: — h^ 'RooV.&c, Ecclesiastical Poiily,m.i, 
 ' Are these villains members of 7, and by St. Augustine, who thus 
 Christ ? If so, Christ had sadly al- chastises the Pharisaism of the Do- 
 tered since the day when He was natists : ' Hi " exterminant oleum 
 holy, harmless, undefiled, separate suavitatis," qui non ipsam Dei gra- 
 from sinners. Has He really taken tiam, sed hominum mores, intuentur ; 
 baptized drunkards and harlots to be et quoniam, sicut grana inter paleas 
 members of His body ?' (Spurgeon, non videntur, ita pife viventes inter 
 Sermon on Baptismal Regeneration, iniquorum turbas non facile appa- 
 p. 318.) And yet, it seems, 'The rent, camaliter offensi. . . resiliunt.' 
 purest churches under heaven are (c. lit. Parmen. ii. x. 22.) 
 subject to mixture and error.' {The 
 
1 6 DISSENT IN GENERAL. [lect. 
 
 office-bearers in His new kingdom, for the special purpose 
 He had in view. 
 
 Thirdly, that this purpose was, simply and purely an 
 educational one. The society was, above all other things, 
 not to be exclusive and selfish, as if for enjoyment. It 
 was to be a self-forgetting, self-hazarding agent of His 
 own vast and expansive charity. And therefore, like 
 Himself, it was not to stop and ask if this man were a 
 publican or that man a Samaritan ; but to gather up its 
 armfuls of the strayed, the lost, the weak, the young, — 
 the victims of nature, of man, of their own passions or 
 folly, — and to 'set them once more among princes,' by 
 giving them a home, with love and training in it, and 
 all that makes men human, cheerful, healthful, and (in 
 the best and highest sense) natural 2". 
 
 Fourthly, that the ultimate object of all this machinery 
 was, not to create (in any sense whatever) a privileged 
 class ; not to maintain a hierarchy or an endowed 
 establishment for their own sakes ; (God forbid !) but 
 simply the pure and Christian purpose of saving souls, 
 — of sealing down upon them, when the wax is hot, the 
 impression of Christianity ; stamping it down in sacra- 
 ments, and rituals, and lessons, and sermons ; and setting 
 before them a visible example of the peace and joy and 
 health that dwell in His household, and are the natural 
 inheritance of His children. 
 
 HI. And now, having seen what the Church was to be 
 like according to the mind of Christ, let us look round 
 on Christendom, and especially on our own country, and 
 compare this picture with that. 
 
 rior nrinrfnw"° ""^'f'" ''''' '"P"" "'^^'"''^ ^^ '^^''^ t° ^'^t conformably 
 ™an to oSern P"' l-""'' "=^'"'-^- *» his constitution of 'nature,' un- 
 
 act conform,hlv t '^r ' '\ "'"• '° ''^'^ ^' '^""^^ '° '^at superior prin- 
 act ^°"f°™^bly to tlie constitution ciple the absolute authority which is 
 01 man. Neither can any human due to it.' (Bp. Butler, &rmo«5, p xv ) 
 
I.] PARTIAL FAILURE OF THE CHURCH. 17 
 
 For indeed it is high time to disabuse ourselves of 
 prejudices in our own favour. It is high time that we 
 all, — we Christians who profess to be the salt of the 
 world, and yet are in imminent danger of losing our 
 savour and being trodden under foot of men, — should 
 confess to God and to each other our shortcomings and 
 the miserable failure which, for many a century, His 
 great organ for the conversion of the world has become 
 in our hands'^''. 
 
 The conversion of the world ! Why, the question bids 
 fair to become positively reversed ; and mankind are 
 beginning scoffingly or seriously to ask, not how soon 
 Christianity promises to overspread the world, but how 
 soon the world will succeed in overpowering and 
 superseding Christianity. Amid the wide spaces of 
 unreclaimed heathendom, missions languish and not 
 unfrequently die. China meets a Christianity presented 
 to it in forms of gross superstition by a still grosser 
 outbreak of rancour and abhorrence. Africa throws 
 the very Church that would convert her into convul- 
 sions, by the hard plain common sense of a Zulu herds- 
 man. Even New Zealand breaks up the surface of 
 her otherwise well-established Christianity by an earth- 
 quake of long-repressed fanaticism ''■\. India, where 
 
 " ' By these means we are grown — c'est a ce peuple que les infideles 
 
 hateful in the eyes of the heathens ont affaire ! ' (De Maistre, Bu Pape, 
 
 themselves . . . and what we object p. 2,^9) 
 
 one against another, the same they -' Ci.'M.ta.ie's New Zealand {i?.6^'), 
 
 use to the utter scorn and disgrace pp. 94, 1 68 : ' Too often it is not only 
 
 of us all. This we have gained by our the Gospel of Christ and His Apo- 
 
 mutual home-dissensions.' (Greg, sties, the few essentials of Chris- 
 
 Naz. ap. Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, tianity, which are insisted upon by 
 
 Preface, sub fin. ) ' Quand de tels our missionaries, but those essen- 
 
 hommes n'auraient contre eux que tially dressed in English traditions, 
 
 leurs divisions, il n'en faudrait pas — the traditions, that is, of a cold, 
 
 davantage pour les frapper d'impuis- proud, unaccommodating race.' (Ms- 
 
 sance. Anglicans . . . Methodistes, sion Life, Feb. 1871, p. 143.) 
 Baptistes, Puritains, Quakers, &c. 
 
 C 
 
DISSENT IN GENERAL. [lKC'J'. 
 
 every sect has found an open field, and where vast reve- 
 nues of EngHsh gold are every year employed on mis- 
 sions, bids fair to transmute the Gospel into a sort of 
 Deism, and to re-act with a very unexpected energy 
 upon the Cliurch at home 2''. And meanwhile in the 
 Levant, the ancient ICastern Church sits immutable and 
 therefore ])(i\verless : isolation and ultra-conservatism 
 have frozen up her life. In lun-ojie, the miserable spec- 
 tacle has just been seen of a clerical despotism crowning, 
 by just chastisement, the chronic efforts of a part of 
 Christendom to assign to itself the attributes of the 
 whole. While in America, thoughtful men arc wonder- 
 ing what strange monstrous birth the existing chaos both 
 of speculation and of ecclesiastical polity may, at no very 
 distant day, bring forth. 
 
 And what shall we say of our own country, and of 
 Christianity as it is presented and organized among 
 ourselves ? Can any man, of any sect or of any school 
 of opinions, say he is satisfied with things as they are.'' 
 that religion in England seems to him to have taken 
 just such a form as the great Head and Founder of the 
 Church would most desire, and on which His eye must 
 
 '" 'The preaching of the mission- a single convert.' (Macleod, Peeps 
 
 aries in the streets of liombay greatly at the far Em,/, 187 1, P.4H.) I'laciuf; 
 
 impressed me. At the appointed in the t,|,positi,- scale all that can Ije 
 
 hour we went to the American said by Sir Bartle I'rere in his intcr- 
 
 chapel, from the doorsteps of which csting paper on ' Indian Missions' 
 
 the Rev. Mr. Bowen has preached {in V/eir'a Church ami the A/;e,]i. >,iy), 
 
 every wcel< for more than a quarter slill, is it not manifest tliat we have 
 
 of a century. lie is, I think, practi- not yet discovered the true melhod 
 
 cally identified with the Independents, of missions ? May the writer be pcr- 
 
 Ile is one of the best known and mitted lo refer to a publislicd IJni- 
 
 rno ,t honoured men in Bombay. In versify .Sermon, on '/'he F.vaiip;rliza- 
 
 order to convince the natives of the tirm of India (Parker, i«c,7), where 
 
 tinscl(i,liije-,s of his motives, he has the suljjeet is more fully di:,cu/.c:d ? 
 
 lived for years as poorly as theiu- For the new ' Brahmr, Sorriaj,' of 
 
 selves, refusing all official pay Macleod, p. 243, and Chunder Sen's 
 
 He himself frankly confev.ed that, Lectures, 
 as far as he knew, lie hnd never made 
 
I.] ALIENATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 19 
 
 rest, as the world revolves beneath Him, with (at last) 
 an unclouded smile of perfect satisfaction ? 
 
 We all know too well the facts of the case, to think 
 so for a moment. We all suspect too surely the diseases 
 that are threatening the very existence of any organized 
 Christianity at all in this country. And we hasten, there- 
 fore, with a feverish haste that betrays the secret mis- 
 givings of our hearts, to simulate health by agitation and 
 an often aimless activity, or else by a vulgar ostentation 
 of freedom and spontaneous impulses, whose genuineness 
 lies open to suspicion. I am not speaking of the Church 
 of England only, — but of English Christendom, and of 
 Christ's religion as it has come, in course of time, to 
 take organic shape and to present itself before the 
 eyes of God and man, in these islands. And the 
 simple facts are these : first of all, that nearly one-third 
 of the adult population of this country rejects the 
 ministrations of all the sects and of all the Christian 
 organizations alike ^''; and that this third comprises in 
 it, not merely the waifs and strays of every class in 
 society, the careless and unbelieving and backsliding 
 units which of course will always have to be made 
 allowance for in every part of Christendom, but — what 
 is far more startHng, and should arrest the attention of 
 every thoughtful man — almost the whole of one large 
 class of society, and that the class which has just at- 
 tained supreme political power. For, it seems, there is 
 no reasonable doubt, that the working class, as a whole, 
 is alienated from Christianity in its present forms. Not 
 that it is alienated from essential Christianity or from 
 Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth^^. Nor 
 
 *' 5,388,294 persons, according to be better for the working-classes if 
 
 Mann's CcMSKs /J«/)or/for 1851, p. 93. they attended places of worship in 
 
 '' ' That it would in some respects the same degree that others do, may 
 
 c a 
 
20 
 
 DISSENT IN GENERAL. [lECT. 
 
 is it alienated nearly so far from the Church of England 
 and its daughter society the Wesleyan body, as from 
 the smaller and more exclusive Dissenting systems. But 
 still, dislike and neglect of all our systems are too mani- 
 festly displayed to be for a moment mistaken by any 
 unbiassed observer. 
 
 The next startling fact which meets us, in contem- 
 plating the religious phenomena of our times, is the 
 strange impotence which has befallen us in the depart- 
 ment of theology. A score of new sciences have arisen 
 within the last fifty years, and as yet no Christian 
 society in this land has displayed the least ability 
 to deal with them. Large views seem to have been 
 almost entirely wanting. And while questions have 
 been raised of the very deepest significance and interest 
 to every Christian man, — questions as to the relation 
 of Scripture to science, the relations of man to the 
 lower animals, the criteria by which history may be dis- 
 engaged from legend, and a hundred more, whose solu- 
 tion affects at once the dearest hopes and profoundest 
 fears of Christendom, — no reply has yet been heard, 
 which soared above the thick mephitic atmosphere of 
 party-controversy, or which did not give the impression 
 of addressing itself, not to the question, but (in tones 
 now of defiant rebellion, now of complacent concurrence) 
 to some ecclesiastical coterie. The Old Testament, for 
 instance, has either been defended in the most indiscri- 
 
 be freely conceded. But to say of more charitably inclined in other 
 
 them, because they do not, they have classes attach to it ; and the reasons 
 
 no real religion or true Christianity, for it are simple and not far to seek, 
 
 is on the part of those indulging in To many of the poor and unedu- 
 
 such utterances, saying (in peri- cated, as well as to many of the 
 
 phrastic language) that they know rich and educated, the actualities 
 
 nothmg whatever of the working- of public worship are repellent 
 
 c asses . . Their non-attendance at rather than attractive.' (Canlempo- 
 
 places of worship has not the grave rary Review, December, 1871 • article 
 
 meamng which even many of the by a journeyman engineer, p. 85 ) 
 
I.] IMPOTENCE OF MODERN THEOLOGY. 21 
 
 minate way to the very letter, or else has been torn 
 up, leaf by leaf, before our astonished eyes. Timidity 
 and rashness, in short, on almost all important theological 
 questions, are in full possession of our camp. 
 
 Arrested then by these two startling facts, which mark 
 with so perilous a note of failure the Christianity of our 
 time and country, the student of modern Church history 
 feels compelled to ask, — is there not yet some third fact 
 to be observed, which may offer a clue to explain these 
 strange and (apparently) causeless symptoms of decrepi- 
 tude .'' Else why should an industrial class, which is 
 disposed to believe in every essential doctrine of Christi- 
 anity, be indisposed to join any Christian communion ? 
 And why should Christian communities, whose very first 
 principle is sincerity and truth, thus palter with the most 
 interesting questions and give place so readily to the 
 evil spirit of insincerity and prevarication ? 
 
 The answer is, that there does exist yet a third charac^ 
 teriatic of our modern Christendom, which will in a great 
 measure account for the other two. And therefore if any 
 ecclesiastical question can claim precedence as the lead- 
 ing question of the day, it is this ; and no pains or time 
 can possibly be thrown away which may lead towards a 
 solution of its difficulties. This third and master charac- 
 teristic of our modern Christendom is its fratricidal 
 dissensions. Unity, which the Lord and Founder of the 
 household made the distinguishing mark of His kingdom 
 and the first condition of its missionary success, is posi- 
 tively thrown aside, as a thing of no importance what- 
 ever. Nay, some Christians have become so confirmed and 
 rooted in habits of disagreement, that they have actually 
 learned at last to 'glory in their shame;' and exercise 
 great ingenuity in inventing baseless and unchristian 
 theories to fit and justify existing facts. 
 
22 BJSSENT IN GENERAL. [lECT. 
 
 But no theory can fit or justify these facts, except the 
 theory that the Lord knew not His own meaning ; and 
 that, — after planting in the world an institution wherein 
 His holy spirit of love and peace and mutual good-will 
 should percolate freely, like vital air, athwart every social 
 barrier and through every political boundary, — He is 
 now quite well pleased to behold the miserable network 
 of jealousy, envy, dissension, and mutual obstruction 
 which have parted His Church asunder. Broadcast over 
 this land are scattered no less than 30,000 Dissenting 
 places of worship 32. And on the day set apart for peace 
 and sweet communion and for ' walking in the House of 
 God as friends,' Heaven looks down upon the astonishing 
 spectacle of this English Christendom of ours split into 
 two great separate streams. Five millions of people are 
 issuing from their homes to-day, as members of a great 
 united Church, bound with unnumbered subtle ties of 
 common feelings, common customs, a common history, 
 and a common interchangeable use of buildings, sacra- 
 ments, and other ministries and helps to the higher life. 
 While, on the other hand, a second five millions of people 
 are issuing forth, to break up at once into no less than 
 seventy-five different runlets",— each taking its own 
 course apart, each worshipping in private buildings of Its 
 own, each going aside with some cherished dogma, or 
 some time-honoured grievance of its own, and seeking a 
 growth in all meek and heavenly graces by submitting 
 to customs strictly of its own devising, and listening 
 to teachers rigorously of its own selection. 
 
 'Brethren'— surely some holy man of God would say, 
 if with unaccustomed eyes, and therefore with unhardened 
 heart, he could witness this scene—' I w ot that through 
 
I.] MODERN ECCLESIASTICAL DISPUTES. 23 
 
 ignorance ye did it ; as did also your fathers. But 
 nevertheless, be ye sure of this, that you have been 
 crucifying your Lord afresh by your unholy dissensions, 
 and putting Him and His cause, before a keen and 
 sarcastic crowd of secularists, sceptics, and heathens, to 
 an open shame.' Indeed, were not our feelings blunted 
 and our consciences seared by the perpetual recurrence 
 of this most miserable scene, it is hard to imagine how 
 any one who loves his Saviour and 'owes to Him his own 
 soul also,' — be he Churchman or Dissenter — could go to 
 sleep at night without resolving that, come what may, his 
 own conscience at least shall be free henceforth ; and that 
 no day shall pass in future without some effort made, some 
 prayer put up, some word or act of charity and peace 
 attempted, which may help to abate so dreadful a scan- 
 dal, to remedy so shocking a disease as this, which after 
 1800 years is destroying the efficiency and threatening 
 the life of the Church of Christ. Have we learnt nothing, 
 and forgotten nothing, during all this long period of 
 accumulating ecclesiastical experience, that we can think 
 of no better way of managing our intestine quarrels than 
 our fathers did, in the fourth or the fourteenth century > 
 Can we still conceive of nothing better than compulsion 
 on the one hand, and obstncctiott on the other .? or are we 
 about to throw up the problem in despair, and agree, 
 not merely to differ — that men must always do — but to 
 separate .'' Especially when we remember what severe 
 things are said in Holy Scripture about 'those that 
 separate themselves^*'; how, in a deeply touching pas- 
 sage, the temper which stands up defiantly upon its 
 rights is said to be diametrically opposite to ' the mind 
 which was in Christ Jesus''*^;' and how hixofrracria, the 
 
 ^* Jude 19. " Phil, passim, esp. ii. 5. 
 
24 
 
 DISSENT IN GENERAL. [lECT. 
 
 spirit of non-conformity, the act of standing apart from 
 one's brethren, is unsparingly and repeatedly chastised 
 by St. Paul '^'^ as a thing to be rebuked, a carnal sin, a 
 childish petulance, one among the ' manifest works of the 
 flesh.' 
 
 IV. Yet no one can read the long previous history of 
 the Church, without finding there abundant warnings both 
 of what we ought to remember, and what we ought 
 to forget, in our dealings with these post-Reformation 
 forms of ' Dissent.' And, though it would be tedious to 
 go through all in detail, we may well occupy a short time 
 in examining two or three of the most instructive cases. 
 
 (i) Take, e.g., the very earliest dissension which broke 
 out in the Church. It was that of which we have so 
 many notices on the page of Holy Writ itself, the con- 
 troversy raised by the Judaizers. And by it, remember, 
 the very dearest interests of all Christendom were im- 
 perilled, the very catholicity of the Church came into 
 question, and the approaching failure and explosion of 
 the whole system must have been confidently anticipated 
 by the surrounding Jews and heathens. Observe too, 
 that every well-known symptom of an approaching 
 catastrophe was here. Party leaders (as so often) were 
 put forward against their will : ' I am of Paul, and I of 
 Cephas.' The hardest possible names were used ; the 
 opponent was no Apostle, his ' bodily presence was weak 
 and his speech contemptible.' The very highest sanctions 
 were pleaded, to prove the duty and reasonableness 
 of separation ; appeals to the great mother Church at 
 Jerusalem, appeals to the religious customs of antiquity, 
 appeals (above all) to the authority of Holy Scripture 
 itself and to the express literal commands of God which 
 were there apparently laid down. ' The uncircumcised 
 
 ''■'• Ram. xvi. 17 ; I Cor. iii. 3 ; Gal. v. 20. 
 
I.] METHODS OF THE ANCIENT CHURCH. 25 
 
 man shall be cut off from his people : he hath broken 
 ]My covenant.' ' Ye shall not add unto the word which I 
 command you ; neither shall ye diminish aught from it.' 
 ' If thou wilt not observe to do all His commandments 
 and statutes which I command thee this day, all these 
 curses shall come upon thee ■^".' And yet, in the face of 
 all this fearful storm, we find that the Church did not, 
 after all, break up ; that dissension was, in the main, 
 prevented from ripening into ' Dissent ;' and that, ere fifty 
 years had passed away, the Church was comparatively at 
 peace again, and the two great names that once had 
 adorned the rival banners of all but conflicting ' sects ' 
 were inscribed together on all the banners of the recon- 
 ciled and re-united Church, — ' St. Peter and St. PauF'.' 
 
 And how were these, so desirable, yet to us, alas ! so 
 hopeless, results attained .'' They were attained (so far 
 as we can see at this distance of time) by three things 
 alone : First, by the •^^rsisX.e.wt firmness of the chief person 
 concerned in maintaining the grand principle which was 
 at stake : secondly, by his equally persistent effort at con- 
 ciliation and at bringing about a mutual understanding: 
 and thirdly, by a recourse to that most obvious means for 
 securing to all sides a hearing, and for committing all 
 parties to the maintenance of a common settlement, — 
 viz. a conference or synod '■''K 
 
 ^ Gen. xvii. 14; Deut.iv.2, xxviii. were Apostles, I a condemned man,' 
 
 15. &c. Irenzus iii. 3. I (a.d. 170): 'The 
 
 ^ Contrast i Cor. i. 12 (written Church founded by the two most 
 
 A.D. 57), 'I am of Paul, and 1 of glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul.' 
 Cephas,' with Clem. Rom. Eph/. i. ^^ The account of this synod, or, 
 
 § 5 (prob. A.D. 96) : ' Let us set before as it is sometimes called, the first 
 
 our eyes the good Apostles. Peter, ' General Coundl ' at Jerusalem, may 
 
 through wicked bigotry, underwent be read in the fifteenth chapter of the 
 
 not one, but many labours. . . . Paul Ads of the Apostles. The result was 
 
 too, through bigotry,' seven times a compromise. The Gentile converts, 
 
 imprisoned,' &c. Ign. ad Rom. § 4 at least within the borders of Syria, 
 
 (a.d. T07): 'Not, like Peter and Paul, were required to concede so far to 
 
 do I impose commands on you. They the prejudices of the Jews, as to 
 
26 DISSENT IN GENERAL. [lecT. 
 
 (2) We pass on, then, to the next dissension which 
 vexed and endangered the Church. It was the Quarto- 
 deciman controversy, an echo and continuation of the 
 former, taking shape in a dispute concerning the time 
 of keeping Easter. Should it be kept (as St. John and 
 the earher Hebrew Christians had kept it) when the 
 Jews observed their Passover } Or should Christendom 
 stand free from Judaism altogether, cast off the last 
 marks and dregs of that disgraceful origin, and keep 
 Easter always on a Sunday (the day of the Lord's 
 Resurrection) whatever the unbelieving Jews might do .-' 
 Here, again, was a very serious controversy ; for this 
 time Apostolic or (as we might say) New Testament 
 authority might be quoted on both sides, just as the 
 Old Testament scriptures had been freely used before. 
 And yet here again, for the second time, the Church 
 escaped a schism. Dissension there was in abundance, 
 but when the storm was over, it left no fixed 'Dissent' 
 behind. How marvellous and incredible a blessing ! 
 Yet, on this occasion, we have the first foreboding 
 indications of what bitter misery was in store for the 
 Church of God. S. Polycarp indeed — a follower of the 
 Asiatic rite — had been, in the middle of the second 
 century, most fairly and courteously treated at Rome ; 
 and the Roman Bishop, already the greatest prelate in 
 Christendom, had waived the customs of his see and 
 permitted the venerable Asiatic to consecrate the Eu- 
 charist, in proof of harmony between them. But ere 
 twenty years had elapsed, one of those overbearing men 
 of iron uniformity and inexorable discipline had ap- 
 
 observe the traditional ' seven pre- cease from imposing ciraimcision 
 
 cepts of Noah ' which were imposed and the keeping of the law on their 
 
 on ' proselytes of the gate : ' the Gentile brethren. 
 Jewish converts were required to 
 
I.] THE ' JUDAIZING' CONTROVERSY. 27 
 
 peared, whose government brings ruin to both states 
 and churches. And (as we all know) Pope Victor could 
 only be restrained from excommunicating Asia Minor 
 by the strong remonstrances of an Ephesian bishop 
 and the earnest labours of Irenaeus, the 'peace-maker,' 
 rightly so called. Once more, then, patience and mutual 
 explanations had won the day, and ere long the whole 
 dissension was ready to expire, — the general conference 
 at Nicaea giving an honourable interment to the dead 
 controversy. 
 
 And now men might well look round, and ask them- 
 selves what, then, had come of all this Judaizing con- 
 troversy ? Had no waste or loss occurred, and, if it 
 had, was the waste pure waste ? The answer was, that 
 loss had occurred ; that some over-obstinate and over- 
 confident men had gone astray on either side ; and, 
 preferring their own ideas of truth and duty to the 
 honourable compromises imposed upon them by the 
 Church, had crossed the barriers of good sense and 
 Christian charity ; .and so, as Ebionites on the one hand, 
 or Gnostics on the other, had gradually sunk into extra- 
 vagant and dying ' heresies.' But yet, in the good provi- 
 dence of God, even all this had not been pure waste and 
 utter loss to the Church. For it was the very hostility 
 of these foes which had caused her to develope and 
 consolidate her own organization ; and from amid the 
 chaos of Gnostic sects there had sprung up — under the 
 inspired guidance of St. John and his immediate dis- 
 ciples ^" — the Episcopal system of the Church, which was 
 destined hereafter to be the unbroken bond of union and 
 guarantee of freedom amid the storms of a thousand 
 years. 
 
 *" ' Ordo Episcoporam, ad originem recensus, in Johannem stabit auc- 
 torem.' (Tertullian, c. Marc, iv. 5.) 
 
DISSENT IN GENERAL. [lECT. 
 
 (3) Yet, though the Episcopate was estabHshed, it re- 
 quired yet another violent dissension in the Church, in 
 order to define its powers and functions more completely, 
 and to sketch out the mutual relations of its members 
 among each other. And this was done by the Novatian 
 controversy,— a strange dissension in two successive acts, 
 which broke out about the middle of the third century. 
 It raged first at Carthage in favour of a relaxed discipline, 
 and then at Rome (under the auspices of the same 
 malcontent, Novatus) in favour of a severe discipline. 
 The story is too well known to need repeating here. 
 But its true bearings are not always pointed out. In 
 the first place, it was evidently an expression of the 
 freer spirit, which (let us hope) may always have its 
 place and its honour in the Christian Church, against 
 the too rapidly crystallizing framework of the hierarchy. 
 It is true, that if the mere occasions of the two conflicts, 
 as they occurred at Carthage and Rome, be compared 
 together, they appear to have been diametrically op- 
 posite to each other. But the real cause at the bottom 
 of each was the same. At Carthage, a Roman man of 
 business, of high and noble character, had been converted 
 in middle life and was now made bishop by the popular 
 enthusiasm. He was just the man therefore to have 
 strong ideas of government and order, and to carry the 
 powers of his Episcopate to a considerable height ; and 
 so, when one of the Carthaginian presbyters proceeded 
 to ordain his own deacon, Cyprian at once extinguished 
 so dangerous a relic of the old Presbyterian rights, by 
 putting his veto on his whole proceeding ". Soon after, 
 
 " This appears to be the only strengthening of the Churcli's or- 
 
 intelligible account of the matter, ganization, — which is as much as to 
 
 For it is agreed on all hands, that say, it was somewhat weak and im- 
 
 to Cyprian is due a considerable perfect before ; and the contem- 
 
I.] THE NOVATIAN CONTROVERSY. 29 
 
 when the deacons at Carthage were preparing (as was 
 then usual) to administer the Church funds on their 
 own responsibihty, Cyprian again interfered and reduced 
 the Diaconate too under the central authority of the 
 Bishop, by sending four commissioners of his own 
 to superintend the management of the funds. Of course, 
 a dangerous dissension at once brolce out. Cyprian 
 seems to have behaved very nobly and fairly, and to 
 have patiently tried explanation and argument to the 
 utmost. So that eventually, when he brought the whole 
 matter before a full synod at Carthage (a.d. 251), peace 
 was firmly restored, only a few fanatics breaking off 
 into chronic schism, which gradually languished and 
 died. 
 
 We have, then, here, once more, all the elements of 
 a fairly well-managed dissension. But observe two 
 things : First, that we are now fully within the area of 
 the Latin Church, with its terrible instincts of hard 
 centralization and over-government ; while the subtlety, 
 beauty, and freedom of the Hellenic mind are inevitably 
 beginning to be missed. And, secondly, that these heats 
 (as usual) produce movements toward a yet farther ex- 
 pansion both of force and of machinery. For we now 
 find a very serious feature coming into view, when the 
 
 porary disputes about Origen's lay leave. It is in this way too that Nean- 
 
 preaching point in the same direction, der understands the passage: 'With- 
 
 And though Cyprian's words {Epist. out authority from the bishop, he 
 
 48) may possibly be interpreted to proceeded to ordain as deacon of his 
 
 mean no more, than that Novatus own Church one of his followers . . . 
 
 procured his deacon's ordination, as it may have been the opinion of 
 
 he certainly did the consecration of Novatus, on the principles of his 
 
 Novatian as Bishop at Rome, still Presbyterian system, that as a pres- 
 
 no one surely could speak in the byter and presiding officer of the 
 
 same breath of two such different Church, he was warranted in what 
 
 crimes as breaking up the unity of he had done.' {Church History, i. 
 
 the Roman Episcopate, and getting 313.) 
 a deacon ordained without Cyprian's 
 
3° 
 
 DISSENT IN GENERAL [lECT. 
 
 defeated party began to look abroad for support against 
 the overwhelming power at home, and first appealed for 
 sympathy to foreign churches. We scent from afar the 
 coming vast spiritual empire of the Roman Church. And 
 Cyprian perhaps feels the danger too. For while he 
 implores the Bishop at Rome not to be misled by the 
 malcontents, but loyally to uphold the Episcopal au- 
 thority across the water, he at the same time firmly 
 protests that all such appeals to foreign Bishops are 
 wrong, and that causes like this should be finally deter- 
 mined in the country where they arose *^. 
 
 It is not necessary to prolong this investigation any 
 farther. Suffice it to say, that the second act of this 
 great Novatian controversy at Rome, brought out still 
 more clearly the growing habit of appealing for counte- 
 nance and aid to foreign churches, and especially to the 
 great patriarchal sees of Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage, 
 and Rome ; and thus largely contributed towards ex- 
 tending a well-laced organization over the whole area 
 of the Catholic Church. While the next great dissen- 
 sion, (that of the Donatists,) for the first time introduced 
 a desperate appeal to the secular power : an appeal 
 which the confused Arian controversies, and other events, 
 combined soon after to transfer gradually to the Bishop 
 of Rome. So that on the revival of the Western Empire, 
 about A.D. 800, in a Christian-barbaric form, two powers 
 stood side by side — the Pope and the Emperor — with 
 co-extensive domains ; and the Feudal system and the 
 Papal supremacy had begun. 
 
 And now the Church for many a long century was 
 supreme in Europe. Her external organization was 
 complete, and ere long had attained the highest degree of 
 
 « Cyp. ^pkt. 54. 
 
I.] THE MEDIEVAL PERSECUTIONS. 31 
 
 efficiency. And in most countries, the secular arm was 
 ready to do her bidding, and the sword of the state was 
 placed at her disposal. How would she use this un- 
 exampled opportunity for good and for converting the 
 kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of our Lord 
 and of His Christ .? And in particular, what means 
 would she now employ for healing the dissensions that 
 might spring up within her magnificent empire ? Would 
 she make her vast strength an argument for patient 
 dealing with error and schism : or (like some rude tyrant 
 of this world) would she succumb to the fatal tempta- 
 tion of putting down all gainsayers by the brutal method 
 of main force ? 
 
 We all know too well the sad and disgraceful story. 
 Even the noble-hearted St. Augustine had not been 
 able to resist the temptation of appealing to compulsion, 
 amid the exasperating circumstances of the Donatist 
 controversy ^^. And now his unhappy words, ' Mali 
 sunt prohibendi a malo, et cogendi ad bonum **,' bore 
 murderous and bitter fruits, such as that good man 
 would himself have shuddered to behold. With all too 
 fatal fidelity, the words were copied down by Gratian 
 in his ' Decretum *^ ; ' and so took their place among 
 
 ** ' AUein die Waffen selbst, mit 23 : — His own conclusion is as fol- 
 
 welchen man sie bestiirmte, liessen, lows : ' Rationabiliter hjereticos per- 
 
 in Lehrbegriffe der herrschenden oder sequimur ; sicut et Christus corpoi a- 
 
 Catholischen Parthey, nachtheilige liter persecutus est eos, quos de tem- 
 
 Wirkungen auf alle folgende Zeitalter plo expulit.' (/6(d. 4. 37.) ' Patet, 
 
 zuriick.' (Schrock, xi. 355.) quod malos non solum flagellari, sed 
 
 " ' Neminem existimas cogendum etiam interfici licet.' {Ibid. 5. 48.) 
 
 esse ad bonum ! Dicis Deum dedisse The mischievous effects of these (in 
 
 liberum arbitrium, ide6 non debere Richter's edition) about 25 pages of 
 
 cogi hominem, nee ad bonum ! . . the Canon Law, are perhaps unexam- 
 
 Non tamen ideo qui dihguntur, malse pled in all literature. From the date 
 
 suEe voluntati impunfe et crudeliter of its composition, a.d. i 1 5 i , down 
 
 permittendi sunt : sed, ubi potestas to the present time, they have filled 
 
 datur, et a malo prohibendi, et ad the Church of the Prince of Peace 
 
 bonum cogendi.' (Aug. Efisl. 204.) with murderous feuds and bitter 
 
 *^ Gratian, Decrelum, part ii. cause hatred. Nay, they have even found an 
 
32 DISSENT /N GENERA!.. [r.KCT. 
 
 the established canons of the Western Church. By 
 Aquinas "' and the schoolmen they were reduced to 
 system and maintained by argument. In tlie |)ri!_;es 
 even of our own Engh'sh Lyndwood '? they reappeared ; 
 and Ht the fires of Smitlifield f<ir the I.ollards, and of 
 Oxford for the ]\.eformcrs. And when their acciu'sed 
 work was done, and the last flame died down in ICngland, 
 upon the blackened corpse of a Socinian in the market- 
 place of Lichfield in i6i2 — then, within less than forty 
 years, a ruined Church, an overthrown slate, and the 
 frantic triumph (jf sectarianism and anarchy proclaimed 
 to all the world the utter failure of compulsion in reli- 
 gion. Men have thus been brought by slow degrees to 
 sec at last, that force and persecution were the weapons 
 of Antichrist and not of Christ ; and that charity, 
 courtesy, and honest explanation were the only fitting 
 weapons of a warfare which is ' not carnal, but spiritual,' 
 and whose only lasting victories are gained by 'in meek- 
 ness instructing those that oppose themselves '".' 
 
 May this maxim, then, ever henceforth be inscribed 
 on the Church's banners ! May the thrice accursed 
 .system of compulsion be for ever abandoned and for- 
 gotten ! May the blessed ancient way of peace and 
 mutual explanation be remembered, and be the principle 
 henceforth of every controversy in which, as church- 
 
 clIio — where one wouM l'%n.s' 'xjn.cl wards her own erring children. In 
 
 it — in a refined and aniialjle I'jjglish- Ihe first ensc, lie forbirls all 'fjnipul- 
 
 man of the nineteenth eenfury. .See sioii : in the sfeon'l, he ripproves 
 
 I Jr. Newman's .^ri'aw.v, ]'. 25;', (187,5 ) ; even of capital punishment. iSnnunfi, 
 
 ^ru\ l)i\cfnir:.(^\ to mixed fyjTi^'ref^iiti«)ji'., ii. 16K.) Iwlow, slill more plainly, 
 
 ]). 268 (184(1), he says : ' liii-ielici, slalirn ex (|iio cle 
 
 '"'' Aquinas — following Augustine lia-resi convincuntur, possunt non 
 
 (z. Lit. Petil. \\. y,^,): ' Ad (idem nul- modn oxcommunieari, sed et just" 
 
 Ills est eofjendus invitiis ; sir] per occidi.' (Iliid. xi. ■;,.) 
 
 severitatem solet perfidin [apostacy] *' l.yndwood, Provittcicde, lib. v. 
 
 eastigari ' — draws a distinction lie- tit. 5. 
 
 Iwcen the fdiureli's conduct (a) to '" 2 Tim. ii. 75. 
 wards Jews and heathens : (fS) to- 
 
I.] CONCILIATION THE TRUE METHOD. 
 
 33 
 
 men, we engage. For the battle is not to the strong or 
 to the violent. ' The meek shall possess the earth.' 
 And in this way it may even come to pass that — at some 
 less distant period than we imagine to be likely — the 
 well-known anticipations of De Maistre*^ may be ful- 
 filled ; and that the Church of England may, on the 
 one side, reconcile herself to the best men and the 
 clearest thinkers among the Protestant sects ; and on 
 the other, as the leader of the Northern and Teutonic 
 Churches, stretch forth the hand of reconciliation to the 
 East and to the West : and so may receive that special 
 benediction which the Lord has reserved for the ' Peace- 
 makers.' 
 
 *' ' Si jamais les Chretiens se rap- 1' Eglise de 1' Angleterre.' {Comi- 
 prochent, comme tout les y invite, il derations sur la France, chap, ii.) 
 semble que la motion doit partir de 
 
 D 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 List of the tnore important ' dissensions' within the Church ; from 
 A.D. 30 to the present time. 
 
 FIRST DISSENSION (First Century) : the ' Judaizing ' controversy. 
 
 a. The Gnostics. | /3. The Ebionites'. 
 
 This controversy turned on the question, whether the Church was so far 
 bound by the letter of her old Scriptures as to remain virtually a Jewish 
 sect ; or was free to incorporate the best ideas of the day, — Greek, Roman, 
 Indian, &c., — which were floating especially in the studious air of Alexandria. 
 The Council of Jerusalem, a.d. 50, virtually settled the question in favour 
 of the latter alternative : but demanded conciliatory conduct towards the 
 Jews. Extreme parties seceded on opposite sides into Dissent. 
 
 SECOND DISSENSION (Third Century): the -Puritan' controversy. 
 
 a. The Donatists. | /3. The Montanists. 
 
 The point here was, whether purity and enthusiasm were not better marks 
 of ' the Church of Christ ' than the mere outward features of Ecclesiastical 
 Polity. The Council of Aries, a.d. 314, virtually decided in favour of the 
 latter theory ; but without denying that Church-discipline and warmth of 
 personal feeling were both indispensable to Christ's kingdom. 
 
 THIRD DISSENSION (Fourth Century) : the ' Trinitarian ' controversy. 
 
 a. The Arians. | ;3. The Sabellians. 
 
 The problem was, how best to retain Monotheism while accepting our 
 Lord's miracles in the Synoptical Gospels, and the Logos-doctrine of St. 
 John. The Council of Nicsea, a.d. 325, faithfully held fast to both sides of 
 
 ' The extreme tendenc'cs marked (a) in the following list denote those of 
 a more intellectual or ' rationalistic ' character : those marked (jQ) are of an 
 imaginative or ' mystical ' type. It is hoped that this rough sketch, though not 
 strictly accurate in detail (especially in No. VII.), may be at least suggestive of 
 the truth in each case. 
 
the i:-.eii>.Me n-iyi:ery: ar.d raised the who'.e cuestion .-.love ;he low levels of 
 n'.e.-e loi;-.o.-.! oasc-.i<s;ou, by poir.tir.j: ou; ti.-.; • eter.-.irv- ' ar.d ' infii-.ity " were 
 :ac;ors in the problem : inasn-v-ch as He Wiii ■ bej:of.er. _fro-. ei cr'.^r^:^ of 
 the F.r.her.' 
 
 FOURTH D:SjEXS10X ^F:f:h Ceztnrv) : the ■Free-wUl" co-trorersy. 
 
 a. The Febiriaiis. , ;5. The F:^;.i:i5:i. 
 
 The diiT.O'aln- arose a* to where the line should be drawn .-t which 
 hni'n.^.n .i^ency. in :he soul's re\lejiip;ion. ended .ind divine ."c^n.cv began. 
 The Chnroi virru.-Hy decided that, in o cnes;ion l>"i;'.i: -'O deep .iicong 
 spiri;nal n-.ys;erles. no line coald he djawn a: all hy hura.m re.-.son. 
 
 FIFTH DISSEXSIOX ^Fifth Cesran l : the -Inoaina'don' oonrroversy. 
 
 a. The Xes:oria:-s. /S. The Eunchians. 
 
 This opened hhe ones:ion. how oan we fomi ."'.y dear oonoeption of a 
 God-nnin? The Charoh .-.jr.- in replied by holdir.j; fas: to both sides of the 
 inys:crions ir-j:h ; .and ee.-ahn:;n^ them iii-.der the oonce-e'.ion of a single 
 
 SIXTH nSSEXSlOX ,F;;h;h Cen:^r>-^ : the • Iconoclastic- controversy. 
 
 ii. The Iconoch-.s:s. :?. In-.a-^e-worshhppers. 
 
 Christer.dona h.-.s now en'.ere.i :h.e dark nigh: of R-.rlv.ric invasion, 
 Saracenic hal,h:ess ana s:erili;y in:"ec: the E.'.stean Ch-_-^ch. : Cro'diic mde- 
 ness and ignonmce .i;l:.ce the W"es:em Chnr^. The nn::y of East and 
 
 . 1 - .. : 
 
 
 le. In the Wes:. i:nages are 
 
 res:cre.i: in the £.-.;:. picrares onlv. 
 
 SEVENTH DISSEXSIOX ,X:n:h Cen:nry'i ; the ■ Scc.ran:er:al ' 
 ccn:rcversv. 
 
 h-.aka-.; b.-.l.-ince from is Ens:, redl ialo great satv.-stiicns- 
 
 D J 
 
36 APPENDIX A. 
 
 EIGHTH DISSENSION (Eleventh Century) : the ' Scholastic ' 
 controversy. 
 
 a. Nominalists. | /3. Realists. 
 
 The question was one of subtle logic and word-fence ; training mankind 
 to grapple with the new facts, both in nature and history, which would 
 ere long be presented to it. The NominaUsts — follo\ving Aristotle — defined 
 generic expressions (such as ' animal,' ' plant,' &c.) as merely mental 
 conceptions in man ; the Realists — following Plato— thought of them as 
 true, though ideal, realities in God. The Latin Church leaned strongly 
 towards Realism. In theology, the controversies concerning the Trinity 
 and the Eucharist were those mainly affected by this, essentially logical, 
 dissension. 
 
 NINTH DISSENSION (Fifteenth Century) : the ' Church-reform ' 
 controversy. 
 
 a. The Puritans. | /3. The Romanists. 
 
 On this question the Western Church split yet farther into pieces. The 
 German races favoured the more prosaic and ethical view of the Church ; 
 the Latin race preferred a striking and organized unity. 
 
 TENTH DISSENSION (Nineteenth Century): the ' Church-and-State' 
 controversy. 
 
 a. The Independents. | |8. The Ultramontanes. 
 
 This is the dissension with which the Church has to deal at the present 
 day. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. 
 
 A.D. 1568. 
 
 Leading Idea : — ' Purity ' of the Church, — especially in its external relations. 
 
 Method adopted : — Dissolution of the Ecclesiastical Polity into a multitude 
 of small repubUcs. 
 
 At(i fziKpas Kol Tvxovtras atrtas, rd fieya Kot tvSo^ov Sw/xa tov Xptarov 
 rijivovTOS KOI — offov to eir' avTots — dyatpovvTas. (Irenaeus, iv. 53. 7-) 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 loo. Gnostics, oppose the organized Churcli. 
 
 1 20. Marcion, especially, opposes St. John's arrangements in Asia Minor. 
 
 800. The Paulicians, in the East. 
 1 200. The Albigenses, &c. in the West. 
 1400. The Lollards, Hussites, &c. 
 
 1567. Independent (Dutch Anabaptist) meeting in London dispersed. 
 
 1568. First regular Independent congregation in London. 
 1571. Robert Browne appears in public. 
 
 1584. Queen EUzabeth exasperated; five Independents suffer. 
 
 1593. Capital pvmishments cease : Independents banished. 
 
 1596. First Independent 'Confession,' at Amsterdam. 
 
 1603. Independent petition for Toleration, to James I. 
 
 1616. Independents return to England from Holland. 
 
 1617. Selden's Book on Tithes. 
 
 1620. Pilgrim Fathers sail for America. 
 
 1641. Independent ' Meeting,' held openly in London. 
 
 1643. Westminster Assembly (five Independents present). 
 
 1645. Church of England overthrown and proscribed. 
 
 1653. Independent 'coup d'armfe' — Cromwell Protector. 
 
 1654. 'Triers' (Presb3'terians, Independents, Baptists) appointed, to 
 
 superintend Church patronage. 
 1658. An Independent 'Establishment' attempted. 
 1662. Ejectment of Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, from Church 
 
 benefices. 
 
 — Venner's insurrection : Charles II. and James II. try to stamp out 
 
 Dissent. 
 1672. Proposed comprehension of the Church with Presbyterians and 
 
 Independents (against James II. and Romanism). 
 1689. Toleration Act (Romanists and Unitarians excluded). 
 
 — Proposed comprehension once more: (a) of Church, Presbyterians, 
 
 Independents ; (/8) of Presbyterians and Independents : — both 
 fail. 
 
 1723. George I.'s 'regium donum' to English Dissenters. 
 
 1732. 'The Dissenting Deputies' (Presbyterians, Independents, Bap- 
 tists) established. 
 
 1828. Test Act repealed. 
 
 1868. Church Rates abolished. 
 
 1870. Irish Church disestablished. 
 
 1 871. Attack on the English Church in Parliament defeated. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE INDEPEMDENTS. 
 
 ' Submitting yourselves one to another, in the fear of God.' 
 Ephes. V. 21. 
 
 THE first body of Dissenters which actually broke 
 awa}' from the Church of England was that of the 
 Independents, or — as they are nowadays perhaps more 
 intelligibly called — the Congregationalists. Their un- 
 happy separation began in Queen Elizabeth's reign, 
 about A. D. 1568'; the whole question in dispute be- 
 tween them and the Church being then, as it is still, 
 essentially one of ' discipline,' or Church Polity. Disci- 
 pline forms one of the three main departments, under 
 which all Ecclesiastical affairs naturall}' range them- 
 selves. For if it be true that the Church is a great or- 
 ganized educational institution, first, it must needs have 
 a certain external government or discipline : secondly, it 
 must authorize a certain symbolism or ritual, to touch 
 and enkindle men's imaginations : thirdly, it must deter- 
 mine, at least in outline, a certain type of doctrine 
 which it shall address to their intellect. 
 
 ' ' It is now clearly established that an Independent Church, of which 
 Rich. Fitz was pastor, existed in 1568.' (Skeats, i^re« Chircbes, p. 22.) 
 
40 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lECT. 
 
 With the two latter departments, however, we shall 
 have, in the present Lecture, nothing to do. The In- 
 dependent system does not concern itself with either 
 Ritual or Doctrine. For instance, the first rule of the 
 Congregational Union of England and Wales ^ recog- 
 nizes, — ' as the distinctive principle of Congregational 
 Churches, — the Scriptural right of every separate Church 
 to maintain perfect independence in the government 
 and administration of its own affairs 'I' ' The distinc- 
 tive principle of Congregationalism,' says another ex- 
 ponent of its views, 'is that a church... is complete 
 in itself ; and that all questions of faith, discipline, and 
 membership are to be settled by its members^.' Hence, 
 adds a third writer, ' practically every church is at 
 liberty to hold any theological opinions, and to adopt 
 any mode of worship ^.' It will, of course, be under- 
 stood that in all these passages the word ' church ' 
 simply means ' congregation.' And therefore the ques- 
 tion of polity or discipline here raised by the Inde- 
 pendents, is one of the greatest possible importance and 
 interest. It is nothing less than the question, whether 
 
 ^ ' In 1834, Voluntary Church asso- provide de novo, and amid a cloud of 
 ciations began to be formed. The imaginary safeguards, precisely that 
 whole machinery of popular agi- bond of ' union ' which the Church 
 tation was put in motion, and it ap- safely provided for her people more 
 peared that English Dissent was, at than loco years ago. But then In- 
 last, organized for the overtlirow of dependency was expressly invented 
 the Church Establishment. It was to protest against such courses. That 
 in the midst of this agitation that the safeguards are imaginary, let any 
 the Congregational Union of Eng- one judge for himself, after reading 
 land and Wales was established... 'The Rev. Brewin Grant's Autobio- 
 At the first annual meeting in 1833, graphy, 1869.' 
 
 the Declaration [of the leading Ar- '■' Congregational Year-Book, 1 8 71, 
 
 tides of their faith and discipline] p. xi. 
 
 was adopted.' (Skeats, Hist, of the • Cyclopadia of Religious Denomi- 
 
 Free Churches, p. 589.) Whatever nations, p. 191. 
 
 apologies may be made for such a '^ Religious Republics : six essays 
 
 proceeding, no ingenuity can veil the on Congregationalism, 1869, p. 1 1. 
 obvious truth, that this is simply to 
 
II.] THEIR 'DISTINCTIVE PRINCIPLE.' 41 
 
 it be not right and according to the mind of Christ, to 
 divide the great Society or Kingdom which He left in 
 the world into a multitude of wholly independent bodies ? 
 Whether the Unity, which all Christians agree to be a 
 characteristic of His Church, be not a merely ideal, 
 invisible and spiritual unity ; instead of a visible and 
 organic unity ? And whether ' schism,' as Christendom 
 had for 1500 years understood the word, be not (after 
 all) a duty, rather than a sin, — or, at all events, only 
 a sin when accompanied by jealous and uncharitable 
 feelings ? For ' schism,' says a Dissenting writer, ' is 
 essentially alienation of heart between Christians, — 
 however it may arise ; manifesting itself in uncharitable, 
 contentious conduct. This New Testament signification 
 was given up for that of actual separation from a par- 
 ticular church or bishop *.' 
 
 The true answer to these questions will, it is hoped, 
 appear by and by. We must now occupy ourselves 
 with an inquiry into the origin and early history of this 
 Denomination ; which, on its own political ground, has 
 deservedly won its way to the front rank among all 
 dissenting bodies ; and which frankly inscribes upon its 
 banner ' Dissent, for its own sake and as a principle, — 
 not as a make-shift or a necessity'.' 
 
 Now the cradle in which Independency was nurtured 
 was the Non-conforming Puritanism of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury ^. And no one can enter one of its chapels at the 
 
 ° Schism (a prize essay, 1838), p. to halt where the larger number 
 
 244. had agreed to rest. For the Prela- 
 
 ' Cyclopcedia of Religious Denomina- tical body disdained then, as now, to 
 
 tions, p. 193. permit any co-operation on the part 
 
 ' Cf. Hanbury, Memorials of Inde- of the people, in disseminating Re- 
 
 pendents,!. b : 'Among the controver- ligion by teaching ; or to admit them 
 
 sies of the age, that which the Puri- to exercise any Ecclesiastical autho- 
 
 tans instituted concerning the office rity. [A strange inaccuracy ; when 
 
 of Lay-eldership induced some. . not we think of (1) Churchwardens ; (2) 
 
42 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lECT. 
 
 present day, without being struck with the curious fact 
 that here we have, preserved for us through all the in- 
 numerable changes of 300 years, a specimen — complete 
 and perfect in almost all its parts — of that very Ritual 
 system, to impose which upon the Church of England 
 our Puritan forefathers thought it worth while to suffer 
 and die. A gleam of light is thus thrown on a passage 
 of English history, which otherwise were more absolutely 
 unintelligible and more intolerably tedious, than any 
 other page in the ' long result of time.' And yet we 
 must always carefully remember that Puritanism and 
 Independency are not the same thing. The Puritan, 
 properly so called, was nothing else than a Presbyterian. 
 His one eager all-absorbing passion was, to Calvinize the 
 Church of England. He longed to assimilate its Polity 
 and Ritual, in all respects, to those of Scotland and 
 Geneva. And so far from recommending ' separation,' 
 or proclaiming ' Dissent for its own sake,' he strenuously 
 resisted and cordially anathematized the Independents, 
 for a whole century, on this very account ; and never 
 threw in his lot with the Dissenting interest, till he was 
 compelled to do so by his own ejection from the Church, 
 in 1662. 
 
 We must therefore accept with some reserve the 
 claims advanced by modern Dissenters, as if these 
 early Puritans belonged to their party ; and as if the 
 sufferings of such men as Cartwright and Travers had 
 
 Lay-patrons : (3) the power ex- Engrossment of power is the essence 
 
 ercised by Parliament : (4) Lay- of either system . . The raising of the 
 
 courts of appeal : (5) the Supremacy discussions concerning the rights of 
 
 of the CrowTi : to which we must the people in Church-membership, 
 
 now add, (6) Lay-Synodsmen.] And could not but lead to the ndvocacy of 
 
 the Presbyterians interpreted, on extending the boundary of Church- 
 
 their part, the rights of the people, authority to its extreme limit, — the 
 
 by admitting only certain of them to whole Church." 
 a kind of coordinate jurisdiction. 
 
11.] AN OFFSHOOT FROM THE ' Presbyterians: 43 
 
 borne witness to the modern principle of ' religious 
 equality,' or even of common 'toleration.' In point of 
 fact,_ every such principle was scouted by these men, as 
 contrary to Scripture and an insult to common sense. 
 All they cared for was, to set up a Presbyterian Church- 
 Establishment in this country, and to maintain it 
 against all comers by the sword of the magistrate and 
 the fine of the judge. ' If the question be,' says Cart- 
 wright in the sixteenth century, 'whether princes and 
 magistrates be necessary in the Church, ... the use of 
 them is more than of the sun, without which the world 
 cannot stand 9.' ' I abhor,' says Baxter in the seven- 
 teenth century, ' unlimited liberty and toleration of all ; 
 and think myself able to prove the wickedness of it ^°.' 
 ' They,' says the Westminster Confession, ' who upon 
 pretence of Christian liberty... shall maintain such erro- 
 neous opinions or practices, as are destructive to the 
 external peace and order of the Church, may lawfully be 
 proceeded against, by the censures of the Church and 
 by the power of the magistrate ".' What then, first of 
 all, was the history and meaning of this Puritan or Pres- 
 byterian faction, which grew up in the sixteenth century 
 within the Church of England, and from which the 
 Independents afterwards took their rise .'' 
 
 I. To trace back to their springs the tiny rivulets 
 of a gathering discontent is always a difficult task. And 
 for a complete and thorough survey of this whole sub- 
 ject, we should probably have to search among the 
 records of the earliest Norman kings ; when the hier- 
 archy first established itself in this country on the con- 
 tinental model, — as a separate, allied, and, ere long, rival 
 
 » Reply to Whitgift (1573), § 4. Cramp, Baptist History, p. 269. 
 
 1" Plain Scripture Proof, p. 246: " Westm. Conf. p. 65. 
 quoted in Neal, Suppl. hi. 368 ; and 
 
44 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 body beside the state ^^. Nay, it might be necessary 
 to go still farther back ; and to disinter from amid 
 the obscurities of Anglo-Saxon times, such relics as 
 might remain of those looser Celtic organizations ^^ 
 which were ere long superseded by the strong hand 
 of a Theodore or a Dunstan, under the civilizing in- 
 fluence of the great Roman bishop who had virtually 
 succeeded to the Cssar's throne. For victorious as, in 
 such cases, the party of order may at first be, there are 
 sure to be left behind some seeds of secret dissatisfac- 
 tion and a tenacious tradition of former liberty, such as 
 no vigilance or tyranny, however unscrupulous, is ever 
 able wholly to suppress. And when at last the restrain- 
 ing authority culminates and totters to its fall, the curious 
 spectacle is often seen of reversion to the older and 
 long latent set of ideas '*. Reforms are then attempted. 
 Unwisely stifled, they assume the more menacing and 
 explosive character of a revolution. And at length, amid 
 
 ^'' Previously, in Anglo - Saxon as the strong grasp of Norman 
 
 times, they had been thoroughly feudalism and Norman popery be- 
 
 confused together. (Cf. Lappenberg, came relaxed. Compare Thierry, 
 
 Hisiory of England, i. 192, 200 [Eng. Norman Conquest, ii, 382 : ' These 
 
 Trans.] ; Creasy, ffis^oo" o//ie Ccmsri- acts [the enfranchisement of serfs], 
 
 tution, p. 52; Hallam, Middle Ages, — very frequent in the period we 
 
 p. 338.) have referred to [after a. d. 1381], 
 
 '- See Montalembert, Monk of the and of which we find no instance in 
 West, iii. 1 86 : 'At that period of preceding centuries, — indicate the 
 the ecclesiastical history of the Celtic birth of a new public spirit opposed 
 nations, the Episcopate was entirely to the violent results of the Con- 
 in the shade. The abbots and monks quest.' And Montalembert, Monks 
 alone appear to be great and in- o//ie PFes<, iii. 457, who thus explains 
 fluential ; and the successors of the failure of tlie Roman mission to 
 Columba long retained this singular England in the seventh centui-y : 
 supremacy over Bishops.' ' Perhaps they had not understood 
 
 " The culmination of the over- the national character of the Anglo- 
 organized Papal system took place Saxons ; and did not know how to 
 aboutA.D. 1300, under Boniface VIII. gain and master their minds, by re- 
 From that moment it hastened to- conciling their own Italian customs 
 wards its fall : and then in England, and ideas with the roughness, the 
 as elsewhere, many new ideas and independence, the manly energy of 
 tendencies suddenly came to light, the populations of the German race.' 
 
II.] HISTORY OF THE PRESBYTERIANS. 45 
 
 the chaos which follows, any strong man is hailed as the 
 benefactor and saviour of his times, who can strike out 
 some theory, erect some banner, round which men will 
 rally once more, and for the sake of which they will con- 
 sent to forego the dear, but short-lived, joys of anarchy. 
 
 Such a theorist and constitution-maker arose in the 
 sixteenth century in France, that ever-fertile seed-plot 
 — in all ages down to our own — of theories too logical 
 for realization, and of paper-systems too complete to 
 overcome in practice the friction of their own elaborate 
 machinery. This saviour of bewildered Protestantism in 
 the sixteenth century was John Calvin. He v/as a French 
 layman, of ecclesiastical parentage and of legal educa- 
 tion. And the tone and general character of his mind 
 cannot be better gauged, than by the fact that at the 
 early age of twenty-six, he drew out a finished tran- 
 script of all the opinions that he then held ; and that 
 this work, ' The Institutes of the Christian Religion,' 
 served him, without any material alteration, to the end 
 of a long life, as the expression of his matured judgment 
 on all religious and ecclesiastical questions ^■'. 
 
 To such a man as this, — starting with the postulate 
 which to the mind of that age seemed quite beyond 
 dispute, viz. that in the true infallibility of the Bible 
 was to be found the counterpoise and antidote for the 
 false infallibility claimed by the Pope, — nothing pro- 
 bably seemed easier than to search for and to find, amid 
 the pages of the inspired New Testament, a positively 
 Divine Church-polity. The passage ultimately fixed 
 upon was Eph. iv. 1 1 : ' And He gave some apostles, 
 and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some 
 pastors and teachers, — for the perfecting of the saints, 
 
 '* Dyer, Life of Calvin, p. 34. 
 
46 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body 
 of Christ : till we all come, in the unity of the faith 
 and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect 
 man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ.' Here Calvin persuaded himself that he had 
 found precisely what was wanted "'. Here lay before his 
 eyes the long-forgotten charter of the Christian Church. 
 Here shone out, at length, the jewel which the keen 
 eyes of students for fifteen hundred years had over- 
 looked ; which saints and fathers and schoolmen had 
 missed ; but which suited marvellously — with a little 
 manipulation — the very peculiar needs of Calvin's State- 
 Church at Geneva. 
 
 For there, as in so many reforming countries at that 
 time, no Bishop was to be had ''. The Bishop had fled 
 
 '" Calvin, In&tit. Christ. Relig., iv. 
 3,4:' Qui Ecclcsiie regimiin secund- 
 um Christi institutionem praesunt, 
 nominantur h Paulo " primiim Apo- 
 stoli," &c. Ex quibus duo tantOm 
 ultimi ordinarium in Ecclesii munus 
 habent: reliquos tres initio regni sui 
 Dominus excitavit . . " Doctores" nee 
 diseiplinai, nee sacramentorum ad- 
 ministrationi, nee monitionibus aut 
 exhortationibus praesunt, sed Scrip- 
 ture tantiim interpretationi. " Pas- 
 torale " veru munus ha;c omnia in se 
 continet.' Cf. Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v, 
 78. 8 : ' I beseech them which have 
 hitherto troubled the Church with 
 questions about degrees and offices 
 of ecclesiastical calling, because they 
 principally ground themselves upon 
 two places [viz. i Cor. xii. 28 : 
 " God hath set some in the Church, 
 first, apostles, secondarily, prophets, 
 thirdly, teachers, after that miracles," 
 Sec. ; and Eph. iv. 11] ; that, all par- 
 tiality laid aside, they would sincerely 
 weigh .-ind examine whether they have 
 not misinterpreted both places ; and 
 all by surmising incompatible offices, 
 
 where nothing is meant but sundry 
 graces, gifts, and abilities, which 
 Christ bestowed.' 
 
 " The remarkable unanimity with 
 which the Continental Bishops post- 
 poned every other consideration to 
 iheir allegiance to the Pope, was at 
 least intelligible, if not excusable, in 
 the sixteenth century [see Lect, III.]. 
 But what are we to say to a similar 
 spectacle which bids fair to be 
 presented to us, in the latter half of 
 the nineteenth century I The only 
 explanation of such conduct is prob- 
 ably to be found in a circumstance 
 to which attention was drawn by the 
 Rev. E. Ffoulkes, at the Nottingham 
 Church Congress, 1871 : 'The key- 
 stone of the whole fabric consists in 
 the oa/h taken by every Roman Ca- 
 tholic bishop at his consecration, not 
 merely to uphold, but to augment, the 
 privileges of his suzerain, or liege lord, 
 by every means in his power.' This 
 fatal oath was first imposed by Pope 
 Gregory II. on Abp. Boniface, the 
 English 'Apostle of Germany,' inA.D. 
 723. (Reichel, See of Rome, p. 52.) 
 
n.] c.4zrjx. Fi->r.ypER of r.'^ssurrsj^/jxisM. 47 
 
 from his post ; and had left Geneva to democracy and 
 chaoj. And tlie !a\--dictator Cah-in had then. Hke a 
 second IMoses, rescued the community from disorder 
 and g'ix'en them a law. whose Puritan severity repressed 
 all tlie symptoms of vice, without destroying' it at the 
 root. He had barred the Bisliop's return : he had 
 imposed tlie most stringent restraints upon the press '"". 
 and indeed upon the private utterance of any opinion 
 in contr.i.diction to his owTi ; and he had \-igorously 
 excluded all errant preachers of the Gospel, except 
 those of his own appointment, from the pulpits of 
 his Clrurch -^ And although it was unfortunate, that 
 bishops, autliors. and unattached preachers should 
 happen to be tlie precise modem counteq^arts of 
 'apostles, prophets, and ev.iiigcHsts.' in Eph. iv. 1 1 ; .md 
 incon\-cnient. that there should be no mention wliate\"er 
 in tills ali-conclr.sive passage either of ' niling La)-- 
 elders.' or of a Christian INIoses. or of "Lay-deacons' 
 charged soleh- with tlie financial business of tlie Church ; 
 sri'd tliese difficuhies could perhaps be got o\"or by a 
 little intrepidity. And the remark was accordingh- 
 hazarded, that the first tliree oriices mentioned in that 
 passage were all of a temporan,- cliaracter, and had died 
 out with tlie Apostolic age-''; while, for the lay-goveni- 
 nient of the Church, other texts could, no doubt, easih" 
 be found. Had not St. Paul said. ' let tlie elders that r.vA- 
 well be counted worth\- of double honour -^ ' .' — it being 
 forgotten that tlie \'erse continues. ' especially tlie}- tliat 
 labour in the ro.vv/ unJ diYtrsJu-.' And did not the 
 primitive Church ' look out sc\cn men of honest report, 
 whom we niav set over this t:.s:Jh-ss --' } \"iz. of serxnni: 
 
 ' IDyer, p. I44. " Ihij. p. i.:;S. 
 
 Cil-rin. .ci-T-.;. note 16. -■ 1 Ti"i. v. 17, ^ ^.-.-s ^^. 
 
48 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 tables,— the fact being overlooked that they were there- 
 upon immediately ordained with imposition of hands, 
 and that they presently appear as ' evangelists ^V 
 ' preaching Christ ^•' ' to the people. 
 
 Thus, — even should we concede the extravagant hypo- 
 thesis, that the Bible was intended to impose on man- 
 kind an infallible and unchangeable ecclesiastical polity^^, 
 — even then, Calvin's Presbyterian scheme breaks down 
 at all points. Confronted with Scripture, it is shown to 
 be entirely unscriptural. Confronted with Church history 
 it appears to be an unheard-of novelty, the offspring of 
 one man's over-confident brain. Confronted with the 
 ordinary facts of human life and of the world — not as 
 they ought to be, but as they actually are — in England, 
 within a century, it utterly broke down and disappeared : 
 in Scotland, its adherents have split up into two or three 
 irreconcileable fragments^" : in Ireland, it is thought to 
 be preparing for transformation into a moderate Episco- 
 pacy : in France, it has never succeeded in gaining one 
 inch of ground since the great Religious wars : and in 
 Geneva itself, it is reported to have lost all hold over a 
 community which is, at present, almost equally divided 
 between Socinianism and Rome. 
 
 ^^ Acts xxi. 8. ^* Ihid. viii. 5. states ought to be honoured and 
 
 ^' Dyer, 141, 142. respected among men, so much ought 
 
 2'* ' The writer will never forget the founders of sects and factions to 
 
 the sense of disenchantment with be detested and hated. . . Factions 
 
 which he was struck, on actual sight subvert government, render laws im- 
 
 of the effect [of the Free Kirk dis- potent, and beget the fiercest animo- 
 
 ruption] in Scotland. Two churches, sities among men of the same nation, 
 
 where one had been ; two rival com- who ought to give mutual assistance 
 
 munities in every parish ; a sudden and protection to each other. And 
 
 rent which tore the whole land what should render the founders of 
 
 asunder, and weakened and embit- parties more odious, is the difficulty 
 
 tered both sides.' {BlachvoocTs Maga- of extirpating these weeds, when once 
 
 zine, April, 1871, p. 454-) Surely they have taken root in any state, 
 
 the bitter indignation of Hume is ex- They naturally propagate themselves 
 
 cusable, when he exclaims : ' As for many centuries.' (Hume, Essays, 
 
 much as legislators and founders of i. 71.) 
 
n.] RETURN OF THE EXILES. 
 
 49 
 
 And yet, amid the confusions of the sixteenth century, 
 this impracticable system — which unites the faults and 
 misses the advantages of both Episcopacy and Congre- 
 gationaHsm alike — exercised a sort of fascination upon 
 the minds of a great many good, and even able, men. 
 In England, no doubt, Lollardism had long been secretly 
 paving the way for its reception. For among the tenets 
 maintained by the disciples of Wyclifife was the theory 
 ' that Presbyters had as good right as Bishops to create 
 new Presbyters ; and indeed that every Presbyter had as 
 much power to confer the sacraments of the Church as 
 the Pope himself^^.' Accordingly, when the refugees 
 who in 1539 had escaped abroad from the sharp edge of 
 Henry the Eighth's ' six articles,' and had returned under 
 Edward VI., found themselves driven a second time into 
 exile under Queen Mary, the sight of Calvin's strong 
 and tranquil ' discipline ' at Geneva smote them with a 
 kind of passionate love. Unable, as foreigners, to pene- 
 trate far below the surface of Swiss and German 
 society^*, and forgetful of the petty scale (both as to 
 time and space) on which the experiment had as yet 
 been tried, they surrendered themselves to the preci- 
 pitate conclusion that what was good for the little town 
 of Geneva, with Calvin for its dictator and pope, must 
 needs be equally good for the great realm of England, 
 with neither dictator nor pope. And on their return to 
 England, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, the more 
 
 " Gieseler, Church Hist., iv. 254. gine that Calvin did nothing but 
 ^ Grindal, alone among the exiles, good, I could produce our registers, 
 seems to have leamt the language of covered with records of illegitimate 
 the people (German) among whom children which were exposed in all 
 he was cast. (Strype, Grmrfa/, p. 13.") parts of the town and country; 
 The rest used Latin as their means of hideous trials for obscenity ; . . bun- 
 communication. For the true state dies of lawsuits between brothers ; 
 of society at Geneva, under Calvin's heaps of secret negotiations ; men 
 rigorous discipline, see Galiffe ap- and women burnt for witchcraft ; sen- 
 Dyer, p. 153: 'To those who ima- tences of death in frightful numbers.' 
 
 E 
 
5° 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 advanced and headstrong Calvin ists lost no time in 
 broaching their opinions, and in beginning that fatal 
 intestine conflict within the National Church, which 
 culminated during the great Rebellion ; and which 
 issued — not, as they desired, in a Presbyterian Estab- 
 lishment — but in their own conquest and efifacement 
 by the ' Sectaries ' whom they most vehemently re- 
 sisted and abhorred^'. 
 
 It was Travers, evening lecturer at the Temple in 
 London, and Cartwright, Margaret Professor of Divinity 
 in Cambridge, who made themselves the chief exponents 
 of Calvin's system for England. Both were able men ; 
 the one especially excelling as a preacher, the other as a 
 writer. They had both been Fellows together at Trinity 
 College, Cambridge ; both had thrown themselves en- 
 thusiastically into the ultra-reforming movement which 
 had, from quite the early part of the century, found its 
 greatest impetus from that University ; both had fallen 
 under the lash of Whitgift, then Master of the College, 
 afterwards Elizabeth's disciplinarian Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury ; and both had visited Geneva, and witnessed 
 there the only form of Protestant organization which 
 had as yet been able to make head against the triple 
 foes, whom every continental Calvinist most dreaded, — - 
 viz. the Papists, the Lutherans, and the Anabaptists. 
 
 The analogous foes whom Puritanism had to meet, 
 and, if possible, to conquer in England were the Papists, 
 the Anglicans, and the Sectaries. And so our own soil 
 — which might, surely, have hoped to escape so dreadful a 
 calamity — was henceforth, for a whole century, to be made 
 the battle-field on which the contending French, Italian, 
 and Dutch ecclesiastical ideas waged incessant warfare 
 against each other and against the National Church. 
 
 '''' Skeats, Free Churches, p. 25. 
 
11.] POLITICAL CONFUSION. 51 
 
 No subject probably, in all history, presents such an 
 entangled skein for the student to unravel, as the 
 Elizabethan re-establishment of the Church in this 
 country. On the one hand, the European politics of the 
 time formed a seething chaos ; out of which emerged, a 
 century later, at the peace of Westphalia, that approx- 
 imate equilibrium called ' the balance of power.' And 
 into the midst of that chaos England was irresistibly 
 drawn. She was threatened by France on her front, in 
 close alliance with Scotland on her rear ^'^. Just as, on 
 the larger continental scale, France was threatened by 
 Germany on her front, in close union with Spain on her 
 rear. Meanwhile, Ireland ^^ formed (as usual, and what- 
 ever policy might be on foot) a distracting element in 
 every question for England ; just as Italy and the Pope 
 have always formed a distracting complication for 
 France. It was indeed, throughout the world, a time 
 of travail and of teeming political confusion. The 
 States-system of modern Europe had come to the 
 birth. France had attained her puissant unity, the 
 English being finally ejected from her soil. And now 
 for some time, with her back to the Atlantic and the 
 Pyrenees, she had been feeling for her true frontier 
 eastward, towards Germany and Italy. Germany mean- 
 while, with her antiquated confederation of feudal chief- 
 tains under a nominal head, was already writhing in con- 
 vulsive efforts to attain a similar unity, — granted by Pro- 
 vidence to England, France, and Spain, but denied to 
 her for yet 300 years to come. Spain had cast out her 
 intrusive Arabs, and — with possessions as wide as those of 
 England at the present day — was garrisoning the Nether- 
 lands like a fortress on the rear of France, not without a 
 threatening aspect towards England beyond the narrow 
 
 ^° Burnet, Reform., v. 325 (i2mo. ed.). ^' Strype, Grindal, p. 206. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lecT. 
 
 seas. And England, amid this rapid formation of new states 
 on such an imposing scale, had one great wish at heart, — 
 to secure herself hereafter from fatal diversions in her rear, 
 by amalgamation, in some way and at almost any price, 
 with her jealous and warlike neighbour, Scotland. 
 
 And now, on the other hand, into this seething cup of 
 political complications was poured the additional effer- 
 vescence of religious discord. Athwart the great rolling 
 billows of secular confusion, came pouring the cross-seas 
 of Protestant and Papal strife. And lastly — as the cul- 
 minating misfortune for our country— the all but despotic 
 sceptre of Henry VIII. was now grasped by the hand of 
 a young unmarried woman of twenty-six, subject to all 
 the ebb and flow of feminine nature, with heart drawn 
 one way and intellect another, daily endangered by a 
 rival and probable successor, — who was also a woman, 
 and of opposite religion and superior personal charms to 
 her own — and besieged by the surmises, suggestions, 
 and despairs of a people whose memories were haunted 
 by the horrible ' Wars of the Roses ' about a disputed 
 succession, and who had just had taste of a foreign 
 consort upon their throne. Thus no one can deny that 
 we have in the England of about A.D. 1560 as com- 
 plicated a subject of study as the most valiant and 
 enterprising historian could possibly desire to exercise 
 his mind upon. 
 
 It was in the midst of all these terrible distractions, 
 and as if quite reckless of adding tenfold bitterness and 
 fury to the already existing strife, that the Puritans, 
 in the year 1564, broke out into open ecclesiastical 
 rebellion. Up to this point, it seems, things had been 
 left in great measure to take their own course, and the 
 inrushing streams of foreign ideas were suffered to find 
 their own level. The only important exercise of the 
 
II.] 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL CONFUSION. 
 
 53 
 
 Royal Supremacy which the Queen had yet ventured 
 on, was the issue of the celebrated ' Injunctions to 
 Clergy and Laity,' in 1559, the first year of her reign; 
 whereby the Protestant banner was once again publicly 
 unfurled, and all men might know that the cruel burn- 
 ings and butcheries, which had made the Pope's restored 
 dominion a loathing and a horror to Englishmen for 
 all future generations, were — so long as she should reign 
 — absolutely at an end. Encouraged by the news, the 
 exiles came flocking back from Lutheran Frankfort and 
 Strasburg ^^, and from Calvinist Zurich and Geneva ; 
 bringing with them the remembrance of sad con- 
 tentions even there, about the respective claims of 
 the English Prayer-book and of Calvin's Directory for 
 Public Worship. And it seems the Calvinist party, on 
 returning home, at once stiffly refused to conform ^'. 
 
 ^^ Orig. Letters, p. 50 ; Zurich 
 Letters, ii. 98 ; Dyer, 401. 
 
 ^^ There are three instructive letters 
 to be seen near the end of ' The 
 Troubles at Frankfort,' 1575 (Re- 
 print, p. 186). They form the cor- 
 respondence between the three main 
 English settlements, at Geneva, 
 Aarau [not far from Zurich], and 
 Frankfort, amid the delightful ex- 
 citements of preparing to return 
 home. The Genevan party begin, 
 Dec. 15, 1559, by a circular letter 
 to Aarau and Frankfort, thus : ' To 
 the intent that we might show our- 
 selves mindful of this most wonderful 
 and undeserved grace, we thought, 
 among other things, how we might 
 best serve to God's glory in this 
 work and vocation of furthering the 
 Gospel . . wherein, no doubt, we 
 shall find many adversaries and 
 stays. Yet if we, whose suffrance 
 and persecutions are certain signs of 
 our sound doctrine, hold fast to- 
 gether, &c. For what can the Papist 
 wish more, than that we should 
 
 dissent one from another . . either 
 for superfluous ceremonies or other 
 like trifles, from the which God of 
 His mercy hath delivered us ? . . 
 most earnestly desiring you, that we 
 may altogether teach and practise 
 that true knowledge of God's word, 
 which we have learned in this our 
 banishment, and seen in the best 
 Reformed Churches.' This letter is 
 signed by John I^ox, Goodman, 
 Coverdale, Whittingham, and others ; 
 all afterwards belonging to the 
 extreme Puritan party. From Aarau 
 there soon appeared a sympathizing 
 answer : ' For the preaching and 
 professing of sincere doctrine, so as 
 we have seen and learned in the 
 best Reformed Churches, we do 
 gladly hear your advice.' This was 
 signed by Lever, and three other 
 moderate Puritans, all of whom were 
 afterwards ordained by Grindal. 
 From Frankfort, however, there 
 came the following rebuff: ' To 
 contend for ceremonies, — where it 
 shall lie neither in your hands or 
 
54 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. [leCT. 
 
 A narrow and unstatesmanlike bigotry led them, even 
 against the advice of BuIHnger and Peter Martyr and 
 Quaker at Zurich s*— nay, of Calvin himself at Geneva ^^ 
 — to erect some mere trifling matters of ecclesiastical 
 ceremony and arrangement — which no human being 
 desired to elevate into anything more than symbols of 
 good order, and proofs of canonical obedience ^"^ — into 
 matters of morbid scruple and obstinate antipathy. The 
 innocent and comely surplice (a garment so little super- 
 stitious, that it clothes to this day, — in Rome as well as 
 England, — choristers, sacristans, and lay-clerks) was ig- 
 norantly stigmatized as sacerdotal. A similar anathema 
 was laid on the cross in baptism, the ring in marriage — 
 and indeed on everything which appealed in the slightest 
 degree to the imagination ■''', and redeemed the Church's 
 service from the dead prosaic levels of a mere Genevan 
 pulpit-ritual. All were confounded together as ' the 
 marks of the beast,' ' the vestments of Baal,' ' the dregs of 
 Antichrist.' In short, grown men — like unruly boys in 
 
 ours to appoint what they shall be — which characterized the Puritans, than 
 
 it shall be to small purpose. And their own recorded words concerning 
 
 therefore, as we propose to submit those beautiful legacies of the middle 
 
 ourselves to such orders as shall be ages — the cathedrals. ' I could wish 
 
 established by authority, being not those great temples . . had been de- 
 
 of themselves wicked, — so we would molished from the beginning, and 
 
 wish you willingly to do.' Signed others more convenient for sermons 
 
 by Pilkington, Nowell, &c., most of and administration of the sacraments 
 
 whom, as better churchmen^ received had been erected.' (Beza, Colloq, 
 
 promotion afterwards. Cox and ii. 29.) ' As for pompous cathedrals, 
 
 others had already left Frankfort. that serve for little but to mind us 
 
 '" Zurich Letters, i.%(>o,'i(>'i; ii. 39, of the superstition, ostentation, and 
 
 136. vanity of former times, and to bolster 
 
 ^^ Orig. Letters, ii. 709. up usurping prelates in their pride 
 
 ^' ' Doth your lordship think that and lordUness, — I have no more to 
 
 I care either for cap, tippet, surplice, say for them, but that it were well 
 
 wafer-bread, or any such ? But for if, with the "high places," they were 
 
 the law so established I esteem pulled down, and the materials 
 
 them.' (Abp. Parker to Cecil ; thereof converted to a better use.' 
 
 Strype, Parker, ii. 424.) (Nehitslan, 166S, p. 73.) So too 
 
 '' Nothing can better display the Robinson, Reply to Jos. Hall, 1609, 
 
 almost morbid want of imagination ap. Hanbury, i. 197. 
 
II.] THE PROTESTANT CAUSE IN PERIL. 55 
 
 a family— seemed determined on these points to stal<e 
 the question of a successful resistance to authority. They 
 fixed upon these as the tests, by which should be de- 
 termined who was to be master. They augured from 
 these, what were the prospects of ultimate success for 
 'the cause,' — in other words, for Presbyterianism, — 
 within the Episcopal Church of England. And now, — 
 after making their Church a laughing-stock of discord 
 and confusion for four or five years to all Europe, — they 
 resented, with a fierce and gloomy fanaticism, the first 
 touch of that very ecclesiastical 'discipline,' for which 
 (in their own sense of the word) they had so long been 
 loudly clamouring. 
 
 It was indeed high time that something were done. 
 For the Church of England was rapidly falling into 
 pieces, and becoming a scandal and a weakness to the 
 whole Protestant cause. Yet at this very moment 
 the partisans of the Papacy were everywhere taking 
 heart. Trent was just completing the re-organiza- 
 tion of Neo-Romanism : France, under Charles IX., 
 had already drawn the sword against the Huguenots : 
 Spain, under the gloomy Philip II., was preparing 
 her armies to crush out heresy and revolt in the 
 Netherlands : Mary Queen of Scots was on the point 
 of marrying Darnley, and opening the prospect of a 
 Romanist succession to the united thrones of the two 
 countries : and in England itself, the whole of the 
 northern counties were already in that ferment of dis- 
 quiet, which broke out shortly after in Northumberland's 
 rebellion. Amid all these gathering indications of an 
 impending Papal storm, what was the condition of the 
 mainstay of Protestantism, the Church of England 1 It 
 can only be described in one word ; and that word 
 is — chaos. 
 
56 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lkct. 
 
 The centre and focus of the whole disturbance was, 
 at this time, the University of Cambridge. There the 
 sturdy northern self-reHant spirit of individualism had 
 for a long time found its most congenial home. There, 
 even so early as 1528 ^^ had been seen a little society of 
 religious men, who (like the Wesleys, two hundred 
 years later, at Oxford) encouraged each other in reading 
 the Scriptures, in mutual confession, and similar pre- 
 scribed acts of personal piety. They visited the prisoners 
 at jails ; they preached anew the vital spiritual truths — 
 formerly enshrined, but now obscured, by the ritual and 
 ceremonies of their Church ; and were, in short, engaged 
 in reviving religion in England under its ancient forms. 
 The names of twenty-seven of these men have been pre- 
 served to us ; and just as the early Methodists obtained 
 the honours of ridicule and of social persecution, so the 
 house where these first English Lutherans met was nick- 
 named ' Germany ^".' And worse things than ridicule 
 were not long in following. Three members of this 
 society had perished at the stake under Queen Mary 
 (Bilney, Latimer, and Bradford) ; one had succumbed to 
 a fever caught in visiting the sick (Stafi"ord) ''^ ; and one, 
 after being advanced to a Bishopric under Edward VI., 
 was now under a cloud for his ultra-Puritanism (Cover- 
 dale). One only had escaped unscathed : and he now 
 sat on the archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury (Parker). 
 
 But the return of the exiles from the continent, — 
 bringing with them the remembrance of the bitter feuds 
 which had split them even there into three or four 
 different sections, — had generated a far more acrid 
 and rebellious temper at Cambridge. And from thence 
 the contagion had spread rapidly throughout the 
 
 =» Strype, Grindal, p. 32. » Strype, Parlier, i. 12. 
 
 '" Strype, Grindal, p- 32. 
 
II.] PRESBYTERIAN INSUBORDINATION. 57 
 
 country. About this time (1564), the students at 
 St. John's College with one accord on the same day 
 threw off their surplices, and in other ways took the 
 ritual directions for divine service into their own 
 hands *^ ; and after a sermon against painted windows, 
 the zealots committed a great destruction of them 
 and threatened more *^. In London a clergyman named 
 Crowley shut some surpliced singers out of his church, 
 and created a riot*^. At Canterbury Cathedral, the 
 matins and evensong were sung daily at the communion 
 table, the minister standing behind it facing the 
 people ; while on Communion days, the table was set 
 lengthwise. East and West, the celebrant and assistants 
 wearing copes". At Norwich Cathedral, the prebendaries 
 not only altered the rubrics at pleasure, but had actually 
 entered the choir and battered down the organ ''■\ At 
 Bury, the minister was about to give up his pastoral 
 charge, rather than wear the usual college-cap, — had not 
 his own parishioners begged him not to be so foolish *^ 
 And even at Court, a chaplain to Lord Leicester or one 
 of the great men about the Queen, ventured to appear in 
 the common layman's dress of a hat and short cloak *''. 
 Indeed it may be said without exaggeration, that ' sys- 
 tematic irreverence had intruded into the churches ; 
 carelessness and irreligion had formed an unnatural 
 alliance with Puritanism ; and in many places the altars 
 were bare boards resting on tressels in the middle of the 
 nave. The communicants knelt, stood, or sat as they 
 pleased; the chalice was the first cup that came to hand ; 
 and the clergyman wore surplice, coat, black-gown, or 
 their ordinary dress *^.' 
 
 *' Strype, Parker, i. 390. ^ Ibid. ii. 36. 
 
 ^ Ibid. 382. « Ibid. 374. 
 
 « Ibid. 434. " Ibid. 437. 
 
 " Ibid. 365. *« Froude, viii. 93 (a.d. 1564). 
 
58 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lECT. 
 
 But it was something far more perilous than all this, that 
 nobody even yet believed in the stability of the new order 
 of things, or in the firmness of the Queen's intentions re- 
 garding Protestantism. Five years had elapsed, and she 
 still, against the remonstrances of her Bishops, retained 
 the crucifix and lighted tapers in her private chapel ''I 
 She was known to have sent official notice of her acces- 
 sion to the Pope. And though she had allowed a most 
 scandalous public burning of roods, service-books, and 
 figures of saints in Cheapside and other places, during 
 Bartholomew fair, 1559*^°, — yet her Court favourites 
 (Leicester especially) were allowed to protect Papists", as 
 well as to countenance every other person who could give 
 annoyance and trouble to the Bishops ; while a scandalous 
 pillage of Church goods and Church endowments was 
 allowed to go on unrestrained, under her very eyes. 
 Who can be surprised then, that ' now once more had 
 come a reaction, like that which had welcomed Mary 
 Tudor to the throne ;' that ' in quiet English homes there 
 arose a passionate craving to be rid of all these things ; 
 to breathe again the old air of reverence and piety ;' and 
 that ' Calvinism and profanity were, like twin spirits of 
 evil, making a road for another Mary to reach the 
 English throne '''! 
 
 It was to meet this very real danger that Elizabeth at 
 last aroused herself; and in 1565 compelled her Bishops, 
 — much against their will, — to declare that open war 
 upon Puritan non-conformity, whose results, both for 
 good and evil, have lasted down to our own day. In the 
 August of the preceding year the spring was touched, 
 which let loose all the elements of destruction. The 
 Queen had made a progress to Cambridge. And for 
 
 *' Strype, Parher, i. 92. ™ Strype, Grindal, 37. 
 
 ^' Ibid. 113. =2 Froude, viii. 93. 
 
II.] FIRST MEASURES OF REPRESSION. 59 
 
 four days, — owing to precautions which almost remind 
 one of the Empress Catherine's journey amid pasteboard 
 villages and scenic prosperity in Southern Russia, — 
 the shocking disorders of its long-standing Puritanism 
 were concealed from her view. On the fifth day all 
 was unintentionally revealed. A blasphemous pageant, 
 in which a dog appeared carrying the Eucharist 
 in its mouth, shocked and horrified the Queen beyond 
 measure. She rose and hastily left the room. And she, no 
 doubt, determined from that moment that duty both to 
 God and man demanded of her a conscientious exercise 
 of her visitatorial powers ^^ as ' supreme governor ' in all 
 departments of the State ; and resolved that her vacilla- 
 tion should no longer betray the Reformed Church of 
 England to its ruin. 
 
 In the following January, therefore (1565), she de- 
 spatched a sharp letter to Archbishop Parker, severely 
 rebuking him and the other Bishops for their remissness. 
 There were differences of opinion, — she said, — differences 
 of practice, differences in the rites used in her Churches, 
 throughout the realm. ' We thought, until this pre- 
 sent, that by the regard which you, being the Primate 
 and Metropolitan, would have had hereto, . . these errors. 
 
 ^ No great revolutions, either in time due to the imperial crown of 
 
 Church or State, can possibly be this realm ; that is, under God, to 
 
 accomplished without some mistakes have the sovereignty and rule over 
 
 and temporary confusions. But that all manner of persons born within 
 
 this, and no more than this, is the these her realms . . so as no other 
 
 true meaningofthe'royal supremacy,' foreign power shall or ought to have 
 
 appears abundantly both from Queen any superiority over them:' (ap. 
 
 Elizabeth's words and acts. E.g. in Lingard, vi. 325 ;) (2) a commission 
 
 the very first year other reign we issued to certain persons to visit, — like 
 
 have (I ) an 'Admonition to simple Charlemagne's 'Missi,' — the northern 
 
 men, deceived by malicious : — Her counties ; ' quoniam utrumque Regni 
 
 Majesty neither hath, nor ever will, nostri statum, tam Ecclesiasticum 
 
 challenge any other authority, than quam Laicum, vhitare . . constitu- 
 
 that . . which is and was of ancient imus,' (ap. Burnet, iv. 417-) 
 
6o 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. [leOT. 
 
 tending to breed some schism or deformity in the Church, 
 should have been stayed and appeased. But perceiving 
 very lately, and also certainly, that the same doth rather 
 begin to increase than to stay or diminish, we — consider- 
 ing the authority given us of Almighty God for defence 
 of the public peace, — mean not to endure or suffer any 
 longer these evils thus to proceed : . . that our people 
 may thereby quietly honour and serve Almighty God in 
 truth, concord, peace, and quietness ; and thereby also 
 avoid the slanders that are spread abroad hereupon in 
 foreign countries*-'.' 
 
 But neither in Church nor State, neither in the mili- 
 tary, the scholastic, nor any other profession, can disci- 
 pline be thus sharply and suddenly braced up, after a 
 long period of relaxation and confusion, without serious 
 sacrifices and losses. And in the present instance, the 
 first sacrifice which the Queen's abruptness demanded 
 was that of the peace, the reputation, the pastoral influ- 
 ence, the personal feelings, and all but of the conscience, 
 of the bishops. Archbishop Parker implored Cecil ' not 
 to strain the cord too tightly ;' and if he must act, 
 requested an express letter from the Queen as his 
 authority for enforcing her commands. ' Neither a 
 letter from herself however, nor assistance in any form 
 from the government would Elizabeth allow to be given. 
 The bishops should deliver their tale of bricks, but they 
 should have no straw to burn them . . . Never were 
 human beings in a more cruel position. Elizabeth 
 sat still in malicious enjoyment of the torture which 
 she was inflicting. The Archbishop warned Cecil of 
 the inevitable consequences . . and, driven as he was 
 against his will to these unwise extremities, he again 
 
 ** Strype, Life of Parker, iii. 67. 
 
II.] ARCHBISHOP PARKER'S RELUCTANCE. 6 1 
 
 entreated that some member of the Council might be 
 joined in commission with him. On this last point Eli- 
 zabeth would yield nothing^'.' What wonder that Parker 
 should write about this time [1566], ' Can it be thought 
 that I alone, having sun and moon against me, can com- 
 pass this difficulty t . .\ shall not report how I am used 
 of many men's hands. I commit all to God. If I die in 
 the cause (malice so far prevailing), I shall commit my 
 soul to God in a good conscience ^^.' What wonder that 
 he should again and again warn the government ' in hac 
 causa ne nimium tendas funiculum'' :' or that he should, 
 — like Hooker, a few years later — foresee, ' how secure 
 soever the nobility [Leicester, Sir F. Knollys, &c.] were of 
 the Puritans, and countenanced them against the bishops, 
 . . all that these men tended towards was to the overthrow 
 of all of an honourable quality and the setting afoot of 
 a Commonwealth '*.' And yet it is of this man, — a kind- 
 hearted, loyal, and courageous Englishman, an orderly 
 and law-abiding man; a lover of books and of peaceful 
 studies ^', an earnest remonstrant against all harsh mea- 
 sures, and a Protestant from his early youth (ast. 16 
 or 17) at Cambridge*", — that a partisan historian writes, 
 ' Parker had seceded from Rome, and retained the fero- 
 city of an Inquisitor ^1 :' and another, out-H eroding 
 Herod, ventures to add that he was ' a hot-headed, into- 
 lerant, arbitrary and vindictive man . . He shocked the 
 statesmen of his age and at last shocked Elizabeth 
 herself. Not being an ecclesiastic, there was a limit 
 to her capacity for creating and afterwards enjoying 
 the sight of human suffering. There was no such limit 
 
 ^ Froude, viii. 134. °' Ibid, passim. 
 
 '' Strype, Parker, ii. 453. "" Ibid. 
 
 ^ Ibid. i. 322. "' Fletcher, Hisl. of Independency, 
 
 ™ Ibid. ii. 323 : cf. Hooker, iv. 8, 4. ii. 100. 
 
62 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 in Parker. The jackal's appetite was for once stronger 
 even than that of the lioness ^^.' 
 
 Unhappily, language of this unpardonable kind has, 
 from the very beginning, disgraced the Puritan cause. 
 In praise of its own system and its own partizans, no 
 encomiums could ever soar too high. ' It claimed a 
 higher Scriptural authority for Presbyterianism,' says a 
 Wesleyan writer, 'than its Episcopal antagonists asserted 
 for prelacy itself ^^' Its adherents were always ' the 
 godly,' ' the elect,' ' the truly religious,' ' God's dear chil- 
 dren.' But in describing its adversaries, however con- 
 scientious they might be, no words could be too scur- 
 rilous, no abuse too shocking. So that even Archbishop 
 Grindal, — himself a Puritan, — 'when at length he saw 
 that no other means would bring them to obedience, 
 approved of restraint, especially of the heads of the 
 faction, whom he styled " fanatical and incurable ^*." ' 
 Even Bullinger, — the Calvinist pastor at Zurich, to whom 
 they themselves were constantly appealing — writes in 
 1567 to Beza, (Calvin's successor at Geneva), 'Sampson 
 never wrote a letter without filling it with grievances, the 
 man is never satisfied . . . when he was here, I used to 
 get rid of him in a friendly way, as well knowing him to 
 be a man of a captious and unquiet disposition. England 
 has many characters of this sort, who cannot be at rest 
 and can never be satisfied"^.' Again, five months later, 
 he writes : ' It certainly appears from the conversation of 
 
 '^ Skeats, History of Free Churches confounded together the characters 
 
 of England, p. 14. It is impossible of Parker and Whitgift. 
 not to suspect that this writer,— who '=' Stevens, History of Methodism, 
 
 supports the above statement by a i. 21. 
 
 solitary reference to a letter in Strype " Strype, Grindal, p. 44S. 
 which he misunderstands, and who "= Zurich Letters, u. 1^2. Sampson 
 
 [p. 1,5, second edit.] makes Cart- was a Puritan Dean of Christ Church 
 
 wright an Oxford man, — has here Oxford. 
 
II.] PRESBYTERIAN RESISTANCE. 63 
 
 these men that their minds are entirely set against the 
 Bishops ; for they can scarcely say anything respecting 
 them but what is painted in the blackest colours, and 
 savours of an odium Vatiniamuii ^^.' 
 
 Such being the temper of the English Puritans, as 
 attested by their own firmest friends and co-religionists, 
 we cannot be surprised that Elizabeth's first attempt, in 
 1565, to tighten the reins of ecclesiastical discipline was 
 met with a storm of abuse and resistance. The Puritans 
 looked round in all quarters indiscriminately for help and 
 support. They appealed to the foreigner : they appealed 
 to the Parliament : they appealed to their friends in the 
 Queen's Council : they appealed to the common law 
 courts. One thing alone seems never to have struck 
 them : viz. the simple duty of obedience to their church 
 in trifles, and the good policy of presenting an unbroken 
 front to the common enemy, Popery, — which was watch- 
 ing to destroy them all". Such duties, even when in- 
 culcated repeatedly by the foreigners to whom they 
 appealed, were repudiated with scorn. In fact, the dif- 
 ference between the Anglicans and the Puritans at this 
 time, narrow as it may seem, was as deep as it was 
 narrow. The former obeyed in trifles, because they re- 
 cognized the right of ecclesiastical authority to command 
 in all things left open by God ; the latter rebelled in 
 trifles, because they recognized no right in any mortal 
 
 ™ Zurich Letters, ii. 155. Vatinius a letter in which HolUngham, Cole- 
 was a person celebrated in Cicero's man and Benson are mentioned, as 
 time for his scurrility and abusiveness. persons employed to sow faction 
 
 "' There is good reason to believe among the heretics. Yet these three 
 
 that some of those who appeared at persons are unsuspectingly described 
 
 this time to be the most violent Puri- by Fuller, Church History, ix. 8i : by 
 
 tans, were really Jesuits in disguise. Heylin, Hist. Presbyi. xvi. 257: and 
 
 In 1569, one Heath, a Jesuit, was by Camden, ^«;iaZs, 1568, as violent 
 
 summoned before the Bishop of Puritans. (Cf. Stillingfleet's Vnrea- 
 
 Rochester ; and on him was found soiiahleness of Schism, p. xiii.) 
 
6,1 '/7/a; /a//u</'f<v/>/''V''-'^- I licit. 
 
 innii 111 iiii|insr aiiytliiiit; in icli.c.inn, which (ii'il liad nol 
 expressly comniaiKliil"". 'I'hr Irmlrnry of tin- AiH'.li- 
 cans, llicrcfnic, at lliis lime, was to join the (iennan Kc- 
 fdrmirs; wlio fDimil ihrir tempi. lary ruliinin of resist- 
 ance ti) tile l'a|)acy in the civil power, wliiie tliey ap- 
 l)ealeil in tlie li)nj^ run to a Intnie lucle.siasl iial ( 'onncil. 
 Tlic lenileiicy of Hie i'nrilans, on tin: oilier liand, was 
 to ally theiinxilvcs closely with, the l'"rencli and Swiss 
 Calvinists ; and with them to make their sole appeal lo 
 Scripture, as inlerpriied by each man's individnal reason 
 and conscience. The one system liased itst:lf on men's 
 duties: the other, on men's riidils. Yel the one, which 
 looke-il at first sifjit more lilce servilude, has been 
 proved to favour liberty; for it has swnni; freely to an 
 anchfir [)Iaeed in the far fuliire. It has ever looked 
 forward to a prospeclivc i'i.-arran!;emiiil of the (.'hureh's 
 affairs by a Council, wherein the voice of filher peoj.le's 
 oi)inions would have to be he'ard, and where tin: 
 standing and Iraditional |irei edeiits of Clirislindoiii 
 should form the ack-nowlediMil common ;'.rouiiil for a 
 mutual agreement. 'i'he other, or {''rem h system, 
 though looking at first more like llberly, has been 
 found in practice to favour mental servitude. I'or I he 
 
 "" 'I'lih cxti:ivn[;:uil :t.:;'.fj i ion ui llioil^;lill<','; uhiili) fippc-in, Id iir utfMfl 
 
 llif; rij^lil:-; ol' the iinlivi'lu.'i) con- :,1 ill, wil ImmiI :itjy 1 iinllnl ion:;, in 0:1 
 
 Sf:i'in;(: lnu:,t, if .nllowC'l, Minlfi nil l:iin cilcli-;, • 'I'lur (jiic.lioM ;il i!,:;ilf 
 
 jMtvcnnncnl — -wlnllior civil or rcli- niilly vv;i:;, wllillni (:on:,ricnrc In- 
 
 j'ion;, — im[jo',;il)lc. An ilil;illiljlt: it w'll 01 ill inlojnjiil inn\l :,nltniil 
 
 ro|j(: chiiiri;, lo jii'li;'-, willinut :t|t- lo tlif lull Inn il y ol men , 01 1 11: Ml I ijrct 
 
 |(c;il, whnl HKill't:, hill willlin tin: to lln- lUllllolil y rtl (iotl only . . . I'ot 
 
 nrc.'i of his inl;i Nihility. Allfl nil Ihi'; (.on'linj, ini-tcrnl ol hrijij' jc 
 
 irif;i.llihlu ' i:on:,(:i(:n(:(; ' rnn;,t need;; do |ilo:H:ln'il ii;; 11:11 row-lliillih-d find 
 
 tilt; Miini-. Why then :,h(nild not n. lii);otid \col :i r iiiir,, who involvi'd 111'- 
 
 l.tiink'T [tlcail i:oii',i:i(ni:(: iii'iiijr.t tinlion in hlood :ind ini;,i;hi(i lot 
 
 )i:iyinf^ \:\v.iy. for tin: :,n|)|jorl '»! Ilir trillirH, Ihcy <!<■:, crvc lo Ik; li;i.d ill 
 
 :iirny'(' Why ■.lioillfl a ' oiir.ci'nlioii;; ( V'l hiilinj; ri inrinlnnnc'-. :i,!, Mifhici ', 
 
 ohj'flin ' lo the hilc 10lll(::ili<,ii Act loi jmiii; iiiid iindf:lil(:d irlifdoli.' 
 
 Iinvc distmint |.nl upon lii:, jMjrid',? fOriiic, /,///' 0/ llnxti'l-, 'H'/j, |i. 
 Wh'ii: :,h:ill wc :,lr,|,y V.-i llii:, i,^/j 
 
II.] PRESBYTERIAN DOGMAT/SM. 6g 
 
 obedience claimed for the mere letter of a book, be- 
 comes ere long inevitably transferred to the interpreters 
 of that book ; and the despotism of a Pope, — who may 
 at least die and be changed for another and a better 
 man, — is simply replaced by the despotism of an oli- 
 garchy whose watchful dogmatism never dies ; whose 
 antiquated traditions soon come to be held up to vene- 
 ration as 'the truth;' and whose tyranny leaves open 
 no way of cscai^e, or of thinking and breathing freely, as 
 a Christian ought to do, except one way — and that is 
 the way of secession, the principle of an absolute indi- 
 vidualism, the method of Congregational or even personal 
 Independency. 
 
 And that way the Englishmen of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, confused and deafened by the noisy clamour of a 
 Puritanism whicli could never make up its mind either 
 to conform or to secede, were not long in finding out. 
 And in finding it, no one surely can deny that the Inde- 
 pendents, — however terribly mistaken they may be in 
 their first principles of ecclesiastical action and in push- 
 ing tlie idea of men's ' Rights' to an absolutely revolu- 
 tionary extreme, — at least found their way out into the 
 open daylight of honesty and common sense. For if 
 the Independent refuses to conform, secedes from the 
 Church, and then fights a long and vigorous battle for 
 complete political and social toleration, — barring the 
 first false step, — he is a man \\'orthy of all respect and 
 honour. The complete toleration he valiantly demands, 
 he Irns a perfect political right to attain. Nor will he 
 fail, in the course of its attainment, to teach his country, 
 and even the Church which he has left, some valuable 
 lessons of liberty ; until the time shall come that he will 
 learn from her, in his turn, the inestimable value of 
 Christian obedience, and the invincible strength gained 
 
 F 
 
66 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lecT. 
 
 by ecclesiastical cohesion ; and shall see how far grander 
 and more Christ-like a thing it is to bend one's will to 
 public Duty, than to stand stifly and jealously upon 
 one's private Rights ''^. 
 
 We have reached then the point at which Indepen- 
 dency broke ofif from its parent, Presbyterian noncon- 
 formity. And the farther history of Presbyterianism 
 within the Church of England may now be very briefly 
 told. Foiled at all points, during the later years of 
 Queen Elizabeth, by the indefatigable ability and deter- 
 mination of Archbishop Whitgift, and passing restlessly 
 (as is the wont of a weaker party) from one subject and 
 method of controversy to another''", they naturally 
 looked forward, with hopes raised to the highest pitch 
 of excitement, to the day, now rapidly approaching, 
 which should place a Scotch Presbyterian prince upon 
 the united throne of both kingdoms. And in fact, 
 James I. had hardly crossed the border in 1603, ere he 
 was encountered by a deputation of grave Puritans, 
 bringing with them the so-called Millenary petition, 
 signed by 800 non-conforming ' Ministers of the Church 
 of England.' They had, however, much miscalculated 
 the effect which a long and near acquaintance with 
 Presbyterianism had produced upon that shrewd king's 
 mind. And instead of an intention to assimilate the 
 
 " This lesson is inculcated not only . , ' let this mind be in you which 
 
 by the text which stands at the head was also in Christ Jesus ' 
 of this Lecture, but by a hundred ™ Cf. Tertullian's description of 
 
 other passages of Holy Scriptiire. I the Dissenters in his own time : ' \ 
 
 cannot forbear, however, pointing regulis suis variant inter se; dum 
 
 out one noble, profound, and deeply unusquisque proinde suo arbitrio 
 
 touching appeal in St. Paul's Epistle modulatur quee accepit Penitiis 
 
 to the Phihppians, which ought to inspectaj, hiereses omnes in multis 
 
 put all 'dissent for dissenting's sake' cum auctoribus suis dissentientes 
 
 to crimson shame and confusion of deprehenduntur.' (De Pressor Hcer 
 
 lace. It IS the passage, Phil, ii.i-14: §42) 
 
II.] PRESBYTERIANISM DIES OUT IN ENGLAND. 67 
 
 English Church to that of Scotland, they soon found 
 reason to suspect, in this Scottish dynasty, a fixed pur- 
 pose to reform the Northern Church itself after the 
 Southern model. And henceforth, — although the poli- 
 tical struggle against despotism was begun (it is true) 
 by Churchmen, and the Long Parliament of 1640 was 
 Episcopalian almost to a man ■", — bitterness and tenacity 
 were added to the civil strife by the whole force of 
 Ecclesiastical Puritanism being thrown into the ranks 
 of the opposition. Till at last, in 1646 a Presbyterian 
 army held Charles I. prisoner ; a Presbyterian House of 
 Commons ruled the country ; a Presbyterian assembly 
 sat supreme at Westminster ; and — ^within one hair's 
 breadth — a Presbyterian Church was established and 
 endowed in this country, and the long-desired union 
 with ' the best reformed Churches on the continent ' 
 was all but completed. But by that hair's breadth 
 we were saved. And, through the agency of the Inde- 
 pendents, a calamity was averted which, in all human 
 probability, would long before this time have cast back 
 the majority of the English people into the arms of 
 Rome. Ere twenty years were past, the Presbyterians 
 were themselves ejected, together with all the promis- 
 cuous crowd of Dissenters who had occupied the parson- 
 ages and parish churches throughout England '^ And 
 
 " Skeats, p. 49. secutions, ejectments, and a mevci- 
 
 " This ejectment of 1662, of which less wielding of all social, legal, 
 
 so much has been made, was simply and even physical methods of of- 
 
 one in a series of similar events, fence. Thus, in the twenty years 
 
 For religious quarrels (unchecked by preceding 1662, we have in 1641, 
 
 good sense) have always taken the the ' Protestation ' imposed upon all 
 
 same course, whether on the large Englishmen, against Charles I. by 
 
 European scale or on the small one the Churchmen of the Long Parlia- 
 
 of a single country — or even parish, ment : in 1643, the 'solemn League 
 
 First comes a preliminary skirmish and Covenant ' imposed upon the 
 
 with literary weapons ; and then fol- whole nation, by the Presbyterians : 
 
 lows a miserable warfare of per- in 1649, the 'Engagement' — an 
 
 F 2 
 
68 THE INDEPEAWENTS. [leCT. 
 
 we may now leave these non-conforming Presbyterian 
 officers of an Episcopalian Church, and pass over to the 
 history of those more sturdy and honest Englishmen, 
 of uncompromising Calvinist opinions, who —conscious 
 that the Church was not really Calvinist, and that, to make 
 her so was simply an impossibility — took at once _ the 
 only manly course open to them, viz. that of secession 
 from her ranks. 
 
 II. The first person who ventured openly to take this 
 decisive step was the Rev. Robert Browne. He was a 
 Cambridge man, regularly ordained, and now (about 
 1570) was keeping a school in Southwark. He felt, no 
 doubt, emboldened by having a powerful friend at court, 
 no less a person than Lord Burleigh, his kinsman and the 
 Queen's great adviser, especially in ecclesiastical affairs. 
 He was an able, though a turbulent and impracticable 
 person. His books and pamphlets formed for a long 
 time the arsenal, whence the controversial weapons of 
 his party were procured '^ : and he is acknowledged by 
 
 oath to maintain the existing state purposes, absolutely worthless. In 
 of things, viz. a government by London, e. g., he represents the eject- 
 Parliament without either King or ments as amounting to 293 : the 
 Lords, — imposed on all England by truth being that, on the highest pos- 
 the Jndependenti. If any minister sible computation, they only amount 
 refused it, he was instantly de- to 127. In Essex, more than half 
 prived ; and many of the Presby- the cases which stand upon his roll 
 terian clergy suffered accordingly, were not true cases of ejectment. 
 — Reynolds, among the rest, being In Hertfordshire, four-fifths of his 
 deprived, of his deanery of Christ list disappear under investigation. 
 Church. (Cf Cai-withen, Church In short, there is every reason to 
 History, ii. 127, &c.). As to the believe that unbiassed inquiry would 
 number of Nonconformists who were strike off from the celebrated cata- 
 really ejected in 1662, Dissenting logue of '2000 confessors' no less 
 writers appear to have been guilty than 1200 names, 
 of the most incredible exaggerations. " ' He deserveth to have the hon- 
 A careful examination has lately our, if any be ; and to be called the 
 been made of Calamy's list, on which Captain and master of them all. 
 the whole of the ■ bicentenary ' rhe- They have all their furniture from 
 tone was founded. It turns out him: they do but open his pack 
 that his History is, for all statistical and display his wares : they have 
 
11.] THE INDEPENDENTS SECEDE. 69 
 
 the latest Independent historians to have held all the 
 views which distinguish the denomination at this mo- 
 ment, with one important exception, — viz. that he had 
 no idea of what we now mean by ' toleration^ 
 
 This exception, however, is (as it happens) of the 
 greatest possible interest to us. For it is just this 
 question of toleration — or, as it has now come to be 
 worded, ' religious equality,' — which has grown in our 
 own days to be the grand battle-flag of the whole 
 Independent body. And endless are the appeals to 
 our indignation, to our pity, to our admiration, in be- 
 half of a denomination which we are led to suppose 
 has from the earliest times, loyally and amid innu- 
 merable sufferings, preached that doctrine which the 
 superior wisdom of the present age now at last re- 
 cognizes as the truth '*. And yet, here we are met, 
 at the very outset of their history, with the startling 
 fact that the founder himself — and not only the foun- 
 der, but all the earliest champions and martyrs of 
 Independency — as earnestly repudiated ' toleration,' as 
 the Churchmen and Presbyterians, and perhaps every 
 human being at that period, repudiated it. Yes : in- 
 tolerance formed part of the very atmosphere of those 
 times ; and no one — not Luther or Calvin or Cranmer 
 or Cartwright '^ — could escape its subtle infection. The 
 
 not a sharp arrow, which is not the civil magistrate.^ (Essays, ii. 438.) 
 drawn out of his quiver.' (Giffard, ''"' Luther invoked the civil sword 
 Short Treatise against the Brownists, against the Anabaptists : Calvin 
 1590: preface, ap. Hanbury, i. 50.) burnt Sei"vetus: Cranmer burnt Jane 
 ^* Hume credits no ' denomina- Bouchier : and of Cartwright, a Dis- 
 tion,' — if left to itself, — with the senting writer says, ' Parker and 
 virtue of toleration. He says : ' If, Whitgift persecuted the Puritans ; 
 among Christians, the English and but if Cartwright had been in Whit- 
 Dutch have embraced the principles gift's place, he would have dealt out 
 of toleration, this singularity has pro- equal persecution to Baptists and In- 
 c ceded from the steady resolution of dependents.' (Skeats, p, 20.) 
 
70 TJiK ixiiiirii^ni'-y !'■'<■ 
 
 \\.V.C\. 
 
 Indcpcmk-iUs, when tlicy had the powi-r (as tlu-y shortly 
 afterwards had in America), would be sure lo persecute 
 their opponents as fierctly and unrit;-hteously as they 
 themselves had been persecuted. And, in short, what 
 Cromwell a hundred years later bitterly complained of, 
 was in these earlier lili/.abethan days still more conspi- 
 cuously true : viz. that each sect cried out lustily lur 
 liberty and toleration ; and when they had ac(|uired 
 it, would by no means allow it to any but themselves'"'. 
 We may therefore waive and put asidi' — not without 
 some impatience — the long and lamentable threnodes, 
 the modern 'lives of the saints' and 'acts of the 
 martyrs,' which form the staple of so many l)issi:nting 
 histories, -especially since the so-called bicentenary 
 movement, in 1862. Such narratives .ire stimulating 
 to devotion ; they are useful in polemics ; they inflame 
 the passions; they check the suggestions of l)rotherly- 
 kindness and moderation. But no man of sense lingers 
 now amid these sickening scenes, lie cari:s not to 
 know ivjiat gnod pe(iple suffered in bygoni: times: 
 but rather wliy they suffered, what was the cause they 
 really died for, and what were the liistorieal circum- 
 stances of their time wiiich led to so sad — although 
 perhaps inevitable- a struggle". 
 
 Returning then tn Robert ]5rowne and tlie Inde- 
 
 '" r.irlylc, Cromwell, ii, 2(jH : Hit stiiilciil nf scciihn liislmy. ' lly 
 
 ' 'I'liat halh been one ol the v.'Liiilies and by,' wriles Mr. Iliixley, willi liis 
 
 of our erinlcsl. Every seel sailli, "O iisiiul j'nucl 'riv.r, 'we iniisl Ikivi' 
 
 [;ive me liljerly." liut j^ive it lo liim, hislnry, tii'iile<l jiol as a mii;i es;;ina 
 
 and lo liis ])ouer he will iiol yield of bailies .and dyiiaslies, nol its a 
 
 it to anyljody else.' series fil biofM:i])liies, nol a:; evidence 
 
 ''^ 'J'lie rnLdliplicalion of endless lliat I'lovideiiee iia:, always Ifcn on 
 
 and meaniiiyless Morlyrolofdes en- tlie side of i ilher Wl]i(,'S oi 'I'ories, — 
 
 ales llu- same impaliijiee in a nut- but as tile drvelopmenf of man in 
 
 dern sliidenl of Cliuieii liislory, as limes jia!,l, and oliiei condiliftns than 
 
 the old frJdotjed ii-cords of iiitei- our own." U'f'y •*^fnnt>ii:., (Ve,, o. c^tj,) 
 jninable dynastic eonllids creates in 
 
II.] ROBERT BROWXE DEPARTS TO HOLLAND. 71 
 
 pendents, — their subsequent history may now be briefly 
 narrated. It was, as we have seen, about the year 1570 
 that this hot-headed man thought fit to add to the 
 other difficulties and distractions of his country, in her 
 death-struggle against Popery, by loudly summoning 
 every Puritan who would listen to him, to break up 
 the National Church without any scruple, and to pul- 
 verize into a heap of incoherent fragments the only 
 organized means of ecclesiastical resistance the country 
 possessed. Yet at this very moment, the signal-gun 
 was being charged at Rome, which was to let loose, if 
 possible, upon our fair land all the horrors of domestic 
 rebellion and of foreign invasion. In 1569 the Pope 
 and his conclave drew up, and in 15 71 they launched 
 into the country, one of those shameful clerical pro- 
 clamations which Englishmen can never forget and 
 never can or ought to forgive. By this Bull, Pope 
 Pius V. declared Elizabeth a heretic and a favourer of 
 heretics ; released her Lords and Commons and all 
 others from their oaths of obedience ; and forbade, 
 under pain of Anathema, any one to obey her laws "^ 
 
 Who can wonder that, at such a juncture as this, 
 the foolish and mischievous preacher of confusion and 
 religious separation — none the less mischievous because 
 conscientiously and religiously so — was summoned be- 
 fore the Queen's Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and bid- 
 den to hold his peace .-' On this, he at once departed 
 for Holland. For it was under Dutch Anabaptist in- 
 fluence, which was strong in the Eastern counties, that 
 he had learnt his new ideas : and that country, having 
 lately emancipated itself from the dreadful tyranny of 
 Spain, offered free scope for every sort of ecclesiastical 
 
 '* See the document, given in full by Burnet, Reformation, iv. 452. 
 
72 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 experiment, and for the full enjoyment of that, which 
 seems perhaps to most men, before experience, the most 
 delightful of all things, — viz. perfect Independence, 
 entire liberation from the vexatious restraints of Law, 
 absolute freedom to do whatsoever they will. 
 
 But alas, when men obtain, at length, this long-co- 
 veted prize, when that most delightful thing is reached, 
 that golden fruit is grasped — the power to do exactly 
 as one likes — what bitter disappointments immediately 
 arise ! The glittering fruit turns to ashes in the hand. 
 The truth of the adage is at last recognized, ' how much 
 better is the half than the whole.' And the sad dis- 
 covery is made, — perhaps too late to be of any real 
 use, — that laws mean nothing more, after all, either 
 in Church or State, than a system of mutual insurance 
 for each man's personal liberty ; and that (in the Ger- 
 man poet's words) obedience to them alone ' can give 
 any man true Freedom ''°.' 
 
 Browne had hardly set up his separatist communion 
 in Holland, ere (as the Independent historian con- 
 fesses *") ' dissensions quickly sprang up, and their 
 pastor retreated into Scotland,' — at that time a congenial 
 scene of religious discord and confusion. 'Yet even 
 here,' adds the same writer, 'he was so great a mal- 
 content, that he was committed to ward, and detained 
 a night or two in prison.' The next year (1585) finds 
 him once more in England. And the protection of his 
 powerful kinsman, Lord Burleigh, enabled him to pub- 
 lish, with impunity, several tracts and books, — the title 
 of one being suggestive of the contents of all : viz. ' On 
 Reformation without tarrying for any.' At last, in 
 
 " Nur das Geseiz kann tins die '" Hanbury, Memorials of the In- 
 Freibeit geben. (Goethe.) dependents, i. 22. 
 
II.] HARSH MEASURES OF THE STATE. 73 
 
 Northampton his rude and turbulent conduct became 
 so unbearable, that he was solemnly excommunicated 
 by the Bishop of the diocese. And then this violent 
 and undisciplined soul was actually melted into sub- 
 mission. He made his peace with the Church ; and 
 ere long was presented to a living, where he died in 
 obscurity, at an advanced age, in 1630, — leaving (says 
 a Dissenting author, with a curious cynicism) ' to the 
 Church of England the ample legacy of his shame. All 
 that was discreditable in him. Independents remit to his 
 ultimate patrons ; the good alone that has followed 
 his career, they shrink not from applauding and 
 adopting *\' 
 
 But now arose a succession of storms, conspiracies, 
 rebellions, confusions, in our country, which as Eliza- 
 beth grew older could hardly fail to have their effect 
 in hardening and embittering her character. Plots were 
 everywhere exploding beneath her feet. A murderess, 
 an adulteress, and a Papist, was the presumptive suc- 
 cessor to her throne. Terror-stricken fugitives from 
 continental massacres were crowding her dominions. 
 And the white sails of the Armada seemed already 
 to be towering in her narrow seas. Who can wonder 
 at her righteous indignation, who can seriously blame 
 her impatience, at the Puritans and Brownists, who — 
 with their incredible puerilities about cap and ring and 
 surplice and tippet — were sedulously and conscientiously 
 labouring to undermine the foundations on which her 
 house, and theirs, was built } Hence it came to pass 
 that, — not by the Church, but by the State, — in the ten 
 years between 1583 and 1593, five Independents (and, 
 be it remembered, five only) were hanged, for what then 
 
 " Hanbury, i. 24. 
 
74 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lECT. 
 
 appeared to the Judges, the Parliament, the Statesmen 
 of England, to be seditious and inflammatory language. 
 ' By law we proceed against all offenders,' — write certain 
 Puritan justices of the peace and magistrates from 
 Suffolk, in 1583, — 'we touch none that the law spareth, 
 and spare none that the law toucheth. We allow not . . 
 of the Anabaptists and their communion : we allow not 
 of Brown, the overthrower of Church and Commonwealth : 
 we abhor all these, we punish all these. And yet we 
 are christened with the odious name of Puritans '^.' 
 
 'If any person,' says Parliament in 1581, 'shall devise, 
 write, print, or set forth any book, rhyme, ballad, letter, 
 or writing, containing any false, slanderous and seditious 
 matter to the defamation of the Queen or to the stirring 
 or moving of any rebellion . . every such offence shall 
 be adjudged felony *^' It was when sent for trial by 
 such magistrates, and under such Acts of Parliament 
 as these, that the Law Courts of the realm found these 
 men guilty. And of these convictions, no less a layman 
 than Lord Bacon thus delivers his opinion, in 1592: 
 ' As for those whom we call Brownists, ... a very small 
 number of very silly and base people, here and there 
 in corners dispersed, they are now (thanks be to God !) 
 by the good remedies that have been used, suppressed 
 and worn out : so as there is scarce any news of them **.' 
 And in the same year. Sir Walter Raleigh thus ex- 
 pressed himself in Parliament : ' In my conceit, the 
 Brownists are worthy to be rooted out of the Common- 
 wealth *^' 
 
 And yet,— will it be believed 1 — the deaths of these 
 men are perpetually laid to the charge of the Bishops, 
 
 »" Strype, Annah, iii. 103. Neal, «* WorU, ii. 35: ap. Hanbury, i. 
 Puritans, i. 254. 5e_ 
 
 '" Slatutes of the Realm, vi. 336. »' Hanbury, i. 34. 
 
II.] THE FIVE INDEPENDENT MARTYRS. 75 
 
 and attributed to the intolerance of the Church of 
 England. They were ' sacrificed by a blood-guilty 
 Protestant hierarchy ^^ :' 'Thus fell these unhappy 
 gentlemen to the resentment of an angry prelate *' : ' 
 ' The ferocity of Archbishop Parker was even ex- 
 ceeded by that of Whitgift . . . His throne was the 
 chair of pestilence ; his mouth full of cursing against 
 God and his saints ^^.' 
 
 And now, who were these five men ? and what were 
 their delinquencies ? The two first that suffered were 
 Thacker and Copping, condemned, in 1583, for spreading 
 Browne's books, and for saying the Queen was perjured. 
 ' They were both sound,' says the Puritan historian, ' in 
 the doctrinal articles of the Church of England, and of 
 unblemished lives. One Wilsford, a layman, should have 
 suffered with them : but on conference with Secretary 
 Wilson, who told him the Queen's supremacy might be 
 understood only of her Majesty's civil power over ec- 
 clesiastical persons, he took the oath, and was dis- 
 charged ^^.' Thus easy was it to escape ' persecution ' 
 by a little common sense, and by listening to reason. 
 The three others who suffered death were Barrowe, 
 Greenwood, and John Penry, a Welsh clergyman. 
 These all fell victims in 1593, not to the Archbishop's 
 anger, but to the indignation of the Queen and the 
 whole country at the appearance of the scurrilous and 
 
 ™ Hanbury, i. 63. herited from former ages, infected 
 
 " Neal, i. 356. more or less all religious parties.' 
 
 ^^ Fletcher, Hi&t. of Independency, {The Church of the Civil Wars, i. 17.) 
 
 ii. 143. It is quite a relief to con- ' The Queen,' writes the latter, ' was 
 
 trast with the violence of these party not a little displeased. The Bishops 
 
 writers the calm reasonableness of [in 1565] had been disposed to a 
 
 men like Dr. Stoughton and Dr. more liberal course.' {Engl. Non- 
 
 Robert Vaughan. ' In the sixteenth conformists, p, 54,) 
 century,' says the former, ' and far ''' Neal, i. 256. 
 into the seventeenth, intolerance, in- 
 
7 6 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lECT. 
 
 blasphemous Mar-prelate tracts, in 1588. It is impos- 
 sible to give any extracts from these abominable and 
 filthy lampoons. The judgment of a contemporary 
 Puritan writer shall suffice. 'Three most grievous ac- 
 cidents did greatly astonish us, and very much darken 
 the righteousness of our cause. The first was a foolish 
 jester, who called himself Martin Mar-prelate and his 
 sons ; which, under counterfeit and apish scoffing, did 
 play the sycophant and slanderously abused many per- 
 sons of reverend place and note. This kindled a mar- 
 vellous great fire. Then did our troubles increase '".' 
 
 Now it was under the impression — though perhaps an 
 erroneous one — that Penry was the author of some of 
 these inflammatory papers, that the Privy Council issued 
 an order for his apprehension in 1590. He escaped for 
 the time into Scotland. But, three years later, he had 
 the incredible rashness to return to London, for the 
 purpose of presenting an Address to the Queen ; the 
 draft of which, found on his person, contained the fol- 
 lowing expressions : ' Madam ! you are not so much 
 an adversary to us poor men, as unto Jesus Christ and 
 the wealth of His Kingdom . . . This peace, under these 
 conditions, we cannot enjoy : and therefore, for anything 
 I can see. Queen Mary's days will be set up again, or 
 we must needs temporize . . . When any are called be- 
 fore your Council, or the Judges of the land, they will 
 not stick to say that they come not to consult whether 
 the matter be with or against the Word or not : but 
 their purpose is to take the penalty of the transgressions 
 against your laws^'^.' Now this is just what the Judges 
 of the land — with the full concurrence of Noncon- 
 
 "^ NichoUs, Plea for the Innocent (1602), p. 33 ; ap. Hanbury, i. 5. 
 °' Neal, i. 357. 
 
II.] FOR WHAT DID THEY SUFFER ? 77 
 
 formists and all men of sense — -say at the present 
 day. Indeed, is not this precisely one great part of 
 what we mean now-a-days by ' religious toleration ;' viz. 
 that the officers of the State shall not be empowered 
 to impose on men their own interpretations of the 
 'Word,' but shall act merely as civilians and admi- 
 nistrators of the laws } Such, however, was not at all 
 the mind of Penry and the Independents of those days. 
 'Her Majesty,' says he, 'hath full authority from the 
 Lord, by her royal power to establish and enact all laws, 
 both ecclesiastical and civil, among her subjects "I' 
 ' We acknowledge,' write Barrowe and Greenwood to- 
 gether in 1591, 'that the prince ought to compel all 
 his subjects to the hearing of God's Word in the public 
 exercises of the Church '^.' And yet this same Barrowe 
 is panegyrized by modern Independents, as ' one of the 
 most remarkable men that have ever engaged in reli- 
 gious controversy in the worst of times '*.' Greenwood 
 is called 'another instance of resistance to oppression 
 by a courageous and enlightened mind '".' Penry is 
 said to have been ' of great service by his talents, 
 zeal, and Christian discretion, to the cause which he 
 espoused "'.' 
 
 What, then, was that cause .' For what was it — in 
 the name of common sense — that these men contested 
 and suffered } It was not (as we have seen) for the 
 great principles of Independency, as expounded by 
 modern writers. It was for nothing in the world but 
 for the mere ' crotchet,' that the State was bound at the 
 
 ^ Declaration of Allegiance: ap. vestigated and acknowledged, as in 
 
 Hanbury, i. 79. later times.' 
 
 "^ Plain Refutation, p. 4: ap. Flet- " Hanbury, i. 61. 
 char, ii. 166. Well may this writer '' Ibid. p. 63. 
 add: ' The principles of civil and re- °° Fletcher, ii. 206. 
 ligious liberty had not then been in- 
 
78 
 
 THE INDEPEhWENTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 sword's point to establish Calvin's divine Church-system 
 (drawn from Ephesians iv. ii) on the ruins of the ex- 
 isting human one '^\ It was for the ' fixed idea,' that 
 the Queen and the government, in resisting this inter- 
 pretation of the infallible Word of God, were resisting 
 the Holy Spirit Himself, and going to perdition. It 
 was for the insane fanaticism, which led them to urge 
 the overthrow of the ecclesiastical constitution of their 
 country in language so violent and inflammatory "*, that 
 no court of justice, in such dangerous times as those 
 were, could possibly forbear to put the Act of Parliament 
 into execution. No question, then, of the slightest impor- 
 tance to any human being was here at issue. No subtle 
 and far-reaching doctrine was under dispute. No blow 
 for liberty was here being struck ; nor any single step 
 of intellectual or moral progress being gained. Whether 
 
 °' ' The Queen is governor of the 
 whole land, . . but may not make 
 any other laws for the Church of 
 Christ, than He hath left in His 
 Word. I cannot see it lawful for 
 any prince to alter the least part 
 of the judicial law of Moses.' (Bar- 
 rowe^ ap. Hanbury, i. 38.) 'Every 
 congregation of Christ ought to be 
 governed by that presbytery which 
 Christ appointed ; a pastor, teacher, 
 and elder.' (Greenwood, ap. Han- 
 bury, i. 63.) ' I have, by public 
 writing, laboured to defend and in- 
 duce in our Church that uniform 
 order of Church-regiment, which our 
 Saviour Christ hath ordained in His 
 Word to continue perpetually therein ; 
 and also, have endeavoured to seek 
 the utter ruin and overthjow of that 
 wicked hierarchy of Lord Bishops.' 
 {Penry, ap. Hanbury, i. 74.) 
 
 " ' Each of these men attack, with 
 the most extraordinary fury, (1) the 
 Episcopalian Churchmen, — with their 
 " old, written, rotten stuff . . abstracted 
 
 out of the Pope's blasphemous Mass- 
 book ; " their " stinking patchery de- 
 vised apocrypha liturgy ;" their " false 
 ecclesiastical regiment, the Kingdom 
 of the Beast;" " blasphemous wretches, 
 who give out that the heavenly order 
 and ordinances, which Christ hath 
 appointed in His Testament, are but 
 accidentals and no essential mark 
 of the Established Church." (2) The 
 Preshyterian Puritans, " the pharisees 
 of these times ; your great learned 
 preachers ; your ' good men ; ' that 
 sigh and groan for reformation, but 
 their hands with the sluggard deny 
 to work ; " " who, instead of Christ's 
 government, set up their counterfeit 
 ' discipline ' in and over all the 
 parish, making the popish church- 
 wardens and perjured questmen ' el- 
 ders ' " . . Their permanent synods 
 and councils also, not here to speak 
 of their new Dutch "classis," for 
 therein is a secret.' (Hanbury, i. 
 38, &c. &c. ; Strype, Whitgifl, bk. 
 iv. ch. xi.) 
 
II.] 'MARTYRDOM' DEFINED. 79 
 
 Calvin's ' pastors and doctors' were divine or human, is 
 a question which has always stirred a very languid 
 interest among the mass of mankind. And the only 
 possible use to which these five executions could be 
 put, was that to which they were actually put ; viz. to 
 remind statesmen that banishment were a much more 
 humane and reasonable way of dealing with obstinate 
 fanatics, than the infliction of death ; and to accelerate 
 the transition of the Church of England, from the Eras- 
 tianism which had at first identified her with the State, 
 towards the present intimate alliance with the State, — 
 an alliance which leaves to both sides their necessary 
 ' independence' of each other. 
 
 If it is in this sense that the modern Independents 
 claim Barrowe and Penry as their martyrs, be it so. 
 There are few Churchmen, in these days, who will with- 
 hold their sympathy from any bona fide advance made 
 in the direction of liberty, or will stint their admiration 
 of any men that can — in any reasonable sense — be called 
 martyrs to a principle. But then the 'principle' must 
 be one that is in advance of the martyr's own times ; 
 some truth for which the world was waiting, but which 
 had not yet dawned upon the majority of mankind. It 
 must not be some notion quite behind the average in- 
 telligence of the times. Would he be accounted a 
 ' martyr of science ' who sulit'ered now-a-days for the 
 Ptolemaic astronomy, or who died for the old world's 
 belief in the philosopher's stone .'' 
 
 Any way, it is certain that after the death of these 
 five Independents, no more executions took place. 
 Those who could not bring themselves to obey the law 
 of the land, and who refused to take the ordinary and 
 legal methods for getting bad laws amended, were 
 simply henceforth bidden to depart from the land. And 
 
8o TBE INDEPENDENTS. [leCT. 
 
 SO an exodus of Brownists and other separatists took 
 place; at first directed (under Robinson, Ainsworth, 
 and others) to the friendly shores of Calvinistic Holland ; 
 but afterwards to the, as yet, infant colonies of North 
 America. There the field was free, and the atmosphere 
 full of fresh and healthy life. Virginia had been co- 
 lonized thirteen years before, by a London company, 
 in 1607; New York, in 1614, by the Dutch; and now 
 New Plymouth (a little farther north) was settled by 
 these adventurers, under the auspices of a Plymouth 
 trading company, in 1620. 
 
 This Puritan migration to America was in every 
 respect an important epoch, both in the religious and 
 political history of our English race. It need not indeed 
 be supposed that the bravery displayed, or the hardships 
 undergone by the ' Pilgrim Fathers,' were greater than 
 those which accompanied every attempt, in the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, to colonize the rude and 
 hostile shores of the new world. Nor must it be ima- 
 gined that this emigration was the only one, of which 
 the mainspring was supplied by the strong religious 
 passions of those times. In the Spanish settlements of 
 Mexico and Florida, Jesuitism had long before been 
 extending its empire. In Canada, the French Huguenots 
 had already planted their country's flag, which ere long 
 threatened to float supreme over the whole new world, 
 and to secure the ultimate supremacy of the Latin over 
 the German race. 
 
 But two things were at this moment determining the 
 matter otherwise : (i) the curious fact that here, on the 
 opposite shore which mirrored the western face of Europe, 
 the central post of advantage had been occupied by 
 England, — while France lay northward of our settlements 
 and Spain southward. So that unawares, and on a vast 
 
II.] THE PURITANS IN AMERICA. 8 1 
 
 scale, Nelson's well-known tactics had here been anti- 
 cipated. The Franco-Spanish line had been cut in two ; 
 and between them was placed that vigorous English 
 race, which was not slow to perceive and employ the 
 golden opportunity, (a) But besides this, the natural 
 vigour of the English colony was now reinforced in an 
 unexpected way, by the sudden influx of a new and 
 most important element — Puritanism. Religious into- 
 lerance, three hundred years ago, seems to have been 
 used by Him, who 'out of evil still produceth good,' 
 much in the same way as the discovery of gold in various 
 quarters of the world has been so marvellously em- 
 ployed, to people the waste places' of the earth, in 
 later years. The Babel of excessive European con- 
 centration needed some great confusion to shatter it. 
 And now, just when the old world was about to be 
 counterbalanced by a new one, the character of that new 
 world was at the critical moment finally determined by 
 the influx of that very earnest, moral, well-to-do middle- 
 class which was ere long to be victorious in the deadly 
 struggle for political supremacy at home. There is little 
 doubt, therefore, that in this sense the arrival of the 
 ' Mayflower,' bearing the first-fruits of English Puri- 
 tanism, in 1620, really was a crisis in the history of 
 the world. 
 
 But now, on the smaller and ecclesiastical scale, it 
 becomes highly interesting to observe what precisely, 
 under these new conditions of perfect liberty, Puritanism 
 will do. It can here, of course, display itself fearlessly 
 in its true colours. And the suspicion that, as an Eccle- 
 siastical system, it was at this time nothing whatever 
 but an attempt to establish, at the sword's point and 
 on principles of intolerance, Calvin's idea of a Biblical 
 Church, will now easily receive disproof or confirmation. 
 
 G 
 
82 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lECT. 
 
 In May, 1 631, at the first court of election in Massachu- 
 setts, it was ordered that no person should be admitted 
 to the rights of a citizen who was not previously admitted 
 as a member of one of the churches'". In 1635, the 
 celebrated Sir Harry Vane came out, and was elected 
 governor : but even his influence was not sufficient to 
 prevent Mrs. Hutchinson and an ultra-Calvinist party 
 from being banished from the state ^. Towards the end 
 of the same year, Mr. Roger Williams, a Baptist minister 
 and afterwards founder of the State of Rhode Island, 
 ' having broached and divulged divers new and dangerous 
 opinions,' was expelled from the colony^. In 1650, a 
 code of laws was drawn up for Connecticut. It began 
 thus : ' Whosoever shall worship any other God but the 
 Lord, shall be put to death.' Then followed several 
 other enactments, borrowed word for word from the Law 
 of Moses. Blasphemy, adultery, sorcery, theft, disobe- 
 dience to parents, were punished with death, — because 
 Leviticus had so punished them : and people were forced 
 by fines to attend divine serviced In July, 165 1, a 
 Mr. Obadiah Holmes, a Baptist, was ' well whipt ;' and 
 that so barbarously, that for some weeks he could only 
 take rest upon his knees and elbows*. In 1656, attention 
 was turned to the Quakers : and by a law of Massachu- 
 setts, passed on the 14th of October in that year, it was 
 enacted that any Quaker landing on the coast should be 
 seized and whipped ; then imprisoned with hard labour ; 
 and finally expelled from the colony^. Nor were these 
 laws suffered to remain a dead letter. Three Quaker 
 
 °' ¥Yos,t, Hist.of the United Slates, ^ Cramp, Sa^^i'si JJw/. p. 415. 
 
 p. 66, cf. 76. ' The very men who ^ De Tocqueville, Dimocratie en 
 
 had fled from England to gain an Amerique, i. 62. 
 
 asylum for religious freedom, were '■ Cramp, p. 409 : he adds, ' Bonds 
 
 refusing the slightest toleration to and imprisonment awaited all Bap- 
 
 any opinions but their own.' tists in New England.' 
 
 ' Ibid. p. 68. 5 De Tocqueville, i, 64. 
 
II.] INDEPENDENT INTOLERANCE. 83 
 
 women were stripped to the waist, amid frost and snow, 
 and flogged through eleven towns ^. Four persons were 
 hanged together, a drummer preventing any of their 
 dying words from being heard. The very captains of 
 vessels were flogged for bringing Quakers into port. 
 And every Roman Catholic priest who returned, after 
 one expulsion, was put to death'. In short, it may be 
 truly said, 'the first Independents adhered to the doc- 
 trine, that it was the official duty of princes and magi- 
 strates to suppress and root out all false ministries, 
 voluntary religions, and counterfeit worship of God ' ;' 
 and that the Presbyterians, who at home ' pleaded with 
 tears for liberty of conscience, denied it to the first Ana- 
 baptist whom they met ^.' 
 
 But then, what becomes of these men's ' martyrdoms 1 ' 
 what becomes of their ' independency .'' ' For, strange 
 to say, ' it was the Congregationalist clergy by whom the 
 magistrates in New England were instigated-'":' just as 
 in England under the Commonwealth, when the Quakers 
 were whipped, imprisoned, and pilloried by thousands, 
 ' their persecutors were for the most part Presbyterians 
 and Independents^^ ^ Are we not driven of necessity to 
 the conclusion, that whatever there was of vigorous life 
 and progress, in the great Puritan movement of the six- 
 
 ° George Fox, "Journal, (Armi- by Queen Elizabeth's statesmen in 
 
 stead's edition,) i, 3^9; ii. 210. persecuting himself, had he lived at 
 
 '' De Tocqueville, i. 64. that day. ' It was natural that such 
 
 * Skeats, Free Churches, p. 34. onslaughts as were made upon its 
 
 ° Ihid. p. 21. order by the Quakers, should be met 
 
 *° Cramp, p. 411. with a determined resistance. Mrs. 
 
 " Skeats, p. 70. It is almost Hutchinson's antinomian virulence 
 
 startling to find, in the pages of an and activity were such as no Church, 
 
 intelligent Independent historian in having any pretension to discipline, 
 
 the year 1862, this intolerance of his could tolerate ... It belongs to the 
 
 co-religionists in the seventeenth cen- magistrates to coerce such people ; 
 
 tury condoned, and even praised, on and to make the coercion strong.' 
 
 precisely the same grounds as those (Vaughan, English Nonconformity, 
 
 which would have been maintained pp. 141, 146.) 
 
 . G 2 
 
THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 teenth and seventeeth centuries — and unquestionably 
 there was abundance of both — was of a political ^^ and 
 not at all of a religious or ecclesiastical character ? Are 
 we not debarred from imagining that Calvinism was, in 
 any modern view of the matter, an advance on the 
 Catholicism of the Church of England ? And must we 
 not acknowledge, that to recommend ' Independency ' to 
 modern England, because 300 years ago it happened to 
 be mixed up with a great forward movement of political 
 freedom, — a freedom whose foundations were laid long 
 ago by Medieval Catholics, and to which whatever 
 sound and lasting improvements were made in the seven- 
 teenth century, were made by a Long Parliament of 
 Churchmen ^^, — would be indeed an incredible culmina- 
 tion of confusion and folly ? 
 
 Politically, indeed, the plot was now rapidly thicken- 
 ing. The pedantic James I., with his foolish ' king-craft,' 
 had passed away ; and was succeeded by a weak, vacil- 
 lating, uxorious, and romantic successor, — who, desiring 
 to be an Emperor, behaved like an ecclesiastic, and who 
 allowed the chambers of his French queen to become the 
 haunt of Jesuits and foreigners, burning with an eager 
 desire to render England as subservient and docile, both 
 in church and state, as France and Spain had then 
 become. How could such a king, surrounded by a cloud 
 of flatterers, and served by a Strafford and a Laud, pos- 
 sibly fail — except by a miracle — to bring the England 
 
 '- See De Tocqueville, i. 65. ' Side states rest, . . the intervention of the 
 
 by side with this penal legislation, people in public affairs, free discus- 
 
 so strongly coloured by the narrow sion of taxation, responsibility of 
 
 spirit of sectarianism, we find placed, ministers, personal liberty, and trial 
 
 and as it were intertwined therewith, by jury, — all are there established, as 
 
 a body of political enactments which facts beyond dispute.' 
 — drawn two centuries ago — seem " Skeats, p- 49- 'The House of 
 
 even now to be in advance of the Commons which declared war against 
 
 liberality of our own age. The ge- Charles was a House of Churchmen 
 
 neral principles on which modem only.' 
 
11.] THE GREAT REBELLION. 85 
 
 of the seventeenth century, or of any century, to rebel- 
 Hon ? And' once the barriers broken, and civil war 
 declared, of course every private and sectarian griev- 
 ance, every wild and preposterous theory, every personal 
 and party hatred, instantly rushed to the easy opening 
 and began to break down the embankments of society in 
 every direction. 
 
 The story is too well known to need repeating here. 
 Suffice it to call attention to two important facts : 
 (i) that politically, the Great Rebellion was, in the long 
 run, a great success ; (2) that ecclesiastically it was, from 
 beginning to end, a complete and even ludicrous failure. 
 Politically, — it issued (in spite of occasional reactions) 
 in that supremacy of the middle-class, which has lasted 
 down to our own day, and which (having done its work) 
 is about to be superseded by a more direct participation 
 of the industrial classes in the affairs of the country. It 
 secured that ordered freedom of the state, which — sub- 
 mitting to the checks and delays of parliamentary 
 government, — is alone stable, reasonable, and popular. 
 And it averted that most menacing danger, — be- 
 queathed to England by the destruction of the feudal 
 nobility in the Wars of the Roses, and by the downfall 
 of the great independent abbots and bishops at the 
 Reformation, — viz. a possible combination of all the 
 powers of the state in one hand, ruling personally, not 
 through the old English institutions of parliaments and 
 common law courts, but through mere committees of 
 Privy Council, the ' Star Chamber ' Committee for mat- 
 ters of state and the (so-called) 'High Commission' for 
 ecclesiastical affairs. For these most happy results, 
 every Englishman — Churchman and Dissenter alike— r- 
 now gives hearty thanks to God ; and all are disposed to 
 recognize, and to assign their full value to, the part borne 
 
86 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 by either side in reaching at last the peaceful settlement 
 of 1688. 
 
 Ecclesiastically, — on the other hand, — I do not 
 scruple to say, that the results obtained by the tri- 
 umphant Puritanism of the Commonwealth were an- 
 archy and chaos to begin with, and a legacy of 
 dissension and weakness ever since, which have de- 
 layed the spread of the Gospel among the heathen ^'', 
 have given endless occasion to the enemies of the 
 Reformation to blaspheme, have divided English Chris- 
 tendom into a network of feeble and partitioned sects 
 — the well-known breeding-places of many unchristian 
 vices, — and have offered a hopeful opportunity for re- 
 turn to that greatest of all enemies to human progress, 
 liberty, and veracity, the Jesuitized Neo-Romanism of 
 these modern days. The only ecclesiastical benefit for 
 which England has to thank the Independents of the 
 Commonwealth is this, — that they delivered us from 
 the then imminent danger of a Presbyterian establish- 
 ment, — a thing which, in those days, meant the nar- 
 rowest and most inquisitive clerical intolerance, a 
 gloomy Calvinism in doctrine, Sabbatarianism in prac- 
 tice,- and a degrading mental slavery to the mere letter 
 of the Bible. From all these things many of the great 
 
 " ' The Baptist Congregation in India, as elsewhere, there are, and 
 
 tliis neighbourhood [at Monghyr, on probably ever will be, divisions and 
 
 the Ganges] was first collected by discords such as sadly hinder the 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain, an excellent man work of the Gospel. They are often 
 
 and a most active missionary, — but such as cause shame to all sensitive 
 
 of very bitter sectarian principles, Christians.' (Sir Bartle Frere, Essay 
 
 and entertaining an enmity to the in The Church and the Age, p. 377-) 
 
 Church of England almost beyond ' If you ever hope for one gleam of 
 
 belief. He used to say that Martyn, success in India, you must either 
 
 Corrie, and Thomason were greater settle your differences at home, or 
 
 enemies to God, and did more harm draw lots for the possession of the 
 
 to his cause, than fifty stupid, drunken field.' {Frazer's Magazine, Dec. 1871, 
 
 "padres."' (Bishop Heber's Indian p. 720.) 
 Journal, chap. x. vol. i. 135.) 'In 
 
II.] 
 
 AN INDEPENDENT 'ESTABLISHMENT: 
 
 87 
 
 Independents of the seventeenth century, although strict 
 Calvinists in creed, were free. Yet the marvellous fact 
 must in all fairness be added, that nothing else but 
 the death of Cromwell (in 1658) seems to have pre- 
 vented an Independent Church-establishment being set 
 up in this country, — with toleration indeed for others 
 who agreed with them in doctrine ; but for those who 
 disagreed, not only incapacity to receive any public 
 maintenance, but even disqualification for holding any 
 civil office'^. 
 
 However, the common misfortunes which fell upon 
 both these religious bodies after the Restoration in 
 
 '^ This astonishing fact stands on 
 the page of history, and cannot be 
 cancelled. ' In 1657, Cromwell gave 
 his consent to a petition from Par- 
 liament that the Polity of the Inde- 
 pendents might become the Church 
 Polity of the nation. Toleration, 
 however, was to be granted to those 
 who differed from them in worship 
 and discipline, — but who agreed in 
 doctrine. All others were to be 
 without " protection," disqualified for 
 holding any " civil " office, and " in- 
 capable of receiving the public main- 
 tenance appointed for the ministry." 
 Two hundred delegates met at the 
 Savoy, under the presidency of " the 
 Dissenting brethren," and made a 
 " Declaration of their Faith and 
 order" . . But Cromwell passed away, 
 and with him all hopes of Inde- 
 pendency becoming the established 
 religion of England.' (Hunt, Reli- 
 gions Thought in England, i. 216.) 
 * Whatever might have been the 
 ulterior design — whether, unhappily, 
 a " national " establishment of re- 
 ligion, or not — of those divines con- 
 cerned in the main subject of this 
 chapter; it was probably frustrated 
 by the intervention alone of an over- 
 ruling Providence. By what party 
 chiefly the measure was projected or 
 
 promoted, does not appear ; but we 
 find that on May 25, 1657, ^^^ Vio- 
 tector gave his " consent " to " the 
 humble petition," &c. The eleventh 
 clause contains these words : " That 
 the true Protestant Christian reli- 
 gion, as it is contained in the Holy 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Tes- 
 tament, and no other, be held forth 
 and asserted for the public profes- 
 sion of these nations ; and that a 
 Confession of Faith, to be agreed by 
 your Highness atid the Parliament, ac- 
 cording to the rule and warrant of 
 the Scriptures, be asserted, held 
 forth, and recommended to the 
 people of these nations; that none 
 may be suffered . . to revile or re- 
 proach the Confession of Faith so 
 agreed on ; and such as possess faith 
 in [the Trinity, &c ] shall be pro- 
 tected from all injury and molesta- 
 tion in the profession of the faith 
 and exercise of their religion ; . . so 
 that this liberty be not extended to 
 Popery or Prelacy. . . Such persons 
 who agree not in matters of faith 
 with the public profession aforesaid, 
 shall not be capable of receiving the 
 public maintenance appoiyited for the 
 Ministry." ' (Hanbury, Memorials of 
 the Independents, iii. 515.) 
 
THE INDEPENDENTS. [leCT. 
 
 1660, and which too amply avenged their misuse of 
 power during the Rebellion, at length drew them nearer 
 together and necessitated a temporary alliance. For 
 so great was now the national hatred and suspicion of 
 all Puritans and ' Sectaries,' — especially when Venner's 
 insurrection^^, in 1661, had suddenly opened the eyes 
 of the government to the mines that Fifth-monarchy- 
 men, and other wild fanatics, were digging everywhere 
 beneath their feet, — that for the next ten years the 
 king and Parliament vied with each other in inventing 
 ever new schemes for getting rid of Dissent, if it were 
 possible, altogether. This attempt began in 1661, with 
 the passing of the 'Corporation Act:' in 1662, came 
 the Act of Uniformity: in 1663, the Conventicle Act, 
 — forbidding any religious assemblies of more than five 
 persons, besides the master of the house and his family : 
 in 1665, this was followed by the 'Five-mile Act,' — for- 
 bidding Dissenting ministers, who refused to declare it 
 wrong to take up arms against the King, to approach 
 any important town nearer than five miles: in 1670, 
 the Conventicle Act was reinforced : and, in 1673, the 
 Test Act was passed. 
 
 The meaning of all this is evident at a glance. It 
 is simply a violent national reaction, extending through 
 thirteen years, from that Puritan domination, from which 
 the country had suffered so fearfully in the previous 
 
 ^^ Burnet, Own Times^ p. 104. Lin- remained to withstand them in Eng- 
 
 gard, ix. 12. Baxter, Autobiog. p. land, but Presbyterian priests, cor- 
 
 301. The horror and terror inspired rupt lawyers, and a superannuated 
 
 by these fanatics may perhaps be Parliament . . And when the saints 
 
 pardoned, when it is understood had firmly established this in Eng- 
 
 that, even under the Commonwealth, land they would wage war with the 
 
 ' they believed that . . the saints were enemies of Christ, and the oppressors 
 
 to bring things as near as might be, of His people, over the whole earth.' 
 
 before Christ's coming, to what they {Life and Opinions of J. Rogers, a 
 
 shall be when He is come . . Nothing Fifth Monarchy-man, p. 40.) 
 
"•] 
 
 NATIONAL RECOIL IN 1660. 
 
 89 
 
 decade. It was yet one more determined effort to carry 
 out, — in defiance both of fact and reason, — the original 
 Lutheran (or Erastian) theory that the State and the 
 Church are but two aspects of one body-politic ; a 
 theory, from which it would seem to follow that seces- 
 sion from the National Church was as much an act 
 of 'treason,' as secession from the State. The attempt 
 to impose this theory upon England had been made 
 under Henry VIII. and Edward VI., by the direct 
 despotic action of the Crown : under Elizabeth and the 
 Stuarts, by the intervention of Royal Commissioners : 
 under the Commonwealth, first by the Presbyterian 
 ' Assembly,' and then by the Independent ' Parlia- 
 ment.' And this last method was now pursued 
 by Charles II. But a theory which demands, on 
 the one hand, that all men shall be compelled by 
 the police to come to church ''' ; and on the other, 
 that the Church shall consent to take its tone and its 
 commission from the world to whom it is sent, in- 
 stead of taking it from Jesus Christ, by whom it is 
 
 " Yet even this — incredible as it 
 may seem — was part of the pro- 
 gramme of the ' Independent ' Estab- 
 lishment, which was all but set on 
 foot in the year of Cromwell's death, 
 1658. ' Further, on June 26th, the 
 Protector gave his consent also to a 
 stringent and rigid " Act for the 
 better observance of the Lord's 
 Day : " in which is this clause, — 
 " And to tlie end no profane licen- 
 tious person or persons whatsoever, 
 may in the least measure receive 
 encouragement to neglect the per- 
 formance of religious and holy duties 
 on the said day . . every person and 
 persons shall — having no reasonable 
 excuse for their absence, to be al- 
 lowed by a Justice of the Peace of 
 the county where the offence shall 
 be committed — upon every Lord's 
 
 Day diligently resort to some church 
 or chapel where the true worship 
 and service of God is exercised, or 
 shall be present at some other con- 
 venient meeting-place of Christians, 
 not differing in faith from the public 
 profession of the nation, as it is ex- 
 pressed in ' the humble petition 
 and advice of the Parliament,' &c. 
 . . And every such person or persons 
 so offending shall, for every such 
 offence, being thereof convicted, for- 
 feit the sum of two shillings and six- 
 pence."' (Hanbury, Memorials, iii. 
 516.) Well may the satirist exclaim, 
 ' For saints may do the same things 
 by 
 The spirit, in sincerity, 
 Which other men are tempted to, 
 And at the devil's instance do I ' 
 (Butler's Hudibras, ii. 2. 335.) 
 
90 THE INDEPENDENTS. [leCT. 
 
 sent, is self-condemned, and must fall by its own want 
 of consonance with the Gospel and with the facts of 
 the modern age. We may indeed venture to doubt 
 whether there be any essential difference, or anything 
 more at issue than a question of scale and magnitude, 
 between this theory and that of the Independents 
 themselves. For the one determines on a very small 
 scale that a certain community is a Church, and appoints 
 teachers that shall echo its own views, and shall submit 
 to its own control ; while the other does precisely the 
 same thing on a very large scale. But still, where men 
 have acquired in any degree the habit of personal 
 freedom, it is not by petty persecutions that they can 
 be induced to conform to ideas which — whether in kind 
 or only in degree — are not really consonant to their 
 character or to their habits of life. 
 
 A far greater danger arises to such persons when a 
 policy of a precisely opposite kind is pursued towards 
 them. The moment of their greatest peril is the moment 
 of their entire and assured success : just as the traveller, 
 in the fable, was overcome by the warm and smiling sun- 
 shine ; when the bluff winds of adversity had attempted 
 him in vain. So it was with the Independents. The 
 Act of Toleration was passed in 1689: and thereby 
 every religious body gained a recognized legal position, 
 — except the dreaded Romanists and the hated Unita- 
 rians ^^. Nay, even serious attempts were made at a 
 comprehension of the Dissenters within the National 
 Establishment. Independents, no less than Presby- 
 
 18 'Provided always, that neither ever; or to any person that shall 
 
 this Act, nor any clause herein con- deny in his preaching or wi iUng the 
 
 tained, shall extend . . to give any doctrine of the blessed Trinity.' {Act 
 
 ease, benefit, or advantage to any 0/ ro/era/t'ore, clause 17.) 
 papist or popish recusant whatso- 
 
II.] ATTEMPTS AT ' comprehension: 91 
 
 terians, displayed in those days no reluctance to come 
 in, and to receive their share, (as they had already 
 done under the Commonwealth,) of the tithes and par- 
 sonages of the Church i'. And when at last these re- 
 peated attempts were foiled by the strong opposition of 
 the Clergy in the Lower House of Convocation, still the 
 bounty of the State was accepted under another name, 
 in 1723^°. Many able men, — like Joseph Butler, after- 
 wards Bishop of Durham ; and Seeker, a future Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, — left Dissent for the Church of 
 England. The number of Dissenters in the whole coun- 
 try sank to about 1 10,000 ^^ And it seemed not unlikely 
 that, in another fifty years, the whole Separatist move- 
 ment would have spent its force, and English Dissent 
 have become a thing of the past. 
 
 What then happened, to give affairs the quite new 
 direction they have since taken .■' What was the cause 
 of the new life and prosperity, which, within the present 
 century, have made Dissent so strong a power, for good 
 or evil, in this country } The question may be answered 
 in one word : It was the great Wesleyan revival of per- 
 sonal religion, — a revival which began within the Church 
 
 " 'It was at that time [1688] fully lies.' (Skeats, Hutory of the Free 
 
 intended to bring about a compre- Churches, p, 98.) 
 
 hension of the Presbyterians and the ^° In ifipo.Williamlll. had given a 
 
 Independents in the Established Royal grant (the ' Regium Donum ') 
 
 Church ; and it was known that to the Presbyterians in Ireland ; and 
 
 these two principal sections of the now a similar ' Regium Donum,' of 
 
 Nonconformist body, provided tliat £1000 ayear, was given byGeorge I., 
 
 the Church services were modified, — nominally for the relief of min- 
 
 were willing (for the sake of Chris- isters' widows. (Skeats, p. 319.) 
 
 tian unity, and what was considered ^' Ihid. p. 151, quoting a Return 
 
 to be the strength of the Protestant made to government ; giving the 
 
 interest) wholly to unite with the Nonconformists in the province of 
 
 Church. In such an event, the tests Canterbury as 93,151 : and in the 
 
 which it was proposed to retain province of York, as 15,525: total 
 
 would bear only upon the Baptists, 108,676. 
 the Quakers, and the Roman Catho- 
 
92 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 of England ; but which the leaders of the Church at 
 that time had not the fidelity or the skill to know how 
 to employ for her advantage : and so they thrust it out 
 from among them, to swell the ranks and revive the 
 dying enthusiasm of Dissent. This curious chapter of 
 Church history, however, will form the subject of a 
 future Lecture. And all that remains for us to do now 
 is to ask, in conclusion, what are the special tenets of 
 the Independents : and whether they are such as, in 
 these days, to justify a continued separation from the 
 Church of England for their sakes } 
 
 III. The leading theory of the Independents is this : 
 once grant the Calvinistic hypothesis, — that the Church 
 is, in its highest sense, no organized, visible thing at 
 all, but a mere spiritual body consisting of God's elect 
 scattered throughout the world, — and it seems logically 
 to follow, that high organization is a mischief rather than 
 an advantage. To make the Church a strong and well- 
 ordered power in the world, appears on the face of it to 
 •be a procedure at variance with the will of Christ ; and 
 to necessitate sacrifices, — especially sacrifices of disci- 
 pline^^,— such as no worldly advantages (even were they 
 permissible) could possibly counterbalance. Upon this 
 axiom are built the three main tenets which characterize 
 the Independent body, viz. : 
 
 (i) That in point of organization, the line must be 
 drawn at ' the congregation.' All larger and grander 
 schemes than that are wrong. Each separate and 
 
 ''■''■ This notion was clearly stated pline. Ecclesiastical discipline and 
 
 by Dr. Stoiighton, in his reply (No. voluntaiyism go together.' It is 
 
 .^.135) before the Select Committee obvious that he means 'discipline' 
 
 of the House of Lords on ' University in the strict, or Puritan, sense of the 
 
 Tests,' 1871 : 'My reading of the word. But that is distinctly KoMhe 
 
 history of England is this, — if you Churchman's interpretation of the 
 
 have a Church Establishment, you word, 
 cannot carry out ecclesiastical disci- 
 
II.] TENETS OF THE INDEPENDENTS. 93 
 
 isolated congregation therefore is, so to speak, a sovereign 
 state. It enjoys an absolute and uncontrolled right to 
 settle its own doctrine, ritual, and discipline ^^. And the 
 method by which this congregational right is exercised 
 is simply by the vote of a majority. 
 
 (2) That while thus repudiating every sort of ecclesi- 
 astical control, a congregation is of course under still 
 more stringent obligation to reject every relic of secular 
 control -*, and — above all things — to liberate both itself 
 and others from the bondage (for so it, oddly enough, 
 appears to them,) of a National Establishment and 
 National Endowments. No religious body organized on 
 so large a scale as that of a National Church is held to 
 be safe from the danger of priestcraft. No acceptance 
 of public money is held — at least, by modern Inde- 
 pendents—to be compatible with that severe purity of 
 discipline, which is thought to be a Church's foremost 
 duty to her Lord. The voluntary system, therefore, — 
 that is, the financial support of such organization as is 
 permissible, by payments at the pleasure of the laity 
 out of their private property, — is the only safe and 
 allowable method of finance. 
 
 (3) That it is not enough to maintain this loose and 
 curious system only as a matter of occasional expedi- 
 ency, or to resort to it as an experiment or as a human 
 
 ^' See ' Declaration of the Faith, that the New Testament authorizes 
 
 Church Order, and Discipline of the every Christian Church to elect its 
 
 Congregational or Independent Dis- own officers, to manage all its own 
 
 senters." (Congregational Vear-Book affairs, and to stand independent of 
 
 for l87I,p. xvii.) Art. I.: 'The Con- and irresponsible to all authority, — 
 
 gregational Churches hold it to saving that only of . . the Lord Jesus 
 
 be the will of Christ that true be- Christ.' 
 
 lievers should voluntarily assemble ^' ' They believe that the power of 
 
 together to observe religious ordin- a Christian Church is purely spiritual, 
 
 ances, &c., and that such a society of and should in no way be corrupted 
 
 believers .. is properly a Christian by union with temporal or civil 
 
 Church.' Art. III. : ' They believe power." (Ibid. Art. IX.) 
 
94 THE INDEPENDENTS.- [leCT. 
 
 contrivance that may be altered or amended. No : it 
 is seriously recommended to us, as a matter of awful 
 and positive obligation. It is a divine, and not a human, 
 system ^". Submission to it is submission to the will of 
 Christ : rejection of it is rejection of the command of 
 Christ. Whereas every other system, every larger hier- 
 archy, every wider and less rudimentary organization, are 
 human and not divine, — systems of man's invention that 
 dare at their peril to compete with the system established 
 by the Most High. 
 
 Now it is on these three pillars that the whole 
 structure of Congregationalism (or Independency) stands. 
 And it is obvious at the first glance, that we have here 
 the very quintessence of Dissent ; that precisely what 
 the Church used to call ' separation,' and the ' sin of 
 schism,' is here elevated into a normal and satisfactory 
 condition of things ; and that the Independents are 
 (as they themselves express it) ' Dissenters, not by the 
 stress of circumstances, but of principles ^''.' Such ' prin- 
 ciples,' then, demand from us the most careful and 
 thorough examination. For, if true, they overset the 
 whole existing organization of Christendom. They 
 convict the vast majority of the Christian Churches of 
 a gross misconception as to what ' a Church' was meant 
 to be. They open to us the gloomy vista of fifteen 
 hundred years of sad disobedience to the plain words 
 of Jesus Christ, and of abandonment — so far as polity 
 is concerned — by that Holy Spirit which should lead 
 men into truth ; until, at last, the happy day dawned 
 when Robert Browne arose to set things right. But 
 
 3 . q-j^g Congregational Churches Preamble.) ' The divine institution 
 
 . . hold the following doctrines as of of Congregational Independence.' 
 
 Divine authority, and as the founda- (Fletcher. Hist, oflndep. ii. 29.) 
 tion of Christian faith and prac- ^^ Cyclopcedia of Religious Deiiomi- 
 
 tice.' (Congreg. Vear-Book for 1871, nations, p. 193. 
 
II.] THEIR TENETS ANTIQUATED. 95 
 
 these results are so extraordinary and paradoxical, 
 that a Christian man may be justified, I suppose, in 
 feeling some hesitation and doubt about them ; and 
 may at least claim to institute an honest and searching 
 criticism of these trenchant maxims, when they are 
 submitted to his private judgment for acceptance, as 
 marking the highest level which modern thought has 
 yet attained, — or, perhaps, can ever attain, — on the sub- 
 ject of Ecclesiastical Polity. 
 
 And what if it should appear, on a very little 
 examination, that every one of these three positions 
 has — like some mediaeval fortress — not by assault or 
 by the stress of conflict, but simply by the march of 
 events, the growth of experience, and the progress of 
 modern intelligence, been left far behind the times, 
 been rendered for practical purposes untenable, and 
 become hopelessly obsolete and antiquated. 
 
 (i) Take the first of these three much-prized principles 
 — the right of each separate congregation, worshipping 
 together in the same building, to arrange, by a majority 
 of lay votes, its doctrine, ritual, and discipline, according 
 to its own views of duty, from time to time. This 
 appears indeed a tempting bait. This seems a certain 
 remedy against jealousy and discord. This is, surely, 
 a better security for the rights of the laity, than a 
 system which attempts the same thing through lay- 
 patrons, lay-churchwardens, and the compulsory obe- 
 dience of the clergy — not indeed to arbitrary lay volition 
 — but to fiixed laws 2^, drawn up by the Church in the 
 
 " Subjection to laws — which are The true condition of Dissenting 
 
 impersonal and impartial — has al- ministers, in this respect, is well 
 
 ways been held by Englishmen to known to all those who have any 
 
 constitute ' freedom.' Subjection to acquaintance with the subject. It 
 
 volition has always hitherto been is fairly acknowledged in the foUow- 
 
 held by them to mean 'slavery.' ing passage from a Dissenting writer: 
 
g6 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 first instance, and then sanctioned and enforced by a 
 lay Parliament. How truly (it seems at first sight) may 
 such congregations assume to themselves the title of 
 ' Free Churches ! ' 
 
 Yet wait a while. Look a little deeper. To whom, 
 we ask, does all this freedom and independence belong } 
 Not in the least, it appears, to the 'congregation' who 
 worship together, after all. They have, as such, no 
 voice, no power, no freedom of any kind. It is only 
 to a select and privileged part of the congregation 
 that the whole power belongs. It is these, the so-called 
 ' Church-members,' who alone manage the affairs of the 
 Church, arrange the ritual, settle the doctrine, dispose 
 of the finances, appoint and dismiss the pastor. It is 
 an oligarchy, then, after all ; and not a ' religious re- 
 public' It is a close body ; and not an open one. And 
 what is more, it is a body which decides, without appeal, 
 on all admissions within its own circle ; and fixes, 
 without any constitutional checks whatever, the con- 
 ditions and qualifications of membership. But how can 
 institutions organized after this fashion arrogate to 
 themselves the peculiar title of 'free churches.'" How 
 can they claim, — while they avowedly reduce the ruling 
 powers of the pastor to insignificance, and leave the 
 mass of the seat-holders without any representation 
 whatever, — to make singular provision for the inde- 
 pendence of the congregation .'' It is only an inter- 
 mediate body, after all, a sort of middle-class (as it were) 
 
 — ' In point of strict law, nothing About half the present number of 
 
 can be more insecure than the posi- Baptist pastors, e.g., have held their 
 
 tion of the Congregational minister, posts for less than five years. {Reli- 
 
 lie is, at most, only tenant at will f;ious Republics, p. 27.) See also Rev. 
 
 to the trustees. . . The average length Brewin Grant, The Dissenting World: 
 
 of Congregational pastorates is com- an Autobiography, p. 217 ; and Mait- 
 
 monlyset down at a very low figure.' land, Voluntary System, p. 283. 
 
II.] WANT OF FREEDOM IN THE ' FREE CHURCHES: 97 
 
 in the congregation, which has assumed to itself the 
 powers and attributes of the whole body of worship- 
 pers. What is this, but a most imperfect conception 
 of liberty, — a conception which was much in vogue 
 half a century ago ; but which satisfies no one now. 
 For higher and larger views of polity are dawning on 
 mankind; and the well-to-do trading classes, which 
 seized the sceptre at the Great Rebellion, have been 
 summoned to take cognisance of a grander and nobler 
 idea than that of a plutocracy, or of the divine right of 
 capital and private property to do all that it will with 
 its own. Yet such is, in few words, the true meaning 
 of the boasted ' Voluntary system.' Such, and no more, 
 is the boasted freedom of the ' free churches.' 
 
 But let us look a little closer still. Suppose any 
 member of the mere congregation desire to obtain 
 admission to the inner and more privileged circle, what 
 is required of him } He is first of all reminded that 
 the Church-body consists of those persons alone who 
 can 'give evidence to each other of their being Chris- 
 tians ^V And he accordingly must give evidence. He 
 must receive a visit from two or three of the deacons, 
 and, perhaps, the pastor of the flock ; and must submit 
 to the ordeal of being examined by them as to his 
 spiritual condition ^l ' He narrates (to quote from an 
 Independent writer) the story of his awakening to 
 spiritual consciousness, of the hours of secret penitence 
 through which he has passed, of the inward conflicts 
 through which he has fought his way into the kingdom 
 of God, and of those more gentle drawings of the Spirit 
 of God by which he has been led to a knowledge of 
 
 "« Cyclopcedia 0/ Religious Dene- '^ Congregational rear-Booh (iS^ l), 
 minations, p. 191. P- 5^- 
 
 H 
 
THE INDEPENDENTS. [LECT. 
 
 the Saviour 3».' The results of this interview are then 
 reported to the Church-body ; and a vote of the ma- 
 jority decides the question of admission or rejection. 
 
 Two things, surely, at the outset are quite clear, — and 
 indeed they are honestly confessed by more than one 
 distinguished member of the Independent communion. 
 The first is, that such a system as this would be sure to 
 exclude the most highly spiritual, the most refined, the 
 most educated, the most sensitive members of the con- 
 gregation from all share in its government, from com- 
 munion at the Lord's table, and from all the other privi- 
 leges of Church-membership "i. And the second is, that 
 it would be equally sure to include many a hypocrite and 
 many a self-deceiver. For ' how, (asks the same Inde- 
 pendent writer,) if a man should be simply using unctuous 
 phrases . . , with which the clever hypocrite never finds 
 any difficulty in making himself acquainted, . . how is 
 the Church to unmask the deception ^^ .' ' How, indeed .' 
 
 But with this we are not at present concerned. The 
 unquestionable evidence of Dissenters themselves was 
 
 ^^ Ecclesia : a series of Essays, by visitors whose want of tact in the 
 Members of the Independent deno- prosecution of their inquiries may 
 mination (1870), p. 490. very possibly furnish little guar- 
 
 ^' ' To some the idea of an inves- antee that their judgment will be 
 ligation into their private religious formed with wisdom and discri- 
 experience by comparative strangers, mination. Others object to it on 
 in order that a report of the results the ground of principle, as well as 
 may be made to a meeting of the of feeling. They regard the whole 
 Church, is so distasteful and re- proceeding as essentially inquisito- 
 pellant, that they at once turn rial in its character.' {Ecclesia, p. 
 away from the community which 483.) The spirit of this admira- 
 requires it. They shrink, with a ble Essay (No. viii.) is that of the 
 sensitiveness which it is impossible Church, rather than of Dissent, 
 not to respect, from laying bare Cf. Christian Year, Fourth Sunday 
 their most sacred feelings, . . to in Lent : 
 
 ' E'en human love will shrink from sight, 
 Hej"e in the coarse rude earth ; 
 How then should rash intruding glance 
 Break in upon her sacred trance, 
 Who boasts a heavenly birth ? ' 
 ^ Ecclesia, p. 491. 
 
II.] TRUE 'FREEDOM' IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 99 
 
 hardly needed, in support of a truth of human nature 
 discovered and applied by the Church more than a 
 thousand years ago : viz. that a ' discipline ' such as that 
 dreamed of by Congregationalism, and for the sake of 
 which Congregationalism exists, is a simple impossibility: 
 that it may easily become a dangerous delusion : and 
 that ' the vital principle of the Church may be retained, 
 even though the Church should disclaim the respon- 
 sibility involved in the judgment of the inner life, and 
 should leave each individual to determine [these things] 
 for himself ^^.' What we are now concerned with is this : 
 to point out the simple fact, that the Independent 
 system, — which makes such loud pretensions to ' free- 
 dom,' and compares itself so advantageously with the 
 Church of England in this respect, — stands in reality on 
 a lower level altogether''*, and represents an obsolete 
 notion of what freedom really means. Its institutions 
 are, in point of fact, not of a ' republican ' but of an 
 oligarchical nature, and are therefore liable to fall 
 prostrate at the feet of some influential tradesman or 
 some wealthy and determined deaconess ■•^. And this 
 sort of 'liberty' is one to which Englishmen in these 
 days absolutely refuse that honoured and almost sacred 
 name. No : such a system is obsolete, and cannot 
 live. And should it ever succeed — which God forbid ! — 
 
 ^ Ecclesia, p. 488 : cf. 4q6. ' As presentation. And Mr. Herbert 
 a safeguard for the purity of the Spencer tells us, that, ' whether con- 
 Church it is illusive ; and yet a sidered in theory or in practice, re- 
 giievous burden is laid on the in- presentative government is the best 
 dividual conscience.' for securing justice . . . And it is the 
 
 '' The government of the Church form of government natural to a 
 
 of England — like that of the State — very highly organized and advanced 
 
 is not committed to the will of social state.' (Essays, second series, 
 
 a mere popular majority, (which 1863, p. 226.) 
 
 is the Dissenting system, and is ^ ''" Arist. PolU. iv. 4, 3 : Arjuos fiiv 
 
 for certain purposes the most ef- ea-riv, orav 01 (XevOfpoi Kvp^ot Siaiv 
 
 fective,) but is conducted by re- bXiyapx^a S' orav 01 TiXovaioi. 
 
 H 2 
 
100 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 in overthrowing the really free and popular system of 
 the Church of England ='^ it is (we may feel quite sure) 
 the very last religious system, of all now existing in 
 this country, which would take her place or succeed to 
 her inheritance. 
 
 (2) But perhaps the second main pillar on which Inde- 
 pendency rests is more solid, and will better bear the 
 test of an impartial examination under the light of 
 modern ideas. Let us see. This second grand prin- 
 ciple is, — that a national religious establishment is a 
 wrong and an absurdity ^^ : that an endowment by 
 
 ^® As to ' freedom ' in other ways, 
 — it has been abundantly shown 
 within the last few years, that an 
 Established religious community pre- 
 sents far more favourable conditions 
 for its enjoyment, than a so-called 
 Free Church. ' The Church of Eng- 
 land,' says a liberal journalist, ' is, no 
 doubt, in a state of difficulty and 
 trial. But from what does that diffi- 
 culty arise? It arises exclusively from 
 the circumstance, that no other reli- 
 gious body in this country contains 
 so many honest and truthful men, 
 alive to the paramount necessity of 
 discovering and proclaiming the 
 truth — be it what it may.' {Pall 
 Mall Gazette, Dec. 5, 1866,) 'Let 
 Great Britain,' says a French writer, 
 ' rest in her so-called " heresy." The 
 Established Church possesses the 
 rare merit of adapting herself to 
 the complicated workings of con- 
 stitutional institutions. . . The reli- 
 ance of the English clergy must be 
 in their moral force, and in the first 
 principle of the Reformation, — I 
 mean in liberty.' (Esquiros, Reli- 
 gious Life in England^ sub fin.). 
 ' While some of the most serale 
 adherents to a doctrine [of Infalli- 
 bility] which their own most learned 
 theologians have denounced as false 
 and mischievous are drawn from the 
 so-called free and voluntary sections 
 
 of the Catholic Churches of England, 
 Ireland, and America, — its most de- 
 termined opponents are found in the 
 independent spirit manifested by the 
 national, endowed, and established 
 Churches of Germany, Hungary, and 
 France.' (Dean Stanley, Essays, &c., 
 1870, p. xiii.) 
 
 "^ ' As a general nile, the business 
 of life is better performed when those 
 who have an immediate interest in it 
 are left to take their own course, 
 uncontrolled either by the mandate 
 of the law or by the meddling of any 
 public functionary . . But if the work- 
 man is generally the best selector of 
 means, can it be affirmed with the 
 same universality, that the consumer , 
 or person served is the most compe- 
 tent judge of the end ? Is the buyer 
 always qualified to judge of the com- 
 modity? If not, the presumption in 
 favour of the competition of the 
 market does not apply to the case ; 
 and if the commodity be one, in the 
 quality of which society has much at 
 stake, the balance of advantages may 
 be in favour of some mode or degree 
 of intervention, by the authorized 
 representatives of the collective in- 
 terest of the State. . . This is pecu- 
 liarly true of those things which are 
 chiefly useful as tending to raise the 
 character of human beings. The un- 
 cultivated cannot be competent judges 
 
II.] SECOND TENET OF THE INDEPENDENTS. loi 
 
 private property is sound and right enough, but an 
 endowment by public property is an apple of discord, 
 a certain means of corrupting the Church that is se- 
 lected for endowment, contrary to the will of God, and 
 in direct opposition to the examples of Holy Scripture. 
 And in the maintenance of this thesis, a strength of 
 language is habitually employed by Independent writers, 
 which forms a curious contrast to the studied moderation 
 of speech with which the subject has lately been in- 
 troduced into Parliament. No one will contend for a 
 moment that the rightful and useful employment, not 
 only of State grants, but also of all endowments attached 
 to religious and educational establishments, is not a 
 proper and necessary subject for occasional parlia- 
 mentary inquiry. Indeed it is believed that there are 
 not a few Nonconformist endowments, at the present 
 day, of an obsolete or mischievous character ^*, which 
 
 of cultivation . . It will continually those churches ; that it approves the 
 happen on the " Voluntary system " principle of a fund in aid.' {Congre- 
 that, the end not being desired, the gational Fear-Book, 1871, p. 74.) 
 means will not be provided at all ; And for abundant proof in detail, 
 or that, the persons requiring im- not only of the scanty maintenance, 
 provement having an imperfect and but also of the permanent depend- 
 altogether erroneous conception of ence, and the often heartless disap- 
 what they want, the supply called pointments, to which Independent 
 forth by the demand of the market ministers are liable, — let any one 
 will be anything but what is really read - Maitland's Voluntary System, 
 required.' (Mill, Political Economy, passim; or even trust to his own ob- 
 V. II. 7.) That this miserable with- servations in any part of England, 
 holding of more than is meet from ^^ Take, for instance, the endow- 
 the support of the ministry, not only ments attached to a ' Seventh Day 
 ' will ' happen, but has happened and Baptist ' chapel, in Mill-yard, London. 
 is continually happening, under the ' It was rebuilt in 1 790, but founded 
 ' Voluntary system,' is candidly ac- more than a century before that . . 
 knowledged by Dissenters them- On Saturdays, this little old-fashioned 
 selves. At the autumnal meeting of meeting-house is opened twice a day 
 the Congregational Union, in 1H71, . . Here in England [this sect] have 
 'thefoUowing resolution was adopted, dwindled down to two skeleton con- 
 nem. con. : — that the Assembly . . gregations, an endowment, and a 
 recognizes the inadequacy of the pro- Chancery suit. As there is money, a 
 vision which is made for the temporal form of worship is hept up ; though for 
 support of many of the ministers of all practical purposes the cause is dead. 
 
102 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 might with advantage be reported upon to Parliament, 
 with a view to a better and more liberal employment 
 of their funds. But, language such as is used by Dis- 
 senters towards the Church it may be reasonably hoped 
 that Churchmen will never condescend to use towards 
 Dissent. ' The Establishment,' writes Mr. Miall, ' is a 
 life-destroying upas, deeply rooted in our soil. It 
 desecrates religion, . . in its eyes immorality and licen- 
 tiousness are trifles. It is at once a blunder, a failure, 
 and a hoax ^'.' Mr. Binney openly records his opinion, 
 that ' it destroys more souls than it saves '"*.' Mr. Dale 
 ' denies the Church of England to be a true Church at 
 all*^.' Another judges it to be ' Antichristian, unscrip- 
 tural, and corrupt*-.' And another considers 'the union 
 between Church and State, in any country, to be un- 
 principled, absurd, and mischievous *'l' 
 
 Why 1 — we ask, in incredulous amazement. Is the 
 England in which we live, then, so degraded, ruined, 
 miserable a country, as surely under this hypothesis it 
 ought to be .'' Is piety quite worn out among us .'' Is 
 religion a power that has ceased to be .'' Is the ' failure ' 
 so patent, the ' blunder ' so obvious, that we dare not — 
 after a Church Establishment of some 1200 years — hold 
 up our heads as a Christian people .'' Or does any one 
 believe — beyond the limits of the very narrowest Dis- 
 senting circles — that all the goodness and piety that 
 is among us is due to Nonconformity alone .'' Are there 
 
 There may be four grown-up per- hou&e Chapel (1834), p. 52. 
 
 sons, besides the pew-opener, to form " Lecture on the Pilgrim Fathers, 
 
 the morning service: there are just (1854), p. 13. 
 
 as many in the afternoon.' (Ritchie, " Foster, ap. Christian Witness, 
 
 Religious Life of London, 1870, p. Feb. 1847. 
 
 160.) « Baptist Noel, Essay On Church 
 
 ^^ Miall's Noticonformist' s Sketch- and State (1849), p. 238. I am in- 
 
 book (1842), pp. 16, 185, 212. debtee!, for some of these references, 
 
 " Address at opening of the Weigh- to the Church and State Handy-book. 
 
II.] WARPING EFFECTS OF PREJUDICE. 103 
 
 not many persons, and those not the least observant 
 of mankind, who hold that the very best specimens of 
 Englishmen and of Christians to be met with in this 
 country, are precisely those who have been trained 
 under the tranquil teaching and comely ritual of the 
 Established Church ? 
 
 No :— we say to ourselves, — there must be some mis- 
 understanding here, some ruinous mistake as to what a 
 ' Church ' was intended by our Lord to be, some historical 
 ignorance as to what the Church of England has really 
 done, some verbal confusion as to what ' failure,' ' Chris- 
 tian,' 'scriptural,' really ought to mean. Else, it were 
 impossible that men under whose teaching one would, on 
 many accounts, gladly sit, could bring charges against 
 a great religious society which the very slightest interior 
 acquaintance with that society bars at once with a posi- 
 tive contradiction. The fact is simply this : that, in 
 controversy, men do not make sufficient allowance for 
 the extraordinary refraction produced by antipathy and 
 bias**. There is assuredly no conscious unfairness in 
 
 *' See, for instance, in the sixteenth the Pope lias come from the Devil.' 
 
 century the almost incredible sciir- (Vaughan, English Nonconformists, p. 
 
 rility and blasphemy of Thomas 1 5 7-) For the eighteenth century, 
 
 Becon against ' that wicked idol, the take Micaiah Towgood, ' whose work 
 
 Masse.' One would say, he could for three generations remained the 
 
 never have understood the common- standard work on this subject, and 
 
 est and most obvious truths, about which has been more frequently re- 
 
 either its history or its meaning, printed, both in England and America, 
 
 And yet for the first thirty years of than any other publication of the 
 
 his life (b. 1511), it must have been kind.' (Skeats, p. 489.) This work 
 
 to him the principal means of grace, is a tissue of misunderstandings from 
 
 and after ordination one of his daily beginning to end. Unlike John Lil- 
 
 recurring duties. (Becon's Works, bume, he represents the object of his 
 
 Prayers, Sec, p. 253.) In the seven- aversion, 'the Church of England, as 
 
 teenth century, no better instance a civil establishment, founded upon 
 
 could be found than John Lilburne : acts of Parliament as the only au- 
 
 ' The Church of England, exclaimed thentic rule of what is to be be- 
 
 Lilbume, is the creation of the Bishops, lieved and practised therein.' (Tow- 
 
 the Bishops derive their authority good. Dissent Justified, p. 17, twelfth 
 
 from the Pope, and the authority of edition.) 
 
104 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lecT. 
 
 these men *^ But the oar that looks broken beneath the 
 water, is with great ado and alarm pronounced and 
 believed by them to be really broken. 
 
 An ignorant Protestant, for instance, goes into a 
 foreign cathedral to witness a High Mass. And to him 
 it seems nothing but a heap of unmeaning, childish, and 
 unchristian mummeries. But meantime an uninstructed 
 Romanist attends an Independent meeting-house ; and 
 to him the service is a perfectly ludicrous, cold, unedifying, 
 and burdensome piece of ceremonial. Where he had 
 been accustomed to see an altar, leading his thoughts 
 straightway to Jesus and to ' the Lamb in the midst of 
 the elders as it had been slain *^' he sees a cushioned 
 pulpit. The priest who pleaded amid touching symbols 
 the great atoning sacrifice, is replaced by a lecturer on 
 the Bible. The noble liturgies of the early Church have 
 made way for the extempore effusions of an individual. 
 The place of worship, in short, seems to him to have 
 become a preaching-house "". And every breath of 
 poetry from the South, every touch of symbolism from 
 the East, every trace of Greek freedom and masterhood 
 in the management both of doctrinal matter and of 
 artistic form, every relic of strong Roman obedience, 
 order and majesty, — seem to him to have fled ; and Ca- 
 tholicity to have given place to a bald French Calvinism, 
 capable of imagining nothing whatever but a sermon 
 
 * Of course far more than this is all that is most beautiful and noble, 
 
 to be said of the honourable candour ought to be regarded as the rightful 
 
 of men, who really know what they inheritance of every one who believes 
 
 are writing about ; such as appears in in the essential unity of Christ's 
 
 the following passage of Dr. Stough- Catholic Church.' (Stoughton, Two 
 
 ton on the Prayer-book: 'As the Hundred Years Ago, ^.121.) 
 
 sources whence the book was com- ^ Rev. v. 6. 
 
 piled are so numerous and so ancient, *' A.vxoviJi TrpoluTaaOai SiarpiPrjs 
 
 belonging to European Christendom iiaXkov tj iHttX-rjaias. (Clem. Alex, 
 
 in the remotest times . . the bulk of Strom, vii.) 
 what the book contains, including 
 
II.] MISAPPREHENSIONS ABOUT THE CHURCH. 105 
 
 Yet we know that neither conception would be wholly- 
 true. We know how much there is to be said for both 
 these forms of worship ; and what numerous points of 
 interest occur in both to the instructed eye. In the first, 
 there survives the spontaneous over-luxuriant ritual 
 growth of many ages ; in the last, the violent and con- 
 scious effort of the sixteenth century to be rid of an 
 intolerable ultra-ceremonialism at a blow. 
 
 But meanwhile, the effects of these misapprehensions 
 have been disastrous. They have given credence and 
 currency to legendary histories of almost ludicrous false- 
 ness and party spirit ; and as mischievous to Christian 
 brotherhood and good order, as the pseudo-English 
 Histories which are said to have been taught for a long 
 time in America, or as the fatal Napoleonic legend, so 
 long industriously cultivated by M. Thiers, has proved in 
 France. In history thus distorted, the Church of Eng- 
 land is made to figure as a fell and bloody tyrant, eager 
 for prey, delighting in persecution of the saints, bent on 
 obstruction, and glorying in shameful outrages upon 
 men's liberty and conscience *^. No word is uttered to 
 remind men, that it was this same Church, nevertheless, 
 
 ° The discordances and self-con- blood of the saints.' {History of Dis- 
 tradictions which prevail among senlers, i. 84.) Again, 'The Reforma- 
 second-rate Dissenting historians, tion of the English Establishment 
 concerning the Church of England, retrograded, rather than advanced, 
 sui-pass all belief. Even such re- after the reign of Edward.' (Ibid. 
 spectable writers as Messrs. Bogue p. 39.) The ' Establishment,' there- 
 and Bennett can condescend to the fore, was clearly in existence under 
 following confusions : ' The Dis- Edward VI. But yet it seems, ' the 
 senters were persecuted with tenfold Commons House of Parliament, the 
 fury; for, availing himself of Mon- temporal peers, . . and Queen Eliza- 
 mouth's rebellion to crush the ene- beth, the sovereign of the land, 
 mies of popery and arbitrary power, brought the Church of England into 
 the King [James II., a Romanist]^ being, — like Adam, full grown, with 
 turned his realm into a slaughter- all her soul and body.' (Ibid. p. 102.) 
 house. . . Several ministers of the After this, we can be surprised at 
 establishment forsook it, as un- nothing in writers of an inferior 
 worthy the name of a Church of calibre. 
 Christ, since il was stained with the 
 
I06 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 which first curbed the aristocratic insolence of feudal 
 force, which produced the emancipation of the serfs, gave 
 the model and impetus to parliamentary government, 
 preserved art and literature and all that opened a career 
 to the lower ranks of society, and in our own days has 
 laboured with a noble self-devotion (while Dissent has 
 done comparatively nothing) in educating the masses of 
 our fellow-countrymen. No distinction is attempted to 
 be drawn between repressive measures which were purely 
 the work of the State — often pre-eminently of the House 
 of Commons "" — and those which may more fairly be as- 
 cribed to ecclesiastics : though even then (as we have 
 already seen), to ecclesiastics of all denominations alike. 
 Nor do we find any proper care taken to discriminate 
 between conflicts and sufferings that belong to the 
 histories of two or more perfectly distinct, and often 
 hostile, sects ^''. All are pressed into the service of theo- 
 logical hatred and party strife. And the profoundly 
 interesting history of the great political transition from 
 feudal aristocracy to the ascendency of the middle class®"^, 
 
 " Take, for instance, the much p. 264.) ' The Commons still far- 
 abused 'Act of Uniformity,' 1662: ther added to the severity of the 
 ' Considered as an act of the State- measure.' {Ihid. p. 268.) ' Parlia- 
 Church,' we are bitterly told, 'it was ment was quite prepared to do all 
 a fatal blunder ' (Skeats, p. 73), and that the Episcopalians desired, and 
 the penalties that followed on it, — even more.' (Fletcher, History of 
 'long and weary impiisonments, ba- Independency, iv. 198.) 
 nishment, and starvation, — satisfied ™ ' These two had lived in much 
 the episcopal bench.' {Ibid. p. 75.) friendship and agreement under 
 But other Dissenting writers are a tyranny .. as it is the talent of fellow- 
 little more careful of the truth : ' We sufferers to do, — men in misfortune 
 must now return to the House of being like men in the dark, to whom 
 Commons. On the 1st of March all colours are the same. But when 
 (1662), the Members . . were intro- they came forward into the world, 
 duced to the King. " Gentlemen," and began to display themselves to 
 he observed, " I hear you are very each other and to the light, their 
 zealous for the Church, and very complexions appeared extremely dif- 
 solicitous, and even jealous, that ferent.' (Swift, TaZe o/a 7";.?', § vi.) 
 there is not expedition enough used " ' The History of England during 
 in this affair. I thank you for it." ' the seventeenth century, is the his- 
 (Siton^\ton, Two Hiijtdred Years Ago, tory of the transformation of a 
 
II.] ENGLAND SAVED BY BOTH PARTIES. 107 
 
 — a history embracing all the whole period from the 
 Wars of the Roses to the accession of William III., — is 
 travestied into a sectarian battle of kites and crows, where 
 ecclesiastics figure as the main authors and movers of 
 the tedious and noisy strife. 
 
 The thing were incredible, if it were not true. But 
 the fact is, that men are habitually more interested in 
 watching and describing the fortunes of their own small 
 clan or favourite theological party, than in admiring the 
 providential method by which men of both parties in the 
 Church and in the State have been combined to bring 
 into being the glorious England of to-day; to ward off, 
 on the one hand — by Puritan vigour and obstinacy — the 
 threatening danger of a Stuart autocracy ; to heal, on 
 the other — by the welding and organizing instincts of 
 the Churchman — that republican disunion which, even 
 before Cromwell's death ^^, bade fair to crumble the 
 nation into fragments and lay her prostrate beneath a 
 vast irresistible Latin empire, which would have been 
 the curse and bane of mankind for untold generations *'. 
 
 limited monarchy, constituted after tlie scorn and contempt of those 
 
 the fashion of the middle ages, into strangers [Dutch ambassadors arid 
 
 a limited monarchy suited to that the like] who are amongst us to 
 
 more advanced state of society, in negotiate their masters' affairs ! To 
 
 which the public charges can no give them opportunity to see our 
 
 longer be borne by the estates of the nakedness, as they do I' (Carlyle, 
 
 Crown, and in which the public de- Cromwell, ii. 302.) 
 
 fence can no longer be entrusted to a ^•'^ How imminent this danger was, 
 
 feudal militia.' (Macaulay, History let the following passage declare. 
 
 of England, i. 'J 2.) 'The King of England offered to 
 
 '^ ' This land is become in many declare himself a Roman Catholic, 
 
 places already a Chaos, a Babel, to dissolve the Triple Alliance, and 
 
 another Amsterdam ; yea worse, — to join with France against Holland, 
 
 we are beyond that and in the high- if France would engage to lend him 
 
 way to Munster, if God prevent it such military and pecuniary aid as 
 
 not.' (Edwards' Gmtgrcena, part i. might make him independent of his 
 
 P- 67-) 'To have our peace and ParUament. Lewis at first affected 
 
 interest, whereof those were our to receive these propositions coolly . . 
 
 hopes the other day, thus shaken Nevertheless, the propositions made 
 
 and put under such a confusion ; by the Court of Whitehall were most 
 
 and ourselves rendered hereby almost welcome to him. He already medi- 
 
io8 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 Waiving aside, then, not without some indignation, 
 the violent and repulsive language in which this second 
 great principle of Independency is too often expressed, — 
 what, now, is the truth of the matter ? It is, that this 
 strange worship of ' private property,' this extraor- 
 dinary narrowness of view, — which can rise to the con- 
 ception of a Church-polity on the scale of a vestry- 
 meeting, but cannot go beyond,' — is also an obsolete 
 idea ; and is left far behind by the nobler and broader 
 conceptions of modern times ^*. If anything is certain, 
 it is that the growing democracy of our age is teeming 
 with an idea which already, in a blind and unskilful 
 way, has found expression ; and which only needs a little 
 sympathizing guidance to show its essential accordance 
 with Christianity and with the Catholic spirit of the 
 Church ^^ as distinguished from the particularism of 
 
 tated gigantic designs, which were 
 destined to keep Europe in constant 
 fermentation during more than forty 
 years. He wished to humble the 
 United Pro\'inces, and to annex 
 Belgium, Franche Comte, and Lor- 
 raine to his dominions. Nor was 
 this all. The King of Spain was a 
 sickly child . . A day would almost 
 certainly come, and might come very 
 soon, when the House of Bourbon 
 might lay claim to that vast Empire 
 on which the sun never set . . Eng- 
 land would turn the scale. On the 
 course which, in such a crisis, Eng- 
 land might pursue, the destinies of 
 the world would depend . . A secret 
 treaty was signed at Dover, in May, 
 1670 . . Charles bound himself to 
 employ the whole strength of Eng- 
 land, by sea and land, in support of 
 the right of the House of Bourbon 
 to the vast monarchy of Spain. Levids, 
 on the other hand, engaged to pay a 
 large subsidy, and promised that, if 
 an insurrection should break out, he 
 would send an armyathis own charge 
 
 to support his ally.' (Macaulay, 
 History of England, i. 98. Cf Bissett, 
 Omitted Chapters in English History, 
 ii. 19.) 
 
 '* The anxiety which already pos- 
 sesses the ' Dissenting Interests,' and 
 urges them to hurried action, is thus 
 fairly confessed by Rev. Baldwin 
 Brown : — ' This spirit of democracy 
 is an advancing and, in its present 
 aspect, a menacing power. The next 
 great experiment in the organization 
 of society will be under its auspices. 
 This tendency to universal organiza- 
 tion is a tremendous power. . . In- 
 stead of rejoicing that Christianity, 
 under the auspices of the Establish- 
 ment principle, will fall naturally and 
 easily into the new order, we should 
 pray earnestly to be delivered from 
 an endowed democratic Church.' 
 {Contemporary Review, Jan. 1871, p. 
 320.) 
 
 " ' L'^galite commence a penetrer 
 par I'Eglise au sein du gouverne- 
 ment ; et celui qui edt veg^t^, comme 
 "serf" dans un itemel esclavage, 
 
n.] ULTRA-INDIVIDUALISM UNCHRISTIAN. 109 
 
 Dissent. It is, in few words, the idea that the absolutism 
 of mere ' capital'— which ' knows no country,' and owns no 
 obligations to any one — is nearly over : that property is 
 a trust, and has duties as well as rights : that the highest 
 ideal of human society is rather community than iso- 
 lation, rather confederacy than individualism : and that 
 not petty private schemes, mutually jealous and ob- 
 structive'^, but institutions on the broad and public 
 scale, are those wherein power and efficiency are gene- 
 rated, — where the self-denial and self-sacrifice of the 
 many are husbanded from waste, and are made to co- 
 operate towards the successful issue of large and well- 
 planned enterprises. 
 
 ' What,' say our working classes, 'is the meaning of this 
 " private property," this "voluntary system," this absolute 
 right of every man to do whatsoever he will with his 
 own } Is there no one who will stand up and teach us, 
 in the name of cofnmon sense, that if the individual is 
 the root and the beginning of human society, he is not 
 the flower and the crown thereof*^ .' Is there no man 
 of culture who will come forward, and shew that there 
 are whole races of men who have never yet been able 
 fully to understand what this strange right of the in- 
 dividual against the community exactly means : nay, 
 that our own German race — no effete descendants of 
 a worn-out Latin imperialism, but breathing the fresh 
 and bracing atmosphere of nature and simplicity — 
 established wherever it came the feudal system ; and 
 held fast, throughout the middle ages, to the idea 
 
 se place comme pretre au milieu des IgtX, fcal on dvOpanros (pvan tioXitik^v 
 
 nobles.' (De Tocqueville, Democ. en {wov /cat 6 dwoXis (Siii (pvGiv xal ov 
 
 Amerique, I. p. iii. 1st series.) Sici Tiix']'') ryroi <pav\6s kanv, fj 
 
 '" Mill, Polit. Econ. V. II. 16. Kpi'iTToiv ^ dvOpuiros. (Arist. Polit. 
 
 " ^avipbv on ra/y (fivaet ^ iruKis i. 2. 9.) 
 
no THE INDEPENDENTS. [lect. 
 
 of public property standing on duties, rather than 
 that of private property standing on rights ? And, 
 lastly, is there no man of God, who, in the name of 
 Christianity, will teach us that the Lord and His dis- 
 ciples — the embryo Christian Church — had a common 
 purse : that the earliest society of believers practised 
 community of goods : that, altered in mere shape 
 and outward expression, the spirit and teaching and 
 institutions of the Catholic Church have been the same 
 from that day down to this, — preaching in every prac- 
 ticable way the softening down of the hard inequalities 
 of heathenish ordinary life ; opening a career to men 
 of every rank ; breaking down with all its might 
 the ever-recurring partition-walls of clique and caste ; 
 and bidding men combine on the largest possible 
 scale, with " brotherhood " for the motto of their 
 system, and self-denying orderly " co-operation " for 
 its method 58?' 
 
 That this is the conception which is floating before 
 the minds of modern men, this the voice which is already 
 vibrating in the air of our modern times, no one — who 
 has ears to hear and eyes to see — can possibly deny''. 
 It may be called democracy. But that does not alter 
 the case. Some people call it Christianity ; and aver 
 
 '■'^ ' To come now to the favourable, " E.g.; ' It is scarcely possible to 
 
 the hopeful view of these prospects, reflect with patience upon the fact, 
 
 The things needful to the improve- that nearly eight million acres of land 
 
 ment of the condition of the working which might have been retained at 
 
 classes are : a general and higher a very small cost as public property, 
 
 education, a friendly, open, non-ag- have been suffered to fall into the 
 
 gressive federation of the labouring possession of private hands ; and 
 
 classes throughout the civilized world, that, year by year, additional thou- 
 
 and Christianity. These are, in my sands are being diverted from the 
 
 opinion, the three grand essentials.' public in the same manner.' (Art. 
 
 {Coniemp. Review, Dec. 1871, p. 93 : on 'The Preservation of Commons,' 
 
 art. by Thos. Wright, ' the journey- in Eraser's Magazine, Sept. 1871, 
 
 man engineer.') p. 301,) 
 
II.] MODERN TASTE FOR BREADTH AND GRANDEUR, iii 
 
 that it only needs a skilful and kindly direction, to 
 become a power for good and not for evil in the world ; 
 to become a power which shall raise— like the fresh vocal 
 tide on some dead silent shore — the helpless stranded 
 barks to life and beauty and mutual aid once more, and 
 shall produce effects of a scale and efficiency which have, 
 as yet, been hardly dreamed of. 
 
 And now, what are we to say to a religious system, 
 which comes forward amidst the dawn of such a period 
 as this, to preach once more the dying doctrines of a 
 middle-class ascendency ; which proclaims once more 
 the divine right of small Independent coteries ; gives 
 an actual consecration, at length, to the most extreme 
 theories of ' private property ; ' repudiates in sacred 
 things — which have always furnished the prelude and 
 the model to secular arrangements — all organization on 
 the grand scale ^", all publicity and national union ; and 
 would fain establish the most important by far of all 
 our social institutions — the National Church — upon a 
 mere Voluntary system, and on the base idea of men's 
 private rights, instead of the noble and inspiring one 
 of their public duties ? What else can be said, but 
 
 ™ The evidences of this growing lately they were found to be erecting 
 
 taste for organization on the grand, a greenhouse, to supply the infirmary 
 
 and not on the petty scale, meet one with flowers. . . In another union, we 
 
 sometimes in the most unexpected had to object to the elevation, as 
 
 quarters. Here is a passage from being of a more ornamental and 
 
 The Twenty-second Annual Report of costly character than was necessary 
 
 the Poor-law Board, 1869-70, p. xv. — particularly to the addition of a 
 
 ' The extreme parsimony displayed tower ; and granite columns and 
 
 by Boards of Guardians of the older terra-cotta enrichments had to be 
 
 school has, in some of the larger struck out. In another instance, we 
 
 unions, given way to a desire to refused to sanction proposals to in- 
 
 conduct all the duties devolving upon troduce encaustic tile paving in the 
 
 the guardians upon a somewhat entrance - hall, moulded Portland - 
 
 grand and liberal scale. The guar- stone stairs to the chapel ; . . and 
 
 dians of a Lancashire union, for Portland-stone decorations to the 
 
 instance, have built one of the best front of the building.' 
 infirmaries in the kingdom . . and 
 
112 
 
 THE INDEPENDENTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 that such a system is obsolete and self-condemned ? 
 And were the legislature to commit the country irre- 
 vocably to an ecclesiastical policy dictated by an active 
 minority possessed by these narrow views, — at the very 
 moment of transition, when the middle-class is being 
 called upon to part with its exclusive ascendency, 
 and to share the government of the country with a 
 class possessed of totally different ideas, — such a 
 course would be a flagrant breach of a most solemn 
 trust, and a crime little short of treason to the State. 
 
 For here is something quite other than an Irish 
 Church question. There the problem was essentially a 
 numerical one. There honest statistics were not with- 
 held ^^ ; and the course, therefore, of political justice was 
 clear. Six hundred thousand Churchmen ^'^, amid a 
 
 " It is impossible, as an English- 
 man, not to feel a sense of shame, 
 on recalling the following facts : 
 (i) That in 1851, a quasi-religious 
 census was obtained, — by a method 
 which gave every advantage to the 
 Dissenters, and by a calculation 
 whose accuracy is now universally 
 repudiated ; and that the result, even 
 then, giving fifty-six per cent, of the 
 (so-called) ' worshipping' population 
 to the Church of England, and only 
 forty-four per cent, to all the other 
 denominations put together ; this 
 ratio has been, for twenty years, 
 inscribed on all the banners of Dis- 
 sent, as giving ' half the population 
 of England' to their side: (a) That 
 in 1 86 1, a serious effort on the part 
 of Churchmen to obtain the simple 
 truth on this question, was thwarted 
 by Dissenters for another ten years : 
 (3) That, in 1871, another effort to 
 obtain bona fide statistics was thwart- 
 ed in the same way, for another ten 
 years to come. No man can believe, 
 surely, that a policy of obscuration 
 
 can answer, in the long run, in 
 England. — As to the honesty of the 
 1 85 1 statistics, discoveries of the 
 following sort are perpetually bring- 
 ing it into discredit. A chapel in 
 Leeds is registered as affording room 
 for 200 persons ; on Census Sunday, 
 1 85 1 , it returns its ' worshippers ' as, — 
 morning, 650; afternoon, 723; even- 
 ing. 1030. A chapel in Marylebone 
 accommodates 198 persons; its re- 
 turns were — morning, 277, evening, 
 336. {Church and State Handy-Book, 
 p. 55.) In Wales, visits to three 
 chapels, impartially chosen, on a 
 casual Sunday in 1870, verified the 
 Census returns as follows, — the three 
 chapels had returned 900 ' wor- 
 shippers' between them: the actual 
 attendance, when visited, was found 
 to be respectively, 19, 25, and 45. 
 (Guardian, Sept. 21, 1870.) 
 
 62 1 -y^rg need unity. We are only 
 some 600,000 against the combined 
 forces of the Church of Rome.' 
 {Irkh Bed. Gaz., Dec. 22, 1871, 
 p. 262.) 
 
II.] THE IRISH CHURCH NO PRECEDENT. 113 
 
 population of six millions, were enjoying all the benefits 
 and advantages of a national establishment. Long 
 before any such ratio shall have been arrived at in 
 England, it is perfectly certain that English Churchmen 
 themselves will appeal to Parliament for relief from 
 an intolerable position. But the question, on this side 
 the Irish Channel, is confessedly not one of numbers, 
 but of principles. For it is not contested that Church- 
 men outnumber in England all the other denominations 
 put together. Here therefore it is the question of re- 
 taining, for the benefit of coming generations, a most 
 important national institution ; — an institution which has 
 lasted for twelve hundred years ; and which as an engine 
 of education and discipline concerns the lower orders 
 more nearly than any others. Yet this it is proposed to 
 throw to the winds before their very eyes, to waste it 
 with its vast accumulation of influence and property, 
 to reduce it from a public and open to a close and 
 private society, — and that, not in order to benefit any 
 single person or institution in the country, nor to satisfy 
 one single Christian or noble aspiration ; but merely 
 to satisfy the jealousy of those who are already (we 
 are told) in a position of far greater freedom and effici- 
 ency, and to respond to a cry, never yet listened to in 
 England, — never (I think) likely to be listened to, — a 
 cry, not for ' liberty,' but for ' equality ^".' 
 
 (3) But perhaps the third fundamental maxim, on 
 
 '' "OXois, ri laov (yTodvT(s ffTaffi- (1689), for the people's right to 
 
 d^ovatv . . To Se dTr\ws, Trdvrri, Ka9' choose their own pastors. . . Hence 
 
 inaTipav, reraxSai Ti)v laSTr/Ta — they railed against the pomp and 
 
 <pav\ov. iayepdv 5' kit toC avii^ai- greatness of the clergy, — which is 
 
 vovTos- ouSe/iia yd-p piuvifios k/c twv always a popular theme ; and so 
 
 TOLovToiv -noXiTtiSiv. (Arist. Polit. would the exposing of the ineqnalily 
 
 V.I. II.) ' Hence they pleaded then of men's estates be.' (Stillingfleet, 
 
 (1570), as others do at this day Unreasonableness of Separation, p. 2^.) 
 
 I 
 
114 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lECT. 
 
 which the Independent system rests, is more tenable 
 than the other two. And although Englishmen on 
 the whole are likely, as intelligence and education 
 increase, to display a very active antipathy to its eccle- 
 siastical and political principles, it may be that the 
 religious and theological basis on which it takes its 
 stand, is such as to command an assent, (however un- 
 willingly accorded,) and to compel all thoughtful and 
 serious minds to an unconditional surrender. Let us 
 see then what this theological groundwork of Inde- 
 pendency really is. We are to embrace Congrega- 
 tionalism, it seems, — I quote once more from writers 
 of that communion, — because 'the institutions adopted 
 by the primitive Church and recorded in Scripture are 
 obligatory on Christians of all ages, . . no variations in 
 different ages and countries affording any ground for 
 introducing modifications in the system ^*.' 
 
 Yes, we now know precisely where we are. We have 
 met with this absolutely astounding proposition before. 
 But it was amid the confusion and darkness of three hun- 
 dred years ago. It was amid the first struggles of the 
 Reformation, when men eagerly caught at any theory, 
 however imperfect, which would save them from Popery ; 
 and when, amid the insurrection of the laity against a 
 corrupted hierarchy, numberless wild and irrational 
 schemes were broached, which have since been slain a 
 hundred times in open conflict, but still survive in at- 
 tenuated form among the traditions of narrow com- 
 munities where the fresh air and light of modern Chris- 
 tendom have never yet found full admission. 
 
 ^' Religious Republics, p. 3. (Cf. 17, 29, and passim : Miall, Brit. 
 Wiclif, Trialogus, i. 9: Cardwell, Churches, p. 411: Ecclesia, p. 484: 
 Conf. -p. 4: Vaughan, Eng. None. Skeats, Free CtorcAes, p. 442 : &c.) 
 
11.] FALLACIOUS APPEAL 70 ' THE SCRIPTURES.' 115 
 
 What! — we ask in amazement — is the Gospel in the 
 hands of Christians, and of those Christians especially 
 who make the loudest pretensions to intelligence and 
 freedom, to be discharged of all its freedom and to 
 become petrified into a sort of Jewish Law ? Are we to 
 stand by and see without a protest the New Testament, 
 — with its express claims to be instinct with principles, 
 not rules, and to enkindle men by a living spirit instead 
 of binding them by dead statutes, — treated by men who 
 occupy the place of teachers just as the Rabbis treated 
 the Old Testament, and thereby converted it into a 
 Talmud ? Nay, do these men really know what they 
 say? Do they mean, e.g., to bind us, for all time, to 
 the use of the primitive love-feast, to a literal com- 
 munity of goods, to the promiscuous kiss of peace, to 
 the regular hour-services of prayer, to the frequent at- 
 tendance at a great endowed sacrificial service, to the 
 Lord's Supper in private chambers, to baptism by im- 
 mersion, and above all to the exclusive use of the 
 Old Testament as Holy Scripture .? Has the Church 
 of Christ no power whatever to alter or adapt anything 1 
 Nay, do the Congregationalists themselves conform to 
 all these things .' 
 
 We know that they do not. But then we decisively 
 refuse to listen to them, when they stand forth and 
 preach to the world a system, which breaks down at 
 the very first attempt to reduce it honestly to practice. 
 We smile, when they pretend to be in the van of modern 
 thought and modern progress, and are found to be in 
 the rear. We turn away, when the claims of their 
 Church-polity are discovered to be based on a view of 
 Holy Scripture so strangely unintelligent, so profoundly 
 superstitious, so certainly at variance with all the con- 
 clusions of modern criticism and modern science, and so 
 
 I 2 
 
n6 THE INDEPENDENTS. [leCT. 
 
 surely condemned to a speedy interment among the dead 
 things of the past, that any one who assails therewith 
 the well-tried polity and free theology of the Church, 
 can only be compared to a naked savage, with his 
 arrows and his canoe, advancing against an iron-clad 
 man-of-war. 
 
 But, at the same time, I cannot refrain from saying 
 what I think — at this moment especially — every Church- 
 man is bound to say to his Independent fellow-Christians 
 and fellow-countrymen. It is this. If we meet you — as 
 you would wish us to do — in fair and open conflict as to 
 the claims of your Church system to universal reception, 
 if we remain absolutely unconvinced by your arguments, 
 and are determined (by God's help) to resist to the 
 utmost your attempts to dissever Church and State, 
 — attempts whose success would be far more ruinous to 
 yourselves than to us, — far be it from us, meanwhile, 
 to withhold the tribute of our praise from men of your 
 communion, who have in bygone times withstood, for 
 conscience sake, the tyranny and violence of evil 
 rulers, and have helped to give our country the free- 
 dom she enjoys. An over-submissiveness is certainly 
 a great evil. And on this political field, the blood of 
 many an Independent and Puritan was not shed in 
 vain. Nor does any intelligent Churchman (I believe) 
 now desire for one moment to narrow the common area 
 that has been cleared, where one Englishmen may meet 
 another with honourable friendship or with courteous 
 rivalry ; or refuse to recognize science, literature, com- 
 merce, politics, art, as arenas open to all, and where 
 religious discord need not, and ought not, to enter. 
 
 Nay, more than this : even in the ecclesiastical sphere, 
 I believe no Churchman now-a-days withholds a just 
 encomium from the Congregationalist members of our 
 
11.] SUCCESSFUL WORK. 117 
 
 common Christendom, for the missionary work that 
 they have done (with other Dissenting bodies) in the 
 dark places of this country, as well as in foreign lands. 
 Partly, no doubt, from her own negligence, but far more 
 (as every honest man will now confess) from the sudden 
 and enormous increase of the population during the 
 present century, the National Church has been utterly 
 unable to overtake the arrears of her work. And Inde- 
 pendents, — however crippled by a system which is not 
 found to flourish well among the poor, — have nobly done 
 what in them lay to supplement her agency. 
 
 But I will not stop even here. I would fain go much 
 farther than that ; and would point out to Churchmen 
 at least, — and, if I might be permitted to do so, to Con- 
 gregationalists also, — that the very truths which they 
 have most conspicuously emblazoned upon their banner, 
 are simply ait essential pat't of the acknowledged teaching 
 of the ChtLrch of England "l ' The ecclesiastical rights of 
 the laity,' and ' the urgent need of guarding Christendom 
 
 "^ It would be difficult to find England,' with subordinate ' County 
 anywhere a more edifying or inter- Unions,' — and a ' Church of Eng- 
 esting series of papers, on subjects land,' with subordinate ' Dioceses.' 
 connected with religion and the (2) Between a ' declaration of faith. 
 Church, than (so far as the present order, and discipline,' in thirty-three 
 writer has seen them) those which articles, — and a similar ' declaration" 
 are written by various Independent in thirty-nine articles. (3) Between 
 ministers, and attached annually to ' the obligation of Church to Church,' 
 the Congregational Vear- Book. It because ' the Churches in Apostolic 
 would be equally difficult to point out days recognized their inter-depend- 
 an abler or truer series of essays on ence,' (Vear-Book, 1871, p. 68) — and 
 ecclesiastical matters, than those con- the diocesan scheme of congrega- 
 tained in the work entitled Ecclesia. tional inter-dependence within the 
 But then the spirit, the tone, almost Church of England. (4) Between 
 the wording of these papers are such ' the custom for especially the better- 
 as any English Churchman might known among our ministers to an- 
 have used. Would to God, that nually spend some weeks in visiting 
 Independents would ask them- the churches generally,' {ibid. p. 1 20) 
 selves candidly and dispassionately; — and the Church's system of Epi- 
 (i) What essential difference there is scopal and Archidiaconal visitations, 
 between a 'Congregational Union of (.5) Between the statement, that ' the 
 
Il8 THE INDEPENDENTS. [lECT. 
 
 against secular corruptions from without' — where are 
 these two maxims more clearly enunciated, or more 
 energetically acted on at the present day, than within 
 the National Church ? No one can honestly doubt, that 
 this fact is in some measure owing to Congregationalist 
 influence. But at the same time, it is equally certain 
 that while these small private religious bodies, — holding 
 such fragments of the truth as their own specialties, and 
 carrying them apart as ' banners,' — magnify them out 
 of all due and healthful proportion, the Church, (on the 
 other hand,) holds them with a far broader and more 
 statesman-like freedom. For she balances them care- 
 fully by many other compensating truths, and so keeps 
 them in due subordination to the true ' analogy of the 
 faith.' 
 
 And as for Voluntaryism, Disestablishment, and the 
 other nostrums of the day, — her one sufficient answer 
 is this : tliey have all been tried already, ttnder the 
 guidance of one of the greatest statesmen whom Englatid 
 has ever produced'^, — and they have signally failed. 
 
 outcry against all dogma, which is (7) Between a ' Union, which has 
 so loud and common in our time, been able indirectly to command an 
 tells disastrously on our religious influence over the weaker churches 
 life,' {ihid. p. 92) — and the state- in the election of their ministers,' 
 ment, that certain ' creeds ought to and thereby ' has prevented many 
 be received and believed,' and taught an imprudence,' {Year-Booi, -p. lit)) 
 as rudimentary long-tried forms of — and the Church's system of pa- 
 dogma. (6) Between the discovery, tronage, which has (on the whole) 
 that ' there is nothing in our eccle- worked wonderfully well, and also 
 siastical systems' — in spite of the 'prevented many^ an imprudence'? 
 internecine hostilities amid which " The results of the ' liberation ' 
 they arose — ' to prevent fraternal effected by the Independents in the 
 co-operation,' (iii'fi. p. 126) — and the seventeenth century, even under 
 Church's earnest pleading, that such Cromwell's strong rule, were these ; 
 things (being of human, and not A hundred sects were tearing each 
 divine, obligation) should not pre- other to pieces in every corner of the 
 vent conformity and organic union ; country ; the Baptists wrote threat- 
 for ' the spirit of singularity in a few ening letters to him from the army ; 
 ought to give place unto public the Fifth-monarchy men were pre- 
 judgment,' (Hooker, iv. 13. 7.) paring to be rid of his and every 
 
II.] 
 
 AMERICA UNLIKE ENGLAND. 
 
 119 
 
 In America the experiment may possibly have been 
 more successful. But then England is a very different 
 country from America : although some people fail to 
 see the differenced^. While, of destruction, revolu- 
 tion, separation, disunion, surely the world has of late 
 years seen more than enough. Nay, the very Dissent- 
 ing periodicals ** themselves are full of those calls to 
 
 other human government; the Qua- 
 kers penetrated into his apartments 
 at Whitehall, and taking the cap 
 from his head tore it in pieces ' as 
 a sign ; ' and this great man con- 
 fessed, — after experience of govern- 
 ing a nation where the fountains of 
 the great deep had all been broken 
 up, where the first principles of all 
 things, sacred and profane, were 
 brought under perpetual discussion, 
 and ' scattering, division, and con- 
 fusion came upon us like things that 
 we desired, — these, which are the 
 greatest plagues that God ordinarily 
 lays upon nations for sin," — that ' he 
 would rather keep a flock of sheep.' 
 (Carlyle, Cromwell, ii. 280, 302.) 
 
 ^ The interest of the magnificent 
 problem, which is now being slowly 
 worked out before our eyes by ' the 
 logic of events,' is immensely en- 
 hanced by the fact that England and 
 America — essentially and at bottom 
 one race — have each to work out 
 their share of the problem under 
 totally dissimilar conditions. Eng- 
 land is an old country, with all the 
 immense advantages and disadvan- 
 tages of a history reading back thir- 
 teen hundred years : America is a 
 new country. England is a small 
 and crowded island: America is a 
 vast, and thinly peopled continent. 
 In England, the main features of the 
 country, social, commercial, and po- 
 litical, have long ago been fixed and 
 have become over-rigid; so that 
 ' one sees in their stolid looks and 
 incurious minds a fatal hopelessness, 
 
 the natural result of a fixed and 
 limited destiny.' (Tuckerman, Month 
 in England, 1854, P- 118.) In Ame- 
 rica, everything is over-fluid and 
 changing. The very capital of the 
 country will, in another generation, 
 probably be transferred to St. Louis. 
 (Bell, North Amer. i, 6.) In Eng- 
 land, there exist a wonderful va- 
 riety and inter-dependence of classes ; 
 in America, 'one of the most marked 
 peculiarities is, the total absence of 
 all classes higher than the merchant 
 and the professional man.' (Zincke, 
 Winter in U.S. 1868, p. 174.) In 
 England, the ' masses ' are town- 
 artisans : in America, the 'masses'- 
 are yeoman-farmers : ' all the way 
 from Philadelphia to Baltimore, I 
 found the country sown with houses. 
 This arises from the fact that every 
 100 or 150 acres belongs to a separate 
 proprietor.' (/iii.p.^i.) Whenthere- 
 fore Mr. Miall, in his great speech 
 on May 9, 187 1, advises the House 
 of Commons to ' look at the United 
 States of America!' we can desire 
 nothing better than to accentuate 
 that advice. 
 
 "'■ E.g. The Methodist New Con- 
 nexion Magazine, for April, 1870, 
 p. 241. ' There are everywhere just 
 now among the different sections 
 of the Christian Church, yearnings 
 after Christian union. In England, 
 Scotland, Australia, and America, 
 different sections of Baptists, Pres- 
 byterians, and Methodists, are seek- 
 ing closer fellowship with their kin- 
 dred sections.' 
 
I20 THE INDEPENDENTS. 
 
 peace and amalgamation, to combined rather than in- 
 dependent efforts, to subordination, harmony, and (on 
 the small scale) reunion, which are — if anything in this 
 world is — the first breath of returning spring upon the 
 Church, a re-awakening of brotherly love and Christian 
 charity among men, and a response on man's part to 
 the gracious pleadings of the Holy Ghost, preparing the 
 way for quite another epoch than that of hatred and 
 watchful jealousy among Christians, — and whispering, 
 ' Sirs, ye are brethren : why do ye wrong one to 
 another ? ' 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 The Presbyterian ' Confession of Faith! 
 
 [The following are the most interesting points in the celebrated ' West- 
 minster Confession of Faith.' It was drawn up by the Assembly of Divines, 
 who were appointed by Parliament, in 1543. to organize the new Presby- 
 terian ' Establishment.' These thirty-three articles are subscribed to, at 
 the present day, by all ministers of the Scotch Presbyterian ' Established 
 Church.'] 
 
 I. Of the Holy Scripture. 
 . . ' It pleased the Lord, at sundiy times and in divers manners, to reveal 
 Himself and to declare His will unto His Church ; and afterwards . . to 
 commit the same wholly unto writing . . Under the name bf Holy Scripture, 
 or the Word of God written, are now contained all the books of the Old 
 and New Testament . . All which are given by inspiration of God, to be the 
 rule of faith and life . . The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it 
 ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not on the testimony of any 
 man or Church ; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author 
 thereof. And therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God. 
 . . Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine au- 
 thority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness, 
 by and with the Word, in our hearts . . Nothing is at any time to be added 
 — whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men . . The 
 Church is finally to appeal to them . . The infallible rule of interpretation 
 of Scripture is the Scripture itself . . 
 
 II. Of God, and of the Holy Trinity. 
 
 III. Of God's Eternal Decree. 
 
 ' God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His 
 own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass. Yet 
 so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin or is violence offered to the 
 will of the creatures . . By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His 
 glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and 
 others foreordained to everlasting death . . Neither are any other redeemed 
 by Christ, . . but the elect only. The rest of mankind God was pleased . . 
 to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath.' . . 
 
122 APPENDIX B. 
 
 IV. Of Creation. 
 
 V. Of Providence. 
 
 VI. Of the Fall of Man, &c. 
 
 ' Our first parents . . so became dead in sin and wholly defiled in all the 
 faculties and parts of soul and body. They being the root of all mankind, 
 the guilt of this sin was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted 
 nature conveyed, to all their posterity . . whereby we are utterly indisposed, 
 disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil.' . . 
 
 VII. Of God's Covenant with Man. 
 
 VIII. Of Christ the Mediator. 
 
 IX. OfFree-Will. 
 
 . . ' Man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will 
 to any spiritual good . . When God converts a sinner and translates him 
 into the state of grace. He freeth him from his natural bondage under sin ; 
 and by His grace alone enables him freely to will and to do that which is 
 spiritually good.' . . 
 
 X. Of Effectual Calling. 
 ' All those whom God hath predestinated unto life — and those only — He 
 is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call by His 
 Word and Spirit . . not from anything foreseen in man, who is altogether 
 passive therein . . Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved 
 by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, where, and how He 
 pleaseth.' . . 
 
 XI. Of Justification. 
 ' Those whom God effectually calleth. He also freely justifieth . . by 
 imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them . . They are 
 not justified, until the Holy Spirit doth in due time actually apply Christ 
 unto them . . Although they can never fall from the state of justification, 
 yet they may by their sins fall under God's fatherly displeasure.' . . 
 
 XII. Of Adoption. 
 
 XIII. Of Sanctification. 
 
 XIV. Of Saving Faith. 
 XV. Of Repentance unto Life, 
 
 XVI. Of Good Works. 
 ' Good works are only such as God hath commanded in His holy Word, 
 — and not such as, without the warrant thereof, are devised by men out of 
 
APPENDIX B. 123 
 
 blind zeal or upon any pretence of good intention . . Works done by unre- 
 generate men, — although, for the matter of them, they may be things which 
 God commands . . are sinful and cannot please God . . And yet their neglect 
 of them is more sinful and displeasing unto God." 
 
 XVII. Of the Perseverance of the Saints. 
 ' They whom God hath accepted . . can neither totally nor finally fall 
 away from the state of grace ; but shall certainly persevere therein to the 
 end and be eternally saved.' . . 
 
 XVIII. Of Assurance of Grace and Salvation. 
 . . 'This certainly is not a bare conjecture and probable persuasion grounded 
 upon fallible hope, but an infallible assurance of faith, — founded upon the 
 divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those 
 graces unto which the promises are made, the testimony of the spirit of 
 adoption witnessing with our spirits.' . . 
 
 XIX. Of the Law of God. 
 ' God gave to Adam a law. . . This law, after his fall, continued to be a 
 perfect rule of righteousness, and as such was delivered by God on Mount 
 Sinai in ten commandments . . Besides this law — commonly called Moral — 
 God was pleased to give to the people of Israel ceremonial laws . . The 
 Moral law doth for ever bind all.' . . 
 
 XX. Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience. 
 . . ' God alone is Lord of the conscience ; and hath left it free from the 
 doctrines and commandments of men, which are in anything contrary to 
 His Word, — or beside it, if matters of faith or worship. So that to believe 
 such doctrines or to obey such commands out of conscience, is to betray 
 true liberty of conscience . . For their publishing of such opinions or main- 
 taining of such practices as . . are destructive to the external peace and 
 order which Christ hath established in the Church, they may lawfully be 
 called to account, and proceeded against by the censures of the Church and 
 by the power of the civil magistrate.' 
 
 XXI. Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day. 
 . . ' God, in His Word, — by a positive, moral, and perpetual command, 
 binding all men in all ages, — hath particularly appointed one day in seven 
 for a Sabbath.' . . 
 
 XXII. Of Lawful Oaths and Vows. 
 
 XXIII. Of the Civil Magistrals. 
 . . ' It is his duty to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the 
 
124 APPENDIX B. 
 
 Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies 
 and heresies be suppressed, all connptions and abuses in worship and dis- 
 cipline prevented and reformed, and all ordinances of God duly settled, 
 administered, and observed. For the better effecting vifhereof, he hath 
 power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that what- 
 soever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.' . . 
 
 XXIV. Of Marriage and Divorce. 
 XXV. Of the Church. 
 ' The Catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the 
 whole number of the elect . . The visible Church, which is also Catholic or 
 universal under the Gospel, consists of all those throughout the world that 
 profess the true religion, together with their children . . This Catholic 
 Church hath been sometimes more, sometimes less, visible : and particular 
 Churches, — which are members thereof, — are more or less pure . . The 
 purest Churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error . . 
 There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can 
 the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that 
 man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the Church 
 against Christ and all that is called God.' 
 
 XXVI. Of the Communion of Saints. 
 
 XXVII. Of the Sacraments. 
 
 XXVIII. Of Baptism. 
 
 . . ' Not only those that do actually profess faith and obedience unto 
 
 Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents, are to be 
 
 baptized . . Grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed to it, as 
 
 that . . all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.' . . 
 
 XXIX. Of the Lord's Supper. 
 . . ' In this Sacrament Christ is not offered up to His Father, nor any 
 real sacrifice made at all, . . but only a commemoration . . So that the 
 Popish sacrifice of the mass is most abominably injurious to Christ's one 
 only sacrifice . . All ignorant and ungodly persons, as they are unfit to 
 enjoy communion with Him, so are they unworthy of the Lord's table.' . . 
 
 XXX. Of Church Censures. 
 
 XXXI. Of Synods and Councils. 
 
 XXXII. Of the State of Men after Death. 
 
 XXXIII. Of the Last Judgment. 
 
APPENDIX C. 125 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 The Independent ' Declaration of Faith, Church Order, and 
 Discipline^ .' 
 
 The Congregational Churches in England and Wales, frequently called 
 Independent, hold the following doctrines, as of Divine authority, and as 
 the foundation of Christian faith and practice. They are also formed and 
 governed according to the principles hereinafter stated. 
 
 Preliminary Notes. 
 
 1. It is not designed, in the following summary, to do more than to state 
 the leading doctrines of faith and order maintained by Congregational 
 Churches in general. 
 
 2. It is not proposed to offer any proofs, reasons, or arguments, in sup- 
 port of the doctrines herein stated, but simply to declare what the Deno- 
 mination believes to be taught by the pen of inspiration. 
 
 3. It is not intended to present a scholastic or critical confession of faith, 
 but merely such a statement as any intelligent member of the body might 
 offer, as containing its leading principles. 
 
 4. It is not intended that the following statement should be put forth 
 with any authority, or as a standard to which assent should be required. 
 
 5. Disallowing the utility of creeds and articles of religion as a bond of 
 union, and protesting against subscription to any human formularies as 
 a term of communion, Congregationalists are yet willing to declare, for 
 general information, what is commonly believed among them, reserving to 
 every one the most perfect liberty of conscience. 
 
 6. Upon some minor points of doctrine and practice, they, differing 
 among themselves, allow to each other the right to form an unbiassed 
 judgment of the Word of God. 
 
 7. They wish it to be observed, that, notwithstanding their jealousy of 
 subscription to creeds and articles, and their disapproval of the imposition 
 of any human standard, whether of faith or discipline, they are far more 
 agreed in their doctrines and practices than any Church which enjoins sub- 
 scription, and enforces a human standard of orthodoxy ; and they believe 
 that there is no minister and no Church among them that would deny the 
 substance of any one of the following doctrines of religion, though each 
 might prefer to state his sentiments in his own way. 
 
 ' Transcribed from the Congregational Fear-Booli, 187 1 
 
126 APPENDIX C. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION. 
 
 I. The Scriptures of the Old Testament, as received by the Jews, and 
 the books of the New Testament, as received by the Primitive Christians 
 from the Evangelists and Apostles, Congregational Churches believe to be 
 Divinely inspired, and of supreme authority. These writings, in the lan- 
 guages in which they were originally composed, are to be consulted, by the 
 aids of sound criticism, as a final appeal in all controversies ; but the 
 common version they consider to be adequate to the ordinary purposes of 
 Christian instruction and edification. 
 
 II. They believe in One God, essentially wise, holy, just, and good ; 
 eternal, infinite, and immutable in all natural and moral perfections ; the 
 Creator, Supporter, and Governor of all beings, and of all things. 
 
 III. They believe that God is revealed in the Scriptures, as the Father, 
 the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that to each are attributable the same 
 Divine properties and perfections. The doctrine of the Divine existence, as 
 above stated, they cordially believe, without attempting fully to explain. 
 
 IV. They believe that man was created after the Divine image, sinless, 
 and, in his kind, perfect. 
 
 V. They believe that the first man disobeyed the Divine command, fell 
 from his state of innocence and purity, and involved all his posterity in the 
 consequences of that fall. 
 
 VI. They believe that, therefore, all mankind are born in sin, and that 
 a fatal inclination to moral evil, utterly incurable by human means, is 
 inherent in every descendant of Adam. 
 
 VII. They believe that God having, before the foundation of the world, 
 designed to redeem fallen man, made disclosures of His mercy, which were 
 the grounds of faith and hope from the earliest ages. 
 
 VIII. They believe that God revealed more fully to Abraham the covenant 
 of His grace, and, having promised that from his descendants should arise 
 the Deliverer and Redeemer of mankind, set that patriarch and his posterity 
 apart, as a race specially favoured and separated to His service ; a peculiar 
 Church, formed and carefully presers'ed, under the Divine sanction and 
 government, until the birth of the promised Messiah. 
 
 IX. They believe that, in the fulness of the time, the Son of God was 
 manifested in the flesh, being born of the Virgin Mary, but conceived by 
 the power of the Holy Spirit ; and that our Lord Jesus Christ was both 
 
APPENDIX C. 127 
 
 the Son of man, and the Son of God ; partaking fully and truly of human 
 nature, though without sin, — equal with the Father, and ' the express image 
 of His person.' 
 
 X. They believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, revealed, either per- 
 sonally in His own ministry, or by the Holy Spirit in the ministry of His 
 Apostles, the whole mind of God, for our salvation ; and that, by His 
 obedience to the Divine law while He lived, and by His sufferings unto 
 death. He meritoriously ' obtained eternal redemption for us ;' having 
 thereby vindicated and illustrated Divine justice, ' magnified the law,' and 
 ' brought in everlasting righteousness. ' 
 
 XI. They believe that, after His death and resurrection, He ascended up 
 into heaven, where, as the Mediator, He ' ever liveth ' to rule over all, and 
 to ' make intercession for them that come unto God by Him.' 
 
 XII. They believe that the Holy Spirit is given, in consequence of 
 Christ's mediation, to quicken and renew the hearts of men ; and that His 
 influence is indispensably necessary to bring a sinner to true repentance, 
 to produce saving faith, to regenerate the heart, and to perfect our 
 sanctification. 
 
 Xin. They believe that we are justified through faith in Christ, as ' The 
 Lord our righteousness ;' and not ' by the works of the law.' 
 
 XTV. They believe that all who will be saved were the objects of God's 
 eternal and electing love, and were given by an act of Divine sovereignty 
 to the Son of God ; which in no way interferes with the system of means, 
 nor with the grounds of human responsibility ; being wholly unrevealed as 
 to its objects, and not a rule of human duty. 
 
 XV. They believe that the Scriptures teach the final perseverance of all 
 true believers to a state of eternal blessedness, which they are appointed 
 to obtain through constant faith in Christ, and uniform obWience to His 
 commands. 
 
 XVI. They believe that a holy life will be the necessary effect of a true 
 faith, and that good works are the certain fruits of a vital union to Christ. 
 
 XVII. They believe that the sanctification of true Christians, or their 
 growth in the graces of the Spirit, and meetness for heaven, is gradually 
 carried on through the whole period during which it pleases God to con- 
 tinue them in the present life ; and that, at death, their souls, perfectly 
 freed from all remains of evil, are immediately received into the presence 
 of Christ. 
 
 XVIII. They believe in the perpetual obligation of Baptism and the 
 
128 APPENDIX C. 
 
 Lord's Supper : the former to be administered to all converts to Chris- 
 tianity and their children, by the application of water to the subject, ' in 
 the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ;' and the 
 latter to be celebrated by Christian Churches as a token of faith in the 
 Saviour, and of brotherly love. 
 
 XIX. They believe that Christ will finally come to judge the whole 
 human race, according to their works ; that the bodies of the dead will be 
 raised again ; and that, as the Supreme Judge, He will divide the righteous 
 from the wicked, will receive the righteous into ' life everlasting,' but send 
 away the wicked into ' everlasting punishment.' 
 
 XX. They believe that Jesus Christ directed His followers to live together 
 in Christian fellowship, and to maintain the communion of saints; and that, 
 for this purpose, they are jointly to observe all Divine ordinances, and 
 maintain that Chui ch order and discipline, which is either expressly enjoined 
 by inspired institution, or sanctioned by the undoubted example of the 
 Apostles and of Apostolic Churches. ■ 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF CHURCH ORDER AND DISCIPLINE. 
 
 I. The Congregational Churches hold it to be the will of Christ that true 
 believers should voluntarily assemble together to observe religious ordi- 
 nances, to promote mutual edification and holiness, to perpetuate and pro- 
 pagate the Gospel in the world, and to advance the gloiy and worship of 
 God, through Jesus Christ ; and that each society of believers, having these 
 objects in view in its formation, is properly a Christian Church. 
 
 II. They believe that the New Testament contains, either in the form of 
 express statute, or in the example and practice of Apostles and Apostolic 
 Churches, all the articles of faith necessary to be believed, and all the 
 principles of order and discipline requisite for constituting and governing 
 Christian societies ; and that human traditions, fathers and councils, canons 
 and creeds, possess no authority over the faith and practice of Christians. 
 
 III. They acknowledge Christ as the only Head of the Church, and the 
 officers of each Church under Him, as ordained to administer His laws im- 
 partially to all ; and their only appeal, in all questions touching their reli- 
 gious faith and practice, is to the Sacred Scriptures. 
 
 IV. They believe that the New Testament authorizes every Christian 
 Church to elect its own officers, to manage all its own affairs, and to stand 
 independent of and irresponsible to, all authority, saving that only of the 
 Supreme and Divine Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
APPENDIX C. 129 
 
 v. They believe that the only officers placed by the Apostles over indi- 
 vidual Churches are the bishops or pastors, and the deacons; the number of 
 these being dependent upon the numbers of the Church ; and that to these, 
 as the officers of the Church, is committed respectively the administration 
 of its spiritual and temporal concerns — subject, however, to the appro- 
 bation of the Church. 
 
 VI. They believe that no persons should be received as members of 
 Christian Churches, but such as make a credible profession of Christianity, 
 are living according to its precepts, and attest a willingness to be subject 
 to its discipline ; and that none should be excluded from the fellowship of 
 the Church, but such as deny the faith of Christ, violate His laws, or refuse 
 to submit themselves to the discipline which the Word of God enforces. 
 
 VII. The power of admission into any Christian Church, and rejection 
 from it, they believe to be vested in the Church itself, and to be exercised 
 only through the medium of its own officers. 
 
 VIII. They believe that Christian Churches should statedly meet for the 
 celebration of public worship, for the observance of the Lord's Supper, and 
 for the sanctification of the first day of the week. 
 
 IX. They believe that the power of a Christian Church is purely spiritual, 
 and should in no way be corrupted by union with temporal or civil power. 
 
 X. They believe that it is the duty of Christian Churches to hold com- 
 munion with each other, to entertain an enlarged affection for each other, 
 as members of the same body, and to co-operate for the promotion of the 
 Christian cause ; but that no Church, nor union of Churches, has any right 
 or power to interfere with the faith or discipline of any other Church, further 
 than to separate from such as, in faith or practice, depart from the Gospel 
 of Christ. 
 
 XL They believe that it is the privilege and duty of every Church to call 
 forth such of its members as may appear to be qualified, by the Holy Spirit, 
 to sustain the office of the ministry ; and that Christian Churches unitedly 
 ought to consider the maintenance of the Christian ministry in an adequate 
 degree of learning, as one of its especial cares ; that the cause of the 
 Gospel may be both honourably sustained, and constantly promoted. 
 
 XII. They believe that Church officers, whether bishops or deacons, 
 should be chosen by the free voice of the Church ; but that their dedication 
 to the duties of their office should take place with special prayer, and by 
 solemn designation, to which most of the Churches add the imposition of 
 hands by those already in office. 
 
 K 
 
130 APPENDIX C. 
 
 XIII. They believe that the fellowship of every Christian Church should 
 be so liberal as to admit to communion in the Lord's Supper all whose 
 faith and godliness are, on the whole, undoubted, though conscientiously 
 differing in points of minor importance ; and that this outward sign of 
 fraternity in Christ should be co-extensive with the fraternity itself, though 
 without involving any compliances which conscience would deem to be 
 sinful. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE ROMANISTS. 
 
 A.D. 1570. 
 
 Leading Idea : — The organic Unity of the Church. 
 
 Method adopted: — Concentration of the Ecclesiastical Polity into a 
 despotism. 
 
 ' Quisquis se Universalem Sacerdotem vocat, vel vocari desiderat, in 
 elatione sua Antichristum preecurrit.' (Pope Gregory I. Episi. vii. 33.) 
 
 K 2 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 c. 200. First symptoms of Papal pride (Pope Victor). 
 c. 400. Rights of Patriarchs overridden : 
 
 347. C. of Sardica gives appeals to Julius I. 
 402. Innocent I. interferes at Constantinople. 
 445. Leo I. (in Peter's name) claims the whole Church. 
 680. Agatho, entitled ' Universalis Patriarcha.' 
 863. Nicholas I. deposes Photius. 
 1054. Leo IX. excommunicates the Eastern Church. 
 1 203. Innocent III. (fourth Crusade) captures Constantinople. 
 
 c. 500. Rights of Metropolitans overridden : 
 
 417. Zosimus interferes in Africa. 
 
 498. Symmachus begins to send the pallium. 
 
 600. Gregory I. places Augustin over the British Church. 
 
 752. Zachary sends 'legates a latere.' 
 
 840. Forged decretals composed. 
 
 860. Nicholas I. tramples on Archbishops of Rheims, &c. 
 1 06 1. Alexander II. claims to confirm all Bishops. 
 1070. — deposes Archbishop Stigand. 
 I140. ' Decretum Gratiani,' &c. 
 
 c. 1000. Rights of Bishops overridden : 
 1066. Monasteries exempted. 
 1155. Bishops robbed of patronage by 'mandates.' 
 
 c. 1050. Rights of Presbyters ovenidden : 
 1050. Leo IX. imposes celibacy. 
 1150. Bishops chosen by Cathedral Chapters. 
 1199. Innocent III. begins to tax the clergy. 
 1216. Friars sent out into the parishes. 
 
 c. 1 100. Rights of the Laity overridden ; 
 1050. Interdicts begin. 
 1059. Popes elected by Cardinals only, 
 1076. Gregory VII. deposes the German Emperor. 
 1 100. Laity excluded from electing Bishops. 
 1 158. Adrian IV. grants away Ireland, &c. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 133 
 
 1 1 70. Lay tribunals forbidden to try Clergy. 
 1200. Innocent III. makes kings his ' vassals.' 
 1 266. Clement IV. deprives lay-patrons. 
 1300. Boniface VIII. claims universal dominion. 
 
 :. 1200. Rights of General Councils overridden : 
 
 384. Siricius annuls a Canon of Nic^a. 
 
 440. Leo I. annuls a Canon of Chalcedon. 
 1200. Innocent III. claims a general dispensing power. 
 1409. Councils (Pisa, Constance, Basle) nullified by the Popes. 
 
 1300. Culmination of the Papal pretensions in Boniface VIII. 
 1303. Resistance begins in earnest : 
 
 1279. English ' Statute of Mortmain.' 
 
 1303. Philip IV. of France burns the Pope's Bull, and appeals 
 
 to a General Council. 
 1305. — transfers the Pope to France. 
 1350. English 'Statute of Provisors.' 
 1366. English Parliament refuses Papal tribute. 
 1 389. English ' Statute of Praemunire.' 
 1409. Councils of Pisa, Constance, Basle. 
 J438. ' Pragmatic sanction ' of Charles VII. 
 1520. Luther in Germany bums the Pope's Bull, and appeals 
 
 to a General Council. 
 1530. Church of England renounces the Papal supremacy, and 
 
 appeals to a General Council. 
 1588. Spanish Armada repelled. 
 
 1688. James II. expelled, and the throne barred in future to a 
 Romanist. 
 
 1530. England throws off the Papal supremacy. 
 1S43. The Jesuits sanctioned by the Pope. 
 1545. Latin Council at Trent. 
 1564. Cassander's effort at reunion. 
 
 1569. Seminary for English priests founded at Douai. 
 
 1570. Pius V. issues his Bull against Queen Elizabeth. 
 1572. Massacre of St. Bartholomew in France. 
 
 1587. Plots to assassinate Elizabeth, and set Mary Queen of Scots on 
 the throne. Mary beheaded. 
 
 158S. England attacked by the Spanish Armada. 
 
 1598. Pope commissions an Archpriest to govern the English Ro- 
 manists. 
 
 1605. Gunpowder plot, Oates's plot, &c. 
 
134 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 1623. Pope commissions titular Bishops (in partibus) to govern as his 
 
 Vicars-Apostolic. 
 1658. Bishop Forbes's effort at reunion. 
 1689. Romanists excluded from the Toleration Act. 
 1 71 8. Archbishop Wake's effort at reunion. 
 1829. Romanists admitted to Parliament, &c. 
 1851. Schismatic Hierarchy nominated by the Pope. 
 1854. Immaculate Conception of Blessed Virgin Mary added to the 
 
 Creed. 
 1865. Dr. Pusey's effort at reunion. 
 
 1870. Latin Council at the Vatican ; Papal Infallibility added to the 
 
 Creed. 
 
 1871. Protest of Dr. Dollinger and the South German Church. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE ROMANISTS. 
 
 ' Neither as being lords over God's lieritage ; but being ensamples to 
 the floclc.' — I Peter v. 3. 
 
 THE second great secession which rent the unity 
 and disturbed the peace of the Church of Eng- 
 land, subsequently to the Reformation, was that of the 
 Romanists. Amid all the ecclesiastical changes of 
 Henry the Eighth's reign, and during the minority of 
 Edward VI., no schism had taken place. Queen Mary's 
 reactionary policy had, no doubt, encouraged many to 
 revert to the scholastic doctrines and superstitious cere- 
 monies to which they had been accustomed in their youth. 
 Yet, even then, on Elizabeth's accession there was little 
 thought of forsaking and anathematizing their mother 
 church. Out of 9,400 priests then in England, less than 
 200 protested against all change so far as to abandon 
 their posts \ Such conduct was reserved for a later 
 period ; when a disgraceful Bull from Pius V., in 1 5 70, 
 compelled men to choose between allegiance to their 
 own Church, and allegiance to the great (so-called) 
 
 ' Stoughton, Church of the Civil Wars, i. 8. 
 
136 THE ROMANISTS. [lECT. 
 
 'centre of unity' and sole 'Vicar of Jesus Christ,' — the 
 Bishop of Rome. And from that time forward, espe- 
 cially during the next eighteen years, a considerable 
 secession certainly took place. Till, at length, the death 
 of the Queen of Scots in 1587, and the failure of the 
 Spanish Armada in 1588, dispelled many illusions; and 
 caused a great number of recusants to conform once 
 more to the National Church ^ 
 
 The question on which these Romanists seceded, — 
 and thus followed the evil example set them by the 
 Brownists and Independents shortly before, — was once 
 more a question of external organization. They too, 
 like the Independents, went off on a point of eccle- 
 siastical polity, — only in the opposite direction. They 
 too imagined they were obeying Christ's behests in 
 breaking up the framework of His Church in these 
 realms. And just as the Independents persuaded them- 
 selves that a democracy (or, more strictly speaking, an 
 oligarchy,) was the sole divinely-appointed arrangement 
 for Christendom, so the Romanists persuaded them- 
 selves, on the other hand, that a despotism was the 
 only divinely-ordered Christian polity ; and that what- 
 ever the Autocrat of the Church — Christ's supposed 
 Vicegerent — should order them to do, that as a matter 
 of conscience they must do. 
 
 They are not now numerically very strong in Eng- 
 land. It has recently been calculated that the whole 
 number of really English-born Romanists does not ex- 
 ceed 180,000 persons: while even the Baptists number 
 700,000, and the Congregationalists claim 1,000,000 ad- 
 herents ^ Nor are they increasing nearly so much as 
 some people appear to imagine. It is mainly their 
 
 - Froude, xii, 531. ' Ra,venstein, Denominational Statistics, -p. 24. 
 
III.] WHY DID THEY SECEDE? 137 
 
 chapels and monastic buildings that increase. And 
 these do not necessarily represent any great number 
 of English converts ; nor are they necessarily either 
 built or maintained wholly by English money*. 
 
 It is clear, then, that the great pressure they are able 
 to exert upon political and ecclesiastical affairs in this 
 country is due, mainly, to their enormous preponder- 
 ance in Ireland, to the strangely passive obedience 
 which their clergy succeed in exacting from their 
 flocks, and to their intimate connexion with an im- 
 mense mass of sympathizers in other parts of the world. 
 And thus it comes to pass that the alienation of this 
 small body from the National Church is a real calamity. 
 And, inasmuch as there is no ' dissent upon principle' 
 here, no objection whatever to a close alliance between 
 Church and State, and not nearly so much essential 
 divergence — either in doctrine or practice — from the 
 Church of England, as is popularly imagined *, it be- 
 comes a very interesting question to ask, ' How then did 
 the secession take place .'' And on what grounds is it 
 now so disastrously, yet so persistently, maintained.'' 
 
 The answer to these questions is at once very clear 
 
 * In 1854, the Romanists were 4.94 opinion, that Roman ' Catholics and 
 
 percent, of the whole population : in Protestants, viewed as bodies, hold 
 
 1866, they were only 4.63 percent, nothing in common in religion, — 
 
 They have now one chapel to every however they may seem to do so.' 
 
 970 persons. (Ravenstein, DcJiomma- (On J/rein. BrfMC. p. 155.) What notion 
 
 tiottal Statistics, -p. 2.^.) of 'morality,' e.g., — beyond the 
 
 ° This has been well shown by merely sexual sphere, — can a writer 
 
 Dr. Pusey in his i?ire«ico«(i865, &c.), possess, who thus speaks of poor 
 
 and by Dr. Lingard, Hist of Engl. vi. bloodstained, ungovernable Ireland? 
 
 332. And yet, on the other hand, 'To this day, among the nations of 
 
 such profound gulfs sometimes open the Christian world, there is not to 
 
 between the Roman and Anglican be found a people so . . . governed by 
 
 views, not merely upon religion, but Christian morality, as the people of 
 
 upon the very ffrmxeia of common Ireland.' (Abp. Manning, The Four 
 
 morality, that one is forced"(almost in- great Evils of the Day [1871], p. 132.) 
 voluntarily) to concur in Dr. Newman's 
 
138 THE ROMANISTS. [lECT. 
 
 and very brief. For though a vast accumulation of 
 controversial literature has grown up round this sub- 
 ject, and it might therefore easily be imagined that 
 no human brain is equal to the task of weighing the 
 arguments that can be adduced on either side, nor an 
 ordinary lifetime long enough for arriving at tranquil 
 certitude about the matter, — this would be in reality a 
 great mistake. In controversy — as in every other sort 
 of conflict— whatever be the extent of country over 
 which it may range, and however intricate its combina- 
 tions may appear, there is always some one central spot 
 which forms the key to the whole position. And this 
 point once mastered, this key once gained, the whole 
 field is found to be dominated ; and many an enormous 
 outwork and laborious entrenchment become at once 
 entirely useless. 
 
 Now this is remarkably the case with the Romanist 
 controversy. For join issue on whatever subject you 
 will, begin from any outlying part of the broad field of 
 theology that you or your antagonist may please, the 
 course of argument will be sure to bring you at last 
 always to the one central question, which forms the key 
 and focus of the whole matter, — and that is, the question 
 of the ecclesiastical supremacy — or rather, as we must now 
 say, the absolute and unlimited despotism — of the Pope'. 
 
 ' Driven from every other point by Canonists like Lancelott to sup- 
 of advantage against the English ply ' sapissime ' good legislation for 
 Church, by the increase of light and the whole Church to accept ; her 
 spread of knowledge, — finding her grandeur, and magnificent history 
 orders acknowledged as genuine by conceded by Dr. Newman ; — Roman- 
 men like Courayer, Du Pin, and Dr. ists are now-a-days, more than ever, 
 Lingard ; her Liturgy offered express taking refuge in this last desperate 
 ratification by Pope Pius IV. ; her stronghold, viz. the absolute neces- 
 primate called a 'Patriarch' by sity to the existence of any Church on 
 Reyner, and even ' alterius orbis earth, that its clergy should hold their 
 Papa' by Pope Adrian ; her provin- ' mission ' from the Pope. 'Though 
 cial councils such, as are admitted we were to admit of an apostolical 
 
m.] THE KEY TO THE WHOLE CONTROVERSY. 139 
 
 Suppose, for.-instance, you begin with the question of 
 Transubstantiation. No sensible man can argue for ten 
 minutes on this subject, without discovering that — if 
 this theory about the precise mode of Christ's presence 
 in the Eucharist have any meaning at all, and be not 
 (as some have ventured to say) a mere hard answer 
 given to amuse people who will persist in asking hard 
 questions — the only meaning it can possibly have is a 
 physical one. The dogma simply stamps as infallibly 
 true the speculations of a heathen philosopher, Aristotle, 
 about the essence (substantia, ovcrCa,) of bodies, — an 
 essence which none of our senses can reach, but which 
 can only be subjectively cogitated or imagined. But then 
 the question at once arises, what authority has stamped 
 this strange notion, of heathen origin, as infallibly true ? 
 And the answer given by a Romanist is, ' the authority 
 of the whole Catholic Church, assembled in council, first 
 at Rome in 1215, and afterwards at Trent in 1555.' But 
 how can it be said that the ' whole Church ' did this act, 
 when the Greek communion in the one case, and both 
 the Greek and almost all the Teutonic Churches in the 
 other, were absent ? It is replied : ' because (as the 
 Lateran Council put it) whatever the Pope does, the 
 Church is reckoned as doing * :' or (as Nicolas Sanders 
 tells us Englishmen quite plainly) 'that alone is the 
 true Church, which is in communion with the Roman 
 Pontiff sitting in the seat of Peter ^.' And consequently, 
 
 succession of orders in the Estab- * ' Illud quod Papa facit, etiam 
 
 lished Church, we never could admit Ecclesia dicitur facere, — tanquam 
 
 of an apostolical succession of mis- ipsius caput universale.' (Fourth 
 
 sion, jurisdiction, or right to execute Lat. Council, 1215 : ap. Bail, i. 435.) 
 
 those orders.' (Milner, End of Con- » ' Ilia sola est vera Christi Eccle- 
 
 trov.. Letter 29.) But we reply by sia, qua communicat cum Pontifice 
 
 a maxim of the old Canon Law : Romano in Cathedra Petri sedente.' 
 
 ' Extra territorium, impunfe non pare- (Sanders, De Visibili Monarchia 
 
 tur jus-dicenti." (1592), P- 219.) 
 
140 THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 Transubstantiation, having the sanction of the papal 
 Church, is to be reckoned as having the sanction of the 
 whole Church. It is therefore infallibly true. For the 
 whole Church has the Lord's promise of indefectibility, 
 and can never go utterly astray. And so they that hold 
 the dogma false or unproven, are ipso facto out of the 
 Church and accursed ; because they do not concur with 
 the Pope. And so the Papal question, after all, forms 
 the key to this Eucharistic controversy, which seemed at 
 first sight so far removed from it. 
 
 Yes, it was this question of the Papacy — might we 
 not almost say, alone and exclusively — which divided 
 us English Churchmen in the sixteenth century, and 
 which divides us still, from the Romanists in our own 
 country, and from the foreign Churches who abet them 
 in their schism. And deep as is our obligation to the 
 earlier and more large-hearted Popes, for invaluable aid 
 in organizing and giving stability to the somewhat loose 
 and shapeless Christianity which we received from the 
 British missionaries, who mainly converted our fore- 
 fathers ^^ ; and whatever thanks we owe them, for many 
 a good Church-law and many an improvement in music, 
 ritual, and architecture ; still it were not wonderful, if 
 every ancient benefit were totally forgotten and the 
 former loyalty were changed into bitter indignation, in 
 view of what the later King-popes have essayed, not only 
 
 " This fact has been long indus- and Cedde (S. Chad's brother) : 
 triously kept out of view. But the Northumbria was Christianized by 
 truth is, that the whole of England Aidan : Mercia by Aidan's scholars, 
 north of the Thames owes its Chris- Diuma, Chad, &c. It was on Chad's 
 tianity to the missionaries, not of head, at his consecration as Bishop 
 Rome, but of the ancient British of Lichfield A. D. 644, that the two 
 Church. Essex and East Anglia, lines of episcopal succession (British 
 though attempted by the Roman and Roman) for the first time con- 
 party, relapsed into paganism ; and verged and united, 
 were finally converted by Fursey 
 
III.] CULMINATION OF THE PAPACY, A.D. 1300. 141 
 
 against the peace and order of our country, but against 
 the efficiency and spirituality of our Church ". 
 
 A.D. 1300 — the year of the great Jubilee at Rome, 
 under Boniface VIII. — -may be conveniently marked as 
 the culminating point of the Papal supremacy. And 
 from that point, during three centuries, it gradually 
 decHned ; passing through (i) the disastrous period of 
 ' seventy years' captivity ' at Avignon : (2) the still more 
 disastrous epoch of divided allegiance, when two or three 
 Popes were striving together for the mastery : (3) the 
 shameful half-century of abortive Conciliar reformations 
 (1409 — 1442) : ere it ultimately descended into the 
 lowest depths of degradation and infamy, under Alex- 
 ander VI. (tiSoa). How it had grown to that dangerous 
 and toppling height, which it reached under Boniface 
 VIII., is a story too long and too well known to need 
 repeating here. It must suffice to touch the salient 
 
 '^ This point has not been sufifi- (Decretal, ii. 24. 27, quoting Inno- 
 ciently attended to. Yet surely, if cent III.) ' feom. Pontifex jura 
 anything is treason "within the ^aai- omnia in scrinio pectoris sui cen- 
 Xtia ToC Qiov, if anything deserve setur habere.' (Bonif. VIII., ap. Sext. 
 the name of ' Anti-christian ' con- Decret. i. 2.1.) ' Subesse Romano 
 duct, it is the fearful sacrilege of Pontifici omnem humanam creatu- 
 perverting the very Church of Christ ram, declaramus omnino esse de 
 Himself into a school of inveracity, necessitate salutis.' (Bull unam sanc- 
 superstition, covetousness, ambition, tain, of Bonif. VIII.) ' Eadem re- 
 and implacable cruelty. These are verentia exhibeatur imagini Christi, 
 among the vices which the Church is et ipsi Christo . . Crux Christi est 
 expressly commissioned to eradicate, adoranda adoratione latriee.' (Aqui- 
 Yet it is these very things, which the nas, Summa, iii. 25. 3 : a canonized 
 Papal maxims and conduct, in Eng- saint.) ' Sunt hseretici ipso jure ex- 
 land as elsewhere, have tended to communicati : item, in filiis dissol- 
 foster ; and which the deplorable vitur patriae potestatis vinculum ; et 
 worldliness of a Royal-papal system ipsi filii, fratres, et sorores debent 
 actually hindered the lower clergy eos deserere : et cum iis dissolvitur 
 from effectually combatting. The conjugalis servitus, et potest fieri 
 following, e.g., are some of the separatio Ji, toro. . Item, sunt infames 
 Papal maxims — the maxims of the et intestabiles . . . Confiscari debent 
 pretended Vicar of Jesus Christ, and omnia bona eorum . et hodife dam- 
 mouthpiece of the Holy Ghost upon nandi sunt ad mortem per seculares 
 earth : — ' Juramentum contra utili- potestates, et per eos debent com- 
 tatem ecclesiasticam non tenet.' buri,' (Lyndwood, p. -293 ; Oxf. ed.) 
 
142 THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 points, and to make the huge masses of historical fact 
 and theological commentary, that encumber in Titanic 
 confusion this whole district, surrender to a side ray the 
 real secret of their conformation. 
 
 For though the whole truth about the Papacy is known 
 now, it was not known 300 years ago. And this fact in 
 great measure accounts for and excuses the Romanist 
 secession in England. It was then still popularly 
 believed that Christ had left His Church, when He 
 ascended into heaven, organized very nearly on the me- 
 dieval system. It was then still believed that St. Peter 
 was, in some true sense, a ' Pope ; ' and that he had 
 presided in his Cathedral at Rome for twenty-five 
 years, seven months, and eight days. He was still 
 clothed, by a childlike imagination, with the attributes 
 of an Innocent III. or a Martin V., — -just as the painters 
 of that period represented Roman centurions in medi- 
 aeval armour, and conceived the dreary landscapes of 
 Judaea as luxuriant with the beauty of Southern Italy. 
 
 And did there not stand too, amid every public and 
 authorized collection of the Church's Canon Laws ^^, — 
 
 '^ The Canon Law (properly amid all the exasperations of the 
 
 speaking) is, of course, nothing else Reformation period, she enacted — 
 
 than the lex scripta of that great not only that ' such canons and 
 
 l3a/jL\iia Tou ©€oC, that true Ca- synodals provincial, being already 
 
 tholic or ' International ' Society, made, which be not contrariant nor 
 
 the Christian Church spread through- repugnant to the laws statutes and 
 
 out the world. But among the customs of this realm, nor to the 
 
 thousand inaccuracies and confusions danger or hurt of the King's prero- 
 
 which have arisen from the usurpa- gative, shall now still be used and 
 
 tions of Rome, this is one: that executed;' (25 Hen. VIII. 19 :) — but 
 
 the Pope's Canon Law has come also that ' Judges ecclesiastical shall 
 
 to supersede the Church's Canon not adjudge for " heresy '* anything 
 
 Law. Of the latter, as set forth in but that which heretofore hath been 
 
 the enactments of the Church's true so adjudged by Scripture,' or by the 
 
 legislative organs, the great CEcu- first four General Councils,' &c. ( i Eliz. 
 
 menical Councils, the Greek Church i. 36.) The fountain-head of the 
 
 has been the most watchful guar- ' Pope's Canon Law,' on the other 
 
 dian. Though England too may hand, is to be found in the Decrelum 
 
 claim her meed of praise; when, Gratiani {a.v. 1140) — a strange jum- 
 
m.] THE PAPAL ' CANON law: 143 
 
 by which every archdeacon's and every bishop's court 
 guided their proceedings, and under which the whole 
 daily life of the Church was governed, — a series of 
 canons, letters, quotations from the Fathers, and decrees 
 of Popes, reaching down from the very earliest centuries ? 
 And did they not all alike acknowledge the two rnain 
 facts in dispute : viz. (i) Peter's monarchy over the whole 
 Church, and (2) his transmission of that office to the suc- 
 cessive occupants of the Roman See ? 
 
 What, amid such overpowering proofs, was a modest 
 man to do, who desired to be in communion with the 
 Catholic Church from the beginning, and who believed 
 in the maxim ' quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab 
 omnibus' ? What was he to reply, when he was shown a 
 passage in a Greek Father, so early and so important as 
 St. Cyril of Alexandria in the fifth century, to this 
 effect : ' Just as the Son of God received from His 
 Father the government of the Church and of the 
 nations, so that every knee must bow to Him, — so the 
 same ample power did He fully commit to Peter and 
 his successors ' .'' What was he to think, when he found 
 St. Augustine, in the fourth century, writing, ' Rome 
 hath spoken : the question is settled :' Cyprian, in the 
 third century, saying : ' How can he believe himself to 
 be in the Church, who forsakes the chair of Peter >. ' 
 Iren^EUS, in the second century, saying : ' It is neces- 
 sary that all depend upon the Church of Rome, as on a 
 well-spring or a head:' and even Anacletus, in the 
 
 ble of scraps from the Fathers, shreds eery. The modern Papal Hand- 
 
 from the Councils, and above all of books breathe a still more concen- 
 
 sentences from Papal epistles (both trated atmosphere of ultramontane 
 
 genuine and forged). This, swollen absolutiim: see, e.g., Lancelott, In- 
 
 to thrice its original size by subse- s/iVM/iorees (1560), bk. i. tit. 6 : Sauter, 
 
 quent accretions, formed the 'Cor- Fundamenta (1809), i. 69: Devotus, 
 
 pus Juris Canonici,' for the lawyers Instit. (i8j8), p. 52 ; Bouix, Traclalus 
 
 who practised in the Pope's Chan- (1852), p. 128. 
 
144 THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 first century, — the next but one in succession to St. Peter 
 himself, about A.D. 78, — determining the question plainly 
 thus : ' Let all the more important and difficult cases 
 that may arise be referred to the Apostolic See : for so 
 the apostles decreed, under the express bidding of the 
 Saviour'? How could he feel comfortable, I say, in 
 remaining within his own national Church, when he was 
 shown this consensus of authorities in favour of the Papal 
 supremacy, and yet saw her indignantly shaking off the 
 Papal yoke, which had, on these very grounds, been 
 submitted to by kings and bishops and schoolmen for 
 1000 years? 
 
 Nay, if he still hesitated, he was shown the letters of a 
 whole series of Antenicene Popes, all plainly supporting 
 the Papal claims. There were the letters totidem verbis 
 of Melchiades, Eusebius, and Marcellus, early in the 
 fourth century : of Felix, Sixtus II., Lucius, Cornelius, 
 CaHxtus, Zephyrinus, in the third century : of Victor, in 
 the second century : and of Anacletus, Clement, and 
 even S. Peter himself, in the first century. There were, 
 besides these, the Conciliar decisions at Sinuessa in 
 Italy, A.D. 303, laying it down that 'the first see is to 
 be judged by no man ;' and at Nicaea, the great OEcu- 
 menical Council in A.D. 325, ordering that 'all episcopal 
 appeals be taken before the Bishop of Rome.' And to 
 clench and settle the whole matter, there stood — in plain 
 and legible characters — upon the page of Gratian's 
 Decretujn 1^, the following words of the great, holy, 
 and intelligent St. Augustine (A.D. 400), placing the 
 decrees of the Popes on the same level of inspiration 
 as the Bible itself ; ' The Epistles,' said he, ' issued by 
 the Holy See form part of the Canonical Scriptures.' 
 
 I have not even now set before you all the proofs of 
 
 ^ Part i. dist. 19. cap. 6. 
 
in.] THE PAPAL CLAIMS REST OX FORGERIES. 145 
 
 this kind, which were used to overpower men's judgment 
 and common sense in the sixteenth centurj,'. Xay, some 
 of them are still used, are still incorporated in the 
 Breviaries and the books of Canon Law ; and are even 
 (with audacious effronterji pushed to extravagance-^in 
 our own land and in the year of grace 1S70, — by being 
 carried back yet farther than St. Peter, and attached to 
 the sacred person of our blessed Lord Himself. ' Do you 
 mean,' — writes an English Romanist, onh- last year, — 
 ' that our blessed Lord taught His apostles the immacu- 
 late conception of His blessed mother .' I do. And the 
 infallibility of t]ie Pope? I do^^.' However, enough has 
 been said, I think, to show that, (whatever may be the case 
 in the nineteenth centur}-.') an ordinarih" educated clerg^-- 
 man or layman, about the middle of the sixteenth cea- 
 tur}-, might well be excused if he felt in great perplexity- 
 about this subject : if he hesitated betiveen these oppo- 
 site claims to his allegiance ; and sometimes decided in 
 favour of obedience to the Pope, in preference to a con- 
 tinued loyalt>- to his own EngHsh mother church. 
 
 And now what is the truth of the matter .' The truth 
 of the matter is simply this : tlw z^'::U cj t/use dccurricnts 
 and passages that I have quoted, are no-.i- knozc-: tc ce. 
 — a>td are for tiie nest part aekno-ivledged e-eeu iv jesuits 
 and Popes to ce, — a series of gross forgeries. There is not 
 one of them, that has been able to stand the test of 
 inquiri- ; not one of them, that has not melted away 
 beneath the searching glance of an honest criticism ; 
 not one that has escaped the brand of a disgraceful 
 imposture. 
 
 Take first the passage from St. C\Til— quoted even by 
 such men as Ferraris, the Canonist, in the eighteenth 
 
 '-' Tbe Baric: Catholic Magazine. May, 1570. p. 6. 
 L 
 
146 THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 century 15 ; and by Rayner the Dominican, in the seven- 
 teenth century 1^. It is expressly acknowledged to be 
 spurious by the Dominican editor of Rayner's book, in 
 1655. Indeed, a whole 'treasury' of similar forgeries, 
 purporting to represent the submission of the early 
 Greek fathers to the Papal claims, has now been de- 
 tected and exposed. There is a Thesaurus Grcecorum. 
 Patrum, which is now known to be the work of a forger 
 in the thirteenth century, who brought to Pope Urban IV. 
 a MS., full of fabricated citations, constructed in support 
 of the Papal claims and of the filioque clause in the 
 Nicene Creed, against the aspersions of contemporary 
 Greek writers. Urban handed on the MS. to his friend 
 Thomas Aquinas ; who was in his turn deceived, and 
 who accepted — though not without some grave suspicions 
 — this gross imposition as a genuine work i''. 
 
 Turn next to the peremptory and decisive passage 
 from St. Augustine, a passage employed even to this 
 day — as any one who has had controversy with Ro- 
 manists can attest — with perfect confidence and triumph : 
 ' Roma locuta est, causa finita est.' Those words were 
 never written by St. Aiigustine. What he did write is 
 as follows : on the Pelagian question, ' the results of two 
 councils were communicated to the Apostolic See, and 
 letters were received in reply. The controversy is at 
 
 ^ Ferraris, Bihlioiheca Canonica^ corum, confesses that the great 
 
 vii. 2S, [second edition, 1780,] a work Schoolman was deceived by this 
 
 in great request, especially on Ru- forgery and made use of it against 
 
 brical questions. the Greeks : but thinks that after- 
 
 '" Raynerii, Panlheologia, iii. 162, wards his suspicions were aroused, 
 
 [ed. Nicolai, 1655.] It was used as and that a certain ' olfacta falsitas-' 
 
 a text-book in most Roman Catholic warned him against using the The- 
 
 institutions, till nearly the middle of saurus in composing his great work, 
 
 the last century. the Summa Theologice. (See P. 
 
 " P. de Rubeis, the Dominican, Gratry, ' Deuxifeme lettre Ji Mgr. 
 
 in his dissertation prefixed to Thomas I'archeveque de Malines,' p. 26.) 
 Aquinas' work Contra errores One- 
 
III.] FORGED CITATIONS FROM THE FATHERS. 147 
 
 an end: may the error also, one day, end"!' More- 
 over his personal opinions on this subject can easily be 
 gathered, by a hundred genuine passages culled at random 
 from his voluminous works ; by which it appears that, — 
 so far from maintaining the modern Jesuit view of the 
 chief authority in the Church,— he held precisely the 
 Anglican view ; viz. that the supreme ecclesiastical power 
 was lodged in a gejieral council of the whole Church ", 
 the Bishop of Rome claiming merely a Primacy among 
 his brother bishops 2". To which we may venture to add, 
 that his opinion also about ' pious frauds' and convenient 
 forgeries may be gathered from the following passage : 
 ' Omnis qui mentitur, iniciuitatem facit ; et si cuiquam 
 videtur utile aliquando esse mendacium, potest videri 
 utilem esse aliquando iniquitatem ^1.' 
 
 We come next to St. Cyprian, in the third century. 
 The famous passage in his work De Unitate Ecclesia 
 (chap, ii.) has been by Romanists ' so often alleged and 
 repeated, that scarce any writer of their side sails in the 
 
 ^^ 'Jam enim de hac causa duo norum, i. I. 2.) Cf. Janus, p. 88. 
 
 concilia missa sunt ad sedem aposto- ' St. Augustine has written more on 
 
 licam : inde etiam rescripta venerunt. the Church, its unity and authority, 
 
 Causa finita est ; utinam aliquando than all the other Fathers put 
 finiatur error I ' (Serm. 132, sub fin.; together. Yet, from his numerous 
 
 Migne, v. 754: cf. Gratry, ii. 57; works filling ten folios, only one 
 
 Janus, 70.) sentence in one letter can be quoted, 
 
 " ' Nee tale aliquid auderemus where he says that the principality 
 
 asserere, nisi Universee EcclesicC [the " primacy," — principatus] of the 
 
 concordissima auctoritate firmati. Apostolic chair has always been at 
 
 Cui et ipse [Cyprianus] sine dubio Rome ... In the seventy-five chapters 
 
 cederet, si jam illo tempore quffi- [of his work on the Unity of the 
 
 stionis hujus Veritas eliquata et de- Church] there is not a single word 
 
 clarata per plenarium Concilium soli- on the necessity of communion with 
 
 daretur.' (De Bapt. ix. 2. 5 : ap. Rome as the centre of unity.' 
 Gratry, ii. 60.) -' Augustine, De Doctrina Chris- 
 
 '" ' Communis omnibus nobis qui fun- tiana, i. § 36 : cf. Serm. 132, cap. 3. 
 
 gimur Episcopatus officio — quamvis ' Eligo ut homo in aliquo fallatur, 
 
 ipse in ea pr^emineas celsiore fas- quam ut in aliquo mentiatur. Falli 
 
 tigio — specula pastoralis.' (Ad Bo- enim pertinet ad infirmitatem : men- 
 
 nifacium, contri duas Epist. Pelagia- tin ad iniquitatem.' 
 
 L 2 
 
THE ROMANISTS. [leCT. 
 
 main ocean of controversies, but he toucheth at this 
 point ^^.' Unluckily, every single word is an interpolation. 
 'I have seen,' says Dr. James, first curator of the Bodleian 
 Library (ti629), ' eight very ancient MSS., and can speak 
 of my certain knowledge, that none of these have any 
 such matter ^^.' 
 
 The passage first appears in a letter from Pelagius II. 
 (tSgo) to the Istrian Bishops ; in order (it would seem) 
 to save the credit of St. Cyprian, — a great saint, who 
 stood too high in popular veneration to be dethroned, 
 although a previous Pope had included his writings in 
 a list of works rejected by the Church. To effect this, 
 it was necessary (i) to interpolate a pro-papal passage in 
 the midst of a distinctly anti-papal work, — and that, only 
 ten lines below the following passage : ' The other apostles 
 were the same as was Peter, endued with an equal share 
 both of dignity and power ;' and only ten lines above 
 the celebrated words: 'Episcopatus unum est; cujus a 
 singulis in solidum pars tenetur :' — and (2) to alter in his 
 favour the papal list of rejected works. Both these 
 things were done^*. And in the subsequent Roman 
 edition of 1563, the forgery was retained, — in the face 
 of better knowledge and against the express remon- 
 strances of the editor himself, — by order of the Papal 
 censors. In the Paris edition of 1726, the same dis- 
 graceful conduct was repeated. For when the learned 
 editor, Baluze, had erased the forgery, it was restored 
 afresh by order of Cardinal Fleury, ' lest he should 
 
 ^ James, On the Corruptions of the inserted words are nothing more 
 
 Fathers, 1611. (Oxford reprint, than the marginal note of a copyist 
 
 p. 78-) or reader, which afterwards crept 
 
 ^ Ibid. p. 81. into the text.' As regards the spu- 
 
 ** Janus, p. I'z;. To this Dr. Her- riousness of the passage then, 'ha- 
 
 genrother, in his Anti-Janus, p. 149, bemus confitentem reum.' 
 
 makes the following reply : ' The 
 
III.] IREN^US MISQUOTED. 149 
 
 involve himself in a quarrel with Rome.' And to this 
 day, in the ordinary Romanist editions, the false but 
 useful words retain their place ^®. 
 
 The next citation to be examined, is that from Ire- 
 naeus, in the second century. It is used by Melchior 
 Canus (1563), by Bellarmine (1586), and by other con- 
 troversialists, down to St. Liguori (1787), — whose work 
 on Moral TJieology is in the hands of every Roman 
 priest and seminarist, and who is lauded by an ultra- 
 montane archbishop as ' the most powerful echo of tra- 
 dition in modern times ^^.' Will it be credited.'' The 
 words are nowhere to be found in St. Irenceus. They 
 are a pure invention from beginning to end. The only 
 basis on which they can even pretend to stand, is the 
 well-known passage, where Irenaeus makes his appeal 
 to Catholic tradition — best preserved, naturally, in the 
 most central, populous, and apostolic Churches — against 
 the heretical novelties of his day. He asks, therefore, 
 as a matter of common sense, why people should go 
 far afield to search for the truth, tvhen it is already 
 to be found deposited in the Church : and whether it 
 were not the more rational course, ' to refer to the most 
 ancient Churches, in which the apostles had been per- 
 sonally present ; and from them to draw a clear certainty 
 about the matter in debate^' V 
 
 ^^ E. g. in the handy 8vo. edition, Non habentur in antiquis editionibus, 
 
 Paris, 1836; and in Migne's cheap neque in libris nostris antiquis.' Yet 
 
 edition, which is headed Traditio in the face of these facts, the passage 
 
 Catholica, Paris, 1865: the latter, is used by Baronius, Bellarmine, Sta- 
 
 however, having undertaken to give pleton, the Rhemists, and many 
 
 Baluzius' notes in full, is compelled others; and no doubt does good 
 
 to reprint the following remarks of service in the Papal cause to the 
 
 an ' eruditionis hand ita sance ' (!) — present hour. 
 
 'Latinius (1563) ait, hoc addita- ^° Mgr. Dechamps, Archbishop of 
 
 mentum non-reperiri in septem codi- Malines, (Gratry, ii. 21). 
 
 cibus Vaticanis. Ego vidi septem et " ' Nonne oporteret in antiquis- 
 
 viginti, in quibus pariter deest . . . simas recurrere Ecclesias, in quibus 
 
igo 
 
 THE ROMANISTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 But 'since it were long,' he says, 'to go through, 
 in a work Hke this, the successions of bishops in all 
 the Churches,' he will content himself with that 'greatest, 
 most ancient and well-known Church, founded at 
 Rome. For to this Church, on account of its primary 
 importance, the whole Church of the surrounding faithful 
 find themselves drawn together ; and so in it, by the 
 concourse of the faithful from all sides, the Apostolic 
 tradition is kept up^'.' (iii. 3. i.) We observe that in 
 all this there is not one word about the Pope or his 
 mysterious claims. Rather, the reference to the Roman 
 Church at that epoch was as much a matter of simple 
 common sense, as was the precisely similar language 
 of Tertullian ^^ and of St. Augustine ■''", on the same 
 subject. But garbled in later times, accentuated and 
 interpolated, it was made to do duty by falsely en- 
 
 Apostoli conversati sunt, — et ab iis, 
 de preesenti quaastione, sumere quod 
 certum et re liquidum est ? ' {H(Er. 
 iii. 4. I.) 
 
 ^ * Sed quoniam valde longum est, 
 in hoc tali volumine, omnium eccle- 
 siarum enumerare successiones, max- 
 ima et antiquissimtB et omnibus cog- 
 nitse, ^ gloriosissimis duobus Apo- 
 stolis Petro et Paulo Rom« fun- 
 datffi ecclesise . . . traditionem indi- 
 cantes, confundimus. eos, etc. Ad 
 hanc enim ecclesiam, propter poten- 
 tiorem principalitatem [qu. hid. t^v 
 iKavoyrtpav ap\i}v, or apxaioTrjToi], 
 necesse est omneni convenire Eccle- 
 siam, — hoc est, eos qui sunt undique 
 fideles, — in qua semper, ab his qui 
 sunt undique, conservata est ea qua2 
 est ab Apostolis traditio.' The pas- 
 sage (as is well known) exists only 
 in a Latin translation. Its meaning 
 is well illustrated by Athenceus, 
 DeipH. i. § 36, (ap. Neander, i. 285,) 
 
 'FW^TJ noKlS ilTlTOfJ.^ TTJS olfCOVfX^VTJS, 
 
 ev 77 cvviSfiv fOTLV ovTois irdaas tAs 
 ir6\eis ISpvfjLevas : and by Chrys. 
 Farewell Oraiion, tom. i. 755 : where 
 he uses similar language about the 
 Eastern ' emporium of the faith,' 
 Constantinople. 
 
 ^' ' Percurre Ecclesias Aposlolicas, 
 apud quas ipsee cathedrce aposto- 
 lorum suis locis pr^sidentur . . Prox- 
 ime est tibi Achaia, — habes Corin- 
 thum : si non longe es k Macedonia, 
 — habes Philippos, habes Thessalo- 
 nicenses : si potes in Asiam tendere, 
 — habes Ephesum: si autem Italise 
 adjaces, — Romam, unde nobis quo- 
 que auctoritas prtesto est.' {De 
 Prtescrip. § 36.) 
 
 ™ ' QuEerebam quomodo se isti 
 [scil. Donatistae] justfe separassent 
 ab innocentia czeterorum Christ- 
 ianorum qui, per orbem terrarum 
 successionis ordinem custodientes, in 
 antiquissimis ecclesiis constituti, ig- 
 norarent,' etc. {Episl. xliv. 3.) 
 
in 
 
 ] THE 'FORGED DECRETALS! igi 
 
 listing the weight of a great name in support of the 
 universal dominion of the Roman See ". 
 
 And now we come to that enormous and shame- 
 less imposture, — commonly called the ' Pseudo-Isido- 
 rian Decretals.' This presents us, in the interests of 
 the Holy See, with a collection of letters purporting 
 to be written by thirty of the earliest Popes of Rome, 
 during the first four centuries of the Christian era. 
 Skilfully attached to a large number of later epistles 
 and decrees, — which are genuine, and which breathe 
 the true spirit of Roman domination, — they were im- 
 plicitly believed in for seven centuries ; and materially 
 contributed to rivet on the neck of Christendom that 
 fatal yoke of a spiritual despotism, which the utmost 
 efforts of re-awakened Europe in the sixteenth century 
 were unable wholly to shake off They were composed 
 by an unknown forger, amid the deepening gloom of 
 the middle of the ninth century. And, though suspected 
 once or twice by thinkers of unusual independence 
 during the middle ages ^^, the imposture was never 
 publicly detected till the era of the Reformation. It 
 was then made known to Europe : first of all, by the 
 Protestant historians at Magdeburg (1559) ; soon after- 
 wards, by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tarragona, 
 in Spain ^^. It was then acknowledged by Cardinal 
 Baronius-^*, the great Church historian (ti6o7) ; and 
 
 ^^ Gratry, ii. 44, shows how, in a.d. 871. He calls them a ' poculum 
 so widely used a book as the Roman quod confecisti ex nominibus sane- 
 Breviary, this passage has been torum apostolicae sedis pontificum/ 
 truncated and misapplied and made etc. (ap. Neander, vi. 28 : Bohn). 
 to serve the Papal cause. They were next called in question 
 
 ^^ They seem to have been vehe- in 1170, again in 1324, in 1418, and 
 
 mently suspected by Hincmar, Arch- 1448. (Gieseler, ii. 335.) 
 
 bishop of Rheims, against whom ^ Gieseler, ii. 335. 
 
 they were first used by the Popes, ^ Bccles. Hist. a.d. 865, § 8. 
 
152 THE ROMANISTS. [leCT. 
 
 by Cardinal Bellarmin ^^ the subtle Jesuit controver- 
 sialist (fi 621). By David Blondel, at Geneva, in 1628, 
 the question was dragged forth still farther into the 
 light of day, and became finally decided ^^ ; so that, 
 since that time, men the most devoted to the Holy 
 See ^"^ have been obliged to confess the vast imposture, — 
 and Pope Pius VI. himself, in 1789, judged it to be 
 worthy of the flames ^*. And yet this transparent forgery 
 did good service at Trent ; where it was quoted without 
 rebuke by an Italian bishop, in a speech on the duty 
 of the Church ^^. It was trusted by the great theologian, 
 Melchior Canus, in 1563*°. Nay, it was actually em- 
 ployed so late as the end of the last century, by the 
 great saint and doctor of the Latin Church, Liguori *^,- — ■ 
 whose handbooks are in universal circulation, — as a 
 basis for his teaching on ' the infallibility of the Pope.' 
 
 What then does this Isidorian forgery contain .^ It 
 contains, in the first two hundred and fifty pages, the 
 supposititious letters of thirty Popes during the Ante- 
 nicene period. In these, it represents St. Peter himself 
 as saying, ' not even among the Apostles was there 
 equality : but one was set over all.' It makes St. 
 Clement (fioo) call Peter 'the prince of the Apostles,' 
 and assign damnation as the award for neglecting his 
 
 ^ De Pontif. Rom. ii. cap. T4. cremandam.' {Letter to four Metro- 
 
 ^^ Hinschius, Decretales Pseudo- politans of Germany^ p. 236 : ap. 
 
 Isid. p. Ixxxii. Gieseler, loc. cit, Gratry, ii. 9.) 
 
 " Devotus : Instit. Canonica; i. 70 '" Le Plat, Monum. Condi. Trid. 
 
 (Ghent, edit. 1846): ' Hodie per- vii. 341. 
 
 spicua, non suspiciosa, omnibus est *■ De locis Theol. vi. cap. 4 : ap. 
 
 falsitas Decretalium, quse ex penu Gratry, ii. 8. 
 
 Isid. Mercatoris ediicta sunt.' And *'■ Theol. Moralis, i. 109. Cf. Dr. 
 
 Dr. Hergenrother, Anti-Janus, p. 112 Vnsey, Eirenicon, i. 255 : 'Theforgery 
 
 (Engl, trans.) : ' The genuine Papal of the Decretals, after they had 
 
 iDecretals, that have been preserved, passed for true during eight centuries, 
 
 begin with the year 385.' was owned by all, even in the 
 
 ^' ' Seponamus coUectionem hujus- Church of Rome. But the system 
 
 modi, igni etiam (si placet) con- built upon the forgery abides still.' 
 
Ill 
 
 :.] PRETENDED LETTERS OF EARLY POPES. 153 
 
 regulations. It makes Anacletus (tQi) say, ' If difficult 
 questions should arise, in case of appeal, let them be 
 referred to the Apostolic See : for so the Apostles 
 ordained, under the injunctions of the Saviour.' It puts 
 into the mouth of Victor (t202) the following decree : 
 ' Although the case of an accused Bishop may be 
 examined by his comprovincial Bishops, still it is not 
 lawful for them to determine the matter, without con- 
 sulting the Bishop of Rome.' Zephyrinus adds (t2i8), 
 ' Let the conclusion of such a cause be reserved for the 
 Apostolic See, and then be terminated, and not before. 
 . . To it also let all, especially those under oppression, 
 make appeal and fly for refuge, as to a mother.' Calixtus 
 (t223), ' It is undoubted, that the Apostolic Church is 
 the mother of all Churches . . the head of the Church 
 is the Roman Church.' Cornelius (t252), ' Let no priest 
 commit his cause to any alien jurisdiction, unless appeal 
 have been first made to the Apostolic See.' Lucius I. 
 (t2S3), 'This is the holy and Apostolical mother of all 
 Churches, the Church of Christ, which, by the grace of 
 Almighty God, is proved to have never erred from the 
 path of Apostolical tradition, nor succumbed to heretical 
 innovations.' Sixtus II. (t2S8), ' Bishops are blame- 
 worthy, who act otherwise towards their brethren, than to 
 the Pope of their see shall seem good.' Marcellus (t3 10), 
 ' He is the head of the whole Church, to whom the Lord 
 said, "Thou art Peter," ' &c. Eusebius (tSio), 'Blessed be 
 the Lord our God, who hath enriched the Roman Church 
 with the ministry of blessed Peter, prince of the Apo- 
 stles ; and to us too, on account of the universal charge 
 which is the privilege of the same Church,' &c.*^ Such 
 are a few specimens of this unparalleled forgery. 
 
 '^ For all the above-quoted passages, see Hinschius, Decret. Pseudo-Isid. 
 vol. i. 
 
154 THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 We turn now to the pretended Council of Sinuessa, — 
 a place not far from Rome, — held (it is alleged) in 
 A.D. 303 ; and promulgating the famous maxim, that 
 'the first See is judged by no man.' Of this Council Dr. 
 Hefele, the learned Roman Catholic Bishop of Rotten- 
 burg, gives the following account. ' If the document 
 which tells us of a synod at Sinuessa could have any 
 pretension to authenticity, this synod must have taken 
 place about the beginning of the fourth century, in 
 303. It says the Emperor Diocletian had pressed 
 Marcellinus, Bishop of Rome, to sacrifice to the gods. . . 
 A synod assembled, and Marcellinus denied the fact. 
 The inquiry was continued in a crypt near Sinuessa, 
 on account of the persecution. There were assembled 
 many priests, and no fewer than three hundred Bishops ; 
 a number quite impossible for that country, and in a 
 time of persecution. . . The third day, the three hundred 
 Bishops charged Marcellinus in God's name to speak 
 the truth. He then threw himself on the ground, and, 
 covering his head with ashes, loudly and repeatedly 
 acknowledged his sin, adding that he had allowed him- 
 self to be bribed with gold. The Bishops, in pronouncing 
 judgment, formally added : Marcellinus has condemned 
 himself, for the occupant of the highest see cannot be 
 judged by any one . . This account is so filled with impro- 
 babilities and evidently false dates, that in modern times 
 Roman Catholics and Protestants have unanimously re- 
 jected the authenticity of it. Before that, some Roman 
 Catholics were not unwilling to appeal to this document, 
 on account of the proposition, prima sedes non judicatur 
 a quoquam. The Roman Breviary itself has admitted 
 the account of Marcellinus' weakness *^.' 
 
 *' Hefele, Concilien-geschicble,i. 118 imaginary Council are to be seen in 
 (Engl, trans, i. 1 2 7). The acts of this Hardouin, i. z 1 7. 
 
III.] THE .YICEXE CAXOXS TAMPERED WITH. 155 
 
 Far more important, as giving an apparent sanction 
 of the very highest kind to the Papal claims, was the 
 decree attributed through many a long age to the 
 OEcumenical Council of Nic3ea (325), that all episcopal 
 appeals should be carried before the Bishop of Rome. 
 Nicjea, it need not be said, decreed nothing of the kind. 
 But the history of this imposition is really curious and 
 instructive. It is a network of fraud. \\^e must begin 
 by going back so far as Pope Zosimus (t4i8), within 
 a century of the Nicene Council itself. 
 
 A presbyter of the Latin Church of North Africa had 
 been degraded by his Bishop for misconduct. He, how- 
 ever, crossed the sea to Italy, and begged the Pope's 
 interference. This, of course, was only too readily 
 granted. And when three African councils were held, 
 to protest against the interference, Zosimus alleged, as 
 his authority for interfering, a canon of the Council 
 of Nicaea ; which was. in reality, nothing but a canon 
 of the later and mereh- local Council of Sardica, A.D. 
 347 **. The Africans, however, were too acute to be 
 thus deluded. They confronted the Pope with authen- 
 ticated copies of the true Xicene Canons, furnished by 
 the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Constantinople ; and 
 ended the matter by deposing the presbyter on his 
 own confession, and by writing a severe rebuke to the 
 Pope both for his interference and his untruthfulness ■*"'. 
 
 ^* * The canons quoted by the camur ut deinceps ad vestras aures 
 
 Legates, under the title of Xicsea, hinc venientesnonfacilitisadmittatis: 
 
 were in fact those of Sardica ; which nee a nobis excommunicatos ultra 
 
 Council was not received by the velitis accipere. QuiJt hoc etiam 
 
 Greek nor the African Church.' Nicieno concilio definitum, facilfe 
 
 (Huisey, Rise of the Papal Power, advertet venerabiUtas tua . . Pruden- 
 
 p. 47.) tissime enim justissimeque proWde- 
 
 *^ ' Tandem de omnibus incredi- runt, qutsimviqite negotia in mis locis 
 
 bilibus opprobriis ultroneus se ipse ubi or/a mnt finienda . . Quia uni- 
 
 con\-icit. . . Prsefato itaque debitse cuique concessum est, si judicio offen- 
 
 salutationis officio, impendio depre- sus fuerit cognitorum, ad concilia 
 
156 THE ROMANISTS. [lECT. 
 
 But the imposition, although thus bravely detected and 
 exposed, was persisted in nevertheless. Tvifenty-five 
 years later. Pope Leo I. again alleged this Sardican 
 canon as if it were Nicene*^. And in a Roman collec- 
 tion of canons coming down from about this date, 
 Nicsea is expressly made responsible, not only for her 
 own genuine twenty canons, but for the whole twenty- 
 one which were made at Sardica, and for five more 
 besides. And here, a name being altered to make all 
 compatible with their pretended Nicene origin, it is quite 
 impossible to acquit the authors and the employers of 
 this collection from the charge of deliberate fraud. 
 
 But even this was not all. In the middle ages, — as 
 Zonaras (1120), the great Greek canonist, bitterly com- 
 plains*'', — the Popes still continued falsely to employ 
 this canon of Sardica, as if it were a canon of Nicsea. 
 Until, at length, it became necessary to prop up their 
 misrepresentation by a forgery. And some vehement 
 partisan, or interested practitioner in the Roman Courts 
 of Appeal, did not scruple to compose in the name of 
 
 suDe provincise, vel etiam universale, totius mundi sunt sacerdotibus con- 
 
 provocare. Nisi forte quisquam est stituta, quseque subter annexa sunt.' 
 
 qui credat, uni cuilibet posse Deum (Leo I., Epht. 40 : Migne, i. 831.) 
 
 nostrum examinis inspirare justitiam, All the annotators agree that the 
 
 et innumerabilibus congregatis in canons here referred to are the 
 
 conciluim sacerdotibus denegare . . canons, not of Nicsea, but of Sar- 
 
 Quia illud quod pridem, tanquam ex dica, — a merely partial and local, 
 
 parte Nicffini concilii, transmisistis, in though important. Council, 
 conciliis verioribus . . a S. Cyrillo etc. " ' By this canon the Pontiffs of 
 
 ex authentico missis, tale aliquid Old Rome pretend that all episcopal 
 
 non potuimus reperire. Exsecutores appeals were referred to them : and 
 
 etiam clericos vestros, quibuscunque they falsely allege that it was passed 
 
 petentibus, nolite mittere, nolite con- in the first CEcumenical Council of 
 
 cedere : ne fumosum typhum sEeculi NicEea . . But neither is it a canon 
 
 in ecclesiam Christi videamur indu- of Nicsea ; nor did it give to him all 
 
 cere.' (Hardouin, i. 947.) such appeals, but only appeals 
 
 ^"^ ' Quam autem, post appella- made by Bishops who Aicre subject 
 
 tionem interpositam, hoc necessarife to his jurisdiction.' (Zonaras, ap. 
 
 postuletur, — canonum Nicsese habi- Beveridge, Synodicon, i. 489.) 
 torum decreta testantur ; quee a 
 
in 
 
 ] THE FORGED 'ARABIC CANONS' OF NICE A. 157 
 
 the great Athanasius himself, two apocryphal letters ad- 
 dressed to Popes of the Nicene period. In these he is 
 positively made to request that, — the Arians at Alexan- 
 dria having destroyed all extant copies of the canons 
 of Nicaea, — these ' Popes of the universal Church ' would 
 condescend to restore, 'by the authority of your Holy 
 See, which is the mother and head of all Churches,' the 
 previous canons, ' seventy in number,' which had ' no 
 doubt been safely and carefully preserved at Rome.' 
 ' For,' he continues, ' in our presence, eighty sections were 
 treated of in the above-mentioned Council, — forty in the 
 Greek tongue and forty in the Latin. But it seemed good 
 to the 318 fathers . . to amalgamate ten of these sections 
 with the rest, and reduce the whole to the number of 
 the seventy disciples ■^^.' ' For we know,' adds the second 
 pretended letter, ' that at Nic^a with one accord it was 
 confirmed by all, that without the sanction of the Ro- 
 man Pontiff no councils ought to be held, nor bishops 
 condemned : . . and likewise, that if any one suspected 
 partiality in his bishop, metropolitan, comprovincial 
 bishops, or judges, he should appeal to the Roman See, 
 — to which by special privilege the power of binding 
 and loosing,' &c.*^ Now this last clause bears a strong 
 
 " ' Domino sancto, . . Marco, sane- sanctae Ecclesire auctoritate, qure 
 tse Romanse et ApostolicEe sedis est mater et caput omnium Ecclesi- 
 atque universalis ecclesice Papee, arum, ea percipere mereamur,' etc. 
 Athanasius, etc. — Ad vos pervenisse (Aiban. Op. iv. 1446, Migne.) 
 non dubitamus, quanta et qualia ab *' ' Nam scimus in Nic^na magna 
 hereticis, et maxime ab Arianis, quo- s)Tiodo cccxyiii. episcoporum, ab 
 tidife patimur . . Libros vero nostros omnibus concorditer esse roboratum, 
 usque ad minimum incendentes, nee non debere absque Romani Pontificis 
 iota unum relinquentes, propter veri- sententia concilia celebrari, nee epi- 
 tatis fidem Nicanam synodum, qua scopos damnari ; . . Similiter et a su- 
 clenis et populus imbuebatiu-, . . in- pradictis Patribus est definitum, ut 
 cenderunt. Quapropter precamur, si quisquam episcopum, aut metro- 
 Pater beatissime, — quia non dubita- politanum, aut comprovinciales, vel 
 mus apud vos plenaria esse Nicieni judices, suspectos habuerint, — ves- 
 concilii exemplaria, — ut ilia nobis tram sanctam interpellent sedem : 
 mittatis . . Optamus ut i vestrje cui,' etc. {Ibid. p. 1473.) 
 
158 THE ROMANISTS. [lECT. 
 
 resemblance to one of the Sardican canons already men- 
 tioned. And it seems probable that the forger had be- 
 fore him the same Roman collection of interpolated 
 Nicene canons, which had been used so freely by pre- 
 vious Popes : but that their number had grown in his 
 time, from the original twenty — not merely to forty-six, 
 but — to seventy. 
 
 Nor was even this all. The great and venerable 
 Council of Nicaea was not even yet to be let alone. 
 These letters of the pseudo-Athanasius — such palpable 
 forgeries, that the Benedictine editors, in 1698, actually 
 hesitated about taking the trouble to print them, ' so 
 full were they of falsehoods that they bore not even a 
 shadow of genuineness''''' — were actually employed by 
 the great Spanish theologian, Melchior Canus ^'^j in the 
 sixteenth century, in support of the Papal claims. But 
 where then were these ' seventy Nicene canons,' of which 
 the letters spoke so confidently, to be found .'' Mankind 
 was becoming, in the sixteenth century, critical and 
 sceptical. Would they believe in this alleged Nicene 
 support of Popery, if no such canons could be produced .■" 
 
 Stimulated by such questions as these. Pope Pius IV., 
 a lawyer and man of the world, sent Baptista, a Jesuit, 
 to Alexandria to search for any extant copies of the 
 desired canons. And, singular to relate, a MS. was — there 
 and then for the first time — produced which was found 
 to contain, in Arabic, precisely the eighty original Nicene 
 canons mentioned by the forger of Athanasius' two 
 epistles. They were brought to Rome, and committed 
 
 ™ ' Reliquas verb epistolas hsEsi- primo conspectu advertet eruditus 
 
 mus aliquando dubii, an ederemus, lector, non sunt isthsec nisi lacinise 
 
 necne . . Commentis sunt et menda- . . a falsario quodam consarcinat^/ 
 
 ciis respersK, exque variis locis con- etc. {Athan, Opera, iv. 1442, Migne.) 
 sarcinatae, ut ne umbram quidem ^' De locis Theologicis, lib. iv. 
 yvTjawTTjTos referant . . Ut autem 
 
III.] THESE FORGERIES USED STILL. 159 
 
 to another Jesuit, Turrianus, to translate. And at length, 
 by a third Jesuit, Pisanus, they were given to the world 
 in the Third Book of his ' History of the Nicene Council ' 
 (1572), — but not without one final touch of falsehood, 
 by being reduced to seventy instead of eighty ; in order 
 that they might correspond more accurately to the 
 forger's account of them in the pseudo-Athanasius '^. 
 
 Such then are the famous Arabic canons of Nicsea. 
 And among them we find the following truly astonishing 
 passages : ' There came together at the appointed time 
 318 Bishops, in the year of Christ our Lord 325 . . But 
 among these the Roman Bishop Julius \sic: Silvester 
 of course was really Bishop at that date, and Julius 
 came twelve years later] was not present, on account 
 of his great age. He sent, however, two presbyters of 
 known probity and orthodoxy to represent him, and to 
 confirm whatever might be decreed in the Council ^^.' 
 ' The Patriarch is over all those who are under his juris- 
 diction ; just as he who holds the See of Rome is the 
 head and prince of all Patriarchs, — inasmuch as he is the 
 first, as was Peter, to whom was given power over all 
 Christian princes and all their people ; and is also Vicar 
 of Christ our Lord over all nations and over the universal 
 Christian Church. And whoever shall contradict this, is 
 excommunicated by the Council ^''.' 
 
 That such documents as these can have been honestly 
 believed by the Roman ecclesiastics of the sixteenth 
 century to have proceeded from St. Athanasius and 
 the fathers of Nicaea, is perhaps more than can possibly 
 be conceived. That they should serve the Papal cause 
 to this very hour, by having been carelessly admitted 
 
 " Hefele, Concilien-geschichte, i. Hardouin, i. 526. 
 345. °' Arabic Canons, 39. Hard. 
 
 "' Arabic Canons ; preface. See 469. 
 
l6o THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 among Liguori's proofs of 'infallibility,' in his Moral 
 Theology — a work which is in the hands of every 
 Roman Catholic priest ^^ — is, however (although true), 
 almost equally incredible ; after French Benedictine 
 editors had characterized the epistles as 'at the first 
 glance' a forgery, and when a German theologian 
 and bishop designates the pretended canons as ' from 
 beginning to end false '".' But the spirit of false- 
 hood, which has so long been at work in the dark 
 precincts of the Roman Curia, has not even yet, it 
 appears, fulfilled its whole course ; nor have all its 
 shameful secrets even yet been brought out into the 
 open light of day. How much less were men in 
 the sixteenth century in a position to form any sound 
 judgment on this question ; or capable of doing aught 
 but what the best among them actually decided to do, 
 — viz., by a desperate act of faith in God and in His 
 holy Word, to cast off the deadly incubus which weighed 
 upon them, and to go forth at their Master's call, like 
 Abraham, hardly knowing whither they went. 
 
 But the times, at least, are now changed. And men 
 of sense and honour and learning, at the present day, 
 may well indignantly protest against a system which 
 commits them and their Churches, in the sight of 
 Christendom, to a Papal tyranny based on such 
 enormous falsehoods as these, which make the German 
 Catholic blush to record, how ' like the successive strata 
 of the earth covering one another, so layer after layer 
 of forgeries and fabrications was piled up in the 
 
 ^' Liguori, Theol. Mor. i. 109 : nischen Canones durch und durch 
 
 ' Tons nos frferes dans le sacerdoce falsch sind.' (Hefele, Concilien-gesch. 
 
 ont la theologie morale de St. Liguori.' i. 347, Engl, trans, i. 362, where, how- 
 
 (.Gratry, ii. 19.) ever, the strength of the expression 
 
 " ' AUe andern angeblich Nica- has been much softened down.) 
 
m.] FRENCH AND GERMAN PROTESTS. i6i 
 
 Church^';' and which wring from a French priest 
 and member of the Oratory, the almost desperate 
 avowal, 'it is a question perfectly gangrened with 
 fraud «8.' Above all, well may the English Churchman 
 — in thankfulness, not in pride or contented isolation 
 from his struggling and entangled brethren — acknow- 
 ledge the great mercy of God, which has cleared his 
 path from this network of lies, and has ' set his feet upon 
 a rock, and ordered his goings.' Should he not, there- 
 fore, earnestly, courteously, and lovingly extend what- 
 ever aid he can to those noble men on the continent, 
 who are now trying to carry their Churches through 
 the same conflict, with all its inevitable miseries and 
 confusions, which his own Church so triumphantly passed 
 through three hundred years ago ^^ ? 
 
 Abandoning then — if it were possible — to merited 
 oblivion these disgraceful and mischievous forgeries, 
 let us proceed to ask how it really was that the Bishops 
 of Rome came to possess the vast influence which they 
 
 " Janus, p. 117. me to remind you,' writes a man of 
 °' ' C'est une question totalement nobler metal, Pere Hyacinthe, ' tliat 
 gangren^e par la fraude.' (Gratry, pages so celebrated as your last letters 
 ii. 72.) And yet not only is this are not to be got rid of by ingenuously 
 writer a model of courtesy to his saying that they are effaced.' {Daily 
 ecclesiastical superiors, but he re- News, Dec. 30, 1871.)] 
 tains an unshaken loyalty to his own ^^ ' As the Apostolic fishermen in 
 Church in all respects but on this the Gospel beckoned to their partners 
 one question of submitting to the in the other ship, that they should 
 Papal claims. He is even careful to come and help them, and they came ; 
 add, on a subsequent page, ' tous so, in the present day, if the " old- 
 ces mensonges et toutes ces fraudes Catholics " in the ships of the 
 ne portent que sur un point, un seul. Churches of Germany, Italy, and 
 — et nuUement sur aucun autre.' France, should think fit to beckon 
 (p. 80.) [Ere this note goes to press, to us, who rejoice to be the " old- 
 1 am ashamed to add that Pfere Catholics " of England, may we 
 Gratry too has fallen. He wrote, it regard that invitation as a call from 
 appears, on Nov. 25, 1S71, to the Christ Himself!' (Bishop Words- 
 Archbishop of Paris, ' What I have worth, at the Nottingham Congress, 
 written on this subject before the 187 1.) 
 decision — je V efface. ' But ' permit 
 
 M 
 
1 62 THE ROMANISTS. [lecT. 
 
 certainly wielded from a very early time — thereby 
 gaining the opportunity, which was afterwards so 
 shamefully abused, of becoming 'lords over God's 
 heritage ' ? 
 
 The answer is quite clear. And the genealogy of the 
 modern Papacy is as historically certain, as any de- 
 duction from the records and monuments of past ages 
 can possibly be. It is this : the political consequence 
 of imperial Rome during the first four centuries of our 
 era ^^ gave to its Bishop the primacy among all Bishops : 
 the primacy of this (supposed) Petrine Church generated, 
 in ignorant hands, the legend of St. Peter's princedom 
 among the Apostles : the legend of St. Peter, in dis- 
 honest and designing hands, generated the Papal 
 S2ipremacy of the middle ages : and the Papal supre- 
 macy of the middle ages has generated, at last, the 
 Jesuit theory "^ of the personal infallibility of the Roman 
 
 *° The great name of ' Rome ' ungen des Papstes, und die ihrer 
 
 acted like a spell upon the imagina- eigenen Gesellschaft, in ein und 
 
 tions of mankind ; e.g. ' Theodoric dasselbe System zn verschmelzen, 
 
 se faisait Roman vis-a-vis les bar- bildet fur sie eine Aufgabe welcher 
 
 bares, . . se servant du grand nom de sie ebenso gerne als unschwer ge- 
 
 Rome, pour les inspirer le respect niigen.' Pius IX. ' wurde selbst 
 
 ou la crainte.' (Thierry, Cinquiime seinerseits noch hingebender an die 
 
 Siecle, p. 4S4.) Jesuiten, denn je ein anderer Papst. 
 
 " All authorities agree in ascribing Er hatte sie zu einem Kanale fiir 
 
 to the Jesuits the preparation and seinen Einfluss gemacht, und wurde 
 
 management of the Vatican council, selber es fiir den ihrigen. Die Je- 
 
 and in characterizing the dogma of suiten hatten fort und fort in Rom 
 
 ' Papal Infallibility ' as their one Boden gewonnen, zumal seit der 
 
 special and favourite scheme, for Riickkehr des Papstes. . . Ihre Theo- 
 
 crushing all liberty of thought and logen wurden die Orakel der rii- 
 
 action finally out of the Church, and mischen Congregationen. Immerdar 
 
 for completing its subjugation to war die piipstliche Unfehlbarkeit ihre 
 
 their own principles — and to them- Lieblingslehre.' (Lord Acton, Gesch. 
 
 selves. The steps by which their desVatic.Concils,'-p.io,T.%']l.) Who 
 
 fatal plot at length attained a (seem- can wonder that this transmutation 
 
 mg) success, are well described by of the leading Christian bishop into 
 
 one who has had every opportunity an Oriental caliph, or a Thibetian 
 
 of knowing what was going on: 'lama,' should .seem to them an 
 
 'Die Interessen und die Anschau- object worthy of their utmost efforts. 
 
III.] HISTORY OF THE PAPACY EXAMINED. 163 
 
 Bishop, and his despotism, of divine right, over the 
 very thoughts and consciences of the submissive Latin 
 race. 
 
 There are, in fact, three steps in the ordinary Ro- 
 manist argument in favour of entire submission to the 
 Papal claims. First, and above all, we are confronted 
 with the supposed fact that our Lord gave a distinct 
 and special commission to St. Peter to become 'prince 
 of the Apostles.' Secondly, we have the supposed fact 
 that St. Peter was Bishop of Rome, and handed on this 
 special commission to all the successive occupants of 
 that see. Thirdly, we are assured that, as a matter of 
 history, the power exercised accordingly by the Bishops 
 of Rome has been uniformly and visibly a blessed, 
 saving, and Christianizing power, faultless in govern- 
 ment, infallible in teaching. 
 
 Let us briefly examine each of these three supposed 
 facts. We shall find, I believe, that the first is nothing 
 else than a misinterpretation of our Lord's words ; the 
 second, a mere legend ; and the third, an erroneous 
 deduction from the plain facts of history. 
 
 (i) No one, of course, will deny that owing to his 
 bold and early confession of Jesus as the Messiah, a 
 peculiar honour was accorded to St. Peter. ' Thou art 
 Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church,' — this 
 
 when their own society is described if necessary, to be ruthlessly stifled, 
 
 by its founder as having ' engaged — no constitutions, &c. involving ' an 
 
 every thought and will of its own obligation to sin, unlea the Superior 
 
 to Christ our Lord, and His Vicar ; ' command them in the name of our 
 
 when the modus operandi recom- Lord Jesus Christ, or in virtue of 
 
 mended by Him is, that His disciples holy obedience ; which shall be done 
 
 ' should permit themselves to be in those cases or* persons wherein 
 
 moved and directed by their supe- it shall be judged conducive to the 
 
 riors, just as if they were a corpse:' particular good of each, or to the 
 
 and when (incredible to relate) even general advantage.' (Constit. Soc . 
 
 conscience and the fear of God is, Jesu : Parts vi. and vii.) 
 
 M 2 
 
1 64 THE ROMANISTS. [lKCT. 
 
 looks like a personal reward and a personal promise, and 
 probably had its fulfilment when Peter founded the 
 Jewish Church on the day of Pentecost, and the Gentile 
 Church in the conversion of Cornelius. Again, no one 
 will deny that — owing mainly to his shameful fall — a 
 special prominence was given to him after our Lord's 
 resurrection. His Saviour's love singled him out, just 
 as in the Parable the one erring sheep was singled out, 
 and the one lost piece of money ; and ' when he was 
 converted,' then the suspended Apostolic commission 
 was restored, with the words ' Feed My sheep : feed My 
 lambs.' It was not therefore, it seems, any special 
 designation, but rather his own natural forwardness and 
 precipitancy, both in confessing and denying his Lord, 
 which made him the foremost Apostle. For as to the 
 supposed personal commission which is inscribed in 
 colossal letters round the dome of St. Peter's Church at 
 Rome, ' unto thee will I give the keys of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven,' the words are explained immediately afterwards 
 by our Lord Himself : ' and whatsoever thou shalt bind 
 (or loose) on earth, shall be bound (or loosed) in heaven:' 
 and this same power is accorded, on the very next page 
 of St. Matthew's Gospel, and in precisely the same words, 
 to all the twelve Apostles. 
 
 At the very first step therefore, at the very first link 
 (as it were), the whole chain of argument for a special 
 and divinely ordered 'supremacy' in the Church gives 
 way. A simple, natural, spontaneous ' primacy ' of per- 
 sonal character is all that can fairly be attributed to St. 
 Peter, — a primacy neither unrecognised nor unhonoured 
 by our Lord, but consecrated by Him to highest uses ; 
 just as He consecrated other sweet and wholesome 
 truths of human nature, — sending out pairs of friends 
 and brothers on His missions, — revealing Himself by a 
 
III.] NO 'SUPREMACY' GIVEN TO S. PETER. 165 
 
 star to astronomers and by a draught of fishes to fisher- 
 men, — manifesting His divine power for the first time 
 amid the innocent gaities of a wedding-feast, — and sub- 
 mitting during thirty long years to the tranquil home- 
 life and handicraft employments of the carpenter at 
 Nazareth. 
 
 And after our Lord's Ascension, the same fact of a 
 natural Primacy in St. Peter, through his eagerness and 
 courage in pressing to the front, meets us repeatedly in 
 the Acts of the Apostles. But on the other hand, I am 
 bold to say, neither there nor anywhere else among the 
 records of the first century, is one single trace of any 
 official supremacy to be found. If there is a 'supremacy' 
 at all, it is certainly lodged in St. James, the Lord's 
 • brother, and not in St. Peter. It is St. James who pre- 
 sides and gives 'sentence' at the council in Jerusalem : 
 it is St. James whose emissaries at Antioch frighten the 
 impulsive Peter into eating no longer with the Gentiles : 
 it is St. James who figures among the early legends of 
 the Clementine Homilies as ' the Bishop of Bishops,' as 
 sending Peter hither and thither, as charging Peter to 
 report to him all his proceedings, and as constituting the 
 final court of reference whereby the false teaching of 
 Simon Magus and others might be detected and ex- 
 posed ^^. But in real truth, it need hardly be said, this 
 whole conception of a supremacy as existing in the 
 Apostolic age is a pure illusion. It is a mere after- 
 
 ^"^ E.g. the introductory epistle of 7rpa£eis Ypd^ovTa SmTre^Treiro'ot. (Ibid. 
 
 Clement to James is headed, Kf^jjfirjs p. 42.) And again, near Antioch, 
 
 'laKw^w, Toj Kvpiai teal etrtaKoirojv Peter says to the surrounding Pres- 
 
 itnaKSiraj. (Clem. Horn, ed. Dressel, byters, Std npb ttAvtwv /xifii'ijaOe dTr6~ 
 
 p. 10.) Farther on, Peter submits otoXov tj SthdcrfcaXov tj itpo^-qr-qv (p€v- 
 
 to an order from James to report to feiv, jJ-^i ttpirfpov axpijiuis avriPaX- 
 
 him annually about his proceedings : Kovto, avTov to K-qpvy/xa 'laKii^cf t^ 
 
 •napd oov kvroK^v ^x^tv elwchy, rds \ex^^^'^t- aScA^y tov Kvplov. (Ibid. 
 
 /naff' inaarov iviavTov 6/u\ias t( xal p. 253.) 
 
1 66 THE ROMAXISTS. [lECT. 
 
 thought. And the notion of a ' Princedom ' among the 
 disciples of the lowly Jesus, we may be sure, would never 
 have taken shape in people's imaginations, had there not 
 grown up meanwhile a real ecclesiastical Princedom, 
 whose existence it was necessary to account for, and 
 whose origin it was desirable to place as far back as 
 possible. 
 
 (2) The next stage in the argument — if it can pro- 
 perly be entitled an argument — by which the Romanist 
 maintains his dogma of a divinely-instituted Papal 
 supremacy, brings us to a really curious chapter in early 
 Church history. It is the point where the scene changes 
 from Jerusalem to Rome. And here a question occurs 
 in passing, which of itself cuts at the root of the whole 
 argument. If, as it is constantly and indefatigably . 
 asserted, the Bishop of Rome wields all St. Peter's 
 prerogatives because St. Peter was his predecessor in the 
 Roman see, — and no other argument, be it remembered, 
 has ever yet been advanced for attaching all these won- 
 derful prerogatives to Rome — why should not the see of 
 Antioch prefer a prior claim ? That Peter's first see was 
 there, is universally confessed by Roman writers. And 
 on their theory, accordingly, it is absolutely unaccount- 
 able that the Bishops of Antioch should not be entitled 
 to the supremacy, rather than the Bishops of Rome. 
 While on our theory, — that of a spontaneous supremacy 
 engendered by the political importance of the world's 
 metropolis, — the difficulty vanishes of itself. 
 
 But the fact is, that at this point of his argument 
 difficulties crowd upon the Romanist at every step. Not 
 only is he bound by his traditions to confess that St. 
 Peter had occupied the see of Antioch before he was 
 translated to that of Rome, but it is now well known 
 that all such language about his occupancy of either 'see' 
 
III.] .S. PETER'S 'BISHOPRIC' AN ANACHRONISM. 167 
 
 is a childish and nugatory anachronism. Wliat do we 
 mean by St. Peter being ' Bishop of Rome ' } He was 
 martyred, as Roman writers tell us, not later than the 
 last year of Nero, A.D. Qj. But if anything is made 
 certain by modern investigations, it is that tlie Diocesan 
 system was not at that time in existence at all ^^'. 
 ' Bishops,' we all know, are in the New Testament 
 nothing else than Presbyters. And the Apostolic office 
 — out of which the episcopate subsequently grew — was 
 not, in any sense, a fixed or stationary office. Even 
 Timothy and Titus seem to have been moveable and 
 temporary delegates of St. Paul. And St. Clement, the 
 supposed successor to St. Peter himself, writes at Rome 
 a letter to the Corinthian Church, in which he never so 
 much as hints at the existence of a Bishop either at 
 Rome where he was writing, or at Corinth to which he 
 was writing. Diocesan episcopacy, in short, was not yet 
 born. It was reserved for St. John "*, and the great men 
 of his school in Asia Minor, to set that system first in 
 motion ; and that with the intention of organizing the 
 Church more firmly, and so enabling her — under a more 
 centralized discipline — to win her subsequent victories 
 
 •' ' At the close of the Apostolic Episcopacy definitely appears, still 
 
 age, the two lower orders of the lies beyond the horizon.' (Prof, 
 
 threefold ministry were firmly and Lightfoot, on Phillippians, p. 193, 
 
 widely established ; but traces of the 1869.) 
 
 third and highest order, the Episco- " So TertuUian (a.d. 200) c. Mar- 
 
 pate, properly so called, are few and cion,iv. 5: 'ordo tamen episcoporum, 
 
 indistinct . . James, the Lord's bro- ad originem recensus, in Joannem 
 
 ther alone, within the period com- stabit auctorem :' and Clem. Alex, 
 
 passed by the Apostolic writings, (a.d. 220) Quis dives, § 42: fTreiSfj 
 
 can claim to be regarded as a bishop [j.eTT}\6€v kirl T^i'''E(/>€croi', aTrrjfi irapa- 
 
 . . But while the episcopal office thus icaXov^ivos Kal km rd. TrX-rjciox^po- twv 
 
 existed in the mother church of eOfwv, — ottov ^iv eiriaKonovs icara- 
 
 Jenisalem from very early days, at (TTrjaojy, ottov Sk o\as eKKKtjaias 
 
 least in a rudimentary form, the New app.6(ra}v, ottov hi KK-rjpcp eva je riva 
 
 Testament presents no distinct traces ickTjpdaajv tuv vtto tov IlvevfxaTos 
 
 of such organization in the Gentile aT]iJ.atvopi.eyojv. 
 congregations . . The stage, in which 
 
1 68 THE ROMANISTS. [leCT. 
 
 over the swarming hosts of Gnostics, Ebionites, and other 
 heretics, by whom she was then beginning to be sur- 
 rounded. But how then can an argument be sustained, 
 which grounds the present exorbitant pretensions of the 
 Papacy on the plea that the Pope occupies ' the see of 
 Peter'? And that this is, not only the main, but the 
 sole ground on which the Papal supremacy rests, is 
 acknowledged by the most eminent Romanists them- 
 selves : e. g. by Archbishop Kenrick, an American writer 
 of the highest authority, — who, in a work dedicated to 
 Pope Pius IX. in 1848, speaks thus : ' The principality of 
 Peter is the real and only source of the dignity of the 
 Roman Church "'.' 
 
 But even this is not all. Not only was St. Peter, we 
 may rest assured, never in any intelligible sense ' the 
 Bishop of Rome ;' but we may almost certainly infer 
 from the New Testament that he was not, in any per- 
 sonal sense, the Apostle of Rome or the founder of the 
 Roman Church. St. Paul wrote an Epistle to that 
 Church in A. D. 58, whose genuineness has never been 
 called in question even by the most reckless German 
 critics ; and in that Epistle the very name of St. Peter 
 is not so much as once mentioned. He is not saluted, 
 among a whole page-full of salutations ; his Episcopate 
 is not mentioned ; his Apostolate at Rome receives not 
 one passing allusion ; na,y, so utterly does this Epistle 
 overthrow any such notion, that it expressly calls the 
 attention of the Roman Christians themselves to St. 
 Paul's standing principle of action, viz. that he never 
 
 '' Abp, Kenrick, The Primacy of per Romanum Pontificem loquitur, 
 
 the Apostolic See, p. gg (fourth ed. et semper in suis successoribus vivit, 
 
 1855). So. too, Pius IX. himself, in et judicium exercet, ac pr^estat qu^- 
 
 an encyclical Qui pluribus, Nov. 1 846 : rentibus fidei veritatem." {Recueil des 
 
 ' Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesia; ac Petrus Allocutions, Sec. [1865], p. 178.) 
 
III.] ^. PE TER NO T ' FOUNDER OE ROMAN CHURCH: 1 69 
 
 would interfere with the converts of another Apostle or 
 ' build oji another man's foundation ^^.' And accordingly, 
 not even the legends of the earliest period make St. 
 Peter (as the later ones do) the founder of the Roman 
 Church. But either Barnabas is fixed upon ; or an 
 unknown ' someone ;' or — as is most in accordance with 
 the known facts of the case — some obscure traders or 
 soldiers or pilgrims, who had visited Judaea and brought 
 back with them the first distant rumours of ' a messenger 
 sent from God ' to establish a ' kingdom of God ' among 
 men "'. And yet once more, we possess four letters 
 written by St. Paul at a later epoch, while he was re- 
 siding for two years in his own hired house, in the very 
 heart of Rome itself, viz. the Epistles to the Ephesians, 
 Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon ; and again, in not 
 one of them is there the slightest reference to any epi- 
 scopate of St. Peter at Rome ; in not one of them is 
 there any apparent consciousness of St. Peter having 
 been there, or holding any connexion whatever with the 
 Roman Church. How is it possible to reconcile these 
 facts with St. Peter's pretended long residence of twenty- 
 five years, seven months, and eight days at Rome, — or 
 even with his residence at Rome at all .■■ 
 
 For not even yet has all been said that must be said 
 on this — to a Romanist — absolutely vital question. So 
 early as 1520, it began to be seriously doubted by the 
 scholars of the sixteenth century, whether St. Peter had 
 
 ^ K-Om. XV. 20. and Clem. Recognitiones, i. 6 ; * Haec 
 
 '' Cf. Clem. Horn. 1. 6 : <pr]iXTj tis et horum similia processu tem- 
 
 ^pe/xa, €7ri T7J$ Ti^^piov Kaltrapos Pa- poris, crebris jam non rumoribus 
 
 aiXeias, If eapivrjs Tpow^s Ti]v apxhv sed manifestis quodammodo adven- 
 
 KafiPavovaa, Tjv^avfv kxaaTOTt . . . Kol tantium se illis partibus nuiitiis fir- 
 
 Srinore tis, wphs avrf to! erei iv <p6ivo- mabantur . . Donee, sub eodem anno, 
 
 TrajptvTj Tpoirrj, drjpioffia arAs k06a \4- vir quidam adstans in urbis loco 
 
 yaii/- dvdpes 'Fcopiatoi, d/eovaaTe ! d rod celeberrimo proclamaret ad popu- 
 
 Qeov vl&s iv 'lovSaia ndpeariv, k. t. X. : lum, dicens ; Audite me, O cives 
 
170 
 
 THE ROMANISTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 ever really been to Rome at all «». And now, with the 
 increased information of the present day, I venture to 
 say that no one who has been accustomed to investiga- 
 tions of this kind, and to the critical treatment of legend, 
 can any longer entertain much doubt that the whole 
 story is fictitious from beginning to end. It reposes 
 entirely on two mistakes, (i) that of certain commenta- 
 tors, who misunderstood Babylon, in i Peter v. 13, to 
 mean Rome '^^ : (2) that of Justin Martyr about A.D. 150 ; 
 who misread the inscription to the Sabine god ' Semo 
 Sancus ' on a pedestal near the Tiber, as if it referred 
 to Simon Magus'", and so gave occasion to the legend 
 
 Romani I . . . Erat autem vir iste, qui 
 hsec loquebatur ad populum, ex Ori- 
 entis partibus, natione Hebrseus, 
 nomine Barnabas.' [In Clem. Horn. 
 i- 9, Barnabas first appears upon 
 the scene, not at Rome, but at Alex- 
 andria.] 
 
 ^^ E. g. Velenus, ' Liber, quo Pe- 
 trum Romam non venisse asseritur,' 
 1520. Spanheim, ' De ficta profec- 
 tione Petri in urbem Romam,' 1679, 
 etc. 
 
 »' This notion, though no doubt 
 of earlier date, first comes to the 
 surface in Eusebius, Eocl. Hist. ii. 15 : 
 ' Current report has it {<paa\) that he 
 wrote the Epistle at Rome itself; 
 and that he signifies this, by men- 
 tioning the city metaphorically under 
 the name Babylon.' ^^'hy there 
 should be any metaphor in the case, 
 has yet to be explained. Archbishop 
 Kenrick {Primacy of the Ap. See, p. 
 79 ) states that ' Babylon on the 
 Euphrates was then in ruins.' But 
 he has forgotten passages like Jose- 
 phus, Antiq. XV. 2. 2 : ' Phraates the 
 Parthian king released him [Hyr- 
 canvTS, father-in-law of Herod the 
 Great] from his chains, and allowed 
 him to reside at Babylon, where 
 were a great multitude of Jews. 
 
 These honoured him as High Priest 
 _and King : and so did all the Jewish 
 inhabitants as far as the Euphrates.' 
 (Cf. x™. 2. I : xviii. 9. I.) Mr. Vaux, 
 in Smith's Diet. Geogr., adds : ' The 
 story of his [Peter] having been at 
 Babylon is confirmed by Cosmas 
 Indicopleustes, who wrote in the 
 time of Justinian.' (tsfiS-) There 
 is no reason for the often-echoed 
 statement that Eusebius is here 
 quoting Papias. 
 
 ™ Justin Martyr, Apol. i. 26 ; Ss 
 Cf rfi TToAet v/J-ofv tiaaiXidi 'Fwfir] Oeds 
 kvoixiaBi) Kal di'dpiavn Trap' vjxwv ws 
 Oeiis riri^T^Tac us di^bptds dviy-qyepTai 
 €V TO! TtjSept TTOTO/tc?, iJ-CTO^v Twv bvo 
 yt^'vpaiy, 'i\o)v ewtypafpi^v 'VojfJ.atH^v 
 TavTrjv 2IMnNI AEH SAFKTn. 
 Unluckily for the authority of this 
 testimony, a pedestal was dug up in 
 1574, precisely in the spot indicated, 
 on the island ' between the two 
 bridges,' bearing an inscription be- 
 ginning ' Semoni Sanco Deo Fidto 
 Sacrum. ' Now Semo Sancus was a 
 Sabine god, presiding over covenants 
 and treaties, who is mentioned in 
 Ovid, Fasti, vi. 213, &c. 'I'he dis- 
 covei-y is related by Card. Laronius, 
 Annals, i. 363, (ed. 1624). 
 
m.] 
 
 S. PETER PROBABLY NEVER AT ROME. 
 
 171 
 
 to spring up, that as Peter had met and defeated Simon 
 Magus at Samaria, so he must needs have done also at 
 Rome '1 ; a legend which forthwith expanded and fur- 
 nished itself with the most detailed embellishments, — 
 as these things always do, in an atmosphere which is 
 favourable to them. But meantime we are met with 
 the perfectly astounding fact, that not one single writer, 
 either at Rome or anywhere else, — during a wJiole centicry 
 subsequent to St. Peter's alleged long residence at Rome, — 
 makes the smallest or most distant allusion to any snch 
 residence'''^. Yet meanwhile, St. Paul lived at Rome 
 
 " Observe the naivete with which 
 even Nich. Sanders expresses this 
 feeling in 1592: {De Visibili Mon- 
 archid, p. 220): ' Mysterio quodam 
 non vacare, quod princeps apostolo- 
 nim Simon Petnis principem lisere- 
 ticorum Simonem Magum ita in 
 Samaria detegit, et in Judgea con- 
 vincit, et in Italia peresquitur,' etc. 
 
 ^^ It is customary among Ro- 
 manist writers to echo one an- 
 other's statement that (i) Clem. 
 Rom, i. 5 attests St. Peter's visit 
 to Rome. E. g. Archbishop Kenrick 
 {Primacy, &c., p. 80) : ' Clement . . 
 mentions Peter and Paul as having 
 suffered martyrdom at Rome under 
 his eyes.' This is really amazing. 
 Not only is there no mention of 
 Rome in the passage, but the very 
 name of Peter has to be inserted by 
 conjecture. The Roman Catholic 
 Bishop Hefele edits the passage 
 thus : Adiiojfxev Trpb o^pOaKjjiwv [17^0)1/] 
 Tovs ayaOovs aTTO(rTu\o\j\j. 'O Ilk- 
 7p]os hid. ^TjKoy ddiHov ovx L^'^*^' o^]5^ 
 dvo, dWd -nXiiovas VTT\T]vfylCiv] tto- 
 vovr icai ovtoj ftapTvp[7]aas] knopevOr] 
 its T^v 0(^6iA[ujUei'oi/] ToTTOV T7]S dd^rjs. 
 Aid ^rjkov [/rai 0] TlavXos, k, t. A. 
 (2) That Ignatius ad Rom. % 4, at- 
 tests the same thing. His words 
 are these : TlapaKa\w v^ds, iii) euvoia 
 dtiaipos yevrjfjOk fJ.OL ! d^perk fi€ drjptojv 
 
 ^Tvai Popdv . . . Ovx, ^s Uerpos Kol 
 TlavXos, diardffffofxaL vtuv Ikuvol 
 CLTTotyroXoi, eyoj KaraKptTOS. (3) That 
 Papias ( ap. Euseb. ii. 15 ) adds 
 whatever weight his testimony may 
 have, in the same direction. The 
 passage runs as follows : ri'6vTa dl 
 To TrpaxOky, (paat, tqv dnoCToXov . . . 
 Kvpwaai re tt)v ypaipi^v els eVreu^ii/ ttjs 
 kKKX-qaias, ( I'LkrjpiTjs kv e/CTO} twv 
 'XTrOTvnajffeaiy -naparkdeiTai rj)v tffTO- 
 piav, ffweiTi^apTvpet 5* ainaj fcaX 6 
 'IepaTrokiT7}S kiri(XKOTTOs ovofj-ari Ha- 
 mas-) Tov de Mdpicov ^vr^p^oveveiv tov 
 Tlerpov kv t^ trpoTepa ewiffToXr}, tjv 
 leal GvVTa^at (paaly eir' avTrjs 'PoJjUt^s, 
 K. T. X. It is obvious, as Storr re- 
 marks, (ap. Heinechen's Euseb. loc. 
 cit.), that Papias says not one word 
 about Rome ; but simply attests the 
 fact that St. Mark's Gospel was 
 written under the influence of St. 
 Peter. Thus, on the slightest exa- 
 mination, the only three testimonies 
 previous to a. n. 150, that are ad- 
 duced to support the story of St. 
 Peter's visit to Rome, melt away 
 into thin air. And an impartial 
 student cannot help assenting to 
 the judgment of Winer {Reahuorlerb. 
 ii. 238), 'Solche Grtinde kann man 
 nur der parteiischen Kathol. Polemik 
 iiberlassen.' 
 
172 
 
 THE ROMANISTS. [lECT. 
 
 ' two years in his own hired house,' and wrote several 
 Epistles : St. Clement wrote at Rome a long letter to 
 the Corinthian Church, which is extant : St. Ignatius, 
 St. Peter's successor (as we are told) in the see of An- 
 tioch, journeying towards Rome to receive the same 
 crown of martyrdom as, the legend informs us, Peter 
 had attained there not many years before, sent a long 
 letter beforehand to the Roman Church ; still, no men- 
 tion is found of St. Peter having died there, or ever 
 having resided there : and lastly, Justin Martyr, living 
 at Rome for some years, about A. D. 150, wrote two long 
 Apologies for Christianity there, and even gave that 
 very account of Simon Magus' visit and popularity in 
 the city, on which it appears the Petrine legend was 
 afterwards grafted ; yet still neither there, nor in any 
 other passage of his rather voluminous writings, do we 
 find the slightest trace of any consciousness that he was 
 living and writing on the very spot where the great 
 Apostle St. Peter had lived and governed and had 
 finally suffered martyrdom. 
 
 After such an extraordinary silence on the part of 
 every single extant writer, during the whole century 
 which succeeded the supposed event, we may well begin 
 to ask with some amazement, where then is the first 
 rumour of this legendary episcopate at Rome to be 
 found } Well, this all-important and to a Romanist 
 absolutely essential episcopate is first heard of, among 
 all literature, in the pages of a heretical religious novel, 
 the Clementine Homilies, — a purely fictitious work, attri- 
 buted with great probability to the third quarter of the 
 second century, and written (it has been shrewdly sus- 
 pected) with a strong Ebionite purpose of elevating St. 
 Peter the Jewish Apostle, at the expense of St. Paul the 
 
III.] 
 
 ' THE CLEMENTINE HOMILIES: 
 
 173 
 
 Apostle of the Gentiles ''. The book, with its sensa- 
 tional plot and very beautiful style, appears to have 
 gained a wide circulation and to have passed through a 
 good many revisions. And its influence may possibly 
 have been enough, falling in, as it did, with the prevalent 
 Judaizing tendencies at Rome, to float the Petrine legend 
 fairly out upon the wide sea of men's fancy. Hence- 
 forth, accordingly, the legend begins to grow, in the 
 usual manner, by perpetual imaginative accretions. It 
 first comes to the surface in a fragment of Dionysius of 
 
 Corinth, (ti78 
 
 V41 
 
 a writer who, in defiance of the 
 
 New Testament, makes St. Peter and St. Paul to have 
 
 '^ Cf. Gieseler, Eccles. Hist, i, 264 : 
 ' The fiction of St. Peter being first 
 Bisliop of Rome proceeded from tlie 
 Clementines ; and was propagated 
 in the Catholic Church by the Re- 
 cognitions.' Uhlhorn, Die Homilien 
 mid Recogjiitio7iem des Clem. Rom., p. 
 435 : ' The original groundwork 
 must have appeared after a. d. 150; 
 the Homilies after a. d. i 60 ; the 
 Recognitions after a. d. 170.' Cote- 
 lerius, (ap. Dressel, Clem. Horn. p. 
 418); 'They are full of errors, the 
 offspring of semi-Christian philo- 
 sophy and of heresy, especially of 
 an Ebionite character.' — The scene 
 of this most curious theological 
 Romance is laid in Syria. But in 
 the Homilies, p. 11 (edit. Dressel), 
 we find this passage : ovros avros, 
 5td rT]v dfierpov irpiis dvOpuiiTOvs (rrop- 
 yT)v . . fi€xp^s kvravOa ttj 'Poj/j-t] yev6- 
 fjL^vos, 6io(iovXr]T(x} 5idaaKa\ia ffw^ojv 
 dvdp<i;Trov$, avros tov vvv l3iov ^laiojs 
 TO (rji' ixeTT)\Xa(a>. (cf. also p. 39.) 
 In the Recognitions (a Latin form oT 
 the Romance), iii. 63-68, the rea- 
 sons for this journey are set forth : 
 ' debemus enim auxilium aliquod 
 ferre Gentibus, qu» ad salutem 
 vocat£e sunt. Ipsi audistis quod 
 Simon, praecedere volens iter no- 
 
 strum, profectus est [i. e. towards 
 Rome] ; quem oportuerat e vestigio 
 insequi ; ut, sicubi aliquos subvertere 
 tentaret, continuo confutaretur a 
 nobis.' It is impossible to avoid 
 the suspicion that St. Paul, the anti- 
 Judaizing Apostle to the Gentiles, 
 is here glanced at ; as he certainly 
 is in Recogn. i. 71, and Horn. xvii. 
 14 and 19. But, however this may 
 be, one link only is wanting to con- 
 nect the story with Justin Martyr's 
 imaginary inscription : and that is 
 found in a third apocryphal book, 
 of a kindred character, but of later 
 date, viz. a History of the Apostles, by 
 a pseudo-Abdias. ordained Bishop 
 of Babylon in Mesopotamia by St. 
 Peter. Here Simon boasts, ' in aere 
 volando invehar ; adorabor ut Do- 
 minus : publicJ; divinis donabor hono- 
 1 ibus : ita ut simulacrum mihi statu- 
 entes, tanquam Dominum colant et 
 adorent.' And presently, a deluded 
 disciple complains, ' Rogabat me cum 
 ipso ut proficiscerer, dicens se Romam 
 petere. Ibi enim se tantum placi- 
 turum, ut Dominus putetur et divi- 
 nis publice donetur honoribus.' (Fa- 
 bricius. Codex Apocr. i. 418, 422.) 
 
 " Dion. Cor. Fragm. ap. Ettseb. ii. 
 25- 
 
174 THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 laboured together at Corinth, and to have sailed from 
 thence in company to Rome. It then appears in Irenaeus, 
 (t202'°) — with the addition that St. Mark was with 
 Peter as his interpreter. Next, in Tertullian (t243 "') — 
 with the addition that St. Peter was crucified and St. 
 John was plunged unharmed into a cauldron of boiling 
 oil. Then, in Clement of Alexandria (1220"),— with 
 additions about the entreaty of the Romans to St. Mark 
 to write down what St. Peter had just preached to 
 them. Then in Origen, Clement's pupil (t2Si "*), — with 
 the addition that Peter was crucified with his head down- 
 wards. Then in Eusebius (t 340 '''''), — who adds, for the 
 first time, that he came to Rome so early as the second 
 year of Claudius, [a. D. 42 : a date historically irrecon- 
 cileable with the New Testament], in order to meet and 
 discomfit Simon Magus, the ' Simon Sanctus Deus ' of 
 Justin's mistaken inscription. Next, in the Apostolical 
 Constitutions, (a work of about the fourth century ^•'), — 
 where we read for the fii'st time, the miraculous story 
 of Simon's flying in the air and being brought to the 
 ground by Peter's prayers. Next, in Arnobius (t330*^), 
 — where the airy flight becomes a fiery chariot, blown 
 into pieces by the breath of Peter ; and where the 
 defeated heretic afterwards commits suicide at Brundi- 
 sium. Then Jerome (t420 ^^) gives us the precise dura- 
 tion of Peter's episcopate, viz. exactly a quarter of a 
 
 '^ Iren. Hcer. hi. i. a. d. 44; read also Gal. i. 18 (prob- 
 
 ™ Tert. Pnescr. 36. ably a.d. 42), and Acts xv. (a. d. 48). 
 " Clem. Alex. Fragni. ap. Euseb. '" Apost. Const, vi. 9 : for the 
 
 ii. 15; vi. 14. dates of its various parts, see Gie- 
 
 " Origen, Fragm. ap. Eiiseb. iii. I. seler, i. 359 : and the preface to 
 
 "" Euseb. Chron. ad ann. 42. But Ultzen's edit p. xv. 
 
 let any one read for himself the Acts " Arnobius, c. gentes : ii. 12. 
 
 o//ieYl/.os//e5, as far asxii. 23 : where '^'^ Jerome, de Script. Eccles. voc. 
 
 an event occurs whose date is well ' Petrus.' 
 
 known ; viz. the death of Agrippa I,, 
 
in.] THE GROWTH OF LEGEND. 175 
 
 century. And lastly, the Middle Ages have still more 
 accurate information on the subject ; and writers like 
 Bernard Guido (1320 '^•^) inform us that the period was 
 precisely twenty-five years, seven months, and eight 
 days ; that his first ordination was held in September, 
 Avhen he set apart six Bishops, ten Presbyters, and seven 
 Deacons ; and that he brought with him, and sent on 
 into Gaul, two intimate friends of the blessed Virgin, 
 together with Nathaniel, Simon the Leper, and the per- 
 son who had, as a child, been ' set in the midst ' by our 
 Lord, - this last person bearing with him, as a precious 
 relic, some of the blood of St. Stephen. 
 
 It is surely useless to go any farther. The whole 
 story from beginning to end displays every mark of a 
 legendary origin **. Its sole foundation in fact appears 
 to be the circumstance that the primitive Church at 
 Rome, being of Palestinian origin, maintained for some 
 time a strongly Jewish colour ; and that it sought to 
 entrench itself against the inroads of a more Hellenic 
 type of doctrine, by pleading the authority of ' the 
 twelve ' who had seen the Lord in Judtea, and by 
 
 "^ Gm&o, Short Hist, of the Popes : found.' (6) a.d. 420, Sulp. Severus re- 
 ap. Spicilegium Roman, vi, 5. cords that a corpse was brought to life 
 
 ''* For excellent specimens of le- by the contact with one of the three 
 
 gendary growth, take first the story crosses. (7) a.d. 489, Sozomen com- 
 
 of Helena's ' Invention of the Tme pletes the picture, by describing how 
 
 Cross.' (l) A.D. 338, Euseb. Vita Bishop Macanus, after prayer, car- 
 
 Consl. simply tells us, she had the ried each of the crosses to touch a 
 
 earth removed ; and ' the monument dying woman, who was healed by 
 
 of the resurrection' came to light, the third and true one. — Or again, 
 
 (2) A. D. 347, Cyril of Jerusalem take the growth of the Labarum 
 
 says, the Cross was found at the legend, as told in Robertson, Church 
 
 same time. (3) a.d. 384, Jerome Hist. i. Or the gradual belief in the 
 
 adds, it was kissed by the pilgrims, assumption of the Blessed Virgin 
 
 (4) A.D. 394, Chrysostom informs us, Mary, which came as ' a tradition 
 
 the Cross had been buried between wafted westward on the aromatic 
 
 two other crosses. (5) a.d. 400, breeze.' (Dr. Newman's Discourses to 
 
 Socrates adds, ' two nails w'ere also Mixed Congregations, p. 398.) 
 
176 THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 laying claim to St. Peter as its true founder, rather 
 than St. Paul. 
 
 And if it be objected that it seems impossible to 
 imagine that, in the course of a single century after 
 his death, the true history of a great Apostle, like 
 St. Peter, could have become so hopelessly confused 
 and forgotten : I answer, where then is the true history 
 of St. Matthew the Evangelist, of St. Thomas, of St. 
 Andrew, of St. Barnabas 1 Nay, where is the history 
 of the blessed Virgin Mary .? Where is the history of 
 the childhood and youth of our Saviour Himself.'' How 
 is it, that we can glean nothing new from men like Ire- 
 n^us and Polycarp : that the stories preserved by so 
 early a writer as Papias are childishly absurd and pal- 
 pably false *^ : that Dionysius of Corinth does not know 
 the earlier history of his own see: that even of an Epistle 
 contained in the New Testament Origen is obliged to 
 confess, ' who wrote it God alone knows *^ ' .' It is quite 
 certain, in short, that the sub-apostolic age was an 
 uncritical age ; and that our Lord and Master has not 
 willed that authentic reports of those early events should 
 be preserved. It is useless, therefore, to kick against the 
 pricks. It is foolish to indulge in vain regrets. But it 
 is still more foolish to replace the unknown by the 
 imaginary ; and most foolish of all, surely, to prop up 
 some great system or doctrine — which has a perfectly 
 clear and natural history of its own — by an affectation 
 of supernatural support, which it does not really possess 
 and does not really need. 
 
 (3) For the superiority of the Roman Bishop has a 
 perfectly intelligible history ; and to one who believes 
 in the Providential government of the Church, it re- 
 
 "^ E. g. the fragment preseiTed in Irenseus, v. 33. 3 : cf. the opinion of 
 Euseb. iii. 39. »« Origen, Fragm. ap. Euseb. vi. 25. 
 
III.] 'PRIMACY' OF ROME NOT DENIED. 177 
 
 quires no adventitious or miraculous authorization, — 
 except for the scarcely legitimate purpose of dazzling 
 and imposing upon mankind. Once disabuse our minds 
 of the false and mischievous notion, that our Lord set up 
 an absolute monarchy in His Church, in the person of 
 the Apostle Peter ; once get rid of the legendary tale 
 that that monarchy was afterwards in some way trans- 
 ferred to the successive Bishops of Rome ; and we are 
 then free to acknowledge, with all deference and honour, 
 the natural Primacy of the great historical and imperial 
 See. Nor need we stop there. We may even confess 
 the wonderful adaptation to mediaeval needs of that 
 vast ecclesiastical Dictatorship, which the most far- 
 seeing and religious minds of that dark period welcomed 
 and supported. 
 
 These honours of the Primacy the English Church 
 has never (so far as I am aware) refused to the Bishops 
 of Rome, even amid the most intolerable injuries and 
 provocations *''. She welcomed with gratitude the aid 
 which, during her long struggles with heathenism, came 
 from Rome. During the later conflicts of the Gospel 
 against an armed and brutal feudalism, she gladly 
 arrayed herself in line with the other Churches of the 
 continent. She accepted the Papal Dictatorship. She 
 stood not upon her rights. She was content to behave 
 as though the English race had formed part of the Holy 
 Roman Empire, to which they never had belonged. 
 She received Italian legates, endured legions of exempt 
 
 " E. g. Archbishop Wake writes, the view of Greek Canonists of high 
 
 in 1718, to Du Pin: 'The honour authority: e.g. of Balsamon (a.d. 
 
 which you give to the Roman Pontiff I180), ap. Beveridge, Synodicon, i. 
 
 differs little, I deem, from that which 486 ; Ei bi xal tovto ws irpovS/jtov 
 
 our sounder theologians readily grant [i. e. appeals, as a privilege] ('inys 
 
 him.' {Epist. 100 : ap. Pusey, Eire- Sodfivai r<f ndwTTa, — naiviiv oiiiv ! 
 nicon, i. 334.) Such too seems to be 
 
 N 
 
178 THE ROMANISTS. [lECT. 
 
 monks, was patient when her benefices were squandered 
 on absentee foreigners, let go matrimonial and testa- 
 mentary appeals — with the floods of English gold that 
 followed them — to Rome. 
 
 All this she bore. And no one who has ever honestly 
 studied the history of these ages, will (I am persuaded) 
 accuse England of cherishing any spirit of wanton dis- 
 obedience, or of causelessly aiding to break up the unity 
 of the Western Church. It was not until a series of pro- 
 vocations and injuries had been inflicted on her by the 
 Popes, such as no Church is bound, — or ought, in loyalty 
 to Christ Himself, — to endure, that the Church of Eng- 
 land did at last take up the attitude of indignant ' pro- 
 test ; ' an expectant and hopeful attitude which she has 
 since resolutely maintained in the face of Europe for 
 the last 300 years, — and for which it is possible that 
 she may yet be rewarded, by being made helpful to 
 restore her Master's cause of veracity, justice, and 
 freedom, in Germany first, and then in Italy and else- 
 where. 
 
 For let us call to mind what the Papacy professes to 
 be to the Christian Church ; and then compare with that 
 pretension what, especially in later times, it has really 
 been. The Pope professes to be the first clergyman 
 in Europe. In him are supposed to be concentrated — 
 hitherto by a tacit lex regia, but now by express utter- 
 ance of the Vatican Council — all the powers and voices 
 of every Church in Christendom. In his hands he 
 claims to hold all the spiritual powers of the Church, 
 — powers of exhortation, rebuke, encouragement, per- 
 suasion, teaching, all her armoury (in short) of means 
 and aids towards the redemption of men's souls from the 
 gross depths of superstition, dread, ignorance, worldly 
 
m.] 
 
 DUTIES OF PRIMACY NOT FULFILLED. 
 
 179 
 
 greed, carnal lusts, and — that deadliest of all heresies 
 — the divorce of religion from morality. This is his 
 Ideal. It was for this, that the Medieval Church placed 
 herself passively in his hands. It was for this, we may 
 fairly believe, that the great Head and King of the 
 Church, (whose promise to be 'with you always, even 
 unto the end of the world,' has not, surely, been broken,) 
 permitted for a time such a concentration of all eccle- 
 siastical powers*'. 
 
 But now, what did Rome do with this magnificent 
 opportunity .■' How was it, that she contrived to throw 
 into so indignant an attitude of protest, first of all the 
 whole Greek Church, and then (400 years later) the 
 whole Teutonic Church, — alienating that whole group 
 of nations, German, Scandinavian, and English, in 
 whose veins the love of freedom is most ardent, whose 
 
 " Surely the writer of these pages 
 is not wrong in believing, with all 
 his heart and mind, that mpenti- 
 tion is just one of those debasing 
 diseases of the soul, which the Great 
 Physician came to heal ; that it is a 
 gross perversion and parody of ' re- 
 ligious awe,' which is a feeling full 
 of health and the beginning of all 
 sound wisdom ; and that any Church, 
 which (on any pretence") fosters, in- 
 stead of curing it, is so far doing the 
 work of Anti-Christ instead of Christ. 
 What words then can express one's 
 painful feelings, in observing the 
 unrebuked customs and habits of 
 mind, which prevail in Romanist 
 countries ! I take up two books, 
 which happen to lie close at hand ; 
 one directed ad clerum, the other 
 ad populum. The first, St. Liguori's 
 Homo ApostoUcns, iii. Ii8, contains 
 such incredible follies about exor- 
 cism, as no Christian writer of the 
 eighteenth century, much less a great 
 
 N 
 
 saint and teacher of the clergy, should 
 have been guilty of. The second, 
 les FetesChretiennes (in the Bibliofhegiie 
 de VHopital Milifaire, a Toulouse), 
 p. 60, contains a full account of the 
 aerial flights of the Blessed Virgin 
 Mary's house to Loretto, and in- 
 forms us, that the truth of the story 
 is attested ' par d'innombrables mira- 
 cles ; par les constitutions des Sou- 
 verains Pontifes ; par le savant ou- 
 vrage du savant Pape, Benoit XIV.' 
 (fiysS.") The incredible doctrinal 
 superstitions, engendered by the free 
 play of men's morbid fancies, are 
 only to be paralleled in Hinduism 
 or the ancient Gnostic systems. 
 {SteDr-V-asty, Eirenicon, i. 151-174.) 
 Surely modern Romanists must for- 
 get the dictum of the great saint and 
 schoolman of the Middle Ages, 
 Thomas Aquinas ; who boldly as- 
 serts, ' Gravius est peccatum super- 
 stitionis vitium quam Dei tentatio.' 
 {Stimma, ii. part 2, 97. 4.) 
 
 2 
 
l8o THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 home-life *■' is the purest and the most religious among 
 all European peoples, and whose sound sense the most 
 instinctively revolts against mummeries, impostures, and 
 debasing superstitions ? 
 
 Rome alienated them by wantonly outraging and put- 
 ting to an open shame every one of their noblest sen- 
 timents, and every one of their most deeply-cherished 
 Christian feelings. Had these islanders a strong love 
 for their sea-girt independence, — Rome blest and sent 
 against them, first the Norman Conqueror, then a French 
 army in the thirteenth century '"', and, lastly, the Spanish 
 Armada. Did they proudly remember that the Roman 
 Empire, neither in its old shape nor yet in its new, had 
 ever bent their race beneath its yoke, — the Papacy took 
 them at their word and proceeded to claim them (with 
 all other islands '^'), as a direct fief of the Holy See. 
 Did they, first among the nations, feel the breath 
 
 *' Read, for instance, the beauti- impotent resentment of Innocent, 
 
 fill Life of Perthes, English transla- had no monarch been found willing 
 
 tion, (1858). E.g. p. 176: ' What a to undertake the execution of the 
 
 vast wilderness the world becomes, sentence. The Pope applied to the 
 
 when a man has no home!' and King of France; and Philip lent a 
 
 Pollio's Re^niniscences of Mendelssohn, ready ear to proposals so flattering 
 
 English translation, p 9 (1869) : 'In to his ambition. A numerous army 
 
 his gay early youth, Mendelssohn was summoned to meet at the moutli 
 
 wrote a vast deal ; , . while the sun of the Seine.' (Lingard, History of 
 
 that matured this growth and in- England, ii. 162: Matt. Paris, ii. 130, 
 
 crease was — his parental home. Ever ed. Madden.) 
 
 blessed be such a home I No better '' ' Sanfe omnes insulas, quibus sol 
 talisman can be found, against the justitije Christus illuxit, et quae do- 
 perils of life, for man or woman, cumenta fidei Christiante suscepe- 
 tlian the memoirs of a loving home.' runt, ad jus beati Petri et sacro- 
 
 '" 'Innocent, with apparent un- sancts3 Romana2 ecclesia;, (quod tua 
 
 willingness, had recourse to the last voluntas etiam recognoscit,) non est 
 
 effort of his authority. He absolved dubium pertinere.' (Bull of Pope 
 
 the vassals of John from their oaths Adrian IV. to Henry II., a.d. 1155, 
 
 of fealty, and exhorted all Christian sanctioning the English conquest of 
 
 princes and barons to unite in de- Ireland, — a fact that is surely 
 
 throning the King, and in substi- strangely forgotten on the other side 
 
 tuting another more worthy, by the of St. George's Channel ; cf. Matt, 
 
 authority of the Holy See. John, Paris, ii. 304.) 
 however, might have laughed at the 
 
in.] ALIENATION OF THE NORTHERN RACES. l8l 
 
 of reviving political life, and "^inticipate the coming 
 modern epoch by noble attempts to balance and har- 
 monize the various estates of the realm into an or- 
 ganized whole, — Rome has no sympathy, to this hour, 
 for national life. She interfered at every stage '^'^. 
 Alexander III. (1164) pretended to annul the Consti- 
 tutions of Clarendon. Innocent III. (12 15) vetoed 
 Magna Charta, and excommunicated all who had a 
 hand in it ''. Urban IV. (1261) released Henry III. 
 from his royal duty to execute the Acts of the Par- 
 liament of Oxford. And Clement V. (1305) absolved 
 Edward I. from his oath' to observe the charters, using 
 almost the same words as were employed only the other 
 day in interfering with an Austrian Act of Parliament '*, 
 ' we, by our Apostolical authority, revoke, annul, and 
 dissolve the said concessions, and all their effects.' Did 
 a strong feeling arise, that the endowments attached to 
 parishes ought to be spent in preaching the Gospel to 
 the poor, and not in swelling the overgrown state and 
 wealth of foreigners who had never set foot within the 
 country, — successive Popes laid down the maxim that 
 all the benefices in Christendom are in their gift. And 
 notwithstanding every remonstrance of men like Bishop 
 Grostete"^, and every rule and canon of the Church 
 
 ^^ Cf. Guizot, Representative Go- of all his spiritual weapons ; and on 
 
 vernment, pp. 278, 317, 332, 357. the 22nd June launched a charac- 
 
 '^ And yet Dr. DoUinger, in 1861, teristic allocution at the heads of the 
 had the assurance to write : ' It was Austrian rebels. In this allocution 
 the Church that the nation had to* the three laws in question are de- 
 thank for the Magna Charta of 1 215 ', nounced as "destructive, abomin- 
 {The Church and the Churches, p. 105.) _ able, and damnable. Therefore, (so 
 Probably in 1871 he would be more '.runs the allocution,) on the strength 
 guarded; and would distinguish be- 'pf our Apostolic authority, we anathe- 
 tween the old Catholics of England ipatise these laws . . and we declare 
 and the Pope. tlie laws, by the virtue of this same 
 
 '* Viz. in June, 1870. See Qiior- authority, to be null and void."' 
 terly Review, July, 1871, p. 104: ** See Grostete's celebrated letter 
 
 'The Pope determined to make use to Pope Innocent IV., in 1253, — in 
 
l82 
 
 THE ROMANISTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 Itself to the contrary, they accumulated preferments, by 
 fifty or sixty together, upon some Italian courtier or 
 sumptuous Prince of the Church ^^. 
 
 Again, when an urgent and increasing need began to 
 be felt in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries for 
 husbanding the resources of the State, when foreign 
 wars were pressing, and the feudal militia system was 
 beginning to give way, then, — against all protests, and 
 sometimes even threats, from Parliament, — the covetous- 
 ness of the clergy still found a shield in the Pope ; till, 
 at the Reformation, one-half of the landed property of 
 the country was found to be in dead ecclesiastical 
 hands ^^. When, at the same period, all good men 
 were groaning under the manifold corruptions and im- 
 becilities of the Church, and were demanding a timely 
 
 reply to a request that a canonry at 
 Lincoln might be reserved for his 
 nephew. ' Noverit discretio vestra, 
 quod mandatis Apostolicis affec- 
 tionfe filiali omnino devote et re- 
 verenter obedio ; his quoque — quae 
 mandatis Apostolicis adversantur, — 
 parentalem zelans honorem, adversor 
 et obsto. Ad utrumque enim simi- 
 liter teneor ex divino mandato . . 
 Prsetere^, post peccatum Luciferi, — 
 quod idem erit, in fine temporum, 
 ijDsius filii perditionis Antichristi, 
 quem interficiet Dominus Jesus spi- 
 ritu oris sui, — non est, nee esse 
 potest, alterum genus peccati tam 
 adversum et contrarium Apostolo- 
 rum doctrin^e et evangelicee, et ipsi 
 Domino J. C. tam odibile, detes- 
 tabile, et abominabile, et humano 
 generi tam pernecabile, quam animas 
 ■ — curse pastoralis officio et mini- 
 sterio vivificandas et salvandas — pas- 
 toralis officii et ministerii defrauda- 
 tione mortificare et perdere . . Hse 
 autem (quas vocant) " provisiones " 
 non sunt in sedificationem, sed in 
 manifestissimam destructionem. Non 
 
 igitur eas potest beata sedes Aposto- 
 lica/ (EpistoliE, p. 432 ; ed. Luard, 
 1861.) This manly letter was writ- 
 ten, be it remembered, three hundred 
 years before the iniquity of the Popes 
 was quite full. And on his death-bed 
 this noble Englishman, ' as if seized 
 with a prophetic spirit, exclaimed : 
 " Nor will the Church be free from 
 this Egyptian bondage, except at the 
 bloody sword's point." ' {Ibid, pre- 
 face, p. Ixxxii.) 
 
 '■ Hallam, Middle Ages, p. 376 
 (sm. edit.), cf. Grostete, Epist. p. 
 xlviii. ' The same year, 1 240, is re- 
 markable for the audacious attempt 
 of the Pope to attach the Roman 
 citizens to him, by giving them 
 English benefices.' 
 
 »' Hallam, Middle Ages, p. 336 
 (sm. edit.). Even so early as 1250, 
 Matt. Paris (p. 859) tells us: 'The 
 incomes of itit foreign clerks in Eng- 
 land amounted to more than 70,000 
 marks. The clear revenue of the 
 King did not amount to a third of 
 this.' 
 
III.] 
 
 CONCILIAR REFORMATIONS IMPEDED. 
 
 183 
 
 reform, in order to stave off a revolution, — tlien once 
 more, at Pisa (1409), Constance (1414), and Basle (143 1), 
 it is the Pope that always impeded and neutralized 
 every honest effort for good ^* ; and that endeavoured 
 in blood and flame to silence the protests and clamours 
 
 ^' It is certain that about A. D. 1400 
 all honest and good men in every 
 land were perfectly shocked at the 
 scandals and corruptions into which 
 the Church had fallen : and were 
 thoroughly in earnest in attempting 
 to rectify them, by the only way 
 which seemed open, — viz. tltat of 
 General Councils. And the appeals 
 made to the Popes, both by indi- 
 viduals and by the Councils them- 
 selves, to ftilfil their duty by for- 
 warding — instead of hindering — the 
 ' reformation of the Church, in head 
 and members,' are (in ^'iew of the sad 
 events which followed) quite pathe- 
 tic, (i) ' Too late,' — cries Nicholas 
 of Clemangis, the spokesman of the 
 University of Paris, before the Coun- 
 cil of Pisa, — ' too late will it repent 
 you to have looked about after no 
 remedies ; if now, when it stands in 
 your power, you do not see the near 
 impending dangers,' (ap. Neander, 
 ix. 77.) But the only result of that 
 Council was, that the execution of 
 Church-reform fell into the hands of 
 Pope John XXIII., — a man stained 
 with every crime; who 'hoped that, 
 by his money, his power, his policy, 
 he should be able to repress all the 
 counteractive influences of that bet- 
 ter spirit, which for so long a time 
 had been earnestly and ardently 
 longing after a reformation of the 
 Church.' (Zfczi. p. 129.) (2) Another 
 Council was therefore necessary. 
 And before the Council of Con- 
 stance, thus wrote Chancellor Ger- 
 son, one of the greatest men of the 
 age : ' The Pope is not above the 
 Gospel of God . . See, ye believers ! 
 Long ere this would they have quitted 
 
 the grasp of their tyrannical rule, 
 had you not indulged them with 
 your obedience. The Apostles, in 
 drawing up the Creed, did not say, 
 "I believe in the Pope." For the 
 comnton faith of Chnstians does not 
 repose on the Pope, who is but a 
 single person, and may err ; but they 
 said, " I believe in one holy Catholic 
 Church."' (/Ai'd.p. 136.) But the only 
 result of that Council was, that when 
 a new Pope was elected (Martin V.) 
 and Church-reform was entmsted to 
 his hands, he did jwthing but re- 
 erect his own sovereignty, and for- 
 bade any appeal to a General Council 
 on pain of excommunication. {Ibid. 
 p. 1S3 : Hefele, Conciliengesch. vii. 
 343.) (3) A third Council was there- 
 fore necessary. And at the Council 
 of Basle, the assembled Fathers en- 
 treated Pope Eugenius IV, not to 
 obstruct and neutralize their earnest 
 efforts at reform, in the following 
 terms : ' Hegc igitur sancta synodus 
 prjedictum beatisamum dominum 
 Papam Eugenium, cum omni re- 
 verentia et instantia supplicat, et per 
 viscera misencordi^e Jesu Christi 
 exorat, requerit, et obtestatur, ac 
 monet, quateniis . . ab omni impeiii- 
 mento dicti Concilii penitiis desistat.' 
 (Hardouin, ™i. 1 1 24 : Cone. Basil, 
 Sess. iii.) But all was in vain. Pope 
 Eugenius and his successors won 
 their sad and godless victory over 
 ' Reform by the way of General 
 Councils;' Pius II., as Pope, re- 
 tracted and anathematized all he had 
 said as .ffineas Sylvius the reformer ; 
 and all good men, for half a century, 
 absolutely despaired of the Church. 
 (Cf. Guericke, Kirchengesch. p. 511.) 
 
184 THE RORTANISTS. [lECT. 
 
 of the Church, by lighting, for the first time in this 
 country, his dreadful Moloch fires for heresy. And 
 lastly, when Christendom had awoke from its fever- 
 dreams of fanaticism, when the Crusades were over, 
 the mendicant orders had become ' clothed and in their 
 right mind,' and the beautiful ideal of a purer, healthier, 
 more natural system of things, moulded on the family 
 rather than the convent, was dawning on mankind like 
 sweet morning after troubled sleep, — then yet, again, the 
 Popes understood none of these things. A celibate 
 clergy — that fatal mistake, which (in Father Hyacinthe's 
 words) forms the heart-wound among the five wounds 
 of the Church, — making ' nations that see in it the 
 exclusive ideal of perfection, fail to recognise the 
 sanctity of domestic life''' — was still obstinately im- 
 posed on Christendom. Monastic houses were still 
 maintained in luxury and splendour, at a time when 
 all men of sense saw clearly that the day was over, 
 and that the time had come for founding colleges and 
 schools instead. And — what was worst of all — they were 
 still persistently maintained without any effective super- 
 vision, and apart from the ordinary episcopal system of 
 the Church, that they might serve the better for frontier 
 fortresses of the Pope in every land ■'. The consequences 
 
 "' Father Hyacinthe, Orations, p. of the aforesaid legate. On the mes- 
 
 xiii. ; cf. p. 141. senger's return from Rome, there was 
 
 ^ For the twelfth century, cf. Jo- not the means of discharging what 
 
 cehn's Chron. of Edmondibury, p. 2 he had promised to our lord the 
 
 (Tomlin's trans.) : ' Now there came Pope and the Cardinals, — unless, in- 
 
 intelligence to Hugh the Abbot, that deed, under the special circumstances 
 
 Richard Archbishop of Canterbury of the case, the cross which was over 
 
 purposed coming to make a visita- the high-altar, the Virgin Mary, and 
 
 tion of our Church by virtue of his the St. John . . adorned with a vast 
 
 authority as legate [' legatus natus'] ; quantity of gold and silver, could be 
 
 and thereupon the Abbot, after con- made use of for this purpose.' This 
 
 sultation, sent to Rome and sought a was in 11 76: and the same exemp- 
 
 privilege of cxCT;/)/!cm from the power tion was procured again, in 1198 
 
III.] MONASTERIES WHY DESTROYED. 185 
 
 of this insensate policy are now to be seen by the 
 traveller in every part of England. What mean those 
 ruined and shattered abbeys, that add a romantic beauty 
 to so many of our loveliest landscapes ? Has England 
 then, at some former time, given way to ' the blind fury 
 of the Celt ' ? Has she too, at one time, belied her 
 natural character and torn down with frantic glee these 
 structures, in hatred of their beauty, their costliness, 
 their sacred character ? If so, why then were the 
 cathedrals spared ? Why, at every step in our land, 
 do parish churches— often priceless gems of beauty and 
 antiquity — stand unharmed, and shelter to this hour a 
 religious life whose continuity has remained unbroken, 
 in some places for eight hundred or a thousand years ? 
 No : the lesson read by these majestic, windy ruins. 
 
 (p. 23). Indeed, adds Jocelin, ' the palis.' See also preface, p. Ixxxii. 
 
 Abbot often sent his messengers to In 1253, 'the Abbey of St. Albans 
 
 Rome, — by no means empty.' (p. 16.) appealed against the Bishop's visita- 
 
 For the thirleenth century, of. Gros- tion, from which they claimed ex- 
 
 tete, Epistolw, p. 325, (to Cardinal emption . . . Those were no light 
 
 Otho, A.D. 1343): 'Recogitet etiam, crimes of which the dying Bishop 
 
 supplicamus, et domino Papas sug- accused the Papacy.' (Cf. also Poems 
 
 gerat vestra discretio quam pericu- of Walter Mapes, Camd. Soc, p. 3J'.) 
 
 losum est saluti amimarum, si apud For the fourteenth century, cf. Piers 
 
 subditos vilescat auctoritas episco- P/o7t/ma«s Creet^, 1. 915, (ed. Wright): 
 
 ' He folwen nought Fraunceis, But falsliche lybbem ; 
 And Austyne's rewle They reckeneth but a fable ; 
 And purchaseth hem privilege Of popes at Rome.' 
 
 For ih^ fifteenth century, see Gieseler, utuntur ministeriis.' All this, how- 
 
 iv. 433: "rhe mendicants boldly main- ever, was in clear contradiction to 
 
 tained, ' sola Papie potestas in tota (at least) the rule of St. Francis 
 
 ecclesia immediate est a Christc' (see Brewer's Momim. Francisc. p. 
 
 ' Papa posset totum jus canonicum 564) : in spite of which, in later 
 
 destruere, et novum construere.' times, they became ' infatuated slaves 
 
 ' Quicunque contradicit Papas pa- of the Pope.' (.Hill, Engl. Monast. 
 
 ganizat.' — For the beginning of p. 412.) • The Apostolic See,' says 
 
 the sixteenth century, cf. Erasmus, Clem. XIV. in a Bull of 1773, ' wAic* 
 
 Adagia, ii. 8. 65, (ap. Gies. v. 34): owes its lustre and support to these 
 
 ' Si quid moliuntur Romani Ponti- orders, has not only approved, but 
 
 fices, quod paul6 sit alienius ad endowed them with many exemp- 
 
 apostolica ilia et prisca sanctimonia, tions.' 
 hoi-um [sc. the Friars] potissimum 
 
1 86 THE ROMANISTS. [lECT. 
 
 standing roofless in their utter desolation throughout 
 England, is one of serious and almost awful import. 
 It is nothing less than this. There we behold the 
 strongholds of that foreign, effete, and in its later 
 manifestations uncanonical and anti-episcopal system, 
 grounded on mistakes and subsisting by forgery, for 
 which I know no better term than ' Popery.' There 
 are the outposts of that Church-destructive despotism, 
 which our ancestors — more Christian than their teachers 
 • — abolished, fiercely tore, and left in ruins to bleach 
 where it fell. There too is the outside shell of an 
 idea, potent at first for good, but afterwards for un- 
 speakable harm, — the idea of Asceticism; of a per- 
 fection, that is, sought in a heathen manner not in 
 Nature's plane, but beside and athwart Nature ; not 
 seeking the completion and consecration of the world 
 and of mankind as God made them, but seeking rather 
 to mould the world on some newly-devised plan alto- 
 gether ; a Manichsean system, in short, which was not 
 tranquil health nor the way to reach health, — but a 
 highly morbid and temporary condition, generated ori- 
 ginally amid the horrors and confusions of an expiring 
 ancient civilization, and now prolonged artificially, by 
 a foreign agency, and for foreign purposes, into a dan- 
 gerous and chronic malady^. But at length the fresh 
 
 ^ Cf. Brewer's Monum. Frnnciscana, tendency to which their example 
 
 p. xxxix. : ' The increasing com- lent encouragement ? Indeed, one 
 
 munication between the West and of the original purposes of St. 
 
 the Eastern world had brought Francis had been to combat this 
 
 out, in a greater degree than ever very superstitious asceticism. ' He 
 
 [c. A. D. 1200], the Manichsean ten- used to say, that the servant of God 
 
 dencies of the times. That influence ought to eat, sleep, drink, and satisfy 
 
 had set in at all points upon Western his bodily requirements with discre- 
 
 Christendom . . . How could the tion ; that the body may have no 
 
 Church with its doctrine of celibacy, occasion of complaining . . He was 
 
 or the monastic orders with their a great advocate of cheerfulness ; 
 
 enforced asceticism, counteract a saying that it was the sign of a clean 
 
III.] THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING. 187 
 
 breeze blew. Tone and vigour returned to those 
 Churches of Europe that were still susceptible of health 
 and revival. Greece, in her rediscovered literature, once 
 more ' overcame her fierce and barbarous conqueror.' 
 And the linked monastic and papal systems together 
 fell. 
 
 From that time forwards the Papacy has been 
 essentially a question for the Latin nations ^. The men 
 of the Teutonic and Saxon races have found, or are 
 finding, other methods for securing combination and 
 unity, than a Dictatorship founded on fraud. And the 
 Church of England, in particular, when she saw herself 
 forced, in the sixteenth century — if she would be loyal, 
 not to the Pope, but to the Pope's Sovereign and hers, 
 Jesus Christ — to take some measures towards a pro 
 tempore self-reform, simply purged away all absolutely 
 intolerable abuses and superstitions ; and so patiently 
 abode, until such time as her sister Churches also (with 
 or without the Pope) should take heart to reform also *. 
 
 heart.' {lUd. p. xxxiii.) So too his face, p. v.) : and Hallam, MiA. Ages, 
 
 admirer, Bishop Grostete : ' To a p. 605, sm. edit.) 
 friar, as a penance, enjoined to drinlc ^ This truth is becoming clearer 
 
 a cup full of the best wine: and when everyday. Let two facts be remem- 
 
 it had been drunk very unwillingly, he bered: (i) That every single Pope 
 
 said to him, " Dearest brother, if you since the Reformation has been an 
 
 frequently had such a penance, you Italian; (2) That in the recent 
 
 would have a much better regulated Vatican Council, while the Latin 
 
 conscience'" (Luard's Grost'e.le, p. votes (including no less than 330 
 
 Ixxxix) But all this was in vain. Italian prelates, in immediate de- 
 
 The friars soon followed the evil pendence on the Pope) amounted to 
 
 example of the monks. And what the enormous number of fSg, the 
 
 they both had come to by a.d. isoo, whole of Germany was represented 
 
 may be seen in the citations given by fourteen votes ! (Quirinus, p. 90 : 
 
 by Gieseler, v. 21-42.. (Cf Wright's Fraser^s Mag. Dec. lb?, p^ 780O 
 Leilers relaling to the Suppression of * The repeated efforts that have 
 
 Monasteries,— ^?in event which I re- been made by the Church of Eng- 
 
 gard as the greatest blessing con- land to find a means of re-union 
 
 ferred by Divine Providence upon (i) with her sister Churches that 
 
 this country since the first introduc- still cling to Rome, u) with the 
 
 tion of the Christian religion,' (pre- vanous Protestant bodies,— form a 
 
THE ROMANISTS. [lect. 
 
 This attitude of our Cliurch at the Reformation cannot 
 indeed be too clearly or too frequently called to mind. 
 It was not a breach or a schism that was intended. 
 It was simply a ' protest.' Now a protest, — whether 
 in a club, a church, or any other society, — of course 
 signifies that the protesting party does not withdraw, 
 does not wash its hands of the society. Else, why take 
 the trouble to protest t When the managers of a so- 
 ciety, for the time being, do something distinctly wrong, 
 there are always two courses open, — either 'protest' 
 or ' secession : ' one of the two. But the choice of the 
 one alternative necessarily excludes the other. 
 
 The former of these two courses was chosen by 
 the Church of England in the sixteenth century : the 
 latter by the Anabaptists and other sectaries. She is, 
 therefore, more truly than any other Christian com- 
 munity in this kingdom, a Protestant Church. And 
 her ' protest' was raised, be it remembered, in the most 
 orderly and effective way that was then possible. It 
 was not the act of the State. It was not the act of 
 the King. It was the act of the Church herself in her 
 regular convocations s, and by the mouth of her then 
 
 chapter in her history, which is (at restoration of union.' (Dr. Pusey, 
 
 any rate) most honourable to herself. Eirenicon, i. 236.) The efforts 
 
 For the former — besides remember- made by Dr. Pusey and others, in 
 
 ing the fact, that no discourtesy has our own day, have met with a far 
 
 ever been done by our Church to more shameful repulse. For her 
 
 the orders conferred by Romanist efforts at Protestant re-union — be- 
 
 Bishops — see the temperate language sides the ordinary Church histories 
 
 invariably used by our greatest ■ — see a monograph by Dr. Heinrich 
 
 divines, from Hooker downwards; Heppe, Die Kirchliche Veriehr Eng- 
 
 andthe direct efforts made by Bishop lands, Sec. (1859). 
 
 Forbes in 1658, and by Archbishop = (i) The Convocation of the Pro- 
 
 ^^'ake in 1 7 ] 7, to hold out the hand vince of Canterbury, in the twenty- 
 
 of friendship to the Galilean Church, seventh of Archbishop Warham, 
 
 'Du Pin's decease, the change of on 11 February, 15,^1, passed, 
 
 political relations, tlie ascendency of ' unanimi consensu," the following 
 
 the Jesuits, quenched the hope of the declaration : ' Ecclesije et cleri An- 
 
m.] 
 
 SELF-REFORM OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 
 
 189 
 
 existing, unreformed Bishops — men who were using 
 every day the Sarum missal ; were firmly holding tran- 
 substantiation, the seven sacraments, and auricular 
 confession ; and many of whom afterwards stiffly re- 
 fused any further changes ^. It was by these men, in 
 the Convocation of 1531, that the Church of England 
 cast off from her neck the fatal incubus of the Papal 
 supremacy. Regretfully and hesitatingly the important 
 step was taken. But once taken, it was firmly per- 
 severed in ; in hope not to stand aloof for ever from 
 her continental sisters ; but that, a fair example once 
 set of such local reforms as were safe and possible, a 
 future General Council might impartially review all that 
 
 glicani, cujus singularem protectorem, 
 unicum et supremum dominum, et 
 (quantum per Christi legem licet) 
 etiam supremum caput, ipsius ma- 
 jestatem recognoscimus.' (Wilkins, 
 iii 724.) The Convocation of York 
 did the same ; but here there was 
 one dissentient voice, that of Ton- 
 stall, Bishop of Durham, — who ob- 
 jected simply to the wording of the 
 declaration as ambiguous (Ihid. 
 745,) Henry the Eighth, therefore, 
 in 15,^3, wrote a letter to the Con- 
 vocation of York, explaining the 
 phrase ' supremum caput ;' and stating 
 clearly that ' Christ is indeed " unicus 
 Dominus et supremus," as we con- 
 fess Him in the Church daily. . . 
 The words " et cleri Anglic," re- 
 strain, by way of interpretation, the 
 word "Ecclesiam," that is to say, 
 " the clergy of England." Their 
 laws, acts, and order of living, for- 
 asmuch as they be indeed all tem- 
 poral and concerned with this life 
 only, in those we be (as we be 
 called) . . "caput;" and because 
 there is no man above us here, be 
 indeed "supremum caput." As for 
 spiritual things, . . they have no 
 worldly nor temporal head, but only 
 Christ.' {Ibid. p. 762.) (2) In 1533, 
 
 Convocation requests the King to 
 withhold annates and firstfruits from 
 the Pope ; ' and, if he make process 
 . . then that the obedience of the 
 people be withdrawn from the See 
 of Rome.' (Ibid, p, 761 ) (3) In 
 1534, six great abbeys renounce the 
 Pope's usurped supremacy. (Burnet, 
 ii. 163.) (,4) In 1538, Convocation 
 appeals to a General Council. (Ibid. 
 p. 198.) 
 
 ' These were the men of whom 
 even the foul-mouthed Nicholas San- 
 ders was obliged to confess, that 
 Henry VIII. ' episcopos (prceter 
 unum Cranmerum . .) et doctos 
 nominavit et minimfe malos. Ade6 
 ut plerique eorum postea, tarn Ed- 
 vardo qukm Eliz. regnante, ob 
 Catholicse fidei confessionem car- 
 ceres et vincula subiverint.' (Be 
 Schismate Anglic, p. 103, ed. 158,^.) 
 Yet among them all, ordy one 
 thought it his duly to protest against 
 the Act of ConvocatioJi which, in 
 1 53 1, ievered England from the 
 Papacy; viz. Tunstall, Bishop of 
 Durham. (Lingard, iv. 273.') 'The 
 oath of supremacy was taken by 
 Fisher of Rochester ; and in all 
 probability by ReginaldPole.' (Hard- 
 wick, Ref. p. 192.) 
 
1 90 
 
 THE ROMANISTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 had been done, and either retrench or extend it, as 
 might seem best for the whole family of National 
 Churches '. 
 
 And not only so : not only did the clergy, after three 
 days' debate, thus break with Rome : not only did the 
 laity, assembled in Parliament, accept and endorse what 
 was done : but also the Universities, the Cathedral 
 bodies, and even the great monastic societies themselves, 
 gave their full sanction to the inevitable emancipation '. 
 It is impossible to conceive, therefore, a more thoroughly 
 unanimous movement of the whole English Church, ex- 
 pressing its concurrence in the most legitimate way, 
 and by the voice of those persons in the realm whose 
 counsel was at that time held to be of the greatest 
 weight, and whose character stood entirely above re- 
 proach. 
 
 ^ This, be it ever remembered, 
 has been the modest attitude of the 
 English Church, from the sixteenth 
 centui"y down to the present day. 
 So early as r427, Archbishop Chi- 
 chele appealed against Pope Martin V. 
 to a future General Council (Burnet, 
 Records, iv. 3S2) : in 153.^, Bishop 
 Bonner (Henry the Eighth's envoy 
 to Rome on the question of the 
 Divorce) appealed to a future Gene- 
 ral Council (Lingard, v. 9.) Luther, 
 in 1520 (Lingard, iv. 224), and 
 Ei'asmus in 1522 (Hardwick, Ref. 
 p. 297). having previously done the 
 same thing. In 1,538, the Convoca- 
 tion of Canterbury (fifteen Bishops 
 and forty-nine members of the Lower 
 House affixing their signatures) af- 
 firmed ; ' There never was, nor is, 
 anything devised, invented, or in- 
 stituted by our forefathers, more 
 expedient . . than the having of 
 General Councils.' (Burnet, Reform. 
 ii. 198, i2mo. ed.) In 1562, Bishop 
 Jewel writes : ' When, therefore, the 
 expectation of a General Council 
 
 was very uncertain . . we proceeded, 
 and have accordingly done that which 
 may both be lawfully done, and 
 which hath already been often done 
 by many pious men and Catholic 
 bishops, — i.e. to take care of our 
 own Church in a provincial synod. 
 For so we see the ancient Fathers 
 ever took that course, before they 
 came to a General and public Council 
 of the whole world.' {Apology, chap, 
 vi. § 17.) And in 1594, Richard 
 Hooker lays it down, as ' the best, 
 the safest, the most sincere and 
 reasonable way; viz. the verdict of 
 the whole Church, orderly taken and 
 set down, in the assembly of some 
 General Council.' {Eccles. Pol. iv. 
 i.V 8.) Meanwhile, it is allowed, 
 even by Lancelot the Canonist (In- 
 stil. Juris Can. p. 15, ed. i.';98), that 
 ' interdum qu^ ab his [Provincial 
 Councils] recti statuta sunt etiam 
 Catholica Ecclesia recipit.' As Dr. 
 Pusey also says {Cowicils, p. 21). 
 
 ^ Wilkins, iii. 748 ; Rymer, xiv. 
 487. (Ap. Hardwick, Ref. p. 194.) 
 
Ill 
 
 ,] REFORM HOW CARRIED OUT. 191 
 
 And now let us notice how she employed her re- 
 covered liberty of action. I need only refer to the 
 manner in which the difficult problem of a revision of 
 the Liturgy was solved in 1549, in order to show the 
 sincerely Catholic and loyal spirit which actuated her. 
 Here, at any rate, was no break with the past ; no 
 consciousness of being anything else than the old time- 
 honoured Church of England, engaged in the very 
 natural task of adapting her old forms to altered cir- 
 cumstances '. First, her ritual canons were reviewed ; 
 and the existing mediaeval Prayer-books were revised, 
 condensed, and translated ; and then were presented 
 to the State for its sanction. She then proceeded to 
 translate the Holy Scriptures, and to give them to 
 the laity, — whom the revival of learning and the con- 
 sequent spread of education had now prepared for an 
 intelligent, as well as devotional, use of them. The 
 next step was, to draw up in the Thirty-nine Articles 
 some doctrinal canons for the guidance (in a broad 
 and general way) of her clergy in their teaching : 
 then to provide some ready-formed Homilies, for cases 
 where trustworthy preachers could not be had : and, 
 lastly, to undertake the difficult task of revising, and 
 adapting to changed circumstances, her existing codes 
 of Disciplinary Canons, — a work begun in the (so-called) 
 
 ^ This point cannot be too strongly hostile contemporary writers,' — they 
 insisted on, in view of the audacious would come to a very different con- 
 statements to the contrary which elusion. Cf. e.g., Sanders, De Schism, 
 are frequently hazarded by partizan Anglic, p. 112 (158;,): ' Admini- 
 writers. If such persons would take strandse autem Eucharistioe . . pariim 
 the trouble to consult original au- a Catholicorum missa distabant . . 
 thorities, — to read the Preface to the Canon missse pane totus ab initio ad 
 English Prayer-book, the Acts of verbum transcriptus fuit. Signaetiam 
 Parliament, 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 19, benedictie Crucis retentse sunt. . . 
 2 Eliz. cap. I, where the old Canon Cranmerus sacrificio niissiE interfuit 
 Law is spoken of as still standing, quotidie, dum regnabat Henricus.' 
 and the opinions of even the most 
 
192 
 
 THE ROMANISl^S. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 ' Reformatio Legimi Ecclesiasiicarutii ;' but, owing to the 
 untimely death of Edward the Sixth, never carried to 
 its completion. 
 
 An English Churchman may, therefore, fairly ask, 
 ' What more could any Church do, under the difficult 
 and painful circumstances into which the misconduct 
 of the Popes had plunged her, than was actually done ^° ? 
 How could any Church display more industry, more 
 loyalty to the past, more fidelity to her Divine Master, 
 more simple dutifulness to the laity committed to her 
 charge, more good sense in providing against future 
 confusions, and against the inevitable mistakes and 
 weaknesses that accompany every effort for good in this 
 world, — than was displayed by the Church of England 
 
 " ' On veut que le premier appel 
 [au futur Concile G6n6ral] soil celui 
 de Duplessis, emis le 13 jiiin, 1303; 
 celuici . . montre un embarras ex- 
 cessif. II est fait " au Concile et au 
 S. Siege apostolique, et a celui et 
 a ceux auxquels il peut et doit etre 
 le mieux posti5 de droit." Dans les 
 quatre-vingts ans qui suivent, on 
 trouve huit appels dont les formules 
 sont : *' Au S. Siege," " au Sacr6 
 College," " au Pape futur," " au Pape 
 mieux informe," " au Concile," " au 
 tribunal de Dieu," " a la trfes-Sainte 
 Trinity" " a Jesus Christ." enfin. 
 Ces inepties valent la peine a etre 
 rappeUes ; elles prouvent d'abord la 
 nouveautd de ces appels, et ensuite 
 I'embarras des appelants.' (De 
 Maistre, Dv Pape, p. 22.) Yes: but 
 they prove three things, in addition ; 
 (i) the shameful failure of the Popes 
 to do the high duties they had under- 
 taken : (2) the fatal confusions which 
 result from despotism, — in the eccle- 
 siastical as well as in the civil sphere ; 
 (3) the shocking demoralization, and 
 inability to understand the serious 
 earnest of uncorrupted men, which 
 
 befalls even highminded persons who 
 surrender to Jesuitism. What sound 
 basis of personal morality, and — by 
 inevitable consequence — what theory, 
 worth calling for a moment 'reli- 
 gious faith,' can possibly be left to 
 any one, who thoroughly accepts and 
 assimilates the Ultramontane theory ; 
 that one Christian is bound to sub- 
 mit his conscience to another's, 
 ' perinde ac si cadaver esset ' — in other 
 words, to commit moral suicide : 
 (cf Loyola's Constilutions,Vi.i, 1558) : 
 that ' Papa tantse est auctoritatis et 
 potestafis, ut possit quoque leges 
 divinas modificare, . . ciim in terris 
 Dei vices fungitur ; ' (Ferraris, Bi- 
 hlioth. Canonica, vii. 28, t 7S0) : because 
 'what i<! calls true and right is true 
 and right !' (Barnet Calh. Magazine, 
 Feb. 1871, p. II. ) Nay; 'si Papa 
 erraret, pra cipiendo vitia vel pro- 
 hibendo virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia 
 credere vitia esse bona et virtutes 
 malas : nisi vellet contra conscien- 
 tiam peccare.' (Bellarmine, De Ponlif. 
 iv. 5.) Can moral suicide go any 
 farther I 
 
III.] ENGLISH HABIT OF SELF-DEPRECIATION. 193 
 
 in the sixteenth century ? It is nothing short of egre- 
 gious folly, to rivet the attention predominantly on the 
 sins and errors that may have accompanied this great 
 movement. It is childish pedantry, to fritter away the 
 main and leading facts of a glorious chapter in our 
 country's history, by learned trifling over its details. 
 It is ungrateful to the Supreme Ruler and Pilot 
 of the Church, to vilify and disparage — by aid of the 
 bitter and calumnious accusations of her enemies — 
 every important actor amid a tempest which would as- 
 suredly try very severely the courage and honesty even 
 of the most self-confident censor among our modern 
 critics. But our English race is strangely prone to a 
 cynical self-depreciation ". It far too patiently permits 
 the enemy to repeat his calumnies and fill the air with 
 falsehoods : till the very sons and daughters themselves 
 of the English Church are thrown into helpless and 
 almost ludicrous confusion, as to her real position, her 
 true principles of action, her attitude towards the Conti- 
 nental Churches, and her duties towards Dissent (whether 
 Romanist or Puritan) at home. 
 
 May God forgive both our own want of diligence 
 in clearing up and stating these matters, and also 
 the incredible hatred with which the separated communi- 
 ties, (and especially the Romanists,) have multipHed a 
 thousand -fold the difficulties of their Mother- Church ! 
 
 " ' Beware of that tendency . . to Church's ' chief danger arises from 
 
 what he would call — if he might the faintheartedness, which regards 
 
 coin a word — "alarmism." There an imperilled cause as hopelessly 
 
 were great numbers of people in this lost.' (Dean Stanley, Essays, p. xi.) 
 
 country, who could not be satisfied Our Church ' hath been honoured by 
 
 without endeavouring to excite the our friends, feared by our enemies, — 
 
 imagination of the people with phan- and contemned by none but ourselves 
 
 toms of constant danger.' (Mr. at home.' (Bishop Williams, 1670 : 
 
 Gladstone, Speech at Whitby : ap. ap. Strype, Parlter, i. xvi.) 
 Guardian, Sept. 6, 1871.) Our 
 
 O 
 
194 THE ROMANISTS. [leCT. 
 
 May He prosper, and give ultimate success to, the 
 noblest attempt that has ever yet been made to plant 
 Christ's banner upon the citadel of a free and modern 
 State, to infuse Christianity into the very nerves and 
 veins of an adult and fully-organized nation, and to con- 
 secrate — not curse or secularize — science, family life, po- 
 litical life! For this has been (in few words) the glorious 
 task of the old Catholic Church in modern England : — 
 to elevate and transfigure the earthly by the spiritual, 
 instead of separating them in Manichaean faithlessness ; 
 to combine the Hellenic and Hebrew elements in Chris- 
 tianity, instead of setting them at open war with each 
 other ; and to employ in God's service, and dedicate to 
 His honour, that Physical Science, which has been God's 
 honoured instrument in 'manifesting Himself to the 
 European races, and a sort of Old Testament of the 
 Gentiles to lead them to Christ ^^. 
 
 But these are things which neither Rome, nor those 
 who are — by sympathy or name — her sons, have ever been 
 able to understand. The idea is too high and (in the 
 truest sense) too spiritual for them. The Judaizing temper, 
 which from the beginning has found its home there, is 
 always ' seeking after signs,' yearning for the marvellous, 
 
 '^ The ' wise men ' of Babylonia educated heathen, that in their world 
 were reached through their own as- too, as well as in the more privileged 
 tronomical science (Matt. ii. 2) : the Jewish world, God had in a hundred 
 Athenians were addressed by St. ways sown broadcast the dormant 
 Paul through the medium of their seeds of Christianity; that in the 
 own Jine arts (Acts xvii. 23 and streets and fields of pagan Rome or 
 28) : the men of Lystra were di- Carthage were to be heard the ' tes- 
 rected to God's revelation of Him- timonia animse naturaliter Christ- 
 self through Nature (Acts xiv. 17): ianas,' (Tert. Apol. § 17,) and in the 
 and the Romans were expressly told, heathen schools of moral philosophy 
 that ' His eternal power and God- might be found ' school-masters to 
 head' should have been clearly un- lead men to Christ;' tpiXoao^ia 5e fi 
 derstood by them from the works of 'E\Ar]vtKTj olov npoiiaBaipet ical irpofOl- 
 Creation (Rom. i. 20). — And so the fei rijv ipvxfiv eis 7rapa5ox^i' mffTCaJs. 
 Christian apologists of the second (Clem. Alex. Strom, vii. § 20.) 
 century always laboured to show the 
 
III.] REACTION UNDER QUEEN MARY. 195 
 
 » 
 
 unable to reconcile itself with the ordinary and the 
 natural. It imposes on itself therefore the suicidal mis- 
 sion of 'beating back the spirit of the age^^.' It recoils 
 from the modern world, and would fain retire into the 
 cloister away from all the present marvellous deployment 
 of freedom and beauty. It has never yet forgiven the 
 revival of classic learning in the fifteenth century. It has 
 never yet ceased to struggle, in truly pitiable blindness, for 
 the reversal of what God then did, for the re-expulsion of 
 Hellenic thought, for the return of the Middle Ages, for 
 the re-enslavement of the noble and subtle Germanic 
 mind to the gross and domineering instincts of the 
 Latin race^*. 
 
 Accordingly, no sooner had our Church set her house 
 in temporary order and addressed herself to the difficult 
 task of governing her more extreme and refractory 
 parties ^*, than behold ! her ancient enemy is in the field 
 against her. Determined to regain this country, and yet 
 already displaying a judicial blindness as to the way in 
 which a free modern people must be dealt with, the 
 Papacy seized the opportunity of Queen Mary's reign to 
 try upon England those coarse methods of brutal com- 
 
 ^ Dr. Newman, Anglican Diji- Scriptures Greek . . . Africa, not 
 culties, '^. 12. But when did St. Paul, Rome, gave birth to Latin Chris- 
 or any great Saint or Father of the tianity. TertuUian was the first Latin 
 Church, hold such language as that ? writer.' But ' the Church of the 
 They did not ' beat back ' their own Capital could not but assume some- 
 age. They seized it, and Chris- thing of the dignity of the Capital.' 
 tianized it. (Milman, Latin Christianity, i. 25.") 
 
 ^* ' Slowly, and at long intervals, ' Sitfit que ce grand travail de I'ame 
 did the Bishop of Rome emerge to a semble acheve, que les plus vastes 
 dangerous eminence . . . For some intelligences se sont consumers k de- 
 considerable part of the first three velopper I'esprit du Christianisme, et 
 centuries, the Church of Rome and qu'il n'est plus besoin que de res^ner, 
 most (if not all) of the Churches of on voit I'eveque de Rome s'6tablir au 
 the West were, if we may so speak, sommet de ces ceuvres de vie, comme 
 Greek religious colonies. Their Ian- s'il en etait le principe et la source." 
 guage was Greek, their organization (Quinet, CEuvres, iii. 58.) 
 Greek, their writers Greek, their '* Froude, xi. 8. 
 
 O 2 
 
196 
 
 THE ROMANISTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 pulsion ^^ which were succeeding only too fatally well in 
 Latin Spain. But all was useless. And when (in spite 
 both of innumerable plots and the shock of open 
 war) Elizabeth's throne became every day more firmly 
 secured, and when a vigorous national organization both 
 in Church and State soon bade fair to render every 
 attack nugatory, then at last the patience and the hopes 
 of Rome were at an end; and on April 27, 1570, the 
 shameful mandate went forth, bidding all who would 
 obey Pope Pius V. to break with their own English 
 Church, to secede and form conventicles, to abandon 
 and dethrone their sovereign, and to subject their 
 country, if they could, to a foreign invader ^'^. 
 
 '' The Inquisition, with its abomi- 
 nable and immoral ciiaelties, was dis- 
 tinctly introduced into the Church by 
 the Popes. ' Dass in dieser papstlichen 
 Veranstaltung (1198) die erste An- 
 lage der nachraals sogenannten In- 
 quisitoren zu suchen sei ; welche 
 bloss von den Papsten abhangig,' &c. 
 (Schrockh, xxix. 577.) 
 
 " The Bull is given at length in 
 Burnet, iv. 452, small edition. It runs 
 as follows : ' Pius Episcopus, servus 
 servorum Dei, &c. Regnans in ex- 
 celsis, cui data est omnis in coslo et 
 in terra potestas, unam Sanctam, Ca- 
 tholicam et Apostolicam Ecclesiam 
 (extrk quam nulla est salus) uni soli 
 in terris, viz. Apostolorum Principi 
 Petro, Petrique successori Romano 
 Pontihci, in potestatis plenitudine 
 tradidit gubernandam. Hunc unum 
 super omnes gentes et omnia regna 
 Principem constituit, qui evellat, de- 
 struat, disperdat, plantet et edificet. 
 . . . lUius itaque authoritate suffulti, 
 declaramus priedictam Elizabetham 
 haereticam et hsereticorum fautricem ; 
 eique adhaerentes in prjedictis, ana- 
 thematis sententiam incurisse esseque 
 a Christi corporis unitate prsecisos : 
 Quinetiam ipsam prcetenso Regni 
 
 praedicti jure, necnon omni et quo- 
 rumque Dominio, dignitate, privile- 
 geoque privatam ; Et item, proceres, 
 subditos, et populos dicti Regni, ac 
 cseteros omnes qui illi quomodocunr 
 que juvaverunt, a juramento hujus- 
 raodi, ac enim prorsiis dominii, fide- 
 litatis, et obsequi debito, perpetuo 
 absolutos; proutnos illos preesentium 
 authoritate absolvimus, et privannis 
 eamdem Elizabetham prcnten&o jure 
 Regni aliisque omnibus supradictis. 
 PrEecipimusque et inlerdicimus uni- 
 versis et singulis proceribus, subditis, 
 popuhs, et aliis praedictis, ne illi 
 ejusve monitis, mandatis, et legibus 
 audeant obedire; qui sechs egerint, 
 eos simili anathematis sententist in- 
 uodamus.' — This is too much even 
 for so gross and reckless a slanderer 
 of the Reformation as William Cob- 
 bett to condone. ' According to the 
 decision of the head of the Catholic 
 Church, Elizabeth was an usurper; 
 if she were an usurper, she ought to 
 be set aside ; if she were set aside 
 Mary Stuart and the King of France 
 became Queen and King of England ; 
 England became a mere province^ 
 ruled by Scotchmen and Frenchmen ; 
 — the bare idea of which was quite 
 
III.] 
 
 THE SPANISH ARMADA. 
 
 197 
 
 The result was, however, hardly equal to the sanguine 
 expectations of the framer of this bull. The English 
 Church was not seriously damaged. Queen Elizabeth 
 was not cast from her throne. The horrible massacres, 
 which soon followed in France,— and for which the Pope 
 in solemn procession gave God thanks", — did not shake 
 the courage, but only aroused the indignant execration 
 of England. And the subsequent attack of the Papal 
 Armada ignominiously failed. The only permanent 
 result was, that one more schismatic body was estab- 
 lished on the English soil ; and that Romanism, by 
 the act of its own infatuated leaders, was now identical 
 with treason to the sovereign, which it became the 
 bounden duty of the magistrates to punish with an 
 entirely exceptional and unwished -for severity ^^. 
 
 sufficient to put every drop of Eng- 
 lish blood in motion.' (History of 
 the Reformation, Letter x.) 
 
 M < Whatever be the number [of 
 Protestants massacred : probably, at 
 least 20,000], not all the waters of 
 the ocean can efface the stain upon 
 the characters of those concerned in 
 the massacre. . . Such a purely gra- 
 tuitous massacre is unexampled in 
 the annals of the world . . . Alva 
 condemned the massacre ; and Mi- 
 cheli, the Venetian ambassador, af- 
 firms that all thinking men without 
 distinction of creed protested against 
 the crime . . La Mothe F^nelon de- 
 clared he was ashamed to be counted 
 a Frenchman. Lord Burghley told 
 him, in most undiplomatic language, 
 that " the Paris massacre was the 
 most horrible crime which had been 
 committed since the crucifixion of 
 Christ." . . In Germany, the horror 
 was hardly less than in England.' 
 (White, Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
 p. 472.) And now behold how the 
 infallible Pope, the self-styled Vicar 
 of the meek and lowly Jesus, viewed 
 the matter : ' When the news of the 
 
 massacre reached. Rome, the exulta- 
 tion among the clergy knew no 
 bounds. The Cardinal of Lorraine 
 rewarded the messenger with 1000 
 crowns ; the cannon of St. Angelo 
 thundered forth a joyous salute ; the 
 bells rang out from eveiy steeple ; 
 bonfires turned night into day ; and 
 Gregory XIII, , attended by the Car- 
 dinals and other ecclesiastical digni- 
 taries, went in long procession to the 
 Church of St. Louis, where the Car- 
 dinal of Lorraine chanted a Te Deum 
 . . A medal was strack to comme- 
 morate the massacre ; and in the 
 Vatican may still be seen three fres- 
 coes by Vasari describmg the attack. 
 . . Gregory sent Charles the golden 
 rose.' {Ibid. p. 476.) 
 
 '' Romanist partizans persistently 
 attempt, in the teeth of all the evi- 
 dence, to represent the political exe- 
 cutions of Jesuits and Seminarists in 
 this reign as acts of religious perse- 
 cution. Such persons cannot have 
 honestly read the history of these 
 times. ' On the morning of the 15th 
 of May (1570) the Bull declaring 
 Elizabeth deposed, and her subjects 
 
THE ROMANISTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 From this time forward, Romanism has played but a 
 sorry part in England. While some of its adherents 
 have shown, as individuals, the very highest qualities, 
 the leaders of the Denomination have receded farther and 
 farther away from any sympathy with the main body 
 of their countrymen. During the seventeenth century, 
 rightly or wrongly, innumerable plots and Jesuitical in- 
 trigues were attributed to them. Under Charles I., a 
 French Romanist Queen contributed materially to bring 
 about the Great Rebellion. Her two sons, Charles II. 
 and James II. — in different ways, the worst sovereigns 
 
 absolved from their allegiance was 
 found nailed against the Bishop of 
 London's door ; and whatever the 
 Catholic Powers might do, or not 
 do, the Catholic Church had formally 
 declared war.' (Froude, x. 59.) At 
 home, ' its strength lay now among 
 the meaner elements of secret con- 
 spiracy and disaffection ' {Ibid. p. 60) : 
 — from abroad, ' if by any means 
 the release of the Queen of Scots 
 could be effected, fifteen or twenty 
 thousand men could be thrown 
 across, before Elizabeth could have 
 notice of her danger. The Catho- 
 lics would immediately rise, Mary 
 Stuart would be proclaimed . . The 
 country would be conquered without 
 a struggle ' {Ihid. p. 69) : ' Liberty of 
 conscience,' therefore said Lord Bur- 
 leigh in Parliament, 'was generally 
 good ; but after the step which the 
 Pope had chosen to take, religion 
 had been made a question of alle- 
 giance' [Ihid. p. 196). — Indeed Eli- 
 zabeth herself (says Dr. DoUinger, 
 Church and Churches, p. 106), ' desired 
 to retain as many elements of the old 
 religion as possible, at least in the 
 Liturgy and the administration of the 
 Sacraments :' nor in fact ' was any 
 priest executed till 1577 . . by a law 
 made six years before ' (Strype, 
 Parker, ii. 134): and then only in 
 consequence of the exasperation pro- 
 
 duced by the Jesuit Campion's pro- 
 ceedings (Strype, Grindal, p. 3S0) : 
 and by discovering 'in the King of 
 Spain an intention to invade her 
 dominions ; and that a principal part 
 of the plot was to prepare a party 
 within the realm that might adhere 
 to the foreigner.' (Sir F. Walsing- 
 ham, ap. Burnet, boolt iii. sub fin.) 
 In short, there were then — as there 
 are now — two sorts of Romanists : 
 (i) the quiet conscientious Romanists 
 from childhood upwards, — and to 
 these Elizabeth always displayed a 
 remarkable lenity ; extending it 
 even to men like Bishop Bonner, 
 who after subscribing to the Royal 
 Supremacy under Henry VIII. and 
 Edward VI., had become a fierce 
 persecutor under Mary. (Cf. Lin- 
 gard, vi. 326 ; Sti^pe, Grindal, 34 and 
 150.) And (2) the turbulent poli- 
 tical Romanists, the tools (often un- 
 awares) of foreign Jesuits and in- 
 triguers, — and for these, of course, 
 she had no mercy. (See abundant 
 evidence, in Challoner's Memoirs of 
 Missionary Priests [written with a . 
 contrary intention], e. g. i. 84, 89, 
 91, 119, 141, &c., &c. Every one 
 of these martyrs to Pope Pius V.'s 
 political schemes died by hanging, 
 &c. (the statutable traitors' death) ; 
 not by burning, (the statutable here- 
 tics' death.) 
 
III.] FOREIGN CHARACTER OF ENGLISH ROMANISM. 199 
 
 that perhaps England has ever had — were both of them 
 Romanists. And it was not till the country had finally 
 concluded that no subject of the Papacy should ever more 
 sit on the throne of these realms^", that peace and security 
 were at last obtained. 
 
 And meantime the foreign character of this most 
 unjustifiable intrusion has plainly shown itself. While 
 at this hour, in every cathedral and parish church 
 throughout the land, the old English Service Books, 
 according to the use of Sarum, are (in a revised and 
 condensed form) daily and weekly to be heard, — in the 
 Romanist chapels, on the contrary, scarcely anything 
 English is to be heard or seen. The modern Roman 
 Rituals have supplanted everywhere those of the ancient 
 English Church '^^. While to this hour, on the Episcopal 
 thrones and on the benches in Parliament are to be seen 
 the direct successors of Chichele, Langton, Anselm, Dun- 
 stan, Augustin, — the Romanist body, after being for a 
 long time governed by a mere commissary of the Pope ^', 
 obtained at last, in 1851, an Episcopate of their own. 
 But it was an Episcopate with no roots in this country; of 
 the Roman not of the Anglican succession ; bearing no 
 commission from, and having no connexion with, Wyke- 
 ham, Grostete, Langton, Chad ; a mere foreign impor- 
 tation ; whose first great public act has been to send 
 
 2» By the (so-called) Act of Set- ^ Until 1598, the Seceders had no 
 
 thment, 13 and 14 Will. III. cap. 2 ; ecclesiastical organization at all. In 
 
 cf. Hallam, CoiKl. Hist. p. 729 (small that year, a Rural Dean was made 
 
 edition). their governor. And this extra- 
 
 "' The title of the modem Ro- ordinary form of Church government 
 
 mano-Anglican Service Book runs continued till 1623; after which 
 
 as follows: ' Ordo administrandi Sa- time, till 1851, mere titular Bishops 
 
 cramenta, etc. in raissione Anglicana, (of Chalcedon, Melipotamus, &c.) 
 
 ex Rituali Romano jussu Pauli V. were sent over by the Pope, and 
 
 edito extractus : nonnuUis adjectis ruled as his commissaries. (Cf. 
 
 ex antiquo Rituali Anglicano.' 1831. Palmer, Orig. Liturg. ii. 286; Lin- 
 
 (Foye's Romish Rites, p. 256.) gard, vi. 312.) 
 
200 THE ROMANISTS. [lECT. 
 
 to a pseudo-CEcumenical Council, as representatives of 
 the English element in Christendom, a body of Papal 
 nominees to vote, in England's name, for— what certainly 
 appears to almost all Englishmen the very height of 
 presumptuous folly — the absolute and infallible des- 
 potism of their ancient enemy over the consciences and 
 thoughts of mankind. 
 
 To the judgment of the great Lord and real Head of 
 the Christian Church ^•', we may safely appeal, in such a 
 quarrel as this. If in His eyes a merely mechanical 
 unity, — guaranteed by the simple arrangement that His 
 Church shall in all ages consist of those who consent to 
 deny and affirm as one man shall direct, — if this sort of 
 unity is of such paramount importance in His sight, as to 
 supersede every other consideration. Divine or human, 
 moral, intellectual, or spiritual, — then before men and 
 angels it will, no doubt, one day appear that Christian 
 England has utterly misread His Gospel and misunder- 
 stood His will. But if otherwise, it may perchance be made 
 manifest, when all things are known, that the Church of 
 our race has, — with all its faults, weaknesses, and sins, — 
 borne a noble and consistent testimony in behalf of 
 freedom, veracity, and manly simplicity. Her stead- 
 fast protest against a system based on forgeries, and 
 cemented by the grossest superstitions, will appear 
 not to have been in vain. And, — honouring to the 
 utmost and herself upholding the principle of unity ; 
 maintaining in her cruel isolation the Catholic faith 
 whole and undefiled, and the ancient discipline un- 
 broken ; striving amid the endless perplexities and 
 
 ^ ' Contradicit tibi, qui dicit Christus hie est. Possessionem et 
 
 " Meus est orbis terrse et plenitude dominum cede Huic.' (S. Bernard, 
 
 ejus." Non tu ille, de quo propheta Be Consid. iii. i : addressed to Pope 
 
 " et erit oranis terra possessio Ejus." Eugenius III.) 
 
III.] A FUTURE GENERAL COUNCIL. 20I 
 
 difficulties of modern life, (as no other Church in Chris- 
 tendom has striven,) to reconcile the ancient faith with 
 modern science ; yet all the while steadily proclaiming 
 the temporary character of all her arrangements, her 
 longing for reunion, her readiness to be employed in 
 God's hand as a means thereto, and her willingness to 
 report all she has done and to revise it (if necessary) 
 at a bond fide General Council (whenever it may please 
 God that such a Council shall be assembled) ; — she may, 
 at last, receive the praise, and not the anathema, of the 
 Lord whom she has thus honestly tried to serve ; and 
 be given no unhonoured place among the galaxy of 
 churches that shall form His heavenly crown. 
 
APPENDIX D. 
 
 The Romanist Confession of Failh : (or the ' Creed of Pope 
 Pius IV.; A.D. 1564)'. 
 
 ' Ego N. firmS fide credo et profiteer omnia et singula, quEe continentur 
 in Symbolo Fidel quo Sancta Romana Ecclesia utitur : viz. Credo in unum 
 Deum . . et vitam futuri sscculi: Amen, Apostolicas et Ecclesiasticas 
 traditiones, reliquasque ejusdem Ecclesire observationes et constitutiones 
 firmissimfe admitto et amplector. Item, Sacram Scripturam — -juxta eum 
 sensum quern tenuit et tenet sancta mater Ecclesia, (cujus est judicare de 
 vero sensu et interpretatione Sacrarum Scripturaram,) — admitto ; nee eam 
 unquam, nisi juxta unanimem consensum Patrum, accipiam et interpre- 
 tabor. 
 
 • Profiteor quoque septem esse, vere et proprife, Sacramenta Novee Legis, 
 a Jesu Christo Domino nostro instituta, atque ad salutem humani generis — 
 licet non omnia singulis necessaria: — scil. Baptismum, Confirmationem, 
 Eucharistiam, Posnitentiam, Extremam unctionem, Ordinem, et Matri- 
 monium ; illaque gratiam conferre ; et ex his, Baptismum, Confirmationem 
 et Ordinem, sine sacrilegio iterari non posse. Receptos quoque et ap- 
 probates Ecclesise Catholics ritus, in supradictorum omnium Sacramentorura 
 administratione, recipio et admitto. 
 
 'Omnia et singula quEe de peccato originali et de justificatione in S. 
 TridentinS, synodo definita et declarata fuerunt, amplector et recipio. 
 Profiteor paritfer in miss^ offerri Deo verum, proprium, et propitiatorium 
 sacrificium pro vivis et defunctis ; atque in sanctissimo Eucharistise Sacra- 
 mento esse — vere, realiter, et substantialitfer — corpus et sanguinem, una 
 cum anima et divinitate, Domini nostri Jesu Christi ; fierique conversionem 
 totius substantia panis in Corpus, et totius substantiee vini in Sanguinem, — 
 quam conversionem Catholica Ecclesia " transsubstantiationem " appellat. 
 Fateor etiam sub altera tantiim specie totum atque integrum Christum, 
 venimque sacramentum, sumi. Constanter teneo purgatorium esse; ani- 
 
 ^ This is the Confession which is imposed upon all converts to Romanism at 
 the present day. 
 
APPENDIX E. 203 
 
 masque ibi detentas fidelium suffragiis juvari : similiter et sanctos, unil cum 
 Christo regnantes, venerandos atque invocandos esse, eosque orationes Deo 
 pro nobis offerre ; atque eorum reliquias esse venerandas. Firmiter assero, 
 imagines Christi sanctorum, habendas et retinendas esse ; atque eis debi- 
 tum honorem ac venerationem impertiendam. Indulgentiarum etiam 
 potestatem ^ Christo in ecclesia relictam fuisse, illarumque usum Christiano 
 populo maxime salutarem esse, affirmo. 
 
 ' Sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Romanam ecclesiam omnium eccle- 
 siarum matrem et magistram agnosco : Romanoque pontifici, beati Petri 
 Apostolorum principis successori, ac Jesu Christi vicario, veram obedi- 
 entiam spondeo ac juro. Cetera omnia k sacris canonibus et oecumenicis 
 conciliis ac prsecipufe h. S. Tridentina Synodo tradita, definita, et declarata, 
 indubitantfer recipio atque profiteor. Simulque contraria omnia, atque 
 hEereses quascunque ab Ecclesia damnatas et rejectas et anatliematizatas, 
 ego pariter damno, rejicio, et anathematizo. 
 
 ' Hanc veram Catholicam fidem, extra quam nemo salvus esse potest, 
 quam in prossenti sponte profiteor et veracitfer teneo, eandem — integram 
 et immaculatam — usque ad extremum vitse spiritum constantissime (Deo 
 adjuvante) retinere et confiteri. Atque a meis subditis, vel illis quorum 
 cura ad me in munere meo spectabit, teneri, doceri, et prsedicari (quantum 
 in me erit) curaturum, — ego idem N. spondeo, ^voveo, ac juro. Sic me 
 Deus adjuvet, et heec sancta Dei evangelia.' 
 
 APPENDIX E. 
 
 The Canons passed at the Latin Council of the Vatican, 1870. 
 
 [The Council met for the first time on Dec. 8, 1869; and continued its 
 labours— in private and public— till Oct. 20, 1870. On that day, owing 
 to the confusions then existing in Europe, it was pronounced by the Pope 
 to be 'suspended, until a more opportune and convenient time— to be 
 named hereafter by the Holy See." The results of its labours are con- 
 tained in the two following series of Canons. The first series were pub- 
 licly promulgated on April 14, 1870; and were directed against free-thinkers 
 and other external enemies of the Church. The second series were pro- 
 mulgated on July 18, 1870; and were directed against the iniernal oppo- 
 nents of Papal Infallibility. They are here transcribed from an edition, in 
 Latin and French, by M. Pelletier, Canon of Orleans ; with the imprimatur 
 of the Bishop of Puy, 1 871.] 
 
204 APPENDIX E. 
 
 Series I. — Coiutitutio dogmaiica de fide Catholica^. 
 ****** 
 
 CANON I. 
 De Deo rerutn omnium Creatore. 
 Si quis unum verum Deum, visibilium et invisibilium Creatorem et 
 Dominum, negaverit ; anathema sit. Si quis, praeter materiam, nihil esse 
 affinnare non erubuerit ; anathema sit. Si quis dixerit unam eandemque 
 esse Dei et rerum omnium substantiam vel essentiam ; anathema sit. Si 
 quis dixerit res finitas, turn corporeas turn spirituales, aut saltern spirituales, 
 e divinS, substantia emanasse ; aut divinam essentiam sui manifestatione vel 
 evolutione fieri omnia ; aut denique Deum esse ens universale aut indefinitum, 
 quod sese determinando constituat rerum universitatem in genera, species, 
 et individua distinctam ; anathema sit. Si quis non confiteatur mundum, 
 resque omnes quse in eo continentur, et spirituales et materiales, secundum 
 totam suam substantiam a Deo ex niliilo esse productas ; aut Deum dixerit, 
 non voluntate ab omni necessitate libera, sed tam necessario creasse quam 
 necessariij amat seipsum ; aut mundum ad Dei gloriam conditum esse nega- 
 verit ; anathema sit. 
 
 CANON II. 
 De revelatione. 
 Si quis dixerit Deum unum et verum, Creatorem et Dominum nostrum, 
 per ea quEe facta sunt (naturali rationis humanas lumine) certo cognosci 
 non posse ; anathema sit. Si quis dixerit fieri non posse aut non expedire, 
 ut per revelationem divinam homo de Deo cultuque exhibendo Ei edoceatur ; 
 anathema sit. Si quis dixerit hominem ad cognitionem et perfectionem qua^ 
 naturalem superet, divinitiis evehi non posse; sed ex seipso ad omnis 
 tandem veri et boni possessionem, jugi profectu, pertingere posse et debere ; 
 anathema sit. Si quis Sacrre Scripturce libros integros, cum omnibus suis 
 partibus, — prout illos sancta Tiidentina Synodus recensuit, — pro sacris et 
 canonicis non susceperit ; aut eos divinitiis inspiratos esse negaverit ; 
 anathema sit. 
 
 CANON III. 
 De fide. 
 Si quis dixerit rationem humanam ita independentem esse, ut fides ei \ 
 Deo imperari non possit ; anathema sit. Si quis dixerit fidem divinam \ 
 naturali de Deo et rebus moralibus scientia non distingui, ac propterea ad 
 fidem divinam non requiri ut revelata Veritas propter auctoritatem Dei 
 revelantis credatur; anathema sit. Si quis dixerit revelationem divinam 
 extemis signis credibilem fieri non posse; ideoque sol& interna cujusque 
 
 ' Here follows, in the original text, a theological discourse in four chapters ; 
 corresponding with the four ' Canons,' which are appended. 
 
APPENDIX E. 2og 
 
 experienti^ aut inspiratione privatft homines ad fidem moveri debere ; 
 anathema sit. Si quis dixerit miracula nulla fieri posse, proindeque omnes 
 de iis narrationes, etiam in sacra Scriptura contentas, inter fabulas vel 
 mythos ablegandas esse ; aut miracula cert5 cognosci nunquam posse, nee 
 iis divinam religionis Christianas originem ritfe probari ; anathema sit. Si 
 quis dixerit assensum fidei Christianee non esse liberum, sed argumentis 
 humauEE rationis necessariu produci ; aut ad solam fidem vivam, quae per 
 charitatem operatur, gratiam Dei necessariam esse ; anathema sit. Si quis 
 dixerit parem esse conditionem fidelium atque eorum qui ad fidem unice 
 veram nondum pervenerunt, ita ut Catholici justam causam habere possint 
 fidem, quam sub Ecclesije magisterio jam susceperunt, assensu suspenso in 
 dubium vocandi, donee demonstrationem scientificam credibilitatis et veri- 
 tatis fidei sute absolverint ; anathema sit. 
 
 CANON IV. 
 T)e fide et revelatione. 
 Si quis dixerit in revelatione diving nulla vera et proprie dicta mysteria 
 contineri, sed universa fidei dogmata posse per rationem rite excultam e 
 naturalibus principiis intelligi et demonstrari ; anathema sit. Si quis dixerit 
 disciplinas humanas ea cum libertate tractandas esse, ut earum assertiones 
 — etsi doctrint^ revelatte adversentur — tanquam verse retineri, neque ab 
 Ecclesia proscribi possint ; anathema sit. Si quis dixerit fieri posse ut, 
 dogmatibus ab Ecclesia propositis, aliquando secundiim progressum scien- 
 ti£E sensus tribuendus sit alius ab eo, quem intellexit et intelligit Ecclesia ; 
 anathema sit. 
 
 Series II. — ConsiUutio dogmatica prima de Ecclesid Christi. 
 
 ****** 
 
 CANON I. 
 lie Apostolici primatus in beato Petro institutione. 
 Si quis dixerit beatum Petrum Apostolum non esse a Christo Domino 
 constitutum Apostolorum omnium principem, et totius Ecclesia: militantis 
 visibile caput ; vel eundem honoris tantum, non autem verje proprijeque 
 jurisdictionis, primatum ab eodem Domino nostro Jesu Christo directs et 
 immediate accepisse ; anathema sit. 
 
 CANON II. 
 De perpetuitate primatus beati Petri in Romanis Pontificibus. 
 Si quis dixerit non esse ex ipsius Christi Domini institutione — seu 'jure 
 divino' — ut beatus Petrus in primatu super universam Ecclesiam habeat 
 successores ; aut Romanum Pontificem non esse beati Petri in eodem pri- 
 matu successorem ; anathema sit. 
 
206 APPENDIX E. 
 
 CANON III. 
 De vi et ratione primatus Romajii Pontifick. 
 
 Si quis dixerit Romanum Pontificum habere tantummodij ofScium inspec" 
 tionis vel directionis, non autem plenam et supremam potestatem jurisdic- 
 tionis in universam Ecclesiam, non solum in rebus quse ad fidem et morem, 
 set etiam in iis qua: ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesi^ per totum orbem 
 diffusEe pertinent ; aut eum habere tantum potiores partes, non vero pleni- 
 tudinem hujus supremse potestatis; aut hanc ejus potestatem non esse 
 ordinariam et immediatam, sive in omnes et singulas Ecclesias, sive in omnes 
 et singulos pastores et fideles ; anathema sit. 
 
 CANON IV. 
 De Romani Ponlificis infallibili magislerio. 
 
 Nos, — traditioni a fidei Christiana exordio perceptEe fideliter inhjerendo, 
 — ad Dei Salvatoris nostri gloriam, religionis Catholicte exaltationem, et 
 Christianonim populoram salutem (sacro approbante Concilio), docemus et 
 ' divinitiis revelatum dogma ' esse definimus ; Romanum Pontificem, ciim 
 ex cathedra loquitur (i.e. ciim omnium Christianorum Pastoris et Doctoris 
 munere fungens, pro suprema sua apostolica auctoritate, doctrinam de fide vel 
 moribus ab universS Ecclesia tenendam definit,) per assistentiam divinam ipsi 
 in beato Petro promissam, eS infallibilitate pollere qa& divinus Redemptor 
 Ecclesiam suam — in definienda doctrina de fide vel moribus — instructam 
 esse voluit : Ideoque ejusmodi Romani Poiidficis definitiones ex sese, — non 
 autem ex consensu EcclesicE, — irreformabiles esse. Si quis autem huic nostras 
 definition! contradicere (quod Deus avertat I) proesumpserit ; anathema sit^. 
 
 ^ [This last Canon, — being the only one of general interest, and also that 
 against which the ' protest ' of the Old-Catholics is now being everywhere raised, 
 is here appended in an English translation. — 'We [i.e. Pope Pius IX], — ad- 
 hering faithfully to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian 
 faith, — with a view to the glory of our Divine Saviour, the exaltation of the 
 Catholic religion, and the safety of Christian peoples (the Sacred Council ap- 
 proving), teach and deline to be *' a dogma divinely revealed," — as follows ; That 
 the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra (that is, when — fulfilling the 
 office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians — on his supreme Apostolical 
 authority, he deiines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the 
 Universal Church), through the divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter, 
 he is endowed with that Infallibility, with which the Divine Redeemer has 
 willed that His Church — in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals — should 
 be endowed : And therefore, that such definitions of the Roman Pontiff of 
 themselves — and not by virtue of the consent of the Church — are irreformable. If 
 any one shall presume (which God avert 1) to contradict this our definition ; let 
 him be anathema!*! 
 
APPENDIX F. 207 
 
 APPENDIX F. 
 
 A Syllabus of the principal errors of our lime, — which are 
 stigmatised in the Allocutions, &c. of our most holy Lord, Pope 
 Pius IX. ' 
 
 § I. Pantheism, Naturalism, and Rationalism absolute, 
 ' That there exists no Divine Power, Supreme Being, Wisdom and Pro- 
 vidence, distinct from the Universe. . . That the prophecies and miracles 
 narrated in Holy Scripture are the fictions of poets. . . .' 
 
 § 2. Rationalism moderate. 
 . . ' That the Church ought to tolerate the errors of philosophy ; leaving 
 to philosophy the care of their correction. That the decrees of the Apo- 
 stolic see and of the Roman " Congregations " fetter the free progress of 
 science. That the method and principles, by which the old scholastic 
 Doctors cultivated Theology, are no longer suitable to the demands of the 
 age." . . 
 
 § 3. Indifferentism and Toleration. 
 'That every man is free to embrace and profess the religion he shall 
 believe true, guided by the light of reason . . That the eternal salvation 
 may (at least) be hoped for, of all those who are not at all in the true 
 Church of Christ. That Protestantism is nothing more than another form 
 of the same true Christian religion ; in which it is possible to please God 
 equally as in the Catholic Church.' 
 
 § 4. Socialism, Biblical Societies, Clerico-Liberal Societies, tfc. 
 ' Pests of this description are frequently rebuked in the severest terms, in 
 the Encycl. ' qui pluribus,' &c. 
 
 § 5. Errors concerning the Church and her rights. 
 'That the Roman Pontiffs and CEcumenical Councils have exceeded the 
 limits of their power, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even 
 committed errors in defining matters of faith or morals. That the Church 
 
 ' The most important and interesting points of the celebrated ' Syllabus ' of 
 Pope Pius IX. are here given. They are taken from a reprint, with English 
 translation, by R. Walker, Esq. (published at the Weekly Register office, London). 
 
208 APPENDIX F. 
 
 has not the power of availing herself of force, or of any direct or indirect 
 temporal power. That ecclesiastical jurisdiction for the temporal causes — ■ 
 whether civil or criminal — of the clergy, ought by all means to be abolished 
 . . That National Churches can be established, after being withdrawn and 
 separated from the authority of the holy Pontiff. That many Pontiffs have, 
 by their arbitrary conduct, contributed to the division of the Church into 
 Eastern and Western.' 
 
 § 6. Errors about Civil Society, ifc, 
 ' . . That the civil government — even when exercised by an infidel sove- 
 reign — possesses an indirect and negative power over religious affairs ; and 
 possesses, not only the right called that of exequatur, but also that of the 
 (so-called) appellatio ab abusu , . That the best theory of civil society re- 
 quires that popular schools, open to the childi'en of all classes, should be 
 freed from all ecclesiastical authority . . That the Church ought to be 
 separated from the State, and the State from the Church.' 
 
 § 7. Errors concerning Natural and Christian Ethics. 
 ' . , That knowledge of philosophical things, and morals, and civil laws, 
 may be and must be independent of Divine and ecclesiastical authority . . 
 That it is allowable to refuse obedience to legitimate princes ; nay more, 
 to rise in insurrection against them . .' 
 
 § 8. Errors regarding Christian Marriage. 
 
 § 9. Errors regarding the Civil Power of the Sovereign Pontiff. 
 ' . . That the abolition of the temporal power of which the Apostolic See 
 is possessed, would contribute to the liberty and prosperity of the Church . .' 
 
 § lo. Errors relating to Modern Liberalism. 
 ' That in the present day, it is no longer necessary that the Catholic reli- 
 gion be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other 
 modes of worship : whence it has been wisely provided by the law, in some 
 countries called Catholic, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy 
 the free exercise of their own worship . . That the Roman Pontiff can, and 
 ought to, reconcile himself to, and agree with, progress, liberalism, and 
 modem civilization.' 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 
 A.D. 1633. 
 
 Leading Idea : — ' Purity ' of the Church, — in its internal relations. 
 Method adopted : — Extreme attention paid to the ritual of admission. 
 
 ' Si fallaciter conversis in baptismo suo peccata donantur, sine causa ad 
 veram conversionem posted perducuntur 1 . . Debent autem timere Christi 
 judicium; et veraci corde aliquand6 converti. Quod ciim fecerint, non eos 
 utique necesse est iteriim baptizari,' (S. Augustine, De Bapiiimo, vii. 3.) 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 200. Tertullian (Montanist) first objects to children's baptism. 
 
 360. Gregory Nazianzen advises ' three years old.' 
 
 1150. Waldenses, &c., refuse Infant baptism. 
 
 1522. Stork and Munzer, in Saxony, rebaptize. 
 
 1535. John of Leyden and the Anabaptists. 
 
 — ■ Menno reforms the Baptists. 
 
 1575. Foxe writes ' No Baptists yet in England.' 
 
 1608. Amsterdam, first English Baptists. 
 
 161 2. This Baptist flock returns to England. 
 
 — Edward Wightman (Anabaptist) burnt at Lichfield. 
 1615. First Baptist tract ; against persecution. 
 
 1633. First Baptist congregation in England. 
 
 1645. Parliamentary orders against preachers. 
 
 1646. First Baptist ' Confession of Faith.' 
 
 1647. Colonel Hutchinson converted. 
 
 1649. Great increase: thirty Baptists in Church livings. 
 1653. Bunyan converted. 
 
 1660. Restoration of the National Church. 
 
 1 66 1. Mobs attack Baptists. 
 
 1662. Baptists and others, refusing to conform, are ejected. 
 1674. Fierce controversy with the Quakers. 
 
 1677. Second ' Confession of Faith.' 
 
 1686. Savage persecution by James II. 
 
 1687. James the Second's 'Declaration of Indulgence ' repudiated. 
 1689. Toleration Act passed. 
 
 — General Assembly of Baptists in London. 
 1732. 'The Dissenting Deputies' constituted. 
 1770. Bristol College for training ministers. 
 
 — ' The New Connexion of General Baptists.' 
 1793. Carey, &c. sailed for India. 
 
 1809. 'Baptist Magazine' begun. 
 
 i860. Norwich Chapel case: ' open Communion.' 
 
 1861. ' The Tabernacle' opened in Southwark. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 ' The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the 
 sea, and gathered of every kind.' — Matt. xiii. 47. 
 
 WE now pass from the sixteenth to the seventeenth 
 century. And leaving the first pair of seces- 
 sions, — which went off from the Church of England, 
 on opposite sides, on the question of ' Church Polity,' — 
 we reach a second pair of secessions, which again 
 departed in opposite directions, — but this time, on ques- 
 tions mainly connected with the Sacraments and with 
 the Church's external ' means of grace.' The third sect, 
 accordingly, which broke away from the National 
 Church and went into (let us hope) a temporary separa- 
 tion, was one which bears this new feature in its very 
 name. It is the denomination of the ' Baptists.' 
 
 Their first formation as a separate community in 
 England took place in 1633 ; when, under the in- 
 fluence of foreign ideas — derived from that teeming 
 hotbed of confusion, the newly-enfranchised States of 
 Holland \ the former head-quarters of the Anabaptists 
 
 ^ The States of Holland pro- And though they established Cal- 
 claimed their independence in 1572. vinism as the National religion, they 
 
 P 2 
 
212 
 
 THE BAPTISTS. [lECT. 
 
 in the previous century— certain very strict and pious 
 members of the Independent body in London deter- 
 mined to secede, and to form a fresh communion 
 of their own'-^. In point of Church PoHty, they still 
 remained Independents. But there were three grand 
 principles, for the sake of which they held themselves 
 justified in making a secession : (i) for the maintenance 
 of a more strictly Calvinistic doctrine : (2) for the exer- 
 cise of a more rigorous and exclusive discipline : (3) for 
 the practice of a more literally Scriptural ritual, — espe- 
 cially in the matter of Baptism. 
 
 Now all these three principles are closely connected 
 together ; and indeed they are all, fundamentally, one. 
 And that one fundamental principle is — Puritanism. 
 Yes ; the Baptists are essentially and Kar' lio)ij\v ' Puri- 
 tans ; ' and —I think it must be honestly confessed — 
 they, and they only, are really consistent and logically 
 unassailable Puritans. If Puritanism is true, the Baptist 
 system is right. If Puritanism is a grand mistake, and 
 the most singularly unchristian of all the (so to say) 
 ' orthodox ' misapprehensions of the Gospel of Jesus 
 
 allowed perfect freedom of conscience Baptist denomination formally sepa- 
 
 to Anabaptists, Lutherans, and all rated themselves. The pastor of the 
 
 other communions, — including even first Baptist flockj numbering ' about 
 
 the Romanists ; though none but twenty men and women, with divers 
 
 Calvinists were admitted to offices others,' was a Mr. Spilsbury, — of 
 
 of State. (Mosheim, p. 600: ed. whom nothing is known. (Cramp, 
 
 Reid.) From this time, their in- History of the Baptists, p. 345.) A 
 
 fluence on England was very great, second body seceded, five years later. 
 
 The Eastern Counties and London, from the same Independent meeting 
 
 especially, were teeming with Dutch in Blackfriars. A third secession 
 
 Anabaptists. (Lingard, vi. 169.) followed in 1639, and estabUshed 
 
 " Although there were, at an themselves in Crutched Friars, 
 
 earlier period, many persons holding (Crosby, English Baptists, iii. 41.) 
 
 Baptist opinions scattered among the And after 1649, their numbers ra- 
 
 Independent congregations, all the pidly increased, — especially in Crom- 
 
 best authorities are agreed that it was well's army. (Neal, iii. 380 : ed. 
 
 not till September 12, 1633, that the Toulmin.) 
 
IV.] A BAPTIST PLACE OP WORSHIP. 2 13 
 
 Christ, then the Baptist system falls to the ground of itself. 
 Of this, however, there will be more to say farther on. 
 
 But now it is, surely, very remarkable that even 
 Puritanism — when placed in a state of separation, left 
 to itself, and free to follow its own logical self-develop- 
 ments — -should at once display the old well-known 
 divergence, (which is due, no doubt, to some twofold 
 constitution of human nature) ; and should evolve, — 
 precisely as the Church has done, — a Ritual and a 
 Spiritual party. For such are the Baptists, on the one 
 hand ; and the Quakers, on the other. 
 
 If you go into a Baptist place of worship, pre- 
 pared to understand what you see, you are imme- 
 diately confronted with an unusual and absolutely 
 unexampled arrangement of the Ritual machinery. 
 In almost all other Dissenting chapels the Pulpit is 
 everything ; and you feel at once that the place you 
 have entered is virtually a preaching-house, a hall for 
 the delivery of lectures on religion, — not unaccompanied 
 (however) with prayers and other subordinate ob- 
 servances. You see at a glance that the simple ob- 
 long building, without either aisles or chancel, is an 
 admirable piece of common-sense, in its perfect adap- 
 tation for preaching purposes,— unwittingly copied from 
 the similar constructions of the Preaching Friars in 
 the middle ages. But when you enter a Baptist chapel, 
 — disguised as the change may be, — all this has under- 
 gone a transformation. The construction is no longer 
 adapted for preaching exclusively. Ritttal has once 
 more made its appearance. The return of the Chris- 
 tian Sacraments to their due place of honour has begun. 
 And the post of dignity, at (what we should call) the 
 east end of the building, has been reserved for — not 
 indeed the Altar, but— the Font. 
 
2 14 THE BAPTISTS. [lECT. 
 
 A strange and needless piece of perversity this seems, 
 at first sight, and to persons accustomed to more tra- 
 ditional arrangements. But still, let us not be too 
 hasty to condemn. Let us not be guilty of that most un- 
 christian temper, which argues, ' It is not what we have 
 been accustomed to : and therefore it must necessarily be 
 irrational and wrong.' Let us wait and see what goes 
 on, at this elevated and honoured Font. We see 
 some grown-up persons approach, full of seriousness, and 
 earnest to confess Christ before men. The minister who 
 officiates receives them in the large deep open font, and 
 in the name of the Holy Trinity baptizes them by im- 
 mersion ; and they arise (so they are taught) from that 
 momentary grave new creatures in Jesus Christ, and 
 members for life and for ever of His Holy Church. 
 Surely, say what people will, and however incongruous 
 it may all appear amid our modern life, it is a solemn 
 and affecting ceremony. Indeed, upon reflection, we see 
 that it is nothing more or less than the baptism of the 
 Catholic Church ; only (by a curious piece of anti- 
 quarian punctilio) a baptism performed according to a 
 very ancient type of ritual, such as was used in Eastern 
 climates and in those early times when the baptism of 
 adults into Christianity was the rule, instead of being 
 (as it is at present) the exception. 
 
 But still, we should probably ask with some surprise, 
 ' How is it that, in the heart of a Christian country, 
 these persons have never been brought within the Chris- 
 tian Church before t What have the clergy been about, 
 that baptism into the name of Jesus Christ, and into all 
 the blessings and privileges of His society, has never 
 been offered to these people .? ' And then (it may be) the 
 strange and confounding truth comes out, that the clergy 
 are not to blame, as might have been supposed ; that these 
 
IV.] MEANING OF ITS ARRANGEMENTS. 215 
 
 people have already been baptized, could already claim 
 every privilege that belongs to a Christian, and instead 
 of being now for the first time brought under the in- 
 fluence of Christianity, have been under it almost ever 
 since they were born. What then can be the meaning 
 of this extraordinary conduct on the part of the Baptists, 
 ■ — or ' Anabaptists,' re-baptizers, as they used more 
 correctly to be called ? It cannot surely be in the in- 
 terests of mere antiquarianism that they have re-baptized 
 these persons in the Eastern manner? Nor can one 
 think it is wholly out of an exaggerated reverence for 
 what the letter of Scripture says on the subject, — though 
 this, it must be confessed, has something to do with their 
 conduct. For though it is almost incredible that men 
 of sense and maturity should, in these days, fly to 
 Scripture for a text to sanction everything they do, it 
 is at any rate certain that their forefathers, who first 
 began this secession, described themselves as ' resolving, 
 by the grace of God, not to receive or practise any piece 
 of positive worship which had not precept or example 
 in His Word V And yet, it need hardly be said, there 
 are numerous pieces of 'positive worship,' to be seen 
 in every Baptist chapel throughout the kingdom, which 
 cannot by any means be brought under this description. 
 It is clearly, therefore, some deeper feeling than this, 
 which has originated the practice. It is either some far 
 profounder truth, or else some far more momentous 
 error, which has induced good and -conscientious men 
 thus to fly in the face of Christendom ; to deny the 
 reality and validity of the Church's baptism ; to un- 
 church thereby the vast mass of their fellow-Christians ; 
 
 ' Neal, iii. 347, ed. Toulmin. Cf. Gould, Norwich Chafel Case, p. 
 clxiii. 
 
2l6 THE BAPTISTS. [lECT. 
 
 and to relegate them among heathens who need — in 
 spite of all that their own ministry have done for them 
 — to be introduced quite afresh as candidates for ad- 
 mission at the portal of Christ's Church *. 
 
 What, then, is that feeling, or that notion ? (for I will 
 not characterize it, by anticipation, as either an error 
 or a truth.) It is simply this : not merely that the world 
 has too much crept into the Church, — for that we shall 
 none of us deny : not merely that the phrase ' Baptismal 
 regeneration ' has been disastrously misunderstood, — for 
 that we shall all quite readily confess : nor merely that 
 the sacrament of baptism has been too disgracefully 
 thrust out of its place, and both in Christian life and 
 worship ought to be restored to its due honour, — for 
 to that every thoughtful and pious Churchman would 
 most heartily assent. No : it is something more and 
 something deeper than all that. It is (in few words) the 
 conception that the Chu7xh tvas intended by its Author 
 to be a social, and not an ediicatioual, society^ ; to be 
 
 * ' Our brethren of the baptized tical enjoyment of the ordinances 
 way would neither receive into the commanded by Christ their head and 
 Church, nor pray with, men as good King. . . Here are the fountains and 
 as themselves, because they were not springs of His heavenly graces flow- 
 baptized." (Bunyan, ap. Gould, p. ing forth to refresh and strengthen 
 295.) them. . . Called thither ta lead their 
 
 ^ Cf. the Baptist Confession of lives in this walled sheep/old and 
 Faith, 1646 (ap. Neal, iii. 563, ed. watered garden.' Again, Cramp's 
 Toulmin). ' Jesus Christ, by His Baptist History, p. 198 (new edit, 
 death, did purchase salvation for the 1S71): ' These sentiments originated 
 elect that God gave unto Him. . . in the views entertained by Baptists 
 The free gift of eternal Ufe is given respecting the purity of the Church, 
 to them and to none else. . '. Faith is . . The Baptists would admit no 
 the gift of God, ^iTought in the hearts members to their churches, but on 
 of the elect by the Spirit of God ; personal profession of repentance 
 . . All those that have this precious and faith, — on which profession the 
 faith can never finally nor totally parties were baptized. All their sub- 
 fall away. . . The Church is a com- sequent arrangements were founded 
 pany of visible saints, called and on these pre - requisites. Every 
 separated from the world, . . joined Church was a family of believers. . . 
 to their Lord and to each other The Church in their estimation was 
 by mutual agreement in the prac- a holy society. All the rule and 
 
IV.] PURITAN THEORY OF A 'CHURCH! 217 
 
 a club for enjoying happy Christian fellowship, and not 
 a school for bringing men gradually to Christ ; to be, 
 in short, a select and exclusive circle of Heaven's 
 favourites, instead of a broad and inclusive 'net' for 
 sweeping in all of every kind. It is the pleasing dream 
 of a sort of little heaven for mutual participation of 
 spiritual pleasures, — instead of the nobler conception of 
 a vast and perilous field where the tares are mingled 
 with the wheat, where Christ's husbandry, Christ's build- 
 ing has to be done, — and where risks are to be run, 
 dangers courted, spiritual lepers taken in to tend and 
 nurse, ignorance beckoned that it may be taught, weak- 
 ness encouraged that it may be strengthened, childhood 
 smiled upon and warmly welcomed, that it may be 
 educated, guarded, matured, and rendered back at last 
 to Christ — the good, the loving, the friend of publicans 
 and sinners, who pleased not Himself, and gave us an ex- 
 ample that we should become ' fellow-workers with Him.' 
 I am far from saying that Baptists and Calvinists 
 do not, in spite of all their creeds and dogmas, think 
 it their duty thus to labour with Christ. Men are, under 
 every imperfect form of Christianity, a great deal better 
 than their creeds. The greatest Baptist preacher in 
 London, who lately gave his Tabernacle for a Calvinistic 
 children's service, at which all our blood ran cold, can 
 yet say, ' there's a bright side to everything, and a good 
 God everywhere ''.' But still their fixed idea is the 
 
 discipline tended to the preservation * Spurgeon, Johti Ploughman's Talk, 
 
 of that holiness. So Baptists have p. 44. The ' children's service,' 
 
 thought and practised from the above mentioned, took place in 
 
 beginning.' — Contrast with all this November, 1868. It was conducted 
 
 the freer and grander views of the mainly by a Baptist minister from 
 
 Catholic Church, as expressed by the America: and was described at the 
 
 ancient Fathers ; and among our time, by an eye-witness, in the pages 
 
 English divines, by Hooker, iii. i. 7; of the Daily News; and commented 
 
 Pearson, art. i.x. ; Field, ii. 3 init. upon in the Saturday Review. 
 
2l8 THE BAPTISTS. [leCT. 
 
 Puritan idea ; viz., that the Church consists only of holy 
 and godly persons, or rather — as it is impossible for 
 human eye to discriminate such persons from hypocrites 
 ■ — of 'professors' (as they are called), who give what seems 
 evidence of holiness and godliness. And, therefore, carry- 
 ing out this idea to its legitimate and logical conclusion, 
 a Baptist would say—' children and immature per- 
 sons (although ' of such is the kingdom of heaven') 
 I cannot possibly allow to be fit members of a society 
 of conscious, mature, professing believers. If I educate 
 them, it will be as outsiders, who may one day be 
 brought in, or who may not. If I help them, it is not 
 as brothers and kindred, members with me of the family 
 of Jesus Christ, but as objects for my pity, and as merely 
 potential members of Christ's kingdom'. And in point 
 of ritual too, I will be consequent and logical. Baptism 
 I will carefully and faithfully reserve for the purpose 
 it was originally intended to fulfil; and that was (as 
 Richard Hooker puts it, and as the early Christians 
 practised it) to be the doorway of admission into Christ's 
 household, — but Christ's household, as I myself interpret 
 it, where babes and ignorant and immature people have 
 no right of entry.' 
 
 And now we are in a position to form our judg- 
 ment upon the matter ; and, both as Christians, and 
 
 ^ Cf. Skeats, Free Churches, p, 509 : observe some Christian ordinances ; 
 
 ' The Baptist denomination at this but were not to be asked to partake 
 
 period {1 793) — as to a considerable of Christian privileges.' And Gould, 
 
 extent it has been since— was largely Norwich Chapel Cass (i860), p. xciv : 
 
 pei"vaded by an ultra - Calvinistic ' Mr. CoUings said, " I should not 
 
 spirit. It was held by the ultra- hold a person a Particular Baptist, 
 
 Calvinists that it was not desirable who considered that the Atonement 
 
 to offer the Gospel for the accept- was sufficient for the whole world; 
 
 ance of the unregeneiate. The elect nor would I admit a person who 
 
 only were lo hear the message of held such doctrine to communion at 
 
 salvation. Olheis might be urged to the Lord's table." ' 
 lead a moral life, and outwardly to 
 
IV.] IT CONTRAVENES THE PURPOSE OF A CHURCH. 219 
 
 as Churchmen — who (thank God) are enfranchised from 
 abject slavery to the mere letter of Scripture, — to 
 decide, whether the theory which has thrown out this, 
 at first sight, beautiful and welcome revival of an ancient 
 piece of ritual, be not (in point of fact) a profoundly 
 fatal form of error ; directly contrary, if not to the letter, 
 at least to the whole spirit and meaning of the Lord's 
 institution of Baptism ; one which leaves outside just 
 those whom He in His tender pity would most desire 
 to draw in ; and commits to chance exterior agencies 
 that very renewing, redeeming, transforming process, 
 which was intended to be the tranquil, gradual, educa- 
 tional work carried on within His holy Church. 
 
 Yet, error as it most assuredly is, it has run (like a 
 dark but interrupted thread) through the whole tissue of 
 the Church's history, from almost the very beginning. 
 And it has always come into view, at various periods, 
 from the same cause, viz. as a recoil from the ex- 
 cessive worldliness of the Church, a protest against the 
 low and fluctuating standard which those in authority 
 have maintained within her sacred enclosure, and an 
 exaggerated dread of the danger thereupon imagined to 
 exist, that all was going wrong and that Christ was 
 ' asleep upon a pillow.' Thus, even so early as the 
 second century, we find Montanism coming forth as the 
 ripened expression of a desire for greater spirituality in 
 the Church. Even already, it seems, the society of Christ 
 was supposed to be suffering damage from its contact 
 with the world, and was not escaping — may we not say, 
 was nobly refusing to escape — the risks which always 
 attend upon conflict with evil, and upon that elaboration 
 of mere mechanism and outward organization without 
 which however no conflict can be effectively carried on 
 in this world. Tertullian, therefore, the great spokesman 
 
2 20 THE BAPTISTS. [lECT. 
 
 and leader of Montanism in the Western Church, comes 
 forward (in the true Puritan temper) with loud and bitter 
 accusations of the Church, for its laxity in admitting to 
 communion those who had fallen into sin. And he is 
 driven (just in the same manner) by the strength of his 
 indignation, to impugn the pretensions of the outwardly 
 organised Church to be the Church at all : ' Ecclesia qui- 
 dem delicta donabit : sed Ecclesia Spiritus, per spiritalem 
 hominem ; non Ecclesia numerus episcoporum ^: 
 
 Ere long the selfsame controversy broke out at 
 Rome, in the Novatian schism. And here, for the first 
 time, we hear the name of Kadapol ('Puritans') taken by 
 the malcontent party. Again, some seventy years 
 later,' the same exclusive temper breaks out — and with 
 the most disastrous results — in the Donatist schism, in 
 North Africa. ' The Donatists held, that every Church 
 which tolerated unworthy members in its bosom was 
 itself polluted by the communion with them ; . . and 
 consequently ceased to be a true Christian Church '.' 
 And acting on this theory, they scouted the idea of a 
 visible organization, with orderly succession from the 
 Apostles, as constituting the true Church ; and held the 
 individualism of the modern Puritans: 'quicunque justis 
 legitimisque ex causis Christianus fuerit approbatus 
 [but by whom 'approbatus' is not said], ille mens est 
 Catholicus '".' And more than that, they dared to affirm 
 that— all the admissions which had been given by the 
 officers of the great Catholic Church into the kingdom of 
 Jesus Christ being mere delusion and pretence — they 
 were bound to re-baptise those that came over to them 
 
 " TcrluUian, Be Pud. § ii, sub ap. Neander, iii. 295: cf. Gould, p. 
 
 fin. clxx. ' This inward change of heart 
 
 " Neander, Church History, iii, 288 is the only triie condition of fellow- 
 
 (td. Bohn). ship at the table of the Lord.' 
 
 "' Emciitus, a Donatist bishop, 
 
IV.] PREDECESSORS OF THE BAPTISTS. 22 1 
 
 from thence. Here then, among the Donatists of the 
 fourth century, we have the first beginning of the Baptist 
 system. It was, however, at once condemned by the 
 Council at Aries (A.D. 314) ; and by all the great saintly 
 men of the following period, especially St. Augustine, — 
 who put out all his strength against so fatal a theory, 
 contravening the most gracious purposes of our blessed 
 Lord in establishing a visible Church upon earth ^^. 
 
 But the Western Church was never to be free, it 
 seems, from this persistent effort to spiritualize and 
 individualize away all the force and unity of Christ's 
 Kingdom. The very next heresy that broke out presents 
 once more the Puritan colours. For Pelagianism too — ■ 
 though the distinct opponent of (what we may call) 
 Calvinist views of grace, — still, from its strong moral and 
 personal interest, laid far greater stress on the Purity 
 than on the Catholicity of the Church ; and taught that 
 it should be, even in this world, ' without spot or wrinkle 
 or any such thing ^^.' Then came the Paulicians, the 
 Cathari, the Albigenses, and other heretics of the middle 
 ages, — all possessed with the same false idea ; and all 
 
 1' Augustine argues most ear- baptizing people, every time they 
 
 nestly against the Donatists, that turned from some great sin; why 
 
 Baptism, rightly and seriously per- should the case be altered, when 
 
 formed, into the most holy name of they simply turn from some glreat 
 
 the Trinity, should be regarded as (supposed) error? See his treatise 
 
 Christ's own action, Christ's own Oe Bapt. c. Donatistas, passim : e. g. 
 
 reception of one more sinful soul vii. 6, ' Baptizentur iterum hasretici, 
 
 into His Church, — however much ut recipiant remissam peccatorum, si 
 
 the mere human minister of that baptizantur iterum perversi et invidi :' 
 
 admission may be supposed to be ibid. 15, ' Baptismus non ipsonim, 
 
 in error or even in sin. Nay, if the sed Christi, erat :' see also De Unico 
 
 baptized person should himself re- Bapt. c. Petil. cap. x, ' Cur non unum 
 
 main, for many a long year, im- Baptisma, in quibus extra ecclesiam 
 
 mersed in error and sin, still the constitutis invenerimus, confirmamus 
 
 blessing Christ has once conferred potids qukm negamus : ut non, ex 
 
 upon him only remains latent, and eo quod in illis pravum est, etiam 
 
 the now obscured light may one day quod rectum est depravemus?' 
 
 gleam forth afresh. And if any '^ Ha.gevih&ch., History of Doctrines, 
 
 Christian would shrink from re- i. 358. 
 
THE BAPTISTS. [lect. 
 
 carrying it out recklessly to its extremest consequences, 
 by spurning the existing Church, as a mere piece of 
 outward mechanism, and holding up to contempt her 
 Baptism as a mere delusion, giving no admission to the 
 true Church at all. 
 
 At last we reach, in our own country, the Lollards of 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries ; and they too 
 display the same principle, — maintaining e. g. that a 
 Baptism administered by a priest in mortal sin is no real 
 Baptism"; a theory which would obviously cast a doubt 
 on the baptized condition of every one, and would throw 
 the whole conception of an outward and visibly organized 
 Church into utter confusion. Crushed for a time by the 
 iniquitous compact of intolerance, whereby Henry IV. 
 purchased the support of the clergy for his insecure 
 title to the throne, they revived again in the following 
 century ; and struggling fiercely against the now weak- 
 ened power of the hierarchy, at last fulfilled Wicliffe's 
 own foreboding prophecy, — that to commence a Reform- 
 ation might be ' columnas Ecclesiae excitare ; et (quod 
 plus timendum est) diviso populo in partes contrarias, 
 ex bello intestino regnum destruere ^''.' And when at 
 last the catastrophe of the ' Reformation ' was over, and 
 the Church emerged reeling from the hurricane, fir.st 
 Presbyterian non-conformity (like a fierce mutiny) broke 
 out within her borders ; and then, in succession, the 
 Independents, the Romanists, and the Baptists aban- 
 doned her, — to try and sail upon their own courses : the 
 Baptist departure taking place in the year 1633. 
 
 '^^ Q,i.^\t\^j,Fa&ciculi Zizaniorum, Ibid. p. 402 : 'Omnis homo sanctus 
 
 p. 320: 'Si episcopus vel sacerdos et preedestinatus ad vitam seternam, 
 
 existat in peccato mortali, non or- etiam si sit laicus, est verus presbyter 
 
 dinat, conficit, nee baptizat.' Ibid, et sacerdos ordinatus a Deo ad minis- 
 
 p. 378: ' Mallem recipere panem de trandura omnia sacramenta necessaria 
 
 manu laici bene viventis et placentis hominibus ad salutem.' 
 Deo, quam de manu talis sacerdotis.' '* Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 370. 
 
IV.] PERILOUS TIMES. 223 
 
 And surely, when all is said that can be said in its de- 
 fence, it was a cruel and narrow-hearted desertion. For 
 it was a time when England's future was darker and 
 more doubtful than it has even been before or since. In 
 that very year Archbishop Laud was promoted to the 
 see of Canterbury : Charles I. was governing without a 
 Parliament : the chambers of his Roman Catholic Queen 
 were a nest of cabals and treasons against the freedom 
 of the country 1^ : the Royal supremacy was being 
 wielded with merciless severity, so as to drill the clergy 
 into an absolute and submissive uniformity : and the 
 clergy were only too ready to be drilled, that they might 
 gain force as the spiritual militia of Despotism, and 
 become once more the greatest power in the State '^. 
 The only thing wanting to assure complete success to the 
 King's treasonable schemes, for converting the realm of 
 England into a ' thorough ' French despotism, was money. 
 And an effort was therefore made— by means of loans, 
 the (so-called) ship-money, &c. — to raise what was vir- 
 tually ' taxation,' without the concurrence of Parliament. 
 But when once the sturdy Churchman John Hampden 
 had set the example of resisting illegal ways of taxation, 
 then the day of resistance and of vengeance had dawned ; 
 and — with the Monarchy — the Hierarchy also (which 
 had fallen down and worshipped the evil spirit of world- 
 liness and ambition) was cast for sixteen years down 
 to the ground. 
 
 And now all manner of strange experiments in eccle- 
 siastical living began to be made. The Church of Eng- 
 land had made her last public utterance, only six 
 months after the opening of the Long Parliament, in the 
 shape of those incredibly foolish and servile canons of 
 
 '* Guizot, English Revolution, p. 38. " Ibid. p. 50. 
 
224 
 
 THE BAPTISTS. [lECT. 
 
 1640, — which have since been by universal consent con- 
 signed to oblivion". In them, — forgetful of her lofty- 
 calling to identify herself with no political parties, but to 
 harmonize and reconcile them all, and especially to 
 soften the harshness of privilege and repress the lawless- 
 ness of power, — she had (on the contrary) thrown her 
 whole weight into the scale of privilege and power. 
 And then, by proceeding to vote financial aid to the 
 crown, she had (in her measure) deprived Parliament of 
 the sole check it possessed upon the absolutism aimed at 
 by the King. Can we wonder that the Church, having 
 thus embarked her fortunes unreservedly with the cause 
 of the Court, should have fallen with the Court : and 
 that in the very same year in which she thus stooped to 
 fawn upon mere rank and worldly power, she was met 
 by the grim and uncourtly apparition of yet a second 
 Baptist congregation establishing itself in London, under 
 the ministry of Mr. Praise-God Barebone '* .'' 
 
 What a revelation does this uncouth name present, 
 of the wide gulf that was opening, or had already opened, 
 between the orthodox and courtly and pedantic clergy 
 of the Laudian type, and the prosaic, fanatical, half- 
 educated middle-class,— who were now on the point of 
 rising to supreme importance in the State ! It was in 
 vain that Presbyterianism essayed to bridge the gulf, 
 and tried to save some organized form of an Established 
 Church. It was in vain that Parliament attempted to 
 silence the fanatical preachers who (owing to the uni- 
 versal loyalism of the clergy) had it all their own way 
 in the army. The Baptists and all the other (so-called) 
 ' sectaries ' survived every attempt to put them down. 
 
 They are given at length in Cardwell's Synodalia, i. 380. 
 Neal, iii. 349 ; Gould, p. cxviii. 
 
IV.] BAPTISTS OCCUPY CHURCH-LIVINGS. 225 
 
 In 1647 Colonel Hutchinson, the governor of Notting- 
 ham, became a Baptist. In 1653 John Bunyan joined 
 their communion and began to preach. In 1654 Vavasour 
 Powell (once a clergyman of the Church of England) 
 rebaptized some 20,000 converts in Wales. Nay, strange 
 to say, — contrary to all their principles, — no less than 
 thirty ^^ Baptists crept (under the pseudo-Episcopal autho- 
 rity of Cromwell's ' Triers ') into the sequestered livings 
 of the Church, enjoyed her tithes and parsonages, and 
 were not extruded till the Restoration. 
 
 So hard, so impossible, is it to keep out the love of 
 worldly gain, by any mere system of exclusiveness. 
 You close the door ; and you find you have shut in 
 the evil spirit with you into your cell. You sift among 
 Christians, and rebaptize into some special coterie those 
 whom you think to ' give evidence ' of their sincerity, — 
 but the ' evidence ' will be, in a hundred cases, de- 
 ceptive, and you will be certain to admit many a 
 hypocrite within the fold. 
 
 But not merely will hypocrisy creep in, and infest, 
 more fatally than under any free and open-air system, 
 the close and narrow purism of these separatist societies. 
 Another danger also attends upon them, like their 
 shadow : and that is, the danger of perpetual subdivision, 
 and of secessions (on the plea of some trifling but in- 
 vincible scruples of conscience), till the whole strength 
 and unity of the original body is frittered away. And 
 thus its energies, which should have assailed the 
 strongholds of sin and darkness, are wasted upon 
 intestine quarrels and scandalous exhibitions of igno- 
 rance, bigotry^", and superstition. Already in 1633, 
 
 *' Cramp, p. 293 : ' About thirty of the ejected belonged to the Baptist 
 denomination. ' ^° Gould, p. xcv. 
 
2 26 THE BAPTISTS. [lecT. 
 
 the Baptists were split into the two main branches in 
 which they appear at present ; viz. the General Baptists, 
 — who are opposed to Calvinism, and the Particular 
 Baptists, — who are stern Calvinists -i. Again, about 1654, 
 we find Cromwell sadly troubled with some of the 
 ' Anabaptists,' who had embraced ' Fifth Monarchy ' 
 principles ; while others repudiated them ^^. About the 
 same time, a separate branch broke off, to carry out a 
 conscientious observance of the Jewish Sabbath-day^'. 
 In 1689, a split took place, on the question whether 
 singing in Divine service were allowable or not ^*. And 
 already, a hot dispute and division existed (which has 
 been made the subject of a most instructive lawsuit 
 within the last few years) as to the admission of non- 
 immersed people to the Lord's Supper^'. In 1719, the 
 Baptists were divided at the so-called Salter's Hall Con- 
 troversy, — on the question whether toleration was, or 
 was not, to be extended to Unitarians'^. In 1765, the 
 Scotch Baptists took their rise ; who have now fifteen 
 congregations in England '''. In 1 770, the ' New General 
 Baptist Association' seceded, on the question of the 
 Divinity of Christ '^. And at the present moment, 
 there appear to be no less than 550 Baptist congregations 
 unattached, who own no connexion with anybody 
 beyond the walls of their own place of meeting '^ 
 
 Can we wonder, then, that farther experience should 
 have opened many men's eyes, and that even Cromwell 
 should have lost all patience, and have cried out, ' Every 
 sect saith, "Oh, give me liberty!" But give it to him, 
 
 '' Skeat's, p. 42. 2' Skeats, p. 9 
 
 . 21. 
 . 408. 
 
 " OKeats, p. 42. '- SKeats, p. 92. 
 
 ^ Carlyle, ii. 261. Cf. Skeats, p. ^^ Ibid. p. 306. 
 
 61 ; Neal, iii. 376. -' Mann, p. 21. 
 
 ^ Cramp, p. 343 ; Mann, p. 21. =» Skeats, p. 408 
 
 ^' Skeats, p. 93 ; Gould, p. Ixx. 2' Mann, p. 295 
 
IV.] ENDLESS SUB-DIVISIONS. 227 
 
 — and (to his power) he will not yield it to anybody else. 
 . . We are a people.that have been unhinged these twelve 
 years ; as if scattering division and confusion came upon 
 us like things that we desired, — these, which are the 
 greatest plagues that God ordinarily lays upon nations 
 for sin ^^ ' ? That Milton (a Baptist in creed) should 
 be described by a Dissenting historian as ' in the later 
 years of his life, attending no place of pubHc worship. 
 He was above the sects ; and loathed their mutual 
 jarrings^i :' or that Bunyan, whom the latest historian ^^ 
 of the Baptists claims as the brightest ornament of their 
 communion, should have said : ' I would be (and hope 
 I am) a Christian. . . But as for those factious titles of 
 Anabaptists, Independents, Presbyterians, or the like, — 
 I conclude they came neither from Jerusalem nor An- 
 tioch, but rather from Hell and Babylon. For they 
 naturally tend to divisions : you may know them by 
 their fruits '^' 
 
 The fact is, that — however ostentatiously these small 
 and select religious societies may entitle themselves 'Free 
 Churches' — the only 'freedom' they really enjoy is that 
 of endless and interminable subdivision. And the sole 
 check placed upon these divisions is that very supremacy 
 of the Law (in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil,) 
 which, in words, they hotly repudiate, but which in 
 reality they are compelled to obey — precisely as the 
 Church of England is compelled to obey — wherever 
 questions either of property or contract arise. For in 
 these narrow circles, people are terribly in earnest. A 
 storm is soon raised. And when it is raised, there are 
 no constitutional breaks, whereby to check precipitate 
 
 *' Carlyle, Cromwell, ii. 298. Cf. "' Skeats, p. 62. 
 
 the Broadmead Records, p. 26; and ^ Cramp, p. 380. 
 
 286. '^ Ap. Gould, p. 295. 
 
 Q2 
 
22 8 THE BAPTISTS. [leCT. 
 
 measures ; there are no means for opposing the arbitrary 
 will of a majority, or of some influential autocrat ; there 
 is no width or space, over which the angry waves may 
 disperse themselves, and so the controversy may find 
 time to cool. And the consequence is (as has been 
 noticed by a friendly writer), that 'the most conspicuous 
 fault of [these early] separatists was excessive dogma- 
 tism. It was impossible for any of them to err ; im- 
 possible for any who differed from them to hold the 
 truth. They were all infallible in their judgments, and 
 none knew the whole counsel of God but they ".' And 
 of the Baptists in particular he adds : ' The spirit of 
 controversy seemed almost to possess the body. . . Their 
 zeal was, to a very great extent, consumed in contentions 
 amongst themselves and with other denominations ^^' 
 
 Yet it must in fairness be said, it was not, — and still 
 more at this day it is not, — all so expended. No doubt (as 
 Neal tells us) in their early days they excited popular 
 resentment and courted (what they called) persecution, 
 by ' coarse and irritating language ' and ' by disturbing 
 congregations and dispersing challenges to dispute with 
 any minister or ministers on the questions relative to 
 baptism ^^.' In the last century, too, their narrow 
 ultra-Calvinism found vent in the tenet, that ' it was not 
 desirable to offer the Gospel for the acceptance of the 
 unregenerate, — the elect only were to hear the message 
 of salvation ^'',' — and in the present century, the stricter 
 Baptists have refused communion at the Lord's Table to 
 any one who held ' that the Atonement was sufficient for 
 the sins of the whole world ^*.' But still, — by the persistent 
 and successful missions they have established, since 1792, 
 
 *• Skeats, p. 42. " Skeats, p. 509. 
 
 =' Ibid. p. 165. S8 Gould, Norwich Chapel Case, 
 
 '" Neal, iii. 367. p. xciv. 
 
IV, 
 
 ] BAPTIST SUCCESSES. 229 
 
 in India ; by the vast activity which has made them the 
 most numerous (with one exception) of all the sects in 
 the United States ^^ ; and by the noble liberality which, 
 in the teeth of all the first principles of Calvinism, has 
 characterized some of their greatest modern preachers 
 (especially Robert Hall), — they have amply redeemed 
 these faults. Their expenditure on missions now amounts 
 to ;^40,ooo a year ; they have taken the lead in translating 
 the Scriptures into the various languages of India; in Eng- 
 land ten colleges are established for the training of their 
 ministers ; and eighteen periodicals, for the dissemi- 
 nation of their views, are circulated far and wide'"'. 
 Yet their numbers are really, in Great Britain and 
 Ireland, very small ; only 280,000, on one (and that the 
 most friendly) computation *^. 
 
 And now has the Church nothing to learn, from these 
 her separated and (as we believe) erring children ? Has 
 the fault been wholly on their side .' Has the protest 
 they have raised been wholly a fanciful and groundless 
 one } It is impossible to maintain this, in the face of 
 all the evidence which history adduces to the contrary. 
 
 (i.) First of all, it is certain that ' worldliness' has far 
 too much crept into the Church ; and that a base and 
 despicable greed of place and power and wealth has 
 formed a sad temptation to men of the ecclesiastical 
 order, from the very earliest times. Even one of the 
 twelve Apostles was covetous and unfaithful about 
 money. Even before the second century had run out, 
 a Roman bishop is beginning to 'lord it over God's 
 heritage.' And the earliest CEcumenical Council is 
 partly occupied with settling questions of precedence 
 and 'who should be the greatest' The admission. 
 
 39 Dollinger, The Church and the " Cramp, p. 475. 
 
 Churches, p. 235. " Ibid. p. 473. 
 
23° 
 
 THE BAPTISTS. [lECT. 
 
 therefore, of such unhallowed and unseemly passions 
 within the Church, does not date from Constantine and 
 his establishment of the Church— as some Dissenters 
 try to persuade themselves. They must be dated much 
 farther back. They are rather evils inherent in human 
 nature. And if in a ministry numbering only twelve 
 persons, and chosen by the Lord Himself, these corrup- 
 tions were not absent, how can we suppose that in a 
 great body, like that of the Church of England, number- 
 ing 18,000 ministers, — all chosen by fallible men and by 
 imperfect methods of selection, — there would not always 
 be abundant room for warnings and protests against this 
 especially ecclesiastical sin .'' But then, where is the 
 sense, or loyalty, or charity, in sepai-ating from the 
 Church, in order to make this protest .' How much 
 more effectually it would be made, how much more 
 serviceably to the Church herself, if the voice of warn- 
 ing were raised from within 1 How can a peevish and 
 sullen withdrawal be held compatible with our duty to 
 Christ and to the brethren, — except only on some false 
 Puritan principle, that our first duty is to ourselves ; 
 and the first object of the Church of Jesus Christ to 
 keep out the imperfect, instead of drawing them in ! 
 
 Oh hateful, thrice-accursed system of the modern 
 Pharisaism, whereby men ' separate themselves ' and 
 stand apart from their brother, on heaven knows what 
 'evidence,' — insufficient, it confessedly is, — that they 
 are better and more godly persons than he! Rightly 
 is it called, not by the name of Christ, (whose just 
 sentence of rebuke was never wanting for this sub- 
 tlest form of human self-deception,) but by the name of 
 a narrow dogmatist, a French lawyer of the sixteenth 
 century ! And yet, once thoroughly entangled in the 
 coils of this portentous sophistry, no man (it seems) can 
 
IV.] LESSONS TAUGHT BY THE BAPTISTS. 231 
 
 ever shake himself free, except by a miracle of God's 
 redeeming grace. No man can emerge into the fresh 
 and wholesome air of Catholic Christianity, except by 
 the determined sacrifice of his mere logical and super- 
 ficial consistency, and by ' becoming a fool that so he 
 may be wise.' We dare not hope, therefore, that men 
 who are thus entangled in Calvinism, will ever be 
 induced, in any great numbers, to rejoin the Church, — 
 whatever improvements in discipline she may be able 
 to introduce. 
 
 But still, such improvements (even at the bidding of 
 enemies) she is bound to attempt. For as an 'educational' 
 institution, her object is not (of course) the mere ad- 
 fnission of so many imperfect and immature people, but 
 the admission of them for the purposes of training and 
 edification. And therefore the true function of the 
 ministry (the ' Ecclesia docens '), can never be properly 
 fulfilled, unless while the admission of the scholars (so to 
 speak) be as free and open as possible, the ranks of the 
 teachers be carefully guarded against the intrusion of 
 evil men, who so far from instructing and building up 
 their weaker brethren, are themselves a hindrance, a 
 scandal, and a mischief to them. 
 
 (2.) Another lesson which the Mother-Church is taught 
 by the Baptists, and which she is bound to listen to, is 
 the mischievous folly of persecution, in order to insure the 
 profession of one uniform National Religion. It can 
 never indeed be repeated too often, that this persecution, 
 of which the pages of all Dissenting histories are so full, 
 has not, since the Reformation, been the work of the 
 Church of England, as such. It has always been the work 
 of the State, and has scarcely ever taken the form of per- 
 secution for opinion, or for heresy, — but always for overt 
 acts of disobedience to the magistrate, in matters which 
 
232 l^HE BAPTISTS. [lect. 
 
 almost every single person in those days, — Dissenter 
 and Churchman alike — held to be legitimately within 
 his province to arrange. Yet still, it cannot be denied, 
 that the great Churchmen of former days lent them- 
 selves far too readily to the merely political purposes 
 of the State ; and that by their action they contributed 
 to encourage the preposterous notion that the Church of 
 England — an institution older than Parliament itself 
 — was an ' Act of Parliament Church.' The real truth 
 is, that — while the system of ' National Churches ' was 
 the old ecclesiastical system, which the Bishops were 
 anxious to restore, — it was also, in the opinion of the 
 great statesmen of the sixteenth century, the only safe- 
 guard against the political dangers of Popery. But it 
 was the unhappy mistake of those times to act as though 
 a National ' Establishment ' of Religion, and poHtical 
 'toleration' for conscientious Dissenters from it, could 
 not possibly co-exist. The mistake was pardonable, 
 because long centuries of really religious persecution in 
 the middle ages had darkened all men's minds upon 
 the subject. But the clergy of our Church should have 
 been the first, instead of the last, to break this spell of 
 darkness. Whereas the truth is that the Baptists seem 
 to have been the first to break it. And unhappily, 
 in breaking it, they cast off with it something with which 
 it had no necessary connexion, — the beautiful theory of 
 a united, homogeneous, National Church. 
 
 Let us then candidly give honour where honour is 
 due ; and (more than that) let us gratefully learn the 
 old Catholic lesson, which our Baptist brethren have 
 had to teach us afresh : viz. that ' the weapons of our 
 warfare are not carnal, but spiritual :' that any eccle- 
 siastical success gained otherwise than by persuasion, 
 warning, plain setting forth of Jesus Christ and Him 
 
IV.] BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 233 
 
 crucified, are no successes at all : that they are not 
 according to the mind of Christ, nor in harmony with 
 the intention of His Church : but are like a house 
 without foundations, built upon the sand, and liable at 
 any moment to be swept away and leave no trace 
 behind. 
 
 (3.) Lastly, there is yet a third and. by no means unim- 
 portant lesson to be learnt by the Church from the Bap- 
 tists, on the subject of Baptism itself, and of Church dis- 
 cipline, with which that rite is closely connected. It is, 
 I fear, impossible to deny that, for centuries past, a great 
 deal of very extravagant and misleading language has 
 been current in the Church on the subject of 'Baptismal 
 Regeneration.' And thereby, not only has this grand 
 and glorious truth been sadly obscured and confused, 
 but vast numbers of pious and half-educated people 
 have been alienated from the Church and carried away 
 into various forms of error and Dissent. No one can 
 have mixed much with the labouring or the trading 
 classes, without finding out that, in their conceptions, 
 the Church teaches by ' Baptismal Regeneration ' certain 
 crude and preposterous heresies, — which of course she 
 never has taught, but would be the first to repudiate *^. 
 Who then is responsible for her having seemed to 
 
 ^ E. g. Mr. Spurgeon (probably influence of such preaching as this 
 the most popular living exponent of upon our beloved England ?' {Sermon 
 Baptist views) preaches as follows : on Baptismal Regeneration, July 5, 
 ' The man who has been baptized or 1864.) The present writer has pro- 
 sprinkled says, " I am saved, I am a bably attended many thousand ser- 
 member of Christ. . . Call me to re- mons within the Church of England, 
 pentance ? Call me to a new life 1 . ■ for every one that Mr. Spurgeon has 
 No matter what my life and conver- attended : and he never once, in all 
 sation is, I am a child of God ; I am his life, heard anything like the doc- 
 an inheritor of the kingdom of trines which are here attributed to 
 heaven. It is true, I drink and her preachers ; nor has he ever read, 
 swear, and all that, but you know in any accredited writer of the Ca- 
 I am an inheritor of the kingdom tholic Church, in any language or at 
 of heaven". . . Now what can be the any period of Christendom, one single 
 
234 
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 teach them ? Is it not we, the clergy of the Church, — 
 who have never taken sufficient pains to point out that 
 the word ' regeneration ' is a technical expression ''^ ; 
 that it does not mean the same thing in theology, 
 as it does in the columns of a modern newspaper; 
 that the ' regeneration ' of a country or the ' regene- 
 
 statement that could fairly give oc- 
 casion to such an enormous misun- 
 derstanding. But he has read the fol- 
 lowing : (I) TertuUian (in the second 
 century), Be Baptismo, cap. 8 : ' After 
 the flood the world fell again, . . and 
 is destined for the fire ; and so is 
 every man who after Baptism renews 
 his sins.' (2) Origen(in the third cen- 
 tury) on S. John, vol.Vi. 133, de la 
 Rue : ' The washing of water, being 
 a symbol of the cleansing of the soul 
 washed from all stain of sin, is to 
 him who yieldeth himself . . nothing 
 less than the opening a fountain of 
 divine gifts.' (Cf. Horn. xxii. on 
 S.Luke.) (3) Gregory of Nyssa (in the 
 fourth century) on Isaiah iii. 18: 
 ' Such should regeneration be : so 
 efface all intimacy with sin : such 
 should be the life of the sons of 
 God.' (4) Augustine (in the fifth cen- 
 tury), De Baptismo, v. 24 : ' The sa- 
 crament of regeneration comes first ; 
 and if they shall preserve Christian 
 piety, co7iversion will follow in the 
 heart, the sign of which preceded on 
 the body.' (5) Aquinas (in the middle 
 ages), Summa, iii. 49. 9 : ' That any 
 one should be justified by Baptism, 
 it is requisite that the will of the man 
 embrace the baptism and its effect." 
 (6) Hooker (in the sixteenth century) 
 V. 57. 4 : ' Sacraments are not physical 
 but moral means of salvation.' (7) 
 Waterland (in the eighteenth century, 
 — quoted in a catena of forty-one 
 Anglican writers on this subject, 
 in Tracts for the Times, No. 76) ; 
 ' The Holy Spirit translates them 
 out of their state of nature to which 
 a curse belongs, to a state of grace, 
 fa\-our, and blessing.' And Arch- 
 
 bishop Sharp, ibid. : ' We grieve the 
 Holy Spirit, . . when being Christians 
 in profession we will not vouch- 
 safe Him a lodging in our hearts.' — 
 These Puritan misunderstandings are 
 however, in Dean Barlow's words 
 (1603), 'Crambe bis [or rather 'cen- 
 ties '] posita ;' and, as Dr. Pusey said 
 in 1 85 1, (Letter to Bishop of London, 
 fifth edition, p. 195): 'If Tracta- 
 rianism were what it is popularly 
 depicted to be, none would eschew 
 it with more abhorrence than the 
 writers of the Tracts.' (See also a 
 Puritan 'Rejoinder to the Bishops,' 
 1661, in Documents on English Puri- 
 tanism, p. 318 : Pierce, Vindication of 
 Dissenters, 17:7, p. 147: Towgood, 
 Dissent Justified, 1746, twelfth edit., 
 p. 42 ; Fisher, Liturg. Purity, 1857, 
 p. 100: Binney, Church Life in Aus- 
 tralia, second edition, i860, p. 59.) 
 
 *' This is at once proved, by the 
 fact that the word is occasionally 
 applied even to our Lord's baptism : 
 e. g. by Clem. Alex. Pad. i. 6, and 
 Jerome, c. Jovin. i. ' According to 
 these writers, as our Lord's " rege- 
 neration " consisted in His being 
 ritually separated to the work which 
 the Father gave Him to do, so ours 
 must consist in our ritual consecra- 
 tion to His service.' (Wall, on Bap- 
 tism, parti, ch. 3): cf. Barrett {Wes- 
 leyan) Catholic and Evangelical Prin- 
 ciples, p, 40 : and Fisher, Lilurg. Pu- 
 rity, p. 182. 'The question is mani- 
 festly a question of words ; and can 
 only be settled by a philological ad- 
 justment.' Also Bishop Bethell, on 
 Baptismal Regeneration, p. no; and 
 English Puritan Documents, p. 323, 
 
IV.] 'REGENERATION' A TECHNICAL EXPRESSION. 235 
 
 ration ' of society is one thing, but the ' regeneration ' 
 of an individual in the waters of Baptism is quite 
 another ; that it is, in short, nothing less than a second 
 birth, not now into the world, but into the family and 
 household of Jesus Christ ; there to be educated, there to 
 come under — at once, and by right as sons — all the 
 healthful elevating influences of His family ; and there 
 to grow up, by slow and (it may be) sadly interrupted 
 degrees, to 'the measure of the stature of the fulness 
 of Christ.' 
 
 But if our people have heard little or nothing of all 
 this, if the beauty of this most lovely ideal (so full of 
 nature and of common sense) has never dawned upon 
 the ordinary middle-class mind, if for many long years 
 the Baptismal service was virtually withdrawn from 
 public view, and (since its restoration) has been veiled 
 amid a cloud of conceits and mysticisms, drawn from 
 the Christian rhetoricians of the fourth and fifth centuries, 
 — how can we be surprised, that half-instructed people 
 have rejected the truth itself, along with the tinsel dress 
 in which it has been presented to them ? How can we 
 pretend to wonder that they have gone astray, and 
 sought in Calvinism some other idea of the Church, 
 which at least they could understand ? How can we 
 complain, if the bolder spirits among them have at 
 length broken away, and (in the name of a God of sin- 
 cerity and truth) have determined that Baptism should 
 at least mean something ; and should really be — what 
 the Church has, all along, amid her too rhetorical 
 language, meant it to be — viz. the doorway into the 
 family and kingdom of Christ, wherein the Holy Ghost 
 and all His abundant blessings dwell**.' 
 
 " Augustine, Confess, xiii. § 29, ccelorum :' Aquinas, Sunima, iii. 73. 
 ' Non enim intratur aliter in regnum 3, ' Baptismus est principium Spiri- 
 
236 
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 And now behold how — neglect having generated error 
 — one error draws after it another; and how a slight 
 angle of divergence may, in process of time, become a 
 vast and incurable misunderstanding ! On the one hand, 
 the Baptist — recoiling from the vague statements of the 
 Churchman about Baptism,— seeks elsewhere his de- 
 finitipn of the Church of the Redeemed. He cannot 
 believe, that those merely who are sprinkled with water, 
 about the conditions of whose admission no care what- 
 ever is taken, and about whose subsequent discipline 
 and training no trouble is expended, form the Church 
 and family of Jesus Christ. He therefore goes in search 
 of some other conception. And he finds it in the 
 (strangely misunderstood) word ' election ' *°. He next 
 
 talis vitae et janua sacramentorum :' 
 Hooker, Eccles. Pol. iii. i. 6, ' En- 
 tered we are not into the visible 
 Church, before our admittance by 
 the door of baptism.' 
 
 •' When a man has once — whether 
 from his own fault, or from that of 
 others — let go the Catholic faith 
 about 'the Church,' as an external, 
 organized, imperfect, educating so- 
 ciety, he is obliged by the necessi- 
 ties of his false position to invent 
 some other theory, and to fit thereto 
 (by the most violent and self-contra- 
 dictory expedients) the traditional 
 language and customs of Chris- 
 tendom. Thus the Independent 
 defines the Church as 'the whole 
 fellowship of the faithful and holy 
 throughout all places and ages . . 
 invisible . . known in all its extent 
 to the Omniscient eye alone.' (Ecclesia, 
 p. 59.) 'The one true Church be- 
 comes visible, not in its proper unity 
 under Christ its Head, but under the 
 form of particular congregations or 
 churches.' {Ibid.p. 104.) But what 
 possible sense or meaning can the 
 outward act of Infant Baptism hold 
 under such a theory as that ? — The 
 
 Baptist is more logical. He baptizes 
 only those whom he believes to be 
 God's elect. But besides the mis- 
 takes to which he is liable, in judg- 
 ing who are God's own people, he 
 has a standing difficulty in dealing 
 with children, — a difficulty which the 
 Church's theory entirely avoids. — 
 The Quaker, feeling all these self- 
 contradictions, repudiates Baptism 
 altogether. — The Wesleyan, rightly 
 shrinking from meddling with God's 
 ekction, yet unable to accept the old 
 simple doctrine, fixes his attention 
 upon ' sensible conversion ' which he 
 supposes to be ' the new birth ;' and 
 Baptism immediately sinks into an 
 almost unmeaning ceremony. But, 
 meanwhile, interminable confusion is 
 introduced, by the Church's technical 
 word ' regeneration ' being employed 
 to express this abnormal and convul- 
 sive crisis. Hence even Wesleyan 
 teachers of high character can bring 
 themselves to write as follows : 'The 
 holding of Baptismal Regeneration 
 in the High Church school precludes 
 the absolute necessity of any subse- 
 quent change or renovation of the 
 heart.' (Barrett, Cath. and Evang. 
 
IV.] CONFIRMATION THE SAFEGUARD OF BAPTISM. 237 
 
 learns to ridicule the Church's Baptismal language and 
 ritual, which he has long ceased to understand ; pro- 
 claims her to be ' the world ' under ecclesiastical forms ; 
 and at last thinks he doeth God service, by undermining 
 her position and counteracting her influence, in every- 
 way he can. 
 
 On the other hand, the officers of the Church more 
 and more lost sight of the true meaning of her Rites. 
 They gradually allowed her discipline to become con- 
 fused and to fall into desuetude. The guarantees she 
 once took, the sponsorships she once so anxiously im- 
 posed, — as the only condition on which she would admit 
 (what her yearning heart could not forbid) the bringing 
 of little speechless infants within her baptismal lines, — 
 were suffered to become a dead letter *^ And then too, 
 her safeguard, her second line of defence, her ' consum- 
 mation' and 'sealing' of what perchance his presbyters 
 or deacons had too lightly done, by the Bishop's more 
 leisurely confirming hand *', — this most beautiful and 
 happy thought too became spoiled and neglected ** : 
 
 Principles (1843), p. 121), — the truth imponitur.' Cyprian (a.d. 250), Epist. 
 
 being, as every Churchman knows, 72: 'Qui in ecclesia baptizantur 
 
 precisely the reverse. PrEpositis ecclesise offeruntur, et . . 
 
 ** How closely on this, and a signaculo dominico consummantur.' 
 hundred other subjects, a really Constit. Apost. (a.d. 300) iii. 16 : 
 thoughtful Wesleyan approaches the "MeTd tovto o 'EmaKOTros -xpiiToiTovs 
 Church, perhaps it hardly needed ^aTtrtaBivjas t^ l^ipf ■ ■ To iivpov 
 the following citation to show : fiePaiacris t^s uiioKoyias.' Ambrose 
 ' For an infant-baptism to take place (a.d. 380), De Sacram. iii. 2 : ' Sequitur 
 without assurance being given on spiritale signaculum : . . quiii post 
 the part of the parents, or others, fontem superest ut perfectio fiat.' 
 that the child shall be brought up in Jerome (a.d. 400) c. Lucif. § 4 : ' Non 
 the ordinances and under the teach- abnuo banc esse ecclesiarum consue- 
 ing of the regenerating [renewing] tudinem, ut ad eos qui longfe a ma- 
 Word, this is only to mock an insti- joribus urbibus per presbyteros et 
 tution which binds all parties con- diaconos baptizati sunt, Episcopus 
 cemed.' (Barrett, Principles, p. 128.) ad invocationem Sancti Spiritus ma- 
 
 " Tertullian (a.d. 200), De Bapt, num impositurus excurrat.' (Cf. 
 
 § 7 : ' Egressi de lavacro perungimur Bingham, bk. xii. I ; Neander, i. 438.) 
 
 benedicta unctione . . Dehinc manus " 'We have to acknowledge that in 
 
238 
 
 THE BAPTISTS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 until ' Confirmation ' also came to lose its high baptis- 
 mal meaning, even to the Churchman himself. And 
 what has it, after all this divergence, come to mean to 
 the Dissenter ? It has come to mean simply a rite 
 without sense or reality, without any sufficient Scrip- 
 tural authority, and which will not fit in to any concep- 
 tion he now possesses as to what the Church is, or what 
 she ought to do *^. 
 
 Should we not then, taught even by our foes, take 
 seriously to heart this urgent question of Church Dis- 
 cipline ? Can it be right — the Baptist virtually says to 
 us — to admit men by shoals into the Church, and then 
 to take so little trouble about the guarantees and the 
 methods of their spiritual training ? Why not rather 
 refuse them ? Why not thrust back these unmanage- 
 able crowds; narrow the gates, reject the infants'", 
 
 the Church the rust of abuses, and of 
 a mechanical superstition, is always 
 forming afresh . . The right reform- 
 ing spirit must therefore never depart 
 from the Church.' (DoUinger, The 
 Church and the Churches, p. 1 8, English 
 translation.) 
 
 *' Two hundred years ago, it seems, 
 the Puritans had not yet lost sight 
 of the beauty and utility of the 
 Church's right of Confirmation. See 
 'Rejoinder to the Bishops,' 1661, 
 English Puritan Documents, p. 331 : 
 ' O that we had the primitive 
 Episcopacy, and that Bishops had no 
 more churches to oversee than in the 
 primitive times they had ; and then 
 we would never speak against this 
 reservation of Confirmation to the 
 Bishop.' 
 
 ■■° 'The first whisper of the exclu- 
 sion of infants from a full and free 
 admission to the Church and family 
 of Jesus Christ by baptism, is to be 
 found in the gloomy Montanist Ter- 
 tuUian, a.d. 200, {De Bapl. § 18) : 
 
 ' Veniant dum adolescunt ; veniant 
 dum discunt, dum qu5 veniant do-' 
 centur ; fiant Christiani quum Chris- 
 tum nosse potuerint. Quid festinat 
 innocens tetas ad remissionem pecca- 
 torum?' His reasons therefore are 
 very different from those of later 
 Puritans, who have confused them- 
 selves (i) with Jewish notions, about 
 a covenant made with ' believers and 
 their seed,' (2) with pseudo-philo- 
 sophy, about election and free-will. 
 Cf. 'Rejoinder to the Bishops,' 1661, 
 English Puritan Documents, p. 318 : 
 ' The covenant of grace that giveth 
 the saving benefits of Christ, is 
 made to none but the faithful, and 
 their seed. Will you call this a 
 punishing of them for their fathers' 
 sakes, that God hath extended His 
 mercy to no more ? Their parents' 
 infidelity doth but leave them in their 
 original sin and misery.' Thank God, 
 the Church of England has ever re- 
 jected such dreadful and unchristian 
 sophistries. 
 
IV.] THE CHURCH'S BAPTISMAL SYSTEM. 239 
 
 restore the Catechumen system, bid men (at length) 
 ' give evidence,' by recounting their feehngs and their 
 experiences, that they are spiritually Christians, be- 
 fore they are formally admitted and enrolled as 
 His? 
 
 'Nay,' answers the Churchman, ' refuse (in my Master's 
 name) I dare not : narrow I will not : bid men be already 
 Christ's scholars, before I admit them to the school of 
 Christ, I cannot, — lest I bring scorn and derision upon 
 the very educational institution with which I am set in 
 charge. But what I can do, I will do, and must do, for 
 His sake. And this I can do : I can expend more toil 
 and care and management on this vast subject; I can 
 call to mind what the system of " sponsors" really means, 
 what " catechising " really implies, and how the wisdom 
 of antiquity knit up each diocese into unity by gathering 
 all its threads into the Bishop's hands, and especially by 
 calling on him to review and seal by " Confirmation " all 
 the Baptismal admissions given by his priests and 
 deacons in his absence. And if it be desirable (as it is 
 most urgently desirable) to bring before my countrymen's 
 very eyes — who have too long been enslaved to a mere 
 bald and prosaic common sense — the beautiful and mean- 
 ing rites of my Church, in their most plain and speak- 
 ing forms, I will take advantage of the perilous and 
 disgraceful fact, that thousands in every English town are 
 actually unbaptized, to let down Christ's net visibly 
 among them. I will seek them first by home missions. 
 Those who offer themselves I will train previously as 
 Catechumens. And then I will present before the assem- 
 bled Church the spectacle of a Baptism in its highest 
 and most normal form : not indeed by immersion, — 
 in that point the Church's freedom must be unflinchingly 
 maintained, in order to teach the spirituality of the Lord's 
 
240 THE BAPTISTS. [lect. 
 
 sacraments, by using the drop of water and the fragment 
 of bread, to represent the " Regenerating Bath ^^ " and 
 the Eucharistic Feast, — but by placing the adult and 
 instructed convert before the whole "congregation of 
 Christ's flock," and then admitting him publicly,— both 
 by baptism and (if possible) by Confirmation also,— to 
 all the privileges of a Christian.' 
 
 If the Baptists,— even by their deeply to be regretted 
 and mistaken separation, — shall have taught the Church, 
 or reminded her of, some of these truths, their testi- 
 mony will not have been thrown away nor their suffer- 
 ings in the olden time have been in vain. And if God 
 would grant them, or those (at least) of them who are 
 the most loosely attached to Calvinism, such grace of 
 charity, humility, and brotherly-love, as should whisper 
 in their consciences — ' the Church of Christ thou mayest 
 not thus lightly rend: not " he that defileth" but " he that 
 destroyeth {4>6(Lp€i) the Church of God, him {saith the 
 Apostle) shall God destroy :" and therefore to strengthen 
 the Church with what thou hast to contribute of trtith and 
 earnestness, not to weaken it by withdrawing them and 
 thyself from her service, — this is thy bounden dtity to thy 
 Lord,' — I believe that the return of such men to an 
 honoured place within her ranks, would be as when 
 brothers are reconciled after a long estrangement. 
 The hands once clasped, the mutual confession of past 
 sins, hasty words, of passionate deeds, once honestly 
 made, — a thousand causes of misunderstanding would 
 at once be cleared away. And — instead of bitter rivalry, 
 and the devilish spirit of jealousy and hate, — union 
 and concord might once more produce their miraculous 
 effects upon the heathen, as of old ; effects as dear to 
 
 ^ The 'lavacrum regenerationis,' Iren. v. 15, 3. 
 
IV.] HOPES OF REUNION. 241 
 
 the heart of our Baptist brethren, as they are to our 
 own, and expressly promised by our Lord Himself on 
 condition of ecclesiastical unity, when He prayed ' that 
 they may be ONE in Us, that the world may believe that 
 Thou hast sent Me «2.' 
 
 '•''^ John xvii. 2r. 
 
APPENDIX G. 
 
 The Baptist Confessions of Faith. 
 
 [The first is a form drawn up, in 1646, by seven Congregations in 
 London, ' for vindicating of the truth . . and taking off those aspersions 
 which are frequently — both in pulpit and print — unjustly cast upon them.' 
 The second Confession (modelled on the ' Westminster Confession ') was 
 published in 1677 ; and was afterwards reprinted, with approval and 
 recommendation from more than a hundred congregations, in 16S9. The 
 former is to be found in Neal (Toulmin's edition), iii. 559 : the latter was 
 republished, in 1863, by Mr. Spurgeon. In both cases, I have only given 
 what seemed of special importance or interest.] 
 
 The first ' Confession ' {in fifty-two Articles^ : 1646. 
 
 ' (I.) The Lord our God is but one God, whose subsistence is in Him- 
 self . . (II.) In this divine and infinite Being there is the Father, the Word, 
 and the Holy Spirit ; each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence 
 undivided . . (III.) . . God hath, before the foundation of the world, fore- 
 ordained some men to eternal life through Jesus Christ, to the praise 
 and glory of His grace : leaving the rest in their sin, to their just con- 
 demnation, to the praise of His justice . . . (VIII.) The rule of this know- 
 ledge, faith, and obedience, concerning the worship of God, — in which is 
 contained the whole duty of man, — is (not men's laws, or unwritten tradi- 
 tions, but) only the Word of God contained in the Scriptures ; . . which are 
 the only rule of holiness and obedience for all saints, at all times, in all 
 places to be observed . . (XXI.) Jesus Christ by His death did purchase 
 salvation for the elect that God gave unto Him ; these only have interest 
 in Him and fellowship with Him . . The free gift of eternal life is given to 
 them, and none else . . (.XXIII.) All those that have this precious faith 
 wrought in them by the Spirit, can never finally nor totally fall away . . . 
 (XXXIII.) The Church is a company of visible saints, called and separated 
 from the world by the Word and Spirit of God, to the visible profession of 
 the faith of the Gospel ; being baptized into that faith . . (XXXV.) And 
 all His servants . . are to lead their lives in this walled sheepfold and 
 watered garden, . . to supply each otlier's wants, inward and outward . . 
 (XXXVI.) Being thus joined, every Church hath power given them from 
 
APPENDIX G. 243 
 
 Christ, for their well-being to choose among themselves meet persons for 
 elders and deacons . . and none have power to impose on them either 
 these or any other . . (XXXIX.) Baptism is an ordinance of the New 
 Testament, given by Christ, to be dispensed upon persons professing faith, 
 or that are made disciples; who, upon profession of faith, ought to be 
 baptized and after to partake of the Lord's Supper . . (XL.) The way and 
 manner of dispensing this ordinance, is dipping or plungifig the body under 
 water. It, being a sign, must answer the things signified ; which is, that 
 interest the saints have in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ ; and 
 that as certainly as the body is buried under water, and risen again, so 
 certainly shall the bodies of the saints be raised by the power of Christ, in 
 the day of the resurrection, to reign with Christ. (XLVIII.) . . We ac- 
 knowledge with thankfulness, that God hath made this present king and 
 parliament honourable in throwing down the prelatical hierarchy . . and 
 concerning the worship of God, there is but one lawgiver . . Jesus Christ ; 
 who hath given laws and rules sufficient, in His Word, for His worship ; 
 and to make any more, were to charge Christ with want of wisdom or 
 faithfulness, or both ... It is the magistrates' duty to tender the liberty of 
 men's consciences . . without which all other liberties will not be worth the 
 naming . . Neither can we forbear the doing of that, which our under- 
 standings and consciences bind us to do. And if the magistrates should 
 require us to do otherwise, we are to yield our persons in a passive way to 
 their power . . . (The conclusion.) Thus we desire to give unto Christ that 
 which is His . . . Also we confess, that we know but in part, and that we 
 are ignorant of many things which we desire and seek to know. And if 
 any shall do us that friendly part, to shew us from the Word of God that 
 we see not, we shall have cause to be thankful to God and to them. But 
 if any man shall impose on us anything that we see not to be commanded 
 by our Lord Jesus Christ, we should rather . . die a thousand deaths, than 
 to do anything . . against the light of our own consciences.' 
 
 The second ' Confession ' {in thirty-two chapters^ ; 1689. 
 
 ' (I.) The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule 
 of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience . . Nothing is at any time to 
 be added, whether by new revelation of the Spirit or traditions of men. 
 Nevertheless, we acknowledge that . . there are some circumstances con- 
 cerning the worship of God and government of the Church, common to 
 human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature 
 and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which 
 are always to be observed . . The infallible rule of interpretation of Scrip- 
 ture is the Scripture itself . . (II.) . . In this divine and infinite Being there 
 are three subsistences . . which doctrine of the Trinity is the foundation of 
 
 R 2 
 
2 44 APPENDIX G. 
 
 all our communion with God, and comfortable dependence on Him. (HI.) 
 By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and 
 angels are predestinated or fore-ordained to eternal life . . others being left 
 to act in their sin to their just condemnation . . . (X.) . . Infants dying in 
 infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ, through the Spirit; who 
 worketh when, where, and how He pleaseth ; so also are all elect persons, 
 who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word. 
 Others, not elected, though they may be called by the ministry of the Word 
 . . neither will nor can truly come to Christ, and therefore cannot be saved 
 . . (XIV.) The grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe . . is 
 ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the Word ; by which also, and by 
 the administration of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, prayer, and other 
 means appointed of God, it is increased and strengthened . . . (XXVI.) The 
 Catholic or universal Church, which (with respect to the internal work of 
 the spirit and truth of grace) may be called invisible, consists of the whole 
 number of the elect . . The officers appointed by Christ to be chosen and 
 set apart by the Church . . are bishops or elders, and deacons . . It is 
 incumbent on the Churches to whom they minister, to communicate to 
 them of all their good things, according to their ability ; so as they may 
 have a comfortable supply, without being themselves entangled in secular 
 affairs . . . (XXIX.) Baptism is an ordinance of the New Testament . . 
 Those who do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in, and obe- 
 dience to, our Lord Jesus Christ, are the only proper subjects of this ordi- 
 nance . . Immersion, or dipping of the person in water, is necessary to the 
 due administration of that ordinance. (XXX.) . . All ignorant and ungodly 
 persons, as they are unfit to enjoy communion with Christ, so are they 
 unworthy of the Lord's table. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE QUAKERS. 
 
 A.D. 1646. 
 
 Leading Idea : — Spirituality of the Church. 
 
 Method adopted : — Abandonment of all external ritual whatsoever. 
 
 'Ad hanc erg6 interiorem vocem aures cordis erigi admonemus ; ut 
 loquentem Deum inttis audire, qukm foris hominem, studeatis . . Nee sanfe 
 laborandum est, ut ad vocis hujus perveniatur auditum. Labor est potiiis 
 aures obturare ne audias.' (S. Bernard, de Conversione, cap. i.) 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 150. Montanisiu appears in Asia Minov. 
 
 1 200. Manichseanism, in South Europe. 
 
 1350. Wicliffe; and pre-Reformation Mystics. 
 
 1552. Preludes to Quakerism, in France, Sec. 
 
 1646. Geo. Fox (cet. 22) appears in public. 
 
 1653. Persecutions, in England and America. 
 
 1654. First preaching in London (Howgill.) 
 
 1655. First preaching in Ireland, and on the Continent. 
 
 1656. Fanaticism at Bristol, &c. (James Naylor.) 
 1660. Charles II. promises them toleration. 
 
 — Venner's insurrection causes severities. 
 1666. William Penn becomes a Quaker. 
 
 — New central Meeting House in Gracechurch-street. 
 1669. First ' Yearly Meeting ' in London. 
 
 1672. Charles II. 's Declaration of Indulgence : accepted by Quakers. 
 
 1676. Wilkinson and Story's secession ; they object to discipline. 
 
 — Barclay's Apology published in Latin. 
 
 — Great controversies with Baptists. 
 
 1 68 1. Pennsylvania granted to William Penn. 
 
 1689. Toleration Act. 
 
 1816. ' Peace Society ' established. 
 
 1827. Hicks-ites secede ; holding Socinian views. 
 
 1838. Test Act repealed. 
 
 1833. Abolition of the slave trade. 
 
 1837. 'Evangelical Friends' secede, in London. 
 
 1845. Mrs. Fry ('the female Howard') died. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE QUAKERS. 
 
 ' The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not 
 the author of confusion, but of peace.' — i Cor. xiv. 32. 
 
 THAT the Church of Christ should perpetually need 
 reformation and cleansing from (what has been 
 well called) the ever-recurring 'rust of superstition,' is 
 no more than all good men, in all ages, have sadly- 
 confessed. That zealous and active minds should 
 eagerly desire to set their hands to this work, and be 
 tempted to break up the divine order of the Church in 
 their impatience, to root out the tares without regard 
 to the general interests of the slowly ripening crop, and 
 even to invent new theories altogether and new plans, 
 which God hath never planned and His Church has 
 never acknowledged, — all this is too likely, when we 
 remember what human nature is, and what the science 
 of polity should lead us to expect and prepare for. 
 But that good and Christian men should not only feel 
 the temptation, but should also give way to it, and 
 actually so far lose their self-command as to hold them- 
 selves called by Almighty God to break the engine in 
 pieces, because the fire has sunk too low and its work is 
 being imperfectly done, — this is indeed a strange and 
 
248 THE QUAKERS. [lect. 
 
 melancholy spectacle of human infirmity and self-will. 
 And yet even this too, waste though it seem, is capable 
 of being employed by the great Master of all for the 
 good of His Church in the end. 
 
 We are now engaged on a study of the second pair of 
 separatist denominations, which seceded from the Church 
 during that torrid epoch of abnormal growths of every 
 kind, — the seventeenth century. The first pair of Dis- 
 senting bodies belonged (you will remember) to the 
 sixteenth century, — viz. the Congregationalists and the 
 Romanists. And they went off from the Church on 
 questions merely of polity and external order. The. 
 second pair, with which we are now dealing, — the Bap- 
 tists and the Quakers, — departed from the Church rather 
 on questions of internal order, of domestic discipline (so 
 to speak) and especially of ritual ; the Baptists being 
 — in their own way, and with their attention fixed ex- 
 clusively on 'baptism' — the high Ritualistic party among 
 Dissenters, while the Quakers, on the other hand (with 
 whom we are to be occupied to-day), gave way to an 
 almost distempered aversion to ritual and outward ex- 
 pression of every sort and kind, and inscribed on the 
 banner of their very small, but determined and highly 
 influential party, the motto of ' Spirituality-^.' 
 
 Let us earnestly and candidly endeavour to see what 
 
 ' Cf. Fox, Journal, i. 75 (seventh me, that I could not hold, but was 
 
 edition, 1852): 'Now as I went to made to cry out and say, " O no, it 
 
 Nottingham, on a first-day in the is not the Scriptures I " and I told 
 
 morning 11649],! espied the great them what it was, viz. the Holy 
 
 Steeple-house ; and the Lord said Spirit, by which the holy men of 
 
 unto me, " Thou must go and cry God gave forth the Scriptures.' And 
 
 against yonder great Idol, and against ibid. p. no, a similar scene at Pick- 
 
 the worshippers therein." . . The ering, in Yorkshire. — Fenn, A'o Crois 
 
 preacher told the people it " was the no Croivn, p. 92. Pride set men 
 
 Scriptures, by which they were to ' first at work to pervert the spiri- 
 
 try all doctrines, religions, opinions." tualily of the Christian worship.' — 
 
 Now the Lord's power was so Barclay, ^/>o/o^^, p. 219 :' We judge 
 
 mighty upon me, and so strong in it our duty, to hold forth that pure 
 
v.] ORIGIN OF THE NAME. 249 
 
 they meant, and whether the word they have thus 
 spoken be not indeed a word of God, and well worthy 
 the attention of the Christian Church and of every 
 Christian man, — though it be not spoken through the 
 regular and accredited organs of the divinely constituted 
 Society. 
 
 Quakerism (as we all know) was founded by George 
 Fox. And it gained its strange name from one of his 
 casual expressions about ' fearing and quaking at the 
 word of the Lord^.' The name however by which they 
 entitle themselves is that of ' Friends ^.' George Fox 
 was a religious enthusiast, of pure life, imposing per- 
 sonal appearance and manner, and of unimpeachable 
 sincerity. He appeared in the second quarter of the 
 seventeenth century, — a time when the very foundations 
 both of Church and State were being shaken. For, 
 born within a few months of the day when Charles I. 
 succeeded to his difficult inheritance,- at his humble 
 home in Leicestershire he must have witnessed the 
 gathering of that fearful storm, which plunged the 
 
 and spiritual worship, which is ac- entire spirituality of the Gospel dis- 
 ceptable to God.' — Evans, Exposition, pensation." This idea has led to the 
 p. X. [an American authorized work, rejection of the outward ordinances 
 1827]: ' The peculiar views which of Baptism and the Lord's Supper.' 
 the Society entertained of the Spiri- ^ Journal, i. 85. Marsden, Diet, of 
 tual nature of the Gospel dispensa- Sects, p. 423. — 'God had visibly 
 tion, rendered its members obnox- clothed him with a divine preference 
 iousto much opposition.' — Spurgeon, and authority; and indeed his very 
 Lecture on George Fox, p. i : 'It presence expressed a religious ma- 
 seemed to me, esteemed Friends, jesty : yet he never abused it.' 
 that you were a picked body of (Penn's Preface to Fox's Jourtial, 
 men, peculiarly set apart to be the p. 34.) 
 
 advocates of a spiritual religion.' — ' ' The Society are called " Qua- 
 
 Qualterism and the Church: being my kers " by the world; but are known 
 
 reasons for leaving the Society of to each other by the name of 
 
 i^W«Krfs, p. 6 (1870): ' There remains "Friends," — a beautiful appellation, 
 
 the grand principle which distin- and characteristic of the relation 
 
 guishes the Society of Friends from which man, under the Christian dis- 
 
 all other Churches or sects, and pensation, ought unifoiTnly to bear 
 
 which they are accustomed to sum to man.' (Clarkson, Portraiture of 
 
 up under the expression of " the Quakerism, i. p, viii.) 
 
2 50 THE QUAKERS. [lect. 
 
 whole realm of England into chaos ^ : and which, con- 
 centrating all its violence in those midland counties, 
 issued in the King's defeat at Naseby and his final 
 surrender at Southwell in 1646. Charles surrendered on 
 May 5th, and armed men throughout England rested 
 awhile on their swords ; while the Puritan party every- 
 where rejoiced, for it seemed that at last their hour of 
 triumph had come, that the Reformation would at 
 length receive its completion, Scotch Presbyterianism 
 be established throughout the country, and our Church 
 be assimilated (as they expressed it) to the best and 
 most thoroughly reformed Churches on the Continent. 
 
 But all this (happily) was not to be. When men raise 
 the flag of rebellion and secession, it is not always 
 lowered precisely at that point where the success of 
 just their own schemes has been secured. There are 
 other schemers now in the field, besides them. There 
 are other theories, more advanced ideas, more reckless 
 fanaticisms, which have dawned upon men's minds 
 during the conflict. And these will not give way, when 
 the persons who originally drew the sword give the signal 
 that it is time to sheathe it. This is the history of all 
 'revolutions,' whether in Church or State. And so it 
 happened that, on the very same May morning when King 
 Charles was surrendering his sword to the Presbyterian 
 Scots, — not a hundred miles away there was a young 
 man, wandering gloomily in the fields at Coventry®, and 
 
 * ' The English nation was at this of May, while he was walking in 
 
 period (1650) much engrossed with the fields [near Coventry], he had, 
 
 the great subjects of religion and he believed, a divine revelation . . 
 
 politics, and both were mingled He therefore retired to fields and 
 
 together in strange conjunction.' orchards, and studied his Bible 
 
 (Fox, j'o!/™!!/, i. 94, note.) 'A mad alone." (Marsden, Diet, of Sects, p. 
 
 and confused scene.' (Burnet, Own 421 ; Fox, j'oanja/, i. 52.) Charles I. 
 
 Times, book i. sub fin.) surrendered on May 5. 
 
 '■ 'In the year 1646, on the 1st 
 
v.] GEORGE FOX. 251 
 
 brooding over thoughts which were destined to carry 
 on the work then one stage completed, not merely to 
 a second, but a third stage in advance ; and whose task 
 it was — when Baptists and Independents had superseded 
 Presbyterianism — to supersede them in turn by a pure 
 ultra-spiritualism. 
 
 This young man was George Fox. He was the son 
 of a weaver, a solitary shepherd and cattle-drover by 
 employment, and of an innocent, serious, devout dispo- 
 sition. But he was touched and (it is impossible to 
 doubt) a little thrown off his balance by religious enthu- 
 siasm". He had for three years left his home and em- 
 ployment, ' broken off (as he tells us) all familiarity or 
 fellowship with old and young,' and wandered about the 
 country with the Bible in his pocket, seeking peace and 
 mental satisfaction from the Clergy and from Dissenters 
 of all denominations, — but finding none. For even in 
 London, the head-quarters of Puritanism and Dissent, 
 he says, ' all was dark and under the chain of dark- 
 ness ^.' 
 
 What did he mean t He meant, I think, that a great 
 and majestic truth was dawning within him and strug- 
 gling outwards into the perfect day ; but that none of 
 the narrow sects, and none (I am afraid) of the men 
 who then too often mis-represented the Catholic Church 
 of England, were able either to understand or to assist 
 him to bring it forth. There were, however, very few 
 of the regular clergy to whom he opened his heart, — 
 not more, it seems, than two or three : for he was much 
 
 ' ' At the command of God, in the temptations ; I fasted much, and 
 
 ninth day of the seventh month, 1643, often took my Bible and sat in hollow 
 
 I left my relations and broke off all trees and lonesome places.' (JUd. 
 
 familiarity with old or young.' {Jour- p. 54.) 
 nal, i. 50.) ' I was often under great ' Journal, i. 51. 
 
252 THE QUAKERS. [lict. 
 
 more drawn to the Dissenters *. And we cannot doubt 
 that, had he found out a Jeremy Taylor, a George 
 Herbert, or a Joseph Hall, instead of some miserable 
 priest at Mancetter, who bade the youth 'take tobacco 
 and sing psalms ^' Quakerism would never have been 
 born ; and its noble energy and pure essential Chris- 
 tianity might have gone rather to enliven and spiritualize 
 the Church, whose true meaning (in so many ways) 
 it unconsciously expresses. 
 
 This majestic truth was, in few words, that department 
 of the Church's creed, which was not then, — nay, I am 
 bold to say, which is not now, — brought out into its 
 full and proper significance, Koja ttjv avaXoyiav Ttjs 
 TTio-recos : viz. ' I believe in the HOLY GhosT, the Lord 
 and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and 
 the Son ; who, with the Father and the Son together 
 is worshipped and glorified ; who spake by the prophets.' 
 The theology of those days (remember), from the Re- 
 formation onwards, had been a mere play of logic and 
 word-fence around the profoundest subjects. The reign 
 of scholasticism had never really come to an end. Words 
 and notions, not things and facts, had been hitherto 
 the subject of endless, weary, unprofitable controversy ^°. 
 
 * ' After I had received that open- were gone . . then, oh then, I heard 
 
 ing from the Lord, that " to be bred a voice which said, " There is one, 
 
 at Oxford or Cambridge was not even Jesus Christ, that can spealc to 
 
 sufficient to fit a man to be a minister thy condition ; " and when I heard it, 
 
 of Christ," I regarded the priests my heart did leap for joy.' {Journal, 
 
 less, and looked more after the i. 55.) 
 Dissenting people. Among them I ** Journal, i. 52. 
 saw there was some tenderness. . . '" Cf. Fox, Jovrnal, i. 61 (1647): 
 
 But as I had forsaken the priests, ' The Lord opened it to me, that 
 
 so I left the separate preachers also, people and professors trampled upon 
 
 and those esteemed the most ex- the life, even the life of Christ ; they 
 
 perienced people : for I saw there fed upon words, and fed one another 
 
 was none among them all that could with words.' — Barclay, Apology, p. 
 
 speak to my condition. When all ix. (1675): 'The world is even bur- 
 
 my hopes in them, and in all men, dened with the great and voluminous 
 
v.] TEDIOUS CONTROVERSIES OF THE TIME. 253 
 
 Calvinism and its childish philosophy about the Divine 
 decrees, Puritanism and its senseless prattle about the 
 vestments of Baal and the dregs of Rome, Romanism 
 and its subtle, scarcely honest, verbiage about transub- 
 stantiation, Laudianism and its petty tyrannical enforce- 
 ment of uniformity in minimis, — oh, the world was weary 
 of them all. And the time was ripe for one to arise who 
 should dare, in his simplicity, to take with him the Bible 
 apart into the fields and see what God had really meant 
 by a revelation, — 'holy indeed and just and good,' — but 
 which seemed to have been so hopelessly buried amid this 
 heap of Rabbinical rubbish and scholastic reiinements, 
 that nothing short of beginning from the beginning 
 once more, and stripping the Gospel absolutely bare of 
 all its intolerable makebelieves and hypocrisies, seemed 
 a fitting remedy for the mischief. 
 
 Behold, accordingly, this childlike soul, this babe in 
 Christ, this man of one book — but that book the Bible, 
 — step forth amid the confused Babel that called itself 
 English Christianity in the seventeenth century", to 
 bear testimony in the name of God to the inner truth 
 and meaning of all these things that the sects were 
 battling over. He thought himself a prophet, a ' Nabi 
 like one of those in the Old Testament 1^. And, for my 
 
 tractates which are made about it Church and State were in the utmost 
 
 [God's truth], and by their vain disorder and confusion at the close 
 
 jangling and commentaries, by which of this year.' 
 
 it is rendered a hundredfold more '^ This was precisely the Mon- 
 dark and intricate than of itself it tanist feeling, in the second century, 
 is ; which great learning, so ac- ' By bringing forward an Old Testa- 
 counted of — to wit, your school ment prophetic order, it formed a 
 divinity (which taketh up almost a check against mingling the Old Tes- 
 man's whole lifetime to learn), brings lament priesthood with the Christian 
 not a whit nearer to God.' standpoint.' (Neander, Antignost. p. 
 " Fox first appeared in public in 202 ; Bohn.) And it is curious that 
 1646; and 'wifliout all question,' the great Montanist, TertuUian, in 
 says Neal {Puritans, ii. 425), 'both some respects resembles George Fox. 
 
 • ) 
 
254 THE QUAKERS. [lect. 
 
 own part, I will not undertake to say he was not. For 
 his ' heart was hot within him ; and at last he spake 
 with his tongue.' And if, in his early days, he was 
 guilty of extravagances which he afterwards regretted ; 
 if his followers (especially when all the sects combined 
 to persecute them) became still more heated, fanatical, 
 insolent ; and if both he and they (buoyed up by an 
 enthusiasm which for a time overcame the natural and 
 healthy action of common-sense) bade adieu to all the 
 established customs and decent conventionalities of the 
 world, — such conduct, under the strange circumstances 
 of the Commonwealth, was not, perhaps, wholly un- 
 pardonable. It is by such weak things, and by the 
 ignoble, ignorant persons, the ' babes and sucklings ' (as 
 William Penn reminds us ^^), that God's greatest works 
 are oftentimes accomplished for mankind. 
 
 No : it is not in the affirmations of George Fox, but 
 (as usually is the case) in his denials, that the Church 
 of Christ meets him and repudiates his teaching ; tells 
 him plainly that his system is no system to bear the 
 wear and tear of time ; that even his warnings against 
 externalism were but temporary truths, local truths, half 
 truths, — not the eternal, catholic, solid and many-sided 
 verities of the Gospel by which men live : and that when 
 
 ' TertuUian's mind had acuteness, world, and especially the expression 
 
 depth, and dialectic dexterity ; but of it, might sound uncouth and 
 
 no logical clearness, repose, and unfashionable to nice ears, his matter 
 
 arrangement. It was profound and was, nevertheless, very profound. . . 
 
 fruitful, but not harmonious : the so that I have many times been 
 
 check of sober self-government was overcome in myself, and been made 
 
 wanting.' {Ibid. p. 206.) to say, with my Lord and Master 
 
 " 'He was a man that God en- upon the like occasion, "I thank 
 
 dued with a clear and wonderful Thee, O Father, that Thou hast hid 
 
 depth, a discerner of other's spirits, these things from the wise and 
 
 and veiy much a master of his own. prudent of this world, and revealed 
 
 And though the side of his under- them to babes." ' (Penn, Preface to 
 
 standing which lay next to the Fox's Journal, p. 30.) 
 
v.] 'DENIALS' OF QUAKERISM ALONE UNTRUE. 255 
 
 they were coupled with downright denials of the other 
 side of truth, negations of what wiser saints of God than 
 he, and far broader societies of Christians than his, had 
 held most sacred and indispensable for spiritual growth 
 ■ — then (and not till then) he had fallen into error and 
 was on the way to schism, and so on the way to weaken 
 and shatter still farther the Church of his Master Christ, 
 which he was sincerely and devoutly anxious to build up. 
 
 For it was not long, before that which he had begun 
 as a mere ' Society of Friends,' organized and settled 
 itself (especially when it fell under the " guidance of 
 more educated men, like Barclay and Penn) into a 
 sect or — as the fashionable nomenclature now is — a 
 ' Church.' Terrible were the persecutions it underwent, 
 in America from the Independents, and from all the 
 sects alike in England. But it thought scorn of all these 
 things. And after arranging its own discipline by an 
 ably-devised, though very bald and prosaic, system of 
 ' meetings,' it has since been able, with the most extra- 
 ordinary success, to infuse the spirit and essence of 
 George Fox's teaching into the very veins (as it were) 
 of the modern world ^*. It has all but put down slavery : 
 it is on its way, I hope, to put down war ^^. 
 
 But let us hear now, from his own pen and those of 
 his best-accredited followers, what his doctrines were. 
 At the very first opening of his career, the simplicity 
 
 " It is curious that the same thing " To what strange lengths, in the 
 
 has to be said of its correlative de- opposite direction, does the almost 
 
 nomination in primitive times. 'Al- Antichristian worship of mere me- 
 
 though the sect and its subdivisions chanical centralization and efficiency 
 
 continued to flourish for a time . . lead some Romanists ! E. g. De 
 
 the chief success of Montanism was Maistre (6'0/re'es, ii. 16) actually says: 
 
 gained in another way — by infusing ' Rien ne s'accorde dans ce monde, 
 
 much of its character into the comme I'esprit religieux et I'esprit 
 
 Church.' (Robertson, Church Hist, militaire.' 
 i- 77-) 
 
256 ' THE QUAKERS. [lect. 
 
 of the man is quite amazing. He had evidently never 
 once heard the veriest (jroixda and commonplaces of the 
 Catholic teaching of the Church. 'As I was walking 
 in a field on a first-day morning,' says he, 'the Lord 
 opened unto me, " that being bred at Oxford or Cam- 
 bridge was not enough to fit and qualify men to be 
 ministers of Christ:" and I wondered at it; because it 
 was the common belief of people. But I saw it clearly 
 as the Lord opened it to me, and was satisfied, and 
 admired the goodness of the Lord ^''.' Now we may 
 smile at this ; and say (what is perfectly true) that this 
 is simply the teaching of the Catholic Church from the 
 very beginning ; and that if George Fox had only 
 opened that not very uncommon book — the English 
 Prayer-book — he would have found it set down in very 
 large and distinct characters indeed ". But then, let 
 
 '° Jmirnal, i. 53. efgo, necesse est, cogitatione mimdus, 
 ^^ The slightest acquaintance with actione praecipuus, discretus in si- 
 the history and literature of the lentio, utilis in verbo, . . benfe agen- 
 Church will abundantly confirm this tibus per humilitatem socius, contrji. 
 statement. See, e.g. (i) Chrys. (a.d.^Si) delinquentiam vitia per zelum justitiae 
 Be Sacerdot. iii. 7 : ' If it be enough erectus, internorum curam in ex- 
 simply to be called "pastor," and to teriorum occupatione non minuens, 
 undertake the duty at hap-hazard, exteriorum providentiam in inter- 
 and there be no danger in so doing, norum sollicitudine non relinquens.' 
 — then accuse me, if you will, of (4) Bernard (a.d. 1 i 50) rfc Conversione, 
 levity [in shrinking from the min- ad Clericos, cap. xix : 'Vae vobis, qui 
 istry]. But if there be need of a clavem tollitis non scientiEe soliim, 
 ready intellect, and (a long way sed et auctoritatis I Tollitis enim, 
 before intellect) of much grace from et non accipitis, claves. . . Nanudi- 
 God, of uprightness of character, of cordes utique vocat Pater coelestis ; 
 pureness of life, and of virtue greater qui non quasrunt qux sua sunt, sed 
 than belongs to unassisted man, — qui Jesu Christi, . . Vse ministris in- 
 then deny rae not your sympathy.' fidelibus, qui necdum reconciliati 
 (2) Aug. (a.d. 400) de Doctr.vi. 27; reconciliationis aliense negotia ap- 
 ' Habet (ut obedientfer audiatur) prehendunt I Vse filiis irce, qui se 
 quantScunque granditate dictionis ministros gratise profitentur I ' (5) A 
 majuspondus — wVa dicentis. . . Abun- Pan- Anglican Council, under Car- 
 dant enim, qui mala: vitje suse de- dinal Otho (a.d. 1237), Lyndwood, 
 fensionem ex ipsis suis Prsepositis et p. 1 6 : Johnson, English Canons, i. 
 Doctoribus quserant.' (3) Greg. I. 155: 'The sacred order is therefore 
 (a.d. 600) rfe Pas/oca/i Cu)-o, ii. I ; 'Sit to be conferred upon worthy men 
 
v.] 
 
 PREVALENT MISTAKES AT THAT TIME. 
 
 257 
 
 US reflect. Here was a man of the people, who appa- 
 rently had been a Churchman up to the age of twenty, 
 but who had (it seems) never once been taught these 
 things. He had most probably never once had the 
 solemnities of ordination brought within his view ; and 
 he testifies that the 'common belief of people' at 
 that time was the gross and incredible parody of the 
 Church's teaching about the ministry — that a University 
 degree was all that was required to enable a man to 
 preach the Gospel and undertake the cure of souls ! 
 I blush to think how secular, how dead, how mechanical, 
 how official, the Church must have seemed to such a 
 man — and to thousands such as he — when such were 
 the results of the popular teaching of her clergy. 
 
 and in a worthy manner. . . Since it 
 is perilous to ordain unwortliy per- 
 sons, we enact that a diUgent in- 
 quiry be made by the Bishop before 
 ordination.' (6) Provincial synod of 
 Canterbury, under Abp. Reynolds 
 (a.d. 1322), Lyndwood, p. 47: 'Let 
 none be admitted to officiate, unless 
 it be first ascertained, that they be 
 properly ordained, of pure life, and 
 of sufficient learning.' (7) The English 
 Ordinal, (a) Pontif. Sarisb. : ' Quantum 
 ad humanum spectat examen — natura, 
 scienti^ at moribus, digni habentur : ' 
 (b) Prayer-book of 1549, &c. : 'Take 
 heed that the persons whom ye 
 present to us, be apt and meet for 
 their learning and godly conversation, 
 to exercise their ministry. . . Do you 
 trust you are inwardly moved by the 
 Holy Ghost ? . . Will you apply all 
 your diligence, to frame and fashion 
 your own lives, according to the 
 doctrine of Christ?' (8) The Thirty- 
 nine Articles (a.d. 1552), Art. 26 : 
 ' It appertaineth to the discipline of 
 the Church, that inquiry be made of 
 evil ministers, and that they . . be 
 deposed.' (9) [We now come to the 
 seventeenth century, George Fox's 
 own time] ; a.d. 1604, the Canons 
 
 (now in force) imperatively require 
 assurance of ' a good life and con- 
 versation,' in candidates for orders. 
 
 (10) A.D. 1632, George Herbert writes 
 {Country Parson, ch. ii) : ' Think 
 not, when they have read the Fathers 
 or Schoolmen, a minister is made, 
 and the thing is done. The greatest 
 and hardest preparation is within' 
 
 (11) A.D. 1633, Charles I. and Abp. 
 Laud issue instructions to each bishop 
 personally, 'That there be a special 
 care taken by them all, that their or- 
 dinations be solemn and not of un- 
 worthy persons.' (Wilkins, Concil. iv. 
 480.) ( 12) A.D. tfi34,a Synod at Dublin 
 is again imperative in demanding as- 
 surance of ' a good life and conversa- 
 tion.' {Ibid. p. 503.) (13) A.D. 1640, 
 the two Convocations of Canterbury 
 and York solemnly ' require all those, 
 to whom the government of the clergy 
 is committed, . . to reform all scan- 
 dalous and offensive persons, if any 
 be in the ministry ; as they will 
 answer to God.' — Surely, then, it did 
 not require a special revelation to 
 George Fox to inform the Church 
 that mere intellectual qualifications 
 were not sufficient for a clergyman. 
 
 S 
 
2 58 THE QUAKERS. [lECT. 
 
 But now, unfortunately, instead of feeling an impulse 
 towards improving the Church, instead of inquiring 
 whether her own beautiful sacraments and formularies 
 did not of themselves bear witness to higher things than 
 her clergy at that time taught, — the very first thought 
 that occurred to good men, in those miserable Puritan 
 times, was that of secession from the Church. Fox, 
 therefore, instantly determined, on the strength of this 
 amazing revelation, to go to Church no more. 'What 
 should I follow these for.' So neither these, nor any 
 of the Dissenting people could I join with ; but was 
 a stranger to all, relying wholly upon the Lord Jesus 
 Christ.' Indeed he seems to have been far more 
 averse to the Dissenting ' professors,' than he was to 
 the Church ; and thought them by far the greatest de- 
 ceivers of all. The priests of the Church, (he says,) 
 'though they stood in deceit and acted by the dark 
 power, . . yet they were not the greatest deceivers spoken 
 of in the Scriptures. . . But the Lord opened to me who 
 the greatest deceivers were, . . such as could speak by 
 experience of God's miracles and wonders. . . These that 
 could speak so much of their experiences of God, and 
 yet turned from the Spirit and the Word, and went 
 unto the gainsaying. These were, and would be, the 
 greatest deceivers, far beyond the priests i*.' 
 
 (l.) We see, I think, at once of what this man's mind is 
 in travail ; though he finds such difficulty in expressing 
 himself intelligibly. His first great doctrine is this, (and 
 it is also the doctrine of the Catholic Church) : that the 
 visible and outwardly organized Church,^ — with all her 
 hierarchy, her canons, her ritual, her creeds, her sacra- 
 ments, — is nothing more than the shell (as it were) of the 
 
 '' Journal, i. 67. 
 
v.] TRUTHS TAUGHT BY THE QUAKERS. 259 
 
 living creature, the scaffolding of the real building, the 
 means and not the end, the casket and not the jewel. 
 He points out how prone men are to forget this fact, 
 and to value the outside case for its own sake ; and so, 
 either to love the Church's paraphernalia, for sesthetic 
 and imaginative reasons rather than the true one ■'^ ; 
 or, on the other hand, to be enamoured of (so-called) 
 ' schemes of salvation,' bodies of divinity, and elaborate 
 confessions of faith, rather for the intellectual pleasure 
 they afford, than for the higher reason that these things 
 may be made the helps and framework of the spiritual 
 Hfe 20. 
 
 It surely need not be said that every word of this is 
 true ; that it is really (had George Fox but known it) 
 the teaching of the Catholic Church from the beginning. 
 At least, it may be confidently asked, what accredited 
 Church author, of any age or country, has taught other- 
 wise ? Who has ever maintained the heathenish super- 
 stition, that the framework of the Church, and (as it 
 were) the boards and sockets and pins of the tabernacle, 
 were sacred in God's eyes for their own sake ; that the 
 official hierarchy and priesthood were aught but the 
 ' Servi servorum Dei ; ' or that the very highest rituals 
 
 '' ' At another time it was opened word of the Lord God unto them, — 
 
 to me, " that God, who made the that they lived in words : but God 
 
 world, did not dwell in temples made Almighty looked for fruits amongst 
 
 with hands." This, at first, seemed them.' (Fox, Journal, i. 104.) 'The 
 
 a strange word ; because both priests priest (who was a Baptist and a 
 
 and people used to call their temples chapel-priest) came to oppose ; but 
 
 or churches "dreadful places," "holy the Lord confounded him. . . Then 
 
 ground," and the " temples of God." ' the priest out with his Bible, and 
 
 {Fox, Journal,!. 53.) '"Alas, poor said it was the Word of God. I 
 
 man," said I, " dost thou call the told him, it was the words of God, 
 
 steeple -house the Church ? The but not God the Word. . . Then he 
 
 Church is the people, whom God said he would prove it to be a god : 
 
 hath purchased with His blood, — so he toiled himself afresh, till he 
 
 and not the house." ' {Ibid. p. 113.) perspired again.' {Ibid. p. 151.) 
 
 '" 'I told them, that this was the 
 
 S 2 
 
26o THE QUAKERS. [lECT. 
 
 and sacraments were anything in themselves, but ' means 
 of grace,' ' moral (not physical) instruments ' of sanctifi- 
 cation, and therefore never performed for their own sakes 
 as if they were so many incantations, pleasing (for some 
 inscrutable reason) to the great Author of our being ? 
 
 But at the same time, I think it must be honestly 
 confessed, that, at many epochs, these true and Catholic 
 doctrines have not been so openly and prominently stated 
 in the Church, as they might and ought to have been. 
 And more especially, in the times which succeeded the 
 revival of learning, and that great awakening of intelli- 
 gence which has continued in increasing measure down 
 to our own day, surely 'timidity' was far too much 
 mistaken by the clergy for 'prudence:' and when the 
 laity, — no longer 'babes in Christ,' — might well have 
 been made 'friends' and shown all that their Lord 
 doeth, the old system of reserve and the demand of 
 implicit obedience was too long kept up, — lest perchance 
 what was understood might run the risk of being de- 
 spised, and might produce rebellions in the Church. 
 
 But, it appears quite plainly, it is the opposite 
 system that has produced rebellions and schisms with- 
 out end. Were it not well, therefore, that the Church 
 should condescend to learn this lesson, even from the 
 humble shepherd of Drayton-in-the-Clay : not merely 
 that her own ancient spiritual doctrine about the ministry 
 and sacraments is true; but that it were well if the 
 truth were more often acknowledged and publicly pro- 
 claimed : not merely that the clergy are but temporary 
 stewards of Christ's mysteries for a practical purpose, 
 and the Church's 'servants for Jesu's sake;' but that 
 they might advantageously explain their status more 
 frequently to the people, and affirm in words — what the 
 mediaeval painters never scrupled to do in figures,— 
 
v.] DOCTRINE OF THE 'INNER LIGHT.' 26 1 
 
 viz. that many of the official hierarchy, who had hypo- 
 critically and unwillingly done service, and 'cast out 
 devils in Christ's name,' will be disowned by Him at last, 
 and be found on His left hand at the day of doom. 
 
 (2.) The second great doctrine taught by the founder 
 of the Quakers is of an analogous kind. It is the im- 
 portant and much overlooked doctrine of tlie universal 
 inward light, by which he (in common with the Catholic 
 Church) protested against the dreadful heresy of Calvin. 
 There is no thoughtful man, I am persuaded, even in 
 our own day, who has not (amid the ' foolish and un- 
 learned' controversies with which the Church has of 
 late years been distracted) sometimes shuddered at the 
 words, — almost of treason against the inner light of con- 
 science, and of blasphemy against the indwelling Spirit 
 who ' leads men into truth,' — into which the eager 
 defenders of some hotly-contested position have been 
 led by their intemperate zeal. But far more was this 
 the case in earlier times : when, wielding some favourite 
 but broken fragment of the Church's machinery in their 
 hands, the religious combatants of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries were writhing in defeat or frantic 
 with victory ; and (in either case) held the instrument 
 with which they fought dearer than life, truer than the 
 truth itself. Take, for instance, that which is by far the 
 most striking case of all, — the attitude of the Reforming 
 party towards the Holy Scriptures. It is briefly summed 
 up in the well-known aphorism of Chillingworth ; ' The 
 Bible is the religion of Protestants.' And so it really 
 came to be. So it really is still, in many a narrow circle 
 where the fresher, freer air of the Catholic teaching of 
 the Church has failed to penetrate. 
 
 In those small Dissenting circles (as we have seen in 
 a former Lecture, and as might be substantiated by a 
 
2 62 THE QUAKERS. [leCT. 
 
 hundred proofs) the Bible,— which is only one among the 
 many instruments of grace committed to the faithful 
 usage of the Church, — is wrongly made the sole code of 
 statutes, treasury of docti'ines, directory of worship, for 
 the Christian Church. The conscience, which is (if any- 
 thing is) the shrine and vehicle of the spiritual life of the 
 man, is positively crushed out by the superincumbent 
 weight of dead texts and precedents of Scripture, which 
 are unmercifully heaped upon it. He may not breathe, 
 he may not live, he may not believe, he may not pour 
 out his pent-up soul in worship, hope, and love, but 
 precisely in such predetermined grooves as Scripture 
 shall have marked out for him. The experiences of a 
 lifetime lived with God shall go for nothing ; the burn- 
 ing thoughts that wake within him in some glorious 
 cathedral or beneaththe star-lit sky must count for airy 
 fancies ; the certainties that move him altogether, with 
 the full momentum of his being, and carry him (with a 
 faith that hostile arguments can never reach) to Christ, 
 shall be accounted madness and folly, — unless all these 
 things can show their credentials in a text, unless the 
 life in Christ can show a literal law to justify it, unless 
 the experience can show it has been copied from Acts or 
 Galatians, and the certainty can set forth all its logical 
 procedure in terms taken from some Epistle written 
 eighteen hundred years ago, to a people whose very lan- 
 guage has ceased to exist. 
 
 Surprising and almost anti-Christian bondage ! What ! 
 a Churchman asks such people in amazement, — has the 
 Lord left us nothing but a Book .' Has He armed the 
 Church, His evangelizing society on earth, with no other 
 instrument wherewith to reach men's hearts and souls, 
 than this? Are there no other ' sacramenta,' or holy 
 means of grace ; no more present, no more living 
 
v.] 
 
 THIS TOO TAUGHT BY THE CHURCH. 
 
 263 
 
 ' oracles of God,' than these ? And in particular,— did 
 He mean nothing when He promised Christendom 
 'another Comforter;' or was that 'other Comforter' 
 removed with the inspired Apostles, and the Church 
 ever since been (as it were) ' empty, swept and gar- 
 nished,' waiting for, — or rather despairing of, — its holy 
 promised guest, who should lead it into truth and peace? 
 We all know perfectly well, that this has not been the 
 teaching of the Catholic Church. She has bidden her sons 
 not fear to recognize, in the gentle whispers of their 
 Christian conscience, in the strong wrestlings of some 
 inward conflict, in the sweet and full conviction of some 
 glorious truth, in the passages of a filial friendly walking 
 with God, — the adorable and neither mute nor insensible 
 presence of the Holy Spirit ^\ She has taught, as 
 
 ^^ Cf. AugiTStine, Confess, x. 26 ; 
 ' Ubique, Veritas ! prcesides omnibus 
 consulentibus te, simulque respondes 
 omnibus etiam diversa consulentibus. 
 Liquide tu respondes ,■ sed non liquide 
 omnes audiunt. . . Sero te amavi, 
 pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova 1 
 Sero te amavi ! et ecce intiis eras, ut 
 ego foris et ibi te qucerebam.' — Ibid. 
 xi. 3 ; ' Scripsit hoc Moses . . sed 
 unde scirem an varum diceret ? Intiis 
 utique mihi, intiis in domicilio cogi- 
 tationis . . sine strepitu syllabarum 
 diceret, "verum dicit.'" — Bernard 
 (a.d. 1150), Sermo de Convert, cap. i. 
 [i. 1 135. ed. Gaume] : 'Ad banc 
 ergij interiorem vocem aures cordis 
 erigi admonemus, — ut loquentem 
 Deum intiis audire, quam foris ho- 
 minem, studeatis . . Nee sane labo- 
 randum est, ut ad vocis hujus per- 
 veniatur auditum : labor est potiiis 
 aures obturare ne audias. Nimiram 
 vox ipsa se offert, ipsa se ingerit, nee 
 pulsare interim cessat ad ostia singu- 
 lorum . . Est enim non tantum vox 
 virtutis, sed et radius lucis, — annun- 
 tians pariter hominibus peccata 
 eorum et illuminans abscondita te- 
 
 nebrarum.' — The Abbey of the Holy 
 Ghost (A.D. 1350: Early English Text 
 Society, No. 26): 'I here make a 
 book of the religion of the heart, — 
 that is, cf the abbey of the Holy 
 Ghost ; that all those that may not 
 be bodily in religion [i.e. the monas- 
 tic life], may be ghostly. A Jesu 
 mercy ! Where may this abbey best 
 be found, and this religion? Now 
 certes, nowhere so well as in a 
 place that is called conscience. And 
 whoso will be busy to find this holy 
 religion, that may each good Chris- 
 tian man and woman do, that will 
 be busy thereabout.' The whole of 
 this most interesting spiritual alle- 
 gory is well worth reading. — Bishop 
 Sanderson (a.d. 1634'), Sermons, i. 205 : 
 ' The conscience hath this power over 
 men's wills and actions, by virtue of 
 that unchangeable law of God, which 
 He establisheth by a law of nature 
 in our first creation.' — Campbell, 
 On the Atonement, p. 110 : 'This 
 power is mainly to be referred to 
 conscience, and the light that is in 
 God from every man. For great as 
 are the obligations of conscience to 
 
264 THE QUAKERS. [leCT: 
 
 St. Paul taught, that the Christian's breast is a shrine, 
 wherein that Holy One (like a Divine Shekinah) dwells. 
 And she has bidden us, above all things, not to quench 
 that light, not to grieve and drive away that guest, not 
 to silence that voice — which intertwined with our prayers 
 reacheth the very heart of God, which mingled with our 
 questionings and studies revealeth the deep things of 
 God, and carrieth us up into the recesses of that Eternal 
 Mind, whose contemplation 'passeth knowledge,' yet 
 ' whom to know is everlasting life ^^.' 
 
 Yet I fear not to say that within the Church of Eng- 
 land, no less than among the Dissenting communions, 
 this doctrine of the Holy Ghost and of His indwelling 
 light has been far too little heard. And therefore, when 
 in the seventeenth century a fragment (as it were) of her 
 substance was thrown off on this account, and began to 
 revolve, not far away, but yet in a separate orbit of its 
 own, — it were well to acknowledge that, even thus too, 
 good may be brought out of evil; that even from a body 
 thus temporarily estranged, some rays, which else would 
 have failed to reach us, may be reflected on our eye ; and 
 that no small debt of gratitude is due to one who first 
 (even amid some error and extravagance) recovered for 
 us the true prominence of the third great section of the 
 Nicene Creed. 
 
 (3.) Another great doctrine broached by George Fox 
 and the early Quakers is, yet again, a doctrine of the 
 Catholic Church, — which had been obscured or denied by 
 the Puritans of the seventeenth century. If Puritanism 
 be true, if Calvin's philosophy of the ways of God to 
 man be a faithful portraiture of the principles which 
 
 Scripture, not less assuredly are the '^ John xvii. 3 ; cf. Rom. viii. 1 6, 
 obligations of Scripture to con- 26 ; i Cor. ii. 10 ; &c., &c. 
 science.' 
 
v.] QUAKER PROTEST AGAINST CALVINISM. 265 
 
 govern this universe, — then all that a religious man can 
 do is to lay his hand upon his mouth that speaks, and 
 upon his eyes that see, and to bow to an inscrutable and 
 irresistible Power. God's ways find no response what- 
 ever in his heart. God's sovereign decrees wake no 
 adoring sense of justice, or even goodness in his mind ; and 
 the Church becomes simply a close society of Heaven's 
 favourites, conscious (in some very suspicious way) of 
 their being such, and therefore safe for ever— on no 
 moral, intelligible, or spiritual grounds, but merely 
 because God ivills it — from falling back among the 
 horrible mass of a festering and accursed world. 
 
 A more complete parody of the truth, — -attempting 
 to save the credit of half-a-dozen misinterpreted texts 
 of Scripture, at the expense of all for which Scripture 
 was given and Christ came into the world, — I will be 
 bold to say, never entered into the brain of fallen man 
 to conceive. For it is a mere brain-conception. It is a 
 mere piece of fine-spun logic, and French system-making. 
 It is not itself religion. And hence arises the curious 
 fact, that it may be held, and often is held, by really 
 good men, quite apart from their religion ; that it may 
 be lodged in the bare intellect alone ; and does not in- 
 juriously aff"ect (as we know in a thousand cases it does 
 not) the religious life and heart of the man. But, on the 
 other hand, it may very seriously affect it. It may pro- 
 duce, in one word, Pharisaism. And the next logical 
 stage to that is Antinomianism,— the strong conviction 
 that the Elect of Heaven (being such for good and all) 
 remain such, be they of what moral character they may 2-: 
 
 ^ Take the following specimens, and wicked and the worst of men 
 
 from Love's Sermons (a.d. 1654), p. the objects of His election, — rather 
 
 203 : ' God, in His eternal counsel, than civil, honest men, rather than 
 
 doth commonly make the profane men of civil and moral conversation 
 
266 THE QUAKERS. [lect. 
 
 that moral renovation (in short) has nothing really to do 
 with the question : — Religion and morals coming at last 
 to be absolutely divorced one from the other, and a low, 
 imperfect, worldly state being comfortably acquiesced in 
 by the passive and waiting child of God ^*. 
 
 Against all this, the voice of the Church in England, 
 during the sixteenth century, was all too feebly and 
 doubtfully raised. Perhaps the alliance of Calvin and 
 the foreign Reformers seemed too important, amid her 
 dreadful struggle with Rome, to lose, or even run the 
 risk of losing it. And farther, the deep and spiritual 
 truth, germinating amid all this mass of falsehood, and 
 akin to it, she was too nervously aware of. And (I fear 
 it must also be added) she became ere long too busily en- 
 gaged in doing the State's work, and in helping to enforce 
 by mere outward methods the magnificent dream of a 
 national religious unity resting on law, instead of rest- 
 ing on persuasion. So that she had little time, and 
 ever diminishing opportunity, for counterbalancing these 
 dangerous errors, by a distinct inculcation of their 
 kindred truths. And so — surely, not in His wrath, but 
 in His mercy, — God provided that here again the 
 perishing truth should be revived by agencies outside 
 the ordinary mechanism of the Church. One arose, 
 a despised and uneducated man, to give testimony 
 against these errors in the following way : ' While I was 
 in prison [at Derby], divers professors came to discourse 
 with me; and I had a sense, before they spoke, that 
 they came to plead for sin and imperfection. I asked 
 
 here in the world.' There is a truth, of men, at this moment, very credit- 
 here : but how fearfully exaggerated able to them. . . The fatal trait is the 
 and open to fatal misuse ! Contrast divorce between Religion and Mo- 
 with this John Wesley's admirable rality.' (Emerson, Conduct of Life, 
 sermon ' On the Means of Grace.' p. 128.) 
 ^* ' I do not find the religions life 
 
v.] HERE TOO THEY AGREE WITH THE CHURCH. 26'J 
 
 them whether they were believers, and had faith ? And 
 they said yes . . I repHed, if your faith be true it will give 
 you victory over sin and the devil, purify your hearts 
 and consciences, and bring you to please God . . But they 
 could not endure to hear of purity, and of victory over 
 sin and the devil . . At another time a company of pro- 
 fessors came ; and they began to plead for sin . . I asked 
 them, w/iai hope is it you have ? Is Christ in you, the 
 hope of glory ? Doth it purify you, as He is pure ? But 
 they could not abide to hear of being made pure here. 
 Then I bid them forbear talking of the Scriptures, which 
 were holy men's words . . For since you plead for impu- 
 rity and sin, which is of the devil, what have you to do 
 with holy men's words ? Now the keeper of tlie prison, 
 being a high professor, was greatly enraged against me, 
 and spoke very wickedly of me. . . This was in the year 
 
 It must strike us all, I think, that here is nothing 
 more or less than i/ie CImrch's doctrine of sanctity, — 
 preached unawares by one who had separated from her, 
 to the Calvinists and mixed multitude of 'high pro- 
 fessing' Puritans of the seventeenth century. It was 
 (as William Penn justly says) ' not merely in words 
 pressing repentance, conversion and holiness ; but 
 
 ^' 'Fo-x., Journal,!. 84: cf. ibid. .^14. would, — as David an adulterer, and 
 
 At Garshore, in Scotland (1657), Paul a persecutor. I was led to open 
 
 'we had a great meeting; and seve- to the people the falseness and the 
 
 ral professors came to it. Now the folly of their priests' doctrines . . 
 
 priests had frightened the people Was not Christ a propitiation for 
 
 with the doctrine of Election and the sins of the whole world ? He died 
 
 Reprobation,— telling them that God for all men, the ungodly as well as 
 
 had ordained the greatest part of the godly.'— After this, it is strange 
 
 mankind for hell ; and that, let them to see Mr. Spurgeon and other Cal- 
 
 pray, or preach, or sing, or do what vinists make complimentary lectures 
 
 they could, it was all to no purpose, and speeches to the Quakers,— 
 
 if they were ordained for hell : that merely, I fear, to engage them in the 
 
 God had a certain number elected proposed crusade against the Na- 
 
 for heaven, let them do what they tional Church. 
 
268 THE QUAKERS. [lECT. 
 
 doing it knowingly and experimentally ; and direct- 
 ing those to whom he preached to a sufficient prin- 
 ciple, and telling them where it is and by what tokens 
 they might know it, and which way they might expe- 
 rience the power and efficacy of it ; which is more than 
 theory and speculation^*".' 
 
 Yes ! this is precisely what the great Catholic 
 teachers of the Church have always taught, it is what 
 her glorious symbols mean, it is what she has ever 
 spoken in poetry while the Quakers (and similar good 
 people) say the same thing in prose. So that there was 
 really no need to go out of the Church to teach all this. 
 What was urgently wanted, and what Christ (I think) 
 was really commissioning George Fox and others to do, 
 was not a destructive but rather a constructive work, — the 
 work of breathing fresh life into old forms, recovering 
 the true meaning of old symbols, raising from the dead 
 old words that needed translating into modern equiva- 
 lents 2'. For this is just the work that a 'Clergy,' of 
 whatever denomination, always finds it so very hard to 
 do. ' Traditionalism,' — which, in its due measure, is the 
 same thing in the Church as 'loyalty' is in the State, — 
 when it runs into excess, easily hardens into ' officialism.' 
 And then ere long it takes on a new and spurious life ; 
 acquires a fresh and disastrous anti-Christian power of 
 its own ; and becomes, in short, an active superstition. 
 Yet a Clergy ought, surely, to know when it is time, — 
 
 =« Preface to Journal, i. 21. in which men will receive it at the 
 
 2' Cf Edinburgh Review, October present day.'— This is the urgent 
 
 1866 art.vi. onSccsf/omo. 'What task, the paramount duty, of the 
 
 has the author done? He has simply living Church, in our own and m 
 
 translated the dead foi-mute of ortho- every age. With true wisdom has 
 
 doxy into the living language of it been said, ' it is not by rejecting 
 
 modern thought and of men of the what is formal, but by interpreting 
 
 world. That is to say, he has pre- it, that we advance in true spiri- 
 
 sented Christianity in the only shape tuality.' {The Patience of Hope, p. 70.) 
 
v.] THE MODERN AGE PROSAIC. 269 
 
 not indeed (God forbid !) to sweep aivay old precious 
 historical rites and forms, that touch the man of educa- 
 tion so profoundly, — but to explain and translate them : 
 and to recognize — if it really be so — that the age of 
 childhood and poetry is at an end, and that the reign 
 of prose has begun. Else how can they speak home 
 to the age of prose ? How can they preach Christ in- 
 telligibly to it ? How can they gild and refine and ele- 
 vate it, once more, to the higher and truer poetry that 
 comes of maturity and cultivation ^^ ? No ; they will 
 rather be rejected by the laity, as speaking enigmas and 
 trifling with unrealities. Serious sects will arise, without 
 end, — to whom all symbol is an abomination. And so 
 all the lovely play and cross-lights of her many-coloured 
 ritual, will — by our fault, by our infatuated and unintelli- 
 gent apathy — be misunderstood and cast away by a half - 
 taught middle-class, who (more than any other) need the 
 Church, and are perhaps needed by her. 
 
 (4.) And this brings me to the fourth and last point, 
 which I have time to speak of here, as characteristic of 
 the teaching of George Fox and the Quakers : and that 
 is, their denials; the negative part of their doctrine; 
 and especially their unhappy mistakes about the Sacra- 
 ments. The whole of their teaching, no doubt, hangs 
 together; and all has a tendency towards a Gnostic 
 ultra-spiritualism, of which the Church has had plen- 
 tiful experience in all ages, and whose ultimate results 
 she knows too well. But here we emerge, at length, 
 into a department of Quaker doctrine which is pure 
 
 '=■ How wonderfully has George And the Lord answered, "That it 
 
 Fox caught this true characteristic was needful I should have a sense 
 
 of the genuine shepherd of souls I ' I of all conditions ; how else could I 
 
 cried to the Lord, saying, " Why speak to all conditions I " And in this 
 
 should I be thus, seeing I was never I saw the infinite love of God.' 
 
 addicted to commit these evils?" (Journal, 1.60.) 
 
270 THE QUAKERS. [lecT. 
 
 and simple denial. It is obvious, indeed, that the notion 
 of the ' inward light,' the direct and immediate illumi- 
 nation by the Holy Ghost, may very easily lead (if 
 pushed too far) to a displacement of doctrinal balance. 
 It suggests to a proud and headstrong mind, a contempt 
 for all media, all ' means of grace.' It thinks itself able 
 to do without them. Possibly it is able. For St. Augus- 
 tine himself allowed that there were high states of reli- 
 gious consciousness, when a man (for instance) who had 
 used the Scriptures till their inspiration became (as it 
 were) a very part of himself, was able to dispense with 
 the Scriptures. He had climbed up by a ladder; and 
 then needed not the ladder. He had built the house so 
 far, that the work of the scaffolding was done ^^ 
 
 We must not therefore deny Y\\^\. possibly, conceivably, 
 it may be so. Else we shall put ourselves and our 
 cause into a false position ; and shall be unable to deal 
 with those very striking expressions of George Fox, 
 which remind one so vividly of a greater man than he, 
 who lived 1400 years before him. ' No one (said Origen) 
 can rightly read St. John, who has not lain with him on 
 Jesus' breast 2".' 'I saw plainly (says Fox) that none 
 could read Moses aright, without Moses' spirit . . . Nor 
 could they know the words of Christ and His Apostles, 
 without His Spirit. But as man comes through, by the 
 Spirit and power of God, to Christ who fulfils the types, 
 figures, shadows, promises, prophecies that were of Him, 
 — and is led by the Holy Ghost into the truth and 
 
 2s ' Homo itaque Me, spe, et cari- i. 39.) 
 
 tate subnixus, eaque inconcussfe re- ^» 'Airapx') V-"' ™<''"'' 7f"'^_"'' ^d 
 
 tinens, non indiget Scriplnris — nisi (vayjiXia, tSiv U eiayyeXiwv^ drrapxp 
 
 ad alios instruendos . . Quibus taraen, to Kard. 'laavv-qv. o5 t6v vovv ou8eis 
 
 quasi machinis, tanta fidei et caritatis Sivarai \a0(tv jii] avaTrtaoiv ittl t6 
 
 in eis surrexit instruclio ut, perfec- arfiSos 'iT/ffoC. (Orig. in Joann. i. 
 
 turn aliquid tenentes, ea quae sunt ex p. 14; Lommatsch.) 
 parte non quadrant.' (Aug. de Doc/r., 
 
v.] POETRY OF THE CHURCH'S RITUAL. 271 
 
 substance of the Scriptures, sitting down in Him who 
 is the Author and End of them ; tlien they are read 
 and understood, with profit and great dehght '^.' 
 
 And why (one asks with amazement), cannot the very 
 same principle be appHed to all the glorious and beau- 
 tiful and instructive symbolism, creeds, sacraments, and 
 other mechanism of that Church, — wherein the same 
 Holy Ghost hath promised evermore to dwell ? Surely 
 herein He hath not belied His mission, to take of the 
 things of Christ and to show them unto us ! And the long 
 and varied developments of the Church (even down to 
 the singular phenomena of the sixteenth century, which 
 no one has yet been able fully to explain), have not 
 surely been a collapse and apostasy and failure, lasting 
 1500 — or even 1800 — years ! Can it be, that George Fox 
 too was a victim of the old Puritan delusion, that the 
 Scriptures are the sole organ of the Holy Ghost in this 
 world ^^ ? Is Quakerism too bound up to the belief, 
 that the Church was left by her Divine and All-wise 
 Founder, so scantily furnished, so ill-found in all the 
 means and helps of grace, — that a Book was all He 
 gave her ? That her noble and intelligent efforts to pro- 
 vide herself with a framework, to clothe her body 'all 
 glorious within ' with a raiment of fair needle-work, 
 honourable to her spouse, and comely for her children 
 to see, — was a gross apostasy ? That her common-sense 
 procedure (which those who study history can fully 
 understand), in organizing herself for a large and long 
 
 ^' Journal, i. 69. of the New Testament was written.' 
 
 ^2 The Quakers unhesitatingly ac- (journal, ii. 22.) 'Yet I had no 
 
 cept and employ the Holy Scriptures, slight esteem of the Holy Scriptures, 
 
 though they will accept no other of but they were very precious to me ; 
 
 the media of grace, which Christ lias for I was in that Spirit by which 
 
 committed to the Church's hands, they were given forth, and what the 
 
 ' That " light " could not be the Lord opened to me, I afterwards 
 
 Scriptures of the New Testament ; found was agreeable to them.' {Ibid. 
 
 for it was testified of before any part i. 71.) 
 
272 THE QUAKERS. [lECT. 
 
 campaign, was treason and folly ? And her beautiful 
 shell-work of external symbolism, of architecture, music, 
 ritual and sacraments, — so purely natural, spontaneous 
 and expressive, — were all the work of the devil and 
 not of the 'indwelling light;' an accursed and detest- 
 able thing, — because (forsooth) it was Christian and not 
 Gnostic, Catholic and adapted to all ages and not 
 merely to the age of prose, and (like man himself, for 
 whom it was all meant, and even the Lord Himself, who 
 ' despised not the Virgin's womb,') was compounded of 
 body as well as soul, and did not take for granted that 
 the deepest depths of all religious philosophy had been 
 reached, when the word ' spirituality ' had been uttered ? 
 
 Yet it seems that this umst be the Quakers' very great 
 mistake. For when you go into one of their meeting- 
 houses, if you reflect on what you see and can get over the 
 first strangeness of it, you find yourself present at one 
 of the most extraordinary external presentations of the 
 notion of non-externalism that the human mind has 
 perhaps ever conceived. Everything around you is a 
 symbol of anti-symbolism. All the Church's well-used 
 ' media,' or means of grace, are absent. Every trace of 
 her chequered history, and of the thousand suggestions 
 of varied times and men and countries which her ritual 
 presents, is wiped out as with a sponge. One memory 
 alone survives, — and it is one which every thoughtful 
 man would fain be rid of, — viz. the memory of the 
 almost frenzied and despairing effort of the distracted 
 seventeenth century, to be rid (at one blow) of all the 
 banners and watchwords of the chaotic sects, and (if it 
 must be so) to begin Christianity absolutely afresh and 
 over again. 
 
 Impossible wish ! Though it is the persistent efibrt of 
 every Dissenting community ; some fixing one period. 
 
v.] A QUAKER PLACE OF WORSHIP. 273 
 
 some another, to which the hour-hand of history shall 
 be pushed back ^-^ : and none having faith to see, that 
 the nineteenth century cannot be either the sixteenth 
 century, or the middle ages, or the fourth or fifth cen- 
 turies of dogmatic development ; or the Primitive Church ; 
 or the Apostolic Age ; or indeed anything but itself : 
 none having simplicity and filial confidence enough to 
 walk with God in His Church as it has now grown to 
 be ; and with patience and modesty to help and guide, 
 — not destroy and render impracticable, — its healthy 
 growth for the future. 
 
 Quakerism however, so far as lay in its power, and so 
 far as the external developments of the Church are con- 
 cerned, has committed this great sin and error against 
 our Common Master. You sit down in their assembly 
 — ' gathered ' remember, at enormous cost and suffering, 
 out of all the ecclesiastical bodies in the seventeenth 
 century — and in the plain square chamber, filled with 
 perhaps a numerous assembly, a thrilling and pro- 
 foundly solemn silence reigns. No one opens a book, 
 no aid to meditation of any sort or kind is vouchsafed. 
 It is an act of patient waiting upon God ; a listening for 
 any faint and still small whispers of the inward voice — 
 presumed and hoped to be the inspiration of the Holy 
 Ghost — which shall at last unseal some lips, and issue in 
 vocal prayer, instruction, or exhortation. And mean- 
 
 ^ ' I know not any one gap that sort very ill with the Church in her 
 hath let in more and more dangerous fulness of strength . . Thus the con- 
 errors into the Church than this, — stitutions that the Apostles made 
 that men take the words of the sacred concerning deacons and widows in 
 text, fitted to particular occasions, those primitive times, are with much 
 and to the condition of the times importunity, but very importunely 
 wherein they were written, and then withal, urged by the " discipline "- 
 apply them to themselves . . Sundry arians.' (Bishop Sanderson (a, d. 
 things spoken in Scripture agreeably 1634), Sermons, i. 216.) 
 to that infancy of the Church, would 
 
 T 
 
2 74 THE QUAKERS. [lect. 
 
 while, such morbid dread exists in some persons present, 
 of the slightest external symbolism, that the very atti- 
 tudes remain unchanged. The hat is not removed from 
 the head, the knee remains unbent, no sign of attention, 
 of interest or of concurrence in what is said, manifests 
 itself. The outward is (as far as it can be) utterly abo- 
 lished ; the man, as God made him, is not allowed to 
 exist ; his body is forgotten, his spirit is alone recognized 
 as having any wants, any rights, (I had almost said) any 
 redemptio7t, within the house of God. 
 
 And not only so : but along with all the other and 
 lesser ' sacramenta,' or outward media of inward grace, 
 even the two great Sacraments (instituted by the Lord 
 Himself) have also been allowed to disappear. 'The 
 baptism of the Holy Ghost and the Communion of the 
 body and blood of Christ (says one of their writers) are 
 not dependent on these outward ceremonies'*.' The 
 spiritual man, therefore, cannot need them. If we have 
 ' Christ dwelling in our hearts by faith ' (say they), what 
 can we possibly want with external receptions of Him .' 
 His dying commands. His parting injunctions, we do 
 not contemn ; but only interpret them in our own way. 
 We spiritually communicate. We do not believe that 
 manducation is the only way to feed on Christ, or water- 
 baptism the only way of admission to His love. 
 
 ' But oh, dear friends,' — the Churchman may reply, — 
 ' did it need you George Fox, and a grievous separation 
 in Christ's family of peace and love, and martyrdoms 
 and sufferings innumerable, to get you to that height 
 of wisdom } Had the founders of your Communion 
 been men of greater modesty or learning, they need 
 not have searched far before they found that (however 
 
 '* Evans' Exposition of the Faith, &c. (1867), p. 53. 
 
v.] TRUE 'SPIRITUALITY' IN THE CHURCH. 275 
 
 obscured at that time) the grand teaching of the 
 CathoHc Church upon the Sacraments was at least as 
 spiritual, and far more compassionate to weaker souls, 
 than yours. Never, in compassion to such souls, has she 
 said ' Stand by, till thou art spiritual ; and then thou 
 shalt taste that the Lord is precious.' But this she does 
 say and has always said : that when occasion demands 
 it, a man may ' eat and drink the body and blood of our 
 Saviour . . . though he do not receive the Sacrament with 
 his mouth ^^ ;' she does cry, when the need arises, with 
 St. Augustine, ' Crede ! et manducasti ^"^ ;' — she does 
 allow, with Tertullian '■', 'that martyrdom for Christ is 
 as good and valid as baptism ;' — with Cyprian ^', ' that 
 mere water cannot save a man, unless he have the Spirit 
 too ;' — and even, with Justin Martyr 2^, ' that many a 
 good heathen (like Socrates) is saved by the Redeemer, 
 and is virtually a Christian, though he has never heard 
 of Christ at all with the outward hearing of the ear.' 
 In these, then, and several other matters (into which 
 
 '^ Prayer-hooh, rubric at end of menti. Qu^m multi de altari acci- 
 
 ' Communion of the Sick.' So too, piunt, et moriuntur ! . . . Hunc itaque 
 
 with no less clearness, the mediseval " cibum et potum " societatem vult 
 
 Prayer-book of the Church of Eng- intelligi corporis et membrorum suo- 
 
 land(Afa«Ka/e5'am6. p. 77, ed. 1555): rum, — quod est sancta Ecclesia . . 
 
 ' Deinde communicetur infirmus, — Hujus rei Sacraraentum . . de mensEi, 
 
 nisi de vomitu vel alia irreverentia dominie^ sumitur, quibusdam ad vi- 
 
 probabilitbr timeatur : in quo casu, tam, quibusdam ad exitium : Res verb 
 
 dicat sacerdos infirmo, "Frater, in ipsa, cujus Sacramentum est, omni 
 
 hoc casu sufficit tibi vera fides et homini ad vitam . . Hoc est erg6 
 
 bona voluntas. Tantiim crede, et " manducare " illam escam, et ilium 
 
 manducasti."' Again, Aquinas (A.n. "bibere" potum, — in Christo manere, 
 
 T250), Summa, iii. 80, goes into the et ilium manentem in se habere.' I 
 
 whole question, and concludes : *Duo venture to assert, that no more spiri- 
 
 sunt manducandi modi, — alter sacra- tual doctrine than this can be found 
 
 mentalis, . . alter spiritalis, per quem in all Quaker literature, 
 
 suscipitur effectus Sacramenti, quo ^ Aug. in J'oarareem, xxv. 6. 13. 
 
 homospiritaliterChristoconjungitur.' ^' Tert. de Bapt. § 16. 
 
 And so Augustine (a.d. 400), in '" Cypr. Ep. 74. 
 
 Joannem, tract, xxvi. 6. 11: 'Aliud ^' Justin Martyr, .(4^o/. i. 46. 
 est Sacramentum, aliud virtus Sacra- 
 
 T 2 
 
276 THE QUAKERS. [lecT. 
 
 the time forbids me now to enter) it surely appears that 
 the Church's doctrine is complete and soHd ; while that 
 of the Quakers is merely superficial and one-sided. 
 Their teaching indeed is true as far as it goes, and so 
 long as it consists of affirmations. The Church also (as 
 we have seen) aiifirms these things, — and with far more 
 real power and good sense. But their teaching goes a 
 very sorry distance indeed ; makes some disastrous mis- 
 calculations as to what human nature and human society, 
 on the large scale, are like ; lays its people open to some 
 gross delusions, from forgetting that impulses (even from 
 above) are not always to be given way to ; for that such 
 an abdication of calm health and self-control is nothing 
 else than ' to be carried away ' (as St. Paul says, dirdye- 
 (sQaC) like a heathen *"'. Quakerism fails to observe that 
 the Apostle, in passages like those which I have quoted 
 for the text, distinctly places the outward unity, peace, 
 and order of the Church first, and the dictates of the 
 prophetical spirit second. Above all, it has brought 
 itself (in its fancied wisdom, but real self-will) to dis- 
 obey the plain commands of Christ about the use of 
 
 *> Nothing is more remarkable be revealed to another sitting by, let 
 
 than the thorough soundness and the first hold his peace . . The spirits 
 
 healthfulness of the teaching, both of of the prophets are subject to the pro- 
 
 the Holy Scripture and of the Ca- pheis. God is not the author of 
 
 tholic Church, — in contradistinction confusion.') And contrast this with 
 
 to the morbid and fanatical tenden- the following passage from George 
 
 cies of all sectarian theology. Ob- Fox's Journal (ii. 56) : ' As I was in 
 
 serve e.g. the calm wisdom of i Cor. bed at Bristol, the word of the Lord 
 
 xii-xiv. (' Ye were heathens, carried came to me, that I must go back to 
 
 away just as the impulse seized you. London. Next morning, Alexander 
 
 . . But the Spirit is given to profit Parker and several others came to 
 
 withal. . . So, forasmuch as ye are me: I asked them, "What they 
 
 zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that felt?" They in like manner asked 
 
 ye may excel to the edifying of the me "What was upon me?" . . so we 
 
 Church. . . Be not children . . If there gave up, to return to London. For 
 
 be no interpreter, let him [a pos- whatever way the Lord moved and 
 
 sessor of the gift of tongues] keep led us, thither we went in His power.' 
 
 silence in the Church. . If anything (Cf i. 100: Neal, iii. 442, &c.) 
 
v.] THE CHURCH STOOPS TO HELP THE WEAK. 2'j'j 
 
 outward means of grace, to contemn the usages and 
 sentiments of the whole Church for fifty generations, 
 and (by a strange relapse to the very Puritanism against 
 which its earliest protest was raised") to shrivel the 
 Church once more into a select club, where all is cal- 
 culated, — not for the weak, the low, the babes and be- 
 ginners in Christ, — but for the TeXetot, the spiritual, the 
 men (far fewer probably than they themselves imagine) 
 who can do without the aids and props of external 
 sacred things. 
 
 We Churchmen therefore will candidly and gratefully 
 acknowledge all that is good and pure and elevating in 
 Quaker doctrine ; and will (I hope) not be ashamed to 
 own that the early Friends were 'friends' indeed 
 (although in strangely repulsive guise and with strangely 
 uncourteous behaviour ''^) ; and will confess that of the 
 persecutions which they underwent from Dissenters and 
 Churchmen alike in earlier times, we (to speak for our- 
 selves) are heartily sorry and repentant. 
 
 For their protest against Puritanism and Calvinism 
 was just that which the Church herself ought to have 
 made: their large-hearted doctrine of the 'inner light' 
 was almost Catholicity itself : their teaching about the 
 Holy Ghost was also the teaching of the Nicene Creed : 
 and even their ritual peculiarities have found no small 
 
 " Fox ' exasperated them by his tricities, their invasions of the rights 
 
 plain dealing, in endeavouring to of their neighbours, or even to their 
 
 show them that though they — being indecencies. Every ministry beyond 
 
 Presbyterians and Independents — that of their own sect was the min- 
 
 were high in the profession of reli- istry of "Baal " and of "Antichrist." 
 
 gion, they were without the posses- They assailed ministers as such in 
 
 sion of that they professed.' {Neal, the public streets, even such men as 
 
 iii. 420.) Baxter, flinging the most offensive 
 
 '^ Cf. Vaughan, English Noncon- language at them as a testimony 
 
 formity, p. 1 44 : ' Filled with the mys- from heaven.' In these respects, 
 
 tical notion that their impulses were however, they were unawares imita- 
 
 not so much human, as divine, there ting the older Puritans and Inde- 
 
 seemed to be no end to their eccen- pendents. 
 
278 THE QUAKERS. [lecT. 
 
 sympathy among the deepest thinkers of the Church, 
 in every age*^. 
 
 But then, in justice and charity to them and in fideHty 
 to our own people, we will not cease to protest against 
 an excessive spirituality which forgets the body, and 
 dissipates thereby the force and efficiency of Christ's 
 kingdom. For, that steam alone will propel our goods 
 and persons, without an elaborate machinery to com- 
 press and direct it, we cannot readily bring ourselves 
 to believe ; nor yet, that intelligence can best work 
 without a brain ; an army without officers or drill ; a 
 state without organization ; or that the mighty subtle 
 life that stirs within us, and subdues and changes all 
 things at our will, can remain a present and effective 
 power in the world, if we kill and destroy that frame- 
 work of nerves and muscles, by which it mysteriously 
 acts. 
 
 By the grace of God, therefore, we will loyally main- 
 tain and guard that ancient organization of the Church 
 which, — corresponding more nearly than any other now 
 existing system, to that which meets us in the Acts of 
 the Apostles, and dating back (on the earliest testi- 
 
 *^ E.g. Hermas [a.d. 150], Pastoi-, 33: ' Vald^ interdum, ut melos omne 
 ii. 1 1 : ' Spiritus qui desursilm est, cantilenarum suavium, quibus Da- 
 quietus est et humilis . . Neque quiim vidicum Psalterium fiequentatur, ab 
 vult, homini loquitur Spiritus Dei; auribus meis removeri velim, atque 
 sed tunc loquitur, quitm vult Beus . . ipsius Ecclesise.' — S. Bernard [a.d. 
 et loquitur in turb4, sicut vult Deus.' 1 150], Op. i. 110 : ' Ligna et lapides 
 — Coptic Apost. Const, ap. Bunsen, docebunt te, quod a magistris midire 
 Anal. iii. 399 [a.d. 300]: 'At mid- non possis.' — Hooker [a.d. 1600], 
 night all Creation is silent, praising Eccl. Pol. i. 2, 2: 'Our safest elo- 
 Thee.' — S. Greg. Nyssen [a.d. 380], quence concerning Him is our silence.' 
 ill Psalm, cap. x : rd Staif/aAiJ.a, SiSa- — Spenser, Hymn of heavenly Beauty, 
 OKaKia nap^ tov nv€v/.taTos rrj ^vxjj. Park. Soc. i. 18 : 
 — S. Augustine [a.d. 400], Confess, x. 
 
 * Cease then, my tongue I And lend unto my mynd 
 
 Leave to bethink how great that Beautie is, 
 
 Whose utmost parts so beautifuU I fynd; 
 
 How much more those essentiall parts of His !' 
 
v.] ORGANIZATION NECESSARY. 279 
 
 mony) from St. John and his school in Asia Minor, — 
 has proved itself by 1800 years' experience the best 
 adapted to the wants of mankind, the most efficient by 
 far for all the beneficent purposes which the Church 
 was intended to fulfil, the most supple in stooping to 
 men of low estate, the most noble in facing — with the 
 'cor sacerdotale ** ' — the iniquities and follies of the 
 world's highest ranks, the most natural and normal 
 organ for enshrining and giving the freest practical 
 scope to that, which at every matins and evensong she 
 prays that both her Clergy and her people may abund- 
 antly possess — ' the healthful spirit of God's grace.' 
 
 ** Greg, the Great, de Past. Cura, etiam suggestiones vitiorum reprimat, 
 
 ii. 3, thus beautifully plays upon eisque (velut ex regia potestate) con- 
 
 Exod. xxviii. 8 : ' Auro quoque et tradicat . . De hac quippe nobilitate 
 
 hyacintho purpura permiscetur : ut spiritus per Petrum dicitur : " Vos 
 
 videlicet Sacerdotale cor, ciim summa autem genus electum, regale sacer- 
 
 qu£e prfedicat sperat, in semetipso dotium." ' 
 
APPENDIX H. 
 
 ' The chief principles of the Christian religion, as professed by the 
 people called Quakers' 
 
 [These fifteen Propositions— of which the most important points are 
 here given— were drawn up by Robert Barclay, first in Latin, and afterwards 
 in EngUsh, a.d. 1678. They form the headings of the fifteen chapters of 
 his celebrated Apology for the Quahers. The following extracts are tran- 
 scribed from the latest edition of the Apology (thirteenth edit. 1869). The 
 Propositions are also to be found— under the title given above— in Toul- 
 min's edition of Neal, iii. 569.] 
 
 I. Concerning the true foundation of Knowledge. 
 ' Seeing the height of all happiness is placed in the true knowledge of 
 God . . the right understanding of this foundation and ground of knowledge 
 is that which is most necessary to be known and believed in the first 
 place.' 
 
 II. Concerning immediate Revelation. 
 
 ' Seeing no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the 
 Son revealeth Him ; and seeing the revelation of the Son is in and by the 
 Spirit ; therefore the testimony of the Spirit is that alone by which the true 
 knowledge of God hath been, is and can be only revealed ; . . by the revela- 
 tion of the same Spirit He hath manifested Himself all along unto the sons 
 of men, both patriarchs, prophets, and apostles ; which revelations of God 
 by the Spirit, whether by outward voices and appearances, dreams, or 
 inward objective manifestations in the heart, were of old the formal object 
 of their faith, and remain yet so to be ; since the object of the saints' faith 
 is the same in all ages, though set forth under divers administrations. 
 Moreover, these divine inward revelations, which we make absolutely 
 necessary for the building up of true faith, neither do nor can contradict 
 the outward testimony of the Scriptures, or right and sound reason. Yet 
 from hence it will not follow, that these divine revelations are to be sub- 
 jected to the examination either of the outward testimony of the Scriptures, 
 or of the natural reason of man, as to a more noble or certain rule and 
 
APPENDIX H. 281 
 
 touchstone ; for this divine revelation, and inward illumination, is that 
 which is evident and clear of itself, forcing, hy its own evidence and clear- 
 ness, the well-disposed understanding to assent, irresistibly moving the same 
 thereunto.' . . . 
 
 III. Concerning the Scriptures. 
 
 ' From these revelations of the Spirit of God to the saints, have proceeded 
 the Scriptures of truth, . . nevertheless, because they are only a declaration 
 of the fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be 
 esteemed the principal ground of all truth and knowledge, nor yet the 
 adequate primary rule of faith and manners. Nevertheless, as that which 
 .giveth a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they are and 
 may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit from which 
 they have all their excellency and certainty.' . . . 
 
 IV. Concerning the Condition of Man in the Fall. 
 
 ' All Adam's posterity (or mankind) both Jews and Gentiles, as to the 
 first Adam or earthly man, is fallen, degenerated, and dead, deprived of the 
 sensation or feeling of this inward- testimony or seed of God; and is subject 
 unto the power, nature, and seed of the serpent, . . Hence are rejected, the 
 Socinian and Pelagian errors, in exalting a natural light ; as also those of 
 the Papists, and most Protestants, who affirm that man, without the true 
 grace of God, may be a true minister of the Gospel. Nevertheless, this 
 seed is not imputed to infants, until by transgression they actually join 
 themselves therewith : for " they are by nature the children of wrath, who 
 walk according to the power of the prince of the air." ' . . . 
 
 V. and VI. Concerning the Universal Redemption by Chrisl, and also the Saving 
 and Spiritual Light wherewith every man is enlightened. 
 
 ' God out of His infinite love, who delighteth not in the death of a 
 sinner, but that all should live and be saved, hath so loved the world, that 
 He hath given His only Son a light, that -whosoever beUeveth in Him 
 should be saved; who enlighteneth every man that cometh into the 
 world. . . 
 
 . . ' Therefore Christ hath tasted death for every man ; not only for all 
 kinds of men, as some vainly talk, but for every one, of all kinds ; the 
 benefit of whose offering is not only extended to such who have the distinct 
 outward knowledge of His death and sufferings, as the same is declared 
 in the Scriptures, but even unto those who are necessarily excluded from 
 
282 APPENDIX H. 
 
 the benefit of this knowledge by some inevitable accident ; which know- 
 ledge we willingly confess to be very profitable and comfortable, but not 
 absolutely needful unto such, from whom God Himself had withheld it .' . . 
 
 VII. Concerning 'justification. 
 
 ' As many as resist not this light, but receive the same, in them is pro- 
 duced a holy, pure, and spiritual birth ; bringing forth holiness, right- 
 eousness, purity, and all those other blessed fniits which are acceptable to 
 God. By which holy birth (to wit, Jesus Christ foimed within us, and 
 working His works within us), as we are sanctified, so are we justified 
 in the sight of God.' . . 
 
 VIII. Concerning Perfection. 
 
 ' In whom this holy and pure birth is fully brought forth, the body of 
 death and sin comes to be crucified and removed, and their hearts united 
 and subjected to the truth, so as not to obey any suggestion or temptation 
 of the evil one, but to be free from actually sinning, and transgressing of 
 the law of God, and in that respect perfect. Yet doth this perfection still 
 admit of a growth ; and there remaineth a possibility of sinning, where the 
 mind doth not most diligently and watchfully attend unto the Lord.' 
 
 IX. Concerning Perseverance, and the Possibility of falling from Grace. 
 
 ' . . in whom it hath wrought in part, to purify and sanctify them . . such 
 may fall from it, and turn it to wantonness, making shipwreck of faith ; and 
 after having tasted of the heavenly gift, and been made partakers of the 
 Holy Ghost, again fall away. Yet such an increase and stability in the 
 truth may in this life be attained, from which there cannot be a total 
 apostasy.' 
 
 X. Concerning the Ministry. 
 
 ' As by this gift, or light of God, all true knowledge in things spiritual is 
 received and revealed ; . . by the leading, moving, and drawing hereof, 
 ought every Evangelist and Christian pastor to be led and ordered in his 
 labour and work of the Gospel, both as to the place where, as to the per- 
 sons to whom, and as to the times when he is to minister. Moreover, those 
 who have this authority may and ought to preach the Gospel, though with- 
 out human commission or literature, as, on the other hand, those who want 
 the authority of this divine gift, however learned or authorized by the com- 
 missions of men and churches, are to be esteemed but as deceivers, and not 
 true ministers of the Gospel. Also, those who have received this holy and 
 im spotted gift, as they have freely received, so are they freely to give, without 
 hire or bargaining, far less to use it as a trade to get money by it.' . . 
 
APPENDIX H. 283 
 
 XI. Concerning Worship. 
 
 ' All true and acceptable worship to God is offered in the inward and 
 immediate moving and drawing of His own Spirit, which is neither limited 
 to places, times, or persons : for though we be to worship Him always, in 
 that we are to fear before Him ; yet as to the outward signification thereof 
 in prayers, praises and preaching, we ought not to. do it where and when 
 we will, but where and when we are moved thereunto by the secret inspira- 
 tion of His Spirit in our hearts ; . . All other worship then, both praises, 
 prayers and preachings, which man sets about in his own will, and at his 
 own appointment, which he can both begin and end at his pleasure, do or 
 leave undone as himself sees meet ; whether they be a prescribed form, as a 
 liturgy, or prayers conceived extemporarily, by the natural strength and 
 faculty of the mind ; they are all but superstitions, will-worship, and 
 abominable idolatry, in the sight of God ; which are to be denied, rejected, 
 and separated from in this day of His spiritual arising.' 
 
 XII. Concerning Baptism. 
 
 ' As there is one Lord and one faith, so there is one baptism ; which is 
 not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good con- 
 science before God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And tliis baptism 
 is a pure and spiritual thing, to wit, the baptism of the Spirit and fire, by 
 which we are buried with Him, that being washed and purged from our 
 sins, we may waUc in newness of life ; of which the baptism of John was a 
 figure which was commanded for a time, and not to continue for ever. As 
 to the baptism of infants, it is a mere human tradition, for which neither 
 precept nor practice is to be found in all the Scripture.' 
 
 XIII. Concerning the Communion, or Participation of the Body and 
 Blood of Christ. 
 
 ' The Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ is inward and 
 spiritual, which is the participation of His flesh and blood, by which 
 the inward man is daily nourished in the hearts of those in whom Christ 
 dwells ; of which things the breaking of bread by Christ with His disciples 
 was a figure, which they even used in the Church for a time, who had re- 
 ceived the substance, for the cause of the weak ; even as abstaining from 
 things strangled, and from blood, the washing one another's feet and the 
 anointing of the sick with oil ; all which are commanded with no less 
 authority and solemnity than the former; yet seeing they are but the 
 shadows of better things, they cease in such as have obtained the substance.' 
 
284 APPENDIX H. 
 
 XIV. Concerning the power of the Civil Magistrate, in matters purely religious, 
 and pertaining to the Conscience. 
 
 'Since God hath assumed to Himself the power and dominion of the 
 conscience, who alone can rightly instruct and govern it, therefore it is not 
 lawful for any whatsoever, by virtue of any authority or principality they 
 bear in the government of this world, to force the consciences of others ; . . 
 provided always, that no man, under the pretence of conscience, prejudice 
 his neighbour in his life or estate ; or do anything destructive to, or incon- 
 sistent with, human society ; in which case the law is for the transgressor, 
 and justice to be administered upon all, without respect of persons.' 
 
 XV. Concerning Salutations and Recreations, See. 
 
 ' Seeing the chief end of all religion is to redeem man from the spirit and 
 vain conversation of this world, and to lead into inward communion with 
 God, before whom if we fear always, we are accounted happy ; therefore 
 all the vain customs and habits thereof, both in word and deed, are to be 
 rejected and forsaken by those who come to this fear ; such as the taking 
 off the hat to a man, the bowing and cringings of the body, and such other 
 salutations of that kind, with all the foolish and superstitious formalities 
 attending them.' . . 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 A.D. 1719. 
 
 Leading Idea : — The Intellectual Freedom of the Church. 
 
 Method adopted : — Abolition of all engagements, which may fetter the free 
 teaching of the Clergy. 
 
 ZijT^ffOTf ovv Airdv, Kal upaTaiiiffrjTf I (jjr-^ffaTe ri wpoaomov AutoO, SicL 
 ■navT&s, TravToias t iro\viifplus y^p KctI ■no\vTp6was \a\r]aai, oix oirXus yvapi- 
 ftToi. (Clem. Alex. Strom, vi. 10. 81.) 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 c. 100. The Ebionites, — an ultra- Judaizing sect. 
 
 :. 200. Theodotus, at Byzantium : Artemon, at Rome. 
 
 270. Paul, Bishop of Samosata, condemned. 
 
 325. Arius, presbyter of Alexandria, condeirmed. 
 
 351. Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium, deposed. 
 
 381. Macedonius, Patriarch of Constantinople, condemned. 
 c. 400. Arianism takes refuge with the Goths. 
 
 — Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia. 
 
 431. Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, deposed. 
 c. 800. Adoptionist controversies, in France and Spain. 
 1 100. Abelard (rationahst) : Roscelin (nominalist). 
 1300. DunsScotus: William Occam. 
 1450. Nicolas of Cusa, ' De docta ignorantia.' 
 1500. John Denck, professor at Basle. 
 1552. Servetus burnt by Calvin. 
 1562. Ljelius Socinus died. 
 1604. Faustus Socinus died. 
 1647. John Biddle imprisoned for heresy. 
 1689. ' Toleration Act,' — Unitarians excluded. 
 
 1719. ' Salters' Hall controversy.' 
 
 — Unitarians a distinct Denomination. 
 1729. Dr. Samuel Clarke died. 
 
 1750. 'General Baptists' adopt Unitarian doctrines. 
 
 — English ' Presbyterians ' adopt Unitarian doctrines. 
 1771. 'Feathers Tavern petition,' against subscription. 
 
 1 794. Priestley sails for America. 
 
 181 1. Belsham's 'Calm Inquiry.' 
 
 1813. Laws against Unitarians repealed. 
 
 1827. Hicksite Quakers adopt Unitarian doctrines. 
 
 1842. Channing died. 
 
 1844. 'Dissenters' Chapels Act' 
 
 1 860. Theodore Parker died. 
 
 1869. J. J. Tayler died. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 ' If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him 
 become a fool, that he may be wise.' — i Cor. iii. i8. 
 
 WE have now passed under review and given some 
 amount of careful and, I hope, not uncandid or 
 unfriendly study to two successive pairs of Dissenting 
 bodies ; viz. those which broke off from the Church of 
 England in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. 
 And we have not failed to remark that the controversies 
 which mainly characterized those two centuries were of 
 a dissimilar type. The cause of divergence in the six- 
 teenth century being the merely exterior question of 
 Church-polity, — on which the Independents seceded, and 
 drifted away in the direction of excessive liberty and of 
 ultimate anarchy ; while the Romanists broke off in the 
 direction of excessive centralization, and have since 
 drifted towards, and reached, an ecclesiastical despo- 
 tism. — In the seventeenth century, we have seen that 
 the matters in dispute were of a more interior nature. 
 The use or disuse of the Church's ' sacramenta,' or ex- 
 ternal means of grace, was the question mainly at issue. 
 And here the Baptists represented one tendency of 
 
288 THE UNITARIANS. [lect. 
 
 thought, and the Quakers the diametrically opposite 
 one. — We now approach the controversies of the 
 eighteenth century, and the two principal secessions 
 in which those controversies terminated ; viz. Unita- 
 RIANISM on the one hand, and Wesleyanism on the 
 other 1. 
 
 The questions, on which those two controversies 
 hinged, are of extreme interest and of paramount im- 
 portance. But they are of a still more subtle nature, 
 and belong (so to speak) to a still more interior depart- 
 ment of the Church's life, than either of the questions 
 which agitated the preceding centuries. They are, in a 
 word, questions relating to the Church's system of doc- 
 trine, to her educational method of procedure, to her 
 tactics, and to the way in which she should give battle 
 to the frowning forces of ignorance and sin, which are 
 still in possession of half the world. And here Uni- 
 tarianism — interested mainly with the more thoughtful 
 and educated classes — went off in the pursuit of an 
 unlimited intellectual freedom ; while Wesleyanism — 
 interested rather in the lowest strata of society, the 
 neglected, untaught crowds, whom commercial pros- 
 perity was at once engendering and disowning — seceded 
 in search of more potent and immediately efficient 
 methods of onset ; handled, with an almost sublime 
 self-confidence, the tremendous spell of an appeal to 
 the mere feelings of half-taught and half-civilized men ; 
 and buoyed itself unhesitatingly on the crest of a wave, 
 whose swiftness and power might at any moment resolve 
 themselves into a destructive fanaticism. 
 
 1 '1 
 
 ' It was a one-sided subjective to Rationalism. But it could also 
 
 tendency, which made its appearance take that of the feelings, — and then 
 
 in Socinianism. Here, it took the it assumed the form of Mysticism.' 
 
 path of the understanding, — and led (Neander, Hist, of Dogmas, ii. 630.) 
 
VI.] EFFETENESS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 289 
 
 Such questions as these were, unmistakeably, ques- 
 tions which belonged to the eighteenth century. They 
 naturally sprang up, at a period when the world was 
 utterly weary of Puritanism and all its childish conten- 
 tions ; when the Church and all the Dissenting bodies 
 alike slumbered and slept ; and when the turning-point, 
 the aphelion, of Christendom had at last been reached 
 and the ' revival of religion ' was happily about to 
 begin. 
 
 Hence the eighteenth century is at once a most 
 painful and dreary, and also a most profoundly in- 
 teresting and momentous period of the Church's his- 
 tory. There is no one, probably, now living who does 
 not congratulate himself that his lot was not cast in that 
 epoch. It has become, by general consent, an object 
 for ridicule and sarcasm ^. Its very dress and airs had 
 something about them which irresistibly moves a smile. 
 Its literature — with some noble exceptions — stands neg- 
 lected upon our shelves. Its poetry has lost all power 
 to enkindle us. Its science is exploded : its taste con- 
 demned : its ecclesiastical arrangements flung to the 
 winds : its religious ideas outgrown, and in rapid 
 process of a complete and perhaps hardly deserved 
 extinction. 
 
 What can be the cause of so remarkable and sudden 
 a revulsion of feeling .' How can we account for this 
 chasm, which seems to have opened and spread so 
 quickly, between the men of the eighteenth and the 
 men of the nineteenth century .' 
 
 The cause is to be sought for in the fact, that in the 
 
 ^ For descriptions of eighteenth drews' Eighteenlh Century. But per- 
 
 century life, see the Spectator, Taller, haps the most vivid conception of 
 
 Sec; JiosweWs Life of yohnson,¥ield- all may be obtained by studying 
 
 ing's Novels, Miss Seward's Letters; Hogarth's pictorial satires of his 
 
 and — among modem books — An- own age. 
 
 U 
 
290 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 eighteenth century an old world was passing away. For 
 300 years— such is the grand scale on which history 
 measures her epochs — the Middle Ages had lain in 
 the long throes and agonies of death. And in the 
 eighteenth century they died. Before that century was 
 ended, the great transition was accomplished. In poli- 
 tics, a new theory had been adopted by England, by 
 America, and then by France. In philosophy, a new 
 system had sprung up, and was beginning its successful 
 career, at Konigsberg, on the eastern frontiers of Ger- 
 many^. And in taste, — from whence, it is impossible 
 to say ; except it be from those hidden, mysterious 
 storehouses of our common humanity, from which so 
 many half-obliterated memories and forgotten habits 
 are being constantly revived, — a new and romantic love 
 of nature suddenly manifested itself. So that Rousseau 
 and others went into ecstasies of delight at things and 
 scenes, which Dr. Johnson — a man of the older culture 
 — had deliberately ranked below Cheapside*. And phi- 
 
 ' Immanuel Kant was born at this very fine I " . . I answered, " Yes, 
 
 Konigsberg in 1724. He resided Sir; but not equal to Fleet Street." 
 
 there during the whole of a long Johnson : " You are right, Sir " . . 
 
 life, and died there in 1804. His Let me shelter myself under the au- 
 
 two most important works are, the Ihority of a very fashionable baronet, 
 
 Critih of pure Reason (1781), and the who, on his attention being called to 
 
 Crilili of practical Reason (ilSS). See the fragrance of a May evening in 
 
 K. Fischer, Kant's Leben, &c., i860. the country, observed . . "for my 
 
 * ' " Yesterday I returned froni my part, I prefer the smell of a flambeau 
 Welsh journey . . I have been in five at the playhouse." ' {Ibid. i. 266.) 
 of the six counties of North Wales ; Contrast the following : ' Je me sou- 
 have been upon Penmaenmawr and viens d'avoir pass(5 une nuit d^li- 
 Snowdon, and passed over into An- cieuse hors de la ville [Lyons] : . . la 
 glesea. But Wales is so little dif- soiree etait charmante ; la rosde hu- 
 ferent from England, that it offers mectait I'herbe fli5trie ; le soleil, aprfes 
 nothing to the speculation of the son coucher, avait laiss^ dans le ciel 
 traveller." All I heard him say of it desvapeurs rouges; . .Jemepromenais 
 was, that "instead of bleak and bar- dans une sorte d'extase.' (Rousseau, 
 ren mountains, there were green and Confessions, i. 4, p. 157.) 'On sait 
 fertile ones."' (Boswell, ii. 183.) ce que j'entends par un beau pays . . 
 ' We walked in the evening in Green- II me faut des torrents, des rochers, 
 wich Park. He asked me, " Is not des sapins, des bois noirs, des mon- 
 
VI, 
 
 .] RISE OF UNITARIANISM. 291 
 
 losophers, poets, and divines rivalled each other in ex- 
 travagant encomiums on savage life, — which had (not 
 unreasonably) struck the Pilgrim Fathers, a century- 
 earlier, with repugnance and terror '. 
 
 We must then never forget, in studying the religious 
 phenomena of the eighteenth century, what an extraor- 
 dinary period of transition it was. On a small scale it 
 represented the first few centuries of the Christian era. 
 It repeated their efifeteness. It reproduced a similar 
 dying and corrupt condition of society. And in its 
 utter unnaturalness, coldness, and unbelief, it felt the 
 same urgent need of regeneration by an upspring from 
 below, and from the heart of the people, of a new 
 warmth and life ; which should clothe the dead tree 
 with beauty once more, and bring forth, in due time, 
 bright leaves and wholesome fruit. 
 
 Amid this wintry day it was, — while the Church, 
 as well as most other European institutions, slumbered 
 and slept, — that two provisional forms of religious life 
 made their appearance, as heralds of the returning 
 spring. The first of these, with which we are to em- 
 ploy ourselves to-day, being unmistakeably of an 
 eighteenth-century cast : viz. Unitarianism. 
 
 The history of Unitarianism in England is not very 
 important. Of course, all Denominations display a 
 
 tagnes, des precipices & mes cAt^s savages." ' (Morton's New England's 
 qui me fassent bien peur.' (Ibid. AfemoHa/, 1669: ap. Hanbury, i. .^99.) 
 p. 161.) The man of the nineteenth Wesley (173S) 'looked forward to 
 century, the reader of Wordsworth, the conversion of the Indians as com- 
 Tennyson, Ruskin, Emerson, feels paratively an easy task : there, he 
 that here his own age has already said, he should have the advantage 
 dawned. of preaching to a people not yet 
 
 ° ' The Indians, whose cry was beguiled by philosophy, and vain 
 "dreadful" . . "these poor blind deceit.' (Southey's W'es/ey, p. 47.) 
 ' Nor think in Nature's state they blindly trod ; 
 The state of Nature was the reign of God.' 
 
 (Pope, Essay on Man, iii. 4.) 
 
 U 3 
 
292 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 pardonable pride in tracing themselves back, through 
 I know not what devious channels, to the first founders 
 of Christianity. All find their ancestors in the Primitive 
 Church, and all see their patent of nobility in the Acts 
 of the Apostles. 
 
 The ingenuity herein displayed is often extremely 
 praiseworthy ; the compliment paid to the Church's 
 view of these matters, if unintentional, is still welcome ; 
 and the warning conveyed against the extreme sim- 
 plicity of attempting to settle such controversies as 
 these by an appeal to Scripture texts, is salutary and 
 decisive. The Unitarians accordingly claim kindred, 
 first of all, with the Judaizers and Ebionites of the first 
 century ; then with Artemon '^ and Paul of Samosata '' ; 
 with Photinus, Arius *, Abelard, the Albigenses and the 
 Anabaptists ; and so on to Socinus and the Italian 
 reaction against the virtual paganism of the Papal 
 Court, under Leo X., in the sixteenth century. 
 
 And no doubt, this claim to an early origin on the part 
 of all the post-Reformation sects is (in a certain sense) a 
 true one. For they all appealed to the Bible, and sought 
 their models in its pages. And just as a sort of Congre- 
 gationalism may really be found in the New Testament 
 as an embryo arrangement befitting an embryo con- 
 dition ; just as adult baptism may be found in the 
 ' Acts ' of a Church planting itself amid a crowd of Jews 
 and heathens, — precisely as it may be found used freely 
 by the Church at the present day in India or in Bethnal 
 
 " The opinions of Artemon [c. a.d. x'""' • ■ ''"I'S ^^ /"''' knetvovs $eo\o- 
 
 200) are thus described by Theo- yijcrai rhv Xptcrrbv, ovk Svra Stliv. 
 doret {flKr. Fab. ii. 4) ; Tiiv 5^ Ku- ' Biddle, Brief History 0/ the Uni- 
 
 piov 'l-qGovv XpKTTov dvBpojrroy eiVe tarians (second edit., 1691), p. 10. 
 ipiKdy, €« TrapOivov y^yivvrjix^vov^ Tuiv ^ Dr. Beard, Cycl. Rel. Denom.-, 
 
 6^ TTpofprjTuiv dpcT^ KpetTTova. TavTa p. 310. 
 SI Kai Tovs dTTOTT6\ovs (Kcyf fte/crjpv- 
 
VI.] ANTECEDENTS OF UNITARIANISM. 293 
 
 Green or Wolverhampton ; so, possibly, Unitarian theo- 
 logy might be found amid the half-formed and tentative 
 theories of a Christian society that had lately lost its 
 Master, and had not yet (under stress of 'winds of false 
 doctrine' blowing from every quarter under heaven) 
 rooted itself firmly in the soil, or grown to full con- 
 viction as to Who precisely that marvellous Being was, 
 that, after a ministry of three short years, had left man- 
 kind absolutely metamorphosed and had 'turned the 
 world upside down'.' 
 
 But it does not therefore follow, that either the Con- 
 gregationalist polity, the Baptist ritual, or the Unitarian 
 theology are fitted for the present adult condition of 
 the Church, after 1800 years of study and experience. 
 Unless indeed the extraordinary hypothesis be true, 
 (about which we have already had occasion to speak so 
 often in these Lectures) ; viz. that the embryo condi- 
 tion of the Church was meant to be its normal condi- 
 tion ; that all growth and adaptation were vetoed from 
 the very beginning ^^ ; and that the New Testament 
 
 ^ It is however remarkable, and a i. 22.) Within the Church, therefore, 
 
 proof of the profound impression it seems to have been reserved for 
 
 which our Lord's Person made on Theodotus and Artemon (about a.d. 
 
 His contemporaries, that all the 300) to broach the opinion that our 
 
 earliest errors which arose about Lord, in His whole Personality, was 
 
 Him erred on the side of wild ex- ^iiXis dvOpaiwos. Although Artemon 
 
 travagance. He was one of the ' old pretended that, ravra Kal tovs 'Atto- 
 
 prophets risen again ;' He was ' an ar6\ovs /ciKrjpvx^vaL. (Theodoret, 
 
 iEon ' or emanation from the Divine ; ubi supra.) 
 
 His body was an incorporeal body, " It is one among many proofs that 
 
 and He had not really ' come in the (in the words of Mr. Maurice, King- 
 
 flesh:' or more exactly, the man dom of Christ, preface), 'The ques- 
 
 Jesus was a mere man, bom of Jo- tions, " Is there a Catliolic Church ? 
 
 seph and Mary ; while Christ was What are its principles and con- 
 
 an ^on who had descended on Him stitution ?" [should] take precedence 
 
 at His baptism and left Him at His of all others ' in our day, — that we 
 
 crucifixion. This last was perhaps find even Mr. Vance Smith demand- 
 
 the notion of the Jewish Ebionites, ing, in 1871, 'Where is this, or any- 
 
 who TTtpl riv UpWTov oiioiais Tiy K;;- thing like this, to be found in either 
 
 pivBij) iiai^apT!OKpi,T(i fivBivovai. {Iren. Testament? When and where, pre- 
 
294 THE UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 was to be to Christendom, — what the Koran has been 
 to Mahometan countries, and the Talmud to the Jews, 
 — a barrier to all free thought and an impediment to all 
 free movement, throughout the succeeding ages. 
 
 Yet it was, in fact, on this strange hypothesis that 
 Unitarianism in the sixteenth century at first took its 
 stand. Servetus the Spaniard, about IS SO, called his 
 greatest work (now the rarest of all printed books) a 
 Restoration of Christianity. Socinus, the Italian, is de- 
 scribed as having been led to his opinions entirely by 
 an examination of Scripture. His nephew's first book, 
 in IS70, was On the AiitJwrity of Holy Scripture. And 
 John Biddle, the first Unitarian separatist in England, 
 in 164s, not only came to his opinions purely by a 
 solitary study of the Bible, but always loudly appealed 
 (amid his various persecutions) to the much-vaunted 
 principle of Chillingworth, — who himself died a Uni- 
 tarian, — that 'the Bible alone is the religion of Pro- 
 testants.' 
 
 This man, Mr. Biddle, was a M.A. of Magdalen Hall ; 
 a good Latin scholar ; and of a truly devout, earnest, 
 and pure character. In 1641 he became master of the 
 Grammar School at Gloucester. And there prosecuting 
 his studies, he eventually declared himself by conviction 
 a Unitarian ". His confident appeals, however, to the 
 
 cisely, in the teaching of Scripture, is metic, appears at once in Mr.Biddle's 
 
 the new idea of a divine plurality, a writings. ' You teach that there are 
 
 divine threeness, iirst distinctly in- three Persons who are severally and 
 
 troduced? . . Can Dr. Liddon, or any each of them true God, and yet 
 
 other person, confidently lay his hand there is but one true God. This is 
 
 upon the place f ' (V. Smith, The Bible an error in counting or numbering, . . 
 
 and Popular Theology, p. 83.) and not to discern it, is not to be 
 
 " The strangely prosaic and irri- a man." (Biddle, Brief Hist. p. 9.) 
 
 table state of mind which generated Fifty years later, it began to dawn 
 
 modern Unitarianism, and which on such men that, at least, there 
 
 reduced the subtle questions of theo- was something more than that in the 
 
 logy to questions of a bald arith- Church's theology. 'If you would 
 
VI.] JOHN BIDDLE. 295 
 
 then much-vaunted ' right of private judgment' did not 
 save him from violent and repeated persecutions. In 1647 
 he was imprisoned, under Charles I., for heresy. And 
 soon after, certain zealous Puritans in the Westminster 
 Assembly even urged that he should be put to death 
 for his opinions. This, however, Crorhwell would not 
 allow ; but sent him out of the way of his enemies, with 
 a pension of £2^ a year for his maintenance. Return- 
 ing to London at the Restoration, he opened a chapel ; 
 and tried to establish a first Unitarian congregation in 
 England. But the attempt totally failed. He died in 
 prison in 1662. And Unitarianism, — detested and pro- 
 scribed by all parties alike, and denied toleration in 
 express terms by the very ' Act of Toleration ' itself 
 (1689) — sank into obscurity for the remainder of the 
 century 1^. 
 
 But with the opening of the eighteenth century a 
 marked change took place. The Deism, which had 
 begun with Lord Herbert of Cherbury fifty years earlier, 
 was now (through the writings of Toland, Collins, and 
 others) exercising an enormous — though often an un- 
 conscious — influence both upon the Church and upon 
 the sects. For even many good and religious people 
 became inclined towards Unitarian opinions, in order 
 to retain their self-respect, as being (what that age 
 called) 'rational' persons, without forfeiting their alle- 
 
 be content with a religion, rather but boldly seized it, and raised it to a 
 
 than a philosophical creed, Christianity higher and spiritual power. 'S.oipiav 
 
 would be better preserved. For 5^ XaKoviav, tv rois t€\uois' uotplav 
 
 what is it, but a scholastic philo- 5c oi toC al&vos tovtov. (i Cor. 
 
 sophical faith, that runs upon meta- ii. 6.) 
 
 physical notions of " essence " and '^ Marsden, Did. p. 833 ; Cramp, 
 
 "persons?"' (Emlyn, Narrative, Baptists,-p. 2'!'; iSkezts, Free Churches, 
 
 Append, p. lix.) St. Paul, however, p, 128. 
 was not thus afraid of ' philosophy ; ' 
 
296 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 giance to Christ, whom many of them sincerely loved 
 and served. 
 
 And accordingly, not many years elapsed ere, — first 
 in the Dissenting communities, and then in the Church, 
 — this serious form of doctrinal error made its appear- 
 ance. First, in 1702, Thomas Emlyn — a Presbyterian 
 minister in Dublin — avowed Unitarian opinions, and was 
 driven from his pulpit. In 17 10, Whiston, a Cambridge 
 professor, was expelled from the University for the same 
 reason. In 171 2, Dr. Samuel Clarke, Rector of a 
 London parish, published his celebrated Arian book on 
 the Trinity. In 1719, the whole Dissenting world was 
 thrown into confusion by (what was called) ' the Salters' 
 Hall Controversy 13.' A great meeting, summoned at 
 
 " The 'Salters' Hall Controversy' 
 forms one of the most instructive 
 pages in the whole history of modern 
 Dissent ; and casts a curious gleam 
 of light — if that were needed — on 
 the freedom of the 'Free Churches.' 
 This angry meeting was held on 
 Feb. 19, 1719, and was composed, 
 in nearly equal numbers, of Pres- 
 byterians and Independents. On 
 the vote being taken, seventy-three 
 creed-subscribing Presbyterians were 
 in favour of free-thought : while 
 sixty-nine creed-hating Independents 
 were so detennined to impose a test 
 of ' orthodoxy,' that they at once 
 seceded, formed a fresh meeting of 
 their own, themselves subscribed to 
 the first of ' the Thirty-nine Articles,' 
 and demanded a similar submission 
 from the ministers at Exeter. Here- 
 upon, Pierce was locked out of his 
 own chapel by the trustees : and ap- 
 pealing in vain that the congregation 
 should be consulted, he eventually 
 led 300 seceders with him to a new 
 chapel ; and ' from this time Uni- 
 tarianism spread with unexampled 
 rapidity.' (Skeats, Free Churches, 
 PP- 302-310.) — In the face of this. 
 
 and many similar scenes, two things 
 become very difficult to understand : 
 (i) How the Independents, whose 
 'distinctive principle is, that a church 
 is complete in itself, and that all 
 ciuestions of faith are to be settled 
 by its members' {Cyclop. Rel. Denom. 
 p. 191), and whose 'only appeal in 
 all questions touching their religious 
 faith is to the sacred Scriptures' 
 {Congr. Year -Book, 1S71, p. xx), 
 can call the Unitarians 'heterodox' 
 (Vaughan, Engl. Nonconf. p. 466) ; 
 who are organized precisely on the 
 system of Congregational independ- 
 ence (Marsden, Diet. p. 840; Mann, 
 Censvs Report, iSfli, p. 25), and have 
 always loudly appealed to the Bible 
 as supporting their views ? (E. g. 
 Biddle, Brief Ilisl., in seventeenth 
 century; Emlyn, Narrative, in eight- 
 eenth century ; Carpenter, Scriptural 
 Grounds, 1S23 ; and Vance Smith, 
 Bible, &c. 1S71.) (2) It is, if pos- 
 sible, still more difficult to under- 
 stand how the leaders of Unitarianism 
 can range their denomination — nay, 
 all but identify it with — Puritanism. 
 (See James IMartincau, Why Dis- 
 sent? 1S71.) 
 
VI.] ' THE S ALTERS' HALL CONTROVERSY! 297 
 
 that place, to put down a Socinianizing minister at 
 Exeter, split into two violently opposed parties. One 
 still maintained the old watchword of freedom from all 
 creeds and subscriptions ; and the other insisted that 
 there was no way left of putting down such fatal errors, 
 but by reverting to tests of that kind. At length, in 
 1778, — after many clergymen (such as Lihdsey, Jebb, 
 Wakefield, Disney), and many Dissenters (such as 
 Priestley, Price, Aikin, Rees, and Belsham) had overtly 
 embraced Unitarianism, and almost all the chapels be- 
 longing to the General Baptists and to the Presbyterians 
 had been surrendered to Unitarian teaching ^*, — the 
 body firmly established itself, as a separate communion, 
 in England. It extorted toleration from the Govern- 
 ment in 1813 ; and now numbers some 70,000 members, 
 gathered in about 250 congregations. 
 
 The denomination is organized, for the most part, on the 
 Independent principle ; — each congregation claiming the 
 uncontrolled management of its own doctrine and worship. 
 The general aspect, therefore, of a Unitarian chapel is 
 
 '' ' In the generation which had have, to a great extent, been formed 
 
 grown up, on the accession of out of the old Congregalionalist 
 
 George III., the Dissenters who churches.' {Cyclop. Rel. Den. f. 2,11.) 
 
 passed as Presbyterians were gene- * It is probable the Baptists had 
 
 rally known to have deserted the never been entirely free from this 
 
 faith of their forefathers.' (Vaughan, taint.' (Skeats, p. 301.) 'A ma- 
 
 Engliih Nonconf. p. 466.) ' In less jority of the American Qi'aliers are 
 
 than half a century, the doctrines of Unitarians.' (Marsden, p. 841.) 'In 
 
 the great founders of Presbyterianism Europe, Socinianism prevails in the 
 
 could scarcely be heard from any Church founded by Calvin at Ge- 
 
 Presbyterian pulpit in England. The neva.' (Ibid.) It was the rude and 
 
 denomination vanished as suddenly mechanical Calvinistic conception of 
 
 as it had risen. . . The Unitarians the Atonement . . and the opposing 
 
 became, from this period, a distinct of the Divine Persons . . like parties 
 
 and separate denomination in Eng- in a law-suit, which by a natural 
 
 land. Hitherto it had been their reaction made Unitarians of the 
 
 practice to worship with other per- Puritan theologians and preachers.' 
 
 sons.' (Skeats, Free Churches, p. (Ddllinger, Church and Churches, p. 
 
 31 r.) 'In the United States of 239.) 
 America, . . the Unitarian societies 
 
298 THE UNITARIANS. [lect. 
 
 that of an ordinary Dissenting place of worship. Bjut the 
 preaching is more ambitious and philosophical ; and the 
 worship aims — in the true spirit of the Church — freely 
 to enlist art and science and every good gift in the 
 service and adoration of their Giver. But it seems to 
 yearn and strive ineffectually after a hearty and popular 
 expression of God's praise, — such as can hardly exist in 
 its cdld theological atmosphere. 
 
 Indeed Unitarianism is, I believe, generally acknow- 
 ledged now to be a failing system ; and its work (as 
 a separate communion) to be well-nigh done in this 
 country i'. America is the land where its real successes 
 have been gained. There, under the leadership of able 
 men, like Channing, Parker, and Emerson, it already 
 numbers 600,000 adherents i"*. And there half-sym- 
 pathizing minds (like that of Renan" and others) an- 
 ticipate for it a brilliant future. In England, on the 
 contrary, no one can attend a Unitarian service, without 
 feeling instinctively, that — able, philosophical, and in- 
 teresting as the preaching not unfrequently is — the 
 scanty attendance of the less educated classes, and the 
 extreme coldness and constraint of the worship, there 
 offered to the Father alone, indicate a very slender hold 
 upon the English mind. Indeed these results of one's 
 own observation are corroborated by the following 
 
 ^'^ * Trotz des neiien Anfschwunges con, s. voce.) 
 
 jedoch, den der Unitarianismus in '* Cf. Guardian, Dec. 11, 1867. 
 
 England und America genommen Dr. DoUinger {Church and Churches, 
 
 hat, ist doch seine geschichtliche 1861, p. 239) reckons the Unitarian 
 
 Mission . . in der Hauptsache als and Universalist preachers in the 
 
 beendigt anzusehen : seitdem die United States at 944. Dr. Beard 
 
 grossern protestantischen Kirchen- (Oyc/o^. p. 311) states that, in 1846, 
 
 gemeinschaften das rationale Princip, there were about 3000 congrega- 
 
 als bleibenden Eestandtheil ihres tions. 
 
 kirchlichen Lebens, in sich auf- " Renan, Etudes d'Histoire, p. 400. 
 genommen haben.' (Convers. Lexi- 
 
VI.] WHY DOES UNITARIANISM FAIL? 299 
 
 candid and touching confession of one, to whom every 
 Churchman must surely yearn to hold out the right 
 hand of fellowship : — ' Socinians (says he) seem to me 
 to contrast unfavourably with their opponents ; and to 
 exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy 
 (on the whole) of the true genius of Christianity. I 
 am conscious that my deepest obligations as a learner, 
 in almost every department, are to others than writers 
 of my own creed. . . In devotional literature and religious 
 thought, I find nothing of ours that does not pale before 
 Augustine, Tauler, Pascal. And in the poetry of the 
 Church, it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the 
 lines of Charles Wesley or of Keble, that fasten on my 
 memory, and make all else seem poor and cold ^*.' 
 
 Such words as these, — and from a man of such a 
 character, — should cause us all to reflect, and to ask 
 ourselves one or two very important and heart-.searching 
 questions. First of all, — Why is it that Unitarianism 
 fails .'' What is its real meaning, and the real burden 
 of its testimony .'' and wherein is that testimony faulty 
 and inefficient .■' And then, secondly, — What is the fault 
 or sin on our side ; that such men as these, — so near 
 the Church, so almost in heart and spirit hers, nay, 
 almost of that precise character which she delights 
 especially to honour, and which has representatives in 
 abundance upon her catalogue of saints, — should yet 
 be severed by some crevasse (as it were) from her ; and 
 so be cut off, both from doing her unspeakable service ^^, 
 
 " Martineau (ap. Ritchie, Religisus point to a distant future, — to those 
 
 Life of London, p. 200). natural premises [ethical, &c.] with- 
 
 " ' The Anti-trinitarians . . gra- out which, free Christological pro- 
 
 dually reducing their tone, sought gress would be an impossibility.' 
 
 to gain a firm footing on the empirical (Domer, Person of Christ, iv. 142: 
 
 soil of Natnre and History. . . They English trans.) 
 
300 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 and also from gaining unspeakable advantages from 
 her ? 
 
 In attempting to answer these questions, I begin by 
 pointing out — what many thoughtful Unitarians them- 
 selves allege — that this name ' Unitarian' is entirely 
 misleading. For it is not in behalf of any one special 
 doctrine, or in protest against any one special error, that 
 their voice has been raised. It is rather in behalf of 
 something far wider, greater, and of more practical 
 importance, — viz. iii defence of intellectual freedom ivilhin 
 Christ's Church''-^. Unitarianism was, in this point of 
 view, a reaction and a protest against the narrow Puri- 
 tanism of the seventeenth century^', wliich claimed to 
 be rational, and was not. And it was a reaction dis- 
 tinctly in the direction of the Church. For it was all 
 very well, at the Reformation, to overthrow the authority 
 
 ™ . . ' Least cif all should this 
 appear so to us, who profess our- 
 selves " (.'hristlans and only Chris- 
 tians," plcdf^ed to nothing but to lie 
 open to all God's truth.' (Martineau, 
 Sijtilies of Christianity, p, 411.) Uni- 
 tarians, ' strielly speal^ing, have no 
 corporate capacity ; but exist as 
 individuals and in churches, with 
 such paj'tial combination as . . the 
 maintenance of religious liberty may 
 seem to require.' (Dr. lieard, ap. 
 Cycl. Rel. I)t)i'>in. p. 301.) 
 
 ^^ When it is remembered that, in 
 the sixteeu'h century, Puritanisin burnt 
 Servetus at a slow fire and hunted 
 the Unitarians out of every country 
 in Europe ; that, in the seventeenth 
 century, it desired to put Mr. Biddlc 
 to flcath, and persecuted and ana- 
 thematized Unitarianism both in 
 l!^ngland and America ; that, in the 
 eif^hteenth century, it drove Pierce, 
 I'^mlyn, and others with the fiercest 
 theolrj^^ical hatred from their own 
 pulpits ; Ihat, in the nineteenth century. 
 
 it wrested Lady Ilewley's endow- 
 ments from Unitarianism, and ce.ises 
 not to this day to brand it as 
 'heterodoxy' (Vaughan, Engl. Non- 
 conf. p. 466, &c.), and to adhere 
 firmly to its Westminster Confession 
 [see Appendix A], and its Decliiration 
 uf Faith [Appendix II], — it is abso- 
 lutely beyond belief, that Mr. Mar- 
 tineau, in his late pamphlet, should 
 identify himself and his denomination 
 with ' PuritaniMu,^ as against the 
 Church of England ; and yet should, 
 in the same breath, explain his 
 antipathy to lier as caused by lier 
 'whole theory of religion, of human 
 ruin by nature and select rescue by 
 faith, . . and a worship which Ifgins 
 with the abjectness of man before 
 the terror of God, and is lifted 
 thence only by a foreign deliverance, 
 and ends with a borrowed righteous- 
 ness.' (Why Dissent? p. lO.) — every 
 one of which 'theories' belong to 
 the very essence of I'nritanism. 
 
VI.] AUTHORITY AND REASON. 30 1 
 
 of the Pope and of the hierarchy, and to establish that 
 of the Bible in their place. But a very short experience 
 sufficed to show that, if this were all, it was simply to 
 substitute one authority for another. Mr. John Biddle 
 and Mr. Thomas Eml}'n soon found out in practice, 
 that the appeal had merely been transferred, — from an 
 organized teaching body, proceeding by known rules, 
 and capable (to say the least) of veiy great freedom and 
 elasticity indeed -'-, — to a chaotic body of self-constituted 
 and half-instructed interpreters of holy Scripture, from 
 whom no mercy or freedom was to be expected, and 
 who would render inevitable the re-opening (on a far 
 narrower and less intelligible issue) that whole warfare 
 between Authority and Reason, which seemed, perhaps, 
 to some sanguine people to have been closed altogether. 
 But never, probably, so long as man remains upon the 
 earth, will this conflict be really closed. There will always 
 be persons of a passive and imaginative character, who 
 repose their weight on others, who delight in the splendour 
 of external religious observances -', who can breathe 
 most freely in an atmosphere of the marvellous and the 
 supernatural, — and whose highest types shine out upon 
 us in the sweet and heavenly creations of a Fra Angelico ; 
 while their lowest types gaze, with bated breath, in the 
 awe-stricken ascetics of a Zurbaran. Such persons will 
 
 *■ ' J'avoue, pour ma part, que toujoursl'erreurprotestante, qui s'ob- 
 
 j'accegterais plus volontiers I'autorit^ stine ^ commenyer par la science; 
 
 de I'Eglise, que cette de la Bible, tandis qu'il faut commenyer par la 
 
 L'figlise est plus humaine, plus vi- predication imperative, accompagni5e 
 
 vante. Quelqu'immuable que Ton de la musique, de la peinture, des 
 
 la suppose, elle se plie mieux aux rites solemnels, et de toutes les 
 
 besoins de chaque ^poque.' (Renan, demonstrations de la foi, sans dis- 
 
 £tudes, p. 3S0.) cussion. Mais faites comprendre cela 
 
 ^ ' Le docte Cliev. Jones a re- k I'orgueil I ' (De Maistre, du Pape, 
 
 marque I'impuissance de la parole iii. i. 241.) 
 evangelique dans I'lnde. . . C'est 
 
302 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 never cease out of the land, or out of the Church. And 
 God forbid that they ever should ^^ ! For they are, in 
 many ways, the salt of the earth. Nor yet (on the other 
 hand) will the dreaded pretensions of an irrepressible 
 Reason ever, so long as man exists in his present form, 
 be extinguished, or the terrible solvent of its analysis 
 ever be forgotten or laid aside. And again, I say, God 
 forbid that it ever should ^'^ ! 
 
 And yet these words, 'dreaded' and 'terrible,' are not 
 one whit too strong. This solvent chemistry of reason 
 is indeed terrible ; is indeed to be dreaded. For if any 
 one wishes to see what speculation comes to, when 
 reason wanders alone into the dark cold spaces of ex- 
 treme thinking ^'', — when analysis alone is set free to 
 act, and synthesis (the balancing imaginative power) 
 is cast in prison, till her time for reprisals be come, — 
 
 ^ The Christian pastor will not, 
 however, regard these as the highest 
 types of religious people among his 
 flock. He will remember St. Paul's 
 judgment, implied in ^\ifis ol ZvvaToi 
 (Rom. XV. I) ; and St. Augustine's 
 words : ' Operentur ministri Tui, non 
 . . loquendo per miracula et sacra- 
 menta et voces mysticas, — ubi intenta 
 sit ignorantia mater admirationis in 
 timore occultorum signorum ; . . sed 
 sint forma fidelibus, vivendo coram 
 iis, et excitando ad imitationem.' 
 (Confess, xiii. 21.) 
 
 ^ No Church can be in a healthy 
 condition, which is unable to bear 
 free inquiry or bold criticism. TcJs 
 
 VTrO0€(T€tS TciS TTpiVTaS, KOL Ci uiffTat 
 
 vfuv eliriv, btxSjs (TTiaKkTmai <Ta<pe- 
 <XT(pov, (Plato, Phcedo^ Ivi. sub fin.) 
 ' Cum aliquis ad probandam fidera 
 inducit rationes, quse non sunt co- 
 gentes, cadit in irrisionem infidelium. 
 Credunt enim, quod hujusmodi ra- 
 tionibus innitamur et propter eas 
 
 credamus.' (Aquinas, Siinima, i. 32. 
 
 '"' How far astray — into fields 
 which border upon the droTtov — 
 Unitarianism is, at least, tempted to 
 wander, may perhaps be judged from 
 the following passage ; ' "The vouchers 
 of religion are the Bible in its general 
 tenor, and the universe in its general 
 influence. The vouchers of theology 
 are the text-books of the schools, 
 and the climate of particular zones 
 of the globe; the S'wmma of Aquinas ; 
 the Institutes of Calvin and Priestley ; 
 the Mahabarata and Ramayana of 
 Hindostan.' (Dr. Beard, ap. Cycl. 
 Rel. Den. p. 307.) A Hindoo writer 
 takes one step farther, and condenses 
 these large statements into a small 
 compass : ' Was not Jesus Christ an 
 Asiatic? . . His religion is entitled 
 to our peculiar regard, as an alto- 
 gether Oriental affair.' (Chunder 
 Sen, Lectures, p. 26.) 
 
VI.] z>.-/.\-(;rA.-^ l\~ £xc£ss/rs /{AriOA'.-iz:s:.:. 303 
 
 he must go to a subtler race than ours, to men of a finer 
 brain and a more Eastern faculty of self-abstraction. 
 He must examine that most surprising religious pheno- 
 menon, Buddhism : and must follow on, till he shivers 
 at the dread brink of lonely, dark, and vacuous Xir:^\7>;j. 
 which is a'.l the residuum that is left, when reason has 
 done its worst ^^'ith our conception of a li\-ing God, 
 and has reached that abstract 'nothing' which lies a 
 step behind abstract 'existence-'.' And he wiU then 
 know why it is that — half unconsciously — men of imagi- 
 nation, men who cannot live on space and nothingness, 
 men as "men' ,in short', and as God has made them, 
 hate and shrink from illimitable scepticism. He will 
 then find out why religious men. who feel their pressing 
 need of something better than mere ::<[C-^f:^':s. on which 
 to stand upright against the terrors and temptations of 
 our earthly life, shudder at tliose claims of Reason about 
 which we sometimes hear so much ; and refuse her 
 pretensions to go all lengths unchecked, to o^^•n no 
 allegiance to any one, to bow to no authorit}-, and to 
 shake off all reverence and all faith -^ 
 
 -~ • X'-TA^".::-! is ihe end of '■ S'ac- tioad:^<c5B^e^i5"s oder Xich^-F^irriRs 
 
 ce-iive existence :" the Ary-.N^r..^ .1: its von ein.'j:.".er .ibweichen ; y:nv,ina 
 
 ,.,.., jj.^ shore: i:s co~-i-''.e',:or.. . . is cie c.e-'l;;itive BeiVeiunj:. ist der 
 
 >>':-•. -r_.-i is r._n prodceec. bv merit Tod. n.-ch welchem es mit allem 
 
 or demerit ; it caatiot be so.i.i tli.-it it Hiend ces P:iseTO5 eia Er.ie hat 
 
 it is r.is:, present, or future. . . Those keine Gestolt. keine F.^rbe, weder 
 
 who Are bom .'s ov..iIr.:revis. or J\.'ojn. coch Zeit. . . Xicht konimen, 
 
 soe-.-f-OS, o.i::i:ot (L-. th.i.t birth^ .ttt-iin clcht jehe::. nioh: woilen und \v;"n- 
 
 nirAv,-.:i.-v. . . The joy of nir\^~ana is schen. ,vc. ;s: Xirvr^na. . . Leerheit 
 
 ur.r.'.ixed. . . It is free from c.i-i^er. nnd Xioh-ijkeit si:;d cein Euddhis- 
 
 sot'e, withotit fe.i.r. hr.ppy. re--Oc:Vi. cits do.s innere Wesen .-I'.es Df.seii—s 
 
 ^\"o.cn a man who h.-.s been broded mid Lebeiis : mid diese Xichtigkeit 
 
 some ooen soaoe. he feeis the most tmd imwahre Fonn der Existem: 
 
 .-.-reeable sezso.tion : . . the open space vo'dstit^iE: ablest reit't. . . henonre- 
 
 is "irwaDa.' ^Hardv, E.zi.-eTi M:".- ten." ^K.'ppea. iJi-.'.-j-. da BuJJcj, 
 
 i:,b:s-:. V. 2):^ ■ So sehr sie sonst p. ^^04.) 
 m der Dc~m:;oa oder X'.oht-Derm;- ■' A sin^til.i.r !org-etiuhiess is some 
 
304 THE UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 Yes : if a man say to me, ' Why should Reason, which 
 God has given, seem to you terrible ? or a thing to be 
 'dreaded?' I reply: 'Nay, thank God 1 to me, as an 
 English Churchman, it is not either terrible or dreaded. 
 I hail it, as God's almost highest gift to man. I fear it 
 not. In distant imitation of the noblest saints in every 
 age, I would rejoice in all its conquests. And on the 
 foremost fringe and perilous outskirts of every scientific 
 advance, I would fain be found, — if I might only bring 
 to the self-denying men who combat there, that which 
 my Church, and God's Spirit teaching therein, have 
 brought home to me. And that precious lesson, that 
 pearl of great price, is this : the calm and profound 
 conviction, that it is only faithless reason which is to 
 be mistrusted : that half the truth is not the truth, and 
 half the man is not the true man : and that only when 
 you cultivate 07ie department of your nature exclusively, 
 cast away as useless rubbish the helps and ' sacramenta ' 
 of your moral sphere, and forget to pose your own soul 
 in attitude of worship, — as you would teach your child 
 to kneel, so that by repeated acts of reverence a thou- 
 sand faint traces may accumulate into lines of permanent 
 
 times noticeable, in quarters where lie wishes to believe; he tries to 
 
 one would least expect it, that the believe. . . All these efforts avail 
 
 education of an immature mind, and nothing.' {Christian Theology and 
 
 the ^roXQMiion ai B. scientific inquiry. Modern Scepticism: 1872, p. 144.) 
 
 are two perfectly distinct things : The Duke and the Trokstant arc 
 
 that the former requires faith; the simply trying to do two things at 
 
 latter scepticism : and that while the once ; and naturally fail in both, 
 
 former is the work of the Church ; I^rof. Huxley is tempted in the same 
 
 the latter is the work of individuals, direction {Lay Sermons, Sec, p. 71.) 
 
 Thus the Duke of .Somerset goes to Hut then he is keen enough to suspect 
 
 Church, and finds ' an ignorant gene- some absurdity in the position ; and 
 
 ration reposed in a paradise of honestly proclaims, that 'the anny 
 
 illusions ; while its more learned and of liberal thought is, at present, in 
 
 thoughtful progeny is excinciated very loose order ; and many a spirited 
 
 with doubt. In vain preachers now freethinker makes use of his freedom 
 
 exhort to faith. . . The Protestant mainly to vent nonsense.' {Ibid. p. 
 
 oftentimes takes up his open Bible ; 69.) 
 
VI.] A 'PARABLE OF NATURE.' 305 
 
 religious character ^'', — only then is Reason terrible ; 
 only then does the divine and glorious gift of light 
 threaten to become a flame, to burn up the ungodly.' 
 
 For, in one word, the powers within us are precisely 
 like those without us, — awful and ruinous without their 
 proper counterpoise, which God their maker intended. 
 How quietly, for instance, we all sit here ! How fixed 
 and stable appears the solid ground beneath our feet ! 
 How few of us realize the tremendous thought, that 
 (like helpless playthings in our Creator's hands) we and 
 our earth and all the works of fretful man upon it are, — 
 at a speed of 60,000 miles an hour, — darting through 
 space : so that let there be one moment's check, one 
 added grain or two of friction, — and the break-up of 
 this planet into a jostling crowd of shapeless whirling 
 asteroids, would make the worst railway accident we 
 ever heard of no more than a clash of tiny motes within 
 a sunbeam. 
 
 And yet on the other hand, the centripetal forces, 
 which are ever dragging us towards that tremendous 
 furnace the sun, are equally terrible. There, even iron, 
 it seems, exists in a state of vapour'". There, rosy 
 flames of hydrogen curl and flicker their thousands of 
 miles in height ; and the temperature is computed at 
 120,000 degrees of heat ^^. How appalling the thought ! 
 
 ^° ' Who has ever calculated the mium, and other metals to be con- 
 number of traces out of which his stituents of the solar atmosphere : 
 psychical forms have grown ! ' (Be- but as yet he has been unable to 
 neke, Elements of Psychology, p. 140, detect gold, silver, mercury, alunu- 
 English translation, 1871.) The ideas nium, tin, lead, arsenic or antimony.' 
 of Space and Time seem to have (Tyndall, On /fra<, p. 415.) 
 been generated in man by constant " It has been calculated by Z611- 
 external contacts with extension and ner, an Austrian astronomer of high 
 succession. (H. Spencer, Psychol., repute, that the temperature at the 
 i. 4fi}'.) sun is 123,000° Fahr. {Gent. Magaz,, 
 
 30 'Professor Kirchhoff finds iron, September 1870, p. 513.) The heat 
 
 calcium, magnesium, sodium, chro- given out by each square yard of the 
 
 X 
 
3o6 
 
 TirE fTNITAKrAMS. [l.ECT. 
 
 And yet each night, suspended directly above that 
 fearful death '^, wc commit ourselves to repose with 
 perfect confidence. Wc trust in the stability of God's 
 standing purpose of beneficence^'''. And wc perceive 
 that it is only when one of these great forces breaks 
 away, and releases itself from the control of the other, 
 that any harm can come. And .so we learn to recognize 
 that God's method is compromise, not directness ; that 
 safety lies, not in one force, but in a resolution of forces ; 
 and that, — eagerly as people of one idea are always 
 craving for simplicity, unity, and logical completeness, — 
 these ways are not God's ways, and are sure to lead to 
 some ruinous and (ultimately) illogical result. 
 
 I need not, surely, spend time in applying this parable 
 of nature to the subject before us. Unitarianism on the 
 one side, with its entire abnegation of all Creeds, — and 
 Romanism on the other, with its now completed central- 
 ization of authority, — are each of them compact and 
 perfect logical systems. While the true system of the 
 Catholic Church seems incomplete, illogical, a mere 
 resolution of irreconcileable forces, a ' compromise.' 
 Yet this, there is every reason to think, is God's way, 
 after all. 
 
 sun's surface is eciuivalent to that of perception.' (Tyndall, p. 424.) 
 13,500 lbs. of coal per hour; and "■'' Omnia portenta contra naturam 
 were the sun abolished, the tcmpe- diciinus esse. Sed non sunt. Quo- 
 rature would finally settle itself at modii est enim "contra, naturam " 
 239" below zero. ( I terschel, ^s/ron. quod Dei fit voluntate, — quum vo- 
 chap. vii.) The heat at the sun's luntas tanti ulifjue Conditoris con- 
 surface would boil, per hour, 700,000 dil;c rei cujusque nahira sit? i'or- 
 millions of cubic miles of ice-cold tentum ergi'i fit, non contra naturam, 
 water. (Tyndall, 0« //ra/', p. 419.) sed contra quam est nota natura.' 
 "'' 'Without doubt, the whole sur- (St. Augustine, de Civ. Dei, xxi. 8.) 
 face of the sun displays an unbroken A remarkable passage, on more ac- 
 ocean of fiery fluid matter. On this counts than one. Cf. Theodore 
 ocean rests an atmosphere of glow- Parker, Di^.anir^c of Relif^ion, p. 1.30: 
 ing gas. . . If the earth struck the ' But this Lcrt*, — what is it but the ««7/ 
 sun, it would utterly vanish from of God ; a mode of divine acl ion ?' 
 
VI.] GOB'S METHOD IS ' COMPROMISE: 307 
 
 To return then to our question : how is it that the 
 Unitarian metliod, in comparison with that of the 
 Churcli, seems to fail ? The answer seems to be this. 
 The Church (as we have seen in a previous Lecture) 
 claims to be a great Divinely instituted educational 
 society. If it be otherwise, then it must be frankly ad- 
 mitted that all these questions are capable of being 
 re-opened. Education however (it is well known) is 
 divisible into two branches: (i) teaching or 'doctrine;' 
 (2) training or ' discipline.' We drop the subject of 
 'discipline.' Doctrine then may again be subdivided 
 into two departments, — the speculative, which prepares 
 it ; and the practical, which applies it. 
 
 Now in both of these two departments, as all those 
 who have studied the subject are aware, it is of intinense 
 importance to have some fixed points to start loiili. A 
 hypothesis, a dogma, a provisional form and mould of 
 thought, is found (I believe) in prosecuting any science 
 under the sun, to be absolutely indispensable ^*. And 
 therefore, even so far as theological speculation is con- 
 cerned, some simple outline of a creed is employed by 
 
 ^* The nebular hypothesis, the tematic reasoning ; afterwards arrives 
 
 Darwinian hypothesis, the undula- the epoch of doubt.' (Lewes, Seaside 
 
 tory theory of light, the glacial hy- Studies, p. 38.) 'A man may have 
 
 pothesis in surface geology, and at his fingers' ends the distances, 
 
 many others might be named, as volumes, densities, and so on, of all 
 
 . instances of provisional ' dogmas,' the planets, . . but unless he has iij 
 
 put forth under the con\dction that his mind's eye a picture of the solar 
 
 no greater boon can be confen"ed system, . . he has not yet passed even 
 
 on any science, than to project its tlie threshold of the science.' (Proc- 
 
 ascertained data in a form that the tor, 0« Astronomy, Fraser's Mag., 
 
 imagination can seize, and can then September 1871.) 'H fi'^v oSi/ iriaTis 
 
 correct or improve. ' False /ac/s are fjvvTon6s ({jriv . . -jTwcTiS- ij yvwais St 
 
 highly injurious to science, . . but airodH^is rwv Std Triffreajs irapeiKr] fifii- 
 
 false views, if supported by some ccui/. (Clem. Alex. 5/rom. vii. 10. 57.) 
 
 evidence, do little hann ; as every- ' Wer wissen will, ehe denn er glaubt, 
 
 body tal<:es a salutary pleasure in der kommt nimmer zu wahren 
 
 proving their falseness.' (Darwin, Wissen.' (Deutsche Theologia, [a.d. 
 
 Descent of Man, ii. 385.) ' Sciences 1400,] p. 78.) 
 begin in casual observation and sys- 
 
 X 2 
 
3o8 THE UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 the Church, and is really (though not verbally) ac- 
 cepted by all the other religious bodies, as a basis for 
 theological thinking. But still more when we come to 
 practical teaching of the poor and uninstructed and of 
 children, how is it possible to pretend that the Church 
 can ever be rid of creeds ? When you are rid of creeds, — 
 short, compendious, time-honoured, authoritative forms, 
 well suited for unauthoritative, varied, many-sided ex- 
 pansion, — what do you get instead ? ' Catechisms' longer 
 and shorter, formula drawn up by ' Congregational 
 Unions' and 'Baptist Unions,' 'Mr. Wesley's Sermons,' 
 and a hundred such things. And these, while verbally 
 disclaiming all pretensions to authority, any one can see 
 have an irresistible tendency to become tests of doc- 
 trine for their respective societies, and much more 
 elaborate tests than anything which the Church imposes 
 upon her members ^^ 
 
 For what does the Church impose upon her members .■• 
 I believe there exists the greatest possible misappre- 
 hension upon this subject : and that the mass of half- 
 educated people believe that — if they have not already 
 in some occult way been made to sign the Thirty-nine 
 Articles — at least they must be prepared, as members 
 
 ^' The Presbyterian ' Westminster tarian ' Negative elements of our be- 
 
 Confession' is contained in thirty- lief are four only, and very brief 
 
 three articles, and (with Scripture (Martineau, 6'/»dies, p. 77) : the posi- 
 
 proofs") covers T08 pages, 4to. The tive ones, as described by Dr. Beard, 
 
 Independent 'Declaration of Faith,' appear to be eight or nine {Cyclop. 
 
 Sec, is drawn up also in thirty-tliree Rel. Den. p. 301). The Wesleyan 
 
 articles. The Romanist ' Creed of ' Standard Doctrines,' imposed by 
 
 Pope Pius IV.' contains eleven arti- the Conference on every minister in 
 
 cles in addition to the Nicene Creed, the connexion, are contained in Mr. 
 
 The Baptist ' Confession of Faith ' is Wesley's four volumes of Sermons, 
 
 in thirty-two chapters, and occupies covering (in the reprint of 1838) 
 
 thirty-five pages in Mr. Spurgeon's 1469 pages of close print ; and his 
 
 edition. The Quaker has a 'Con- 'Notes on the New Testament ' oc- 
 
 fession of Faith, containing twenty- cupying (with the text, post 8vo., 
 
 three articles,' by Robert Barclay edit. 1869) 700 pages in addition. 
 (Evans's Exposition, p. 67), The Uni- 
 
VI.] INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM IN THE CHURCH. 309 
 
 of the Church of England, at any moment to sub- 
 scribe to every statement in them. Such has been the 
 result of our false and improper use of these things, so 
 long persisted in ! But what is the truth of the matter } 
 It is, that the only theological formula which a Cliurch of 
 England layman is called upon — from his baptism till 
 the hour of his death — to assejtt to, is ' The Apostles' 
 Creed^'^.' That, and that alone, is required at his bap- 
 tismal admission within the Church : that, and that 
 alone, is asked for at the death-bed, as a sufficient proof 
 that the man retains what he originally began with— 
 the Christian's confession of a true faith. 
 
 And that Creed, Mr. Biddle the Unitarian in the 
 seventeenth century, Mr. Emlyn in the eighteenth, and 
 (I believe) a great many of the best Unitarians at the 
 present day, profess themselves quite ready to accept ^''. 
 As to the other Creeds, — they stand in the Prayer-book 
 as triumphant hymns of orthodoxy ; and therefore are of 
 a more elaborate and florid doctrinal type. They stand 
 there to be sung in divine worship, — not to be subscribed. 
 And as for the Thirty-nine Articles, — their proper usage 
 is as a rtJiros SiSax?;?, a sketch or framework of sound 
 doctrine, by which the Church takes engagements from 
 her clergy and other teaching officers, that — while occu- 
 
 ^" ' The Church hath power to in- Creed.' (Bishop Browne, On the 
 
 tend our faith, but not to ex- tend it ; Articles, p. 11): see Prayer-book, 
 
 to make our belief more evident, but Baptismal and Visitation Services, 
 not more large and comprehensive . . ^' ' If a Socinian were to make a 
 
 If we have found out what founda- confession of his faith, he would do 
 
 tion Christ and His Apostles did lay, it in no other words but these of 
 
 — i. e. what body and system of the Apostles.' (Biddle, Brief His- 
 
 Articles they taught and required us tory, p. 8.) ' This was wont to be 
 
 to believe, — we need not, we cannot the sufficient test of Christianity and 
 
 go any farther.' (Jeremy Taylor, Church Communion ; which I wil- 
 
 Liberty of Proph. p. 20.) ' Our own lingly assent to, in its plain and fair 
 
 Church requires from its lay members sense.' (Emlyn, Narrative, Appendix, 
 
 no confession of their faith, except p. Ixiii.) 
 that contained in the Apostles' 
 
310 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 pying her pulpits and teaching in her name — they will 
 not be disloyal ; but will teach in her spirit, and present 
 her time-honoured doctrine, albeit in sundry forms and 
 divers manners to her people. For, observe, should they 
 contravene these Articles, she does not excommunicate 
 them. She simply bids them cease from teaching in her 
 name, and be content with lay-communion '^^. 
 
 How then can the Church's use of Creeds and Articles 
 be accused of tyranny and usurpation .? Practically, the 
 most widely used Unitarian Prayer-book ■*" in London 
 
 "' E.g. this was the case lately 
 with Mr. Heath, in the diocese of 
 Winchester; and Mi. Voysey, in the 
 diocese of York. They were ad- 
 judged, in an open court of law, to 
 have contravened the Church's Arti- 
 cles in their public teaching; and 
 were simply deprived of their posi- 
 tion as ' teachers ' in her name. 
 ' Our Articles and other formularies 
 are not tests of communion ; they 
 are means by which the congregation 
 of Christ's flock is preserved from 
 error in the teaching of the minister.' 
 (Canon Swainson, On Aulhority of 
 New Testament, p. 274.) 'By sub- 
 scription it was not meant that 
 people should never alter their 
 minds : but only that the person 
 subscribing held certain definite and 
 intelligible views, with respect to the 
 truth he was to teach: and that, if 
 he afterwards changed his mind, he 
 should be prepared to lay down the 
 office that he held.' (Bishop Wil- 
 berforce, speech in House of Lords, 
 1862.) 
 
 '* ' The Prayer-book for the use of 
 the Unitarian Congregation in Little 
 Portland Street.' This Service-book 
 is interesting for many reasons. It 
 contains a choice of ten services for 
 Morning and Evening Prayer, con- 
 structed on the model of the Church's 
 book; but with all 'creeds' omitted, 
 from objections ' on principle to 
 
 making definitions of belief part of 
 the act of worship.' {Preface, p. vii.) 
 Many of the ' occasional prayers ' 
 are exceedingly good. At the Com- 
 munion, consecration takes place by 
 reciting i Cor. xi. 23-26. In deli- 
 vering the bread, &c., there are three 
 alternative forms : ( 1 ) ' Take and 
 eat this, in remembrance of Christ :' 
 
 (2) 'As a solemn testimony, in the 
 presence of each other and before 
 God, of our faith in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, let us take and eat of this 
 bread, in remembrance of Him.' 
 
 (3) 'This bread is our Lord's own 
 emblem of His body which was 
 broken for us. Take, eat, in remem- 
 brance of Him.' Aftenvards comes 
 a sort of ' Church Militant Prayer ;' 
 containing, ' we remember those who 
 have fallen asleep in Christ,' &c. 
 Indeed, such remembrance is pur- 
 posely made a special feature in all 
 the sendees. {Preface, p. xiii.) At 
 Baptism, there are four alternative 
 forms: (i) 'I baptize thee in the 
 name of the Father, and of the Son, 
 and of the Holy Spirit.' (2) ' I bap- 
 tize thee in the name of Jesus Christ.' 
 (3) I dedicate thee to the kingdom 
 of God, through His Son Jesus 
 Christ.' (4) 'In the name of Jesus 
 Christ, I dedicate thee to God, our 
 Father in heaven.' Then follows an 
 address to the parents : ' Let me re- 
 mind you, that what you are your- 
 
VI.] ALL ELUCIDATIONS OF THE CREED WELCOME. 311 
 
 confesses the very same need, which the Church has thus 
 tried to meet. For the preface to that book states, 
 that ' it is prepared for a body of Christians, who own 
 the importance both of definite individual conviction, and 
 of broad average conctirreiue among the members of the 
 same Church.' Yet surely, these important blessings are 
 precisely those which the Church of England has been 
 aiming to secure to her people. And as far as free 
 speculation is concerned, — surely, the press is open ; 
 speech is free ; even her teaching officers are far more 
 unfettered, than they are in any other community that 
 has lasted so long, and that disclaims so vigorously the 
 rightfulness of ' secession.' And more than this : I will 
 be bold to add, that if, after really examining and under- 
 standing the matter, any individual man is able to offer 
 to the Church a better solution of the subtle and per- 
 plexing problems that environ us on every side, than 
 those which the incessant labour and consummate skill 
 of sixty generations have evolved,' — the Church for her 
 part, will be only too thankful to take such a solution 
 into her most careful consideration ; and by individual 
 aid (as she has often done before) to improve the methods 
 of her teaching *". 
 
 For surely it comes to this, after all : that it is not so 
 much her teaching, as the method of her teaching, to 
 which the Unitarian objects. He claims more freedom. 
 
 selves . . is a commentary whereby Church. Subject to these condi- 
 
 your direct teaching will be inter- tions, she has warmly welcomed the 
 
 preted,' &c. aid of individual thinkers : such as 
 
 *° What the Church demands in Athanasius the deacon, Leo the 
 
 such cases is, that the intellectual Pope, Augustine the Bishop, (cf. 
 
 acumen of the individual be balanced Nicolas, he Symbole des A^dires, p. 
 
 and kept from schismatical arro- Iy7), Anselm the monk, Aquinas 
 
 gance, by the Christian and moral the friar, Erasmus the layman, 
 
 virtues of patience, modesty, and by Hooker the priest, and a multitude 
 
 faith in Christ as the unseen yet not of others, 
 inactive Head and Ruler of the 
 
312 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 He protests, for instance, against the ' Divinity,' i. e. the 
 divine character and mission of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 — wliich he, it seems, in words confesses, as well as our- 
 selves *!, — being set forth in the terminology of meta- 
 physics, as it is at present set forth in the Church. 
 
 But it would not, I think, be difficult to show two 
 things: (i) that the Church has been driven to do 
 this quite nnwillingly'^''- (though perhaps providentially), 
 by the onset of anti-Christian metaphysics, in the earlier 
 centuries ; and that watchfulness against similar pheno- 
 mena is not wholly unnecessary at the present day : and 
 (2) (what is far more important), that the real secret 
 of her successful teaching and training of mankind, 
 under the Holy Spirit's guidance, is simply this, — 
 that she has addressed herself to the whole nature of 
 man *■', and balanced the possible mischief of one force 
 
 *' E. g. Mr. Vance Smith writes 
 to the Daily News, on Feb. 20, 1S71, 
 as follows : ' Some speakers . . ap- 
 pear to have resented my participa- 
 tion, much as if they thought I had 
 intended to offer some indignity to 
 the Church and to do a dishonour to 
 the Church's Divine Head. I would 
 earnestly repudiate such a construc- 
 tion.' — i)r. Beard tells us, 'regarding 
 the person of Christ, various opinions 
 are held by Unitarians, . . ranging 
 from the high Arianism of Milton 
 to the simple Humanitarianism of 
 Belsham ; corresponding alike to the 
 pre-existent Logos of John, and the 
 " man approved of God " of Luke. 
 There are other Unitarians who de- 
 cline speculating on the point.' {Cycl. 
 Rel. De7i. p. 302,) . 
 
 '^ See, for the Eastern Church, 
 Cyril Jer., Cat. Led. xi. 12: IloAAd 
 (rjTrji^dra ecrnV ev Ta7s Buais ypacpats- 
 rd yiypanfiiifov ov icaTaKa^fSdvofXcv, 
 Tt TO ^^ yiypafifiiyov TroKviypayiiovuv- 
 
 kyevvTjae Tldv 'iva piuvov. M^ htrai- 
 axvff^TJs ufxoXoyrjaat Tr)v dyvoiav, — 
 eTTfiS^ pi€TcL ayy€\.oiv ayvoits. For 
 the Western Church, Aug. de Trin. 
 ii. I : * Cum homines Deum quperunt, 
 et ad intelligentiam Trinitatis (pro 
 captu infirmitatis humanae) animum 
 intendunt, . . ciim ad aliquid certum, 
 discussa omni ambiguitate, perve- 
 nerint, — facillimfe debent ignoscere 
 errantibus in tanti pervestigatione 
 secreti.* 
 
 " 'There is surely an evil insepa- 
 rable from all partial developments 
 of religion, — which only satisfy the 
 immediate cravings of the mind, and 
 leave parts of our nature — asleep 
 perhaps at the moment — liable to 
 wake and thirst again.' (James Mar- 
 tineau, Studies of Christianity , p. 410.) 
 'With a "Faith" traditionally shy 
 of morals, and " Morals " not yet 
 elevated into faith, we have two 
 separate codes of life standing in 
 presence of each other — one reli- 
 gious, the other secular — and neither 
 
VI.] HUMAN NATURE THREEFOLD. 313 
 
 by the compensating influence of another. She has not, 
 hke the Puritans, preached ' faith only ' to the Con- 
 science ; not, like the modern Romanists, allowed the 
 forces of mere Imagination and representation to run 
 riot ; nor, lastly, like the Unitarians and the men of the 
 eighteenth century, addressed the Reason almost exclu- 
 sively, and held (to use Bishop Warburton's language) 
 that ' the image of God in which man was created lay 
 in the faculty of reason only**.' 
 
 No : surely the Church's method has been admirable 
 indeed, when compared with all of these. She seems to 
 have been led, (may we not suppose by His guidance, 
 who ' knoweth whereof we are made,') to recognize that 
 fact, which all modern psychology seems to point to, 
 that man's inner nature may be partitioned, and the 
 innumerable flashing mobile acts and feelings of his 
 brain be registered, under three grand divisions, — his 
 CONSCIENCE, his IMAGINATION, and his REASON *'' ; of 
 which the conscience, or moral department, — like the cen- 
 tral shoot of some dicotyledinous plant, — may (in a sense) 
 be called the man's true self, the avjos iyia of St. Paul. 
 On this, the moral, central, growing soul, the Sun of 
 
 of them with any true foundations in tions already existent within us. 
 
 human nature as a whole.' {Ibid. They are produced by our not stop- 
 
 p. .^38.) ping at the sensible impressions 
 
 *' Bishop Warburton, Worlis, iii. made by things, but by pushing on 
 
 620, (quoted in Essays and Reviews, to their internal being and life ; by 
 
 p. 269). our thinking of their internal nature 
 
 *^ ' Aristotle, the first systematic as analogous to our own ; and thus 
 
 expositor of the science [of psycho- spiritualizing the objects of sense.' 
 
 logy], enumerates . . the threefold (Beneke, Elements of Psychology, ed. 
 
 division of the facts of consciousness Dressier, 1871, p. 140.) For phy- 
 
 into sensation, thought, and volition.' siological indications of the same 
 
 (Cycl. Brit., art. Metaphysics, p. 555.) truth, see the profoundly interesting 
 
 The first of these is the raw-material researches of M. Flourens, He la 
 
 of the plastic ' imagination :' ' The phrinologie et des etudes vraies sur le 
 
 aesthetic feelings are a union be- cerveau (1863), pp. I49, 151, igi. 
 tween external impressions and emo- 
 
314 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. [lecT. 
 
 Righteousness, when once it has arisen and been pre- 
 sented with power, beams with a marvellous fecundity. 
 The soul stirs and thrills and ascends beneath the trans- 
 forming beam. It reaches out as yet all blindly, as if 
 to feel after and find that wondrous source, whence Hfe 
 and awakening have come to her""^. And therefore it is, 
 that the Church has always made it her first — I had 
 almost said, her single and all-comprehending — duty to 
 present Christ, for the grasp of men's faith to reach hold 
 of ■''' ; to awaken men ; to stimulate into a responsive 
 activity their sluggish moral sense, by pouring on them 
 ' with the power of an endless life ' that beam, with which 
 the effluence from no other source has ever yet, for stimu- 
 lating power, come for a moment into competition ''^. 
 
 But still, even when this has been done, all is not 
 done. The growing plant is not all shoot. It must 
 be ministered to by its lateral root-leaves, which gather 
 for it and fix from the surrounding air its fitting and 
 natural nutriment. And so too it is with the man. He 
 
 *" I cannot refrain from quoting p. 120, translated by Semple ; — trans- 
 
 liere the noblest passage which per- ferred to this work, by the author, 
 
 haps ever welled forth — like water- from his Kriiii der Pract. Vermmft.) 
 
 springs out of a dry ground — from "" Alas, that we clergy should so 
 
 amid the arid pages of modem Me- often, — from want of knowledge or 
 
 taphysics : ' Duty ! thou great, thou from defect of skill, — fail thus to 
 
 exalted name! Wondrous thought, 'preach Christ!' Happily, it often 
 
 that workest neither by fond insinu- occurs that amid our preaching (to 
 
 ation, flattery, nor by any threat ; use George Herbert's words) ' God 
 
 but merely by holding up thy naked takes a text :' or that (as St. Au- 
 
 law in the soul, and so extorting for gustine fancifully interprets Genesis, 
 
 thyself always reverence, if not obe- in his Confess, xiii. 18) 'transeunt 
 
 dience ! before whom all " appetites " nubes : ccelum manet.' 
 
 are dumb, however secretly they '* ' Und so der einzig wahre Met- 
 
 rebel ! Whence thy original ? . . Veiily, sias 1 der einzige, zu dem — als Fiihrer 
 
 it can be nothing less than what ad- und Herrn — ^jeder stets emporhlichen 
 
 vances man, as part of the physical und emporstreben muss, den (sei es 
 
 system, above himself; connecting sinnend, oder arbeitend, oder leidend) 
 
 him with an order of things unap- rein und vollkomnien zu Gott selb.^t 
 
 proached by "sense," into which the zu streben, der Geist zieht!' (Ewald, 
 
 force of reason can alone pierce.' Volk Israel^ v. p. 448.) 
 (Kant, Metnphysic of Elhics, 1797, 
 
VI.] THE CHURCH NEGLECTS NO PART. 315 
 
 too is in danger of some morbid growth, of developing 
 into some blind fanaticism or helpless casuistical scrupu- 
 losity, unless sweet health and joy be brought him 
 through the other functions of his manifold nature. 
 First of all, his imaginative cravings for re-presenta- 
 tion must be fed ; and Art, the great teacher of what 
 is truly beautiful, must be freely and boldly used, to 
 gather from the surrounding world all forms of love- 
 liness and purity, and devote them to this highest 
 service*". And this too (I need not say), the Church 
 has faithfully done. She has repudiated all Montanistic 
 dread of art and imaginative cultivation. She has taken 
 freely, and with filial boldness, all that was in the 
 air (so to speak) of beauty from time to time. She 
 began with what she found, ready to her hand, — the 
 forms of synagogue worship : she then drew from the 
 Temple : and then from the Hellenic and the (so-called) 
 Gothic forms : enlisted the Ambrosian and Gregorian 
 and Palestrinian music : took painting and sculpture 
 and evolved the ritual drama of the altar and the font : 
 was afraid of none of these things, — -because she truly 
 felt, all common things were cleansed for her, that ' all 
 things were hers.' And so it came to pass that, with 
 sweet and healthful pleasure, the great central redeeming 
 verities were taken up and appropriated by thousands of 
 her childlike souls ^^, in whom the conscience had yet to 
 
 *' ' La foi de notre siecle est une rieure a celle du theologien.' (Renan, 
 foi non formulae : I'Art a, de nos Etudes d'histoire, p. 430,) 
 jours, une fonction religieuse supe- 
 
 ' Was wir als Schunheit hier empfunden, 
 Wird einst als Wahrheit uns entgegen gehen.' 
 
 (Schiller, Gedichte, p. 95.) 
 
 ™ Read the beautiful language of Tr/piov elaeXOciv dmr]9Siixev. 'AW' 
 
 the true Fathers and teachers of the eVSoi' 6 Kpunrus tvoticit Uarijp, Kai & 
 
 Church in olden time : ff;^^^a tovt' tovtov Tlais o hirip ^jmou dnoOavajv. . . 
 
 iariv . . 'iva ds tu kolvov tovto natbtv- ^AK\d <Tv ye firj (^airaTr]67Js, u ytytv- 
 
3l6 THE UNITARIANS. [lect. 
 
 be fully awakened, and in whom the adult reason per- 
 chance would never wake at all *^. 
 
 But even this was not enough. There remained yet 
 a fraction of the human race, — and those, in some re- 
 spects; the highest and strongest, in others (as they them- 
 selves but too well know) the weakest and most tempted 
 of mankind, — men ' puffed up,' not ' built up *^ ; ' men 
 whose intellect is bright and keen, while their imagination 
 is (in many cases) neglected, and their moral faculty 
 all but asleep. Shall the Church show no consideration 
 for them ^' f Has Christ no word of pity for them, — 
 
 H^vos dXyOiias ! dWa, — to kvavriov toiovtovs UTTJaai ttj ^vxy 5opv(p6povs. 
 
 rots dWots dv9pw7Tot5, — aeavTw Kara- (Clem. Alex., Quis Dives, § 33.) 
 Xf^ov ffrpardf doirKov, aiT^Ket^ov . . 
 
 ' The prayers of hungry souls and poor, 
 Like armed angels at the door. 
 Our unseen foes appal.' 
 
 (Christian Year, First Sunday after Easter.) 
 
 'Cis yap dyaOos St5d(T/ca\os, K-rjSd- ^ I know of nothing, among all 
 
 fj.evo$ To/v eavTov fiaOrjTatv, rovs /i^ the deeply interesting social pheno- 
 
 hvvafxivovs kK twv fxei^uvojt/ dj(f>f\rj- mena of the present day, — so stimu- 
 
 Oijvai, irdvTojs did twv ciiTeXeaTepoji/ lating to the best energies of every 
 
 (jvyKaTa^aivojv aiiToiis iraiSivft, — ov- Christian minister who is worthy of 
 
 Tws Koi u Tov Qfov A070S. K. T. \. the name, as the half-acknowledged 
 
 (Athanasius, de Incarn. Verbi, § 15 : appeals which are now constantly 
 
 Migne, i. 121.) being made for spiritual help by 
 
 °' Contrast the hard repulsive scientific men. The attitude of Science 
 
 language of the Westminster Con- towards Faith is no longer one of 
 
 fession. Art. xxix. [Appendix B, p. buoyant arrogance. ' Just as fire 
 
 124]: 'All ignorant and ungodly and water require an intervening 
 
 persons, as they are unfit to enjoy substance, to become harmless to 
 
 communion with Him, so are they one another. Reason and Faith can 
 
 unworthy of the Lord's table.' We coexist only on the condition that 
 
 seem to hear the echoes of the very a proper consciousness of the limits 
 
 earliest extant heretical work, the of the human intellect is powerful 
 
 Judaizing Clementine Homilies, p. 15 enough to bind them over to keep 
 
 (ed. Dressel) : T(i irpwreia Trjs KoXd- the peace.' (Westtninsler Review, Oct. 
 
 oews Tots kv TTkdvr) ovalv d-rrobiBoTaL, — 1862, p. 480.) ' When I look at the 
 
 fcdv aojcppuvcuatv. heavens and the earth, . . and ask 
 
 « 'H yvwais tpvaioi- ri 81 dydirri myself, " Is there no Being or thing 
 
 oiKoSoiiet. ( I Cor. viii. i .) ' Eo in- in the universe, that knows more 
 
 firmiores, quodoctioresviderivolunt.' about these matters, than I do?" 
 
 {Aug. de Doclr. a. i^.) what is my answer? Supposing 
 
VI.] SPIRITUAL NEEDS OF INTELLECTUAL MEN. 317 
 
 Christ who at the Sadducee is never known to have 
 levelled one shaft of stern rebuke, and who, from the 
 ranks of the Swaroi, the flower and crown of intellectual 
 cultivation, called his most successful apostle, St. Paul ? 
 Surely it is not so. And whatever neglect, in this 
 matter, the guardians of the modern Church may have 
 one day to answer for, neither the ancient nor yet the 
 mediaeval Church can for one moment be accused of 
 indolence or apathy in making intellectual provision for 
 these men's souls. 
 
 For from every philosophy, as it successively sprang 
 up, did the great thinkers of those times employ their 
 utmost energies to draw, and fix for the Church's use, 
 whatever was most pure and sound and available. The 
 first at hand was Rabbinism ; and it was freely used 
 
 our theological schemes to be dis- 
 sipated, . . is such a condition one 
 of stable equilibrium?' (Tyndall, 
 Fragments of Science, p. 124.) 'In 
 this sadness, this consciousness of 
 the limitation of man, this sense of 
 an open secret which he cannot 
 penetrate, lies the essence of all 
 religion ; and the attempt to embody 
 it in the forms furnished by the 
 intellect is the origin of the higher 
 theologies." (Huxley, Lay Sermons, 
 &c. p. 15.) ' Why is it more irre- 
 ligious, to explain the origin of man, 
 as a distinct species, by descent from 
 some lower form, . . than to explain 
 the birth of an individual through 
 the laws of ordinary reproduction ? ' 
 (Darwin, Descent of Man, ii. 395.) 
 ' Doubt and controversy are painful 
 things ; but they are growing-pains, 
 — they are marks, not of decay, but 
 of life and vigour.' (Pall Mall Gaz., 
 Dec. 5, 1866.) Hence the despair 
 of thoughtful men, in Roman Catholic 
 countries, at the attitude taken up 
 by their Church. ' Le peril immi- 
 nent, celui qu'il faut ^carter par tous 
 
 les actes que la foi autorise, c'est 
 la separation entre la hierarchic 
 catholique et la civilization mo- 
 derne.' (Chevalier, Mexiqne.) — ' Ah, 
 quel sombre avenir tout cela me 
 montre d^jk pour le Catholicisme ! 
 Que d'ames sont bris^es ! Que 
 d'esprits d'ilite se refuseront bientot 
 h. accepter la responsabilit^ redoubt- 
 able du ministere!' {Le Mandit, i. 
 80.) — Hence the joyous hopefulness 
 of men under happier circumstances 
 of religious freedom, — of Germans, 
 who have found that * ernster und 
 gewissenhafter Gebrauch der Ver- 
 nunft den Glauben starkt * (Bunsen, 
 Bibelwerk, i. p.xxxiv) ; and of English- 
 men, who believe that ' it is the happy 
 distinction of this country, that what 
 is 7iew in it does not require to 
 forswear brotherhood with what is 
 old; and that no higher duty, and 
 none more fruitful of reward, can 
 attach to any of us, than the effort 
 to harmonize these two powers to- 
 gether.' (Gladstone, Speech at Man- 
 chester, 1864.) 
 
3l8 THE UNITARIANS. [lecT. 
 
 by St. Paul. Then came Platonism, and the Adyos 
 doctrine of the Alexandrian lecture-rooms. Then the 
 Aristotle of the Saracens. Then the true Hellenic 
 Aristotle arid Plato, — neither abridged by Alexandria, 
 nor diluted by Semitic translation. Then the Baconian 
 induction. And lastly, the Kantian metaphysics, — the 
 noblest, ripest, and most essentially Christian, probably, 
 of them all. And not only philosophy, but all the 
 subordinate sciences too, which are occupied with the 
 laws and phenomena of ' existence,' — from that of man 
 down to the very lowest animals and plants, — were once 
 (and why should they not be again ^* .?) consecrated to 
 God, and their first, best, purest fruits brought in from 
 the great scientific harvest, and waved by theology in 
 the temple of the Author and Giver of them all.,« Only, 
 in these days, we seem too apathetic or too cowardly 
 for this : and Oxford, where Luther's three conditions 
 for an efficient theology (' tentatio, oratio, meditatio ') 
 surely abound, produces few theologians ^^ And so it 
 needed the stimulus of the Unitarian (and that a not 
 very unfriendly) attack to awaken us once more. 
 
 For, — say what men will, — it is impossible for any 
 observant man to believe that the separation of the 
 Unitarians from the Church is a fundamental or a per- 
 manent one. Let us take, for instance, their own especial 
 subject of dispute, viz. (what they call) the Church's 
 
 ■" . . . 'I walked on, musing with myself 
 On life and art, — and whether, after all, 
 A larger metaphysics might not help 
 Our physics, a completer poetry 
 Against our daily life and vulgar wants 
 More fully, than the special outside plans.' 
 
 (Mrs. Browning, Aurora Leigh, p. 236.) 
 "" ' Of all academical institutions, and the most perfectible.' (Sir W. 
 Oxford is at once the most imperfect, Hamilton, Lectures, p. 387.) 
 
VI.] 
 
 METAPHYSICS. 
 
 319 
 
 ^metaphysical'' conception of the Holy Trinity. They 
 repudiate this doctrine, — because it seems to them to 
 contravene that particular truth, which they have set 
 themselves the task of defending, viz. the Divine ' Unity.' 
 But have they ever considered this absolutely certain — 
 though it may be to some people an astonishing and, 
 at first sight, unwelcome — fact, that it was purely and 
 entirely in defence of the tmbroken and inviolable ' Unity' 
 of God, that the whole doctrine of the ' Trinity' was 
 evolved by the Church ^^ ? 
 
 Yes : so profoundly has the Church always believed, 
 so firmly and tenaciously has she always grasped, so 
 clearly and faithfully has she always taught, this great 
 
 ^*' This fact was recognized so 
 early as a.d. 200, and even — in spite 
 of the arevuTTjTa irjs Trap' avTots 
 yKojTTTjs fcal dvoficLTaJV nepiav (Greg. 
 Naz., Oral. 21) — within the Latin 
 Church. ' Simplices quique, ne dicam 
 imprudentes et idiotas (qute major 
 semper credentium pars est), — quo- 
 niam et ipsa regula fidei a pluribus 
 Diis sEeculi ad unicum et verum 
 Deum transfert, — expavescunt ad 
 OLKOvofjLLay. " Monarchiam," inquiunt, 
 "tenemus !" ' {TertuWitin, c.Praxeam, 
 § 3.) — It was recognized by the great 
 Athanasius himself, in the fourth 
 century : Miav dpx^v oiSaixev. T6v 
 5^ S-rj/xiovpydy Auyov (^aaKop.cv ovK 
 erepov Tiya rpdirov '^X^'-^ 0€6tt]tos, 
 ^ TT)y Tov fx6vov 0€oO. Ma\Aof ^iV 
 vvv oi 'ApiiOfjuavTrai SiKmais &v axol^v 
 t6 iyK\r}pua. rrjs noXvSeorrjTos . . 
 iToWom ydp &y clfTdyoiev, Si^ rb 
 ' erepoetB^s' avraiv. . ."Eva yStp Sict 
 T^s TpidSos dfjLoXoyovfiiV eJvat rhv 
 &€ov Kal TToKv fxdWov evae^e/Trepov 
 Xeyofiey, t^s -rroXveLdovs Kal ttoXv- 
 
 pL€pOVS TWV atp€TtfiWV OiOTTJTOS. "Oti 
 
 T^v MI' AN iv TpiAdi BedTTjTa <ppovov' 
 fifv. , . E( ydp ' ©ibv ' avrhv [soil. 
 Tbv \6yov~\ ovo^&^ovdiv, kvTpcno ^€voi 
 
 Trapa twv ypafpuiv, — dvay/crj Xeyiiv 
 avToiis 5iJo 6€ovs. (Athan. Oral. iii. 
 § 15.) — It was pointed out afresh by 
 Petavius, to the Latin Church, in the 
 seventeenth century : ' Verum, ut 
 divini illius arcani stupenda majestas 
 et admirabilitas magis eluceat, — 
 decani id, quod prceter opinionem 
 fortasse lectori accidat : tantum ab- 
 esse, ut unitatem simplicitatem Dei 
 personarum discrimen illud inter- 
 pellet, . . uthxcip^arealis personarum 
 differentia ad id potissimum conferat, 
 ut sit unus imprimis ac simplicissimus 
 Deus.' (Petav. de Theol. Dogm. i. 
 4. 6: A.D. 1644.) — And, of late 
 years, it has been clearly stated to 
 the English Church once more: 
 ' The Father is the one simple 
 entire Divine Being ; and so is the 
 Son. They do, in no sense, share 
 Divinity between them. Each is 
 '6Kfs Qfos. This is not ditheism, or 
 tritheism ; for they are the same 
 God. . . In truth, the distinction into 
 "Persons," — as Petavius remarks, — 
 avails especially towards the unity 
 and simplicity of God.' (Dr. New- 
 man, Athan. Treatises, ii. p. 334, 
 note.) 
 
320 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 and fundamental doctrine of the Divine Unity,— that, in 
 one brief word, she has made it the foundation-stone of 
 all Christianity". By word and by deed, by homily 
 and symbol and sacrament, by creed and treatise and 
 liturgy, by catechisms for babes, by 'Articles' for the 
 clergy, by controversies and polemics innumerable for 
 the learned,— she has striven, for eighteen hundred years 
 and more, to bring the doctrine home to heart and 
 mind. And, with inconceivable expenditure of toil and 
 thought, has cleared away the ever-recurring impedi- 
 ments to its reception ®*. 
 
 And was she not justified in so doing .' Yes : Mono- 
 theism is an essential characteristic of the Gospel. To teach 
 that it was that St. Paul threaded his way among the 
 idols at Athens, and fought with beasts at Ephesus. To 
 teach that, Gregory sent his mission to our forefathers, 
 and Boniface carried on the torch of faith from England 
 into Germany. That is the opening trumpet-note of the 
 Nicene creed. For 4hat it was, that the whole Nicene 
 and Athanasian terminology was invented. For that 
 its champion stood up against immeasurable odds — 
 ' Athanasius contra mundum.' And hence it is that the 
 
 " ' Species eonim quas per prse- thing, that may in any way affect 
 
 dicationem Apostolicam manifesto this truth, is dangerous.' (Courayer, 
 
 traduntur, istD2 sunt : primo, — quod ap. Kippis' Life of Lardner, p. xx.) 
 
 Deus unus est.' (_Origen, inpX dpx^y, ' Christianity is the religion oi Mono- 
 
 i. 4.) ' Manifestum est. qu6d Deus theism ; and is distinguished from 
 
 maxime unus.' (Aquinas, Siimma, Judaism by its universality.' (Dorner, 
 
 i. II. 4.) 'Our God is one, — or Person of Christ, ii. 353, English 
 
 rather, very oneness and mere unity.' trans.) 
 
 (Hooker, Ecd. Pol. i. 2. 2.) 'This ™ 'So numerous and serious have 
 
 unity of the Godhead will easily ap- been the errors of theorists on 
 
 pear as necessary as the existence ; religious subjects, . . that the cor- 
 
 so that it must be as impossible that rection of them has required the 
 
 there should be more Gods than most vigorous and subtle exercise 
 
 one, as that there should be none.' of the reason. . . What an extreme 
 
 (Pearson, on Ap. Creed, Art. i. p. 32, exercise of intellect is shown in the 
 
 Oxf. ed.) 'The nni/y of God is the theological teaching of the Church 1' 
 
 foundation of the Gospel ; and any- (Newman, Univ. Serm. p. 49.) 
 
VI.] UNITARIANS IN ACCORD WITH THE CHURCH. 321 
 
 Church of England, in her very first Article, instructs 
 her clergy and bids her clergy instruct her people, to 
 beware of Tritheism or of any other form of thinking con- 
 cerning God, — than that He is absolutely and indivisibly 
 One. For if Christ be, — as we all confess alike, — in any 
 sense 'Divine;' if He be the irresistible claimant of the 
 heart's supreme devotion and of the soul's supreme obe- 
 dience, — then the only safe way in which that resistless 
 moral instinct can be satisfied, without trenching upon 
 Monotheism, is by acknowledging Him as (in some mys- 
 terious way) the ONE TRUE GoD, manifesting Himself 
 in human nature and in human history ^^ And, on the 
 other hand, every conception (call it by whatever name 
 you will) which militates against this absolute and ador- 
 able 'unity,' is just as much a 'heresy' and a rejection 
 of Christianity, as it is to disbelieve the story of the 
 Evangelists, or to dissipate the historical facts of the 
 Gospel into a cloud of legend. 
 
 But if this be so, then — in mind and intention — the Uni- 
 tarian is entirely in agreement with the Church. Every 
 victory he gains over gross and divided conceptions of 
 the divine nature, are her victories too ^^. Every aid 
 
 ^^ Thus Dionysius, Bishop of Rome kxirov e^ ovaias KaX TroidrriTos. (Jo- 
 
 (+269'), rebukes the * Arians before hannes Damasc., J'e .fiWe Or/A. i. cap. 
 
 Arius' of his day, as SiaipovvTas /cal 13.) — And so too the Latin writers 
 
 KaraT^fxvovTas Kal avaipovvras to ff€fx- of the fourth and fifth centuries : 
 
 v6raT0v K-qpv^^xa 7Tis iKKKrjfrias, — t^v 'Nihil sumus aliud "Christian!," 
 
 fxovapx^av, — €(s rptis Zwafxas riv^s, nisi — magistro Christ o — Summi Regis 
 
 Hat fi€^€piafxivas vrroaTaaeis. {ap. ac Principis veneratores. Nihil, si 
 
 Rouih, iii. 373.) — And a Greek divine consideres, aliud invenies in istS reli- 
 
 of the following century urges, T17- gione versari. H^c totius summa 
 
 poLTo 5' av els @€us, — ds Iv A'iriov ical est actionis, hie propositus terminus 
 
 Ti'oC Kal TlyevnaTos dva<pepop.ivani. divinorum officiorum, hie finis, huic 
 
 (Greg. Naz. Oral. 29.) — And another, omnes prostemimur, hunc coUatis 
 
 centuries later, argues, PovKriais xal precibus adoramus.' (Arnobius, c. 
 
 aotpia Kal Svva^ts b Tlus Ioti rov Gentes, i. 27.) 
 
 Xlarplis- ov xp^ y°-P ^fyfi" t'"' &(ov '" ' Fide rectissime ac robustissime 
 
 ' TToidTrjTa,'' — iva fxTj avv&^TOV tt-nw^iv retinemus, Patrem, Filium, Spiritum 
 
 Y 
 
322 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 he can supply, towards clearing and strengthening the 
 doctrine of the Divine unity, is an aid towards the 
 final prevalence of her teaching. Every contribution 
 he can make, towards the patient and honest investi- 
 gation of those historical records, on which her whole 
 teaching is built, is an additional security against the 
 intrusion of falsehood and error in that teaching. Nor 
 need he fear that any such contributions — if they be 
 found, on reflection, to be sound and trustworthy — 
 would fail to be built into that doctrinal structure of 
 ' gold, silver, and costly stones,' upon which she is ever 
 at work ; and which is cemented, age after age, by the 
 life-exhausting brain-toil of her sons ; that the poor 
 and ignorant and childlike may dwell there without 
 fear, and may enjoy a mental rest, to procure which 
 these ' fellow-workers with Christ ' did not refuse their 
 lives. Many a good work, besides Lardner's Credibility 
 of the Gospel History, has been adopted and widely 
 used by Churchmen, in spite of Unitarian authorship. 
 Nor have the noble words of St. Augustine ever been 
 denied or repudiated : ' Ex qudciinque anima verum con- 
 silium procedat, non ei — sed Illi qui est Veritas — tribu- 
 endum est.' 
 
 And if it should still be complained, — ' why so much 
 endless subtlety and metaphysical elaboration^'.'" — per- 
 
 Sanctum, inseparabilem esse Trini- popular answer to this question, if it 
 tatem, — unum Deum, non Ires Deos.' could be reduced to intelligible terms, 
 (Aug. Serm. lii. § 2,) — ' De Persona- would probably be very surprising, 
 rum in S. Trinitate unitate specifidt, The true definition has been given by 
 qualis est unio personanim in rebus Bishop Hampden : ' We would de- 
 creatis, e. ^. trium bomimim, . . . pri- fine the science . . as the philosophy of 
 mD5vi Ecclesite doctores ne somnia- the facts of consciousness ; [a] con- 
 runt quidem.' (Bull, Opera Lat., sidered subjectively, in relation to 
 P- 268.) the mind knowing, (Psychology :) and 
 "' What IS ' Metaphysics '?— The [,3] objectively, in relation to the 
 
VI.] WHY ' METAPHYSICS' NECESSARY. 323 
 
 haps the answer would be furnished by a Httle deeper 
 reflection on the nature and the needs of mankind ^^. The 
 idea of ' God' is, confessedly, the apex and crowning point 
 of all the lines which form the pyramid of human know- 
 ledge. And the only admissible idea of God being a 
 monotheistic one, — that is to say, being a single and un- 
 compounded conception, — unless all the converging lines 
 find there a final rest and satisfaction, a sense of incom- 
 pleteness arises"'. Some lines still fall outside that 
 which pretends to cap them all. And there is danger 
 lest, along those neglected lines, the restless intellect of 
 man project for itself new and inharmonious conceptions, 
 incompatible with Christianity, and detrimental to the 
 great vital truth of THE UNITY OF GOD. 
 
 Now — say what men will in its disparagement — it 
 cannot be denied that Metaphysics is one of the main 
 lines of human thinking. It is indeed the ruling and 
 ' architectonic ' science, among those that are concerned 
 with Existences, — whether the phenomena of their ex- 
 istence be reported to us through the senses, or otherwise. 
 Just as Astronomy seems to be, at present, the acknow- 
 ledged queen of all the sciences connected with the 
 measurement of space: and History the chief of all those 
 
 thing known, (Ontology.) Cyclop. Word, was forced at once to satisfy 
 
 Brit. xiv. 555. — Again, ^Physical the instincts of a devout belief and 
 
 science does not trouble itself with the requirements of a true philo- 
 
 the inquiry, whether the objects sophy.' (Prof Lightfoot, On revision 
 
 which it investigates are real or o/£. F., p. 84.) 
 
 apparent . . In Metaphysical science, '^ Ei /jt) ' oiaiwh7)s ' ao4>ia, Kal 
 
 on the other hand, consciousness ' evovaios ' X6yos, Kal ' uiv ' vtus ; . . drj 
 
 itself is the direct object of our in- &v airbs 6 TlaTr)p avvStTOs eic ao<l>ias 
 
 quiries.' (Ibid. p. 5,s6.) xal \6yov. ^Athan. c. Arianos, lib, v.) 
 
 "^ ' A study of history shews that ' Omnis res quEe non est Divina essen- 
 
 the Church arrived at the Catholic tia, est creatura. Patet ergo, qu(id 
 
 statement of the doctrine of the in Deo non est aliud esse relationis et 
 
 Trinity .. partly because it was the esse essentia, — sed unum et idem.' 
 
 only statement which, recognizing the (Aquinas, Svmma, i. 28, n.) 
 fact of the Incarnation of the Divine 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. [leCT. 
 
 which are concerned with time and succession (geologic 
 or human). Without laying too much stress however on 
 these notions, the fact at least does not admit of doubt, 
 that not merely are ' space ' and ' time ' (as Kant ''* has 
 taught us) the ultimate forms of human thought, but 
 that ' existence ' is yet a third and more subtle form, 
 which lies deeper than the other two. And hence the 
 science which deals with this subject is a true science, — 
 so long (at least) as it adheres to scientific methods of 
 procedure, and gathers its material mainly from that one 
 interior nature which alone is submitted to its scrutiny — 
 the nature of man ^^. 
 
 But Christianity distinctly and repeatedly asserts, that 
 this nature of man was formed ' in the image and like- 
 ness of God! So that a transition becomes possible from 
 metaphysics to theology '^°. And the truth should 
 begin to dawn upon us, which has been often strangely 
 forgotten : viz. that the religious problem before us is 
 not, from the known Being and Nature of God to deduce 
 the unknown nature of Christ ; but rather precisely the 
 
 '* ' There are two pure forms of ^ Even in Aristotle we find the 
 
 sensuous intuition, as principles of two names used interchangeably, 
 
 knowledge a priori, — viz. Space and Tpefs hv ejev <pi\oao<piai OcaiprjTiKai 
 
 Time.' (Kant, Critik of Pure Reason, fiaOrniaTinr), <pvcnK7}, SeokoyMT) . . Ei 
 
 p. 3^ : Bohn.) f-iv olv fXTj eari tis kr^pa ouaia, trapci 
 
 ^^ ' Une croyance morale . . . ne T<is tjtvaei avvearrjKvias, 77 (pvatK^ dv 
 saurait pr^tendre a I'autorit^ imper- (irj TrpiiT-q imaT-qix-q. Ei 8' Iffri tis 
 sonelle de la science, et s'enoncer ovala aiclvr^ros, avrr] -nportpa teat 
 en ces termes : 11 esf certain que Dieu ipiXooofpia'npijT-q. (Arist. Metaph.\. I.) 
 existe. Mais elle brille d'une sorte It is true that ' the distinction be- 
 d'evidence personelle, qui permet a tween the divine and human was far 
 tout etre moral de declarer : Je sais less marked to the Greek, than to 
 ceriain qu'il existe un Dieu.' (Bar- oiirselves.' (Jowett, Plato, i. 393.) 
 tholmess, Boctrines religieuses de la But it may be, that herein it is we 
 Phil, moderne, i. 359.) — 'God, Free- who are in error; and that, under the 
 dom,and Immortality vanish so soon long reign of a biblical Puritanism, 
 as men open their eyes only to what the Semitic element in our Chris- 
 is without them, and refuse to reflect tianity has too much eclipsed the 
 upon the wonders evident within.' Hellenic element. 
 (Chandler, Inang. Led. [1867], p. 23.) 
 
VI.] CHRIST, A 'REVELATION OF GOD.' 325 
 
 reverse. It is God who is unknown. It is His nature 
 which is inscrutable. It is His ways which are ' past 
 finding out.' It is His mind — towards us, and towards 
 all His creatures — which is fearfully and perplexingly 
 obscure. While in Christ, — who is ' very man ' like our- 
 selves, — that obscurity is cleared up, and that perplexity 
 relieved. ' No man hath seen God at any time : the 
 only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, 
 He hath revealed Him.' So that in Christ, the smiling 
 face of God's tender love and compassion looks upon us. 
 His purposes of mercy have become understood. The 
 feelings of His heart (if we may so say) have made 
 themselves intelligible. And this baffling universe — that 
 looks, to the superficial eye, so like a dead and heartless 
 machine — puts on, at once, a human and engaging aspect. 
 Our confidence is restored. And we repose in faith on 
 the conviction, that (in some transcendent sense) what 
 we call ' Justice,' ' Truth,' and ' Love ' shall ultimately 
 prevail and shall find all enemies put under their feet. 
 
 And hence two thoughts suggest themselves, which 
 may perhaps be worthy of a profounder study than is 
 usually given to them in England. The first is, the 
 question whether an undogmatic theology, which is 
 afraid of and abandons metaphysics ^', can possibly be a 
 sound or a ' Christian ' theology .' For Christ is acknow- 
 ledged, on all hands, to be in soine sense Divine. And 
 to determine in what sense, is a problem which can only 
 
 ^ Few things are more amusing, anv^TTjTa rrfs Trap avroTs yXwTTrjS 
 
 than the almost supercilious pity teal ovojxarcov irepiav, — hiiXav dir() t^s 
 
 with which the subtle Eastern theo- ovaias ttjv virltnaaiv icai did, tovto 
 
 logians regarded the phenomenon of dfrfiaa'yovaTjs tcL Upoawwa, tfa /4^ 
 
 Westeni inability to handle Meta- rpas Ouaiai Tjapad^xOaiat, — ri yive- 
 
 physics. The distinction between rat ; uis XiAv jiXoiov, — ti kKiuvov. 
 
 ovaia and vTT6aTaais was actually too (Greg. Naz. Orat. xxi.) 
 much for them ! ov Swa/Kvot — Sici 
 
336 THE UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 be resolved by a metaphysical inquiry. The second is, 
 the question how it has come to pass, that the Church's 
 doctrine of the Holy Trinity has — in point of fact — 
 satisfied so many generations of able and thoughtful 
 men ? Whether it be not a true account of the matter, 
 to say that the adorable Object — when it is thus pre- 
 sented to the human Subject — -finds a singular correspond- 
 ence and reflection there •'^ f For as the eye can only see 
 that which it has some kindred capacity for seeing ; so 
 perhaps the complex Mind of man could only grasp a 
 dim conception of the supreme Being (in whom all its 
 highest ideals are realized), when that sublime conception 
 is — like the man himself— One; and yet, in some myste- 
 rious way, Three ^'^. 
 
 And again, since the filial Emotion of reverent love 
 can only well forth within the soul, when a sense of 
 paternal similitude — in some ineffable manner and on 
 some transcendent scale — is first established, hence it 
 may be that the intelligent Father of all existence 
 deigns to mirror Himself in man's intelligence ; the Son, 
 suspended (as it were) -npo oiJ.iJ.aTwv in space ' to draw 
 all men unto Him,' addresses Himself to our receptive 
 imagination"^^ ; and the Spirit, working out His gracious 
 
 '° ' Every step of real advance in '" Observe how wonderfully, and 
 
 the matter of Christology, must be (it is impossible to doubt) purposely, 
 
 preceded by a deeper knowledge of the Incarnate Son, — with His brief 
 
 the nature of God and of man' (Dor- but striking Ministiy, His public 
 
 n^LX, Person of Chrisl, iu. 2 : English death, and His hierarchy of surround- 
 
 translation.) ing apostles, saints, and martyrs, — 
 
 "' 'Ei' ovpavtS iaais Tapidetyim dvA- lends Himself, as plastic material, 
 
 K€iTai Tw (iovXofxkvo) upav, Kai opaifTi to imaginative treatment. A well- 
 
 iavTov KaToiKiC^eiv. Aiaipipti St ov- known work on Sacred and Legendary 
 
 S(v, e'lre itov cctti, elVe iVrai. (Plato, Art, and on the pictoral History of 
 
 Repuh. ix. sub fin.) ' Vellem ut hgec our Lord, occupies no less than three 
 
 tria cogitarent homines in seipsis : largevolumes. But I have neverheard 
 
 esse, nosse, velle . . et utriini propter of any book, or seen any work of art, 
 
 tria hcec et ibi Trinitas, . . quis facile which was occupied (predominantly) 
 
 cogitaverit?' (Aug. Confess, xiii. 11.) with the esthetic presentation of the 
 
VI.] LOVE, THE TRUE AVENUE TO GOD. 327 
 
 purposes as history unfolds itself, finds response in the 
 active will and practical conscience of man, enters into 
 combination with his mind, bears witness with his spirit, 
 helps his infirmities, speaks in his unuttered prayers, and 
 displays — to his love, rather than to his reason — the deep 
 things of God. 
 
 But whatever these merely tentative speculations may 
 be worth, one truth remains certain. And it should be 
 clearly understood by every one, of every way of thinking, 
 that the Catholic Church has always as emphatically 
 taught this truth, as it was taught by our Lord and His 
 Apostles '^. It is this : that no man by mere thinking 
 can ever attain to the knowledge of God. Thinking, at 
 the utmost, only clears away barriers. The avenue to 
 God is a moral avenue'^. 'He that wills to do God's 
 will shall know of the doctrine.' ' He that loveth, know- 
 eth God : for God is Love.' And hence it is ' not to the 
 wise and prudent, but to babes', that God has mainly 
 revealed Himself. And he that will be wise in this soul- 
 redeeming wisdom, must first learn to think less of him- 
 self as a philosopher, must cultivate humility of mind, 
 must (in short) ' become a fool that he may be wise.' 
 
 Qiher Divine Persons. — We may re- Kii\ikv7]v (pvatv . . Ai' a<paTov ovv 
 mark too, how entirely devotional dyaOuTr^ra, rjvS6KT]fr€v kfc -twv KaO' 
 Art loses sight of mere time, and rjjxas uvo^d^iGOar tva fj.T] dfxeroxot 
 abandons all chronological propri- -navriXais tS^uej/ ttjs Avtov kmyi'ujaeojs 
 eties. E.g. in Fra Angelico's beautiful dW' e'xwjuti/ «aV d^vhpdv Avtov 
 picture of the Crucifixion, at Flo- '^vvoiav. (Johannes Damascenus, De 
 rence, no less than twenty saints Fide Orthod. i. cap. 12.) 
 are introduced ; and their dates '^ ' This was the usurpation of the 
 vary, from a.d. 26 (St. John the schools of Theology in former ages, 
 Baptist) to A.D. 1250 ^St. Thomas — to issue their decrees to the sub- 
 Aquinas), jects of the senses and the intellect. 
 " Cf. the following passage, from No wonder Reason and Faith were 
 a profound Greek tiieologian, in the at variance. The other cause of 
 eighth century : uiairep ov ttjs ova'ias disagreement takes place, when Rea- 
 AiiTOv ^€T€dai/c€v ijiXLV ovTOjs ovSe, ttjs son is the aggressor and encroaches 
 yyojffeojs TTJs oiiaias Avtov. 'ASivarop on the province of Religion, attempt- 
 ydp (pvffLV TcAe/o's yvwvai t^v virep- ing to judge of those truths which 
 
328 THE UNITARIAA'S. [leCT. 
 
 Thus have all the greatest saints and fathers of the 
 Church with one accord expressed themselves. 'TTrep av- 
 epmijov TO ixderiixa, says St. Cyril of Jerusalem ''='. ^ofSepov 
 TO iyx^flpr^ixa Koi 8ia tovto KadapTiov kavTov lip&Tov, eira ru 
 KaOapi^ ojiiXtreov, says St. Gregory Nazianzen '*. ' Tri- 
 nitatem omnipotentem quis intelligit .'' says St. Augus- 
 tine. ' Rara anima qujE, cum de ilia loquitur, scit quid 
 loquitur".' And, with equal humility, it is always 
 plainly acknowledged by them, that human philosophies 
 can do no more than clear away obstructions, and 
 keep away ' heresies ' — notions, that is, that will not 
 graft or assimilate with the Church's living tree of 
 doctrine. All, says St. Clement of Alexandria, is 
 but yv(i)p[^nv, ov\ o i(TTw, o be ju?; eaTiv . ' Hujusmodi 
 nomina,' says St. Ambrose [viz. ' substance,' ' person,' 
 and the rest], ' sunt inducta in divinis ad remove^iditm, 
 non ad ponendum aliquid ''.' And even Aquinas, the 
 subtle schoolman, in the heart of the middle ages, con- 
 fesses : ' Ad inveniendum nova nomina, antiqiiani fidem 
 de Deo significantia, coegit necessitas disputandi cum 
 hsereticis '^' 
 
 Yes : ' modern language, to express the ancient faith,' 
 ■ — there is the secret of the whole matter ; there is the 
 watchword of the Church's whole conflict, in her mani- 
 
 are subject to another part of our " Aug. Confess, xiii. ii. 
 nature — \he moral sense.' (Newman, " Clem. Alex. ■S/rom. v. it. 
 University Sermons, p. 44.) 'A ra- " Ambrose, De Fide, § 51. 
 tional religion can have no existence " Aquinas, 57;mma, i. 30. 3. 'These 
 unless it is founded upon Ihe laws of expressions were found out and 
 morality. ' (K3.nt, Critik of Pure Rea- used by the ancient Church, lo pre- 
 sort, p, 390,) vent the fraud of those who cor- 
 
 " Cyril Jer., Cal. Lect. xi. 3 ; — cf. rupted the doctrine of the Person 
 
 ibid. II. ov yap to * ttws €yivvrj<j(v' of Christ, and obscured their per- 
 
 t'nretv KarayyeXufieOa- dAAd to ' oiiK nicious sentiments under ambigu- 
 
 ooTcus" SiaBf^awixiOa. ous expressions.' (Owen, Works, 
 
 " Oral. xxix. I. xii. 283.) 
 
VI.] SUBTLE LANGUAGE FORCED ON THE CHURCH. 329 
 
 fold controversies about the Holy Trinity'''. It is not 
 that she delights in this terrible deployment of verbal 
 subtlety ; or that her greatest men have ever taken 
 pleasure in it. Rather they have shrunk from it. They 
 have deplored the necessity, which drove them to the 
 use of these fine-spun definitions. Athanasius habitually 
 avoided using his own celebrated watchword, o\i.oovcnov ^^. 
 Yet he too felt, — precisely as so many Churchmen feel 
 now, — that a definite creed is like an anchor to ride 
 freely by. He saw that it gives liberty of motion (as 
 compared with other possible alternatives), amid our 
 present storms ; that it adds force to thinking ; and 
 enables us (if I may use his own word) to Trapprjaid^ecrdai, 
 — that is, to expatiate, to speak openly and with a sense 
 of filial liberty about God. For ' nisi quietum, nihil 
 beatum*^.' Toy 8e aA.?)5etas kpaaTrjV re ajua, Kca yvaipiiiov, ^Ipr)- 
 VLKOV ilvai — K.O.V Tois Cv'^rjn'sin — Trpoirij/cev ^^. ' Contendunt 
 
 " In theology — as in all' other much stiffness in refusing, and too 
 
 sciences — there is a variable and a much easiness in admitting, any 
 
 permanent element. The part of ■ variation.' {Preface to Book of Com. 
 
 wisdom and faithfulness is, not to Prayer.) — ' MecroT7;7-a' 5e orav €'iTTbj, 
 
 refuse all change with a perpetual ' aKijOtiav' Xiyai. (Greg. Naz., Oro/. 
 
 cry of ' non possumus,' but to bring xxix. 2.) — ''The CathoUc historian 
 
 home, by bold and skilful arfn/ita/;on, distinguishes a permanent element 
 
 old truths to new times. ' Si philo- and a changeable : the former being 
 
 Sophia loqui posset (said Ernesti), the substance of the faith itself; the 
 
 haud dubie se popnlarem profiteretur.' latter the perception, comprehen- 
 
 And a sound theology has always sion, and representation of this firm 
 
 said the same. ' Language is worth,, substance of faith.' (Bp. Hefele, 
 
 after all, just what it means to those Hist, of Councils, i, 253 : Engl, 
 
 who use it. . . The faith and aim of trans.) 
 
 the Church was one and unchanging. ^^ ' One of the characteristic points 
 
 But the question, whether a par- in Athanasius is his constant atten- 
 
 ticular symbol would represent her tion to the sense of doctrine, or the 
 
 mind with practical accuracy, re- meaning of writers, in preference to 
 
 ceived an answer at Antioch which the words used. Thus he scarcely 
 
 would have been an error at Niccea.' uses the symbol d^ioovaiov through- 
 
 (Liddon, Bamp. Led., p. 648.) — ' It out his Orations.' (Newman, Note 
 
 hath been the wisdom of the Church on Athan. Tracts, i. p. 17.) 
 
 of England, . . to keep the mean " Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, i. 20. 
 
 between the two extremes, of too °^ Clem. Alex., Strom, viii. i. 
 
33° 
 
 THE UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 et dimicant : et nemo, sine pace, videt istam visionem^s.' 
 And— as medical science plainly warns us — repose and 
 balance of thought are absolutely indispensable to the 
 health and vigour of the brain ^^. 
 
 And lastly, one word on a practical question of great 
 importance. It is this : — Have not we Churchmen much 
 to learn from Unitarians ? And if so, can we possibly 
 be doing right, either to our Master or to them, in re- 
 taining our present repellent and hostile attitude towards 
 them ? In personal character many Unitarians represent 
 the very highest type of Christian manhood. In ability 
 and learning their ministers are often on a par with 
 our own. To theology they not unfrequently make 
 valuable contributions. In ecclesiastical matters, their 
 tendency is rather towards the Church of England, than 
 away from her. And on questions of Church and State, 
 their opinion has hitherto been expressed rather in 
 favour of that great guarantee of intellectual freedom, 
 the National Establishment, than in sympathy with the 
 Puritan attack upon it. If the severance should come 
 (says one of their leading reviews), ' let it be accom- 
 plished, not only justly, but generously . . and with a 
 patriotic regret that it should be needful. Let it be 
 clear, that the National Church falls, — not by attacks 
 from without (which it might easily have been strength- 
 ened to withstand), — but by internal weakness and 
 dissension. . . For much of what has been said of the 
 
 °° Augustine, Coh/uss. xiii. II. (medically speaking) of a system 
 
 ^^ ' I cannot shut my eyes, as a which puts such brains in repose. 
 
 medical man, to the mischievous . . The soothing effect of ceremonial 
 
 consequences of such studies [the devotion is a moral medicine, cal- 
 
 abstnise points of theology,] to every culated to produce a physical effect.' 
 
 brain whose delicate structure tends (Dr. Wigan, on Insanity, p. 428.) 
 to insanity; nor to the advantage 
 
VI.] 'FREEDOM' SECURED BY A NATIONAL CHURCH. 331 
 
 superior freedom which has been hitherto enjoyed within 
 the Church is undeniably true ^■'.' 
 
 Such writers as these, surely, are not very bitter 
 enemies ; and might easily be made friends. Such 
 men, one would think, might without much difficulty 
 be ranged in the Church's organized array of battle 
 against ignorance, bigotry, and sin. We do not live 
 (thank God) in the fourth century, and we ought not 
 to copy its methods of controversy ^'^. We live in an 
 age of openness, candour, and courtesy towards op- 
 ponents. And it may possibly be our highest wisdom, 
 — while guarding more strictly the approach to holy 
 orders % and rendering all discipline more effective by 
 an increase of the Episcopate, — to throw open the outer 
 precincts of the temple more generously and widely than 
 we have ever yet done. And then, we may remember 
 for our encouragement, that the old canon law of the 
 Church was in nothing more imperative, than in pre- 
 scribing that the doors of approach should be thrown 
 open as widely and freely as possible. ' Episcopus 
 mdhcin prohibeat ingredi Ecclesiam, . . sive Gentilem, sive 
 hcereticum, sive Judczum^^! And if the limit is there 
 
 ^^■' Theological Review^ Jan. 1871, ant. It is strange, therefore, that 
 
 p. 94. Cf. Green, Disse7iters and the to many good men, the fourth cen- 
 
 Church, p. 15. tuiy — in which eveiy theological 
 
 '" The vehemence of religious passion was fanned into a raging 
 controversy has been in all ages flame — should appear a sort of con- 
 remarkable. It arises from the troversial golden age. 
 great facility with which bigotry is " Tors /liv yap tov \aov rdxa hv 
 able to counterfeit /aiVi. Both spring /cal avyyiiwatcoifx^v rcuro [ignorance 
 from the depths of our nature. Both of theology], Traaxovaiv, — ofls trajfci 
 move the man altogether (as the iroWd/cis ri d^avdviaTov 8idaffKd\w 
 wind moves a cloud, or fear and plea- 5^ -nws tovto Sajtro/xtr ; bs Knl tcLs twv 
 sure move a child). But the one is dKKwi^ dyvoias tiravopOoi, dv irfp 77 
 of the earth, — selfish, violent, and ^^ iptvSavvjxos. (Greg. Naz., Orat. 
 tyrannical: the other is from heaven, xxi, § 4.) 
 — tranquil, peaceable, humble, toler- " Decretum Grat. iii. i. 67. 
 
332 
 
 777^ UNITARIANS. [lECT. 
 
 added, 'usque ad Missam Catecliumenorum,' Aquinas 
 (on the other hand) tells us that the old distinction 
 between the Missa Catecfmmenorum and the Missa 
 Fidelunn had been long done away, even in his time : 
 and Cardinal Bona thinks that it had been done away 
 so early as the seventh century **. 
 
 No : the days of theological hatred are (let us hope) 
 at least on the way to their setting. 'Among the wise' 
 (says Boethius, from, his very dungeon where Arian spite 
 had thrust him), 'no place whatever is left for hatred. 
 To hate the good, who would be so foolish t to hate 
 the bad, is absolutely irrational ^°.' 
 
 But if even towards Separatists and opponents, wisdom 
 and charity thus plead for candour and for a mutual 
 understanding, how much more loudly do they plead 
 that a spirit of concord and peace should reign, among 
 brethren of the same household and mejnbej's of the same 
 Church ! Indeed we dare not hope that the former plea 
 will ever be heard to any good effect, until the claims 
 of the latter have been fully recognized. Charity begins 
 at home. And if men cannot bring themselves to love 
 their brother, whom they have seen, all exhortations to 
 the practice of still loftier and more difficult virtues are 
 likely to be in vain "^ 
 
 '" ' Ut observat St. Thomas {Suppl. et peracta condone dimitterentur. 
 
 iii. 37. 2): "Nunc abiit in desue- Id vero, in Ecclesia Latina, circa a.d. 
 
 tudinem hie ritus ; et a foribus 700, contigisse.' (Card. Bona, De 
 
 Ecclesiae discesserunt ostiarii, sub- Rebus Lilurgicis, lib. i. § 16.) 
 
 latisque repagulis omnes indiscrimi- '" Boethius, De Consoladone, iv. line 
 
 natira ad ipsiun altare irrumpunt." 140 (ed. Peiper, 1871). 
 
 . . Qua Estate id fieri ccepit, incertum °^ The vast importance of this 
 
 est. Mihi haud improbabile videtur, re-union within the Church of Eng- 
 
 Ecclesice fores cunctis introire volen- land— as the sole guarantee of her 
 
 tibus tunc patuisse, ciim jam nulli safety, and the first condition of her 
 
 erant " infideles," nulli catechumeni progress — is acknowledged by all 
 
 et penitentes, qui a synaxi arcerentur parties. ' It is not from the bom- 
 
VI.] URGENT NEED OF UNION. 333 
 
 Above all, these duties of candour and toleration seem 
 to be, in an especial manner, incumbent on those who 
 are called ' High Churchmen.' They are — in point of 
 religious faith — those whom St. Paul would call ot SwaroL 
 They, of all mankind, can most safely bend to the 
 intellectual needs of others. They are anchored securely, 
 by their firm loyalty to tradition. And their faith would 
 remain unhurt, were all that criticism has the remotest 
 chance of reaching, already reached, and its material 
 transformed into other shapes. To them, therefore, this 
 plea for peace and candour, and for a fearless recognition 
 of the services and claims of Reason, should surely come 
 home with a special force and urgency ^^. And by them, 
 above all men, the hearty reconciliation of those two 
 great parties within the Church, that are certainly de- 
 stined to share the future between them, — the traditionary 
 and the scientific schools, — should be welcomed and 
 laboured for, with a real enthusiasm and a courageous 
 zeal for God. 
 
 For yvoScrts and ttio-tis are not really in antagonism. 
 The one is but the flower and crown of the other. And 
 it is not ' faith ' which is the last word of our Christian 
 
 bardment of the Liberaiion Society on unassailable, — at any rate, for as 
 
 the outworks of the Church, but long a period as we need loolc to, — 
 
 from the feuds in the garrison, that provided only that those wlio belong 
 
 the citadel will be at length sur- to it can manage to lieep the peace 
 
 rendered.' (Baplist Magazine, Mar. among themselves.' (Lord Derby, 
 
 i87i,p. 172.) 'He could not sup- Speech reported in Guardian, Jan. 
 
 port Mr. Miall's scheme . . for this 10, 1872.) 
 
 reason : that he could not but ac- "' ' (jnless the doctrines received 
 
 knowledge the enormous good being by Faith are approvable by Reason, 
 
 effected by the laity and clergy of they have no claim to be regarded 
 
 the Church.' (Mr. Winterbotham, as true. . . Like a spectator, it ac- 
 
 Speech reported in the Liberator, knowledges and concurs in what goes 
 
 Feb. I, 1871, p. 26.) 'I believe the on.' (Newman, Univ. Sermons, p. 
 
 position of the Establishment to be 174.) 
 
334 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 hopes, but ' knowledge,'— to know, even as we are 
 known"^^ : and, — by the avenue of candour, purity and 
 love, — to reach at last the happy goal, and to see God 
 as He is ^*. 
 
 I Cor. xiii. 12. «* Matt. v. 8 ; i John iii. 2. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 The Metaphysical Language of the Church. 
 
 'Metaphysics' is the science of the facts of consciousness. It is the 
 science which — not content, like the other sciences, to take the present- 
 ments of the senses, &c. for granted as absohite truth — questions and 
 examines into the truth of these presentments ; inquires what precisely 
 they mean, how far they are trustworthy, and what relation the subjective 
 presenimenls on our cerebral mirror bear to the transcendent objective 
 realities which make on us that impression. It is true we cannot get far 
 beyond 'impressions.' We cannot stand outside of ourselves, nor reach 
 (by the avenue of the intellect) absolute truth, where we can say it is 
 impossible for things to be otherwise than they are. Such absolute cer- 
 tainties can only be reached by a moral avenue. When therefore the idea 
 of God dawns upon the mirror of our consciousness, — unless we are simply 
 to 'believe and tremble,' and with superstitious dread to refuse to look 
 freely and intelligently on His revelation of Himself, — we seem at once 
 invited to use Metaphysics. We are bound to ask the profoundest and 
 subtlest questions that we can ask ; sure, meantime, that our profoundest 
 thoughts have no more fathomed the depths of His Being, than our puny 
 telescopes have fathomed the star-sown depths of space. 
 
 Now the subtlest metaphysical philosophies within the ken of the ancient 
 Church, were those of the great Hellenic thinkers, — especially of Plato and 
 Aristotle. Accordingly, ' Theology ' (properly so called), was all along a 
 Greek science, dependent on Greek terminology. It is true the Hebrew 
 words nin' and nin' «"iO'n were expressions of a metaphysical sort, and 
 invited metaphysical treatment. But the Jewish mind was eminently 
 unfitted for this branch of study: and the words remained (scientifically) 
 unfruitful, till they were exposed to the stimulating brilliancy of Greek 
 thought at Alexandria. And then they immediately took a marvellous 
 speculative development, in the works of Philo Judseus and others. 
 
 Hence when Christ appeared, and (after a thousand acts and words of 
 superhuman power and wisdom) spake those astonishing enigmas, ' No 
 man knoweth the Son, but the Father ; neither knoweth any man the 
 Father, save the Son ' (Matt. xi. 27) : and ' Go ye, and baptize in the name 
 of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost' (Matt, xxviii. 19): 
 the metaphysics of Alexandria were at once consecrated, to express and 
 (in a certain degree) to clear the enigma, by irradiating the Messiah- 
 doctrine of Palestine with the A<5'yos-doctrine of the Hellenistic Schools. 
 
336 APPENDIX I. 
 
 And yet once more, as time went on and heresies necessitated 'nova 
 nomina, antiquam fidem significantia,' the problem of a divine relation 
 between the Father and the Son drew from Platonic metaphysics a 
 subtle word ova'ia, — to express the colourless background (so to speak) 
 of the Divine Nature, embracing the adorable Triad ; and from Aristotle 
 and the later philosophers the (originally equivalent) word irroo-Taffis, — • 
 which was then given a technical meaning and made to express the 
 coloured and qualified ovGia- (if w may venture so t > speak), held (not 
 in common) by the ' Persons ' mysteriously spoken of as One by our Lord. 
 But the Latin Church, — unable to keep pace with these fine subtleties of 
 Hellenic thought, — begged leave to substitute the coarser word npicramov. 
 Persona, to express the same thing ; a leave which was, somewhat super- 
 ciliously, granted. 
 
 Ere long, there sprang up a new controversy, about the meajis of grace. 
 And then, (the Baptismal Sacrament, in some way, escaping philosophical 
 maltreatment,) the Eucharistic question enlisted in its service the Aristo- 
 telian metaphysics of the middle ages ; till the Latin Church was satisfied 
 to believe that, — the oiiaia of the bread being annihilated, and the oiaia of 
 the Lord's Body taking its place, — the ovii^ifirjKuTa only, the ' accidentia,' of 
 the bread remained, to beguile the senses and veil the wondrous trans- 
 formation. 
 
 The subsequent controversies that have arisen, — about Inspiration, Rege- 
 neration, Infallibility, — though all capable of a metaphysical treatment, 
 have not yet passed through that ordeal : though it were much to be 
 desired that they should. But it were only to be desired, on one condition ; 
 viz. that the science itself should first come to a clearer conception of its 
 own powers, its limits, and its objects ; should acknowledge that a deeper 
 study, under better methods, of — that ' grande profundum ' — human nature, 
 is its true avenue to deeper things still ; and should recognize that fact, 
 which alone gives significance and weight to the negations of the Unitarian; 
 viz. that the German races (at least) are now adult, and that the watch- 
 words of our modern theology should in future be, (i) the Holy Spirit, (2) 
 the Catholic Church, (3) the Individual Conscience. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE. WESLEYANS. 
 
 A.D. I^QS. 
 
 Leading idea : — Revival of religion ; by a free appeal to the ' feelings.' 
 
 Method adopted: — An elaborate system of ' societies ; ' preaching the doctrine 
 of ' sensible conversion. ' 
 
 Aitrxp^i Oi'^airr^ro'i, Kal \iav aiffxp^, ftal dvd^ia ttjs iv XpiffT^ d7<w7^s dttov- 
 €ff$ai, — T^v l3€0aiOTdT7]v icai dpxaicLv Kopiy0iojy tK/cK-r^ffiav, Si' %v rj 5vo vp6(T' 
 wwa aratjtd^iiv npds tovs npea^vTepovs ! . . 'E^dpcufiev ovv tovto iv rdx^i' fcal 
 TTpoaTTifftafxiv TO) AcctttcSt?;, Koi K\av(j03pLiv iKiTtvovTis Avrdv 07TQJS, tXfftjs yiv6- 
 fievos, iTTHcaTaWayrj tjiuv, Kal knl t^v oefiyj^v ttjs <pt\adt\rpias dyaiy-^v 
 dnoKaTaarria-j[i yfias ! (Clem. Rom. ad Cor. i. § 47.) 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 c. 300. Pachomius, &c. First religious ' Societies ' in Egypt. 
 340. Athanasius (from Egypt) visits Rome, with some monks. 
 500. Benedict adapts ' Monasticism ' to the West. 
 c. 1000. Monastic reforms (Cluniacs, Cistercians, &c.) 
 c. 1200. New rehgious Societies (Mendicant Friars). 
 c. 1300. Rehgious ' Colleges ' for study, at Oxford. 
 c. 1400. The Beghards, &c. on the Continent. 
 
 c. 1500. Monasteries converted into Cathedral bodies, or suppressed. 
 c. 1600. Many new Orders, mostly of a 'practical' kind. 
 1670. Spener's 'Collegia Pietatis' at Frankfprt. 
 1726. John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield form a 'Society' 
 
 at Oxford. 
 1735- Wesley sails for America, with twenty-six Moravians. 
 
 1 738. Returns home ; and joins the ' Moravians ' in London. 
 
 1739. Open-air preaching at Bristol : convulsions begin. 
 
 — First ' Meeting-house,' at Bristol. 
 
 1740. Wesley and Whitfield secede from the Moravians. 
 
 1 741. Wesley separates from Whitfield and the Calvinists. 
 1744. First ' Conference.' 
 
 1763. Secession of Bell and Maxfield (enthusiasts). 
 
 1778- ' Arminian Magazine ' begun. 
 
 1784. Wesley ' ordains ' Dr. Coke, &c. for America. 
 
 — ' Deed of Declaration : ' Conference legalized. 
 1791. John Wesley died. 
 
 — Insubordination among the preachers. 
 
 179,5. 'Plan of pacification :' viz. by severance from the Church. 
 
 1797. Kilham's secession : ' Methodist New Connexion.' 
 
 1 8 10. Secession of the ' Primitive Methodists.' 
 
 1813. Dr. Coke dies, on a mission to India. 
 
 1815. Secession of the ' Bible Christians.' 
 
 1828. Secession of the 'Protestant Methodists,' at Leeds. 
 
 1835. Dr. Warren: Secession of the 'Wesleyan Methodist Association.' 
 
 1849. The ' fly-sheets:' Secession of the ' Wesleyan Methodist Reformers.' 
 
 :868. Overtures, from Churchmen, for re-union. 
 
 1 87 1. ' Class-meeting ' dispute : Mr. Hughes degraded. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 THE WESLEYANS. 
 
 ' Mind not high things : but condescend to men of low estate.' — 
 Rom. xii. i6. 
 
 THERE is a petition in our Prayer-book, which 
 many of us are in the habit of hearing or repeating 
 every day of our Hves ; yet which we too often pass 
 over, without throwing into it all the hearty fervour of 
 concurrence which it deserves. It forms part of that 
 'Prayer for Clergy and People,' which has come down 
 to us from the ' Sacramentary of Gelasius ' in the fifth 
 century ; and has therefore been in use in the Western 
 Church for at least fourteen hundred years. It embodies 
 that noble thought of St. Augustine, that (after all) the 
 natural, the normal, the ordinary doings of God, are the 
 greatest and most admirable of his marvels ^. It suggests 
 — by one word, full of beauty and of meaning — the 
 Lord's own claim to be the 'Physician' of souls. It 
 directs us, in short, to pray that 'bishops, curates, and 
 congregations ' may be endued with ' the healthful spirit 
 of His grace.' ■ 
 
 ' Augustine, Epht. cxx. ; Civ. Dei, xxi. 8. 
 Z 2 
 
340 
 
 THE WESLEYANS. [lECT. 
 
 Yes : health, spiritual health and soundness, perfect 
 sanity, wholesomeness, and tranquil half-unconscious 
 balance of all the moral functions of the inner man, — 
 what words can express the greatness of this blessing ! 
 What thanks can reach the height of this great ' marvel,' 
 this restoration of fallen man, this healing of his diseased 
 and troubled soul, this ' redemption ' (in one short word) 
 of his true self (6 eVo) avOpoiiios), this revival of those 
 Christ-like lineaments upon his nature, in likeness of 
 which he was originally made ! For it is easy to spe- 
 culate about the manner in which the present human 
 frame and average character may have been evolved 
 from lower forms of life ; and deeply interesting,— with 
 all humility and fitting reserve, — thus to trace the hand 
 of God in nature and to perceive that we are (as the 
 Bible has expressly taught us) only the last links in 
 His great chain of terrestrial creation ^ But still Science 
 has to confess, after all, what the Church has always 
 taught ; viz. that man seems capable of sinking again 
 even below the level of the animal world ; and that, 
 by some fall or 'fault' or downthrow he has — in fact — 
 reached depths of degradation, which place him far 
 beneath his proper station, and out of line with that 
 Divine ideal which (to use human language) floated 
 before his Creator's mind^. 
 
 Amid this 'fallen,' sinful, unhealthful world then, it 
 was, that the Church of God was placed, as a treasury 
 of all His healing graces, as an 'educating society' to 
 disabuse mankind of its noxious illusions and super- 
 
 ' Gen. i. 1-26, and more agreeable to the un- 
 
 ^ ' So long as the animal part of awakened, uncultivated side of 
 
 human life lacks the better half human life, than to be bestial.' 
 
 belonging to it, it sinks below the ^Ackerman, Das Chrislliche in Plalo, 
 
 animal form of development, and p. 194: English trans.) 
 becomes bestial. Nothing is easier 
 
vn.] TWO FORMS OF SELFISHNESS IN THE CHURCH. 34 1 
 
 stitions, as a vast sanatorium to restore them to perfect 
 ' health and soundness ' in the presence of each other 
 and of God. But, in carrying out this truly divine and 
 charitable task, the Church has in all ages been hindered, 
 not merely by the grosser forms of vice and sin, but also 
 by the perpetual recurrence of that subtle form of 
 selfishness in spiritual things, which the Lord so un- 
 sparingly rebuked and condemned in the person of the 
 ' Pharisees.' This word means simply separatists ; men 
 who stand apart from their brethren as being holier than 
 they ; men who presume to sever the wheat from the 
 tares, the sheep from the goats, before He arrives who 
 alone can do this truly. And for such spiritual pride 
 there stands on the pages of Scripture the sternest and 
 sharpest rebukes, which ever — during His ministry on 
 earth — proceeded from the mouth of Christ. 
 
 But there is yet another form of this same sin, another 
 kind of self-withdrawal from the needs of the lowly and 
 the ignorant, to which the officials of the Church herself 
 — especially in prosperous and halcyon days gone by — 
 have too frequently given way. And it is even far more 
 disgraceful and inexcusable than Pharisaism itself. For 
 if anything is Anti-christian in this modern world of ours, 
 if anything is clean contrary to the ' mind which is in 
 Christ Jesus*,' — who, though being in the form of God 
 and equal with God, stood not on His rights ; did not, 
 enjoyed not, what He might have done and enjoyed ; 
 but condescended to mankind, yea down to the very 
 depths of a malefactor's agonizing death, — it surely is 
 the selfish and personal enjoyment of aiiy privileged position 
 with which we have been put in trust. 'Privilege,' of 
 any kind, so misunderstood and misused, is (as the 
 
 * Phil. ii. s. 
 
342 
 
 THE WESLEYANS. [lECT. 
 
 readers of classical antiquity know full well) the cha- 
 racteristic mark of society in a state of heathenism. 
 Whereas Christ has bidden us, — if we would be true 
 members of the realm of God, the ' Civit'as Dei,' — to 
 regard every privilege as simply an opportunity for good 
 to others, every advantage as a trust imposed upon us, 
 every possession as merely a reservoir of some common 
 benefit, for whose righteous and unselfish distribution 
 we shall one day have to give account. 
 
 What, then, must we say of those, who — set in places 
 of advantage and privilege and honour, in His very 
 Church itself — refuse to recognize their duties to the 
 poor ; neglect the ignorant and the sinful, for whose 
 sakes they were given these advantages ; forget to 
 'condescend to men of low estate;' and 'enjoy' their 
 benefice or their accumulation of benefices — perhaps 
 some thirty, forty, or fifty years — as though it were only 
 a just reward of their merits, or a fitting opportunity 
 of ' doing well unto themselves ?' What else can we say, 
 — but that such conduct, in the individual, is fatal to 
 his own soul : and in the body politic— if it should ever 
 reach such wide dimensions — is the symptom of a ter- 
 rible disease, which is sure to reveal ere long (as disease 
 always does) the existence of a new set of latent remedial 
 laws. These laws are restorative if possible. But if not, 
 then they effect the removal and destruction of what 
 had become a source of wide-spread infection. ' Where 
 the carcase is, thither the eagles are gathered together.' 
 
 And, unwelcome as is the task of pointing out the 
 faults and omissions of our mother Church, I fear it 
 is impossible to deny, that in the early part of the 
 eighteenth century — amid the general coldness, languor, 
 and want of enthusiasm which characterized that effete 
 epoch — the Church of England, as well as all the Dis- 
 
VII.] COLDNESS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 343 
 
 senting bodies, slumbered and slept ^. A dry ration- 
 alism had taken possession of her. And all the powers 
 of her ablest men were employed in intellectual contests 
 with Deism and Unitarianism ; while an equally dry 
 morality and stoical praise of 'Virtue' formed the 
 staple of her exhortations from the pulpit. At the 
 same time a shameful system of ' pluralities ' had grown 
 up ; whereby the best endowed and most privileged 
 posts of labour became mere vantage-grounds for indi- 
 vidual enjoyment and advantage ; and the sin of irXeov- 
 efta, — of covetousness, of grasping at more than is meet, 
 both of pleasure and profit, — threatened to destroy the 
 very life of the Church. 
 
 Under such circumstances, no one who believes in the 
 divine origin and government of the Church, can feel 
 much surprise if sharp remedial measures began soon 
 to be applied. The Holy Spirit has never (as our 
 Lord promised He should not) wholly abandoned His 
 Church. And accordingly, that new set of laws before 
 mentioned, — which we may call ' the laws of disease,' — 
 now began to work, and threw' out symptoms, such as 
 ignorant and unskilful men always think are them- 
 selves the disease ; but which men of sense know at 
 once to be but Nature's signals of distress, demanding 
 aid in her spontaneous efforts at self-recovery. And 
 
 = At this epoch, ' the Puritans Lichfield Cathedral Library is a copy 
 
 were buried, and the Methodists of Dr. Balguy's Sermons (+1748), 
 
 were not ^ born. The Bishop of containing on the fly-leaf an auto- 
 
 Lichfield, in 1724, in a sermon said, graph remark by Bishop Blomfield, 
 
 " The Lord's Day is now the De\'irs — ' No Christianity here.' See also 
 
 market-day" . . And the three Dis- Warburton's XiVerary iJemams, p. 293, 
 
 senting bodies were lamenting that where a sad picture of the times is 
 
 numbers of their ministers were im- given in a Sermon preached before the 
 
 moral, negligent, and insufficient.' Princess, 1756. 
 (Tyerman, Life of Wesley, i. 61.) In 
 
344 
 
 THE WESLEYANS. [lECT. 
 
 would that men of skill and sense could, at such crises, 
 always be found at the head of affairs ! 
 
 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, 
 it is much to be lamented, that it was not so. The 
 bishops and leaders of the Church were then too often 
 chosen for merely political and party reasons. And 
 ecclesiastical questions were made — as they have often 
 been made, both before and since — mere banners for this 
 world's conflicts, mere coverts of democratic and aristo- 
 cratic strife. Hence the leaders and rulers of the Church 
 were too often appointed in a way which brought positive 
 disaster, instead of any benefit, to the community. Had 
 John Wesley been appointed a bishop in the middle of 
 the eighteenth century, (a thing quite impossible to con- 
 ceive then, — though, thank God, quite possible now,) 
 who can say how different might have been the for- 
 tunes of the English Church, and of her American and 
 colonial daughters, through all succeeding times ! 
 
 For it is around the name of John Wesley that our 
 thoughts and memories involuntarily cluster, whenever 
 our attention is drawn to the great Evangelical revival 
 of that century. There is a law of the imagination, 
 forcing it to demand a concrete and personal centre, 
 round which (as flint gathers round some organic sub- 
 stance in the chalk,) its floating historical conceptions 
 shall dispose themselves. And the most natural centre 
 to fix upon is (of course) some popular and well-known 
 name — an Alexander, a Cromwell, a Napoleon — to bear, 
 as that centre, the whole burden of good and evil deeds 
 connected with the historical events in question. Indeed 
 we seem at the present moment to be threatened with 
 the growth of a ' Wesleyan Legend ; ' and John Wesley 
 is credited with both an originality of invention and a 
 completeness of plan, which did not in reality belong 
 
VII.] THE EVANGELICAL REVLVAL. 345 
 
 to him''. Still, he was (without doubt) the greatest 
 religious reformer of the eighteenth century. And 
 though we cannot exclaim, with his latest exulting 
 biographer, ' Methodism is the greatest fact in the his- 
 tory of the Church of Christ',' — we are able to allow 
 that it is, at least, the greatest fact in the religious 
 history of the eighteenth century ; and that it justly 
 deserves a patient and scrutinizing study. And we are 
 sure that nothing but good can arise from a friendly and 
 candid effort to ascertain its true relations, and to point 
 out the true lesson that it teaches, to the mother Church 
 of England. 
 
 It is indeed with the greatest possible reluctance, that 
 any Churchman can bring himself to speak of the Wes- 
 leyan body as if its secession were complete. Even 
 yet, it is believed, there are many thousands (and those 
 among -the best of ' the people called Methodists,') who 
 refuse to lift up their hand against the Church of Eng- 
 land, or to be borne away by that rushing stream of 
 Puritan hostility which is bent on doing her a mis- 
 chief^. Even yet, secession can hardly be said to be 
 
 •^ Seven biographies of John Wes- dients to conjunctures, is most cer- 
 
 ley have already been written : and tain : this, in fact, was his great 
 
 the subject seems far from being ex- talent.' {Letter, appended to Southey, 
 
 hausted even yet. As usual in such ii. 428 : third ed.) 
 
 cases, it is the earlier publications ^ Tyerman, L(^ 0/ P7es/e_y, i. 12. 
 
 which take the more sober view of ^ Half a century ago, a distin- 
 
 his character and history ; while guished Wesleyan could write as fol- 
 
 those of a later date surround their lows : ' Though IVlethodism stands 
 
 hero with a halo of extravagant ad- now in a different relation to the 
 
 miration. Alexander Knox, a per- Establishment than in the days of 
 
 sonal friend of Wesley's, thus writes Mr. Wesley, dissent has never been 
 
 of him : ' How was he competent to professed by the body, — and for ob- 
 
 form a religious polity so compact, vious reasons, (i) A separation of 
 
 effective, and permanent ? I can only a part of the society from the Church 
 
 express my firm conviction that he has not arisen from the principles 
 
 was totally incapable oi preconceiving assumed by the professed Dissenters, 
 
 such a scheme . . That he had un- and usually made so prominent in 
 
 common acuteness in fitting expe- their discussions on the subject of 
 
346 THE IVESLEYANS. [lect. 
 
 accomplished, — when so many Wesleyans habitually 
 avail themselves of the ministrations of the Church ; 
 when so many cordially welcome the visits of her clergy; 
 and when, amid all confusions and party-cries, there are 
 still so many indications abroad that the Methodist 
 societies have never forgotten, and will never be able to 
 forget, their venerable founder's almost dying words : 
 ' I live and die a member of the Church of England ; 
 and none who regard my judgment or advice will ever 
 separate from it '.' The fact is (as one of their own most 
 intelligent writers affirms), that ' there was no intention 
 in Wesley's mind of a separation from the Church ; nor 
 was it even . . foreseen as a consequence. A necessary 
 consequence it certainly was not '".' No : John Wesley's 
 purpose was not secession. It was simply — if we may 
 believe his own words — that of a revival of Religion, 
 within the Church of England'^^. 
 
 But how should he proceed, in bringing this great 
 and worthy purpose to its accomplishment 1 He, 
 naturally enough, began by seeking amid the surround- 
 ing circumstances at that time some means, which could 
 
 Establishments: (2) a considerable Church; and to spread Scriptural 
 
 number of our members actually holiness over the land.' (Large 
 
 continue in the communion of the Miniifes of Conference, 1744-S9, Qu. 
 
 Church of England to this day; (3) 3.) 'We are not seceders; nor do 
 
 to leave that communion is not, in we bear any resemblance to them, 
 
 any sense, a condition of membership We set out upon quite opposite prin- 
 
 with us.' (R. Watson, Observations, ciples.' {Ibid. Qu. 45.) ' Wesley had 
 
 p. 156.) 'Dissent has never been now proposed to himself a clear and 
 
 formally professed by the body.' determinate object . . He hoped to 
 
 (Id. Life of Wesley, p. 35S,) give a new impulse to the Church of 
 
 ^ Arminian Magazine, April 1790. England, to awaken its dormant zeal, 
 
 '" R. Watson, Observations, p. 152, infuse life into a body where nothing 
 
 (ap. Southey, ed. Bohn.) but life was wanting, and lead the 
 
 " 'What may we reasonably be- way to the performance of duties 
 
 lieve to be God's design in raising which . . the Church had scanda- 
 
 up the preachers called Methodists ? lously neglected.' (Southey, Life of 
 
 Not to form any new sect; but to Wedey, p. 183, ed. Bohn.) 
 reform the nation, particularly the 
 
VII.] THE RELIGIOUS 'SOCIETIES' OF l6-l'joo. 347 
 
 be either used or adapted to effect the object in view. 
 And he found ready to his hand an idea, which had 
 been broached half a century earher by Spener, the 
 great leader of the Pietist revival in Germany ^^. This 
 was nothing else than the fruitful idea of Ecclesiolcz 
 within the Ecclesia ; of ' Collegia pietatis,' — as he called 
 them ; of confraternities, leavening nuclei, RELIGIOUS 
 'societies' (in short), — governed by certain rules, walk- 
 ing orderly and methodically under their appointed 
 leaders, and encouraged from time to time by visits from 
 their founder, or from lay 'exhorters' sent by him in 
 his stead. His first plan was, to commit his converts 
 to the care and guidance of the parochial clergy ^'^. And 
 it was not till many of them proved unwilling or unable 
 to fulfil this duty, that Wesley completed his system 
 without them. 
 
 So far then was Mr. Wesley's ' Society' from being 
 anything new or astonishing at that period, that (on 
 
 '^ This idea was first broached by by him to a clergyman —well dis- 
 
 Spener, in his work entitled Pia posed towards him and his work — 
 
 Desirferia, (1675), p. 58 [ed. Feldner] ; in 1757, displays the growth of an 
 
 ' Es ware vielleicht auch nicht un- autocratic and mutinous spirit. Mr. 
 
 dienlich, wenn wir wieder die alte W^alker, of Truro, had asked the 
 
 Apostolische Art der Kirchenver- question : ' If you love the Church, 
 
 sammlungen in den Gang brachten ; why do you not give up your people 
 
 da, neben unsern gewtjhnlichen Pre- to those in the Church, whom you 
 
 digten, auch andere Versammlungen yourself believe to be real ministers 
 
 gehalten wurden, wo nicht einer ofChrist?' The answer was ; 'Does 
 
 allein auftrate zu lehren . . sondern Mr. Conon or you think, that the 
 
 auch andere, die mit Gaben und King and Parliament [!] have a right 
 
 Erkenntniss begnadigt sind.' to preicribe for me, what pastor I 
 
 '^ 'In the early stages of his shall use?.. If he be sent of God, 
 career, Mr. Wesley was content to can I receive him with a clear con- 
 leave the good done by his ministry science, till I linow he is ? And even 
 [precisely as our Church of England when I do, if I believe my former 
 Mission priests now leave their pastor is more profitable to my soul, 
 converts], to the care of the clergy- can I leave him without sin ?' i_Coke 
 man of the parish.' (R. Watson, and Moore, Life of Wesley [1792], 
 Observ,, ap. Southey, p. 183: Bohn.) p. 313.) 
 But the following letter, addressed 
 
348 THE WESLEYANS. [lecT. 
 
 the contrary) London seems early in the eighteenth 
 century to have positively teemed with such religious 
 societies ^^ Some of them had been devised for a 
 special practical purpose (like the still surviving Society 
 for Promoting Christian Knowledge, or the Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, — 
 or the Pure Literature Society, instituted in our 
 own day) ; and some again, had arisen for mere per- 
 sonal and private purposes of mutual edification. No 
 less than forty of such societies are known to have 
 existed at that time. Thus in 1698 (five years before 
 Wesley was born), his father, a learned Lincolnshire 
 rector, published a sermon ' preached before the Society 
 for the Reformation of Manners! There was another 
 Society for the Suppression of Vice : and Wesley's own 
 Journal in 1738 mentions Mr. Fox's Society, and a 
 Society in Aldersgate Street, and several more. All these 
 ' societies ' required, before admission, ' a testimony of 
 the candidate's sense of spiritual things and of his 
 sincere intention to lead a religious life i^' And the 
 first trace of them in the Church of England reaches 
 back so far as 1677; when Dr. Horneck, Bishop Be- 
 veridge and others, — having converted, from the dissolute 
 and frivolous ways of the Restoration period, a great 
 number of young men who applied to them for religious 
 counsel, — advised a weekly meeting for mutual edifica- 
 tion, and for combination in some special work of 
 practical beneficence '^'^. 
 
 " R. Watson,i!/c 0/ Wes/fi)', p. 73. born). 'It was, however, only in 
 
 ^^ Tyerman, Li/(? 0/ l^e5/e>', i. 217. organization that the two things 
 
 *^ Cf. Woodward, Account of the were alike. The s^pirit of the older 
 
 Kise and Progress of the Religious Societies was the very spirit from 
 
 Societies in London, p. 75 (written in which Methodism was a reaction. . . 
 
 1699, — four years before Wesley was They were not afraid to speak of the 
 
VII.] 'RELIGIOUS HOUSES' OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 349 
 
 But in point of fact, it is not to the sera of Spener 
 or of Beveridge that we must look for the origin of 
 this method of re-enkindHng the Church's life, by a 
 concentration of her smouldering embers for mutual 
 help and closer contact. For what else, than this very- 
 purpose, lay at the root of that magnificent idea of the 
 middle ages — the monastic system ? The working of 
 that system is thus described by an enthusiastic French- 
 man, — in words which a Wesleyan (I conceive) would 
 apply to his own societies, without the alteration of a 
 letter. ' They were an assembly of persons, whom God's 
 grace had united, to live under the banner of the Cross, 
 and to follow Jesus Christ crucified. They composed 
 that inner and spiritual kingdom, which is not of this 
 world, and wherein God reigns by His grace ^''.' And 
 again, a hundred years later, another admirer of the 
 ' religious ' life writes thus : ' To discipline the soul, to 
 transform it by chastity, by obedience, by sacrifice and 
 humility ; to recreate the man wasted by sin into such 
 virtue, that the prodigies of evangelical perfection have 
 become, during long centuries, the daily history of the 
 Church, — it is in this we see the design of the monks. . . 
 During ten centuries, the secular clergy — naturally too 
 much exposed to the influence of the world — have 
 almost always been surpassed in devotion, in sanctity, 
 and in courage, by the regulars withdrawn within their 
 monasteries (as within citadels), where they have re- 
 gained peace and strength in re-baptizing themselves 
 
 support of a good conscience, or of Societies which, — like ditches dug to 
 
 the everlasting rewards which were irrigate the soil, — were everywhere 
 
 worthy of all the care and toil to be ready for the influx of enthusiasm, 
 
 spent in the pursuit of them.' (Wedg- which Wesley was to pour into 
 
 wood, John Wesley, p. I.';4.) In them.' {Ibid. ]>. 195.) 
 1739, Wesley 'began expounding the ^'^ Ordres Mo?iastiques [Jierlln, 175 1): 
 
 Bible to one of that network of vol, i. p. 4. 
 
3.50 THE WESLEYANS. [leCT. 
 
 in austerity, discipline, and silence ^^' And so John 
 and Charles Wesley describe their United SOCIETY, 
 as ' a company of men having the form, and seeking the 
 power of godliness ; united, in order to pray together, 
 to receive the word of exhortation, and to watch over 
 one another in love, that they may help each other to 
 work out their own salvation. . . It is therefore expected 
 of all who continue therein, that they should continue 
 to evidence their desire of salvation, (i) by avoiding evil 
 in every kind ; (2) by doing good of every possible sort, 
 and as far as possible to all men ; . . (3) by attending on 
 all the ordinances of God, — such are, the public worship 
 of God, the Supper of the Lord, fasting or abstinence. . . 
 These are the general rules of our societies 
 
 19 ' 
 
 We may, therefore, I think, safely affirm — little as the 
 modern Wesleyans recognize it— that the Methodist 
 societies are nothing more or less than that very well 
 known phenomenon in the history of the Church, the 
 rise of a nczv religious order witliin Jier pale: though 
 subject, of course, in the eighteenth century, to all the 
 new conditions, and liable to all the untried dangers, 
 of our modern free self-governing European life. Ac- 
 cordingly, John Wesley (as has been often remarked) 
 bears in every lineament of his character the likeness 
 of one of the great founders and legislators of such 
 orders. And his great and blessed work of religious 
 revival was accompanied by precisely the same extra- 
 vagances, and threatened by precisely the same distem- 
 pers, as every student of Church history knows to have 
 accompanied theirs. It caught, — as theirs almost always 
 
 " Montalembert, Monk of the Warren's Digest of the Laws of 
 West, i. pp. 12, 18 (Engl, trans.) Methodism, p. 156). 
 
 '" Rules of the Society, 1 743 (ap. 
 
VII.] JOHN WESLEY'S 'SOCIETIES.' 351 
 
 did, — the infectious disease of fanaticism and hysteria ^°. 
 It appealed too exclusively and unmercifully to the 
 feelings ; worked too much by the springs of terror ; 
 produced, amid these morbid conditions, a plentiful crop 
 of visions, extasies, and revelations ; succumbed to the 
 temptation of over-government ; and fell a victim to the 
 heartburnings, jealousies, and secessions which always 
 accompany that fault. Existing, however, amid the 
 purer and freer atmosphere of modern England, it has 
 been saved from the two mistakes (i) of imposing per- 
 manent vows upon its members ; and (2) from laying undue 
 stress upon a merely ascetic celibacy, which offers, — to 
 ordinary men, and under ordinary circumstances, — an 
 easier, less complex, less useful, and therefore a lower 
 grade of the religious life. And in so doing, it has 
 imitated the sound sense which, — from age to age 
 all through the history of the Church, — has actuated 
 good and holy men to reform the monastic system of 
 their times, and to readapt it to the altered circumstances 
 of the hour. 
 
 Before, therefore, we can quite accede to the triumph- 
 ant boast, that 'Methodism is the greatest fact in the 
 history of the Church of Christ,' — because it has in this 
 country 931,000 'adherents,' and in other parts of the 
 world 2,000,000 more^\ — we must pause a moment. 
 We must reflect (if we are called upon to judge) what 
 
 ™ ' Cassian [a.d. 400], from his ^' These statistical estimates are 
 
 own experience, describes the listless- ' open to the objection that many of 
 
 ness to which a monk was exposed, the enrolled members are children, 
 
 . . They were sometimes relieved by who may not remain in the Society, 
 
 madness or death. . . The imagina- The adherents, (not members), in fact, 
 
 tion, and even the senses, were include dependents, who go with 
 
 deceived by the illusions of dis- their employers, &c. .. The American 
 
 tempered fanaticism.' (Gibbon, De- and colonial statistics are especially 
 
 cZiKejfyc.chap. 37. Cf. also Kingsley, unreliable.' (Urlin, John Wesley's 
 
 Hypatia, p. 14.) Place in Church History, p. 263.) 
 
352 THE WESLEYANS. [lect. 
 
 have been the comparative results of the great Bene- 
 dictine movement of the sixth century, which islanded, 
 amid the rushing inundation of Pagan and Arian bar- 
 barism, the relics of ancient piety, literature, and art, 
 and then with free hand distributed them broadcast, 
 to form the charters of our modern civilization. Again, 
 we must ask, what were the results of the great Preach- 
 ing I'cvival of the thirteenth century ; a revival which 
 scattered lay evangelists ^^ by tens of thousands over the 
 face of Europe ; at first humbly submitting to the 
 guidance of the clergy ; but soon rebelling against them, 
 and claiming to supersede them and take their endow- 
 ments from them^^. Or again, we must inquire what 
 sort of results were attained by those memorable ' Re- 
 formers before the Reformation' the Beghards, Lollards, 
 and many similar confraternities ; to whose previous 
 labours the success of the Reformation is certainly due. 
 Nor must we forget the fact (as people who dwell 
 habitually in a narrow circle are apt to do) that similar 
 ideas are actually at work, on an immense scale, though 
 
 ^ ' Whether the clergy liked the wille. . . And I wille not thynke that 
 change or not, a body of layme?i they be rechiles [reckless] and syn- 
 (for it must be remembered the fuUe ; for I considre and take them 
 friars were to all intents and pur- as my lordis and masters.' {Tesla- 
 poses laymen, bound by certain meat of Si. Francis [Engl, trans, of 
 religious vows,) had come forward 1400-1500]: ap. Brewer, Monum. 
 to the help of the Church, to carry Francisc. p. 563.) A century later, 
 out those functions which the clergy however, ' The Dominicans and 
 could not, and visit those whom the Franciscans made it a gainful doc- 
 clergy found it impossible to visit, trine, to teach laymen that they were 
 A less formal, but not less effective, not bound to pay their tithes to their 
 style of preachingprevailed.' (Brewer, ministers. . . But against their detain- 
 Mo7ium. Frayicisc. p. xxv.) ing of parochial tithes, a canon was 
 
 ^^ ' And yf I had as muche wyse- made in the General Council of 
 
 dome as Salomon had, and shall Vienna, 1340; and their doctrine 
 
 happen to fynde the poor syrriplest was taxed by Pope Innocent IV., 
 
 prestis of this worlde [secular priests], about 1250.' (Selden, on Tithes, m. 
 
 I wolde not preche in ther parisshes § 4.) 
 wherein they dwelle, contrary to ther 
 
VII.] HISTORY OF METHODISM. 353 
 
 under a dififerent inspiration, all around us at the present 
 day; and that since the Reformation innumerable fresh 
 orders have sprung up (in France and elsewhere), of 
 which we have no less than three hundred and thirty 
 specimens in existence at this moment, upon our own 
 English and Irish soil. Nay, must we not go a step even 
 beyond all these revivals .? Must we not inquire whether 
 a still greater fact, by far, in the history of Christendom 
 than any or all of these things, be not the stable, firm, 
 and tranquil Establishment of the Church in these realms, 
 for twelve hundred years and more .'' Whether its 
 parochial network spread throughout the country, and 
 its influence penetrating even to Christianize the military, 
 legislative, punitive, and every other department of the 
 State, be not facts of the very first consequence and 
 interest ; and whether the existence of the thing to be 
 revived, be not of more importance than its subsequent 
 revival ? 
 
 But leaving all these curious historical comparisons, — 
 let us now proceed to study the last of the many revivals 
 which the Church of England has passed through pre- 
 viously to our own times ; and which was unfortunately 
 managed with so little skill, as to drift — unintelligently 
 and unwillingly, like an ill-managed ship drifting on 
 shore — into an all but complete separation and mutual 
 estrangement. 
 
 (I) The mere history of Methodism, however, is so 
 well known, that I need do little more here than call 
 to mind the main facts and turning-points of the great 
 revival ; pointing out, if I can, the steps by which it has 
 reached its present position. In June 1703, John Wesley 
 was born : and in 1725, as a graduate of Oxford, he was 
 ordained. In the following year he obtained a Fellowship 
 at Lincoln College, which he retained for twenty-seven 
 
 A a 
 
354 THE WESLEYANS. [leCT. 
 
 years ; and by which he was supported all through 
 his laborious ministry of Evangelization till his marriage, 
 in 1752. It was here then at Oxford, amid the streets 
 and colleges that we know so well, that this great man 
 was formed and moulded to be the instrument of good 
 to untold thousands of his fellow-countrymen. And 
 he himself was trained, and his enthusiasm enkindled 
 here, mainly by the same agency which he afterwards 
 used with such marvellous success for others, — viz. by 
 the concentration of a few glowing hearts, which God's 
 spirit had touched, into a society or confraternity. With 
 his brother Charles at Christ Church, and their humbler 
 companion Whitfield at Pembroke, and some twelve 
 others, he determined to live under a common rule of 
 strict and serious behaviour, to attend frequently at 
 Holy Communion, and to use a methodical and con- 
 scientious arrangement of their time^*. 
 
 In short, the Wesleys were, in those days, very much 
 what would now be called ' Rituahsts.' They did not 
 profess to invent new practices of devotion ; but simply 
 to revive what the Church already had. Nor did 
 they, at first, refuse to seek counsel and encouragement 
 from the bishops ; or, thus far, seek it in vain. It was 
 with the bishop's express concurrence that they visited 
 the gaols ; with the bishop's advice, John Wesley de- 
 clined to bury himself in a rural parish"^ : shortly after- 
 
 ^' Hence no doubt arose the name paraphrased in many utterances to 
 
 Methodists, — for which other deri\a- John and Charles . . " I would advise 
 
 tions have been found, more curious you, as much as possible, to throw 
 
 than true. Probably ' method ' was your business into a certain method. 
 
 a household-word at Epworth par- Appoint so much time for sleep, 
 
 sonage, and was frequently on the eating, company, &c. In all things 
 
 lips of the Wesleys at Oxford. ' The endeavour to act upon principle." ' 
 
 tree founder of Methodism v/as Mrs. (Wedgwood, John Wesley, p. 48.) 
 
 Wesley. The following letter to her ^' For this sound advice of I3ishop 
 
 son Samuel, in 1 709 . . was no doubt Potter, all who love Wesley and 
 
vn.] EPISCOPAL SANCTION. 355 
 
 wards, Bishop Gibson of London gave the two brothers 
 repeated interviews, and warned them against courting 
 unnecessary persecutions : and Archbishop Potter of 
 Canterbury gave them the important advice — which was 
 in great measure the secret of their subsequent pastoral 
 success, — viz. Do not spend your time in controversy ; but 
 in attacking the stroiigholds of vice, and in promoting 
 practical holiness. Thus, — building on the previous good 
 foundation laid by Horneck and Bishop Beveridge, and 
 encouraged by the good-will and sound paternal advice 
 of the existing bishops of the Church, — the Wesleys 
 proceeded to carry on the work to which they seemed 
 called. Its importance gradually dawned upon them. 
 And at last it took clear shape, as the herculean task of 
 reviving, amid the cold rationalizing atmosphere of the 
 eighteenth century, a warm love of religion, an enthusiasm 
 for the Church and her system, and a sustained spirit of 
 prayer and of self-devotion to good works. 
 
 This' then was the first -period of Wesleyanism. 
 
 value his work ought to be for ever retreat, an asylum still farther off 
 
 grateful. What had the world lost, than that of .lona, upon some un- 
 
 and what might have been the state known rock amid the loneliness of 
 
 of England at the present day, if this the sea.' (Montalembert, Monks, of 
 
 advice had not been given, or had not the West, iii. 223.) — with Francis of 
 
 been followed ! For all reformers and Assisi : ' He retired into secret places, 
 
 revivers of religion, naturally, begin . . a cave or thicket, of which he had 
 
 with a profound discontent. And made an oratory.' l^Oliphant, Life of 
 
 the temptation always comes upon S. Francis, p. 20.) — with Luther 
 
 them, to retire from the world and (a.d. 1505); ' Zu seiner Beruhigung, 
 
 seek — in selfish, un-Christlike Six"- trat er in dem Augustiner-Eremiten 
 
 araaia — a nearer communion with Orden und dessen Kloster zu Erfurt.' 
 
 Cod. This was the case with Bene- (Schrock, K. G. sett der Ref, i. 107.) 
 
 diet (a. d. 500) : ' Horror of the — with George Fox (a.d. 1624), vid. 
 
 \'icious lives of those around him, supra, p. 25 1: — and now, lastly, with 
 
 together with the influence of reli- Wesley. (Southey, Life, p. 28 : 
 
 gious enthusiasm, . . drove him into Wedgwood, Life, p. 48.) In all 
 
 a hermitage at the boyish age of fif- such cases, it needs a voice from 
 
 teen.' (Jameson, il/o«. Ort/crs, p. 8.) God (i) to speak, (2) to interpret 
 
 — with Columba (a.d. 650) ; ' It was the summons, — ' Francis ! seest thou 
 
 the longing for solitude, the irre- not that My house is in ruins ? Go 
 
 sistible wish to find a more distant and restore it for Me.' 
 
 A a 2 
 
356 THE WESLEYANS. [lBCT. 
 
 It was cradled within the Church of England : it was 
 fed by her sacraments : it was methodized by that very 
 orderly religious life of hers, whose framework is laid 
 down in the Prayer-book : it was encouraged and 
 directed by her bishops : and it was given a home and 
 a starting-place in her beautiful religious houses for 
 study at Oxford, which were built and endowed by 
 Churchmen of olden time, precisely for purposes of 
 this kind. Wesleyanism may nowadays (if it can find 
 the heart to do so) point the finger of scorn at the 
 Mother-Church. It may even unite with her bitterest 
 enemies in their grand assault. But it can never obli- 
 terate the fact, — which history will then inexorably 
 record against it, — that it arose and was fostered 
 within the Church of England : and that, not until its 
 leaders went astray into foreign pastures, — importing 
 from ' Moravians,' French ' Convulsionists,' and Calvin- 
 istic ' Puritans,' doctrines and methods of conversion, 
 which the Church of England never will and never can 
 sanction, — not until then were the pulpits and the build- 
 ings of their own Church closed against them, and the 
 countenance of the English bishops withdrawn. 
 
 (2) This second and disastrous period of Wesleyanism 
 opens with John Wesley's voyage to America in 1735. 
 It was a mission nobly undertaken, at the instance of 
 Dr. Burton, of Corpus College, and of the celebrated 
 mystic, William Law. And its purpose was twofold : 
 first, that of ministering to the settlers in Georgia, and 
 then of evangelizing the neighbouring tribes of Red 
 Indians ^^. But its results were far different from those 
 which either Wesley, or those who wished him well, 
 could have anticipated. For not only were his services 
 
 -'' Southey, Lfe, p. 47. 
 
VII.] WESLEY BECOMES A 'MORAVIAN! 357 
 
 for the settlers rejected, and his mission to the Indians 
 a failure '-'', but on his voyage out, he had fallen in with 
 twenty-six Moravian fellow-passengers, on their way 
 from Germany to settle in Georgia : and they spoilt all. 
 On his as yet unsettled, enthusiastic, self-dissatisfied 
 frame of mind, the spectacle of their confident, tran- 
 quil, yet fervid piety, fell like a spark on tinder. ' From 
 friends in England ' (he writes in his journal, now first 
 begun) ' I am awhile secluded : but God hath opened 
 me a door into the whole Moravian Church ^'.' 
 
 At that door he entered in, all too impulsively. And 
 when, after three years' absence, he returned to England, 
 abandoning virtually the tranquil, and (so-called) ' sacra- 
 mental' system of his own Church, — i.e. the system of 
 aiding by outward steps and ladders the ignorant and 
 sinful to mount up towards spiritual things, — he became 
 for some time a regular member of the Moravian Society in 
 London. The unwholesome instructions of Peter Bohler, 
 their leader, were eagerly drunk in. And Wesley learnt 
 from them the fatal error (which he afterwards modified) 
 that, not for some men, but for all men, there was a swift 
 and royal road, by which the highest spiritual things could 
 be reached at a bound ^^. He here learnt (in short) the 
 
 "^ He was opposed at Savannah, other. Here we see the first rudi- 
 for his strict and literal obedience ments of the future economy of 
 to the ritual and disciplinaiy canons classes and bands.' (R. Watson, Life, 
 of his Church. Even there, he at- p. 38.) 
 tempted to revive religion by the '" Southey, Life, p. 55. 
 same means which were afterwards °' Peter Bohler taught thus: '(i) 
 employed with such success in Kng- When a man has a living faith in 
 land. ' As he did not find the door Christ, then he is justified. (2) This 
 open for preaching to the Indians, . . living faith is always give?i i?t a mo- 
 it was agi"eed (i) to advise the more merit: (3) and in that moment he 
 serious [colonists] to form themselves has peace with God, (4) which he 
 into a little Society; and to meet cannot have without knowing that 
 once or twice a week . . (2) to se- he has it; (5) and being born of 
 lect out of them a smaller number, God he sinneth not ; (6) and he 
 for a more intimate union with each cannot have this deliverance from 
 
358 
 
 THE IVESLEYANS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 two peculiar lessons of subsequent Wesleyanism : viz. 
 (i) instantaneous and sensible conversion : (2) the doc- 
 trine of perfection, — i. e. of a Christian maturity, or 
 reAetoVi)?, on attaining which, he that is (in the Wes- 
 leyan sense) ' born again,' ' born of God,' sinneth not. 
 
 It must be observed however, in passing, that these 
 two doctrines are nothing more than exaggerated and 
 ill-balanced statements of that which the Church of 
 England has always taught. On her calendar of saints, 
 stand the names of more than one, who have passed by 
 a sudden transition from darkness to light, from hea- 
 thenism to Christianity. And in her doctrine of ' sanc- 
 tity,' she expressly invites all her children to climb up 
 — by the angels' ladder of her sacraments and outward 
 helps — to those calm heights of spiritual maturity, where 
 (in Bishop Butler's words) 'their danger of actually 
 deviating from right may be almost infinitely lessened'".' 
 Yet (as Hooker warns us) 'the strongest in faith that 
 
 sin, without knowing that he has 
 it.' (Southey, Life, p. 113.) In flat 
 opposition to this ' always,' — the 
 logical issue of which is the Bap- 
 tist, rather than the \\'esleyan, sys- 
 tem, — the Church teaches, and has 
 ever taught, the sound and whole- 
 some doctrine of Bapti^nial Regene- 
 ration : viz. that the symbolical ad- 
 mission within the family and bro- 
 therhood of Jesus Christ becomes 
 realized, and takes effect, in every 
 one, ' qui non ponit obicem :' that 
 children, therefore, and immature 
 people iv-qtnoi, i Cor. iii. i) are not 
 rejected by our loving Master itntil 
 they become mature, fully conscious, 
 thoroughly awakened : but are ten- 
 derly cherished and educated by His 
 Holy Spirit within the Church, and 
 as ' Christians,' until at last (it may 
 be) the blessing of ' assurance ' and 
 
 'maturity' {rtX^ioTqs') is reached. — 
 It was this which Wesley — rapidly 
 recovering from the Moravianism, 
 into which his followers seem to have 
 relapsed — preached ' for above fifty 
 years, never varying from the doctrine 
 of the Church at all.' And as to his 
 repeated warnings against trusting 
 in any mere symbolical salvation from 
 the state of sin and alienation, with- 
 out any real renovation of character, 
 — it is ' language which no High- 
 Churchman shrinks from addressing 
 to those who put Baptism in the 
 place of holiness of life.' {Wesley 
 in company with High -Churchmen, 
 [Church Press Co.,] p. 6.) Read 
 also Wesley's Parents' Guide to Bap- 
 liitn [ed. Holden, 1871], especially 
 p. II. 
 
 " Butler, Analogy, part i. chap. 5, 
 (p. 77, Tegg's ed.) 
 
VII.] HIS ' conversion: 359 
 
 liveth on the earth, hath always need to labour and 
 strive and pray, that his assurance concerning heavenly 
 and spiritual things, may grow, increase, and be aug- 
 mented ''.' 
 
 No such salutary warnings, however, are (in all human 
 experience) listened to by men of enthusiastic 'feelings 
 and religious asceticism, amid the first fervour of their 
 discovery of a supposed new truth. This new truth 
 seems to them, in their almost childish condition of 
 delight, like a talisman, with which all the treasure- 
 houses of God's grace are, with a word, to be opened. 
 'Lord, it is good for us to be here. This enthusiasm 
 is delightful ; and, under it, all things seemed bathed 
 in the radiance of heaven itself Let us take some 
 measures, that it may abide permanently among us ; 
 and may not fade into the mere light of common day !' 
 Such have been the phenomena of over-wrought religious 
 feeling, from the earliest days of the Church down to 
 the present moment. And under such impressions it 
 was, that John Wesley first looked out for a similar 
 'sensible and instantaneous conversion' to happen to 
 himself, and then organized a vast machinery for preach- 
 ing it to others. But when a man under high mental 
 excitement looks out for such a crisis of his inner being 
 to occur, something that will answer to his high-wrought 
 expectations is morally certain ere long to happen. 
 And so, on Wednesday, May 24, 1738, about nine o'clock 
 in the evening, at a 'Society's' meeting in Aldersgate 
 Street, Wesley persuaded himself that he too had felt 
 the desired transition ^^, and had passed^/TO»« what, to 
 what ? 
 
 '' Hooker, Answer to Trovers: '^ ' He was staggered, for a time, at 
 Works, ii. 679, (Oxford ed.) the Moravian doctrine of an instan- 
 
360 THE ]VESLEYANS. [lect. 
 
 In the answer to that question, lies the whole doctrinal 
 difference between modern Wesleyanism and the Church 
 of England. I am not aware of any other cause of 
 severance. But yet (so delicate a thing is theology !) 
 in this one little point lies the germ of that lamentable 
 estrangement which we all deplore ; and which is parting 
 asunder, every day more widely, hundreds of Christians, 
 brothers in speech, sons of the same venerable Mother- 
 Church, meaning almost (if not quite) the same thing, 
 and using habitually the same formularies, the same 
 hymns, the same Bible. And now, at last (it seems), 
 there is actual danger of these ' brethren, sons of the 
 same mother,' turning their arms against each other, 
 in offensive — but (thank God), on otir side, only de- 
 fensive — war. May God, in His great mercy, spare us 
 so miserable a spectacle ! 
 
 But to return to the question : What was it, from 
 which John Wesley, — and all those who under his in- 
 fluence have since gone through the same change, — were 
 'converted' .'' Was it, from sin to God? If so, I surely 
 need not multiply quotations to show that, — suddenly 
 or gradually, by some external stroke of God's provi- 
 dence, or by some internal awakening of His redeeming 
 grace, — this great change is the very one, which all the 
 
 taneous change of heart. . . The which the Spirit works in the heart, 
 
 indefatigable Bohler and his asso- through faith in Christ, " I fell (says 
 
 ciates had already been guiding Wesley) my heart strangely warmed. 
 
 Charles Wesley into the way of I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ 
 
 salvation. . . Three days after Charles alone for salvation ; and an assurance 
 
 had thus attained rest to his soul, was given me that He had taken 
 
 John also found it. . . In the evening, away my sins, even mine." Thus 
 
 he went very unwillingly to a Society had the feet of both the brothers 
 
 in Aldersgate Street, where a layman been directed into the path of life 
 
 was reading Luther's preface to the by the instrumentality of the London 
 
 Epistle to the Romans. About a Moravians.' (Sifvzns, Hist, of Metho- 
 
 quarter before nine, while listening dism, i. 101-105.) See also Southey, 
 
 to Luther's description of the change Life, p. 99. 
 
VII.] THE CHURCH'S DOCTRINE OF 'ASSURANCE.' 361 
 
 great writers and preachers and pastors of our English 
 Church have, for the last twelve hundred years, been 
 persistently striving to produce upon those who have 
 submitted themselves to her teaching. Or was it, fro7n 
 half-consciousness and immatnrity, to ftdl consciousness 
 and an adult sense of filial 'assurance' and peace in 
 believing ? Surely again, I need not waste time in 
 showing, — what every true son of the Church of England 
 knows full well, — that this doctrine forms part of her 
 regular system of teaching ; that all her aids and 
 stepping-stones and sacraments are meant to lead to- 
 wards that goal ; and (as Bishop Jeremy Taylor says) 
 ' according as persons grow in grace, so they may grow 
 in confidence of their present condition. . . And to those 
 few, to whom God hath given confirmation in grace. 
 He hath also given a certainty of their condition ^3.' 
 
 No ; alas ! it was not merely these things that 
 Wesley meant. It was not merely these sound and 
 healthful truths of his own Church's creeds and 
 catechisms, that he had now discovered under Peter 
 Bohler's guidance. His temporary submission to a 
 foreign and Moravian style of teaching, — which was 
 quite alien from that of his own Church, — had heated 
 his mind and thrown him into sad confusion. And so 
 John Wesley,— the once loving and still (at heart) loyal 
 son of the Church, the man who to his dying day ' held 
 (to use his own words) all the doctrines of the Church 
 of England, loved her liturgy, and approved her plan 
 of discipline^*,' — that good man, disturbed with a transient 
 fanaticism, could bring himself to stand up and say, 
 
 Jer. Taylor, Life of Chrkt, pp. 539. 544. 
 Armhiian Magazine, 1790, p. 287. 
 
362 THE WESLEYANS. [lect. 
 
 ' till within the last five days I have never been a 
 Christian! 
 
 'What !' replied his brother, Samuel Wesley, on hear- 
 ing this, — 'had he never then been in covenant with 
 God ? Was his baptism nothing ? or had he apostatized 
 from it ?' Yes ; even so : if, at least, we are to take 
 his words seriously. The change — in his estimate — had 
 been nothing less than a transition from heathenism to 
 Christianity. His previous baptism into the family and 
 household of Jesus Christ had been a mere formality, 
 and an unmeaning superstition. The Puritan notion 
 about these things was (after all) the true one. And 
 —we must add — the present unhappy decadence of the 
 Wesleyan ' revival ' into a mere additional form of 
 English ' Dissent,' becomes not only accounted for, but 
 naturally and logically inevitable ^^. 
 
 In point of fact, however, I believe it could be shown 
 without much difficulty, that this foreign notion about 
 the ' new birth ' (which has been fixed upon and made 
 so prominent since, as a banner of warfare against the 
 Church) was merely a temporary phase of opinion, and 
 never formed an essential or permanent ingredient in 
 John Wesley's scheme of doctrine. For listen to his 
 own subsequent words, taken from those very Notes to 
 the New Testament, and those volumes of Sermons, 
 which are the acknowledged tests of doctrine, subscribed 
 to by all Wesleyan preachers at the present day. A 
 man must 'experience that great inward change by 
 
 35 I jjg ^,,j^g jj^gj^ ^j jjjjg point, churches, he was creating a schism; 
 
 with the objection that he was but if it meant dividing Christians 
 
 creating a schism. His answer to from Christians, it was not. For his 
 
 tliis. to himself at least, was con- converts were not Christians, before 
 
 elusive. He acknowledged that, if they joined the Societies.' (Skeats, 
 
 by '■ schism" was meant only gather- Free Churches, p. 29.) 
 ing people out of buildings called 
 
VU.] WESLEY ABANDONS MORAVIANISM. 363 
 
 the Spirit, and be baptized . . as the outward means 
 of it '^.' This was written in i7S4^eighteen years after 
 his Moravian ' conversion ' to Christianity, and breathes 
 a very different spirit indeed from that of Moravianism. 
 A few years later still, we have the following expressions 
 from his Sermons : ' By baptism we are admitted into 
 the Church, and consequently made members of Christ 
 . . from which spiritual vital union with Him proceeds 
 the influence of His grace on those that are baptized. 
 . . By water then, as a means, we are regenerated or 
 " born again." . . And the terms, being " regenerated," or 
 being " born again," or being " born of God," in Sacred 
 Scripture always express an inward work of the Spirit, 
 whereof baptism is the outward sign . . and the otitward 
 sign dnly received is ahvays accompanied with the inward 
 grace •''''.' Baptism ' is a precious means, whereby this 
 faith and hope are given to those that diligently seek 
 Him ■'*! ' It is certain our Church supposes that all 
 who are baptized in their infancy are at the same time 
 born again. . . The whole Office for the Baptism of 
 Infants proceeds upon this supposition. Nor is it an 
 objection of any weight against this, that we cannot 
 comprehend how this work can be wrought in infants. 
 For neither can we comprehend how it is wrought in 
 a person of riper years. But whatever be the case with 
 infants, it is sure all of riper years who are baptized 
 are not at the same time born again ^''.' And now, if 
 we take into view his own persistent affirmation in still 
 later times, ' I have uniformly gone on for fifty years, 
 never varying from the doctrine of the Church at all,' — 
 
 36 Wesley, Notes on S. John iii. 5. Church.' 
 
 3' Wesley, Worhs, xix. 281. ™ Ibid. 45 : ' On the New Birth.' 
 
 '" Wesley, Serm. 74 : 'Of the 
 
364 THE WESLEYANS. [lECT. 
 
 I think we cannot escape the inevitable conclusion, that 
 the very doctrine on which his modern followers have 
 built their separation from the Church and their alliance 
 with Puritan Dissenters, is nothing else than a transient 
 and foreign element in their great founder's teaching ''°. 
 The longer he lived, the more resolutely he turned away 
 from these Puritan errors. And therefore to construct 
 on that basis a great practical system, which evaporates 
 away into mere bald spiritualism the grand conception 
 of an organized and visible Church, and exchanges the 
 hope of a Catholic re-union of all Christendom, for the 
 visionary dream of an ' Evangelical Alliance,' is simply 
 to haul down the true colours of the Wesleyan revival 
 and to surrender at discretion to Puritan dictation. 
 
 For this is, in one word, the question between Catho- 
 licity and Puritanism. Is the outward organized Church, 
 — with its visible mechanism, its regularly-commissioned 
 officers, its code of laws (ritual, disciplinary, and doc- 
 trinal), and its exterior means of grace — nought .'' or is 
 it, on the contrary, the special organ of the Holy Ghost, 
 the vehicle and instrument and ' sacrament ' (as it were) 
 of His inward operations, in renewing and redeeming 
 mankind .' In this question lies the whole controversy 
 between the Church of England and ' Dissent.' And 
 the controversy is gathered into a point on the (at 
 first sight) irrelevant doctrine of Baptismal Regenera- 
 tion. 
 
 For if a convulsive crisis in a man's inner being first 
 
 ^^ ' In his old age, he said to Mr. linew their sins were forgiven, they 
 
 Melville Home these memorable were imder the wrath and curse of 
 
 words : " \Yhen, fifty years ago, my God, I marvel they did not stone 
 
 brother Charles and I, in the sim- us! The Methodists, I hope, know 
 
 plicity of our hearts, told the good better now." ' (Southey, Lj/e, p. 177.) 
 people of England, that unless they 
 
VII.] CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF ' THE CHURCH' 365 
 
 makes him (as is too often affirmed) a ' Christian,' 
 — then the Church of Christ, no doubt, ought to be 
 composed of such ' converted ' persons alone. It con- 
 sequently becomes a purely spiritual society. It is an 
 unorganized, invisible, and abstract thing. It has (as 
 the earliest heretics affirmed concerning our Lord) no 
 true body at all. It is all spirit. HOOKER is absolutely 
 wrong, — who dares to teach, ' If by external profession 
 men be Christians, then are they of the visible Church 
 of Christ, . . yea, though they be idolaters, heretics, 
 persons excommunicable ".' JOHN WESLEY is absolutely 
 wrong, — who writes, ' By baptism we are admitted into 
 the Church ; and consequently made members of Christ, 
 its Head. . . They are mystically united to Christ, and 
 made one with Him. . . From which spiritual, vital union 
 with Him, proceeds the influence of His grace on those 
 that are baptized,— as from our union with the Church, 
 a share in all its privileges and in all the promises Christ 
 has made to it *^.' St. Paul is wrong, — who simply 
 reminds immoral persons at Rome (exactly as a Church- 
 man would do now) that they had already been by 
 baptism engrafted into Christ's family, but were living 
 unworthily of Him. The whole New Testament is 
 wrong, — which, from beginning to end, never once calls 
 upon a baptized person to become ' regenerate ' (as 
 modern Wesleyans do) ; but only bids them to become 
 ' renewed *".' Nay, what shall we dare to say of OUR 
 Lord's own words, — who so repeatedly represents His 
 Church as a visible institution, with a visible means of 
 entry, and as containing (till He comes to sift them) 
 
 " Hooker, Eccles. Polity, iii. i. 7. " Cf. iJ0m.vi.I-I4 ; xii. 2; i Cor. 
 
 *- Wesley, Parents' Guide to Bap- vi. 11 ; Eph. iv. 23; Col. iii. 10; Tit. 
 tism, p. II. iii- ,5- 
 
366 THE WESLEYANS. [lect. 
 
 tares and wheat, bad fish and good, righteous and un- 
 righteous alike ** ? 
 
 But now, a still stranger event occurred in John 
 Wesley's life, which contributed still farther to darken 
 and confuse his teaching, just at this critical period of 
 his career. He had been carried away (it seems) by 
 his love for the Moravians, so far as to take a long 
 journey, and to visit the head-quarters of their com- 
 munion at Herrnhutt in Saxony. There he had been 
 an honoured guest, at the retreat which the enthusiast 
 Count Zinzendorf had carved out of his estate, for these 
 hunted Bohemian followers of Huss and Wicliffe. But 
 he had returned home, after a brief residence among 
 them, — as Luther returned from Rome, — not a little 
 shaken in his allegiance to their system. Indeed shortly 
 afterwards he broke from them entirely ; set up a sort 
 of English Moravianism of his own ; and organized it 
 with ' bands ' and ' class-meetings ' on their model ^'. 
 The fact is that his feelings as a Churchman revolted 
 against their ultra-spiritualism ; repudiated their doctrine 
 that sacraments and outward means were nought ; and 
 protested that a man must do something more than 
 wait, in quietude, until the influx of God's Spirit came 
 upon him, and filled, like a rising tide, all the sluices and 
 channels of his soul ■*^. Besides all this too, it must 
 
 ** Vid. 5vpra, p. 14. plan of reforming the Established 
 
 '■^ 'Methodism owes to Moravian- Churches, by forming "little churches" 
 
 ism special obligations, (i) It in- within them. . . (4) In many details 
 
 troducedWesleyinto that regenerated of his discipline we can trace the 
 
 spiritual life, the supremacy of which influence of Moravianism.' (Ste- 
 
 over all ecclesiasticism and dogma- vens, Hist of Meth. i. 108.) 
 
 tism it was the appointed mission of « ' J fotmd every day the dreadful 
 
 Methodism to reassert. (2) Wesley effects of our brethren's reasoning 
 
 derived from it some of his clearest and disputing with each other. . . One 
 
 theological ideas. . . (3) Zinzendorf's came to me by whom I used to profit 
 
 communities were based upon Spener's much; but her conversation was 
 
VII.] ANOTHER FOREIGN ELEMENT. 367 
 
 not be dissembled that the instincts of command, which 
 were prompting him to become the leader and founder 
 of a new order in the Church, were already in full revolt 
 against the calm assumption of superiority and the 
 irritating attitude of direction which Count Zinzendorf 
 and the Moravian preachers thought fit to assume. 
 
 But no sooner had this unquiet soul emancipated 
 itself from one foreign influence, than it was warped out 
 of its true course by another. German mysticism had 
 done its work on him : and its doctrine of regeneration 
 into God's kingdom by an interior convulsion of the 
 mind, had left its mark upon Wesleyanism for all future 
 time. But just as this extravagance seemed likely to 
 subside and to be absorbed amid the healthier atmo- 
 sphere of an English Churchman's common-sense, — most 
 unhappily a strong breath ol French fanaticism suddenly 
 set across his path, from quite another quarter. And 
 the singular phenomenon now presented itself, of an 
 epidemic religious-hysteria commingling with, and em- 
 phasizing into lamentable extravagance, all the most 
 dangerous features of the Methodist-Moravian doctrine 
 about the ' new birth.' So wonderfully is all the world 
 
 now too high for me. It was far things. For if he does he destroys 
 above, out of my sight. My soul is himself" Having twice read these 
 sick of this S!(6/ime divinity.' (Wesley, words distinctly, . .he asked, "My 
 3'oi/raaZ,ap.Southey,p. '211.) 'Wesley brethren, is this right or is it 
 took [a favourite volume among the wrong ? " One of them replied, " It 
 Moravianized members] to Fetter is right ; it is all right." . . Another 
 Lane, and read these words before said, " I used the ordinances twenty 
 the jarring Society : " The Scriptures years, yet I found not Christ- But 
 are good ; prayer is good ; commu- I left them off only for a few weeks, 
 nicating is good ; relieving our and I found Him then." ' (Southey, 
 neighbour is good: but to one who Life, p. i\l^ On the following 
 is not born of God none of these Sunday, Wesley (with about seventy 
 things are good, but all very evil. . . followers) seceded from this Mo- 
 First let him be born of God. Till ravianized Society in Fetter Lane ; 
 then let him not do any of these and withdrew to the Foundry. 
 
368 THE WESLEYANS. [lkct. 
 
 connected together ! So impossible it is for any country, 
 however isolated, or for any sect or church, however ex- 
 clusive, to exclude — not merely the great tidal wave 
 of the average opinion of their time — but even the 
 smaller waves, that — generated in some far-off storm — 
 plash and curl in our most sheltered harbours, and 
 rock the tiny craft that have never once dared the open 
 sea at all. 
 
 These French ' convulsionists ' — who had, just before 
 this time, brought their curious mental malady with 
 them into England — were refugees from the atro- 
 cious dragonnades of Louis XIV.*^ Maddened by his 
 abominable and relentless" persecutions, deprived by his 
 autocratic edicts of all that life held dear, robbed of their 
 children at the sweet age of seven years old, broken 
 on the wheel, hunted among the mountains of the 
 Cevennes, beggared, insulted, tortured, massacred, — what 
 wonder that these poor Protestants lost the balance of 
 their mental powers, and engendered a hysterical 
 disease *^ ! The disease is (I believe), under its strangely 
 
 " ' Such, in fact, were the causes chez ces trembleurs des Cevennes : 
 
 of the extacies or irregular inspira- I'individu . . tombait subitement K la 
 
 tions : the want of spiritual guides renverse, priv6 de sentiment. Etendu 
 
 and schools, spoliation, suffering, de tout son long sur le sol, il etait 
 
 liability to torture, and constant saisi d'un acces epileptiforme, . . ses 
 
 apprehension of the galleys or the membres etaient agites de convulsions, 
 
 gibbet. The minds of these un- il eprouvait des ressauts et des 
 
 fortunate creatures became excited, tresaillements d<5sordonn^s. Les per- 
 
 . . This religious enthusiasm began sonnes presentes se hittaient alors de 
 
 in Vivarais with the dragonnades prodiguer leurs secours au mal- 
 
 and the Revocation,' [about a.d. heureux ainsi visile par lEsprit. . . En 
 
 1686]. (Felice, Proleslanis o/France, effet, la scene changait peu k peu. 
 
 p. 98 : Engl, trans.) Les agitations convulsivesdiminuaient 
 
 ■" ' Comprimi5 dans le Vivarais et et finissaient par disparaitre ; le calme 
 
 le Dauphine, rilluminisme apparait et la serenite faisaient place au frissons 
 
 bientdt dans les Cevennes. 11 y est et k la douleur.' (Figuier, Hisl. du 
 
 apporte vers 1700. . . Voici, en Merveilletix, i. 398.') ' A practical 
 
 general, en quoi consistait la crise proof of the morbific power of the 
 
 ou I'acces d'illuminisme extatique, emotions and passions is found in 
 
vn.] THE ' FRENCH prophets: 369 
 
 mutable forms, well known to medical science ; though 
 science has never yet been able to probe all its mysterious 
 depths *^ Its seat is, apparently, the great nervous 
 ganglia of nutrition, which lie in the centre of the body ; 
 and whose strange sympathetic action with and upon 
 the brain, has led to all the popular notions about the 
 heart and neighbouring organs being the seat of various 
 impassioned feelings. 
 
 Suffice it however, at present, to observe, that while 
 the phenomena which this extraordinary and infectious 
 disease presented, had sufficed to cheer the faith and 
 animate the ardour of the Calvinists in the Cevennes 
 against Rome ; the very same disease not long after 
 broke out among the Romanists themselves at Port- 
 Royal^". Nay, already in the previous century, it had 
 thrown whole nunneries near Bordeaux into wild con- 
 fusion '1. In the sixteenth century it had been known 
 
 the frequent occurrence o{ psycho- geistigen Zerriittungen, dieselbefahig 
 
 paibilis in iimes when all the elements sei.' {Horst, Deuteroskopie, ii. 213.) 
 of social life are in a state of fer- '° ' Deux cents docteurs de Sor- 
 
 mentation. In and after revolutions, bonne furent exiles par lettres de 
 
 sudden changes of fortune, &c. pro- cachet en 1729. Jamais la persecu- 
 
 duce a thousand cases of mental tion ne s'^tait montree si ardente. . . 
 
 disorder/ (Feuchtersleben, Medical C'est alors que les convulsions 
 
 Psychology, p. 264, Sydenham edit.) ^clatferent. .. Le sol du cimitiere de 
 
 " ■ Hysteria, — that proteiform and Saint-Medard et des rues voisines est 
 
 mutable disorder, in which the dispute par une multitude de fiUes, 
 
 imaginations, the superstitions, and de femmes, d'infirmes, d'individus de 
 
 the follies of all ages have been tout age, — qui convulsionnent comme 
 
 reflected.' (Hecker, Epidemics, p. a I'envi les uns des autres. Des 
 
 117, Engl, trans.) ' Wir wissen noch hommes se debattent sur la terre, en 
 
 langenicht hinlanglich wasfur ausser- veritables ^pileptiques. . . Enfin, 
 
 ordentiche Dinge durch die Imagina- plusieurs convulsionnaires tombaient 
 
 tion, in Verbindung mit Sympathie dans un ^tat d'extase si complet, qu'on 
 
 und geheimen magnetischen Kraften, I'appelait Velat de mort.' (Figuier, 
 
 bewirkt werden konnen. Auch ist Hist, de Merv, i. 550, 410.) 
 hieraus klar, dass wir unsere Natur " ' Les Ursulines de Loudun se 
 
 . . noch nicht kennen; und aus vouait k I'instruction des jeunes filles. 
 
 diesem Grund auch nicht zu be- . . Mais au printemps de 1632, le 
 
 stimmen vermiigen, weder welcher bruit commen9a k se repandre dans 
 
 geistigen Erhebungen, noch welcher la ville, que des choses etranges se 
 
 Bb 
 
37° 
 
 THE WESLEYANS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 in Italy as the 'Dancing-Mania' or Tarantism •''^. During 
 the middle ages it had appeared in Germany, and was 
 called St. John's or St. Vitus's Dance ^l ^^^^ 
 
 long 
 
 passaient dans le noiiveau convent. 
 . . Les religieuses firent part de leurs 
 visions [au confessetir] ; et il jugea 
 ces choses fort graves. II ques- 
 tionna ses p^nitentes, et peut-etre 
 contribua-t-il a augmenter leur mal. 
 . . La poss^dee eut de conwhions^ qni 
 fnrent tres violentes. . . Cette crise 
 pass6, son visage reprit sa tranqtiillite 
 et sa coloration habituelle. . . (.16,^3) 
 Les sympt6mes d^moniaques re- 
 prisent soudainement k Londnn. . . 
 Cinq autres religieuses se trouvferent 
 possedees. Dans la ville, dix filles 
 seculaires etaient tourmentees. Bien- 
 t6t, la ville ne suffisant plus k con- 
 tenir cette nu6e de demons, quelques- 
 uns se cantonnerent dans les lieux cir- 
 convoisins. . . Le corps de la prieure 
 a et^ prostem^ par terre, avec des 
 contorsions etranges en tous ses mem- 
 bres : . . de!ivr?e de ce diable, elle 
 montrait un visage 5/ sereiti et si 
 tranqiiiUe, que les spectateurs y 
 voyaient clairement le doigt de Dieu, 
 et chantaient Te Demn. . . Cette 
 maladie 6tait un hysteric convulsive, 
 avecdiversescomplications.' (Figuier, 
 Hist, de Men. i. S5, 112, 204, 238.) 
 "Within twenty years, the same 
 phenomena had occurred in England 
 among the Quakers : 'Consider [said 
 Lord Saye, an Independent], after 
 the prating woman Audley came to 
 Banbury, what was done and prac- 
 tised ; men and women falling down, 
 foaming at the mouth, quaking, and 
 using unnatural gestures.' (Beesley, 
 Hist, of Banbury, p. 452.) 
 
 ™ ' At the close of the fifteenth 
 century, Tarantism had spread beyond 
 the borders of Apulia. . . The number 
 of those- affected by it increased 
 beyond all belief. Inquisitive females 
 joined the throng and caught the 
 disease, — from the mental poison 
 
 which they eagerly received through 
 the eye. . . Foreigners of every colour 
 and race were, in like manner, 
 affected by it. Neither youth nor 
 age afforded any protection ; so that 
 e^'en old men of ninety threw aside 
 their crutches, and joined the most 
 extravagant dancers. . . Subordinate 
 nervous attacks were much more 
 frequent during this [seventeenth] 
 century, than at any former period.' 
 (Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle 
 Ages, pp. 107-115, Engl, trans.) 
 
 '■•'' ' The effects of the Black Dealh 
 had not yet subsided, when a strange 
 delusion arose in Germany. It was 
 a convulsion, which in the most 
 extraordinary manner infuriated the 
 human frame ; . . and %vas propagated 
 by the sight of the sufferers. They 
 continued dancing, for hours to- 
 gether, in wild delirium ; until at 
 length they lell to the ground in a 
 state of exhaustion. They then 
 complained of extreme oppression, 
 and groaned as if in the agonies 
 of death. . . They were haunted by 
 visions : and some of them after- 
 wards asserted that they had felt 
 as if immersed in a stream of blood, 
 which obliged them to leap so high. 
 [Cf George Fox. Journal, i. 100 ; 
 ' The word of the Lord came to me 
 again. .. So I went up and down the 
 streets, crying, Woe to the bloody 
 city Lichfield ! And there seemed 
 to me to be a channel of blood running 
 down the streets, and the market- 
 place appeared like a pool of 
 blood.'] Others saw the heavens 
 open and the Saviour enthroned with 
 the Virgin Mary, — according as the 
 religious notions of the age were 
 variously reflected in their imagina- 
 tions.' (Hecker, Epidemics, p. 80.) 
 
VII.] RELIGIOUS HYSTERIA. 371 
 
 before its first appearance in that precise form, in 1374, 
 it had, no doubt, been the real secret of the baccha- 
 nahan orgies among the Greeks, and of the frantic 
 dervish-like gestures and 'cuttings with knives and 
 lancets ' which we read of among Asiatic races '*. In our 
 own day and country (thank God) these extraordinary and 
 degrading spectacles are scarcely to be seen. But the 
 disease still lurks among the superstitious Christians of 
 Tigre in Abyssinia ; in Siberia ®^ ; among the revivalists 
 of Ireland and America ; and (in a very mild form) 
 among the ignorant Welsh Methodists, — who are on this 
 account popularly called 'Jumpers.' 
 
 Now it so happened that these poor hysterical French 
 refugees had arrived in great numbers in London ^'^, and 
 had also visited Bristol, shortly before the critical year 
 1739,— when the excitable George Whitfield landed from 
 America, and John Wesley returned home from Ger- 
 many. Men's thoughts, then, were full of the (so-called) 
 ' French prophets.' A new religious enthusiasm was, as 
 it were, floating in the atmosphere. And it only needed 
 the impulse of some exciting preaching, and the mental 
 tension which is always produced among expectant and 
 heated crowds, to generate infallibly an outbreak of this 
 unaccountable and infectious malady. And such an 
 occasion was not long in presenting itself. In February 
 
 °' ' The Germans had transferred a part of their bacchanalian my- 
 to the festival of St. John's Day an steries.' (Hecker, Epid. p. 87.) 
 ancient heathen usage, the kindling ^' Cf. a curious account of the 
 of the Nodfyr (which was forbidden SiamoKs there, by a Russian traveller; 
 them by St. Boniface); and the ap. Horst, Z)e«/erosi. i, 219-228. 
 belief subsists even to the present ^ ' Dans sa froide lettre sur I'en- 
 day, that people and animals that tbtisiasme, Shaftesbury, parle des Pro- 
 have leaped through these flames, are phetes protestants refugies qui abon- 
 protected for a whole year from daienl en Angleterre, vers 1709. II 
 fevers, &c. ..The Greeks transferred trouveleurscontorsions fort ridicules.' 
 to the festival of John the. Baptist (Figuier, ffiV. rfc Aferi/. ii. 395.) 
 
 2 B a 
 
372 THE WESLEYANS. [leCT. 
 
 1739; Whitfield for the first time preached in the open 
 air, — at Kingswood, near his native place Bristol, — to 
 the wild and lawless colliers of the then Black Country 
 of England. In the May following he persuaded John 
 Wesley to join him there, and to imitate his example. 
 And then, for the first time, religious hysteria began to 
 manifest itself''. Meeting after meeting and sermon 
 after sermon were interrupted, by men and women of all 
 ages and conditions falling down in convulsions, and 
 crying aloud for mercy. ' Scores were sometimes 
 strewed on the ground at once. A traveller was at 
 one time passing by ; but on pausing a moment to 
 hear the sermon, he was directly smitten to the earth. 
 A Quaker, who was admonishing the bystanders against 
 these strange scenes, was himself struck down as by an 
 unseen hand ''^.' 
 
 It is obvious that, fitting, as it did so naturally, to the 
 strenuous exhortations of these preachers of a 'sudden 
 conversion,' and corresponding so well to the hopes they 
 held forth of being sensibly and at a given moment ' born 
 again,' — this phenomenon could not well fail of being 
 interpreted by the ignorant crowd, as the miraculous 
 birth-throes of the New Life ; of being welcomed as 
 the sensible strivings of the Holy Ghost with reluctant 
 sinful souls ; of being with awe accepted as the dark- 
 ness and spiritual gloom out of which men should be 
 presently redeemed into Christ's marvellous light ^'K 
 
 '•" Stevens, Hist. i. 114, 126. were (only a few years ago) sup- 
 
 '' Stevens, Hut. i. 127; cf. Tyer- posed by Edward Irving to be a 
 
 man, Life, i. 264-268 : Bishop Lav- miraculous gift of the Holy Ghost, 
 
 ington, Enthus. of Metb. [1750], part Oliphant, Life of Irving, p. 329.) — 
 
 iii. p. 20. 'Of the more physical " fixed ideas," 
 
 " Similar nervous phenomena — those of Ambition are the most fre- 
 
 ' tears, sighs, and unutterable groan- quent . . Next in frequency is the 
 
 ings; joy, mirth, and exultation,' — Religious. This manifests itself very 
 
VII.] JOHN WESLEY SUPERSTITIOUS. 373 
 
 In all this matter, however, there is no doubt to be 
 entertained that John Wesley was perfectly honest. 
 Not a shadow of suspicion rests upon his integrity. 
 But there is also no manner of doubt that he was 
 extraordinarily superstitious ; that the ghost-adventures 
 of his youth had made a deep and permanent impres- 
 sion on his fancy^'' ; and that he was as much inclined, 
 as the Roman Catholic priests (with whom he was by 
 his enemies so often confounded), to see miraculous 
 interpositions in very trifling circumstances. Much 
 more (of course) would this be the case in any im- 
 portant circumstances connected with his work as an 
 Evangelist and preacher of repentance to the neglected 
 heathens of Kingswood ^\ The one great characteristic 
 
 variously. It appears as profound deceptions of the senses are, in no 
 melancholy, when combined with form of the disease, so frequent as in 
 contrition for past sins, real or ima- this.' (Feuchtersleben, Medic. Psy- 
 ginary; as joyous extasy, when it is chol., p. 280, Sydenham ed.) Shake- 
 accompanied by the illusory feeling speare, Julius Caesar, Act. v., seems 
 of special sanctification and divine to have had an intuition of this 
 grace, (" extasis religiosa.") Hence, truth : — 
 
 ' O hateful Error, Melancholy's child ! 
 
 Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men 
 
 The things that are not?' 
 60 Wedgwood, John Wesley, p. 22 : panied the inward work of God . . 
 — His friend, Alexander Knox, thus From this time, I trust, we shall all 
 writes about him : ' Had my good old suffer God to carry on His own work 
 friend possessed a sounder under- in the way that pleaseth Him.' (Ste- 
 standing, and a more cautious dis- vens. Hist., i. 128.) — In 174.^, how- 
 position, he might have been propor- ever, he thinks 'it was Satan, tearing 
 tionably disqualified for his special them as they were coming to Christ.' 
 destination . .Such, I conceive, was — But in 1781 he wavers again: 
 the native character of his intellec- ' Satan mimicked this part of the 
 tual machinery, that he was to be work of God, in order to discredit 
 always liable to fallacious appre- the whole: and yet it is not wise 
 hension, false calculation, and dis- to give up this part, any more than 
 proportioned energy both of design to give up the whole.' {Ibid. p. 188.) 
 and execution.' (Letter, appended to — In his Sermon 37, however. On 
 Southey, Life, [third ed.] ii. 465.) the Nature of Enthusiasm, (vol. i. p. 
 " In 1739, Wesley writes as fol- 441,) he speaks like an English 
 lows: 'I had an opportunity to talk Churchman: 'Enthusiasm is, un- 
 with [Whitfield] of those outward doubtedly, a disorder of the mind 
 signs, which had so often accom . . It is not any part of religion : 
 
374 THE WESLEYANS. [lECT. 
 
 doctrine, therefore, of Methodism — the doctrine of the 
 ' new birth ' or of the necessity of a sensible conversion 
 from darkness to hght and from Satan to God — became 
 from this time forth doubly accentuated. And in spite 
 of Wesley's own gradual return to a more tranquil, 
 healthful, and Churchmanlike judgment on all these 
 things ; and notwithstanding his earnest protestations, 
 even in his last days on earth, that he had ' never 
 [consciously] varied from the doctrine of the Church 
 at all ;' this topic has continued to form the favourite 
 theme of his preachers ; the distinguishing — and alas ! 
 at length, the dividing — mark, which separates them 
 from the Mother-Church. And so it has come to pass, 
 that the followers of John Wesley — who ' lived and died 
 a member of the Church of England,' — are preparing 
 to enrol themselves under the banners of her natural 
 enemy, and theirs, — Calvinism. 
 
 Yet it was precisely against Calvinism, that their 
 venerable founder's voice spake with no uncertain 
 sound, during all the latter half of his life. He used 
 no weak or vague language on this subject. His ex- 
 pressions were, beyond mistake, those of protest and 
 aversion. The Methodist Journal, during the whole of 
 his life, was called (in downright terms) the Arminian 
 Magazine ; and he did not scruple, so early as 1741, 
 in horror of Calvinism, to separate from his early friend 
 and fellow-labourer, George Whitfield : while in the 
 ' Larger Minutes ' of Conference, — which form (as it 
 were) the Canon Law of Methodism and are subscribed 
 
 quite the reverse. Religion is the dreams ; in sudden impressions, or 
 
 spirit of a sound mind . . . Beware strong impulses of any Icind . . Be- 
 
 you are not entangled therewith I ware, lastly, of imagining you shall 
 
 It easily besets those who fear or obtain the end, without using the 
 
 love God . . Trust not in visions or means conducive to it.' 
 
VII.] METHODISM A SWORN FOE TO CALVINISM. 375 
 
 to by every minister in the connexion, — there stand 
 these uncompromising words : ' What is the direct 
 antidote to Methodism ? Calvinism. All the devices 
 of Satan for these fifty years, have done far less 
 towards stopping this work of God, than that single 
 doctrine ^'-^ 
 
 (3) The subsequent history of Wesleyanism down to 
 its founder's death in 1791, and the important Con- 
 ference of 1795, forms its third period. And it is a 
 story as interesting as it is full of instruction. But the 
 popular Works of Southey, Watson, and many others, 
 are easily accessible. And it is therefore superfluous 
 to attempt anything more in these pages, than a brief 
 indication of the course and progress of its development. 
 In 1744, amid the severe trials and anxieties of a period 
 when Romanism, armed for the re-conquest of the 
 country. Was penetrating from Scotland into the mid- 
 land counties, and Wesley was suspected of being 
 secretly in the Pretender's interest, — he resolved to call 
 around him his most trusted friends, and to take 
 counsel for the continuance of their work'^^ Accord- 
 ingly, six Methodist clergymen of the Church of Eng- 
 land and four lay-preachers met together in London, 
 for (what we should now call) a Retreat. And this 
 meeting is regarded by Wesleyans as the first regular 
 ' Conference' of the Methodist societies. Henceforward 
 
 "'■ Ap. Warren, Digest of the Laws (said Charles Wesley,) damnation is 
 
 of Meih., p. 42. denounced against all who hear us ; 
 
 «'' Reports were rife, that the Me- for we are Papists, Jesuits, and 
 
 thodist preachers were in collusion bringers-in of the Pretender.' ( Wes- 
 
 with the papal Stuart.' (Stevens, ley with High Churchmen, p. 122.) 
 
 Hist., i. 199.) Some confidently as- 'In Yorkshire, an accusation was 
 
 serted ' that they had seen Mr. Wes- laid against him of having spoken 
 
 ley, a week or two ago, with the treasonable words.' (Southey, Life, 
 
 Pretender in France.' (Wesley, p.. 273.) 
 Works, xxwiii. 216.) ' Every Sunday, 
 
3^6 THE WESLEYANS. [lect. 
 
 Conferences were held annually, in London, Bristol, or 
 Leeds, — the three metropolitan cities of the great 
 quasi-patriarchate controlled by Wesley. And when 
 he was gone, this permanent synod of his nominees — 
 entrusted with power to fill up their own vacancies 
 — seemed the most natural body to succeed to his 
 authority ; as they were also the most likely to con- 
 tinue his traditions. 
 
 During the remainder of the century, therefore, Eng- 
 land saw the remarkable spectacle of three distinct, 
 though in most respects similar, organizations, per- 
 meating the country — for the purpose of awakening 
 religious revival — in every direction. First came the 
 original Moravian mission, conducted latterly by Ing- 
 ham and Gambold "*. Next came the High-Church, or 
 Arminian, mission, — under John and Charles Wesley. 
 Lastly, the Calvinistic mission, — under Whitfield and 
 the Countess of Huntingdon. Each was animated by 
 a pure and noble spirit of self-sacrifice. Each was 
 attempting the truly Christian and blessed work of 
 reviving religion among the now multiplying masses 
 of the lower orders. Each was proceeding, on the 
 whole, in the same way: viz. (j) by stirriitg men to 
 ask, ' What shall I do to be saved .'' ' — and -that, espe- 
 cially, by highly-coloured addresses in the open air, 
 wonderfully suitable to ' men of low estate,' and strongly 
 affecting the imagination and the feelings of a class to 
 whom the 'evidential' preaching of that day was like 
 
 " Rev. John Gambold is a very man of pure life and high character; 
 
 interesting person. He was rector and was led to the Moravians by the 
 
 of Stanton Harcourt, near Oxford ; earnest craving he felt for real spiri- 
 
 joined the Moravians in 1741; re- tual fellowship, — too rare, at tliat 
 
 signed his living in the following time, "within the Church. (Cf. 
 
 year ; and became a ' bishop ' among Wedgwood, John Wesley, p. 75.) 
 his new friends, in 1744. He was a 
 
VII.] THE WESLEYAN SYSTEM. 377 
 
 speaking in an unknown tongue : (2) by garnering those 
 whose hearts were touched, giving them a sense of 
 brotherhood and welcome, and watching carefully 
 against a relapse, — especially by an elaborate system 
 of lay-agency, with class-leaders and local preachers 
 to supplement the more regular efforts of the itinerant 
 ministry. 
 
 At length — though his eye was not dim, nor his 
 natural strength abated — John Wesley became an old 
 man, and the time of his departure evidently drew 
 nigh. It seemed advisable, therefore, to establish Wes- 
 leyanism firmly upon the basis of the law of the land. 
 And Wesley drew up, in 1784, a ' Deed of Declaration,' 
 which was formally enrolled in Chancery. It gave 
 almost unlimited powers to the ' Conference ;' entrusted 
 it with the use of all the property belonging to the 
 society, which even then was considerable ; and vir- 
 tually identified Methodism with the ' legal hundred ' 
 preachers, who were empowered to settle, by a majority 
 of voices, all questions that might arise. 
 
 It is clear however that this was a long step taken — 
 however unintentionally on the part of Wesley himself 
 — in the direction of an ultimate separation from the 
 Church of England. But a far more dangerous step 
 was taken by him in this same year. Perplexed by 
 the difficulties that had arisen out of the severance of 
 the United States from the Mother Country^^, in despair 
 
 *' ' The case (argued Wesley) is baptize or to administer the Lord's 
 
 widely different between England Supper. Here, therefore, my scru- 
 
 and North America. Here there pies are at an end : and I conceive 
 
 are bishops who have a legal juris- myself at full liberty, as I violate 
 
 diction ; in America there are none ; no order and invade no man's right, 
 
 neither any parish-ministers. So by appointing and sending labourers 
 
 that, for some hundreds of miles into the harvest.' (Ap. Southey, 
 
 together, there is none either to Life, p. 515.) 
 
378 
 
 THE VVESLEYANS. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 at the timid counsels which prevailed among the Enghsh 
 Bishops at that time'^°, and confident (from a recent 
 perusal of Lord King's book) that he was doing no 
 more than re-asserting the ancient rights of the Pres- 
 byterate''^, — he brought himself, at last, to consecrate 
 two English clergymen as bishops "* (or ' superintend- 
 ents '), and two laymen as presbyters (or 'elders'), for 
 his American societies. This was the origin of the 
 ' Episcopal Methodists ' in the United States ; who are 
 now said to number two million adherents. But — 
 explain it to himself as he might — there is no doubt 
 that, in thus assuming Episcopal functions, John Wesley 
 did what it was quite beyond his province to do ; and 
 that he thereby largely contributed to bring about the 
 unhappy event, which (in words) he forbade, to his dying 
 day, viz. the secession of Ids societies from the Church 
 of England'^K Had he only been a little more humble, 
 
 ^'' ' It appears that some of his 
 friends advised an application to the 
 Bishops, requesting them to ordain 
 preachers for America. Wesley 
 replied, . . their proceedings were 
 notoriously slow, and this matter 
 admitted of no delay.' {Ibid. p. 
 514.) — Alas! the charge was only 
 too true. The Bishops, at that pe- 
 riod, must have lost all conception 
 that it might possibly be a part of 
 Episcopal duty to siiffer something, 
 and to rhli something, to promote 
 the general interests of the Church. 
 Indeed, let any one read, with re- 
 flection. Bishop Wilberforce's Hht. 
 0/ the American Church, pp. 137-181, 
 and he will find it absolutely impos- 
 sible to speak another harsh word 
 of Wesley's irregular proceedmgs in 
 1 7S4. ' Letters and memorials from 
 the colonies supply, for a whole cen- 
 tury [168.^-1784], a connected chain 
 of e.xpo^tulalions. Yet still the 
 
 mother country remained deaf to 
 their entreaties . . It may well seem 
 strange that their prayers were never 
 granted.' (^Wilberforce, Hist., p. 
 I49-) 
 
 " See above, p. 28. 
 
 '* Stevens, Methodist Episc. Church, 
 ii. 224. 
 
 '^' Five years after this unfortunate 
 act, and only two years before his 
 death, Wesley preached as fpUows, 
 at Bath: 'The JMethodists are still 
 members of the Church ; — such they 
 desire to live and to die. And, I 
 believe, one reason why God is 
 pleased to prolong my life so long 
 is, to confirm them in their present 
 purpose, 7iot to separate from the 
 Church. . . I hold all the doctrines 
 of the Church of England ; I love 
 her liturgy ; I approve her plan of 
 discipline. I do not knowingly de- 
 part from the rule of the Church, 
 unless in those few cases where I 
 
VII.] THE SPIRIT OF 'SECESSION' AT WORK. 379 
 
 and 'let patience have her perfect work,' — had he only 
 waited ten weeks longer, he would not have ' forced him- 
 self'"' to supply, on September 2, 1784, the needed 
 Episcopate, which was actually, on November 14, 1784, 
 supplied by the Scottish consecration of Bishop Sea- 
 bury '^. 
 
 Secession at home was indeed staved off, by his per- 
 sonal influence, for many years. But the spirit of sepa- 
 ration and hi)io<jTa(jia. had already found its way among 
 the Methodists, — as it always has done, and always will 
 do, whenever the spirit of loyalty to the Church, of 
 unity, and humility, becomes impaired. Accordingly, 
 so early as 1740, the first interior secession took place, 
 — Wesley and Whitfield departing from the 'Moravians,' 
 on account of their excessive mysticism and their dis- 
 paragement of the ordinary ' means of grace.' In 1741, 
 a second severance occurred, — George Whitfield and the 
 Calvinistic Methodists departing, and establishing that 
 half - Presbyterian, half- Independent community, com- 
 monly known as ' Lady Huntingdon's Connexion.' 
 
 judge, and as far as I judge, there head, his friend and biographer, 
 is an absolute necessity . . . Observe regarded it as an error of judg- 
 my two principles: (i) that I dare ment : (4) another personal friend, 
 not separate from the Church, that Alexander Knox, attributed it to 
 I believe it would be a sin so to senility and infirmity of mind; {^) 
 do : (2) that I believe it would be a the Irish Methodists (so lately as 
 sin not to vary from it, in the points 1839) avowed that the notions on 
 above mentioned . . I have been tree which he acted are, ' in their judg- 
 to my profession, from 1730 to this ment, more easily assumed than 
 day.' (Wesley, Sermon cxv. ; vol. iii. proved.' On the other hand, (6) 
 p. 267.) the Conference, after his death, sup- 
 ™ I Sam. xiii. 12. pressed certain passages in his Jour- 
 " It is curious to observe how nal, and omitted Sermon cxv. alto- 
 Wesley's assumption of episcopal gether; because they looked the other 
 functions was regarded at the time, way: (7) Mr. Barrett elaborately 
 and has been regarded since, (i) defends the ordination: (S)Dr. Ste- 
 Dr. Coke himself distrusted it: (2) vens in America, and Dr. Rigg in 
 his brother, Charles Wesley, de- England, glory in it. 
 nounced it openly : (3) Dr. White- 
 
380 THE WESLEYANS. [lECT. 
 
 About 1750, the question of secession from the Church 
 began already to be openly broached ''^. And in 1755, 
 it was debated for three days at the annual Con- 
 ference, — the decision being that, ' whether it was lawful 
 or not, it was in no way expedient to separate from the 
 Church.' The preachers therefore ' consented, for the 
 sake of peace, to cease to administer the sacraments ''^.' 
 But when once this controversy had reached so low a 
 level, as to be decided on mere grounds of ' expediency,' 
 it is manifest that it had reached a position among mere 
 shifting sands. What was a duty in 1755, would remain 
 a duty still in' 1795 : but what was expedient (merely) in 
 1755) might easily come to appear inexpedient under 
 altered circumstances. And so it actually came to pass. 
 Wesley died in 1791. Four years later the long-prepared 
 secession had taken place. 
 
 (4) It was at the annual Conference, held at Man- 
 chester in 1795, that the last link which kept the Wes- 
 leyans in union with the Church of England was severed. 
 And with that event, therefore, the history of their so- 
 ciety, as forming a separate denomination in this 
 country, properly begins. The people, under the influ- 
 ence of their preachers, were clamouring loudly to have 
 the sacraments administered to them in their own 
 chapels ; and the Conference was at last compelled to 
 give way to their importunity. A ' Plan of Pacification ' 
 was drawn up ; by which the preachers were authorized 
 to administer the Lord's Supper, at such times and in 
 such manner as the Conference should appoint. But 
 
 " ' Respecting the Conference of societies upon them for the sacra- 
 
 1751, held at Bristol, Wesley ex- ments ; and some of both preachers 
 
 pressed much anxiet)^ Many of his and societies were eager for open 
 
 preachers were tired of his forbear- Dissent,* (Stevens, Hht. of Meth., 
 
 ance witli the National clergy, and i. 394.) 
 
 of the dependence of the Methodist " Ibid. p. 397. 
 
VII.] INTERIOR DISSENSIONS. 381 
 
 no sooner was the severance complete, than its punish- 
 ment began to be felt. Two years later, a large seces- 
 sion took place (1797), — under a minister named Kilham, 
 — on the question of admitting lay-representatives to the 
 annual Conference ; and the Methodist New Comiexion 
 was formed. In 18 10, the question of open-air preaching 
 and of ' revivals ' caused another schism ; and the Primi- 
 tive Methodists broke away from the parent body. In 
 1815, the Bible Christians seceded. In 1835, a quarrel 
 broke out on the proposal to establish a Theological 
 College ; and an eminent minister, Dr. Warren, ven- 
 turing to oppose the Conference and to appeal against 
 them to the Court of Chancery, was expelled. The 
 Wesleyan Methodist Association was therefore set on foot 
 by his supporters. In 1849, a still farther division took 
 place, owing to the same cause, viz. the very strong 
 measures taken by the legal ' Conference ' against a 
 dissentient party. And in consequence, a new deno- 
 mination, the Wesleyan Methodist Reformers, sprang 
 into existence. Nor can any reasonable doubt be en- 
 tertained, that the last of such secessions has not yet 
 been seen'*. For when once the spirit of loyalty and 
 unity has given way, every attempt to supply its vacant 
 place by mere laws, or deeds, or lines of demarcation, 
 must inevitably fail. Interior decomposition has set in. 
 And its destructive agency knows no limit, until every 
 atom shall stand apart and separate from its fellow, — 
 
 '* Thus, Mr. Tyerman {Life of growing, on the subject of retaining 
 
 John Wesley, vol. i.) actually boasts class-meeline:s m a lest of membership. 
 
 of the number of these ' branches of And Mr. Hughes, — a minister who 
 
 the Methodist family ;' and describes published a book on this subject in 
 
 no less than nine existing ' branches,' 1869, — has been reduced to the rank 
 
 — besides many that have sprung up of a ' supernumerary,' by the Con- 
 
 and died away again. At the pre- ference, at Manchester, in 187 1. 
 sent moment, a serious dissension is 
 
382 THE WESLEYANS. [lect. 
 
 until in short Congregational Independency is reached, or 
 even Unitarianisin, where every individual claims his 
 own personal freedom to the uttermost. 
 
 But while truth compels me to say these things,, 
 candour also leads me most willingly to add, that — - 
 among all the religious bodies that modern times have 
 produced — John Wesley's Methodist Society stood pre- 
 eminent during his long lifetime ; both for its wonderful 
 efficiency and coherence, under the ubiquitous guidance 
 of his masterly hand ; and also for its persistent attach- 
 ment to the Church of England, so long as he lived and 
 so long as his distinct opinion was not deliberately sup- 
 pressed and kept out of view, by the men of lower mould 
 who succeeded him '^. And, — whatever be its faults, — 
 I boldly say, so it stands pre-eminent still. God forbid, 
 that — whatever mistakes may have been committed, or 
 whatever sinful tempers shown in these later times — a 
 Churchman's voice should ever be raised, to disparage 
 or treat with anything but honour, the memory and the 
 work of the purest, noblest, most saintly clergyman of 
 the eighteenth century. Here was a man, whose whole 
 life was passed in the sincere and loyal effiart to do good. 
 ' Persons came to me, and desired me to advise and to 
 pray with them . . My desire was to live and die in 
 retirement. But I did not see that I could refuse them 
 my help, and be guiltless before God''".' Thus his 
 efforts were directed towards an object, which we 
 should all, I trust, in those days have had at heart, 
 and which (be it remarked) his efforts have actually 
 brought to pass, — though neither wJien he thought, nor 
 
 '^ See letter of Alexander Knox (third ed., 1846.) 
 [1828], — a personal friend of Wes- ™ 'Large Minutes,' ap. Warren, 
 ley's, — ap. Southey, Life, ii. ^11, D/g-M^, p. 23. 
 
VII.] GOOD EFFECTS OF METHODISM. 383 
 
 precisely as he thought. That object was, to revive 
 rehgion within the Church of England ; to re-infuse life 
 and energy into her benumbed and stiffening limbs ; to 
 pour into all the old time-honoured channels, a fresh 
 current of evangelizing zeal ; and to recover — in time 
 and ere a heathenized democracy should rudely seize 
 the reins of power and precipitate England into chaos 
 — the lower orders to an efficient and soul-converting 
 Christianity''''. 
 
 For the subsequent secession — if it be indeed yet a 
 ' secession ' — of Methodism from the Church, John 
 Wesley is not himself responsible. He warded off so 
 great a calamity during all his life. He wrote, he spoke, 
 he protested against it, in every way that was open to 
 a man in the singular position he occupied. Nay, he 
 earnestly endeavoured to prevent the possibility of its 
 occurrence, — though he foresaw that it might occur, — 
 after he should himself be gone. Only nine months 
 before his death, he solemnly charged his preachers : 
 ' In God's name, stop there ! Be Church-of-England 
 men still ! Do not cast away the peculiar glory, which 
 God hath put upon you, and frustrate the design of 
 Providence'*.' And his dying breath was spent in a 
 prayer for the Church. 
 
 But even if it must be ' secession,' even if (with strange 
 want of independence and of foresight) the leaders of 
 this massive religious society — which could surely claim 
 to strike out a policy of its own — are tamely led to join 
 the Puritan crusade against their Mother-Church, still 
 it shall not be from our lips that rebuke or blame shall 
 come. The work for God, in which they have been so 
 
 " Cf. Stevens, Methodist Episcopal Church, i. 26. 
 ^8 Wesley, Sermons, iii. 268. 
 
384 THE WESLEYANS. [lECT. 
 
 signally blest, — their zeal and devotion, which so often 
 put our cold officialism to shame, — these shall stop our 
 mouths from uttering one word of harshness or un- 
 brotherly disparagement. No : it is to their own 
 ' venerable father ''^ ' and founder, that we will appeal, — 
 if appeal we must. And he ' being dead, yet speaketh ' 
 in condemnation of such unnatural and un-Wesleyan 
 courses. ' It is one of the fixed rules of our societies 
 (he says), that every member attend the ordinances of 
 God, i.e. do not divide from the Church ^''.' And again, 
 ' I never had any design of separating from the Church ; 
 I have no such design now. . . Nevertheless, in spite of 
 all I can do, many will separate from it ; although, I 
 am apt to think, not one half, perhaps not a third of 
 them. These will be so bold and injudicious as to form 
 a separate party ; which, consequently, will dwindle away 
 into a dull, dry, separate party. In flat opposition to 
 these, I declare that I live and die a member of the 
 Church of England ; and NONE WHO REGARD MY 
 OPINION OR ADVICE WILL EVER SEPARATE FROM 
 IT8V 
 
 These last words were written by him only a few 
 months before his death. And the neglect and dis- 
 obedience with which they have since been treated, 
 have already been amply avenged by the many internal 
 secessions which have split the connexion in pieces. 
 
 " Minutes of 1797, &c. to receive everything that John 
 
 80 Wesley, Worfs, xiv. 161. Wesley said. That prince of evan'- 
 
 " John Wesley, Arminian Maga- gelists was often inconsistent with 
 
 zine, April 1790. How true-hearted himself: and on no subject did he 
 
 Wesleyans can cast such words as mystify himself more completely, 
 
 these to the winds, it is difficult to than on that of the connexion of his 
 
 understand. But Ihey are now-a- societies with the Church of Eng- 
 
 days cast to the winds, without land.' {The Melh. World, ]an. lS^o, 
 
 scmple and without apology. ' The p. 55.) 
 Methodist community are not bound 
 
VII.] 'DRIFTING' INTO SCHISM. 385 
 
 The consequence has been, — not only an enormous waste 
 of power, not only endless jealousies and confusions, 
 arising from the co-existence of so many intertangled 
 systems of rival ' circuits ' and rival ' conferences ' 
 throughout the country, — but a serious diminution of 
 numbers during the last few years. According to their 
 own returns, since 1850 their adherents have diminished 
 by no less than 11,174 persons: and the annual rate 
 of diminution appears to be increasing ^^. 
 
 And surely we, who remain loyal members of the 
 Church of England, ought — in two ways especially — to 
 derive instruction from the deeply interesting spectacle 
 afforded us by the past history, and the present con- 
 dition, of Wesleyanism. 
 
 (i.) We should learn the negative lesson : viz. to guard 
 against the danger of ' drifting ' into disunion, and against 
 the sin of pushing our ecclesiastical dissensions to the sad 
 extremity of mutual alienation and of actual Dissent. 
 That gulf may possibly seem narrow, and of little 
 account, in your eyes. But it is like the parted cliff, 
 where seas rush in and work an ever-widening disrup- 
 tion. It is like the severed limb, whose mischief might 
 once — ah, how easily ! perhaps — have been re-absorbed 
 and cured without a scar ; but which now the surgeon's 
 knife, with a little narrow cleft, has for ever made a 
 'mutilation.' It is like the alienation of hearts which 
 once have loved ; and the blight of whose gradual 
 estrangement neither silence nor distance can ever effec- 
 tually cure ^■'. 
 
 Ap. Derbysh. Chtircbman, Jan. 1872. 
 = ' Da schieden sie. Und, wie im Miinsterchor 
 Verglimmt der Altarlampe rotlier Glanz — 
 Erst wird er matt; dann flackert er empor 
 Noch einmal hell, und dann verlischt er ganz- 
 
 C C 
 
386 THE WESLEYANS. [lect. 
 
 (2.) But still more earnestly, if possible, should we 
 Churchmen arouse ourselves to learn the all-important 
 positive and practical lesson, that Wesleyanism — by its 
 wonderful successes — ought to teach us. And that 
 lesson is, above all things (in the words of my text), 
 to ^condescend to men of lotv estate! In Dr. Johnson's 
 judgment — who lived in the midst of the great Methodist 
 movement,— the whole secret of its success was, that 
 the preachers 'expressed themselves in a plain and 
 familiar manner, which is the only way to do good to 
 the common people ; and which clergymen of genius 
 and learning ought to do from a principle of duty.' We 
 know it was something more than that. But still, one 
 clear lesson of Methodism is here pointed out to us. 
 The lower classes cannot be drawn to religion, by dry and 
 cold addresses to tJieir reason, which in them is only 
 half cultivated. We must not, therefore, be afraid of 
 appealing to their emotions. We must not shrink from 
 touching their enthusiasm. We must not allow refine- 
 ment to stand between us and our Master's work ^''. But 
 we must venture to incur some risks, and even ap- 
 proach — while we diligently guard against — the evils 
 of fanaticism. Nor again, can persons of this class — 
 nor perhaps of any class — be kept in the ways of religion, 
 without some sort of Methodism : i.e. without some 
 skilfully devised plans for religious association and 
 
 So starb die Lieb' in ihnen. erst bc-.vtint, 
 Dann heiss zurLick ersehnt, iind dann — vergessen : 
 Bis sie zuletzt, es sei ein Wahn, gemtint 
 Dass sie sich je dereinst bessessen.' 
 
 (Geibel, Gedichte, p. 141.) 
 " ' What are the rules of a A preacher of the gospel is the ser- 
 " helper" [local-preacher]? . . Do vant of all. Be ashamed of nothing 
 not affect the genlleman. You have but sin : not of cleaning your own 
 no more to do with this character, shoes, or your neighbour's.' (Large 
 than with that of a dancing-master. Minutes; Warren, Digest, p. 23.) 
 
VII.] THE OLD CATHOLIC METHOD. 387 
 
 mutual help. Wesley's own experience taught him this 
 last truth. For on one occasion he tried to effect a revival 
 of religious enthusiasm in the northern, counties, without 
 afterwards garnering up the results in 'class-meetings' 
 and societies ; but he found that all his labour had been 
 spent in vain, and that 'almost all the seed had fallen 
 by the wayside *^.' 
 
 Now of all institutions the world has ever seen, there 
 is one which — fully understood and boldly set in motion 
 — is beyond all comparison the most effective, for reach- 
 ing and enkindling the hearts of all men, of the lowly 
 as well as the refined. And that is the ancient Catholic 
 system of the Church. This system God, in His 
 mercy, has left us — reformed, indeed, but in its grand 
 features wholly unimpaired — in this country. This He 
 has placed in our hands. This He has entrusted to 
 our loyalty, committed to our courage, commended to 
 our skill. And it is entirely our own fault if it be- 
 comes effete or lifeless under our charge. ' Cir- 
 cuits ' (after all) are not nearly so efficient as parishes : 
 ' superintendents ' are not so good as bishops : a ' con- 
 ference' can hardly compete with a graduated system 
 of church synods: a twelve days' mission is a healthier 
 thing than a 'camp-meeting.' Confirmations, catechiz- 
 ings, and a free system of Bible, communion, and 
 prayer-meetings, might easily be made to compete with 
 
 85 . -y^e jiave preached for more of Friendly Societies. ' The good 
 
 than a year without forming societies, effects of these societies were univer- 
 
 . . from Newcastle to Bervvick ; and sally felt, . . and a respect for religion 
 
 almost all the seed has fallen by the gave a sacred character to the whole.' 
 
 wayside.' (Minutes of 1748: ap. (Grimshawe, Life of Richmond, p. 
 
 Stevens, Hist. i. 324.) Legh Rich- 93.) The modem (so-called) Catholic 
 
 mend, at Turvey (1805-1827), at- revival, aims at precisely the same 
 
 tempted to draw people together on thing, in its guilds. 
 the more wide and common ground 
 
 2 C 2 
 
388 THE WESLEYANS. [lECT. 
 
 ' class-meetings,' too often led by ignorant (though pious) 
 men*". And the private fatherly cotmsel, which the 
 Prayer-book allows each person, fallen under spiritual 
 difficulty or sorrow, to seek for himself among the ten 
 thousand priests of the Church of England, is beyond 
 comparison superior to the public confession of ex- 
 periences in a narrow band-meeting, — where (in all 
 human probability) virtues and transports and triumphs 
 are far more likely to be confessed, than failures and 
 sins. 
 
 In all these, and many other ways, then, we have 
 need to be astir, and to aid in solving happily that 
 great problem of the future influence of Christianity 
 upon the democracy, on which (as we have lately been 
 truly told) ' depends the future existence of Christianity, 
 for a century to come, as the ruling religious power of 
 the civilized world *^' And if we should, in doing this, 
 have to ' condescend to men of low estate,' to stoop from 
 our studies and our speculations, to translate into mother 
 English the net results of our inquiries, to approach men 
 through their imaginations and their senses, and even 
 to bear patiently with their strange superstitions and 
 crude notions about the unseen world, — let us remember 
 that this is the very way by which God's servants have 
 in all ages gone before us ; the very way by which they 
 have done their Master's work, and trodden in their 
 Master's footsteps. Therefore we too may safely take 
 from these low and crude beginnings our starting- 
 point — as St. Paul took his from the pagan sacrifice at 
 
 °* 'Of what use is it to try and you?" [rather ask], "Do you enjoy 
 
 make a class-meeting beneficial to the life of God ? are you diligent in 
 
 any one who is not [already] in the study of the Bible ? " ' {Primitive 
 
 earnest? . . It will not suffice that the Melh. Magazine, Jan. 1870, p. 27.) 
 
 same inquiry be always m.ade : "How " Clay, Essays, p. 2. 
 are you getting on ? how is it with 
 
VII.] ST. AUGUSTINE'S ADVICE. 389 
 
 Lystra, or from the ' altar to the unknown God ' at 
 Athens. And we can hardly do better than follow 
 St. Augustine's example, in dealing with rude and half- 
 awakened souls : ' If any one should tell us, he has been 
 warned or terrified by some supernatural means into 
 becoming a Christian, he thereby offers us a most wel- 
 come starting-point: and we at once take occasion to 
 point out how great a care God has for our souls. Thus 
 we may lead him on to the safer and more solid ground 
 of scriptural theology ; . . and may show him, that the 
 Lord would not have thus instructed him by signs and 
 revelations, were there not a highway already laid down 
 in the Holy Scriptures, wherein He had desired him to 
 walk *8.' 
 
 Augustine, Be Cat. Rud. § 10. 
 
APPENDIX K. 
 
 The Special Doctrines of the Wesleyans. 
 
 The two characteristic doctrines of the modem Wesleyans are those 
 of the New-Birth, and of Perfection. 
 
 (i) The doctrine of the New-Birth is nothing else than the theory, that 
 a person is not made a ' Christian ' by being christened ; but rather, when 
 he passes through a certain convulsive crisis of the inner life, from out of 
 which he issues with a strong feeling of serenity and acceptance with God. 
 This ' feeling ' is construed as ' the witness of the Spirit with our spirit.' 
 And the person is supposed to be, then for the first time, justified, converted, 
 made a ' Christian.' Hence, the main efforts of Methodist preachers are 
 (naturally) directed towards producing this crisis : and revivals, camp- 
 meetings, and terrifying appeals to the imagination, become — in coarser 
 hands — the means of bringing it to pass. The Church, on the contrary, 
 positively refuses to regard immature persons as outside the Christian pale ; 
 and teaches that the normal growth in grace is — not this attainment of a 
 high religious consciousness per saltum, but — ' first the blade, then the ear, 
 then the full corn in the ear.' At the same time, she fully admits tliose — 
 very numerous, but still exceptional — cases, where (the Holy Spirit having 
 been long grieved and resisted) God's mercy puts a man to wholesome 
 shame, by treating him as a relapsed heathen, and sending him a — ' Con- 
 version.' On this subject however, as on all others, every Wesleyan minister 
 may be compelled, by the Court of Final Appeal, to preach in accordance 
 with ' certain Notes on the New Testament, and the first four volumes of 
 Sermons, published by the late Rev. John Wesley.' In those sermons are 
 contained the following passages : — 
 
 ' A man may possibly be bom of water, and yet not be born of the 
 Spirit. I do not now speak with regard to infants : it is certain that our 
 Church supposes that aU who are baptized in their infancy are, at the same 
 time, " bom again ; " and it is allowed that the whole Office for the Baptism 
 of Infants proceeds upon this supposition. Nor is it an objection of any 
 weight against this, that we cannot comprehend how this work can be 
 wrought in infants. For neither can we comprehend how it can be wrought 
 in a person of riper years. But whatever be the case with the infants, it 
 is sure all of riper years who are baptized are not at the same time born 
 again. The tree is known by its fniits.' {Serm. 45, vol. ii. p. 69, ed. 1838.) 
 ' I ask not whether you was bora of water and of the Spirit ; but are you 
 now the temple of the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in you ? I allow you 
 
APPENDIX K. 391 
 
 was " circumcised with the circumcision of Christ" (as St. Paul emphatically 
 terms baptism) : but does the Spirit of Christ and of glory now rest upon 
 you ? . . Unto you I call, in the name of Him whom ye crucify afresh, . . 
 " How can ye escape the damnation of hell ? " How, indeed, except ye be 
 born again? For ye are now dead in trespasses and sins. To say, then, 
 that ye cannot be born again, that there is no " new-birth " but in baptism, 
 is to seal you all under damnation. . . Who denies that ye were then made 
 children of God, and heirs of the kingdom of heaven ? But, notwithstand- 
 ing this, ye are now children of the devil. Therefore, ye must be born 
 again.' {Serm. 18, vol. i. p. 208.) 'The most common of all the En- 
 thusiasts of this kind are those who imagine themselves Christians and are 
 not. That they are not Christians, is clear and undeniable, if we believe 
 the oracles of God. For Christians are holy ; these are unholy. Christians 
 love God ; these love the world. . . Yet they imagine themselves so to be : 
 for they have been called so, ever since they can remember; they were 
 christened many years ago : . . Ah, poor self-deceivers ! Christians ye are not.' 
 {Serm. 37, vol. i. p. 442.) 
 
 Such language is well meant : but in practice it leads inevitably towards 
 the formation of small and exclusive sects, jealously guarding their own 
 ' purity.' And when coupled with the former incorrect language about 
 the ' new birth,' it paves the way for that which its author, all through his 
 life, most feared and deprecated, — viz. a contempt for the Church's doc- 
 trine about baptism, the invention of a new mark of admission to the 
 privileges of a * Christian ' other than that authorized by Christ, and an 
 eventual decision that the ' society' of such regenerated people has a better 
 right to the style and title of a ' Church ' than the old (apparently) lax 
 community which had for ages usurped that name. And this is, in effect, 
 a lapse into Puritanism. 
 
 (2) The second leading doctrine of Wesleyanism is that of Perfection, — in 
 other words, the theory that a person, on being (in the Wesleyan sense) 
 ' born again,' is at once translated from darkness to light ; that he attains 
 at once the maturity (reXeioTjjs), which the Churchman — with his ' sacra- 
 menta ' and careful self-culture— painfully and often unsuccessfully gropes 
 after ; and that such a person can take the words of St. John upon his lips, 
 ' He that is born of God sinneth not.' This is again, nothing else than an 
 unguarded statement of the Church's doctrine of ' assurance ; ' a privilege 
 which she holds out as attainable, in ever increasing (or abating) degree, in 
 proportion as a man faithfully ' fights the good fight of faith ' and becomes 
 ' stablished, strengthened, settled,' by the long indwelling of the Holy 
 Ghost in the temple of his heart. On this subject John Wesley writes 
 as follows : — 
 
 ' So it is with him that is born of God. Before that great change is 
 wrought, although he subsists by Him in whom all that have life " live 
 
392 APPENDIX L. 
 
 and move and have their being," yet he is not sensible of God ; he does not 
 feel, he has no inward consciousness of His presence. . . But when he is 
 bom of God, bom of the Spirit, how is the manner of his existence 
 changed ! His whole soul is now sensible of God ; . . the eyes of his 
 understanding are now open, and he seeth Him that is invisible; . . his 
 ears are now opened, . . and he has a clear intercourse with the invisible 
 world. . . Now one who is so born of God . . not only doth not commit 
 sin, while he thus keepeth himself, but so long as this seed remaineth 
 in him, he cannot sin, — because he is bom of God. . . But here a difficulty 
 will immediately occur. It is plain, in fact, that those whom we cannot 
 deny to have been truly bom of God, nevertheless not only could, but did, 
 commit sin, even gross outward sin. Thus David was unquestionably thus 
 bom of God. . . And yet such a child of God could commit sin ; yea, the 
 horrid sins of adultery and murder. . . I answer, he did not " keep himself," 
 by that grace of God which was sufficient for him. He fell, step by step, 
 first into negative inward sin ; . . then into positive inward sin, inclining 
 to wickedness in his heart ; . . next, he lost his faith, his sight of a pardon- 
 ing God, and consequently his love of God ; and being then weak and like 
 another man, he was capable of committing outward sin.' {Serm. 19, 
 vol. i. p. 212.) 
 
 In other words, the great 'privilege of those that are horn of God' amounts 
 to this : they cannot commit sin, until they begin to commit sin. And if 
 that be all, the Church's more guarded doctrine of ' assurance ' appears 
 preferable : especially as it avoids the error of supposing that God's eye 
 cannot see, in many a case of ' sancta simplicitas,' the germs of a very high 
 potential spirituality. Into this error the following passage seems to fall : — 
 
 ' The great question of all, then, still remains. Is the love of God shed 
 abroad in your heart ? Can you cry out, " My God and my all I " Do you 
 desire nothing but Him ? Are you happy in God ? Is He your glory, 
 your delight, your crown of rejoicing? . . If any man die without this faith 
 and this love, good were it for him that he had never been born.' {Serm. 
 2, vol. i. p. 21.) 
 
 APPENDIX L. 
 
 Extracts from three important documents of Wesleyanism . 
 
 Of these three documents, the^i-s^ (says Dr. Warren, Digest, p. i,) 'on 
 account of its great importance to the whole Connexion, may justly be 
 called the Magna Charta of Methodism.' It is the Deed of Declaration 
 by which (if we may so say) John Wesley ' established ' Methodism ; by 
 describing, in legal language, the conditions under which its property 
 
APPENDIX L. 393 
 
 should be held, and then enrolling the deed 'in His Majesty's High 
 Court of Chancery.' It is dated, Feb. 28, 1784. — The second is the cele- 
 brated 'Plan of Pacification;' whereby Wesleyanism, after its founder's 
 death, virtually severed itself from the Church of England and became a 
 Dissenting Communion. It is dated August 6, 1795. — The third is the 
 ' Model Trust Deed ; ' under the terms of which it is ' strongly recom- 
 mended by Conference ' that all future chapels, houses, and other property 
 of the Connexion, should be secured. It is dated, July 3, 1832. 
 
 (t) The Deed of Declaration: — 'To all to whom these presents shall 
 come, John Wesley — late of Lincoln College, Oxford, but now of the City 
 Road, London, clerk — sendeth greeting. Whereas divers buildings, com- 
 monly called chapels, with a messuage and dwelling-house, or other appur- 
 tenances, to each of the same belonging, situate in various parts of Great 
 Britain, have been given and conveyed from time to time . . . upon trust, 
 that the trustees . . should permit and suffer such persons . . as should be 
 appointed at the yearly Conference of the people called Methodists . . , and 
 no others, to have and enjoy the said premises for the purposes aforesaid : 
 . . . Now therefore, the said John Wesley doth hereby declare that the 
 Conference . . . hath always heretofore consisted of the preachers and 
 expounders of God's Holy Word . . whom he hath thought expedient, year 
 after year, to summon to meet him, to advise with them for the promotion 
 of the Gospel of Christ, . . and for the expulsion of unworthy and admission 
 of new persons under his care, and into his connexion, to be preachers and 
 expounders as aforesaid . . And these presents further witness, that the 
 several persons hereinafter named [one hundred in number], . . now are the 
 members of the said Conference . . subject to the regulations hereinafter 
 prescribed: that is to say, . . No act of the Conference shall be had, taken, 
 or be the act of the Conference, . . until all the vacancies occasioned by 
 death, or absence, shall be filled up by the election of new members [by 
 cooptation], so as to make up the number of one hundred : and during the 
 assembly of the Conference, there shall always be forty members present 
 at the doing of any act . . The duration of the yearly assembly of the Con- 
 ference shall not be less than five days, nor more than three weeks . . The 
 Conference shall and may expel and put out from being a member thereof, 
 or from being in connexion therewith, or from being upon trial, any 
 person . . , from any cause which to the Conference may seem fit or 
 necessary . . The Conference shall not appoint any person, for more than 
 three years successively, to the use and enjoyment of any chapels and pre- 
 mises, . . except ordained ministers of the Church of England . . . Whenever 
 the said Conference shall be reduced under the number of forty members, 
 and continue so reduced for three yearly assemblies thereof successively, — 
 or whenever the members thereof shall decline or neglect to meet together 
 annually for the purposes aforesaid during the space of three years, — then 
 
394 APPENDIX L. 
 
 the Conference of the people called Methodists shall be extinguished, . . 
 and the said chapels, &c., shall vest in the trastees for the time being . . , 
 upon trust that they shall appoint such persons to preach therein . . , as to 
 them shall seem proper.' . . . 
 
 (2) The Plan of Pacificalion : — 'The sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
 shall not be administered in any chapel, except a majority of the trustees 
 of that chapel . . , and of the stewards and leaders belonging to that 
 chapel (as the best qualified to give the sense of the people), allow of it. 
 Nevertheless, in all cases, the consent of the Conference shall be first 
 obtained . . Provided that, iti all chapels where the Lord's Supper has been 
 already peaceably adminhtered^ the administration of it shall continue in future.. 
 We agree that the Lord's Supper be administered among us, on Sunday 
 evenings only; except where the majority of the stewards and leaders 
 desire it in Church hours . . Nevertheless, it shall never be administered 
 on those Sundays on which it is administered in the parish Church. The 
 Lord's Supper shall always be administered in England, according to the 
 form of the Established Church ; but the person who administers shall have 
 liberty to give out hymns, to use exhortation, and extemporary prayer. 
 Wherever Divine Service is performed in England on the Lord's day, in 
 Church hours, the officiating preacher shall read either the service of the 
 Church, our venerable father's abridgment, or at least the lessons appointed 
 by the calendar. But we recommend either the full service or the abridg- 
 ment. The appointment of the preachers shall remain solely with the 
 Conference . . . The hundred preachers mentioned in the enrolled deed, 
 and their successors, are the only legal persons who constitute the Con- 
 ference. And we think the junior brethren have no reason to object to 
 this proposition, as they are regularly elected according to seniority.' 
 
 (3) The Model Trust-deed : — It first recites the origin of the Methodist 
 Societies in 1738; it next notices the first formation of Conference in 
 1744; then recites the Deed of Declaration, &c. : and next recites a contract 
 for the purchase of a piece of ground, &c. . . ' upon trust, to permit the said 
 chapel and premises to be used as a place of worship for the people called 
 Methodists . . and to allow such persons only to preach and expound 
 therein, as should be duly appointed by Conference, or by the superin- 
 tendent preacher for the time being . . [who shall] have the direction and 
 control of the said worship . . Provided always, that no person shall be 
 permitted to preach or expound in the said chapel or premises, who shall 
 teach any doctrine contrary to what is contained in certain Notes to the 
 New Testament by the late John Wesley, and the first four volumes of Ser- 
 mons reputed to be written by him.' 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 A.D. 597. 
 
 Leading Idea : — A federation of National and Mission Churches. 
 
 Method adopted : — A bold adaptation of the ancient Catholic system to 
 modem times. 
 
 'Av fiiv ovv St) KOI ^vi/emKa^illavijTai tis 6p6rj Tpocfir) iraiSeva'cus, 6\6ii\rjpos 
 vytrfs TC TravTf\ws, — t7)v /j.€yi<rTi]V dnocjyvyujv v6aov — y'lyv^Tai [6 a.vQpainos\ 
 KaTa)iiKi}(las h'i, xwA^c tov Plov 5iaTrop€v$(is ^(W^v, UTiX^s Kot avdrjTos ds 
 "AiSou 7ra\iv tpxfrm. (Plato, Timceus, p. 43 ; ed. Stalb.) 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 200. British (Welsh) Church first mentioned. (TertuUian, c. Judaos, 
 
 §70 
 314. Council of Aries : three British bishops present. 
 400. Pelagius, a British ' heretic,' at Rome. 
 457. English (pagan) invasions : first kingdom, Kent. 
 582. English occupation complete: last kingdom, Mercia. 
 
 697. English Church founded, by Augustin, at Canterbury. 
 
 664. All England christianized, mainly by ' British ' clergy. Council at 
 
 Whitby. 
 680. First Reform (Archbishop Theodore). Organization completed. 
 785. New organization attempted by Offa. Higbert, Archbishop of 
 
 Lichfield. 
 970. Second Reform (Archbishop Dunstan). Discipline braced up. 
 1070. Third Reform (Archbishop Lanfranc). Continental improvements 
 
 in ritual (Sanim use), &c. 
 1 140. Canon law introduced into England. 
 1164. Constitutions of Clarendon : Archbishop Becket, +11 71. 
 1 2 13. Papal supremacy culminates, under King John. 
 1221. Fourth Reform: Franciscan revival of religion. Bishop Grostete, 
 
 ti253- 
 1279. Parliament resists the Papacy. Statute of 'Mortmain' (1389, 
 
 ' Premunire.') . 
 1350. Lollards rebel against the Established Church. Wicliffe, ti384. 
 1400. Statute 'De heretico comburendo.' (Sawtre, ti40i: Cobham, 
 
 + 1418-) 
 r429. Archbishop Chichely resists the intrusion of a Papal legate. 
 1457. Bishop Pecocke deposed for Rationalism. 
 
 1530. Fifth Reform (Archbishop Warham) ; Papal supremacy rejected. 
 1539. Monasteries converted into new Sees, new Cathedral chapters, &c. 
 
 many suppressed. 
 1559. English Church restored, after Queen Mary's reaction. 
 1660. „ „ after the Great Rebellion. 
 
 1 689. ' Toleration Act : ' efforts towards ' comprehension of Dissenters.' 
 1739. Sixth Reform, begun: 'Evangelical' revival, Wesley and Whitfield. 
 1833. 'Catholic' revival begun at Oxford. 
 1 871. Puritan attempt to 'liberate the Church from State control.' 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 ' How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob ! and thy tabernacles, O Israel ! — As 
 the valleys are they spread forth ; as gardens by the river-side : as tlie 
 trees of lign aloeswhich the Lord hath planted.' — Numb. xxiv. 5, 6. 
 
 FOR the completion of the task undertaken in these 
 Lectures, — viz. a study of the leading forms of Dis- 
 sent in this country, and of their relation to the National 
 Church, — it only now remains to gather up the various 
 threads of our inquiry, and to knot them into a conclu- 
 sion. We have passed in review, — I trust, in no censo- 
 rious or unfriendly spirit, although with outspoken truth- 
 fulness — six of the more important Denominations, which 
 now exist in England. We have noticed how curiously 
 they fall into pairs ; and how each pair represents the 
 two extreme poles of ecclesiastical thought, which pre- 
 vailed respectively in the sixteenth, the seventeenth, and 
 the eighteenth centuries. We have seen too how each 
 denomination finds its counterpart, and point of attach- 
 ment, within the Church of England itself ; each being, 
 in reality, nothing else than an interior dissension — such 
 as always must exist in a free and healthy Church — • 
 carried to a dangerous extreme, and ripened into ex- 
 terior dissent. And we have observed, accordingly, that 
 
398 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 each separated communion — unlike any really foreign 
 and irreconcilable form of religion, such as Brahminism 
 or Positivism — offers important lessons for the Mother 
 Church ; and ought to awaken, among those to whose 
 fidelity and statesmanship she is committed, the most 
 anxious reflections, as to the possibility of improving her 
 arrangements and of re-enkindling the dormant enthu- 
 siasm of her children. 
 
 For no one can surely doubt, that the Church of Eng- 
 land might, with a very little skill, be made to root 
 herself far more deeply in the affections of her own 
 people than she has ever yet done\ No one, whose 
 vision is not narrowed by partizanship, can doubt that 
 she might, even now, — with a good deal of prudence and 
 self-devotion, — be made once more (virtually) the Church 
 of this whole nation. No one ought to doubt that, once 
 reunited and self-disciplined she might, ere many gene- 
 rations were over, fulfil that magnificent part in the 
 unfolding drama of history, to which her Divine Master 
 seems to be every day more clearly calling and fitting 
 her, — viz. to become the reconciler of the great divisions 
 of Christendom, and the peacemaker among the nations 
 of the earth. 
 
 In making her approaches towards the fulfilment of 
 
 ' According to a carefully con- of England, as regards London, was 
 structed 'Balance-sheet of the Church ever stronger than now.' (Ritchie, 
 of England,' lately published by the Religious Life of London, p. 80.) 
 ' Yorkshire Union of Church Insti- ' Never were her services so well 
 tutes,' the voluntary contributions attended ; never were her clergy 
 entrusted annually to her manage- more useful than now. . . In the East 
 ment amount to £5,445,298: while [of London], where the poverty is too 
 the entire gross amount of her stand- great to admit of the existence of a 
 ing endowments only amount to church on Ilissenting principles, the 
 £4,200,255. Add to this, the testi- church is in some parishes the only 
 mony of men whom no one can place of woiship, and the church- 
 accuse of bigoted attachment to her clergyman the only religious teacher.' 
 cause : ' I knew not that the Church {Ibid, p. 82.) 
 
VIII.] PRESENl DUTY OF THE CHURCH. 399 
 
 this most blessed task, the main hindrance in her way is 
 disunion within the borders of our EngHsh Christendom. 
 We have all observed how a very trifling and accidental 
 derangement will sometimes bring to a complete stop 
 the most elaborate, and otherwise effective, machine. 
 And history is full of lessons, which should teach us how 
 the admixture of a little obstinate self-will, or the out- 
 break of a mutinous temper will utterly paralyse the 
 energy of the most imposing forces; will reduce an army 
 to a mere helpless crowd ; a fleet to absolute inaction ; 
 and a state to weakness and chaos. Just so it is with 
 the Church of Jesus Christ. These miserable separations, 
 which we all deplore, — we may well deplore them. For 
 they have drawn ofi" into, I know not how many, inde- 
 pendent, inefficient, and mutually hostile denominations, 
 a great number of just those persons, whose genuine 
 piety and manly simplicity of character should have 
 placed them among the foremost ranks, in the Church's 
 battle array against ignorance, superstition, and sin. 
 
 It is true that many of these separated bodies appear 
 now to be weakening, to be diminishing in numbers, and 
 falling apart into innumerable fragments. But this fact 
 does not in any way affect the question. We are all 
 bound, by our duty to our brethren and to God, to 'follow 
 peace with all men.' We are bound to study every 
 method of conciliation and of mutual goodwill. We are 
 under the strictest obligation to explain, as clearly as we 
 can, both to the Dissenters and to our own less instructed 
 people, the true position and standing purpose of the 
 Church of England. And as to the present embittered 
 assaults — which probably indicate a consciousness that 
 the power of making them is rapidly passing away 
 — every Churchman should remember, that the only 
 revenge which Christ has taught us is that of returning 
 
40O THS church of ENGLAND. [lECT. 
 
 good for evil. The only retaliation possible to the fol- 
 lower of the meek and lowly Jesus, is to ask clearly and 
 simply, ' Why smitest thou me ? ' The only offensive 
 warfare allowable to a Christian is, ' to instruct in meek- 
 ness them that oppose themselves.' 
 
 For, indeed, there is no doubt whatever that, in innu- 
 merable instances, it is nothing else than want of instruc- 
 tion as to the Church's meaning, which has arrayed people 
 in hostility against her. There is not, it would seem, to 
 this hour, any intelligent — that is to say any real—^v&x- 
 sion either to her doctrines or to her system, among the 
 mass of the English people. It is partly ignorance, and 
 partly unwarrantable misrepresentations, which have 
 thrown them into an attitude of indifference ^. And we 
 must all have seen for ourselves, in various parts of the 
 country, how the Church's full system, boldly and pru- 
 dently displayed, has at once distanced all competition ; 
 and has drawn forth an instinctive response to those 
 aspects of God's Beauty, Truth, and Order, which have 
 been especially committed to her keeping. Nor is testi- 
 mony wanting to the same effect, from many who have 
 been Dissenters themselves, and who have had the fullest 
 
 ^ Mr. Baldwin Brown pleasantly phaeton, or a carriage and pair ; 
 
 describes the Church of England as means to l<eep a couple of servants 
 
 ' a church gorged with ill-distributed and sometimes a groom; and. may be, 
 
 wealth, cumbered with worldly trap- a few hounds." Further. . the author 
 
 pings, and fed by legal exactions :' gives two statements, which show 
 
 (art. in Contemporary Review, Jan. that the average value of benefices 
 
 1871) — all being phantoms of his in the diocese of St. David's is £137 
 
 own imagination, except the 'ill- per annum; and in Llandaff £177. 
 
 distribution ; ' which, however, is Does he mean to affirm that even 
 
 being rapidly amended by the Fxcle- the " nice little phaeton " can be kept 
 
 siastical Commission and other on £150 a year in any part of Wales?' 
 
 agencies. — ' In pamphlet ii. we have {Tie Church in Wales, Rivingtons, 
 
 a charming picture of the style in 1871.) It is clear that the authors 
 
 which the average ^^'e]sh clergyman of these invidious statements simply 
 
 lives : " a pretty little villa, or a overlook the fact, that the clergy 
 
 good-sized mansion ; a nice little often possess private property. 
 
vill.] CULPABLE IGNORANCE ABOUT THE CHURCH. 401 
 
 opportunity for comparing the two systems together. 
 ' Nonconformists (say they) are, in general, simply con- 
 formists to the societies in which they are born ; and the 
 natural prejudice of association takes the place of intelli- 
 gent conviction. For the most part, they see only their 
 own side ; and have strange uncouth pictures placed 
 before them by their own artists, purporting to represent 
 the inhabitants of that unknown land, the terra incognita 
 of the National Church ^.' 
 
 For such misrepresentations, of course, we Churchmen 
 are not responsible. But .for the enormous and incredible 
 ignorance that prevails, both within and around our own 
 communion, we are in a great degree responsible. And 
 every Sunday-school teacher throughout the land, every 
 district-visitor, every godfather and godmother, ought to 
 feel the keenest shame, when they hear what the Colonial 
 clergy say about the ignorance and apathy of the 
 emigrant Churchmen who come under their charge, — 
 ignorance of the very simplest ecclesiastical matters ; 
 ignorance of the first principles of Churchmanship, or 
 that there are any such principles ; ignorance of Church 
 history ; ignorance of symbolism ; ignorance of almost 
 every doctrine, — at least of the secondary and auxiliary 
 kind, — ' which a Christian ought to know and believe to 
 his soul's health *.' 
 
 3 Brewin Grant (late Independent], upon by the Roman Catholic cntic, 
 
 Dissenlins reasons for joining the . . is as hopeless a puzzle as an mtel- 
 
 Chnrch, '-p. 45 ;— ' Friends have a ligent dog is to us mtn.' —(Reasons 
 
 notion, which 'is one of the grounds for returning to the Church of Eng- 
 
 of their prejudice, that the outward land; Strahan, 1871.) 
 
 ordinances are depended upon [in * 'The poorer classes among the 
 
 the Church], as substitutes for Chris- Roman Catholics are so well trained 
 
 tian virtue and graces.' (J. W. C. in the distinctive principles of their 
 
 Reasons for leaving the Society of religion, that they seldom leave it 
 
 Friends, and joining the Church,^. ^2) for any other; and they are rarely 
 
 — ' The case of the devout and Intel- unable to render a distinct account 
 
 ligent Protestant, when speculated of what they believe. With the 
 
 Dd 
 
402 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lECT. 
 
 But above all, we clergy have to confess our miserable 
 shortcomings, and that ' we are verily guilty concerning 
 our brother.' For a whole century, we neglected to 
 unfold to our people any rational theory of the Church 
 at all. We forbore to give them any information about 
 her history, her laws, her customs, her great men. We 
 refused to present to their imagination the glorious ideal, 
 which she was intended by her founder gradually to 
 realize in the world. We were content to copy the 
 meagre methods of a (so-called) Evangelical Dissent, — 
 methods irreconcilable with our own Prayer-book at 
 every turn. We invited men to 'come to Jesus;' with- 
 out ever pointing out to them the easy way, amply 
 furnished with helps and sacra7nenta, by which He bade 
 them come. We neither knew, nor cared to discover, 
 the rich treasures stored up for us in the Rituals, the 
 Lections from Holy Scripture, the Creeds, the Hymns, 
 the elaborate synodal and hierarchical arrangements of 
 our own Church. And the consequence was, — as might 
 have been expected, — that all enthusiasm for her, as an 
 institution, died out ; and the time at length arrived, 
 when the enemy thought his hour was come, by one 
 decisive effort, to overthrow her and trample her finally 
 under his feet. 
 
 All such hopes, however, are evidently doomed to 
 disappointment. Everywhere, men are displaying an 
 eager anxiety to know more about the Church's true 
 system. And the more they come to know of it, the 
 more their conviction grows that it is restoration and 
 adaptation that are wanted, and not destruction or 
 (what is called) ' disestablishment.' Even in places of 
 
 Church of England, unhappily, it is Church of England schools. Dissent 
 not so. .. While four-fifths of the has been increasing.' (Fisher, LiVi/rg-. 
 children in England pass through Revision, p. 544.) 
 
VIII.] SCIENCE AND CHURCHMANSHIP. 403 
 
 science like this University, it is believed that our 
 Church has only fearlessly to throw herself upon her 
 own proper resources, to defend such privileges and 
 endowments as are really hers, and to display no 
 unworthy dread of a thorough study of theology, in 
 order to commend her doctrine, her ritual and her 
 discipline, to the rising generation of Englishmen. 
 
 For the more vigorously science grows, the better its 
 instruments, the more accurate and complete its re- 
 search, — the more certainly every day is the conviction 
 approached, which Kant has thus formulated : ' The 
 principles of Reason, as applied to Nature, do not con- 
 duct to any Theological truths^'. And the more ear- 
 nestly, therefore, do all those whose unspoiled affections 
 and cultivated conscience will not let them rest in a 
 bald Positivisri), turn with anxious eyes to the Revealed 
 Doctrines of the Church, to see if there be in them 
 those higher truths without which men cannot live. 
 
 And so again, amid the present growth of political 
 and personal liberty, how many men there are who 
 feel the need of some — not compulsory, but voluntary 
 — law under which they may regulate their lives ! How 
 
 ' Kant, Kritik of Pure Reason, p. True : the fact being, that Nature is 
 
 390 (Bohn) : — ' By the development an open secret, full of oracles ij>a- 
 
 of true celestial mechanics since vavTa avvfrowiv, fruitful in parables 
 
 Newton, all theological philosophy and suggestions, to those otherwise 
 
 lost for ever its principal intellectual instructed and who 'have ears to 
 
 function, — the most regular order hear." In this sense, it is correct 
 
 being thenceforth conceived as neces- to say, that ' Nature is the great 
 
 sarily established and maintained in Parable ; and the truths which she 
 
 our world.' (Comte, ap. Lewes, holds within her are veiled, but not 
 
 Phil, of the Sciences, p. 88.) — ' Les dismembered . . Long before we have 
 
 lois de la Nature sont I'expression searched out all that the Natural 
 
 la plus rigoureuse de la necessite : includes, there will remain little in 
 
 mais la n(5cessite exclut la creation : the so-called Supernatural which will 
 
 done ce n'est pas au moyen des lois seem hard of acceptance or belief.' 
 
 de la Nature, qu'on peut comprendre (Duke of Argyll, Reign of Law, 
 
 le Cr(5ateur.' (Moleschott, Circu- p. 52.) 
 lalion de la Vie, i. 6, French trans.) — 
 
 D d 2 
 
404 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lECT. 
 
 many, therefore, are coming to crave the easy yoke of 
 the Church's DISCIPLINE; and are desiring to frame 
 and order their daily occupations in harmony (if the 
 clergy will only provide the opportunity) with the simple 
 routine marked out for us in the Prayer-book. 
 
 And yet once more, as every day the dawn of a 
 more imaginative epoch is becoming assured, and the 
 long reign of prose in this country is drawing to an 
 end, so with more interest and craving of the heart do 
 men begin to look around them for some means of 
 honourably gratifying these awakening instincts. And 
 here they find those means prepared for them, — not 
 in the selfish accumulation of art-treasures, not in the 
 private and personal cultivation of aesthetic refinement, 
 •^but in the public, common, unselfish, nay, religious 
 and self-forgetting, Services and RITUAL of the 
 Church. Thus we may rest tranquilly assured that, 
 — whatever be the threatening appearances of many 
 things around us and within, — the circumstances of the 
 day, on the whole, are immensely in the Church's 
 favour ; and her continuance in this land is almost 
 positively assured, if only her own sons be true to 
 their cause, and will intelligently study, explain, and 
 adapt her system, according to the needs of England 
 at the present time. 
 
 And that the opportunity for carrying into effect 
 these plans is certainly approaching, there is another 
 indication of a more subtle historical character, which 
 should not perhaps be overlooked. Obviously, Disci- 
 pline, Ritual and Doctrine, form the three main depart- 
 ments of ecclesiastical activity. And (as we have 
 already seen in the course of these Lectures), this very 
 classification of subjects in dispute meets us — even 
 where we had not expected it — in studying the history 
 
VIII.] LAW OF CONTROVERSIAL PROGRESSION. 405 
 
 of Nonconformity in this country. The secessions of 
 the sixteenth century went off mainly on points of dis- 
 cipline ; the secessions of the seventeenth century, 
 mainly on points of ritual ; those of the eighteenth 
 century, mainly on points of doctrine. And if so, must 
 there not probably be some law, which governs this 
 progression of controversial phenomena ; especially, if 
 the same phenomena are observable amid the contro- 
 versies of very different times and very distant coun- 
 tries .? 
 
 The ' law ' that we are in search of is neither very far 
 to seek, nor very recondite when found. It is simply 
 this : that the most obvious and natural occasions for 
 controversy to spring up, and those most readily sug- 
 gestive of partizanship, are matters affecting our merely 
 external and social arrangements. Hence it arises 
 that questions of polity and discipline will be very 
 likely to form the earliest occasion for ecclesiastical 
 dissension. When however controversies of this class 
 have been arranged, — or have (it may be) attained a 
 sort of recognition, as standing and acknowledged topics 
 of dispute, — then there will emerge a new series of more 
 interior questions, affecting the use or disuse of symbols 
 and other ' sacramenta,' by which inward things find 
 outward expression. And so controversy reaches in- 
 evitably a second, or rittial, stage. Until at last— such 
 discords becoming effete and palpably contemptible— 
 a still farther advance is made into the interior agencies 
 of the Church's life. Her functions as a divinely-com- 
 missioned educating society become matters of dispute. 
 And so the spirit of controversy loses its force at length, 
 and dies out amid the hopeless mazes of doctrinal 
 polemics. And then— when of this too men become 
 weary and satiated — the cycle of dissension seems to 
 
406 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lECT. 
 
 be, at last, complete. The moral and spiritual verities 
 of unity, peace, and brotherly love, begin to appear, 
 after all, as the only things really worth contending 
 for ; and harmony, k6(T)xos, mutual co-operation, dawn 
 upon men's hearts as a far better and more enduring 
 happiness, than all the stormy joys of disputation. 
 
 Now, whatever period of the Church's history we exa- 
 mine, this law of controversial progression seems always 
 — with greater or less degrees of distinctness— to re- 
 appear. Take, for instance, the disputes which raged 
 even within the sacred precincts of the early Church. 
 It was on the very morrow of Pentecost itself, that the 
 history of Christian polemics began. And the opening 
 question was (what may be called) the ' Diaconate ' 
 question, — a matter concerned entirely with Church- 
 order and exterior discipline. But this first prelude of 
 misunderstanding between the Hebrew and Hellenic, 
 the Asiatic and the European, forms of Christianity, 
 was soon succeeded by a far more flagrant and bitter 
 warfare on the ritual question of circumcision or non- 
 circumcision. And this again was ere long followed by 
 the far deeper and subtler doctrinal problems raised by 
 the Gnostic and Ebionite heresies. 
 
 The same ' progression ' was repeated, on a larger 
 scale, in the second century. Amid the Eastern 
 Churches of Asia Minoi', we first behold St. John 
 and Ignatius contending for Episcopal organization. 
 We next pass on to ritual discussions about the time 
 of keeping Easter, and about the Quakerism of Mon- 
 tanus in Phrygia. And we end with the dangerous 
 doctrinal subtleties and speculations of Origen. Mean- 
 while, in the West the same cycle meets us once more. 
 Cyprian here, with his Episcopal and Metropolitan diffi- 
 culties, begins the series. The controversy about re- 
 
vm.] THIS ' LAW' CONFIRMED BY HISTORY. 407 
 
 baptism, and similar questions, soon follow. And then 
 the whole Church, on the grand scale, plunges into the 
 fearful doctrinal storms of the fourth century, relating to 
 the Incarnation. 
 
 And so — passing over the whole intervening period- 
 it was, yet once more, in our own Reformation contro- 
 versies in England. First arose the exterior questions 
 concerning polity and discipline, — Papal autocracy, An- 
 glican constitutionalism, and Puritan democracy, con- 
 tending together for the management of the Church. 
 Then followed questions about adult-baptism, about 
 immersion, and similar matters ; with their natural 
 result, an uncompromising anti-ritual Quakerism. 
 Lastly, in the eighteenth century, we see Deism and 
 Unitarianism propounding their philosophic subtleties 
 to the upper classes ; while, at the opposite pole of 
 the social scale, Methodism inculcated on the unlearned 
 the almost sensuous doctrine of the ' new-birth,' with all 
 its speculative results. 
 
 But if this be so, if this be really the law of contro- 
 versial progression, then at the present hour we have 
 reason indeed to look up and take courage. For the 
 cycle of these miserable and distracting disputes must, 
 in that case, be once more — in this very day of ours — 
 drawing to a close. And a happier period may be near 
 its dawning, when — for some short time, at least, — the 
 voice of Christian good-sense and charity may find 
 opportunity to be heard ; when the intrinsic charms of 
 unity and peace may, for a little while, smite men's 
 hearts with yearning ; and when a temporary rift 
 among the storm-clouds of contention may reveal, for 
 a little space, the clear calm shining of those eternal 
 verities of a moral and spiritual sort, which no terres- 
 trial disturbance can ever really shake, and which (when 
 
408 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lECT. 
 
 once they reach us) declare, as no other things can, the 
 glories of God on high and the beauty of His Law re- 
 vealed here below among mankind. 
 
 And accordingly, not in the Church alone, but 
 everywhere — even among the rival Dissenting com- 
 munions — we hear the same note of friendliness and 
 peace. I open at hazard the pages of a Wesleyan 
 Magazine, and there I find these words : ' There are 
 everywhere just now, among the different sections of 
 the Christian Church, yearnings after Christian UNION. 
 In England, Scotland, Australia, and America, different 
 sections of Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists, are 
 seeking closer fellowship".' — I open the Congregational 
 Year-Book for 1871, and I read thus in the President's 
 address : ' There is nothing on which our Lord lays 
 more stress, than the one-ness of His people . . God 
 forbid, when in so many quarters there is a yearning 
 cry for UNITY in the presence of a common foe, we 
 Independents should not be the first to say, " Grace be 
 with all them that love the Lord Jesus in sincerity'." ' 
 — In a book written some time ago by Mr. Binney, we 
 are told : ' I am as tired as any man of mere sect life ; 
 of this and the other portion of the body becoming a 
 separated limb*.' — In a private letter from a Quaker, 
 the other day, I read : ' The dear blood-bought children 
 of the great universal Father will, in the end, be gathered 
 into one fold, having one Shepherd. Until then, I wish 
 we could have more love, and less doctrine.' — And in a 
 book published by Mr. Miall, in 1850, we are taught as 
 follows : ' It would seem as though the whole business 
 of men here below was to combine in order to render 
 
 ° Meihodkl New Connexion Maga- p. 68. 
 zine, April, 1S70, p. 24. ' Binney, Church Life in Australia, 
 
 ' Congregational Fear-book, 1871, p. 112. 
 
VIII.] PRESENT DUTIES OF CHURCHMEN. 409 
 
 combination impossible . . A lap full of blessings — bless- 
 ings pressed down and heaped up and running over — ■ 
 to that man, whosoever he be, that succeeds in healing a 
 social division" !' 
 
 In such wishes and prognostications as these, 
 surely every Churchman will most heartily concur. 
 But then, he will think, it is not enough merely to in- 
 dulge in beautiful wishes and sentiments : we must also 
 go the right way to bring them to a happy result. And 
 that right way, in our own case at least, — for with the 
 duties of other people we are not concerned, — a very little 
 reflection will make clear. 
 
 (i.) First of all, our plain and bounden duty, as 
 Churchmen, is to make a candid and honourable con- 
 fession of past errors and sins, in our method of managing 
 controversies and in the relations we have assumed 
 towards Dissent. To err is human. And the Church 
 of England — as a mere single member of the great 
 Catholic Body of Christ — has never claimed immunity 
 from error or failed distinctly to repudiate Infallibility. 
 And as there is no doubt, I suppose, that she erred under 
 the guidance of the Popes in the Middle Ages, so she 
 erred under the guidance of Cranmer and others at the 
 Reformation ; erred again, as she was being drawn into 
 the terrible vortex of the Great Rebellion ; succumbed 
 to the great temptations of the Restoration period ; and 
 has not since been secured— mainly through timidity 
 and want of statesmanship — from committing some very 
 serious mistakes in our own day. 
 
 The error and the sin, in most of these cases, lay in 
 making a high-handed attempt to carry the natural and 
 normal alliance between Church and State to too close a 
 
 ' Miall, The Vohmlary Principle, p. 126. 
 
410 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lECT. 
 
 degree of intimacy. The Church undertook, by ecclesi- 
 astical means, to forward the intentions of the State : 
 and the State, in return, lent her own coercive powers to 
 the Church, for the delusive purpose of thereby propa- 
 gating religion. The reparation to be made for all such 
 past mistakes is clear. There is no necessity for a coarse 
 and unskilful severance of all the ties of alliance and 
 mutual control, which for ages have bound together, with 
 such good results, the State and the Church in England. 
 But there is need that we acknowledge, heartily and 
 ungrudgingly, the present full political citizenship of all 
 Englishmen alike ; that we determine to leave no wrong 
 unredressed, no artificial restriction unabated, no civil 
 or religious disability unrepealed ; and even more than 
 this, that we resolve to heal, as far as possible, every 
 social wound and to admit, with courteous welcome, the 
 right of each man to his place upon the common plat- 
 form of our national life ^°. 
 
 '" There is no doubt that leading shame.' (Baldwin Brown, Conlempo- 
 
 Dissenters deceive themselves a good vary Review^ Jan. 1871, p. 308.) — 
 
 deal, as to the causes which give rise ' Non-conformists suffer little now 
 
 to their very strong feeling of jealousy from bad laws .. But let not our 
 
 against the Church. If a certain episcopalian neighbours account it 
 
 section of the middle-classes, already strange, if there are still signs of dis- 
 
 too much isolated from those above content among us. The many forms 
 
 and below them, deepen those un- of social disparagement, disownment, 
 
 happy lines of demarcation by their and wrong to which non-conform- 
 
 own exclusive ecclesiastical arrange- ists are exposed as such, it would 
 
 ments, surely the cause of isolation require large space to describe . . . 
 
 is partly in themselves and partly in Were the episcopalian Church in 
 
 the very nature of English society. England a free and self-sustained 
 
 Still, God forbid that we should not, church, the motive to this policy 
 
 in all brotherly kindness, do our best would cease, and the policy would 
 
 to meet such a challenge as the fol- come to an end.' (Vaughan, Engl. 
 
 lowing: ^ You have placed a rival Nonconformity, p. 472.) But then, 
 
 system in the front rank . . Place us ' how is it that Nonconformists hold 
 
 on a level. Throw open the prizes aloof from the Church in all our 
 
 of your Universities to our youth . . Colonies, where the last remnant of 
 
 let us out of the shade into the free Establishment has faded?' (Bishop of 
 
 air and sunlight ; and, if we then fail Tasmania, in Contemporary Review, 
 
 in culture and power, we fail to our Jan. 1872, p. 156.) 
 
VIII.] ALLIANCE OF CHURCH AND STATE. 411 
 
 There is no reason whatever why such courtesy and 
 fairness should not be coupled, on the part of Church- 
 men, with the most profound conviction of the truth of 
 their own cause. Indeed it is precisely the part of firm 
 and strong conviction to be conciliatory and flexible. 
 Where there is life there is elasticity. It is death or 
 coma, which is rigid and cannot yield. While therefore 
 the Churchman will allow the fullest right to every dis- 
 senting politician to bring forward in Parliament and to 
 support — by all truthful and honest means — his own 
 views of what is good for the country, it does not at all 
 follow that he will not, with more firmness than ever, 
 maintain both the hopeless imbecility of all schemes for 
 a loose Evangelical Alliance '^ ; and also the perilous 
 idealism of all attempts to identify the Church with the 
 State ^-. In that identification, religion would disappear; 
 and its mechanism alone would be left behind. The 
 Church does not hold, and never has held, her commis- 
 sion from the State. The State can do no more, than 
 give free course to her beneficent endeavours throughout 
 
 " The ' Evangelical Alliance ' was think with Dean Stanley that an 
 
 first started in London, in 1846. It identification of the Church with the 
 
 held a second gathering there in 1851. State could be effected in practice, 
 
 It next met in Paris, in 1855 ; then however noble and beautiful the 
 
 at Berlin, 1857; then at Geneva, theory may be. Occasions have 
 
 1861; and lastly at Amsterdam, arisen — and may arise again — when 
 
 1867. (See Krummacher's Auto- the Caurch, if she is to be faithful to 
 
 biography, p. 272.) her Master, must rebuke and oppose 
 
 " In this opinion, which I have the State. And this she can do with 
 not lightly formed, I find myself the most powerful effect, if she is in 
 most unwillingly at issue with one, close alliance with the State ; but 
 whose unwearied efforts to draw she can not do, if her personality (as it 
 closer every bond of mutual good were) is absorbed and blended with 
 will and Christian love, no man who that of the State.— Short of this one 
 ' knows what spirit he is of can fail divergence, I am sanguine enough to 
 to admire and honour. But it seems hope that the attempt made in these 
 to me impossible,— after a long ex- Lectures to 'prove all things, and 
 perience of what earnest men (espe- hold fast that which is good,' will 
 cially young men), of the most not miss the sympathy of the great- 
 varied antecedents and character, est master of ecclesiastical history 
 really feel on this question,— to which this country possesses. 
 
412 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 the land, take care that her endowments be properly 
 distributed, and protect from every form of injustice 
 both Churchmen in their relations to each other, and 
 non-Churchmen in their dealings with the Church. But 
 mission to teach, — this the Church of Jesus Christ, the 
 ecclesia doccns, never has received, and surely never can 
 receive, from any but from her Lord and Master and 
 from His immediate Apostles. And any assumption by 
 the State of greater powers than properly belong to it, 
 she cannot in duty shrink from rebuking as a failure of 
 justice, and a breach of the terms of mutual alliance. 
 
 But such a breach, it must be remembered, the State 
 has not in our day committed. In every one of the 
 appeals to her Majesty's Privy Council, of which we have 
 heard so much lately, the matter under discussion was 
 simply the true legal bearing of a legal document (or 
 'canon') of the Church. And the appeal was carried up 
 to the Crown, in the last resort, — as the fountain-head of 
 justice to all Englishmen, — by a subject of the realm, 
 who conceived (rightly or wrongly) that he had suffered 
 injury by the misconstruction of a certain canon. Pre- 
 cisely in the same way, Presbyterians at the Cape have 
 appealed to the Queen in Council, and Wesleyansor 
 Baptists at home might appeal, — if they felt themselves 
 aggrieved by any misconstruction of the bye-laws of their 
 respective Denominations. Roman Catholics too may, 
 at any moment, find themselves unexpectedly subject to 
 the same ' supremacy of the crown in all causes,' if any 
 such conflict should break out on the novel doctrine of 
 Infallibility, as has already broken out in Germany and 
 France-"^^. 
 
 '^ The Judicial Committee of the of the Nation, in exercise upon a cer- 
 Pli^'y Council is nothing more, or tain class of cases. This independence 
 less, than the independent Sovereignly has never really been surrendered, 
 
VIII.] DISESTABLISHMENT USELESS. 413 
 
 Disestablishment, therefore, would not make the 
 slightest difference in this respect, either to Churchmen 
 or to anybody else. It might give the Church more 
 freedom for interior legislation, and offer facilities for the 
 multiplication of canons, such as perhaps few of us would 
 really desire to be entangled with. But the judicial 
 system of the Church would remain very much as it is 
 at present. And it does seem to be the very highest 
 pinnacle of folly, to lose sight — amid the dust and 
 clamour of mere party disputes — of that grand principle, 
 which the best men in the Church and State of England 
 have, for six centuries, been firmly and courageously 
 maintaining ; viz. the principle of government by fixed 
 laws, and not by the mere will and pleasure of any man or 
 set of men, — government by known and established rules, 
 and not by the swaying impulses of a Congregationalist 
 majority, nor yet by the ipse dixit of an Infallible Pope. 
 
 If that be not, in few words, the grand object and 
 purpose of the Church's bitter sufferings and perplex- 
 ities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it would 
 be very hard to say what their purpose was. But, for 
 that object, that only polity in the world which desei-ves 
 the honoured name of ' freedom,' it was well worth while 
 to suffer martyrdom, and even to run the risk of a tem- 
 porary confusion of all order and loss of Catholic disci- 
 pline. For Constitutional government is a blessing. 
 
 even in the worst times of usurped union. Many of our institutions, — 
 
 Papal supremacy ; and its normal sucli, for instance, as the Court of 
 
 executive form has always been that Chancery and the ordinary Law 
 
 of ' the Crown in Coimcil.' — ' The Courts, — were historically commit- 
 
 essential peculiarity of the Privy tees of the Council . . and the Privy 
 
 Council is . . the indefiniteness of its Council has always acted through 
 
 constitution. Being not an organ- committees.' (Brodrick and Fre- 
 
 ized body, but simply an assemblage mantle. Judgments of Privy Council, 
 
 of all the advisers of the King, it p. Ixv.) 
 has at no time acted in collective 
 
414 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 which brings all other blessings in its train. It offers 
 opportunity for every error and neglect to be amended. 
 It gives an opening for the individual conscience and 
 reason to gain a hearing. It enables fresh truth to win 
 its way gradually to the front. And it permits elasticity 
 of adaptation, to meet the varying emergencies of suc- 
 cessive epochs. 
 
 Indeed, the Reformation itself, and the long struggles 
 which preceded it, were one consistent warfare against 
 (what may be called) •' the voluntary principle,' — that is 
 to say, the principle of arbitrary government by men's 
 mere will and pie astir e. The ' tyranny of majorities ' had 
 not, of course, in those days been invented. It was ec- 
 clesiastical despotism, ' the tyranny of the Papacy,' — pur- 
 porting to override all law, tradition, custom, protest,— 
 against which men's efforts were at that time directed. 
 And no sooner was that tyranny introduced — with other 
 novelties — at the Conquest, than our country began at 
 once (with varying degrees of consistency) to assume the 
 attitude of resistance which she has ever since maintained. 
 The Conqueror himself was strong enough to keep the 
 mischief at bay ; and to answer to the blandishments of 
 Pope Gregory VII, ' Fidelitatem facere nolui ; nee volo : 
 qui^ nee ego promisi, nee antecessores meos anteces- 
 soribus tuis id fecisse comperio ".' But subsequent kings 
 of England, — with their insecure titles to the crown, and 
 with the perilous possibilities of insurrection and chaos, 
 such as had befallen the German Empire before their 
 eyes, — too often gave an opening for this ever- watchful 
 foe to interfere. And at last, when Becket's martyrdom 
 had enlisted the popular enthusiasm on the papal side, 
 King John was forced to succumb ignominiously and 
 
 ^ Greg. VII. Epistohc, p. 74S (ed. Migne), 
 
VIII.] VOLUNTARYISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 4x5 
 
 completely — and then for 300 years — and for that period 
 alone, through the whole course of our history — Popery 
 may be said, on the whole, to have had the advantage, 
 in the ceaseless struggle between the old Catholic free- 
 dom and the new Papal absolutism. 
 
 For even throughout those Middle Ages, which might 
 be claimed as affording precedent to those, who would 
 wish to see the Church ' liberated from State control,' the 
 determination of our country to resist such measures was 
 unmistakably proclaimed. So early as 113S, Henry I. 
 forbade the introduction of the Pope's Decretals into 
 England. In 1 187, we hear the claim advanced, which 
 afterwards in Henry the Eighth's reign became the watch- 
 word of the Reformation, viz. that England was no part 
 of the Holy Roman Empire, and owed no canonical 
 obedience to the ecclesiastical head of that Empire. 
 ' Dicitur etiam per totam Angliam, quod ibi velit 
 Archiepiscopus P atriarchatmn fieri : cum jam nihil 
 Uteris Domini Papae, vel appellationibus, deferat^^.' 
 In the same reign — Becket himself, as Chancellor, 
 energetically supporting the king — the following lan- 
 guage was addressed to the Bishop of Chichester: — 
 ' Tu, pro papas auctoritate ab hominibns concessd, contra 
 dignitatum regalium auctoritates mihi a Deo concessas 
 calliditate argut^, niti prascogitas i'^.' In 1236, the State 
 — loudly protesting, at Merton, against the intrusion of 
 Papal government by will and pleasure — declared 
 'nolumus leges AngHs mutarii''.' In 1253, Bishop 
 Grostete refused point-blank to receive ecclesiastical 
 appointments, made by the Pope in contravention of 
 the Church's laws^^. In 1279, Parliament began in 
 
 " Stubbs, Rzciard /., p. xxxviii, 105. 
 
 " Brodrick, PrzVy CoM«ci7, p. xxvii. "Ibid. p. 109: Luard, Groslele, 
 
 " Robins, Royal Supremacy, p. p. 432. 
 
4i6 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 [lect. 
 
 earnest to ' protest,' in the form of statutes of the 
 realm, against Papal lawlessness. And so at last, in 
 1536, Archbishop Cranmer — standing at Christ Church, 
 at the mercy of his enemies, and following the example 
 first set by some Cardinals at Rome in 1297", and 
 in later times by Chicheley-", Luther ^i, Erasmus ^^ 
 Melancthon-^, Archbishop Hermann, and the Augsburg 
 Confession^*, — uttered his memorable appeal, from the 
 personal autocracy of the Pope, to the ' next General 
 Council ^■'.' And this ' protest ' the Church of England 
 
 ''J ' The two Cardinals of the [Co- 
 lonna] family published a protest 
 against Boniface VIII, and his pro- 
 ceedings . . They appealed to a 
 General Council . . Thus we see, 
 first called forth by the wicked acts 
 of this pope, an appeal to the higher 
 tribunal ; . . an appeal which, for the 
 present indeed met with no response; 
 but is worthy of notice, as the first 
 impulse towards calling into action a 
 power . . so dangerous to papal ab- 
 solutism.' (Neander, Church Hht., 
 ix. 5 [Bohn], — quoting Raynaldi An- 
 nates, AD. 1297.) 
 
 ^^ Archbishop Chicheley thus ap- 
 pealed against Pope Martin V, 1427; 
 . . ^Unde ego, . . sentiens me, statum, 
 dignitatem, et Ecclesiam meam, ni- 
 miiim pr^gravari . . , ad Sacrosanctum 
 Concilium Generale, universalem Ec- 
 clesiam representans . . appello.' 
 (Burnet, Reformaiion, iv. 384, small 
 edit.) 
 
 ^^ Luther, Opera Lai., i. 205, (ap. 
 Schrock, K. G. seit der Ref., i. 166 : 
 * Er appellirte, am 28 Nov. 1518, in 
 der Kapelle des Leibes Christi zu 
 Wittenberg, von dem Papste an ei- 
 men hohern Richter, — an eine allge- 
 meine Kirchenversammlung.') Cf. 
 Hardwick, Reform., p. 28, 
 
 ^^ Erasmus, Episl., lib. xxviii. Ep. 
 8, [1522]: ' Multa problemata nunc 
 lejiciuntur ad .Synodum ol/iovfie- 
 
 VtKTjV. 
 
 ^' ' Melancthon and his friends 
 affirmed, in 1530, that with regard 
 to most of the disputed points they 
 acted but provisionally. Hermann, 
 Archbishop of Cologne — whose 
 " Consultation " was the work of the 
 same moderate school, looked hope- 
 fully as late as 1543 to some Con- 
 ciliar reformation ; " which things we 
 set forth to be received . . until a 
 general reformation be made, by a 
 free and Christian Council, universal 
 or national." ' (Hardwick, Reform., 
 p. 9.) — In 1538, the Convocation of 
 Canterbury put forth a ' Judgment 
 concerning General Councils,' signed 
 by all the Bishops but two ; in which 
 they affirm, 'there never was any- 
 thing devised by our forefathers, 
 more expedient . . for the reduction 
 of Christ's people into one perfect 
 unity and concord in His religion, 
 than by the having of General Coun- 
 cils.' (Burnet, Reform., ii. 19S, small 
 edit.) 
 
 ^' Augsburg Confession [1530], 
 prasf. p. 10 (ed. Maeikel) ; ' Ad cujus 
 etiam Generalis Concilii conventum, 
 in hac longe maxima et gravissima 
 causa, . . provocavimus et appella- 
 vimus.' 
 
 ^' ' On the 14th of February, 1556, 
 the Archbishop was brought under a 
 guard to Christ Church. Here the 
 
viil] voluntaryism is not ' freedom: 417 
 
 has ever since maintained. May she ever maintain it, 
 in tenacious loyalty to freedom and truth, until such 
 happy time shall dawn, when it shall be no longer 
 needed ! 
 
 But that time certainly has not yet come. Dead 
 controversies appear to be, in many varied shapes, re- 
 viving again. And the partizans, it seems, on more 
 sides than one, of a false, a personal, a ' voluntary ' 
 system, have once more to be silenced by those who 
 have learnt, amid the glorious struggles of our country's 
 political history, what true freedom is like, and how it is 
 to be maintained. Meanwhile let but the real conditions 
 of the ecclesiastical problem now before us, be fairly 
 understood by the English people, and there cannot be 
 the shadow of a doubt as to the result. Two distinct 
 epochs, providentially, can be pointed out — even since 
 the Reformation — when the two false systems of Church 
 polity, now once more pressed upon us, gained the 
 ascendant and showed decisively what they were each 
 worth, and what they would each do, if they had the 
 power. The first was the epoch of the five years' 
 Romanist reaction, under Queen Mary : the second was 
 the eleven years of Presbyterian and Independent as- 
 cendancy, under the Commonwealth. It seems incre- 
 dible that our countrymen, in the nineteenth century, 
 should seriously wish to revert to either of those two 
 periods. The Church of England, in any case, would no 
 
 Bishop of London [Bonner], the table in the shape of an altar .. . 
 
 Bishop of Ely [Thirlby], and other Then the voice of the Archbishop 
 
 persons in the commission, had was heard once more. Drawing 
 
 already taken their places on an from his sleeve a docnment hitherto 
 
 elevated platform before the high concealed " I appeal, he said to 
 
 altar. The commission was read . . the next General Council. (Hook, 
 
 The procession moved out of the Archhkhops m-v-l^i- cf. Burnet, Ke- 
 
 Church to a portion of the adjoin- form. 111. 426.) 
 ing yard. Here stood a credence- 
 
 E e 
 
4i8 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 more be destroyed by such experiments, than it was 
 before. But if, on the contrary, Englishmen recoil from 
 both these extreme courses, ^then, let them remember, 
 they have already in their midst a Church, which in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries firmly resisted both 
 extremes ; and which is now prepared to put forth all 
 her latent force, and to use her wide-spread organization, 
 to resist them again. And they might do well to reflect, 
 whether the honourable maintenance of a National 
 Church, thus pledged to loyal and English courses, be 
 not among the most important guarantees which any 
 State can secure, for keeping at safe distance, not one 
 only, but both of these great perils of ' voluntaryism.' 
 
 (2.) Passing then to the second, or ritual, class of con- 
 troversies : in these again our Church's present duty, 
 as illustrated for her by the events of the seventeenth 
 century, is clear. She is bound to confess to the Baptist, 
 that she has been guilty of negligence, both in allowing 
 the sacraments instituted by our Lord to fall too much 
 into desuetude and dishonour ; and also in despairing 
 too much of keeping up interior discipline, the means 
 whereof is partly placed in her hands by the rite of 
 Confirmation. That rite, carefully dispensed, and the 
 rite of Ordination, carefully guarded, supply precisely 
 that testing and disciplinary agency, which the Baptist 
 wrongly seeks in re-baptism ; and without which, no 
 doubt, laxity and worldliness might creep in and over- 
 spread the whole Church with secularity. But on the 
 other hand, any attempt to bind us hand and foot to 
 such ritual alone as happens to be mentioned on the 
 page of Scripture, must be by every Churchman strenu- 
 ously resisted. Ritual freedom must be maintained at 
 all hazards. The theory of Hooker — which is that of 
 the English Church— must be resolutely defended ; viz. 
 
vm.] LOYALTY IS TRUE FREEDOM. 419 
 
 that, all such secondary matters being in themselves 
 things indifferent, demand of us conformity, and not 
 non-conformity, obedience, and not disobedience, to 
 lawful authority. 'Conscientious objections' cannot 
 possibly have any place, where no duty exists, — except 
 only that duty, that debt always outstanding, ' to love 
 one another ' and to ' do all things without murmurings 
 and disputings.' The Ritual canons of the Church, 
 therefore, whatever they may be, — drawn up by the 
 Church herself as laws to guide her people, and inter- 
 preted by the best ' legal ' authorities this country 
 possesses — should be cheerfully obeyed by us ; however 
 strenuously meantime we may endeavour to have them 
 improved. 
 
 And as to falling into any error like that of the 
 Baptists, in threatening or accomplishing ' secession,' 
 in case our own views of these things should not at 
 once gain acceptance, such a course (surely) would be 
 inconsistent with the very first principles of Church- 
 manship. A loyalty which can be reconsidered is no 
 loyalty at all. But a loyalty, which can suffer, which 
 can forego many longed-for things, and to avoid offending 
 weaker brethren can bear to miss from their accustomed 
 place ' antiqtta nomina antiquam fidem significantia,' 
 because fidelity perhaps demands ' nova normna.' more 
 suitable to modern ears, — such a loyalty is sound, living, 
 and trustworthy -^. And it is such a liegeman alone, that 
 
 « Churchmen will probably one all aK&vhaXa which may cause our 
 
 day come to see, how infinitely less brother to stumble or offend. _ 2« 
 
 important is the question, whether mar^v .x^i^-.KarA cavrov ,x^, ,vi>- 
 
 a certain '-^^2X1^ Qtdcnnqne vuU; ,r<o>. to., 0«t,! (i?om. xw 2 2; i Con 
 
 shall be sung at popular services or vm. 11 ) The Apostles Creed ,s 
 
 retained as a standard for the clergy, that which we con essed at our 
 
 than the question whether Christ baptism, and are at all times ready, 
 
 does not demand of us to remove in baptismal attitude to confess 
 
 (at some cost to our own feelings) agam. The Euchanstic creed we 
 
 2 E 2 
 
420 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 has firm ground beneath his feet in rebuking the narrow 
 scruples of the Baptist ; or in recovering the Quaker 
 from a bald spiritualism, which has learnt to despair 
 of all the Church's ceremonial system, owing to its 
 apparent inability to adapt itself to the needs of modern 
 times. 
 
 (3.) And yet once more, — to the Unitarians and 
 Wesleyans of the eighteenth century, the Church of 
 England has her acknowledgments to make ; acknow- 
 ledgments of hard words used and unconciliatory 
 measures adopted ''-''. Rationalism and mysticism, no 
 doubt, are very potent and dangerous elements in the 
 Church's life. But elements in that life they certainly 
 are. And, under any ' Catholicity' worthy of the name, 
 they would be made to balance and supplement each 
 other ; rendering progress — scientific and devotional — 
 at once possible and safe. But if, with rash and strange 
 
 use ' as a hymn-like ascription to in itself.' (Bishop Thirlwall, Report 
 God of His own redeeming work, 0/ Royal Commission, -p. x.) 
 no less than as an expression of ^ No doubt, hard words have 
 belief in it.' (Freeman, Principles been used in all these controversies 
 0/ Iliv. Serv. ii. 451.) But the on both sides. But manly and in- 
 Athanasian Creed, a mere Latin telligent Dissenters are beginning 
 formula of unknown authorship in to be ashamed of their endless, and 
 the eighth century, is far more suit- often baseless, complaints against 
 able to an honoured position as a the injustice of past times ; and one 
 standard of orthodoxy beside the has been found lately bold enough 
 Thirty-nine Articles, than to a place to proclaim the truth : that ' it was 
 where ' most of the essential words emphatically due to members of the 
 are understood by the common Church of England, that tlie last 
 people in a sense very different from penal statute against freedom of 
 their original intention, . . while they religious worship received its over- 
 are enforced under anathemas the throw. . . Congregationalists and Bap- 
 most terrible and plain that human tists — the immediate progenitors of 
 language admits.' (Stanley, ^<iana- the Liberation Society— at the best 
 sian Creed, p. 35.) — ' I protest against were lukewarm ; no fervour of libera- 
 the compulsory use of the Athanasian tion seized them, though their fellow- 
 Creed, as not only an evil on account Dissenters of an unpopular faith 
 of the effect it produces on many might be outlawed and imprisoned.' 
 of the most intelligent and attached (Green, Dissenters and the Established 
 members of our Church, but a wrong Church, p. 14, 187 r.) 
 
VIII. ] THE FEELINGS AND THE REASON. 421 
 
 timidity, we try to arrest Reason on its path of inquiry, 
 instead of skilfully bending its wild useless flight into 
 an orbit obedient to the great Sun of Righteousness, 
 we shall find that success in this attempt will be (if 
 possible) more disastrous to the best interests of the 
 Church, than even a helpless and public failure would 
 be. For secret or open infidelity will begin to honey- 
 comb the English Church, as it has already undermined 
 so many foreign churches that remain under the direction 
 of Rome. And spiritualism, revivalism, mysticism, and 
 religious hysteria, will quickly take their revenge ; by 
 throwing good sense away, and giving rein to some 
 of the fiercest and most irrational emotions of human 
 nature. 
 
 On the other side, feelings coldly neglected, mysticism 
 taken no account of, plainness and common-sense made 
 the absolute rule by which all things shall be squared, — 
 this course too prepares for any religious community 
 a sad and hopeless decline. The great mass of mankind 
 need to be strongly stirred. And it is their feelings, 
 and not their reason, which off'er themselves as the 
 conducting point on which the fire of God shall descend. 
 What note of failure could more plainly condemn any 
 Christian Church, than the failure to draw in those 
 very classes to whom the Saviour announced that His 
 Gospel should be preached, and to whom He Himself 
 dedicated the very opening words of His first Sermon 
 on the Mount,— ' Blessed are ye poor!' As therefore 
 Wesleyanism — in its present condition— is a standing 
 warning to the Church, against fanning overmuch the 
 flame of mere feeling and sensational excitement, a 
 flame which too often ends with becoming master instead 
 of servant in the household, and causing schisms instead 
 of order, peace, and mutual aid : so also Unitarianism 
 
42 2 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 should warn us all against imagining that bare, im- 
 personal truth is ever acceptable to mankind, or exercises 
 any spell upon their moral nature -'. For Plato is most 
 certainly wrong, when he says that knowledge and 
 virtue are convertible terms. And it is not by Reason 
 that a man is justified and made a new creature, — but 
 by Faith. 
 
 But here I hasten to say once more, — what, indeed, I 
 have said, without fear of contradiction, throughout the 
 course of these Lectures, — viz. that it has not been 
 warning merely, or the safety that comes of repulsion, 
 that our Church has gained from the various Dissenting 
 bodies that surround her. Owen and Baxter, among 
 the Independents and Presbyterians ; Cardinal Pole and 
 Sir Thomas More, among the Romanists ; Robert Hall, 
 among the Baptists ; George Fox and Penn, among the 
 Quakers ; Lardner and Channing, among the Unitarians ; 
 and Wesley himself, among the Wesleyans ; these 
 names, of themselves, — not to mention many living 
 men, for whom no one can fail to entertain the deepest 
 respect, — are enough to suggest, that the Church of 
 England owes many obligations and has learnt many 
 valuable lessons, from the religious communions which 
 have seceded from her. They have been to her like 
 the satellites thrown off from some great central planet. 
 And, — not only by catching and reflecting certain rays 
 of light which she had missed, but also by presenting to 
 her the deeply interesting spectacle of their various 
 phases, and of their behaviour amid the complicated 
 
 ^« ' NichtlogischeBegriffe, sondem Triebkraft der Volker-entwickelung. 
 
 geschichtliche ideale Gestalten er- Nicht als logischer Satz, sondern 
 
 fiiUen das Leben der Menschen, als Gestalt tritt die Wahiheit auf.' 
 
 erfliUen die Weltgeschichte, sind die {Europa, No. 27, p. 776.) 
 
VIII.] 'PHASES' OF CHURCH-LIFE. 
 
 423 
 
 influences of modern life, — they have greatly contributed 
 to her instruction. How else could she have learnt so 
 well, what Christianity under modern conditions is 
 capable of.' How else could she have seen, what forms 
 of polity and modes of action are likely either to fail 
 or to succeed .? How could certainty have been attained 
 so easily, as to the ultimate mischief which often flows 
 from an apparently small and harmless deviation from 
 the established traditions of the Church, or which accom- 
 panies the unguarded preaching of some fair-seeming, 
 but one-sided, truth ^' .^ 
 
 Above all, how else could the Church have learnt so 
 well the enormous and (by the utmost human skill) in- 
 curable evils, that accrue from the 'childish' and 'carnal' 
 spirit of hiyomacria, of partizanship, of schism .'' For, 
 explain and pare away the meaning of that unwelcome 
 word, as much as you please, — still the thing, the spirit, 
 the temper, which it expresses remains ^°. And, if the 
 New Testament is true, it is an 'evil spirit,' working in 
 our fallen hearts in opposition to the Spirit of Christ ; 
 and is as contrary to all the teachings of the Gospel, as 
 jealousy and hate are contrary to love. He therefore 
 that thinks lightly, or speaks lightly, of separation from his 
 brethren — be the cause, in his (surely fallible) judgment, 
 
 '' It is suiprizing that thoughtful came to hear him, and that he did 
 
 Dissenters do not see, that it is them good, he now devotes himself 
 
 simple common sense which induces entirely to ministerial worlc. At his 
 
 the Church to protect her people, by Tabernacle, in S. James's Square, 
 
 placing the main barrier of her Dis- there is accommodation for 1200 
 
 cipline at entrance into Holy Orders, hearers; and for the education of 
 
 rather than at entrance into the more than 500 children.' (Ritchie, 
 
 Church. 'Up in Notting Hill is a Religious Life of London, p. 16S.) 
 
 Tabernacle, built up and carried on ^° ' Schismatici dissensiombus mi- 
 
 by a Mr. Varley, an humble imitator quis a fraterna caritate dissiUunt, 
 
 of Mr. Spurgeon. Originally Mr. quamvis ea credant quEE credimus.' 
 
 Varley was a butcher : but he took (Augustine, Be Fide et Symbolo, 
 
 to preaching ; and finding that people § 10.) 
 
424 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lecT. 
 
 as serious as it may— must have 'learnt nothing and 
 forgotten nothing,' since the great revolution of the 
 sixteenth century ^'^. Manly courses, such as lead other 
 people for a time to separate from him, are often the duty 
 of a Christian. Such courses are plainly the duty of the 
 German Catholics at this moment; precisely as they 
 were the duty of English Catholics, 300 years ago. 
 But to ' protest ' is one thing : to ' secede,' or threaten 
 secession, is another. And worst of all were it, to 
 rejoice in secession, to maintain it as a chronic and 
 desirable thing, and to formulate delusive schemes and 
 theories ^^, whereby to perpetuate for ever that which 
 ought to have been only a sharp remedial crisis, with 
 inherent tendency to reversion and to the recovery of 
 organic unity once more. 
 
 Thanks be to God, therefore, that the Church of Eng- 
 land presents at this moment — as she has repeatedly 
 done, during the long period of her chequered history — 
 the aspect of a friend sincerely and anxiously desirous 
 to be reconciled to those who have separated from her. 
 Without exaggerating the simple truth of the matter, 
 and without dissembling that there is not in all Church- 
 
 ^^ At/fa Se rois ^liv itaQovaiv 
 
 ^aBuv imppewet rb fi^Wov. 
 
 (iEschylus, Agam., 249.) 
 
 '^ ' We turn to gaze upon another {Brkisb Quarterly Magazine, July 
 
 vision, fairer, nobler, more fruitful 1871, p. 154.) — 'The only adequate 
 
 by far, which would realize our aspi- conception of a Christian State, is 
 
 rations for the religious future of our that of a nation whose whole life is 
 
 land. The country full of a zealous saturated with Christian ideas and 
 
 and independent ministry of the influences ; and which gives free play 
 
 Gospel, . . each community working to its religious beliefs and impulses, 
 
 out, in entire freedom, its conception that (like the higher intellectual life 
 
 of what a Church ought to be, and of the people), they may express 
 
 ought to do; under the guidance of themselves as they see fit.' (Con- 
 
 a minister ordained for its service by temporary Review, January 1871, p. 
 
 the manifest unction of the Spirit.' 306.) 
 
VIII.] BROAD AREA OF THE CHURCH. 425 
 
 men this spirit,— still on the whole it is beyond dispute, 
 that the attitude of our Church to most of the denomi- 
 nations in this country is now distinctly conciliatory ; 
 and that, with a little more mutual understanding, this 
 tendency to reunion might be almost indefinitely ac- 
 celerated. There is no disinclination, on our part, to 
 adopt from Dissenters (with the fullest acknowledge- 
 ments) whatever they have of good and sound and 
 useful. Nor has any one of the more important deno- 
 minations the slightest necessity, on returning to the 
 Church, to give up one single truth that God has 
 taught them ; to deny or turn their backs upon one 
 single good work which they have already done, and 
 which God has in many cases signally blest ; nor yet 
 to disparage by one breath of contempt, or one word of 
 dispraise, any gifted or saintly personage, who (as we 
 believe) under misapprehension of what the Church's 
 real meaning was, contended against her and sought to 
 preach Christ by other methods than hers. 
 
 On the contrary, every such denomination has — as I 
 have attempted to show in these Lectures — a banner 
 and a camping-ground of its own, within the broad area 
 of the Church of England. And the language that 
 every intelligent Churchman should hold towards those 
 who seek reunion, is but a repetition of what the great 
 Augustine said, 1400 years ago: 'Quemadmodum Ju- 
 daeus cum ad nos venerit, ut Christianus fiat, non in eo 
 destruimus bona Dei, sed mala ipsius ; . . sicut credebat 
 credenda, sicut tenebat tenenda, firmamus ; ita etiam 
 ciim ad nos venit schismaticus vel haereticus, ut Catho- 
 hcus fiat, — schisma ejus et haeresim dissuadendo et 
 destruendo rescindimus ; sacramenta vero Christiana (si 
 eadem in illo invenimus) ^t quidquid allied veri tenet., 
 
42 6 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [leCT. 
 
 absit tit violemus ! absit ut, si semel data novimus, 
 iteremus ^^ ! ' 
 
 But, on the other hand, amid all these words of wel- 
 come and reconciHation, it were sheer folly to expect 
 the Church of England to abandon the very principle of 
 visible and organic unity, on which her own existence is 
 grounded ; or to affect surprise that she will not strike 
 her flag, and disown (at others' bidding) her loyalty and 
 faith in that ideal oneness of Christ's Church, which 
 after all sinks far below Her Master's own definition, — 
 when He prayed ' that they all may be ONE ; as Thou, 
 Father, art in Me, and I in Thee ; that they all may be 
 One in Us, that the world may know that Thou hast 
 sent Me.' No true Churchman pretends to believe, that 
 the decomposition of Christ's kingdom into a multitude 
 of sects, is a matter of indifference to Him ; that all the 
 multifarious communions around us are of equal value in 
 His eyes ; or that (to borrow the language so often 
 heard among our poorer brethren), 'if we get to heaven, 
 it does not matter how we get there.' 
 
 Whatever this popular conception of ' getting to heaven' 
 may be worth, one thing is certain : that if our Lord 
 has left on earth an organized and visible society, — 
 in which He has lodged His commission to go and 
 teach all nations, and has stored therein special gifts 
 of the Holy Ghost for the successful fulfilment of that 
 commission, — it may be one, among the unexpected 
 discoveries of the Day of Judgment, that each person 
 may have to answer for himself — 'according to that 
 
 "■■' Augustine, De Vnico Bapt., cap. conflicting religions. They come, 
 2. (Migne's edit., vol. ix. 596.) The not to lose what they ham, but to gain 
 same thought has struck others also, what they have not; and in order 
 'This is the secret of the influence, that, by means of what they have, 
 by which the Church draws to her- more may be given to them.' (New- 
 self converts from such various and man, Grammar 0/ Assent, p. 241.) 
 
VIII.] EFFICIENCY AND CONCIIIATION 427 
 
 which he had, not according to that he had not ' — how 
 far he presumed, in his hfetime, to act as though Christ 
 had never left any such society at all. And many a 
 well-seeming and well-meaning man, may have to cry 
 out, at last, 'Lord, when saw we Thee crucified afresh, 
 — and made no sign of disapprobation } When caused 
 we Thy name to be blasphemed among the heathen, 
 and Thine own prayer to be converted into failure — by 
 a self-will and disobedience, which we mistook for doing 
 Thee service .'' When was thy seamless robe torn into 
 shapeless rents, by our pitiful jealousies, our sense- 
 less disputes, our utterly un-Christian self-assertion .' ' 
 For these things — whether they exist among Churchmen 
 or Dissenters — ^are not merely errors, but sins. ' The 
 works of the flesh are manifest, which are these : . . 
 hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, 
 heresies ; . . of the which I tell you before, as I have also 
 told you in time past, that they which do such things 
 shall not inherit the kingdom of God ^*.' 
 
 And now, to sum up in two words all that has been 
 said, — every loyal son of the Church of England should, 
 in these days, engrave upon his memory and upon his 
 conscience this simple maxim : Ejficiency and unity 
 within, candour and coiwiliation toivards those that are 
 withotit, — these would be the certain means of restoring, 
 ere many years are past, the old historical Church to 
 an unchallenged position of dignity and usefulness in 
 this country, such as at no former time she has ever held ; 
 and such as no other Church in the whole world has any 
 prospect or any opportunities of holding. Men now-a- 
 days judge practically. They look not to the theories of 
 things, their orthodoxy, their harmony with other truths, 
 
 « Gal. vi. 19. 
 
428 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 or their remote logical consequences, — but to their re- 
 sults. And that religious communion will, in the long 
 run, most commend itself to Englishmen, which displays 
 the greatest eiificiency in winning souls to Christ ; which 
 proves, by a long firm grasp of its spiritual conquests, 
 the stability and force of its methods ; which makes men 
 ' men,' and not merely bigots or spiritual invalids ; which 
 shows masterly boldness in grappling with that special 
 characteristic of our time, an ever-widening and ever- 
 deepening knowledge of nature ; and which has vital 
 power and elasticity enough to adapt itself to all sorts 
 and conditions of men, and to the ever-varying neces- 
 sities of our modern life. 
 
 Lastly, in all our relations to Dissenters, let past evil 
 methods be forgotten and banished clean out of mind, 
 and that ever old, yet ever new commandment be 
 remembered, — the commandment of peace and love. 
 Explanation, — if it were possible, mutual explanation, 
 — let that be the object of our most earnest endeavours ! 
 let that be the solvent, which shall relax our hostilities, 
 and perhaps convert our present ' conscientious oppo- 
 nents ' into the staunchest and most conscientious sup- 
 porters of our Church. It does not follow, because we 
 are touched and edified by the thousand associations 
 that whisper to us between the lines of our treasured 
 Prayer-book, that speak to us in the sculpture or the 
 glass of our storied cathedrals, or haunt us amid the 
 colleges and religious houses for study at the univer- 
 sities, that these things will come home, without expla- 
 nation or kindly guidance, to the minds of a practical 
 and prosaic people. They will rather complain — 
 
 ' The living do not rule this world,' — ah no ! 
 It is the dead, the dead^".' 
 
 ■'' Ingelow, i'o^/ns, p. 12. 
 
VIII.] MUTUAL EXPLANATION REQUIRED. 429 
 
 Thus has lately cried aloud, — with far more terrible 
 impatience and dramatic emphasis than we need ever 
 fear perhaps in this country, — smoking and ruined Paris ; 
 with its noble ' past ' disconnected and estranged from 
 its restless 'present,' through the incurable breach of 
 1789 ; with its failure to interest the industrial masses in 
 the political continuity of the State ; and with its ancient 
 Church, now petrified under foreign influence, slavishly 
 re-echoing the eternal ' non possumus ' of the papacy, and 
 prevented thereby from adapting itself to modern needs, 
 and from reconciling itself heartily to modern civili- 
 zation. A truly sad and miserable spectacle ! A strange 
 conjunction of extreme political mobility, and extreme 
 ecclesiastical immobility, within the area of a single 
 nation, — such as the world has rarely seen, and such 
 as the intervention of an angel from heaven could hardly 
 save from certain disaster and chaos ! 
 
 Happily, our own people have not yet come to dis- 
 believe in their past history, or to distrust the loyalty of 
 their National Church in adapting herself to the nation's 
 needs, as times and circumstances vary '^. They are 
 still proud of their country, and of its ancient institu- 
 tions. And the number of those sad and earnest men 
 of one idea, without humour, without imagination, who 
 still — with France before their eyes — dream of making 
 all things new by one fiat of the popular will, is a 
 very small minority of the nation. For we may 
 not understand the past, we may forget it, and lavish 
 
 "' ' A nos yeux, I'organization de a voulu ce qui est aujourd'hui. En 
 
 r^glise Anglicane est abusive . . I'^tablissant, en le maintenant, elle a 
 
 Mais n'oublions point que I'Angle- fait preuve de libertf^ . . Qu'on s'en 
 
 terre tout entiere, — I'Angleterre, non fie a la nation Anglaise, et a sa 
 
 pas en comptant les voix, mais en longue experience!' (Sismondi, ^iK&s 
 
 p^sant et en estimant les volont^s, — sur les Constit. i. 373.) 
 
430 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. [lect. 
 
 no love or thought upon it : but we can no more dis- 
 connect the present from it, or pretend to be unaffected 
 by it, than we can pretend to be unaffected by the now 
 forgotten and unimaginable Glacial Epoch, — which fur- 
 rowed out for us our smiling valleys, and chiselled in 
 rough outline the loved features of our native land. 
 
 If therefore we could only make some first step, 
 towards recovering for our Church a truly National 
 extension ; if we could only succeed in so small a 
 thing, as in bringing our countrymen together"'^ once' 
 more, if not for preaching, at least for COMMON WOR- 
 SHIP ; if we could only persuade them of the beauty 
 and the happiness of sinking our mere opinions, while 
 uniting in a common Ritual ^^ and lifting up our hearts 
 in common Psalmody ; — who can say, from such small 
 beginnings, what great results might grow ? Who can 
 say, what visions of love and peace might not unfold 
 themselves, as men became accustomed to the harmo- 
 nies of combined musical effort, and resigned themselves 
 to the educating spell of that, which (in Hooker's words) 
 ' delighteth all ages, and beseemeth all states ^" ? ' For, 
 
 " Aristotle (PoUt. i. 2), long ago of Lutetia, i. 184.) 
 remarked, that withdrawal from as- ^' ' The Christian philosopher can- 
 sociation with his fellow-men marked not fail to discern, through all the . . 
 a man as either Sripioy ^ Sios. And bitter contention and conflicting ana- 
 late observation shows, in a lunatic themas which assail him, on his way 
 asylum, the morbid and abnormal of peace, one sublime and original 
 character of ultra - individualism, thought . . This thought is nothing 
 ' Each man talked to himself, less than that great fundamental idea 
 laughed to himself, and although of the reunion of the mind of mortal 
 surrounded by companions took no man with God, by thankful sacrifice 
 heed whatever of one of them, of self, in life — and therefore also in 
 Every man appeared thoroughly worship.' (Bunsen, Analecta Anlenic, 
 alone.' (Blanchard Jerrold, Childre7i iii. 4.) 
 
 ' One sacrifice, I know, in Heaven above more dear 
 Than smoke of slaughtered oxen ; 'tis to offer up 
 Thine own heart's angry rage, thy own revenge.' 
 
 (Bishop Tegner, Friihiofsage, Eng. trans, p. 176.) 
 ^' Hooker, Eccles. Pol., v. 38. 1. 
 
VIII.] UNITY FOUND IN COMMON WORSHIP. 431 
 
 as St. Basil beautifully reminds us, ' Psalmody makes 
 fair-weather for the soul : psalmody is the arbiter of 
 peace : psalmody is the fast welder of friendship. For 
 who can bring himself to regard any longer as an 
 enemy, one with whom he has lifted up his voice in 
 harmony, in the praise and worship of God ■"• .? ' 
 
 But if even this be too much to hope, if we must 
 still — on God's own day of peace and reunion and 
 brotherly love — go apart from one another and ' forsake 
 the assembling of ourselves together^ if the divisions of 
 Christendom touch us with no compunction, and the 
 threatening array of vice and unbelief touch us with 
 no fear, — then there is nought else to do, but to hope 
 for, and pray for, and labour for, a return of that great 
 tide of Christian love ''^, which may lift us all once more 
 to higher levels, and flood our oozy creeks and separate 
 harbours with the desire and with the means of inter- 
 communion once more. And then we may smile to see, 
 how long and how strangely we misunderstood each 
 other. We may weep to perceive how wicked and 
 unchristian were many things, in which we thought 
 
 " St. Basil, On the Psalms, Works, lish language (Tennyson's 7ra Metno- 
 i. 90 (ed. Paris, 1721). riam), opens with an address to the 
 
 " How are all the poets inspired ' Strong Son of God, eternal Love ! ' 
 by the thought of ' love's ' mighty — An American master of song 
 power to lift man above himself, cries : — 
 The profomidest poem in the Eng- 
 
 ' Ah, how skilful grows the hand, 
 That cbeyeth Love's command ! 
 'Tis the heart, and not the brain, 
 That the highest doth attain.' 
 
 (Longfellow, Building of the Ship, Works, p. 343.) 
 And a German, with still more ardent enthusiasm: 
 ' Die Liebe kennt nicht Vaterland ; 
 
 Sie macht uns alle gleich. 
 Ein jedes Herz ist ihr verwandt, 
 Sie macht den Eettler reich.' 
 
 (Tieck, Gedichte, p. 449.) 
 
432 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 we were ' doing God service.' And we may determine 
 that no future dissensions shall ever attain the fatal 
 growth which past disputes have attained ; or ever 
 hereafter blot from view those golden words of old 
 prophetic inspiration, 'Behold, how good and joyful a 
 thing it is, brethren ! to dwell together in UNITY.' 
 
APPENDIX M. 
 
 The Organization of the Church of England. 
 
 All Christians agree that our Saviour left a ' Church,' of some sort, on 
 earth. What then is that Church ? To this question only two answers 
 are possible: (i) The answer of the Puritan : that He left a spiritual, godly, 
 and therefore (for the most part) invisible brotherhood. For who can really 
 judge the hearts of men, but God alone ? Naturally then, such a theory 
 would go on its way independent of^nay, even suspicious of— outward 
 organization ; and it would be content to gather into nuclei, or societies, 
 those who (so far as could be seen) had been ' converted' by God's direct 
 agency. (2) The answer of the Catholic is quite different. He believes that 
 Christ left on earth an actual, visible, and efficient polity ; that its members 
 are all those whom His providence brings to the doorway of baptism, and 
 whose guarantees of being in earnest seem sufficient ; and its government 
 such as was sketched out, and set in motion, by the Lord Himself and 
 His apostles. And on this theory, it is obvious that ' organization ' will 
 form a verj' important question indeed. 
 
 Now there is no doubt that this last is the answer of the Church of 
 England. In no other way is her doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration 
 intelligible ; or her discipline pardonable, in demanding that all who wish 
 for the higher sacrament of full membership, in Holy Communion, should 
 first seek the Bishop's confirmation ; or her still stricter discipline reason- 
 able, in refusing to hear of self-ordained teachers, or to recognise as pres- 
 byters men for whose soundness, ability, and sufficient knowledge, her own 
 officers have never made themselves responsible. What then, more precisely, 
 is the Organization of the Church of England ? 
 
 I. The Supreme Head and centre of unity for tbe Church of England, — 
 as for all other Churches, — is Jesns Christ, seen by the eye of faith, and 
 present with us always 'even to the end of the world.' This is plain, not 
 only from the whole tenor of her teaching, but also from the express con- 
 fession of Henry the Eighth,— the very person who is popularly accused of 
 usurping Christ's Headship. He writes thus to the Clergy of the Province 
 of York, in 1 533 : ' Christ is indeed unicus dominus et svprermis ; as we confess 
 Him in the Church daily. . . It were nimis absnrdum for us to be called Caput 
 Ecclesice, representans Corpus Christi myslicum: .. and therefore is added [in 
 the ' Act of Submission '] et Cleri Anglicani, which words conjoined restrain, 
 
 Ff 
 
434 APPENDIX M. 
 
 by way of application, the word Ecclesiani; and is as much as to say " the 
 Church,— that is to say, the Clergy, — of England.".. So as in all these Acts 
 concerning the persons of priests, their laws, their acts, and order of living, 
 forasmuch as they be indeed all temporal and concerning this present life 
 only, in those we (as we be called) be indeed in this realm " Caput" ; and 
 because there is no man above us here, " supremum caput." As to spiritual 
 things, . . they have no worldly nor temporal head, but only Christ. . . And 
 being called " head " of all, we be not in deed — nor in name, to him that 
 would sincerely understand it — head of such things. . . Ye ought to under- 
 stand temporalibus for the passing over this life in quietness. .. It were most 
 improperly spoken, to say we be ilUus EccIesicB caput in temporalibus, which 
 hath not " temporalia." ' (Wilkins, iii. 762.) 
 
 The same explanation of the phrase ' supreme head upon earth,' as 
 limited to government and coercive jurisdiction over the persons of the 
 clergy, is given by authority under Edward VI : ' Rex, tarn in archiepiscopos, 
 episcopos, cleros, et alios ministros, qiikm in laicos . . plenissimam juris- 
 dictionem, tam civilem quam ecclesiasticam, habet et exercere potest : ciim 
 omnis jurisdictio, et ecclesiastica, et secularis, ab eo (tanquam ex luio et 
 eodem fonte) derivatur.' {Reform. Legum, p. 200.) 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, in her celebrated Injunctions, of 1559, repeats the same 
 thing : ' Her Majesty neither doth, nor ever will, challenge any authority, 
 than that was challenged and lately used by . . King Henry the Eighth and 
 King Edward the Sixth, which is — and was, of ancient time, — due to the 
 imperial croAvn of this realm : that is, under God, to have the sovereignty 
 and rule over all manner of persons born within these her realms, . . so as 
 no other foreign power shall, or ought to, have any superiority over them.* 
 (ap. Cardwell, Doc. Ann. i. 200.) 
 
 Christ therefore being the Head of the Church, whatever comes from 
 Him — and in proportion as it is capable of being shown to come from Him 
 — is to be received with the most profound attention and submission. 
 Hence the extreme respect paid by the Church of England to the Holy 
 Scriptures, — the work of His immediate apostles and prophets. 
 
 II. The Legislative Power — according to the theory of the Church of 
 England, — is lodged in the whole body of the ' fideles' scattered throughout 
 Christendom : and it is the voice of the whole bodj', the oracle or ' temple 
 of the Holy Ghost ' upon earth, which is listened for in Councils gathered, 
 by representation, from areas varying in extent and therefore in the com- 
 pleteness of the induction afforded by them, (a) An CEcumenical Council 
 gives the best prospect of reaching a truthful attestation of what is every- 
 where, and under the most dissimilar conditions of society, language, &c., 
 held by all Christians. And to those few Councils in early times, which 
 have the best claim to that title, the Church of England constantly refers 
 
APPENDIX M. 
 
 435 
 
 as possessing the highest authority, next to Scripture, for her. (Cf. Hooker, 
 viii. 2. 17 : the law of the land, for its part, assenting in i Eliz. i, cap. 36.) 
 
 (3) A General Council offers an induction of somewhat narrower extent ; 
 and therefore its decisions are less trustworthy, — until at least they have 
 been thoroughly tested by comparison with the ' Scriptural ' documents in 
 the hands of the faithful, and have been sanctioned by universal acceptance. 
 Thus the first and second Councils at Constantinople were, perhaps, essen- 
 tially only ' General Councils' of the Eastern Church ; but being ratified by. 
 universal acceptance, in the West as well as in the East, they are ac- 
 counted ' CEcumenical.' (Bum, Eccles. Law, ii. 31.) While the Lateran, 
 Trent, and Vatican Councils, were merely ' General Councils ' of the Latin 
 Church, which have not been raised to a higher power by universal sub- 
 sequent reception. The Pan-Anglican Councils, held in England during the 
 middle ages, may be regarded as ' General Councils ' on a small scale ; and 
 the similar assembly held at Lambeth, in 1867, was a tentative ' General 
 Council' of the English-speaking Churches, on a far larger scale. 
 
 (7) The Provincial Synod, or Convocation, covers an area still smaller. 
 And as long as the Church of England maintains a ' protestant ' attitude, 
 and appeals from the false theories of Rome to the true theory of a future 
 settlement by an CEcumenical Council, so long the decisions of any Provin- 
 cial Synod must be held by her as capable of review. It is on the two 
 Provincial Synods of Canterbury and York that, in practice, the State's hand 
 lies most heavily. By 25 Hen. VIIL cap. 19, each Archbishop's inherent 
 power of summoning his Provincial Council around him is placed under 
 inhibition, except at certain accustomed times, — such as, at the opening of 
 a session of Parliament : when the inhibition is regularly taken off by the 
 .Crown. But a licence to proceed to business, and to draw up and ' put in 
 ure' any Provincial. Canons, is still necessaiy. On the other hand, — owing 
 to this same close connexion of the ecclesiastical and temporal powers in 
 England, and to the free maxims of our polity which forbade any clergyman 
 to be taxed in Convocation without having an opportunity of remonstrance 
 and of presenting his gravamina at the same time, — the English Presbyterate 
 has acquired the singular privilege of, not merely attending at Provincial 
 Synods, but of putting their veto, if they see fit, on the action of the Upper 
 House of Bishops, who are the sole normal members of a ' Provincial 
 Council.' It is the action of the two Provincial Synods in England which 
 — with the assent and concurrence of the State, — has provided us with the 
 Disciplinary Canons of 1604, still in force for the clergy ; with the Ritual 
 Canons of 1662, commonly called the 'Book of Common Prayer'; and with 
 the Doctrinal Canons of 1571, commonly called "the Thirty:nine Articles.' 
 [Consult, — Lyndwood's Provinciale; Johnson's English Canons; Wilkins' 
 Concilia; Haddan and Stubbs, Documents, &c. ; Cardwell's Synodalia; 
 
 F f 2 
 
436 APPENDIX M. 
 
 Gibson's Sy nodus Anglicana (an account of Convocation, drawn from the re- 
 cords of eighty-eight such synods, 1356-168;;) ; Lathbury, History of Convo- 
 cation ; Joyce, Sacred Sytiods; Warren's Synodalia ; and the Chronicle of 
 Convocation^ 
 
 (5) The Diocesan Synod is, of course, a Council of still narrower area and 
 still smaller authority. But it is important to observe that on this lower 
 form of Ecclesiastical Synod the State appears to have laid no inhibition 
 whatever ; for ' the act of submission, &c. do not apply to diocesan synods.' 
 (Opinion by Roundell Palmer and A. J. Stephens, Sept. 18, 1868.) More- 
 over, the Reform. Legum (p. 109), expressly contemplates and orders such 
 synods to take place every year : as they did in the Middle Ages, (Lynd- 
 wood, Snppl., p. 140 : Corp. Juris Can. t. i. p. 79, folio edition : Lancelot, 
 Instit. lib. i. tit. 3 : Gibson, Codex, i. iSS.) In modern times, the Bishops' 
 visitations have superseded the proper ' diocesan synods.' But there are 
 already many happy signs of a return to a better and more canonical method 
 of procedure. [For a full account of the modern continental method of 
 holding a diocesan synod ; see the Pontificale Rom., part iii. p. 75 ; ed. 
 Mechlin, 1855.] 
 
 (0 The Ruridecanal Synod is the smallest ecclesiastical council known to 
 the Church of England. It is expressly mentioned in early times : e. g. in 
 1279, Archbishop Peckham held a Convocation at Reading, in which he 
 ordered certain canons to be published at the principal ruri-decanal 
 chapters, throughout his province, — ' exclusis tamen laicis ;' which seems to 
 prove that lay-consultees were usually present. (Wilkins, Concilia, ii. 36.) — 
 An attempt to set up councils of smaller area than this, would not only be 
 uncanonical, but would probably become a fruitful source of feuds and 
 parochial strife. The 'parochial council' is essentially a Presbyterian inven- 
 tion ; and, with so many other well-seeming innovations, was tried during the 
 Commonwealth, with disastrous results. (See Gauden's Tears of the Church 
 of England, 1659 '■ 'The speedy confutation of this incongruous polity and 
 stratagem, which— to please the people— sought to besiege myself and all 
 ministers, both in city and country, with four or five more lay-elders, made 
 up of fanners, shopkeepers, clothiers, and handicraftsmen,— to be our 
 assessors and assistants, as censors and supervisors of all the parish and of 
 ourselves too,— this hath wrought an abhorrence and disdain in most people 
 of all ruling-lay-eldei-s.') 
 
 III. The Executive Power, in the Church of England, is lodged in the 
 hands of her commissioned officers ; among whom the Bishop,— not stand- 
 ing alone, but supported by his clergy,— bears by far the most important 
 responsibility. The Bishop is the persona (so to speak) of the diocese ; and 
 the diocese (anciently called mpomia) is the true unit in ecclesiastical arithmetic. 
 This is symbolized by his pastoral staff, the emblem of spiritual, loving, 
 
APPENDIX M. 
 
 437 
 
 persuasive power, as distinguished from the sword and mace of the temporal 
 magnates. By him, in conjunction with his Presbyters, the lower Orders 
 are commissioned : by him, in conjunction with his Comprovincial Bishops, 
 the Archbishop is consecrated. Below him are the Presbyters, — whose 
 work is subject to his visitation and correction : and the Deacons, — whose 
 commission empowers them to serve under the Presbyters' guidance. The 
 Reader (or Lay-deacon) is a still lower order, lately revived. — The Arch- 
 deacon is simply the Bishop's coadjutor ; the ' oculus episcopi,' (Lyndwood, 
 Provinc. lib. i. tit. lo:) ' l)iix ad insidias, Argus ad animi scelus omnirao- 
 dum,' (Walter Mapes, + 1210 ; Poems, p. 9 ;) — armed with very large powers 
 of visitation and inspection, within his own limited area, that he may report 
 thereupon to the Bishop : but not armed with powers of Confirmation or 
 Ordination, lest the unity of the diocese (wedded in olden time to the Bishop, 
 by the episcopal ring) should be imperilled. The Dean and Chapter are 
 merely the College of Presbyters, attached to the Bishop's own church, where 
 his cathedra (or episcopal seat) is placed. They originally dined at a com- 
 mon table, and lived methodically under a common rule (' canonici ') ; being 
 always at hand, both to conduct with the greatest possible efficiency the 
 services of the mother church of the diocese, to go forth on missions of 
 usefulness at the Bishop's bidding, and to form a standing cabinet (or 
 ' diocesan-council ' ) who might support the Bishop with advice and assistance 
 at all times. Of this body of collegiate clergy, the Dean is the senior ; and 
 is to the Bishop very much what the captain of the flagship is to the admiral 
 in command of a fleet. No part, however, of the whole organization of the 
 Church has departed so widely, and so dangerously, from its ideal as the 
 cathedral department. And if its meaning and use should become still 
 further obscured, there is imminent danger of this essential member of the 
 Church's diocesan system being impatiently, and most unwisely, destroyed. 
 — The lower functionaries of the church (church-wardens, singers, sa- 
 cristans, school-teachers, district-visitors, &c., &c.) are too numerous to 
 mention here. 
 
 IV. The Judicial Power, — for correction of offences, maintenance of 
 discipline, &c., — is lodged also by the Church of England maijily in the 
 hands of her Bishops. They are the ' Ordinary ' judges, in cases of scandal 
 or dispute. And their courts are usually held in some part of the 
 Cathedral or Close, set apart for that purpose. The Bishop's represen- 
 tative is the 'Chancellor of the Diocese;' who acts as his permanent 
 deputy, skilled in Church-law; just as the Judges in the civil courts are 
 the permanent skilled deputies of the Crown. Below this important 
 court were formerly several inferior courts, in which the ' ordinaiy ' 
 judge was the Archdeacon, or the Dean, &c. Above it is the higher 
 court of appeal, viz. the Provincial Court of the Archbishop. In this, 
 
438 APPENDIX M. 
 
 the sentence of the Bishop's Chancellor is subject to review, and to con- 
 firmation or reversal. And beyond this, so far as the Church is concerned, no 
 ecclesiastical litigation can be carried. If therefore any person, at this point, 
 feel confident that justice has not been done to him, he is at liberty to take up 
 the common right of every English subject, and to appeal to his Sovereign 
 for redress. And the Sovereign issues a standing commission to certain 
 members of the Privy Council, to hear and report to him what seems the 
 true state of the case. And on receiving their report, he proceeds (as the 
 fountain-head of justice to all his subjects, and supreme civil raler of all 
 classes and professions alike) to give a decision, which is absolutely final, 
 and which puts a stop to any farther litigation on that particular point. 
 This Court is called the Judicial Committee of Privy Council. It is essen- 
 tially a civil tribunal ; whereby the State exerts its rightful claims to see 
 justice done to all English subjects, without allowing coercive appeal to 
 any foreign power whatever. In other words, ' this Court now represents 
 the Royal Supremacy, in its judicial character ;' and is a modification (in 
 1832) of the previous ' Court of Delegates,' — an objectionable tribunal, 
 whose members were not a permanent body, but nominated on each case 
 ,as it arose, and whose decisions were (after all) liable to a fresh ' Com- 
 mission of Review ' from the Crown. This however had been the regular 
 court of highest appeal, from 1534 till 1832,— only silenced for a time, but 
 not destroyed, by the sharper and readier weapon of the ' High Commis- 
 sion,' an abuse of the Royal prerogative which was finally done away in 
 1640. (See Brodrick and Fremantle, Judgments of Privy Council, p. xxiv, 
 &c.) 
 
 The Crown (as is natural) now requires, in this class of disputes, that 
 one at the least of the ecclesiastical members of the Privy Council should 
 attend. Still it is purely as a Privy-Councillor, ' expert ' in such matters, 
 that he is called upon to aid in reporting to the Crown whether justice 
 has, or has not, been done. For the questions that come within the com- 
 petence of this Court are simply and exclusively questions of law, — the 
 bye-law (as it were) of certain denominations or professions. And just as 
 Her Majesty fairly considers her legal advisers able to decide on questions 
 of mercantile law, — without relegating the whole suit to a tribunal com- 
 posed of merchants, — so she refers to her legal advisers these questions of 
 ecclesiastical or ' canon ' law, without thinking it likely to conduce to 
 justice if she should estabhsh a tribunal of ecclesiastics, to review and cor- 
 rect judgments already pronounced by ecclesiastics in the Courts below. 
 These principles have been repeatedly laid down by the Court of Final 
 Appeal itself. And it is surprising that so many people, both Churchmen 
 and Dissenters, should have been unable to grasp (i) the essential difference 
 between exercising judicial rights, and usurping legislative functions. The 
 Court itself, in the Gorham case, expressly declared, ' The question which 
 
APPENDIX M. 439 
 
 we have to decide is, not whether the opinions of Mr. Gorham are theo- 
 logically sound or unsound, . . but whether those opinions are repugnant 
 to the doctrines which the Church of England (by its Articles, Formularies, 
 and Rubrics) requires to be held by its ministers.' (Brodrick, Privy Council 
 Judgments, p. 89,) In other words, it is the ' canon law ' of the Church of 
 England which is made the measure of the accused person s alleged delinquejicy ; 
 and that canon law is not of course made by the Court, but simply 
 applied to the case in question, as a pure matter of legal business. (2) It 
 seems equally impossible for some people to comprehend, that the great 
 principles of law must needs apply to all things that have the nature of law , 
 whether ' canon law,' ' mercantile law,' or any other sort of law. And hence 
 it is that they overlook the express and repeated declarations of the Privy 
 Council itself. ' The question must be decided by the Articles and Liturgy ; 
 and we must apply to the construction of those books the same rules which 
 have been long established, and which are by law applicable to all written 
 instruments. We must endeavour to attain for ourselves the true meaning 
 of the language employed, assisted only by the consideration of such 
 external or historical facts, as we may find necessary to enable us to under- 
 stand the subject-matter . . , and the meaning of the words employed.' 
 {Ihid. p. 90.) 
 
 It is not therefore the judicial system of the Church that requires any 
 alteration, beyond mere improvements in detail. It is her legislative organs 
 that urgently require reformation. It is her Convocations that need adapt- 
 ing to the altered circumstances of the age ; and that require the recovery 
 of such bona, fide representative weight as shall compel attention to the crying 
 needs of the English Church ; such as (o) a sub-division of dioceses, (/3) 
 a new and simpler code of ' disciplinary canons,' (7) a thorough reform of 
 the cathedrals, (5) an authoritative extension of the Catechism, by an 
 appendix, ' On the nature and functions of the Church.' — And if, in addition 
 to this, an annual ' Diocesan Synod '■ and ' Conference ' could be established 
 in each diocese, and the lines could also be laid out for occasional assem- 
 blies, on a still larger scale, of representative bishops and clergy from 
 America, the Colonies, and perhaps Germany, — it is not probable that the 
 men of our race would seek elsewhere for an organization suited to their 
 circumstances and in accordance with their character. The imagination 
 of that numerous class of people, whose minds cannot grasp a confused 
 mass of details and whose hearts cannot love what has neither feature nor 
 expression, would be satisfied. And the frowning array of Roman super- 
 stition on the one hand, and of a withering infidelity on the other, would at 
 last find an organized and powerful foe ready to do battle against them 
 under the banner of the Cross, and capable — with or without the auxiliary 
 forces of Dissent — of ' fiUing the earth with the knowledge of the Lord, as 
 the waters cover the sea.' 
 
440 APPENDIX N. 
 
 APPENDIX N. 
 
 The Endoivmmts of the English Church. 
 
 The Endowments of the Church in this country are of three kinds : 
 (i) Lands and buildings, — for the most part, gifts of very ancient date: 
 (2) Money, invested for Church-purposes, — for the most part, gifts of quite 
 modern times ; (3) Tithes of the produce of tlie land, — now commuted into 
 fixed payments in money, as a permanent rent-charge upon the land. A 
 considerable proportion of tlris rent-charge is now (since the suppression of 
 the monasteries) owned by laymen. The remainder forms the principal 
 support of the clergy ; and it produces a yearly revenue which, if equally 
 distributed, would give each clergyman an average income of less than 
 200/. 
 
 But what then is this ' Tithe '? — In seeking for a true answer to this question 
 we are first of all met by the unexpected discovery, that it does not origi- 
 nally rest, either on the vis legislativa, nor even on the vis exemplaris, of the 
 Levitical Law. Its history must be traced down two separate and {for a 
 time) divergent channels, each of which, however, springs originally from 
 the fountain-head of a primeval Semitic custom. And for the sake of 
 clearness, a name may be here at once mentioned, which will put this whole 
 matter into its true light. Melchizedek, tlie Canaanite, 'priest of the 
 most high God,' who received the tithes of Abraham's military spoil — quite 
 as if it were a long established custom, among those races, so to do — may 
 stand as the first recorded instance of that, which perhaps had as long an 
 unknown history before his time, as it has had a known history since. 
 From this point then, we may trace the custom of paying tithes along two 
 channels, as follows ; (A) a sacred channel. — From Abraham the Jews, his 
 descendants, derived the custom ; which was afterwards consecrated and 
 regulated for them, in the Mosaic Law. And when, through the study of 
 the Old Testament, that Law began to exercise a powerful influence in 
 moulding the external features of the Christian Church, then ' tithe ' began 
 once more to take rank as a religious duly, directly sanctioned by the Most 
 High. As such, it was preached — in all good faith — by the clergy. And 
 thus, religion (from the fifth century onwards) reinforced, and imposed a 
 distinctly ecclesiastical direction upon, that which previously had existed as 
 a merely secular custom. 
 
 (B) a secular channel. — For ' tithe ' has also a profane, as well as a sacred, 
 history of its own: (i) From the Canaanites, as was natural, their colony 
 at Carthage inherited tlie custom of devoting a tenth of the spoils taken in 
 
APPENDIX N. 441 
 
 war to their great deity, wliom the classical writers call ' Hercules,' but whom 
 perhaps we must call Baal or Moloch. This appears in their sending a tithe 
 of their Sicilian spoils to the mother-temple at Tyre '. A similar custom 
 existed among the Arabians'' ; and it has perhaps passed from them to the 
 modem Mahometans. From this Carthaginian custom, on the one hand, — 
 and from a similar ' tithing ' custom brought by the Etruscans ^ from Asia 
 Minor, on the other, — the Romans, no doubt, learnt their habit of tithing 
 spoils of war to Hercules, (or, as he was called among the Sabines, 
 Semo Sancus*.') And then afterwards, — as was likely to happen, — not 
 only spoils of war, but other windfalls or pieces of good luck were tithed 
 to Hercules, Mercury, or Fortune '. And at last, rich men came to charge 
 their permanent estates with a standing ' tithe,' — devoting it especially to 
 providing sacrifices, temples, feasts, &c. to Hercules". 
 
 Meantime, a similar custom is found to have existed also among the 
 Greeks. But in their case, Ephesus (instead of Carthage) formed the 
 intermediate link of connection with the more distant and purely Semitic 
 East. Hence Artemis (the Greek form of Astarte) was the first deity to 
 receive tithes ; then Phoebus, and other gods, were honoured in the same 
 way : till at length, a custom arose of frequently charging lands, otherwise 
 free, with a tenth of the produce in support of some neighbouring temple '. 
 
 (2) And here we reach an important point of transition. The habit, 
 which had thus become general, of withholding the hand (as it were) 
 from the enjoyment of the tenth part — often, no doubt, a very roughly 
 calculated tenth part' — of every man's possessions, was in early times 
 taken notice of by legislators and statesmen. And ere long, — when waste 
 lands came to be parcelled out among ' possessors ' (or, to use an Australian 
 term, ' squatters '), and when conquered lands were restored, under condi- 
 tions of yearly tribute, to their former owners, — the reserved charge which 
 it seemed most natural to put upon them, and most easy to collect, was 
 that of a 'tithe' of the produce'. And so it came to pass that, long before 
 Christianity had any influence upon the Roman Empire, this conception of 
 tithes, as a reserve-fund set aside for other purposes than those of individual 
 enjoyment, became thoroughly established in the Western world. And 
 especially would this be the case in Gaul, Spain, and Britain, — which, as 
 
 ' Justin, lib. xviii. (ap. Selden, On ' Cf. Xeiiophoii, 4»io6. v. ,^ II, (ap. 
 
 Tithes, chap, iii.) Diet. Aniiq., s. v. ' decumm:) 
 
 ' Pliny, N. H. xii. 14, {ibid.) ' Seld. x. i. 
 
 = Smith, Diet. Ant., s.v. ' ager.' ' Cf. Thuc. vi. 54, and Appian 1. 7, 
 
 * Gruter, Inscrip. (ap. Selden, loc. {ihid. 'decumse' and ' agrariae leges.') 
 
 (.j^ \ The whole subject may be illustrated 
 
 5 j^i^ from modern Indian customs. (Cf. 
 
 ' Cf. Cicero, Plautus, Plutarch, &c. Maine, Village Communities, especially 
 
 (ap. Selden, 1. c.) Lecture VI.) 
 
442 APPENDIX N. 
 
 conquered provinces, could claim nojas Italicum; and whose soil therefore 
 could never be held in full ownership by anybody'". Here this idea must 
 have taken the profoundest root, and must have appeared to every pro- 
 vincial as almost the order of nature itself". Meanwhile, language con- 
 tributed — as is its wont — to deepen, and also to modify, the idea. A dis- 
 trict of free ' allodial ' Germany, seized by Rome and subjected to all the 
 state-charges of the Empire, was called the Decumales Agri. In every 
 Roman camp, the financial quarter, the paymaster's lodgings, the place 
 (no doubt) for ' requisitions ' and for many a cruel exaction of the ' sinews 
 of war,' was called the Porla Decumana^''. In every provincial town, the 
 hated publican who farmed the annual imposts was called, in early times, a 
 Decumaniis. The notion, therefore, of ' Decumsc ' (tithes), must have become 
 as familiar as a household-word throughout the West ; and no one, prob- 
 ably, conceived of such a thing as private-property without this charge 
 attaching to it, by immemorial custom and by unquestionable right. 
 
 (3) Hence, when the Goths and Germans burst into the Roman Em- 
 pire, and every petty chieftain became a sort of local ' emperor " ' to the 
 terrified provincials, he found himself everywhere confronted with the 
 notion of a ' tithe ' which had never belonged, and never ought to belong, 
 to any individual oiraer '♦. And the clergy at the same time, — not indeed 
 by laying claim to tithe as of right ", but by urging frequently the duty of 
 giving such firstfmits to the Lord, and by drawing their argumentative 
 analogies from Leviticus, — no doubt contributed to bring about the im- 
 portant result ; that ' Tithe ' was, by ever widening custom, assigned for 
 the maintenance of the Church "'. Thus, so early as a.d. 586, in a Council 
 held at Macon, all the Frankish landholders of those parts appear as paying 
 tithes already by old custom. 
 
 (4) But at this point, a curious fact comes to light. It seems that the 
 German or English landowner, until about a.d. i 200, held himself— although 
 in ever decreasing measure, as time went on, and the Church became more 
 powerfully organized — at liberty to assign his ' tithes ' very much as he 
 pleased ". He sometimes therefore gave part to the Church, and (having 
 thus soothed his conscience) kept the rest for himself or his kindred". He 
 
 '" Niebuhr, (ap. i)iVA .i4?z//g., p. 42,) ii. 554: Holland, Land Tenures, p. 
 
 Seld. iv. ?. 106. 
 
 " Cf Becker and Marquardt, Hand- " Waitz, ii. 564, 581 : Selden, iv. 2 ; 
 
 bnch der Rom. Mterth., part iii. I, pp. v. 2 : Holland, p. 102. 
 180, 263. " Selden, iv. 4. 
 
 ^2 Or ' QuEestoria,' Diet. Antiq., p. '" Waitz, ii. 570, 572. 
 206. " Selden, xi. 3 : Waitz, ii. 576. 
 
 "Waitz, Dejjtsche Verfassungsgesch. ^^ Selden, vii. I. 
 
APPENDIX N. 443 
 
 sometimes assigned it to the Church which he had built on his estate ; 
 sometimes to the Church where he himself habitually worshipped ; some- 
 times he bestowed it on his own chaplain, sometimes on a monastery, or on 
 several monasteries in turn, — just as pique or fancy moved him '°. The 
 consequence was, that this half-fixed, half-voluntary, tithe became a source 
 of endless trouble and anxiety to the clergy; until they became strong 
 enough, in the twelfth century, to organize the matter more firmly '". 
 Besides which, a trust-fund of so very floating and arbitrary a character 
 would always be in peril of a partial, or even complete, reversion into lay 
 hands (infeudation), — where it would lose its sacred character, and become 
 subject to ordinary feudal conditions ^'. 
 
 Hence, no doubt, arose two phenomena which we meet with at every 
 step during this whole period, down to about a.d. i 200 ; and which have 
 often been singularly misimderstood. The fir&t is, that Councils, Witena- 
 gemots, and other mixed assemblies, at this epoch, are found to be per- 
 petually binding themselves afresh, and binding all those over whom they 
 have influence, to a better fulfilment of their acloiowledged duties in this 
 matter. It is not that they are passing 'laws,' and (as it were) 'Acts of 
 Parliament,' on the subject ^^. It is not ' the State,' which is here imposing 
 new taxes. Else, why repeat the matter over and over again, through long 
 centuries ? But it is individual landholders, who have long recognised and 
 long — in a confused and irregular way — fulfilled the duty of assigning their 
 ' tithes ' to sacred uses, now solemnly and publicly binding themselves to its 
 regular fulfilment. It is an emperor, like Charlemagne, enjoining his lieges' 
 attention to an acknowledged duty ; ' unusquisque suam decimam donet ^^ ' : 
 or it is a prince, like Ethelwolf, freeing from all regal exactions and sei"vice, 
 the ' tithe ' which he had already given, either to the Church or to his own 
 theigns ; . . ' ut decimam partem terrarum per regnum nosti'um non soliim 
 Sanctis ecclesiis darem, verum etiam et ministris nostris [my theigns] in 
 eodem constitutis, in perpetuam Uberlatem habere concessimus, — ita ut talis 
 donatio . . permaneat ab omni regali servitio et omnium ssecularium absoluta 
 servitute. . . Ista autem est libertas, quam Ethelwolfus Rex suo ministro 
 Hunsige . . concessit, in loco qui dicitur Worthi.' (Haddan and Stubbs, 
 Docutnenls, &c. iii. 63S.) And that this ' freedom ' was a concession of some 
 value, appears from a similar grant only thirty-eight years before, from 
 Kenulf King of Mercia to the Bishop of Worcester : ' liberam quoque istam 
 terram conscripsi ab omnibus aliis . . servitutibus, prsster tantum his tribus 
 causis (i) arcis, (2) pontis constructione, (3) et expeditione [the well-known 
 
 " Selden, xi. i. ii. 28. 
 
 2» Ibid. X, 2 ; p. 289. ^^ Miall, Tide-Deeds, passim. 
 
 ^' Ibid. xiii. I. Adelung, G/ossflMum, ^=' Ap. Selden, vii. 2. 
 
444 APPENDIX N. 
 
 ' trinoda necessitas.'] . . Propter hanc liberlatem, episcopus et ejus familia 
 mihi tradiderant >dv maneria.' (Ibid. p. 585.) Yet it is from such grants 
 as these, that modern writers have argued that tithe is a ' tax,' imposed by 
 the State ; and not a ' rent-charge,' of primaeval antiquity, consecrated 
 frequently by private liberality to Church purposes. Although Selden him- 
 self, from whom all their facts are taken, explains the matter thus : ' this 
 freedom of that time, you must (it seems) so interpret, that every man 
 henceforth was to be valiied in all subsidies and taxes according only to 
 the nine parts of his lands and profits : and the profits of the tenth, being 
 due to the Church, were both in his and their hands discharged from all 
 payment and taxes whatsoever.' (Selden, on Tithes, viii. 4, p. 208, ed. 161S.) 
 
 The second phenomenon which meets us, at this early period, before a.d. 
 1200, is the constant and reiterated effort of the clergy to transfer tithe- 
 giving from its true basis of a human and voluntary assignment — often 
 accompanied by a collateral assignment of precisely similar ' tithes * to 
 secular persons and purposes'-", — to what seemed a safer basis ; viz. that of 
 a divine obligation founded on the Old Testament. It was very natural 
 that they should do so. And amid the universal ignorance of those times, 
 both on historical and on theological questions, the argument vi'as (no 
 doubt) advanced and accepted in perfect good faith. And so — after a 
 divergence of some two thousand years — the two streams of the history of 
 Tithe, the heathen or secular and the Jewish or sacred, flow into the same 
 channel once more. The strong hand of Innocent III, and the enthusiastic 
 feelings engendered by the religious revival of the thirteenth century, com- 
 bine towards the same result. And Tithe becomes, at last, a settled, sacred, 
 and customary rent-charge upon property ; and ecclesiastical tenures take 
 their place among the other benejicia (or fee-ods) of the feodal system -', 
 of which they are to this day, to borrow a convenient word, a 'survival-**,' 
 — the last remains of property held in conditional, not absolute, possession ; 
 and enjoyed as ' fee ' for service done to the community. 
 
 (5) But this settlement did not remain very long unchallenged. The 
 heated feelings of the thirteenth century soon gave rise to the mendicant 
 orders. And the friars, loudly vaunting their new ' voluntary system,' 
 severely shook the orderly parochial arrangements, and began to whisper 
 the highly suggestive question, whether the established assignment of 'tithe' 
 were, after all, a final one. (Selden, Tithes, viii. 4.) Ere long, the same 
 question was repeated, above a whisper, by Wicliffe and the Lollards. 
 
 ^^ Selden, Review, p. 4 78 (ou chap, of Revenues, p. 129. 
 vli.) '"' Tylor, Prim. Culture, i. 64. 
 
 ^' Guizot, OV/7/z. iii. 25; V^\i\,Hist. 
 
APPENDIX N. 
 
 445 
 
 (Lechler, Wiclif, p. 419.) And at length, in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, it was spoken quite openly ; and the too stiffly organized paro- 
 chial system gave way under the increasing pressure. A period of absolute 
 confusion followed. And at the Restoration, in 1660, the old system was 
 established once more ; and was supported by the whole power of the State. 
 Within the present century, the important and beneficial measure of ' tithe- 
 commutation' was passed by Parliament, in 1836. And now at last, in 
 1871, it is proposed to throw recklessly away this precious heritage of a 
 remote antiquity ; to secularize what, ' when devotion grew firmer, and most 
 lay-men of fair estate desired the country residence of some chaplains . . . 
 for Christian instruction among them, their families, and adjoining tenants ' 
 . . ' passed from the patron hy his gift, not otherwise than freehold by his deed 
 and livery ;' (Selden, Tithe, pp. 259, 373 ;) and to sink into the indistinguish- 
 able and already excessive mass of mere ' private property' and ' capital,' this 
 last relic of the second and deeply interesting stage in the history of ' pro- 
 perty,' '^ when it had ceased to be held ' in common,' and was held ' in fee,' 
 — with conditions of service attached. 
 
 Paul, Hist, of Revenues, pp. 16, 22, 
 

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INDEX. 
 
 America, unlike England, 119, 298. 
 Apostles' Creed, 309. 
 Arabic Canons of Niceea, 157. 
 Baptismal Regeneration, 233, 263. 
 Baptists, Ritual of, 213. 
 
 Tenets of, 212, 242. 
 
 Budhism, xiii, 303. 
 Bull of Pius v., 196. 
 Calvinism, 253, 261, 265, 374. 
 Cambridge, centre of Puritanism, 56. 
 Canon law, 142. 
 Church, idea of the, 11. 
 Clementines, the, 172. 
 Coercion in religion, evils of, 31. 
 Commonvi'ealth, confusions of, 107, 
 
 118, 226. 
 Comprehension, attempts at, 90. 
 Confirmation, 237, 239. 
 Democracy and the Church, 108. 
 Dissensions in the Primitive Church, 
 
 24. 
 Dissent, vrhat it is, 7. 
 Donatism, 220. 
 Dutch Anabaptists, 71, 211. 
 Eighteenth century, 289, 343. 
 Ejectments, the (1662), 7, 67. 
 Episcopacy, history of, 28, 167, 406. 
 Europe, in sixteenth century, 51, 55- 
 Evangelical alliance, 411. 
 Five Independents executed, 73, 79. 
 
 Free Churches want ' Freedom,' 99. 
 General Council, appeal to, 189, 201, 
 
 416. 
 Gratry, Pere, 161. 
 Grostete, Bishop, 181, igg. 
 Independents, tenets of, 65, 72, 92, 
 
 125- 
 
 'Establishment' proposed, 
 
 87, 89- 
 
 worship of, 104. 
 
 Infallibility, 192, 206. 
 
 ' Inner Light,' the, 261. 
 
 Jesuits, the, xvi, 162. 
 
 Judicial Committee, the, 412, 438. 
 
 Lady Huntingdon's connexion, 376. 
 
 Latin inaptitude for Theology, 325, 
 
 336. 
 Lay-offices in the Church, 42. 
 Legend, growth of, 175. 
 ' Marprelate ' Tracts, 76. 
 Martyrdom defined, 79. 
 Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 197. 
 Monasteries, 85, 349. 
 Montanism, 219. 
 Moravians, 357, 376. 
 Old-Catholics, xvi, 160, 387, 424. 
 Papal forgeries, 145. 
 Parker, Archbishop, character of, 61. 
 ' Pilgrim Fathers,' 80. 
 Presbyterians, tenets of, 121. 
 
448 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Primacy of Rome, 177. 
 Puritans, description of, 54. 
 
 , theory of tlie Ctiurcli, 46, 63, 
 
 216. 
 Quakers, tenets of, 252, 258, 280. 
 
 , worship of, 272. 
 
 Refugees at Frankfort, &c., 49. 
 Religious hysteria, 369. 
 Romanists, tenets of, 139, 202. 
 
 , worship of, 104. 
 
 Salters' Hall controversy, 226, 296. 
 Science and Rehgion, 316, 403. 
 Spener's societies, 347. 
 Spiritual Communion, 275. 
 
 Superstition, 179. 
 
 Tithes, history of, 420. 
 
 Toleration, 43, 69, 77, 82, 255, 295. 
 
 300. 
 Theories, use of, 307. 
 Transubstantiation, 139. 
 Union desired by all, 119, 187, 408. 
 Unitarian Prayer-book, 130, 310. 
 
 tenets, 298, 300. 
 
 Vatican Council, 200. 
 Voluntary system, 97, 100, 118, 415. 
 Wesleyans, tenets of, 360, 386, 390. 
 Working classes and the Church, 19. 
 Worship, united, 430.