Bla.ch{ord Mhg57 B5 A SHORT APPEAL MEMBERS OF CONVOCATION, THE PROPOSED CENSURE No. 90. BY FREDERIC ROGERS, FELLOW OF ORIEL. LONDON: JAMES BURNS, 17, PORTMAN STREET; AND J. H. PARKER, OXFORD. 1845. In a Convocation to be holden on the 13th inst at One o'clock, the following Form of Decree -will be submitted to the House : — " Whereas it is the declared purpose of this University to maintain and inculcate the true faith of the Gospel, and to this end it is enjoined in the Statutes of the University that every student shall be instructed and examined in the Thirty-nine Articles, and shall subscribe to them on various occasions (Tit. II., sect. 2; Tit. III., sect. 2'\ Tit- IV., sect. II., §3, §4; Tit. IX., sect. II., §3, sect. V. §3; Tit. XVII., sect. III., § 2); and whereas in the 90th number of the Tracts for the Times, entitled ' Remarks on certain passages in the Thirtv-nine Articles,' modes of interpretation were suggested, and have since been advocated in other publications purporting to be written by Members of the University, by which sub scription to the said Articles might be reconciled with the adoption of Roman Catholic errors; — It is hereby declared and decreed, That modes of interpretation such as are suggested in the said Tract, evading rather than explaining the sense of the Thirty-nine Articles, and reconciling subscription to them with the adoption of the errors which they were designe'd("t5 counteract, defeat the object, and are inconsistent with the due observance", of the afeove-mentioned Statutes." Delegites'-room, B. P. SYMONS, Feh._4 1845. VICE-CHAMCELLOE. [Requisition signed by 474.] JmadKh A SHORT APPEAL. Gentlemen, You were to have been called upon to sanction, on the 13th of February, the imposition on the University of a new Test. This, in. deference, I suppose, partly to the law of the land, partly to public opinion, has been abandoned. But a substitute has been found. Drs. Faussett and Ellerton, with 474 other gentlemen, have recommended, and sixteen Heads of Houses require of Convocation a censure of the alleged offence, now four years old, committed by Mr. New man, in the publication of Tract 90. I will venture to suggest some reasons why you should vote against it. First, it is an indirect reproduction of the Test which it has been found necessary to withdraw. Till that withdrawal, nobody talked of dragging forth Mr. Newman. In fact, there was no possible occasion for it. Mr. Ward's " Ideal " is no republication of No. 90, and reflects no responsibility on that Tract. It is a book written in a very different spirit, on a wholly different subject. There was nothing, and there is nothing, to suggest the notion of linking them in a common condemnation, except the obvious possibility of turning upon them both one popular cry. Till a week ago nobady -thought of doing so. Then the most effective part of the Hebdomadal measure was reluctantly withdrawn, and almost simultaneously arose an agitation to censure Mr. Newman. I would ask you how far this new expedient escapes the objections which were fatal to its predecessor ? I presume that the substantial reasons for reprobating that Test were these : — 1. That it was not legally competent to the University to impose any sense or subscription besides that which the law determines. 2. That the University was not prepared to commission the Heads of Colleges, or any one else, to clear the University of supposed erroneous opinions, by a course of expulsion or exclusion. It is hardly questionable that the proposed University cen sure will be used for both these purposes. Tract 90 is already so used, with more or less success. Dr. Hawkins, one of the leading promoters of these measures, cannot object to my alluding to the fact, that he certainly endeavours to render its abjuration a condition of admission to Holy Orders — to Fellowships — to Preferments— to employment in the University ; and this on the alleged ground of its condemna tion by the Hebdomadal Board, and in Bishops' Charges, If the attempt is not always successful, it is, in some measure, from want of authority. Some such authority you have been once very unsuccessfully asked to supply, and you are now asked again. The vote which is required of you is plainly calculated to be employed, first, as an authoritative approval of the present irregular and unauthoritative exclusion ; and next, if it should prove necessary, as a ground (and it is no unnatural one) for the more stringent measures necessary to make that exclusion complete and inevitable. If the present vote pronounces Mr. Newman's sense of the Articles inad missible, powers will soon be found, and if not found, you will be soon asked for more, to " exterminate and banish" it from the University. Let us see how the structure of the condemnation bears out this anticipation. After a preamble reciting the Statutes which impose subscription, and alluding to the attempt to reconcile it with " the adoption of Roman Catholic errors, ' it " declares and decrees " — " That modes of interpretation such as are suggested in the said Tract, " evading, rather than explaining, the sense of the Thirty-nine Articles, " and reconciling' subscription to them, with the adoption of the errors " which they were designed to counteract, defeat the object, and are incon- " sistent with the due observance of the above-mentioned Statutes." Observe the last words of this "decree." They constitute a new academical offence. They declare certain modes of interpretation to be inconsistent, not with the Articles, but " with the due observance of the above-mentioned Statutes " requiring subscription,— Statutes which, as we may soon be reminded, it is the duty of the University authorities to enforce. But this offence, " thus declared and decreed," they leave almost wholly undefined. It it not a specific doctrine, — a specific interpretation, a specific mode of interpretation which is to become unstatutable, — "modes of interpre tation such as are suggested in the said Tract :" — this is the definition of an offence which a learned University is asked to impose upon her members, — with which she proposes to arm her authorities. As if the Legislature, two years ago, had declared treasonable " modes of addressing Irishmen such as are adopted by Mr. Daniel O'Connell." It is little to say that such a decree makes no pretence of distinguishing the erroneous from the many tenable or tolerable principles which a tract of 80 pages, written by no ordinary man, must surely contain. It goes much farther : it involves, or may be held to involve, in one vague and sweeping con demnation, all modes of criticism bearing any analogy to any part of those adopted by Mr. Newman. It may, I say : for, indeed, it is as loose as it is ensnaring ; and might, with equal propriety, be limited to the assertion that the Tract contains one or two strained applications of a true principle. But it is capable of any expansion. Having no determinate meaning, it may, in the hands of authority, and as against a weaker party, be made to mean anything. Under, and by occasion of, this decree, a Head of a College, if so inclined, will find no difficulty in compelling a nervous young man to undergo a detailed examination in the obnoxious Tract, which he has just been ordered to read for the purpose, before admission to any advantage of the University, — in exacting, practically without appeal, a minute abjuration of all state ments personally distasteful to himself, which may be con tained, or which he may consider to be " such as are " contained, in any part of a long and scientific controversial publication, — in pursuing the most inquisitorial inquiries into private belief, beginning, and, possibly, not ending with "modes of interpretation," from which a suspected person can scarcely extricate himself, without more adroitness than it is desirable to encourage. This case is not, at present, so wholly fictitious, that it can be dismissed as impossible. And I will ask, Is this credit able, and is it safe legislation ? I will ask, in spite of recent academical precedents, Is it not highly discreditable to the University, to shrink from defining what she condemns ? " Whereas it is the declared purpose of " this University to maintain and inculcate the true Faith of " the Gospel ; and to this end it is enjoined by the Statutes of " the University, that every student shall be instructed and " examined in the Thirty-nine Articles, and shall subscribe to " them on various occasions ;" is it creditable that, when these Articles are said to be in process of perversion, to be disingenuously explained into accordance with "Roman Catholic errors," the University should appear incompetent, or afraid, to specify what she condemns ; and, instead of in culcating the true Faith, and instructing every student in her Articles, should merely confine herself to bidding them avoid all that savours of Mr. Newman ? Are we not doing the Hebdomadal Board more than justice in saying that their Statute is more like the cry of a silly mother, than the sen tence of a learned University ? Is it not due to those under authority, that they should not be subjected to its arbitrary exercise in times when the per sons entrusted with it may not uncharitably be thought a good deal excited ? Is it not due to the person authoritatively censured (again I am quite aware I am trenching on late precedents), that a definite issue should be joined, a charge brought, against which it is possible to set up a defence? Are not those who play the judge bound to take on them selves the responsibility of that office — to pledge themselves to the contradictory of that which they condemn ? And, finally, is a popular, and therefore probably ill-in formed feeling or clamour for condemnation (for this it is likely will be urged in other words) a reason for dispensing with — rather, when the people themselves are judges, is not the great reason for insisting upon— all the accessories and safe guards of justice ? But, putting credit out of the question, is the proceeding a safe one? It may harmonize with the views of some persons to get rid of a certain number of troublesome neigh bours, at whatever price. But are you prepared to join in this policy? If a non-resident, do you know the present tone and feelings of the University ? Do you know how much ability and energy is at present unemployed, or ill- employed, from the partial prevalence of this course ? — how much more must be still expelled from positions of influence, and, I will add, usefulness, if the intolerant system is to be carried through ? Are you prepared to create and con solidate a mass of active energetic hostility to the English Church (for this you will soon have) where at present there exists only a half= anxious half-hopeful dissatisfaction — equally available, at the least, for good or for evil ? True, between these persons and the Hebdomadal Board a struggle is going on — it would almost appear irreconcilable. But are you prepared to pledge the supreme authority of the University to the struggle, and to place in the hands of the Board the power, not to crush the opposite party — for you cannot crush a knot of clever and determined men — but to drive them out, not perhaps without sin to themselves, but certainly not without the deepest mischief to the English Church ? It is im possible to disguise from yourselves that this will be the almost immediate result, in case you place a formidable weapon of offence in weak, or angry, or injudicious hands. Will you place such a weapon in the hands of any party in Oxford? Grant that there are half a dozen persons who will go to Rome at all events : grant that it is time to drive them there, — it is yet to be remembered that arbitrary mismanagement may, without much difficulty, swell those six into six hundred. Does experience tell you that a fresh authority runs no risk of being mismanaged in Oxford ? You have a long line of policy before you. The Hebdomadal Board has been engaged upon new modes of pacifying Oxford, almost as long as Sir Robert Peel has been occupied with Ireland. Is the result encouraging? Does the ex perience of the last five years justify you in entrusting to those authorities new coercive powers, for the most delicate and dangerous operation of suppression? If you are one of those whose opinions compelled the withdrawal of the Test, you have at least answered some of these questions. You are not prepared for a system of " extermination ;" or, in consequence, for a course of fresh penalties and forfeitures. You, and those who think with you, have expressed your Avishes ; and, happily for the peace of the University, have been strong enough to secure acqui escence. Do not allow yourselves to be played with by a mere substitution of one firebrand for another. There remains the personal aspect of this matter. To those who deny that any personal censure is involved, I must point out that it is absolutely all that the vote can legitimately mean. It may be, and will be, strained into a test, and is therefore unfair and mischievous, but in strict construction it is no such thing. If it had been intended to censure any one specific doctrine— to declare any specific principle— to pledge Convocation to any specific sentiment, or "mode of interpre- tation" — to suggest any one. specific definite caution — thatf might have been done, and it should have been done. If the specification is obvious, it is so much the easier— if diffi cult, so much the more necessary. But it has not been done. No man need consider himself touched by the proposed vote so long as he contents himself with picking and choosing among the "modes of interpretation," of which no one is expressed for disapproval. Upon no part of the Tract, upon no reader, however favourable, of the Tract, can a censure or disclaimer be fastened;— upon none and nothing but the author, who alone must be identified with the unspecified " evasion." To condemn a whole, undivided work, is plainly to con demn, not tenets, but a writer. And I do not say that this mere personal censure is, under all circumstances, unjustifiable. It is an unassailable method, — the most safe, though the least useful or generous ; and for that reason it is often recom mended to persons who find themselves unequal to their position. But it should be looked in the face — it should be fully understood, — especially as it is the course uniformly pursued by those in authority at Oxford,, in the successive cases of Dr. Hampden, Dr. Pusey, Mr. Newman, Mr. Mac Mullen, and Mr. Ward. The proposed vote is personal, in fair construction ; and it may justly be added, that the formal act of the Convocation, if not legally interpreted by, yet does practically receive its colour from, the popular clamour. The vote is to be an answer to a cry — that cry is one of dis honesty; and this dishonesty the proposed resolution, as plainly as it dares to say anything, insinuates. On this part of the question, those who have been ever honoured by Mr. Newman's friendship, must feel it dangerous to allow themselves thus to speak. And yet they must speak ; for no one else can appreciate it as truly as they do. When they see the person whom they have been accustomed to revere as few men are revered, — whose labours, whose greatness, whose 8 tenderness, whose singleness and holiness of purpose they have been permitted to know intimately; — not allowed even the poor privilege of satisfying, by silence and retirement — by the relinquishment of preferment, position, and influence — the persevering hostility of persons whom they cannot help comparing with him — not permitted even to submit in peace to these irregular censures, to which he seems to have been even morbidly alive, but dragged forth to suffer an oblique and tardy condemnation ; called again to account for matters now long ago accounted for ; on which a judgment* has been pronounced, which, whatever others may think of it, he at least has accepted as conclusive — when they contrast his merits, his submission, his treatment, which they see or know, with the merits, the bearing, and the fortunes of those who are doggedly pursuing him, it does become very difficult to speak without sullying what it is a kind of pleasure to feel is his cause by using hard words, or betraying it by not using them. It is too difficult to speak, as ought to be spoken, of this ungenerous and gratuitous after-thought — too difficult to keep clear of what, at least, will be thought exaggeration — too difficult to do justice to what they feel to be undoubt edly true ; and I will not attempt to say more than enough to mark an opinion which ought to be plainly avowed, as to the nature of this procedure. But one word more. On this measure, so pregnant with consequences— so questionable in form — so necessarily painful on an individual — so dangerous to the peace of the Church and University — so similar in character to what the University had promptly and decisively negatived— on this measure Convocation is forced to decide on six days' notice. On this deeply interesting question — most momentous to those who even in part agree with the principles of Tract No. 90 — the Heads of Houses have not been ashamed to * I do not mean the paper put forth by the Heads of Houses, but the opinions delivered (as may be said) ex cathedrd, by so large a number of the Bishops. require that members of Convocation, of whom all are entitled to act as judges, — of whom many are distant— many busily employed — many havey&K^er read the Tract, or its author's explanation of it, — noneiiave read it with that pecu liar feeling of responsibility which ought to attach to those who are called on to pass a public condemnation — that these persons, so impeded by circumstances in forming or correcting their judgment, and now under the most exciting influ ences of alarm and suspicion, should hurry up to Oxford, without thought, without reconsideration, without allowing Mr. Newman's friends that opportunity of attempting to stem or moderate the torrent (it may be) of miscon ception or irrelevant anger, by which they are likely to be overwhelmed, — to pass a resolution, deserving, certainly, both from its structure and its substance, the deepest and most anxious forethought. You may not think, with me, that the vote is ungenerous in its circumstances, disingenuous in its form, most mis chievous in its results ; but surely you must think that it is impossible, with any regard to the ordinary rules of equity, or to the rights both of those who are in peril, as virtually accused, and of those who wish to be informed as judges, to allow it to pass on Thursday next. Your obedient Servant, FREDERIC ROGERS, FELLOW OF ORIEL. Temple, Saturday, Feb. 8th, 1845. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 08837 0672 v