Hdyvxpdcn Nhe56 H2 copy 2 A LETTER TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD JOHN RUSSELL, HER MAJESTY 9 FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY. REV. R. D. HAMPDEN, D.D. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. LONDON : B. FELLOWES, LUDGATE STREET. 1847. My Lord, It is indeed painful to an honest mind, to have to answer a charge of unfaithfulness to a high trust. And what else is the charge alleged by certain par ties, who are reviving a clamour against me, and agitating the Clergy with their jealousies and alarms, but that of unfaithfulness to my engagements to the Church of which I am a minister ? If a person holds not in sincerity the doctrines of the Church to whose ministry he has been called — if he is nomi nally and professedly in the Church, but in heart dissents from, or is indifferent about, its faith ; what is this, which is the substance, as far as ap pears to me, of what has been advanced against me, but an imputation of the grossest dereliction of religious and moral duty 1 In ordinary circumstances, I might treat such an attack with silent contempt. But there are occa sions which demand a sacrifice of feeling. And the present appears to be such an occasion; when by thus publicly addressing your Lordship, I shall at once discharge a duty to Her Most Gracious Majesty, and to yourself, my Lord, the First Minister of the Crown, and may hope, at the same time, by a simple statement of the truth, to tranquillize the minds of humble and earnest Christians, who may have been perplexed by the impassioned appeals made to them against me. It is, as I have said, a painful trial, to have to en counter such most groundless, but most unrelent ing enmity. After a devoted service in the ministry of the Gospel for more than a quarter of a century, of which the last twelve years have been divided between the labours of the Divinity Chair and Pa rochial ministrations, I might well be excused from replying to accusations which my whole life, passed under the eyes of men, and in the presence of that All-Seeing God who tries the heart, effectually re futes, — from being required to deny having im pugned those vital truths of our holy faith, which it has been my constant study to uphold and enforce. Alas, my Lord, how commonly in the jealousies and heart-burnings of the polemical spirit is that precept of the Divine Law, " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour," carelessly violated ! The promotion of certain views, or the depression of an antagonist, is too often regarded by the corrupt human heart, as a warrant for any excess of uncharitableness, and even for untruth. If ever there was a time when the circumstances of the Church presented a temptation to this 3 offence, it is the present. The Church has now for many years been grievously troubled, by what is familiarly known as the Tractarian movement — an organized agitation for the purpose of secretly revolutionizing the Church of this country, for un- protestantizing it, as it has been said by some of the party, or " developing the Catholic principle latent in it." With what effect the movement has been working, is but too evident. Not only have numbers been seduced from the Church of their fathers to the corrupt Church of Rome; — but among such many even of the Clergy, forgetting their ordi nation vows, and their sacred obligation to the Church which carried them to Christ in Baptism, have led the way in the apostacy. Nor has the evil been stopped by these open secessions. Many re main among us, deeply infected with the same prin ciples which have carried others openly to Rome. These consist chiefly of the younger Clergy, ready, as late events have shewn, to respond to the call of their leaders, and to throw the weight of their numbers into any question of high interest to their party. In such a state of things, no one's theological or pastoral cha racter is safe. Any one who is adverse to the designs of the party, and whom it may be worth while to attack, cannot expect to escape. No thing is easier in such times of excitement, than to collect a number of signatures of persons whose names are already registered with their leaders, and a2 to make such persons zealous and active men, as they are for the most part eager to prove their chivalry in the cause, centres of agitation in different parts of the country. Nor is it anything strange or novel, my Lord, which is now happening. From the Scriptures we learn, how the Apostles themselves, following their Lord in his persecutions, were reviled and evil-entreated by their brethren. In our own country, the learned author of the " Defence of the Nicene Faith," Bishop Bull, had to com plain of a charge of Socinianism brought against him by a brother minister of the Church. And before him even the excellent Hooker had to de fend his opinions delivered in Sermons at the Temple against the exceptions of an opponent from the same pulpit ; and at a later period of his life, amidst the simplicity and blamelessness of his daily conversation, to resist a scandalous attack on his character which nearly bowed him to the grave. And thus Archbishop Tillotson com plains, in one of his Sermons, of the evil tongues of his days. "I know not," he says, "how it comes to pass, but so it is, that every one that offers to give a reasonable account of his Faith, and to establish Religion upon rational principles, is pre sently branded for a Socinian But if this be Socinianism, for a man to inquire into the grounds and reasons of Christian Religion, and to endea vour to give a satisfactory account why he believes it, I know no way, but that all considerate, inquisi- tive men, that are above fancy and enthusiasm, must be either Socinians or Atheists." Let me, then, I would say, my Lord, be in structed and encouraged by these and other like examples to submit with patience to His will, who, in the mystery of His providence has appointed for good, that I, humble servant of His as I am, should pass through this ordeal of calumny. What is most afflicting in it is, that I am accused of detracting from His glory and the infinite merits of His blessed Atonement. He knows, however, that I have not done so. I am solaced and strengthened with this thought. I hope, there fore, calmly to address myself to the objections which my importunate adversaries, with all the vehe mence of an electioneering contest, are recklessly throwing out against me. Let me endeavour to silence that conflict of feelings within my own heart, which so unmerited and so base a charge naturally excites. First, then, my Lord, I most solemnly deny the scandalous imputation. As an honest man, I say, I do not, and never did for one moment of my life, in thought or word, hold or maintain any other doctrine respecting our Lord's most holy Person and His blessed Work of Redemption, than that which is plainly set forth from Scripture in the Articles and Formularies of our Church. I hold, too, and have ever held most firmly, the full doctrine of the Holy Trinity, as stated on the same authority in the same documents of the Church. Nay, I go on to say, with the utmost confidence of my sincerity, that I have on every occasion exerted myself to defend these Holy Truths, which I believe not with a mere assent, but really love and delight in. My conviction has been, that no sermon, no exposition of religious doctrine, or exhortation to religious conduct, could have any unction of spiritual instruction, any living power to teach or to persuade, which did not derive its strength from these holy and lovely truths, which describe to us God the Father giving his only-begotten Son, his co-equal in Majesty and Power, "to the end that all that be lieve in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life," — God the Son giving Himself in love, taking on Him our nature, and born into the world, living and dying for us men, and for our salvation, — God the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, the Third Person in the Blessed Trinity, sent down with holy comfort from the Saviour to in struct and guide the Church through all ages. These great revealed verities, no mere opinions collected by speculative reasoning, but the manifest indisputable teaching of Scripture, without which Scripture would not be what it is — I have, then ever taught and enforced both as most certain and as most necessary to be believed. It is not my teaching, whatever may have been attempted to be shewn by prejudiced adversaries, that the doctrines of Scripture or any other of its great fundamental truths, such as Original Sin* Justification by Faith, preventing and assisting Grace, the efficacy of the Two Sacraments insti tuted by our Lord, are nothing more than theories formed by the human mind on the text of Scrip ture. It is a very great mistake to suppose that I have ever meant this, in what I have said of the force of Theory, in my Bampton Lectures or else where. It is one thing, to endeavour to unfold the theories on which a particular phraseology em ployed in the systematic statement of divine truths has been framed and adapted to its purpose ; and quite another thing, to state that the truths them selves which that phraseology expresses are mere theories, or mere opinions, or probable conclusions, having no positive certainty in them. This latter misconstruction belongs to those who have taken it up. It is not mine. It has no warrant in anything that I have said in theological discussion. My Bampton Lectures, indeed, were not written for popular reading, but for such as should come to the study of the subject, with some previous knowledge both of theological questions and of Ancient Philosophy. It is no wonder, then, that they should be open to misrepresentation to ordi nary readers. I should be much concerned, if, from any unskilfulness in the use of words, I should have given rise to misapprehension. I would not assert, however, that I have always succeeded in conveying 8 my thoughts exactly. But I am not, at any rate, to be blamed for some mistakes, or rather perver sions of my meaning. For this I know, that argu* ments which I have advanced in support of the truth, have, in many instances, by an artful selection of detached words, been represented as upholding the very errors which they -refuted. But whatever has been done, by hostile and un- candid expositors, in the way of perverting or obscuring my meaning, I have the satisfaction of knowing that many honest and intelligent minds have apprehended my true intent, and appreciated my labours. Thus, for instance, this or that person would not, or could not see, that it is a strong argument for the truth of the Catholic doc trine of the Trinity, that even heretics (as I have urged) have in some sense professed it, however imperfectly and injuriously, thus acknowledging the truth amidst their vain attempts to corrupt and destroy it, unconsciously bearing testimony to its existence in disputing it ; and the truth itself shewing its vital strength in surviving their attacks. Many such instances of cruel misrepresentation I could allege. But I will not weary your Lordship's patience. Let me, however, be suffered to say, what I would fain have remembered only in thanks giving to Him whose grace enables us to think or do anything good, that I have reason to bless God, that in one instance at least I have not laboured in vain ; but that a person, now a pious and distinguished minister of Christ, was confirmed and fixed, by what I have advanced on the subject of the Trinitarian controversies, in the true faith of that Holy Mystery. And does not this one fact more than outweigh the assertions of a thousand anonymous writers in newspapers, copying one another, and repeating the original false statement of the first mistaken or misrepresenting commentators ? Most sincerely, then, and most firmly do I believe that there is but one Catholic Faith — one invariable standard of orthodox truth ; and that all departures from this, consequently, are Errors of Doctrine, and Corruptions of the Faith, and not that " form of sound words" which God has set forth to us in his Revelation. I challenge my impugners to disprove this asser tion of my belief ; not by sophistical constructions — not by garbled quotations, such as the public has been too familiar with from their hands — not by mere verbal inferences — not by the false colouring of their own minds, or by the shadows cast from their own theories ; but from plain and direct asser tions qualified and explained, as all assertions must be, by the context, and other passages, and the general tenour of my writings. They have hitherto kept certain portions of my publications as much as possible out of view. They have continued re peating certain sentences, or half-sentences, as if these were so many oracular dicta of mine, striking 10 ever on the same note which they once found to awaken a chord in the minds of the uninformed or the prejudiced, skilfully, indeed, as tacticians, but most dishonestly as men. Let them, then, aban don these mere party-polemics. Let them fairly shew, if they can, where I have expressed the shghtest doubt of the truth or of the importance of the great Christian Doctrines which are the foun dation of our Faith. I may appeal to any of my Ser mons, preached or published (I include, in this re ference, a volume of Parochial Sermons, published by me in 1828, and since reprinted), and to every course of Lectures delivered by me, whether public or private, as Regius Professor of Divinity. But, my Lord, whilst I fully believe that there is but one Catholic Faith, I am not required by this per suasion, to treat disrespectfully, or uncharitably, all that differ from us, or that conscientiously declare that they, for their part, cannot learn that Faith from the Bible. I would do nothing to encourage dissent from the Church. It grieves me, Wherever I see it. But at the same time, I am for a full toleration, if dis sent be only open and avowed ; a toleration, that is, extending not only to the grant of civil privileges to dissenters, but to the equitable and kind consideration of their statements and arguments, as well as of their feelings. I would try to win them over — I would not exasperate them. I would not presume to sur render God's Truth, which is not mine to give away, or to call error and falsehood by the sacred name of 11 Truth. But as for candid and indulgent considera tion for the persons of those who are in error, this is in every man's power, and is every Christian man's bounden duty to give. This, then, I would not with hold even from those who have departed the farthest from the true faith. If, accordingly, on any occasion I have ventured to call Unitarians, Christians, surely this must be un derstood in the wide charitable sense of the term — not in that strict sense in which it belongs to a be liever in the Divinity and the Blessed Atonement of our Lord, but in a sense not unlike that in which it is used in our Liturgy, when we pray for " all who profess and call themselves Chris tians," that they "may be led into the way of truth, &c." What I may have said, then, in cha rity of the persons, or of the modes of reasoning, of misbelievers, cannot in any fairness be understood as indulgence to their tenets. I repeat, I not only regard the Doctrines of the Holy Trinity, and ofthe Incarnation and Atonement of our Lord, and the Sal vation of Man through Faith only m Him, with the truths arising out of, and closely connected with, these great Doctrines, as most certain, but further, as vi tally important to be believed, in order to a saving faith, and a right practical religion. So intimate^ indeed, I conceive, is the connexion between a sound Theology and a right religious conduct, that they alone can properly be said to have a right Religion who have a sound Theology. Still, the two terms, Theo logy and Religion, admit of being separately defined, 12 according to the proper notion of each. For so St. James speaks of " pure religion, and unde- filed before God ;" pointing out the practical moral duties, the charity and purity of life, wherein it consists. Surely no one can justly suppose from this, that St. James dispenses with a sound Theo logy, as the basis of that Religion which he de scribes. Nor ought I to have been construed as divorcing a sound Theology and a right Religion. I have insisted, indeed, my Lord, constantly on the Supremacy of Scripture as our Rule of Faith. And what consistent member of the Church of England does not ? But this very assertion of the Supremacy of Scripture has been taken up invidiously by some, as if I rejected altoge ther the Authority of the Church, and undervalued its importance as a visible institution of Christ's religion. This, however, cannot by any means be justly said of me. I have ever taught that a defer ential respect to the Authority of the Church, as it is laid down and explained in the formularies of our Church, was most incumbent on Christians; though certainly not that high and transcendant respect which is due to the Inspired Word alone. But the fact is that many of those who are now objecting to me, will be satisfied with no view on this subject, which is not virtually the same as that of Rome, — ascribing to the Church, not only an authority of order, such as is claimed in our Articles, but an absolute authority for propounding matters of faith, and requiring its decisions to be received with 13 unquestioning submission by its members. The Church, in their view, is not simply "the witness and keeper of Holy Writ," but the depository of revealed truth, the authoritative Interpreter of Scripture, without which, Scripture is conceived by them to speak an uncertain sense. But what is this but to suppose, that the Church is endued with an infallible authority ? For, unless it can pronounce infallibly, how can the Christian be required to receive its decisions as divine truths obligatory on his faith ? This notion, however, of Church-authority will be found to be the root of the objections of this class of theologians to the teaching of all who require that all doctrines should be drawn from Scripture. With them, the reference to Scripture is an "heretical principle;" because it holds up the authority of Scrip ture over that of the Church in all questions of doc trine. Hence their animosity against all who thus establish the articles of faith, and their unchecked boldness in repeating charges of heresy against any confession of faith, however sound in itself, which claims to be simply scriptural in its authority. A person in their view is no believer, who does not hold their " Church-principles" — that is, who does not build his faith on the Church in their sense. But, my Lord, I must notice, before I conclude, the hollow pretence of those who are resting their objections to me on the statute of the University, passed in 1836. 14 I think it will be found, that some of those who are urging this point, were the most active instruments themselves in carrying that illegal measure. Men are naturally unwilling to acknowledge their wrong. More is the honour due to those excellent persons who have not wished that day of excitement to be remembered against me, but would now gladly erase the record of it. But it is distressing to see that there are others who would fall back on their own wrong, and would take a false advantage from it, to justify themselves s to themselves, and to the public. That statute, however, I would observe, has been virtually repealed, by two subsequent proceedings in the University ; in the first place, by the New Theological Statute of 1842, which placed me, as Regius Professor, at the head of a newly-constituted Board of Theological Examiners; and then, in the same year, by the just act of the chief Authori ties of the University, with whom rests the initiative of every measure, the Board of Heads of Houses and Proctors, who unanimously proposed a form of sta tute for rescinding it. So far, then, as the chief responsible Body of the University is concerned, I am relieved of the burthen of that statute ; though the Tractarian party succeeded, with a very reduced majority, however, in throwing out the measure in Convocation. And is not the history of that statute perfectly understood ? How can any venture to put it for- 15 ward now, when by such an act they are implicating themselves with the theology and the spirit of its chief promoters ? Every one knows that the editors of the " Tracts" and others following in their wake, were the great instruments in the work of calumny on which it was founded. A pamphlet, full of gross misrepresentation of my writings, the production of Mr. Newman, was circulated through the country. And the calumnies thus spread abroad, concurred with the great political excite ment of the times, in obtaining a majority against me ; not, however,; even then, until after a repulse on the first assault by the firm and spirited in tervention of the Proctors. How then can any wish to sympathize, or identify themselves with the chief actors of that day ? Where is Mr. Newman now, let me ask, the principal mover then ? What are the rest doing — his old associates whom he has left — but training others to imbibe the spirit of their great leader, reluctant as they may be to follow him throughout. With what real truth, therefore, can it be said, that, as certain persons seem to take an unenviable pleasure in repeating, I am under " the censure of the University ? " I am not, my Lord, in truth. In fact, the statute referred to no opinions or doctrines whatever, but only to the manner of treating theo logical subjects. When indeed a censure of the University is passed, certain propositions are se lected from the author's writings, and the decree 16 of Convocation condemns those particular propo sitions. This was done recently in the case of Mr. Ward, the author of the " Ideal of the Christian Church." Nothing of the kind was done in my case : nothing specific was ever alleged against me. Certainly, whatever may have been the first de sign of the statute referred to, it has had no effect. It has been practically a dea'd letter. I have con tinued to preach and lecture in the University, with out any diminution of attendance or respect on account of it. No Divinity Professor before me, I believe, has been better attended, or received more marks of confidence from his hearers. Then, my Lord, if further witnesses are needed to my character as a Christian minister, let the thousands who have heard my Sermons and my Lectures speak for me. Again, let any of my parishioners, who have known my manner of life and conversation now for twelve years past and my whole ministry among them, in the Church, in the school, and from house to house be called to give their evidence. But let not the public be deluded into a rash and false judg ment by anonymous slanderers in newspapers. Nor let an undue weight be attributed to meetings convened by circulars sent through the country, under the instigation of a few individuals, who are, for the most part, well-known adversaries, not only of me, but of all that is Protestant in our Church. 17 I trust, my Lord, I have not exceeded that re serve, which becomes me in addressing your Lord ship. I am sure you will not wonder at my feeling strongly on an occasion of such solemn interest to me. I have the honour to be, My Lord, With every sentiment of respect, Your Lordship's greatly obliged and faithful servant, R. D. HAMPDEN. Christ Church, Dec. !>. 1847.