Garbett hg57 84-5 G2 THE UNIVERSITY, THE CHURCH, AND THE NEW TEST. J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY, HAVE THE FOLLOWING WORKS BY THE REV. JAMES GARBETT. 1. A SECOND VOLUME OF PAEOCHIAL SERMONS. 2. THE TEMPLE BETTER THAN THE GOLD. A Sermon preached before the University of Oxford, Jan. 28th, 1844. 8vo., price Is. 6d. 3. PAROCHIAL SERMONS. 1 vol. 8vo., 12*. cloth. '* A volume of twenty-seven sermons, all of them admirable, and all deserving of recommendation for family reading." — Britannia. 4. A REVIEW OF DR. PUSEY'S SERMON; and the DOCTRINE of the EUCHARIST, according to the CHURCH of ENGLAND. 8vo. Price 6s. 5. DR. PUSEY and the UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. A LETTER to the Vice-Chancellor. Second edition, 8vo., Is. BAMPTON LECTURE, 1842. 6. CHRIST AS PROPHET, PRIEST, AND KING: being a Vindication of the Church of England from Theological Novelties, in Eight Lectures, preached before the University of Oxford, at Canon Bampton's Lecture, 1842. 2 vols. 8vo., 24s. cloth. " An able, learned, and valuable publication, the fruits of many years' study and reflection." — Christian Observer. " We have read these volumes with interest, and we hope with edification. We regard them as very valuable, on the grounds of their intrinsic merit." — Church man's Monthly Review. 7. RELIGIOUS EDUCATION A NATIONAL DUTY. Vincent. 1834. 8. THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. A SERMON preached on All Saints' Day. 8vo. price Is. cloth. Folthorp. 9. AN ESSAY ON WARBURTON'S DIVINE LEGA TION OF MOSES. 1830. 10. IS UNAUTHORIZED TRADITION ALWAYS SCHISMATIC AL? Second Edition. II. THE MIND, THE SENSE, AND THE SPIRIT. A Sermon preached at Chichester, 1844. 12. THE SECRET OF THE CHURCH'S POWER. A Sermon preached at the Primary Visitation of the Lord Bishop of Chichester, October 28, 1844. Published by request. Folthorp. 13. WHO DID SIN, THIS MAN OR HIS PARENTS* THAT HE WAS BORN BLIND ? A Sermon preached at Brighton for the Blind Asylum. Published by request. Folthorp. THE UNIVERSITY, THE CHURCH, AND THE NEW TEST. WITH REMARKS ON MR. OAKELEY'S AND MR. GRESLEY'S PAMPHLETS. A LETTER TO THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER. BY THE REV. J. GARBETT, PREBENDARY OF CHICHESTER, AND PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. LONDON: J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY; VINCENT, OXFORD. 1845. LONDON : PRINTED BY G. J. PA1MER, SAVOY STREET, STRAND. PREFACE. It would seem a bitter scoff, had it come from the pen of Voltaire, to say, that the Church of England was seriously debating, in the nineteenth century, the sense of those Articles, which, for three hundred years, she has made the condition of her ministry ; and was even gravely questioning whe ther they had any meaning at all ! That her holiest bishops, therefore, suffered mar tyrdom, because they had not the wit to discover that their own faith and that of their persecutors was the same, and that the Bible and the Mass might go together. Yet, such is now literally the case. You hear men, admitted to rank and emoluments, on the faith of subscription, professing their incapacity to understand the meaning of the formularies they have signed, or the sense in which the Church and Uni versity propound them. It is a melancholy symptom, and makes any heart ache, which still cherishes the Catholic-Pro- VI PREFACE. testant faith of our ancestors, the truth contained in Scripture, denned in the Articles, and developed in the Prayer-book, as the gift of God and the life of the soul ! If, when men say that the Articles are not Anti- Romanist, they mean, merely, that the Reformers sought only for God's truth, wherever it might be found, not rejecting Catholic and scripture veri ties, because Rome held them, I cordially agree with them ! But, if they mean, that the Articles do not con demn, as unscriptural, the specific Roman theology ; and do not exclude it, as irreconcilable with the purity of a Reformed Church, I think they pro pound as extravagant a proposition as ever came from the pen or lips of men ! Reason, history, tradition, common sense, convict it of absurdity. It does not deserve to be argued with. And this, in plain words, is the present ques tion — not what the Articles pronounce on the sa craments, or faith, or regeneration, or church go vernment ; not whether they are in favour of high views or low views of church authority ; but sim ply this : can a Romanist, with a safe conscience, sign them? Is Anglicanism, after all, another name for Romanism ? in fact, Popery with a reser vation ? If so, then was the Reformation a sin ! our mar tyrs, were schismatics and heretics; and we, ourselves are not only separated from the source of spiritual PREFACE. Vll life and unity, but we are enjoying the spoils of the true Church of Christ ! Robbers, and intruders into other men's possessions ! Then is our theology false, and the word of God, on which it is founded, a fond fable. But we know, that it is not so. The Church of England and her Articles are built on the eternal truth ! As touching Rome, they are, and ever have been, and I trust they ever will be, fidei certum et indubitatum criterium, whatever latitudinarians may attempt, or sophists persuade us ! Touching University subscription, the following extract (for which I am indebted to a friend) from a letter of the Chancellor in 1584, thirteen years after the first revision of the Articles by Convocation, may be interesting to those who know not how soon active measures were taken to exclude Romanists, by the test of the Articles, even at matriculation. For degrees, subscription had been required five years before. It furnishes a decisive answer to Mr. Oakeley, who has converted the early toleration extended to Papists, and the efforts at first made to persuade them to conformity, into a proof that the Articles, when originally framed, were not intended to exclude Romanists at all. After stating that through neglect of the old order of matriculation, " many Papists have hereto fore, and may hereafter, lurke among you, and be brought up by corrupt tutors, nether yelding to God nor to her Majestie, or your University, theare V1U PREFACE. bounden dutie, as hath of late yeares too much ap peared," he suggested, " that no scholler be ad mitted into any College or Hall of the Universitie, unless he be first before the Vice- Chancellor, sub scribe to the Articles of Religion agreed upon, take the oathe of the Queen's Majestie supremacy, sweare to observe the statutes," &c. Convocation accord ingly, required the oath to be administered to every person, on his matriculation. In the following pages I argue solely against the compatibility of real doctrinal Romanism with the Articles. With any propositions of the traditional and antiquarian school, short of this, I have nothing to do. I may think them Romanizing, and opposed to the spirit of Scripture and the Reformation, but this, being a private judgment, must not limit public formularies, and the liberty of con science. Men may quibble on minute points ; but the broad propositions, that the Articles are Anti- Romanist, and Anti-Arian, and Non^Calvin- istical, are incontrovertible. The doubts suggested about their meaning, and that of their composers, as developed in the state ments themselves, are simply subversive of all tests or dogmatic formulas, whatsoever. They are essentially sceptical principles, and strike not only at the root of articular, but of scriptural interpretation. Yet they who make Scripture the rule of faith should hesitate, before they question the power of clearly PREFACE. IX ascertaining the meaning of the apostles, as ori ginally expressed in the sacred documents. If they question it, as they seem to me to do, practi cally, by the doubts at present suggested on the Articles, they make an admission large enough to es tablish the whole doctrine of tradition. The true principle of interpretation in the Ar ticles is that applied by the Protestant churches to Holy Writ, and adapted to all written records without exception. That the meaning must be ascer tained by the laws of language and reason, and illus trated and confirmed by history and tradition. This principle can neither be enlarged nor limited with out danger to the Church ! If you enlarge it, you admit Romanism ; and, if you limit it, you in vade reason and conscience! Destroy the Articles of the Church of England, and you will do both. And then, instead of a Church, you will, under the same name, embrace two antagonist creeds, which will wage eternal war, on the ruins of our common Mother ! postscript. As the last sheet of this letter is ready for the press, I hear that the test is withdrawn. I am sorry for it, — and my conviction of the dangers of its rejection are too strong to permit me to modify what I have said. And, certainly, I, for one, SHALL REFUSE TO MAKE A VICTIM OF Mr. WARD, ON A PRINCIPLE WHICH CONVOCATION REJECTS. B A LETTER LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER. My dear Lord, I. In prefixing your name to the following re marks upon the great question which, at the pre sent moment, convulses the University and the Church, I beg most distinctly to exonerate you from the responsibility of any of the sentiments contained therein. Indeed, save so far as I may conclude from a general knowledge of the princi ples which guide you in our present deplorable divisions, I am unacquainted with your opinion on the specific points at issue. But the eminent posi tion which you so long held in the University, and now hold in the Church, your intimate acquaint ance with the principles and practice of academic law, and the christian moderation of your cha racter, render you competent, above most men living, to arbitrate upon them. Arid knowing, as b 2 I do, from experience, the obloquy and bitter mis representations which men incur, who, in perilous times, adopt a decided course, — however tempered by charity, and the earnest desire to do justice to their adversaries— I willingly address myself to one who is perfectly aware that I am swayed by no party politics, nor labour for anything else than the pre servation, in her integrity both of doctrine and discipline, of our common mother!* One thing is certain — to the most inattentive observer — that, whatever be the feelings, with which men, of opposite principles, regard the present condition of the Church ; whether with hope, or fear, or an undefined perplexity; no one, ten years since, could have prognosticated the confessed and im minent peril which now threatens its Protestantism. Or at any rate, no one could have divined the spe cific phase which the question has assumed, or the field on which the battle must be fought. Nay, at a much shorter interval, even four years ago, the usual fate of prophets of evil attended those who pre dicted astrugglewith Romanism within our own pale. Whether they drew their conclusions, thus beyond the scope of most men, from a more vigorous and logical intellect, or from a more accurate historical knowledge of mankind and of the Church, or from that sure instinct which the attentive study of Scrip ture confers even upon minds otherwise feeble, it was all the same, — the world at large was incre dulous. Yet, certainly, they have proved neither interested alarmists nor hair-brained enthusiasts. The most sombre predictions have been more than verified by the result. We mourn for the neces sity, but all that remains is to prepare for a struggle which is none of our own seeking, and which no moderation, or temporary compromise, or wise conciliations can either modify or avert. That, be the result what it may, it must be disas trous, and end in the further rending of the Church, I, for one, am deeply persuaded : the prospect is gloomy every way. There never was an occasion, therefore, in which turbulence or violence were more out of place, and where more earnest prayer should be offered to God, to overrule the passions of men to the preservation of the truth and the safety of the Church. Nay, there ought to be witliin us all a spirit of humiliation and repentance for those misdeeds, which, shared by all parties, have brought God's wrath upon us in the shape of schism and faction, real danger, and possible destruction. And whilst we abandon no principle hitherto sacred, it behoves us to abjure a licentious party spirit, and a fierce ungodly triumph over an adversary, rather than the Christian vindication of the truth. Any how, my Lord, however you contemplate itj — whether in its civil or ecclesiastical relations, whether in its present fruits or future possibilities, — the preservation or extirpation of the Protestant spirit of the great Church of England, is no small event. Even to the mere speculator upon moral and religious systems, it is impossible to exaggerate the interest and importance of the problem. That nothing less than this is really at issue, I trust that I shall be able satisfactorily to demonstrate ; and that, in the existing constitution of the Church and the University, no measure but the one pro posed, is calculated to meet the imminence of the danger, or the nature of the emergency. Any one adequately acquainted with the real condition of affairs, and the rise and spread of the insurgent theology, is perfectly aware that the whole policy of the University, even in its apparent decision and severity, has been simply defensive. Let party sophists, say what they will, it has provoked no contest, it has originated no aggression. I pro nounce, indeed, no opinion on the wisdom and ad- dressjwith which the governing body have constructed their successive measures to maintain the existing constitution of the University, and her relations to the Church, whose spirit dwells in her, and whose educational instrument she is. I only maintain that they have been, in the main, forced upon it by an irresistible necessity. It is an easy matter, of course, to cry " peace ;" to argue, what no one denies as a general truth, that the Church requires repose — that she is bleeding her life away, and must rest or die. And then it is easy too to throw the odium of disturbing it upon those who are only dis charging a solemn trust, and, by manly and constitu- tional instruments, repel proceedings, and condemn principles, which their promoters themselves, not only uphold as incapable of compromise, but pro claim to be revolutionary. I readily confess, indeed, that there have been times when this might have been a question ! Men might have said, once, that certain views were mis understood and strained beyond their legitimate conclusions, or that they were mere modalities, as Heylin speaks, questions of more or less, and not essential and fundamental differences, involving the being of a Protestant Church ! Illogical minds saw not the issues of principles as yet undeve loped ; and candid men, untrained in controversy, were deceived by a simulated moderation. But let us render justice to the innovating theology. This, at any rate, can no longer be imputed to it by friend or foe. To whatever charges the Roman izing party have rendered themselves amenable, there is now neither dissimulation nor concealment, compromise nor artifice. Over and above the evi dently frank and ardent nature of the man, dis dainful of half measures, and ready, in a certain chivalrous pugnacity of temperament, even to ex aggerate his own principles, for the excitement of defending them, Mr. Ward's book exhibits that satis faction which all parties whatever feel, at being able to dismiss concealment, and no longer to speak in parables. The new opinions draw breath, and hold .themselves up manfully, with no sign of their ancient timidity, or the bashfulness of double meanings. Mr. Oakeley's recent pamphlet* exhi bits the same tone. Though marked, I cannot but think, in its most meagre historical argument, by. infinite subtlety and management, it is here perfectly frank and manly. He demands the same length and breadth, within the Church, for Romanism to expand in, as Mr. Ward. The Articles cramp and stifle it and him ! This is a great advantage gained. No one need be deceived who can understand plain sen tences, and will take men at their word. There need no longer be any delicacy in calling these theologians Romanists, and their system Romanism. They not only do not decline, as a reproach, but they claim, as a distinction, an identification, in the main, with the stupendous and strong-com pacted system which is embodied in the Roman formulas, and the elaborate and subtle philosophy which is inseparable from it. And though, of course, as sagacious politicians, they refuse no aid from whatever quarter ; though they gladly accept it from those, who,irreconcileable to Rome, have yet long upheld them, as the maintainers and theorists of high Church authority, yet there is no class of opinions within the Church which the Romanizing theologians treat with so much contumely and aversion as this. The odium theologicum is only exacerbated by the apparent approximation to their own scheme. They reject, therefore, favourable constructions, as so many af- * Vide Oakeley, preface, p. xiii. fronts. The attempt, or supposed attempt, topiece out a doctrinal system by alternate fragments of Protes tantism and Catholicism, they treat as an intellec tual incapacity, or a weak, faint-hearted halting between two opinions, to be abhorred by earnest men, as a compromise, and by vigorous reasoners, as a fallacy. Any one, familiar with their later writings, must have been struck by this altered tone and spirit in which they treat what is called, with one of the party titles which work such in finite mischief by maintaining divisions, the High Church party. " It is easier to understand," says Mr. Oakeley, p. 58, " and therefore to feel with those who, look ing at the present moment," (at the movement) " in its true character, as part of a consistent whole, regard it as simply evil, than, with those who view it with mixed feelings, or with no feeling at all. Wherein such persons esteem it a deep philosophy, and not a mere interesting literature, — an absorb ing principle, and not a mere transient excitement ; and, wherein they look beyond its superficial ap pearance into its solid grounds; and beyond its present manifestations to its undeveloped capabili ties, they take, as I must think, a truer and more earnest view of the subject, than those who pro nounce a hesitating and qualified sentence upon certain parties and proceedings, than those who seek to talk the matter off, as a mere ephemeral topic, or hush it up, as a mere inconvenient dis turbance." 10 And again, the same acute and clear-minded writer,— an unquestionable authority on the views of the more politic, and long-sighted of his party, — speaks similarly of the rites and ceremonies which are the immediate occasion of our present dangers. He regards them, like a Christian and philo sopher, as things utterly worthless and contemptible in themselves ; and only valuable, from a vital connection with the principles of which they ought to be the representatives. He thinks the charge of formalism, therefore, urged against the Church of England, in former times, and now perhaps, perfectly just. Because the upholders of her cere monial character have exhibited a tendency to sub stitute an outward conformity for an inward unity ; and to insist on externals, without the living prin ciples of which they are the symbols. There can, too, be but one opinion of his sagacity, and knowledge of human nature, when he says, speaking of the su perficial ritual struggle which covers the profound principles really at stake,—" Later circumstances have tended to furnish the second grand illustration in the reformed annals — (the first, of course, was in the time of Laud) — of the more than frivolity of all contests about the outward framework of the Church, when regarded as a mere point of order," (on which a great prelate has lately put it,) " rather than as the visible result and expression of the inward spiritual life." In the like spirit, I think, of true philosophical insight, and a grasping of the 5 11 very kernel of the question, the Count Montalem- bert speaks in his late letter to the Camden Society, — a composition of the keenest logic, and containing in its sarcastic scorn for a bastard Catholicism, one of the most striking and brilliant reproofs that we have seen, on the perils of a bastard Protestantism, and of a mere dilettante trifling with what, to ear nest and intelligent men, are not antiquarian toys, but the ineffaceable symbols of mighty systems. I will dwell no more on this ! I will only say that they do great injustice to the Tractarian divines, who imagine for an instant, that they would have thrown, as they have done, a sword and fire into the midst of the Church, for anything less than this, — a complete revolution in religion. Their present point, — the last step but one to entire Popery, — is, according to Mr. Oakeley, nothing less than to establish, at the instant, the perfect com patibility of holding the whole Roman doctrine with subscription to the Articles of the Church of Eng land. So Mr. Ward boasts, that for three whole years he has publicly professed the Roman doctrine, and yet has held his fellowship, though conditioned on subscription, without secular or spiritual detri ment, or authoritative rebuke ! This, therefore, is the first point to be clearly seen, and grasped : that the general question at present agitated, is not merely of a Romanizing tendency, — a thing insusceptible of legal definition, and admitting much latitude of construction, and opinion ; — nor of a preference, as a primitive tra- 12 dition, for this or that Roman ordinance or prac tice, which may be perfectly compatible with a con scientious attachment, on the whole, to the Church of England. The contest is not for these, the principles of Laud and Andrews, but for the admission into the Church, as a recognized right, of the Roman doctrine in its totality. When, therefore, I speak of Romanism, I wish to be un derstood, throughout, as designating no mere ge neral temper of mind ; as not using a vague and popular title, often most unjustly and injuriously, as well as ignorantly, applied ; but as meaning the definite system of doctrine, condemned in the Thirty- nine Articles, justification by inherent righteous ness, the dogmas of congruity and condignity, works of merit and supererogation, the authority of tradi tion, the spiritual and universal supremacy of the Roman See, the doctrine of the mass, images, re lics, &c. It is neither more nor less than this, — ¦ I mean formal, literal Romanism, whenever I use the word. II. But it may be said, and truly, that the Trac- tarian theologians do assert a distinction. Let them have the full benefit of it; and, even without a distinct assertion of it upon their parts, common candour, and a moderate acquaintance with Roman theology, would have spontaneously tendered them the advantage. Mr. Oakeley, whilst he claims the right — on behalf of those whom he represents, — of holding the Romanist scheme, according to its tech nical definition, with the Articles of the Church of 13 England, disclaims adhesion to the popular cor ruptions of the doctrine, or any necessary acknow ledgment of the Papal supremacy, and spiritual autocracy of the Vatican ! Take it so, and what have you gained ? You admit that which is all that the Roman doctors, when pressed in contro versy, claim that their disciples should believe — the exposition, and systematic arrangement of the so-called Catholic doctrine by the Council of Trent. That is, you abjure precisely that which the subtle controversialists of that Church likewise abjure ; you condemn corruptions and misinterpretations, with those portentous practical consequences about them which shock not only Christian truth, and accurate philosophy, but the'common sense and moral feeling of mankind ; — you reject the basenesses of the popu lace, and the contradictions of the ignorant ! True, but you embrace, in their stead, a most unscriptural and false philosophy ; and accept as Catholic truth, — nay, as its best and most accurate exponent, — the authoritative Creed of the Roman Sophisters ! No doubt the keen canonists and logicians who moulded theSynod of Trent, with such incomparabledexterity, to the Papal interests, have avoided, in phraseology, some of the most revolting of the popular corrup tions. But its articles are framed, and have ever since been practically held, so as not only to baffle adverse dialecticians, but to justify and stimulate the superstitions of the people ; and they involve, not accidentally, but necessarily and deliberately, all the doctrinal controversies which have employed 14 the genius of Roman and Protestant theologians. The Canons of Trent are the philosophical exposi tions of Rome, — the science of the mystery of ini quity. And it is to the unravelling of their so phistry, and that of the great Jesuit controversialists, whom they have engendered, that no inconsiderable portion of the masterly Anglican theology of the seventeenth century, with its massive learning and argumentation, is devoted. Finally, the Council of -Trent has made that, authoritative doctrine, in many points, which, before it, was private corrup tion, or popular prejudice. And it has enjoined, under tremendous anathemas, the melancholy cha racteristic of Rome, those invasions of men's con sciences, and of scriptural truth, which it had then a final opportunity of renouncing. I have no ambition to calculate the distance be tween an acknowledgment of this pseudo-council, and the supremacy of Rome, and infallibility of the Pope, — the completeness of the Roman unity, — that, after which, so many hearts, as the phrase is, are fondly and passionatety longing. It is enough that they are doctrinal ly Tridentines. However, in regard to Mr. Ward, I imagine that this distinction does not apply. If I read his writings aright, including the later articles in the British Critic, he follows that theology, with whose spirit and tone he is so thoroughly saturated ; — I mean that of Mbhler, De Maistre, and the rest of that band of theologians on the continent who are fighting the battles of Rome with such vigour and eloquence, — exchanging the 15 worn-out metaphysics of the schools for modern wit and philosophy. He considers, therefore, the French Church as fundamentally defective, and, with the Tramontane divines, crowns the spiritual structure, the ideal of a Church of Christ, with the supre macy and infallibility of the Papal Head. Any how, as a practical question, it matters little to the Church of England at the'present mo ment whether they, who, living in her bosom, pour into her veins the Romish poison, reject the divine supremacy and the popular corruptions of Rome, or not. It matters little, whether a central head is acknowledged ; or whether every minister, within his charge, shall become, in fact, a pope, irre sponsible to the Bible and his Church ; and every paiish a holy see in miniature. After all, it is only a matter of time, — nothing more. III. However, having mitigated, and limited, to the uttermost point, both of reason and fact, the Romanism with which we are thus brought into direct collision, look to the immediate and prac tical question to which it has given rise ! A gen tleman, of acknowledged abilities, a fellow of a college, and well fitted, from the courage and energy of his character, to head the numerous party, of which, on this occasion, he is the champion and representative, proclaims in a powerful and elo quent book, his solemn conviction that the Roman system is the truth of God. Nay, he supports his theory, it must be confessed, with infinite ingenuity, 1G and a plausible philosophy. He avows that the Reformation is a sin, and that the Articles of the Church, of which he is the minister, are, in their natural, and immemorial, and hitherto undisputed construction, irreconcileable with Catholic truth. — Yet he claims to retain his position in that Church which he charges with heresy, and in that aca demic body his original engagement with which he has manifestly, and even avowedly, violated. To the true sense and nature of these engagements, you are, my Lord, a witness ; neither the one nor the other has ever been denied ; no ingenuity has ever before detected their double meaning, nor boldness ques tioned their authority. Surely, if there were no other considerations than these on the present question, the evident incompatibility of such a principle with any organised society, whether secular or spiritual, and the consequences of such an example, are enough to exempt the authors of the statute, — even if they have judged wrongly, — from a charge of waging a helium internecinum on a guiltless party. I am sorry that Mr. Gresley should have given the authority of his name to such a statement. And still more am I grieved that he should consider it consistent with Christian moderation, or the decencies of polemical warfare, to charge revenge upon the Vice- Chancellor !* Surely a generous mind will repent of this ; it will tender reparation for an insinuation so unjustifiable, to which it ought never to have condescended ! * Vide Mr. Gresley, p. 12. 17 However, to return to Mr. Ward. Suppose his enterprise accomplished, his challenge unanswered, and the trust committed to his hands, on the faith of subscription, unwithdrawn, on the breach of it, what is the immediate result? Clearly, that an Angli can may be a Romanist, uncompromising and with the proselytizing zeal of a convert ; that one, who not only dissents from the Reformation and its results, but launches anathemas, as hot as ever came from the furnace of the Vatican, against that which most of his countrymen still believe to be the most glorious and blessed event in their national history, can hold a fellowship in a Protestant university, one of the two great educators of the nation ; that he can be a teacher therein, and hold office and dignity, unscathed and unremoved. His talents and un spotted character, his earnestness and zeal, are no thing to the question. If a fellowship be so held, why not a living ? If a living, why not a bishopric? All are held on the same tenure, neither more nor less. All demand the same subsciption, the bona fide reception of the same Articles of religion, — the renunciation of the same foreign spiritual power, and of the same condemned heresies ! Even to have suggested such a thought as a Romanist sub scription is in itself a change worth notice — a sign ! Men had gone on dreaming for three cen turies, that, come what would, an amalgamation of the Tridentine Canons with the Articles of the Church of England, at least, was an impossibility. c 18 That an abyss lay between the Vatican and Lam beth, — and that, in the absence of a formal dispensa tion, the signer of those Articles could not, in the same breath, shake hands with the excluded faith, and the antagonist Formula. It would, however, be wrong, to say that Mr. Ward attempts to re concile the opposites. He boldly leaps the gulf which he cannot fill up, or bridge over ; and offers to instruct those of slower wits — who, being unable themselves to combine intellectual and moral con tradictions like these, are yet desirous to find a way to do so, — in the mystery of this portentous trans formation. Sign the Articles against their meaning, and it is done. I do not charge Mr. Ward,— God forbid, — for, if I may judge from his book, he is of a generous, and candid, as well as ardent nature, — with what every simple mind, but his own, regards with vehement and spontaneous disapprobation. But I do charge the system, the fatal economic system, the canons and science of double-dealing, imported in an evil hour from the volumes of Escobar and Mariana, and now all but naturalized in the Church of Eng land. Of this Mr. Ward is the victim, and so are other once noble and ingenuous natures, nay, inge nuous and noble still in all else but this. There is as much of naivete", and evident unconsciousness of any deviation from the ordinary rules of truth and candour, as of boldness, in the conclusion of the passage, page 68, of his book, which forms a part of the first resolution. " The manner," he says, 19 " in which the dry wording" — that is, the scientific and accurate definitions of the Articles — " can be di vorced from their natural spirit, and accepted by an orthodox believer — How the primd facie mean ing is evaded, and the artifice of their inventors thrown back in recoil upon themselves ; this, and the arguments which prove the honesty of this, have now been, for some time, before the public." The natural, plain, and acknowledged meaning, there fore, is to be evaded, — 'that is, escaped by a sophis tical tour deforce, — and this, with perfect honesty, — a miracle, indeed, if it were possible to accomplish it ! But it is too melancholy to jest upon. I can not for a moment believe, that any one, unsophis ticated by a corrupt system, which would thus fain establish divine truth by tampering with moral honesty, could have uttered such a sentiment. Surely, in what it proposes to inflict on Mr. Ward, no one can question either the right or moderation of the University. On the substantiation of the charge against that gentleman, it is proposed to withdraw those privileges which were granted, on an express engagement, which, in its deliberate judgment, he has broken. It does him no wrong ! It offers him no affront, in charging him with Romanism ! And I hope and trust that the igno minious forms of degradation are not to be enforced. He has made a bold and adventurous throw ; can he be surprised, or complain, if he rises loser from a game the chances of which: he must have pre- c 2 20 calculated ? I feel for him— but I feel more for the Church ! IV. It is said, however, that to Mr. Ward's condemnation no serious opposition will be offered. The first resolution will pass. Now, if so, I earnestly ask your Lordship's attention to the ground on which the University rests the question between itself and Mr. Ward, with a view hereafter to apply it to ano ther portion of my argument. And it is the more important, because the writer of an able and dispas sionate critique of Mr. Ward's work, in the Quar terly Review, (in which, however, he has missed some striking characteristics,) has not noticed this part of the subject, all-important as it really is. Now there are many reasons for condemning Mr. Ward's book, which, however serious are the charges which they involve, alike on moral and intellectual grounds, have nothing , at all to do with the specific condemnation proposed. For instance, however grave the faults, and grievous the deflect tion of the Church of England from that sublime height of purity and devotion to which she is bound to aspire as the servant and representative of Christ, yet the very transgressions of a parent should be ap proached with reverence. It is impossible to excuse, — I will not say the severity, for severity might per chance have been tempered with filial awe and love ; but the wild and fanatical vehemence with which Mr. Ward's impetuous sentences foam and swell against all that, as Englishmen, and Churchmen, we hold 21 sacred. I say, his sentences, for I do not charge his rhetoric on the heart ; nor will he, in more sober and charitable moments, justify this to himself. Again, there are the blighting, personal charges, hardly to be paralleled in Milner or Lingard, the calumnies with which, unsupported by a tittle of historical evidence, he not only undeifies the founders of the Church of England, (for that might be justifiable in an Iconoclast like Mr. Ward) but has the heart to bring her saints, her confessors, and noble army of martyrs, to the level of tricking politicians, conscious hypocrites, and imbecile imi tators and retailers of a foreign heresy. I confess that I think all this is marked, not only by intel lectual aberration, but by grave immorality, — the immorality of awful charges without evidence, and condemnation without investigation. I might mention other things, — the absence, for instance, of any appeal to Holy Writ, in a book expressly inquiring into the nature and signs of the true Church of Christ, — but space does not allow of this. However, it is on no charges of irreverence or disloyalty that the author is called to the bar. Nor is it for heresy. It is not even, directly, a religious question at all which is stirred. It is an university question primarily, — a breach of those conditions upon which alone she confers her privileges. V. In fact, the University neither frames the Ar ticles, nor does she suggest the interpretation. She 22 is only the educational instrument of the Church. She receives the test of membership reverently and dutifully from her hands. She puts the Church's meaning upon them, and so she has done both before and since the time of Laud, whose statutes prescribed the Church-faith as the academical test, — rightly judging that the University is part of the same system, and the servant of the Church. No one, I suppose, denies the right, either of the Church, or of the University under her, to impose, authorita tively such a test. Nothing but a rash latitudi- narianism can desire to relax it. It has always been so from the beginning. In the primitive Church the baptismal creeds were the test ; simple, because no corruption of doctrine had perverted the Catholic faith. The synodical decisions and decrees of the first general councils were of the same nature, — all of them being expositions or definitions of the pri mitive truth, first delivered by the apostles, and then entrusted in Holy Writ to the guardianship of the Church. Ages came and past, and there was darkness over all the earth, and the shadow of death. At last came the Reformation ; and the propositions contained in the thirty-nine Articles, the basis of all our Church and academical teaching, are the result of it; the doctrinal fruits gathered up from amidst the convulsions and bloodshed, and the manifold throes of that tremendous trial of the Church. And now mark the necessary antagonism, never to be removed, in which they stand to the system now intruded on them. Out of that chaos 23 there rose at last,— definite, scientific; with their mutual inter-dependencies alike complete, — two systems, the Tridentine and the Reformed. Each had a reference to the other, as the history of the Reformed doctrineson one hand, and of the Romish on the other, will demonstrate to any one who cares to examine.* And I put, for my present pur pose, the Reformed and Anglican systems together, not because I either undervalue or forget our own greater approach to a Church's organic perfection, and our uninterrupted apostolic succession ; but, be cause, in the present question,— the doctrinal com patibility of the Articles with the Church of Rome, — the one illustrates the other. No one will question the zeal for truth, the doctrinal earnestness and precision of the great continental reformers, the capacious and scientific genius of their leaders, and their full apprehension of the consequences of the principles which they promulgated. Even those who form the most unworthy and malignant estimate of the Reformers of the Church of Eng land, do not gainsay this. No one will imagine, or suggest, that Calvin and Luther drew up mere ar ticles of peace and compromise, or that they pal tered with words in double senses. But, what is for my present argument, every ecclesiastical student knows, that in many vital and characteristic points, the Augsburg confession was the type of our Anglican Articles. If any one * Vide Paul Sarpi's, and Pallavicini's Histories of the Council of Trent, passim. 24 question this fact from a desire to evade its logical consequences, let him consult an unquestionable authority, — the Bampton Lectures of as moderate and learned a man as has adorned the Church in later times, and one certainly not biassed by Calvin- istic or low-church views, — I mean the late Arch bishop of Cashel. He will find that, on their revision, in Queen Elizabeth's reign, under the primacy of Parker, some of the Articles were partly or wholly copied from the Confession ; viz. the second, fifth, sixth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and twentieth. It might well be so ! The object of both was the exclusion of the Romish corruptions, and the resto ration of the authority of the primitive truth. Nor, when you speak of the meaning of the Articles, can you, on any reason or principles of common sense, separate them from the times in which they were composed, the corruptions against which they were specifically directed, and the theological and scholastic phraseology, else unintelligible, in which they are many of them couched. It would be just as absurd, as to take the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, without the study of the Arian Contro versy. And to do theologians justice, no one, till the present moment, through every variety of school, has really and soberly questioned the principle. And here I will make one remark, which is of great importance, and refutes a historical dispa ragement of the Articles, which is so far from being the truth, that it seriously shakes the credit of a writer making use of it for a controver- 25 sial purpose. Mr. Newman, a few years ago, asserted that the Articles, though directed against the popular superstitions of Rome, intended no op position to the Tridentine decrees — the true autho ritative teaching of the Church of Rome. His ground is, that they were published in 1565, and the Articles themselves in 1562-3. I have already stated the contrary, but I will here add some proof to that effect. The fact is, that, not only were the secret deli berations of the council guided by the known Pro testant principles and definitions* but, even before the publication of the forty-two Articles in 1552, the Tridentine decrees were actually issued, on the following important points — justification, baptism, the Eucharist, penance, extreme unction, and scrip ture and tradition. And the Articles then framed were identical, or nearly so, with those published eleven years later — with the exception of the thirty- ninth, on the resurrection of the dead — the forty- first, against the millennium— and the forty-second, against the doctrine of Origen, touching the final salvation of all men. And I mention this last point, because certain statements seem to take for granteda real doctrinal variation between the two formularies. Let it be observed, then, as an essential link in as- certainingthe Anti-Romanist meaning of the Articles, that the leading divines of Queen Elizabeth's reign, held upon the Romanist question, precisely the same views with their predecessors, under King Edward the * Vide P. Sarpi's History of the Council, passim. 26 Sixth. Andat least owe variation, which we findinthe later version of the Articles, arises from that very op position to definite Roman doctrine which has been industriously denied,* and which met the theology of the Papists, not in its popular, but in its scientific, dogmatic, form. Bishop Burnet, for instance, in treating of the Article on purgatory, says, " that these errors were not so fully espoused by the body of the Roman Church, when these Articles were first published, so that some writers softened them down, by throwing them upon the schoolmen, and there fore, the article was cautiously worded, in laying them there. But, before these that we have now were published, the decree and canon concerning the mass, had passed at Trent, in which most of the heads of this Article are either affirmed, or supposed, though the formal decree concerning them was made some months after the Articles were published." Hence the word Romish is used, and not merely the doctrine of the schoolmen, as before. With such precision were these formularies framed ; so triumphantly does history rebut their calumniators I Thus, then, we reply to the captious questions which have been reiterated — which Articles are in tended? " Who were the concoctors and editors of the Articles? the Parliament and the Convoca tion? or the bishops in general? or the arch bishops ? or Melancthon and others whom he con sulted ?"f We answer, we mean the Articles, as com posed mainly by Cranmer, in 1552, ratified by Church * Vide Tract 90. f Vide Mr. Gresley. 27 and State in 1562, in the anti-romanist sense held by their original compilers ; and, finally, resanc- tioned, with their sense still unaltered, in 1662; and so presented to us by the Church at the present mo ment. It will be found impossible to break the iron links of the chain — they cannot be wrenched off — the more you examine them, the firmer they will be found to cohere. VI. But may they not be considered as Articles of peace — not to be believed, but only nominally held ? I reply, with the great majority of the theologians who have examined the question, certainly not. It is not reconcileable with the intention prefixed to them, " Ad tollendam opinionum dissentionem et consensum in verd religione firmandum ; not to gain silence, but consent." They are, be it re membered, the only systematic exposition of the Church's belief; and, above all, they are the authorita tive rule by which all the public instructions of the Church, through her ordained ministers, are to be guided ; they are, therefore, the great instrument of uniformity, and the true remedy for doctrinal dis sension. They .cannot be, therefore, articles of com^ promise. They cannot merely require that the doc trines laid down in them should not be publicly con troverted — demanding thus, a lip-conformity only, and leaving unaffected the convictions of the heart. Really and truly to act upon such asupposition would be to open the door to the boldest and most licentious latitudinarianism, to corrupt Christian truth, and the integrity of its teachers and professors to the 28 very heart's core. It subverts from the very foun dation, the essence, and object of a Church of Christ — the truth. She who compromises principles, and schemes for silence, cannot preach the truth. But, let us allow, my Lord, for the sake of argu ment, that such fatal results need not follow this latitudinarian principle ; and let us look for an in stant, before we pass on, to those who are sometimes quoted as authority, in order to evade the logical and stringent wording of these formularies. Bishop Bull, for instance, is quoted for that purpose. Vide Newman's Letter to Jelf, p. 19. Now, what ever points there may have been, in which that great prelate considered the Church to have pro nounced cautiously, and for the sake of peace, it is clear to demonstration, even from the passage quoted, let alone other decisive evidences, that the Romanist doctrine — the whole Romish system, that is — was not of the number ; and, if not, his opinion is nothing to the purpose. For he says expressly, that " if he* intends that latitude of sense, which our Church, as an indulgent mother, has shown her sons on some abstruser points, {such as predestination, &c.,) not particularly and precisely defined in her Ar ticles, but in general words, capable of an indif ferent construction ... If this be his meaning, this is so far from being a fault, that it is the sin gular praise and commendation of the Church. She professeth not to deliver all her Articles as essentials of faith, but only propounds some," (such * His adversary. 29 as that to which he before alluded, touching the divine decrees,) — " as a book of pious principles for the preservation of peace to be subscribed." It is manifest that " all Roman doctrine," the only point in dispute, is not placed by Bull merely among the Articles of peace, whatever else might be so. Again — Archbishop Bramhall, — "Someofthem," he says, (the Articles) " are contained in the creed ; some of them af e practical truths, and strictly come notwithin the list of Articles to be believed. Lastly, some of them are pious opinions, inferior truths, which are proposed — not to be opposed ; and not as essentials of faith necessary to be believed by all Christians." (Schism guarded, p. 476, vol. ii. new edition.) If you turn to the passage, it will be found that Bramhall is here contrasting the Church of England and the Church of Rome, on the grounds on which they severally exact belief; the moderation and scripturality of the one with the portentous pretensions of the other. He justly reprobates that anti-christian temper, in which Rome had added no less than twelve Articles to the primitive creed, and fortified them by anathemas. Certainly Bram hall, whilst allowing what we all allow, that all the decisions of the Church of England against the corruptions of Rome, are not to be propounded, or imposed, under the threat of damnation, does not consider as indifferent questions, her graver errors. It is calumniating a great man even to suggest it. He was an anti-Calvinist, and a lover of Catholic 30 antiquity, but still a Protestant.* But see what Bingham says, even while he mentions Bramhall as considering the Articles as articles of peace. (Apo. b. ii. c. 1, Works, vol. ii. p. 72.) " Some" (among whom he mentions Bramhall) " take them as Articles of peace ; and that, by subscription, they mean no more than this, that they will so far sub mit to them, as publicly not to dissent from them, or teach any doctrine that is contrary to anything in them. But, generally, subscription is consi dered in the stricter sense, as implying a declara tion of our own opinion," (assent and consent, accord ing to the 36th canon,) " and this seems rather to have been the meaning and mind of the Church." Finally, Bishop Hall, whose Catholic proposi- sitions are quoted by Mr. Newman in the same pamphlet, p. 20, in the body of the very passage itself upon which he relies, excludes the Romish errors from the probable or permissible opinions, which however pious, may be held, pro or con, without rest ing salvation on them ; and may be argued without disturbing the peace of the Church. He says, " As for the fundamental principles of the Christian re ligion, undoubtedly delivered in the Scriptures, except the Romans, who have so affected singularity, as to frame to themselves a new Christianity, &c." Unquestionably, if you had no other passage re maining from which to gather the sentiments of Bishop Hall, if all his other writings were lost, * Vide Reply to De Milletiere. Schism guarded, &c. Rome was idolatrous in Bramhall's opinion. 31 there could be no doubt, that, whatever latitude he gave to indifferent opinions, or however broadly he drew the line, (which the great theologians of that century earnestly and reasonably drew in the Ro mish controversy,) between pious decisions, and articles of faith to be believed on the pain of eternal damnation ; yet the whole Romanist doctrine was never intended by him to be put into that category. I make these strictures, in passing, merely to show how loosely this point has been treated ; and what little regard has been paid, in the eagerness to undermine the doctrinal authority of the Articles, to anything but controversial arms, snatched up, any how, at the moment, to answer a momentary pur pose, and stave off a pressing emergency. On the other hand, if it be only intended, in speaking of the Articles as articles of peace, (as sometimes ap pears to be the case,) to inculcate the duty of a mo derate spirit, and a careful refusal to narrow the legitimate range of thought and speculation, more than the express declarations of the word of God have done ; or if it be meant only that men must be cautious, lest they make private interpretations, and vehement leanings of their own, the standard of other men's faith and orthodoxy, instead of the canons which the Church of England has set up ; if it be meant that, either as a public or private rule of action, no inquisitorial scrutiny is to be made into men's opinions, not publicly proclaimed ; and that, for love and peace sake, it behoves us to 7 32 dwell rather on our common faith in vital questions, than on minor differences; — in all this I cordially agree. This is the spirit of the English Church. But the totality of Romanism is a different and a vital question. And alarmed, as the tractarian di vines are, along with all earnest Christians, by the danger of compromising or attenuating truth, and by the utter incompatibility of mere articles of peace with, the primary duty of all men towards God's word ; nothing but an extreme necessity could drive them to a line of reasoning so irreconcileable with spiritual earnestness, and, if true, so condem natory of the Church, which they have hitherto pro fessed to venerate. And it so happens, that the very class of divines, the school, of Burnet and Tillotson, which, from certain latitudinarian tenden cies, was most likely to advocate a wide range of free opinions in the Articles, is precisely that which, by its resolute Anti- Romanism, is utterly intractable for their present purpose. VII. But grant that they are, really and literally, articles of peace, and no more. Even this will not avail the Romanizing theologians. For you do not see in them, men who ask no more than the permission to hold their own opinions in peace, which it would be unreasonable and unchristian to refuse ; but a power ful party, ever militant, and, on principle, aggressive ; a band of far-scheming Church politicians, never resting, nor permitting others to rest. They strug gle vehemently, not to modify, which is legitimate, 33 but to overthrow the whole existing constitution, — the immemorial and characteristic principles — of the Church of England. / conclude, therefore, that the Articles are not articles of peace, in the sense intended ; and that, if they were, they would not avail to the Tractarian theologians. My former propositions, therefore, re main untouched. VII. But, my lord, I will now put the question, in another point of view. Suppose it to be argued thus. We grant all this, touching the intention of the Articles, as a deduction from contemporaneous re cords, and probable designs. Yet still, if we are able to detect any flaw in the construction of these formula ries, and can show that, judged by the common rules of language and reason, they admit another meaning besides the one intended, we claim the right to do so; we take advantage of the oversight. We care not about the intention and original purpose. It ought to have expressed itself more clearly. A manifest breach has been left in the walls, and through that we will enter. No traditionary interpretation, how ever immemorial and uninterrupted, shall bind us. Grant all this. And what follows? Why still, the question admits of but one solution. The po sition of our adversaries is not bettered. For, Istly, the Articles were constructed by men of eminent capacity, great masters both of reason and language, and versed in all the logical exer cises and distinctions of the schools in which, in- 34 deed, they braced and hardened the very intellect which overthrew their technical and false theology. Just what you might expect from this, has really hap pened. These formulas are marked by extraordinary and scientific precision, both in what they admit and what they exclude. And, as specimens of de finition, and minute, unmistakable discrimination, nothing, in theological literature, surpasses, or, as far as I know, equals, the Articles upon faith, jus tification, and good works. Here, and in other respects, they, are nobly contrasted with the Tridentine decrees, which, as any one knows who has studied the history of the Council, were, indeed constructed, not with a scrip tural moderation, but on the principle of evasion, and a studied ambiguity. And 2ndly, when it comes to the point, their precision is not questioned. Habes con fitentes reos. Mr. Newman,* the author, or at least the expounder, of the Romanistinterpretation, neither pretends, nor ever has pretended, from the first, tha the interpretation which he propounds, is other than opposed to the natural and obvious sense of the Ar ticles; that is, to the manifest intention of the able men and great theologians, who finally ratified them, and obtained for them the solemn sanction of the Church and nation. Mr. Oakeley, over and over again, with a manly candour, makes the same avowal. Mr. Ward, again, proclaims to the world, without concealment or modification, that he signs them against their letter and spirit, in an unnatura, * Santa Clara, an English Jesuit, was the author ! 35 sense, against, not only their traditional meaning, but their plain, literal, and grammatical intention. By this confession, then, of a decisive meaning? we answer two objections of the Romanist divines, out of their own mouth. First, the historical perversions of Mr . Oakeley, such as this, " that the sense in which the Articles were propounded, was not a Catholic, nor a Protestant, but a vague, indecisive, and therefore comprehensive sense ; that the Reformers themselves were without any precise doctrinal views of their own upon the points of controversy." And secondly, we reject, as wholly irrelevant to the question, such quotations as the following, from Sanderson, (Nine Cases of Conscience, p. 94.) " If the intentions of the im- poser be not so fully declared by the words and nature of the business, but that the same words may, in fair construction, be still capable of a double meaning, so as taken in one sense to bind to more, and in another to less, I conceive it not necessary for the promiser, before he give faith, to demand of the imposer, which is his meaning, &c. !" All this is irrelevant to a case confessed to involve no such ambiguity. (Vid. much of this ignoratio elenchi in the " English Churchman.") Let this be clearly understood. And let it be likewise kept in mind that, in these statements, not as abstract opinions, but practical principles, a powerful party are agreed ; and that upon this basis and form of faith, they are now waging an inter- d 2 36 necine war against the Protestantism of the Church of England ! Their bond of union is this new in terpretation of the Articles. Nay, they have metho dized the system. They have their canons of arti cular interpretation— they have put forth a master piece of logical evasion, by their own confession, to which they appeal triumphantly ; and, if it be ad mitted, they defy the power of the Church to dislodge them, or of antagonists to shake their position. We acknowledge it — we grant it. Certainly, all the received principles of upright interpretation or grammatical meaning being laid aside, no words can bind — no definitions can hold — the links of reason snap — the most solid and compacted state ments are volatilized ! Adamant itself dissolves ! We yield the palm in these arts. But at the same time, the simple words of truth, and the common understanding of mankind, are stronger than the logic of the schools. What says King James I. in proclamation for authorizing an uniformity in common prayer? " Concerning the service of God, we were nice, or rather jealous, that the public form thereof should be free, not only from blame, but from suspicion ; so as neither the com mon adversary should have occasion to wrest aught contained to other sense than the Church of Eng land intended." And King Charles I., in the declaration, per manently and authoritatively attached to the Ar ticles of religion, thus speaks : 37 " That all clergymen, within our realm, have always most willingly subscribed to the Articles established, — which is an argument to us, that they all agree in the true, usual, literal meaning of the said Articles." [He is speaking with reference, to the Quin-quarticular controversy, — on predestina tion and free-will, in which both parties appealed to the Articles* — not to Romanism.] " And that no man shall hereafter print, or preach, or draw the Article, (on predestination,) — but shall submit to it in the full and plain meaning thereof; and shall not put his own sense or comment to be the meaning of the Article ; but shall take it in the plain and grammatical sense." And, lest it should be thought that the King would grant to Popery what he denied to Puritanism, it is added, " If any public reader in either of our Universities, or any head or master of a college, or any other person, should affix any new sense to an Article, he shall be liable to our displeasure," &c. Now this attach ment of a new sense to the Articles, is now, not by hostile hypothesis, but by the loud profession and boast of the innovators, really done, and claimed as a right. I will only add, touching the grammatical sense, that it is not, as some have hazarded to say, a mere grammatical abstraction,-— nonsense, that is, grammatically arranged, — with the life, and force, and theological essence extracted, a mere wordy caput mortuum,— but the sense or meaning naturally con veyed according to the laws of language. This is * Vid. Heylin's Tracts on the Quin-quarticular Controversy. 38 supererogation of argument, but, in a case where every step treads on a sophistical trap, it is best to add it. VIII. But to return. The Romanist interpretation, then, is no vague principle, or general tendency, which, at some future time, may assume a definite shape, we know not what, — but, ex-confesso, at length, it is a regular scheme of faith, and an autho ritative formula. It is, therefore, a new test. For, on any principle of reason, articles propounded and ac cepted in a sense opposed, nay, contradictory to the sense attached to them up to the period of change, which in this case may be defined to a day, are a new test. They do not exclude either the doctrines or the persons whom they excluded before. It is not a question of words, but of things. It behoves every one who loves the Church of England to look beneath the surface, to sift sophistical refinements, and, like a man in a manly cause, to grapple fairly with the reality of a great and vital question. He ought to be sure that he has laid hold on the real point in debate. Surely articles so prepared and understood, as to admit Romanism, are not the same test as Articles, imposed and accepted to the exclusion of Romanism. The old Lutheran for mularies and confessions of faith, once shutting out rigidly the rationalistic principle, and so accepted, are not the same test, now-a-days, when the like articles are imposed and accepted with a reserva tion to private judgment and the sense of Scrip ture. The Canons of the Church of Rome, if so in- 39 terpreted, (which, indeed, would be a parallel case,) as to admit the Augsburg Confession or the Articles of the Church of England, would be, not the same test of faith, but a new test. It is not words, or laws, but the meaning attached to them, which is the essen tial point. There can be no question about this to reasonable and candid men, who admit, nay, lay down as a fundamental Church law, the neces sity of creeds, and articles, and tests ; and at pre sent I am reasoning with none other. Tract 90, then, with its acknowledged* logical and moral consequences, as now carried out, and de liberately proposed for the acceptance of the Church, and practically, though indirectly, for the sanction of convocation, is a scheme to reconstruct the Church and fix it on a new foundation. What becomes, now, of all the idle declamation against a new test? The really new test is Tract 90. To insist upon the old one, in its uninterrupted acceptation from the be ginning until now, and to introduce a provision, — always and of necessity presupposed in all tests and covenants — that it is to be taken in its natural and original sense, never interrupted, is no new test. It is only the vindication and re-statement of the old one; It would, indeed, be imbecility to permit the most awful interests, and most solemn truths, to be the sport of a trivial and transparent sophistry, and to sacrifice the venerable inheritance of the Church and nation, the portion, as we hope, of our chil dren's children, to a mere juggle upon words. * Vid. Mr. Oakeley passim. 40 IX. And this brings me to another point, which I have as yet assumed, but which, from its import ance, requires a separate investigation. It is, indeed, felt and understood, amidst the cloudy ge neralities in which it is veiled, to be the essence of the question. Setting words and quibbles aside, what is the moral theory of subscription ? What is the general formula by which articles of religion, and any tests are to be understood ? Is there any recognized, or ascertainable principle ? or have casuists still left it in doubt, how engagements are to be construed, or covenants interpreted ? I need not say, that they have not, — and I wish to make it distinctly understood that the principle now in question is, beyond all doubt, a principle of uni versal morality ; and that no formula can be devised for the proper, moral, interpretation of the Articles, which will not bear, with equal propriety and strength, on the interpretation of all oaths, laws, covenants, or solemn forms, whatsoever. It is a settled rule with casuists, consonant to the reason of things, the necessities of civil society, and the common sense of mankind, that covenants are always to be taken in the sense of the imposers. A great deal has been said about this animus imponentis, as if it were a new and mon strous thing, the invasion of a natural or conven tional liberty, and a mere invention of academical tyranny. Whereas it is an axiom in the science of covenants — allowed by all from Aristotle to Puffen- dorf, from Saunderson to Paley. Such a principle 41 is it, that, without it, it is impossible for the ma chine of society to move, or the rudiments of confi dence to exist among men ! These are days in which even common sense requires the support of authority. Let us adduce that of the greatest judges upon such questions. " Wherefore I take it," says Bishop Saunderson, " for a clear rule, that all promises and assurances, wherein faith is required to be given to another, ought to be understood, ad animum imponentis." (Nine Cases of Conscience, p. 94.) " The Articles subscribed," says Bishop Cony- beare, on Subscription, " ought to be understood, not indifferently, in any sense, of which the words may, of themselves, be capable. But in that pre cise, and determinate signification, which was intended by the imposers of them." " The imposers, then, in the present case of sub scription, are the governing part of the Church, by which we are to understand, not merely the com pilers of the Articles, or those who were governors of the Church at the time that the Articles were prepared, exclusively of all others, but our eccle siastical governors in general. This, therefore, is the sense in which we must subscribe these Ar ticles." And, in fact, the original composers being the imposers, the sense has never been altered in the generations of rulers which have succeeded in their room." Bishop Conybearethus concludes : — " If we know 42 them, happy are we if we do them ! If we neither question an evident authority, nor dispute against a reasonable injunction, — nor under the shadow of compliance defeat the very end and design of the imposers." (Conybeare on Subscrip. Enchir. Theol., vol. ii.) And now for one of the very greatest in the long list of English divines — Waterland. " The sense of the compilers and imposers (where certainly known) must be religiously observed. The sense of the com pilers and imposers may generally be presumed to be the same, (except in some very rare and particular instances, and therefore I mention both, as giving light, one to another.) It (subscription) is a solemn and sacred covenant with the Church, or with the government ; to be capable of such and such trusts, on certain conditions, whose conditions are an expressed belief of those propositions which come recommended in the public form. To change these propositions for others, while we are plighting our faith to those only, (as is supposed in the very acceptance of trusts,) is manifestly a breach of covenant, and prevarication with God and man. It is pretending one thing and meaning another. It is professing agreement with the Church, and, at the same time, disagreeing with it ; it is coming into trusts and privileges upon quite different terms from what the Church intended." He then goes on, at great length, to prove that all such evasions are fraudulent, really mala fides of the worst kind. 43 Is it not now clear, both on reason, and on indis putable authority, that subscription is to be taken, rigidly, ad animum imponentis, and, as the same thing, (unless special reason can be shown,) prout articulos primitus editosfuisse credimus. The first composers were, of necessity, the first imposers, and, from genera tion to generation, the two meanings have been one, and have descended together to their successors. It has been so in the Church of England, — it has been so in the Church of Rome. The only inter ruption is that novel system, of which the statute proposes to get rid. And let this be remarked, — that, in considering the Romanist subscription frau dulent, a plain mala fides, the University, by the confession of all men, is not alone. All the heads of the Church, I believe, without one exception, either in England or Ireland, look upon it, and its certain results in the ruin and disruption of the Church, with unaffected and undissembled dismay.* They all brand it with ill faith ; they earnestly deprecate its introduction, as fatal to ecclesiastical integrity, to the Protestant truth, and to common loyalty to the Church. The sense defined by the University, and which it seeks to protect and per petuate, is, therefore, the present and authoritative sense of the Church, — the sense in which bishops ordain, and are themselves ordained. X. And now to another point. The question being this: " What is a honest subscription to the Articles as propounded to us by the governors of the Church, * For proof, vid. Mr. Bricknell's work. 44 and by the University on the Church's authority ?" it matters not at all what the reservation is by which they are eluded, — all reservation is proved now to be inadmissible and fraudulent. — A few words may involve a pregnant principle ; they may sound well, and may even, being properly under stood, convey primary truths; yet they may be enough to evade and nullify the most stringent engagements. It matters not, therefore, whether the reservation be, " so far as is consistent with Scrip ture," (of course as understood by a man himself,) or, " so far as is consistent with Catholic tradition," (likewise as understood by private judgment) ; whe ther it be made by Dr. Clarke the Arian, or by Mr. Ward the Romanist. There is, indeed, a wide difference between their respective appreciation of vital truths ; and far be it from me, or from any one, to confound the fervent believer and upholder of our blessed Lord's divinit}^ with the rationalising and philosophical heretic. But touching the principle of subscription there is no distinction : and it is of infinite importance to remark, that the very same fences which exclude the Romanist exclude the Arian, and that the hand which uncloses the wicket to Bellarmine, cannot, however well disposed, shut it against Socinus. On the one hand, the for mularies of the Church are, ex hypothesi to all her ministers, received as the mind of Scripture ! They are the truth, the right exposition of the divine word, — the authoritative declaration of the will of God, and the scheme of revelation, as God, by 45 solemn commission, hath put it into her hands to teach. To suppose them to be other than in accord ance with Scripture, is a contradiction to the very essence of the engagement into which her ministers enter ; and for the Church to admit the principle of such a reservation, is to deny her divine right, and to destroy her essence, nay, even her existence, as an ordinary society ; much more as a represent ative of God ! Dei Civitas. So, on the other hand, the Church of England's Catholicism, like her scripturality, is contained in her articles and formularies ; and, so far as it is reasoned upon as her authoritative mind, it is strictly limited by them. She admits no vague description of it — no unlimited phantasmagoric spectrum of catholic antiquity, looming through fifteen centuries; but certain definite forms and arti cles, representing to her children the word of God, and, according to her founders and greatest cham pions, the very same view of it which the earliest ages entertained. This, and neither more nor less, con stitutes her Catholicism. She recognises no other as of weight and authority, or as representing her mind as a church of Christ, individual and inde pendent, excepting this. Anything beyond it she only tolerates ! " The arguments of both classes," says Dr. Elrington, Regius Professor of Divinity at Dublin, speaking of the Tractarian divines, and the author of the Confessional and his friends,* men certainly * Vid. Tracts by the author of the Confessional. 46 verging on Socinianism are " precisely similar. Both assume a standard by which they are to regulate their own opinion of the articles ; and both are equally ready to confess it is not the obvious one ; and the answer to both is the same. — The question is not how far the Church follows Scripture or tra dition, but what is the sense which she has affixed to Scripture?" (Serm. p. 17, 18.) Again ; the Arian principle sounds quite as well as the Tractarian ; and, on the heels of the latter, fair as it seems, all Rome, and the gathered super stitions of fifteen hundred years, inevitably follow. Dr. Clarke's system of interpretation, moreover, if any one will take the trouble to read the sophis tries of a great man, is supported by reasonings and analogies as subtle and ingenious, and by an in tellect quite as keen and fertile, as has ever been put to the rack to elaborate the other ! You have ex amples of former times quite as much to the point — and, finally, pleadings for the rights of conscience, against the tyranny of an authoritative and forensic interpretation, as vehement and as specious as the most eloquent of those by which the mind and feelings of Churchmen are now taken by storm. Before I conclude this part of my subject, I must insert the observations of two minds very dif ferent in structure and temper, but both upright and without guile, on the principle of interpretation above stated — a principle noways differing in its effect on the integrity of subscription from that now forced upon us by the Romanist school. 47 " I could have heartily wished," says Mr. Nel son, an honoured name, to Dr. Clarke, " that we of the laity had no such handle ever given us, as this your last book has afforded, as it is to be feared, to too many, who think themselves able to overturn any foundations whatsoever, if such a method as you there propose be allowable with re spect to the most solemn of all deeds of that church and community whereof we are members, and to sub stitute whom they please in his room." . . . "From a method of this nature, we are threatened with the overturning of foundations both sacred and civil." " The latitude Dr. Clarke allows," says Whiston, " that any person may reasonably agree to modern forms, wherever he can, in any sense at all, recon cile them with Scripture, if it be with a declaration how he reconciles them (as in Tract 90,) even though it bear a sense which is owned to be plainly forced and unnatural, (the very terms of the Tractarian divines,) seems to me not justifiable, but contra dictory to the direct meaning and design of these forms, and is of pernicious consequence in all parallel cases." What will become of all oaths, promises, and securities, among men, if the plain real truth, and meaning of words be not the mea sure of what we are to profess, assert, or prac tise, but his own strained interpretation, as he pleases, upon them? .... This I dare not do, on the peril of my salvation. If I can in no way be permitted to enjoy the benefits of Christ's holy 6 48 ordinances in public, without what I know would be in myself gross prevarication, I shall think it my duty and aim to enjoy that benefit some other way, whatever odium or suffering I may bring upon myself thereby." XI. And now let us again look, having laid a road firm enough to tread upon over the quagmires of the controversy, to the Academical consequences. Is Mr. Ward to be condemned? There are two parties who will answer ' no' — the Romanists and the Lati- tudinarians. The first will say, We grant that the principle for which he contends is against the Ar ticles : we cannot disprove your arguments or your facts, but the modern Church may change their sense, and may declare that, irrespective of former ages, she now admits our interpretation. She may and will, as we fondly hope, thus unprotestantize her self. By acquitting Mr. Ward, we do not declare for Latitudinarianism, but for Catholicity; and Con vocation, though not a synod, is the next thing to it ! Granted. With them we have at present no further argument. We will return to them by- and-by. But there is a moderate party, who, shocked by Mr. Ward's book, and its opposition to all the principles of the Church of England, cannot prevail upon themselves to consent to his acquittal ; and yet are perplexed and hesitating about the third provision of the statute. To dissever the two — to condemn the individual, and yet refuse effectually to control, or even disavow the principle of which he is * Waterland on Arian Subscription. 49 the representative, is said to involve no inconsis tency. I confess, I think that it does. And whilst I honour the scrupulous dread lest the condem nation of an individual should hurry men, be fore they are aware, into a general invasion of academical liberty, I cannot but think it ground less, — and the consequences of it, if they lead to the rejection of the third resolution, perilous to the best interests, and even the ultimate maintenance of the Protestant Church at all ! I would ask, then, of those, who have made up their minds to condemn Mr. Ward, but yet hesitate about the further step, — Why do you sentence a man of learning and abilities, and of spotless repu tation, to so grievous a punishment and depriva tion? Remember that you are bound to try him, not on any indictment of your own, but on the spe cific indictment on which the governors of the univer sity summon him before his peers ! Now the whole charge against him is this : that he has broken the faith of subscription ; and that, in embracing the Romanist doctrine, he embraces that, which no one who subscribes the Articles can with a good con science hold, against the plain meaning of the for mularies, and the intention of the imposers. No con demnation is asked on any other ground whatsoever. It cannot be just to make him a victim or a scape goat, and sacrifice him to the security of ulterior pur poses. That he is bolder and franker than those with whom he acts, more eloquent, more philosophi- e 50 cal, more imprudent and dangerous, if you please ! all this makes him more conspicuous — a more pro minent mark for legitimate controversy ! But to those who do not acknowledge the definite anti- Romanism of the Articles, the denial of which is his sole legal offence, all these and similar con siderations are reasons, not for abandoning or sacrificing him — which were pure baseness — but for acquitting him altogether. If you condemn him, you do it on the ground that the Articles of the Church are definitely anti-Romanist, that the Church and the University impose them in this sense, and that to hold them in any other is incompatible with office and trust in either. You grant it. Well ! it is likewise certain that Mr. Ward is but one of a large party ; and that its growth and power, both of them identified with the Anglo- Romanism of the man thus condemned by you, threaten the existence both of Church and Univer sity, as Protestant establishments. Why, then, whilst you pass sentence on him on this specific ground, refuse the reasonable protection which is asked against the principle? The danger is not in Mr. Ward, but solely in Mr. Ward's canons of subscription I Yet them you protect in the mass ! Thus you let in the revolutionary flood, while you ostentatiously lade out what is but a drop of the incoming sea! To convulse the Church and the University, for each individual case that may arise, is to govern, not by legislation, but by convulsive 51 fits and starts of force, and. is incompatible with all sound and reasonable policy ! It cannot be done! It will be full of danger, then, if, listening to party feelings and theological jealousies, the members of convocation shall proclaim to the world that Ro manists are no proper objects of precaution or con trol. It will go far to shake the Church if they affirm that, even in cases of the gravest suspicion, it is unjust, in a crisis altogether without example in our history, to call upon those who hold offices of trust and dignity within the University to re affirm, for that is all, the conditions upon which they were advanced to them ! But then no man ought to be summoned to sign a test whose sense shall be determined by in dividual dogmatism, and which may at pleasure be applied to the destruction of any theological or academical opponent ! I answer, certainly not — no one ought to be exposed to such cruel caprice. And therefore the test is imposed not by the Vice- Chancellor at all, but by the University of which he is the representative. And the sense of the University has been proved, ex abundanti, to be only the sense of the Church. And the sense of the Church \sfidei certum et indubitatum criterium, and ever has been. 2. You might as well object to the adminis tration of the same test, by the Bishop — and say, that you are called on to sign them, by him, in the sense of an individual ! A test is always adminis tered by a definite officer. e 2 52 3. It is not a partial test. Every minister of the Church of England has submitted to it ; and, I take it for granted, that, in no diocese, would an avowed Romanist, be permitted to retain his preferment, nor a suspected one be exempted from that very scrutiny on the part of the bishop, which the Uni versity claims to exercise over an academical officer. And none but a Romanist can suffer from it. 4. The office of the Vice-Chancellor is purely ministerial ; he puts no questions, nor is called upon to answer any. Whether or no he signs the Arti cles, in the immemorial sense of the Church, is left, entirely, to the conscience of the party summoned. Finally. By the existing statutes, the Vice-Chan cellor, has not only the power, but may be obliged, to call upon a suspected person to sign the thirty- nine Articles, and the three Articles of the thirty-sixth canon. " Ipsius est, — ut haereticos, schismaticos, et quoscunque alios minus recte de fide Catholica., et doctrina vel disciplina. Ecclesise Anglicanse, senti- entes, procul afinibus Universitatis amandandos curet. Quem in finem, quo quisque modo ergo doctrinas vel disciplinam Esise Acae affectus sit, subscriptionis criterio explorandi, ipsi jus ac potestas esto. And then, of any one in holy orders, "Si subscribere a V. C. requisitus, ter abnuerit, seu recusaverit, ipso facto, ab Universitate, exterminetur et banniatur ! What then becomes of the asserted extension of the Vice-Chancellor's power ? All that members of con vocation are requested to do, is to uphold the statutes of the University nullified by Tract 90— by affirming 53 that subscription to the Articles, is subscription in the sense of the Church, and not in the sense of the individual. To refuse, therefore, is not to resist an innovation, but to subvert the hitherto-consti- tution of both Church and University. It will autho rize subscription in no sense but in that of the sub scriber, and leave the Church to oscillate, without ballast, between Latitudinarianism and Romanism ! There is no middle ground left if you remove the Ar ticles. XII. And look at the conduct of the innovating di vines. In order to establish themselves, quasi-syno- dically, within the Church, they are perfectly willing, unless she consents to their terms, and embraces their new test of churchmanship, to strip her practically of her sole authoritative rule of faith. They clamour for uniformity ; and yet, by the aid of those who would subvert all religious authority, destroy the only instrument, by which doctrinal unity can be accomplished, or the individuality of the Church be maintained. In their hatred to the Reformation, they desire to exhibit the Reformed Church, thus deprived of all internal defence, and of all principle of unity, to the eyes of the world, in what will then be a pitiable poverty and powerlessness — as an incon sistent, self-contradictory thing, incapable of per manent combination ; and, unless re-united to a more vital and vigorous element, such as Rome supplies, falling to pieces by spontaneous disso lution. On the one hand, therefore, those, who wish to nullify the Articles, in order to unfetter 54 from subscription the freedom of action and specu lation within the Church, will do well to consider that, by removing a temperate restraint, they are really helping to establish another system which does cramp the liberty of mind and conscience. And, on the other, those who value the Church of England, not merely as a mighty political organi zation, or a voluntary religious society, but as an independent and apostolical Church, will protect her authoritative teaching from its threatened de struction. They will have strength of mind enough, and scriptural courage enough, not to shrink from the charge of insular uncatholic pride and sin gularity. But, whilst they grieve over the dark ness as of death, which still covers the other apos tolical churches, they will assert the prerogative of the Church of England, to stand alone among them all, in the purity of her doctrine and discipline ; exactly as the people, whose spiritual unity is bound up in her, stand alone among the nations ! It may be all very well for those to remove the landmarks of her doctrine who, like the Tractarian theologians, are prepared with another safeguard for their creed — another church on which to rest, and to support, by her infallibility, a creed shifted from its original foundations. This pulling up of the old anchors, by which the faith of the nation at large has held, may be safe for those who, like Mr. Ward, can balance themselves on needles' points ; who can renounce all the ordinary guides to truth,— reason, and Scripture, and authority ; and 55 who, in the strength of an enthusiastic inward sense, launch boldly on the deeps of speculative theology, till they reach the haven, which, in his and other cases, is Rome ; but which, to the mass of those who shall act on similar principles, will be scepticism or blank infidelity. It is not a good or a Christian act thus to shake men's belief, and to substitute in fact a private judgment, for the teach ing of the Church of England. It is certain, that a quasi-sy nodical denial of the immemorial and authorized meaning of the Articles, does, in fact, unchurch her. It questions directly her compe tency to teach and expound Scripture — it subverts her independence, as a witness of the truth ; and all that is substantial in that apostolical commission and succession, which her great controversial divines have ever upheld against the usurpations of Rome. In fact, how can she teach, who deals, as we are now told, in contradictory formularies, and speaks in double meanings ! She cannot be the depositary of God's truth, or have authority in matters of faith, whose most solemn confessions, though once ac counted well nigh inspired, have not distinctly spoken what they mean, if they be godly and Catho lic ; and if they really mean what they speak, are full, as say her present adversaries, of deadly heresy. They who would perpetuate her authority, as a keeper and teacher of holy writ, and as, by descent and commission, the Church of the 56 apostles within these realms, must shun such suicidal admissions, if they would maintain their position ; and, at all hazards, and in the face of all obloquy, vindicate the integrity of the Articles. I am sure that, though vigorous and well-taught minds will still rest securely upon Scripture, — interpreted, as it must be, when the prophetic office of the Church is thus subverted, by private judgment alone, — yet to the mass of the people, to whom a church is a ne cessity and a divine provision, the results may be ultimately destructive of all religious belief. They will have lost the Church of England — and Rome they will still abhor ! The gulf of latitudinarianism will swallow them. Even the Prayer book, with all its simple and sublime devotion, ranging through the full circle of spiritual wants, will not be able to maintain itself, when denuded of the Articles, on the autho rity of the Church which has compiled it. It will be resolved into two elements — one will be absorbed into Catholicity — the other into a faith without a church. And, to say the least of what must happen, if it be thus declared that members of the Church of England can no longer shelter their Protestantism under her wings — that, as a body, she has renounced her peculiar glory, and her na tional title, and has no instrument wherewith to repel from her inmost bosom the whole Romanist doctrine,' — those who value scripture truth above all things else must protect it and themselves, as they 57 best may. They must, form voluntary associations, without reference to ecclesiastical forms or eccle siastical authority. It will be fatal to the Church as a Church to do so — but it will be necessary, if the protection of the Articles be swept away ; whether minor theological jealousies, or feeble mindedness, or a sickly, unmanly sympathy with the Romanist innovations, be the proximate instrument of their destruction. XIII. But, my Lord, it may still be argued, that, even if we grant the imminence of the danger to the Protestant faith, and the inevitable advantage thus given to Romanism, yet it is an unjustifiable step, even in such an emergency, to limit the immemo rial freedom of the Church ; and to cramp those varied and healthful energies, which have created her magnificent theology, within narrow and sec tarian limits. If this were so, it would be a serious objection ; and it would go far to justify the vehe ment appeals to a just and English feeling, which are now pressed, on all sides, against a theological tyranny. Even, indeed, if it were the case, and no choice remained save Romanism, on the one hand, and the barest and most meagre scheme which should preserve the great truths of Scripture, on the other, I, for one, should not hesitate. A noble and expansive literature — a sober majesty of forms — a moderated but acknowledged and efficient au thority — all these I would willingly abandon, dearly as I value them, rather than submit soul and in- 58 tellect to a system, which, with all its skill of construc tion and evil wisdom, I believe, with the Church of England from the beginning, to endanger the salva tion of the one, and to prostrate the noblest faculties of the other. But it is not yet come to this, though it may well do so, in a shorter time than many among us may think possible, unless, with all regard to discipline and legitimate authority, the anti-Ro manist character of the Church be vigorously and unequivocally vindicated ! But no such charge can be sustained against the proposed measures. No liberty is threatened — no privilege is curtailed — no freedom of thought, no independence of theological investigation, no science or philosophy, that has ever ranged within the ample limits of the Church of England, is in vaded or limited. No narrow or sectarian scheme, unworthy of christian men, or an intelligent age, is inculcated — no school of opinion or shade of doc trine, ever acknowledged within the pale of the Church, is proscribed. It would be an evil day, and one which I would heartily join in averting, when the breadth of the Protestant faith should be arbitrarily narrowed, men's judgments hampered, and their consciences entrapped, by limiting what in the Articles is left at large, by individualizing what is general, or by defining what is left ambi guous. Can, or does, any sober and right-intentioned man, question, directly or indirectly, the laws by 59 which, without reference at all to an imposer, (a point already considered,) they are to be interpreted, and by which, in fact, they ever have been interpreted. 1. First, that wherever they are expressed in words, which, according to ordinary usage, in materid theologicd, have a definite meaning, either negative or positive, by that meaning we are bound. 2. That, if the meaning cannot he determined by the Article itself, or other Articles, we are bound by whatever sense may be fixed by the Liturgy or other authoritative monuments. And, 3rdly, that if, by neither of these methods the sense can be settled, men of different sentiments may, fairly and honestly, subscribe them. It is but reasonable that a latitude of words should allow a corresponding latitude in interpretation ; nor ought it to be doubted, that, when such formularies are drawn up by capable and honest men, such latitude was intended. I heartily concur, therefore, with the sentiments of Dr. Bennet, which have been quoted on the other side, and allow to the full all that he says. " When an Article, or any proposition contained therein, is fairly capable of a different interpretation, that man may undoubtedly be said to believe the truth of that Article or proposition, who believes it true in any such sense as it will reasonably admit, without any violence to the words, or contradicting what our Church has elsewhere taught. Had the Church intended otherwise, it was in her power to have penned her Articles more strictly, and to have de- 60 termined all her prepositions absolutely. Wherefore, till the Church exerts such an authority, the first design, or present permission, is manifest." (Bennet on the 39 Articles.) All this, I say again, I heartily grant ; and to act against these principles, I should not only consider an offence against right reason, but against the liberty of conscience. But, in order to pass a competent judgment, let us come out of generalities, and see how far this affects the signing of the Articles by men of differ ent schools and opinions, and what its limits are. It matters not in the least, in investigating, as it deserves, this important question, how or by whom the Articles were originally drawn up. Being once composed and ratified, they are no longer private opinions, but the authoritative voice of the Church. And this part of the question I enter into with especial reference to Mr. Gresley, who has insisted much upon this point — a point, in his argument, wrcfavourable to the statute, but, as will appear by the result, really very decisive in its favour. I will take the Articles he has taken, and, as near as may be, his words, page 9 of his pam phlet. See how Article xx., for example, is quali fied and guarded, so as to express the opinions of both parties. On the side of Catholic authority it is said, " The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies, and hath authority in controver sies of faith." And then, on the side of Christian liberty, " And yet it is not lawful for the Church 10 61 to ordain anything that is contrary to God's word written ; neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another." On the one side " The Church is a witness and keeper of Holy Writ ;" on the other, " yet as it ought not to decree anything against the same, so, beside the same, ought it not to enforce anything to be believed for necessity of salvation.'' " See," says Mr. Gresley, " how the Catholic" — I should say the Roman Catholic, or Greco-Catholic — " and Pro testant doctrines are here brought out, and are blended with another. Is this modification of doc trine insincere and blameable ? By no means. The Article carries out a true representation of the feeling of the Church. Nevertheless, it is certain, that the individual representatives of the two parties respectively, though they admit the qualification of the other side, yet receive the Article, and dwell upon it principally in their own sense." No doubt they do — and have a right to do so — and no practical inconvenience, or even, as the writer admits, no practical discrepancy of opinion results — on the hypothesis that both do receive the Article. Look again at Article xix. on the visible Church. " The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly administered, according to Christ's ordinance in all things that are necessary to the same." Now I wholly dis agree with Mr. Gresley in his polemic statement, 62 (his deliberate judgment I will not call it,) that any sober man in the Church of England, with competent knowledge of his Bible, and the Church's history and formularies, can have any practical difficulty about what is meant by the pure word of God — no doubt would ordinarily suggest itself on the point. However, let that pass. After saying that many, or most, of the terms in the Article are left unde fined, he proceeds to state, " We know that the extremely low churchmen understand the Article to mean, that any congregation of faithful men, where the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments duly administered, is a church — while the high churchmen consider this Article not to be a definition of a church, but, as its title, as well as phraseology, bears witness, to be a descrip tion* of the visible church." Again I say — and we all say — let it be so ! Let both parties enjoy their liberty of judgment and interpretation. No one objects to it ! They exercise an unquestionable right ! I will add, to complete our view, two more Articles, marked by the same wise, and sober, and comprehensive spirit. Look at Article xvii., in which the Reformers have so spoken of the divine predestination as not to exclude the doctrine of free will, and of free will, as not to destroy the truth of the divine predestination. Both parties, as in the former instances, unless resolute to push their half truth to an extreme, may meet in peace within the limits of the formulary. Again, though faith is * Vide Tract 90. 63 described as that alone which can justify a sinner, this is not so asserted as to enable the Solifidian or Antinomian to subscribe the Article. But both those who love to dwell on the fulness of God's promises in Christ, and the freedom of his grace in justifying the sinner — and those, on the other side, who dwell on the Gospel necessity of holiness, and the dutiful obedience due to God's command ments, may find their views in the combined state ments of the Article, both together making up the Church's unity and the whole truth. But what is this acknowledged moderation and comprehensiveness of the Church of England to the purpose of the statute ?— it is ov&v wpog Aiovaoov. It has been already, not suggested, but, I must say, demonstrated, that it is a mere misapprehension, a shadow, to speak, as Mr. Gresley does, of the low or high-churchmanship of the Vice-Chancellor, as affect ing an anti-Romanist test which is not of his making, his duty being wholly ministerial. The test is that of the Church primarily, and then of the University, and so it is distinctly stated in the wording of the proposed statute itself. It is declared to be anti- Romanist, in the preamble. The only statement to the purpose would have been to show that the very same indulgence which is confessedly given to the diversities of opinion, which we have just been considering, has been extended, in the same way and like latitude of ex pression, to the " whole Romanist doctrine." Till this is done, not so much as a single step has really 64 been made towards shaking the integrity of the statute, and its definite and constitutional object ; to accomplish which, both articles and statutes do labour to effect the exclusion, not of mere Ro manizing doctrine, but of total and formal Ro manism. I speak throughout of nothing short of this ! XIV. And now I must be permitted to remark that neither Mr. Gresley nor the Quarterly Reviewer, in speaking of the unquestionable comprehensiveness of the Articles, has noticed the real principle on which it rests, — that which secures liberty without licentiousness, and an orderly restraint on doc trine without tyranny. I doubt not, in both cases, it is an unintentional omission. But it is a vital point, in a complete view of the present ques tion. The great principle of the Church of Eng land in her Articles, and in the services of her incomparable Liturgy, is the word of God. This, illustrated by tradition, (but not enslaved to it, or obscured by it,) unapproached in its authority by ecclesiastical glosses, or ecclesiastical usage ; this, in its own magnificent simplicity and doctrinal clear ness and definiteness ; this, embracing in its grand harmony those innumerable diversities of intellect and feeling which are but modulations of the same vital and central truths, is the standard by which she has measured all doctrine. This is the secret of her moderation, unintelligible or misunderstood without it. This is why she brings some doctrines on the soul with so iron a hand, and leaves other 65 points so loose in comparison. It is not from halt ing between two opinions, or dividing the litigated doctrine between contending parties, as though truth were a substance capable of a material bisection ; still less from a political subserviency, or an un principled Jesuitry. But it is from the wisdom, and charity, and love of truth, which once inspired her founders from " above ;" and that consequent re verence for the word of God, and its primitive simplicity, which forbade them from either binding or loosing where the Word did neither bind nor loose. He who discovers not in the Articles a scheme of doctrine fit for Christian life and practice, — a system of theology, containing, in their due proportion, all things necessary to salvation, — has already deserted Scripture, and followed another rule. In their depth, their simplicity, their perfect yet simple symmetry, their doctrinal coherence and complete ness, they indeed reflect the Scripture, of which, in the form of articulate and scientific teaching, they are the truest image. The only art of peace which they exercise is their moderation, — their truth ; where Scripture is definite, so are they, where Scripture is doubtful, so are they, where it is silent, so are they. They are at once our scheme of com prehension, and our bond of unity. We must not limit their extent ; we will go as far as they ; but beyond it we dare not venture. For beyond is not liberty, but license. XV. And this much being premised, we are in a 66 condition, in the last place, to consider briefly, the only really plausible plea, which has been urged, to the right of holding Romanism along with subscrip tion to the Articles of the Church of England. This plea is rested by an eminent Tractarian divine (vide Dr. Pusey's Letter) on the liberty which Laud has won for us. And in another place, he defines that liberty as a right to the principle of interpreting all things therein contained " according to the analogy of the faith." The latter point has alread}' been determined, in considering the Arian plea, and what, in fact, is, in these writers, synonymous with it, " consistency with Catholic tradition," — that, in its turn, being resolved into the Tridentine canons as the best anthoritative exposition of it, minus, in the case of English churchmen, the spi ritual supremacy of the Pope, as a necessary ac companiment. A probable one, and a reasonable, it is allowed to be ! But it will be well, my Lord, to say a few words about the first point, — the authority of Archbishop Laud, and the liberty which that great divine and churchman, but most mistaken and arbitrary ruler, is supposed to have won for the Church which he loved, yet fatally overthrew. Now neither Laud nor any other individual bishop of the Church, — whatever influence he may exert over his cotempo- raries, whatever changes he may work in the cur rent theology, and however vehement and inflexible his will, — can legitimate a new principle, either of liberty or of restriction, unless either by an actual 67 modification of the authoritative formularies ; or, while the letter of the old formularies is unal tered, by the establishment of a new interpretation, which the Church in after times may, in uninter rupted succession, have adopted. It is singular enough that Dr. Clarke, and the cotemporary advocates of Arian subscription, appeal to the very same authority of Laud, as justifying them in hold ing views opposed to the prima facie intention of the Articles ; nay, in interpreting them in senses irreconcileable and contradictory to them. The same reply, therefore, will be sufficient for both. Now I readily grant that we do owe to Laud a change in the current doctrine of the Church upon a point of great practical importance ; and one which will retain its position in the Church as a recog nised and unquestionable element, — a definite type of theology, — so long as a reasonable liberty is al lowed to the diversities of human intellect, the aberrations of human passions, and the varieties of physical and spiritual temperament. I will at the same time avow my own opinion, that, in order and discipline, he did the Church essential and perma nent service, — a service redounding even upon those who are not only in irreconcileable opposition to him on other questions, but on the very one to which I am now referring, — the doctrine of free will and predestination. I am, indeed, convinced that his views upon Church government were fundamentally erroneous, f 2 6b subversive of liberty of conscience, and the true scriptural type of a divine society; that, from a lack of the true political capacity, he mistook times and seasons, and aimed at reconstructing the majesty of the mediaeval church, though its indis pensable conditions, moral, political, and religious, had disappeared for ever ; and that his vehement and arbitrary temperament made good measures often odious to a free people, and bad ones insup portable. But at any rate I can fully understand and do full justice to the feelings with which, on the whole, this energetic and uncompromising up holder of the Church of England, is, and always will be, regarded by many good, and, in their own doctrinal type, moderate and charitable, men. The opinions, then, upon spiritual authority, known as High-Church, and the system of doctrine called Arminian, owe their recognition and perma nent establishment among us, as constant and indis putable powers within the Establishment, to the vigo rous mind, commanding position, and indefatigable energies of Laud. And no less certain is it, that in this school, thus founded, some of the most illus trious defenders of the common faith, and accom plished theologians, whom the Church of England has produced, have been moulded and disciplined. The reformers of the Church of England, however, and their immediate successors, were, the greater part of them, in doctrine Calvinists, some of them even to the extreme of that austere and metaphysical school. No line can be drawn between their personal 69 theology and that of the great Genevan Reformer, whose Institutions were at one time the authorized text-book of dogmatical divinity in our Universi ties. Not only, therefore, were the doctrines of grace, whieh are not Calvinism but the gospel, but the famous five points, involving grace irresistible and eternal reprobation, the burthen of the popular teaching. " The five points " tormented the heart and soul of the nation like an evil spirit. They disputed in the Universities, and harangued in the Commons, and tyrannized in both. Freedom of intellect, and the rightful interpretation of scripture, lay prostrate under the Calvinistic incubus. And, it must be confessed that, to a great extent, along with the Genevan theology went, hand in hand, the contempt of civil and ecclesiastical authority. This is not the place to examine the permanent debt we owe, notwithstanding, both for political and religious liberty, to the Puritan and Calvin istic schools. But, other considerations apart, truth itself runs riot, when it can suppress opposition by material power. And when we look at the history of mankind, and the laws of the human mind,— which, in the mass of men, is ever fluctuating between two extremes, — we must acknowledge the danger of one set of truths being unbalanced by another, and unmodified by the antagonism of free opinion. I fully grant, moreover, even if the liberty of con science on this great subject, vindicated by Laud, had been, not, as is really the case, a right given by 70 the Articles in their natural meaning, but artfully superinduced upon them, still, that being ratified afterwards by the tradition and practice of the Church, such a liberty of thought ought to be con sidered now as legitimately established and beyond invasion. But observe the true state of the case, which re flects a new light on the existing controversy. It was vindicated by Laud and by the king, upon the specific, constitutional, and irresistible ground, that the liberty in question was accorded by the Articles themselves, in their literal and grammatical — that is, their true and natural — meaning. And here is the enduring monument of the wisdom of the Angli can Reformers, and of their reverential and scrupu lous love of the truth, as revealed in Scripture : that no private bias, no religious metaphysics, no persuasion of the legitimacy of certain conclusions, as deductions from holy writ, prevailed upon them to go beyond its clear and unquestionable declara tions. The victory, therefore, which Laud won, and the freedom which he did secure, was that very literal meaning of the Articles, which, now, under the name of Laud, it is attempted to evade, and thus to admit the Romanism which, even by him, they were intended to exclude. And the very same line of reasoning is adopted by Bull in his defence of the Harmonia Evangelica. Well may Waterland say, " When Franciscus de Santa Clara undertook to reconcile our articles to Popery, what did he else, but play 71 the Jesuit, and make himself ridiculous ?" And in another passage, as an instance of an absurdity and impossibility, he mentions the reconciliation of the Articles with Popery— the whole Roman doc trine. But, on the other hand, it was not unnatural that the popular Calvinism, insurrectionary and bigoted, and coeval with the growth of the Reformation, should have justified itself by the presumed entire con currence of the Articles. It is not astonishing, that, on discovering in the rulers of the Church a new animus on these questions, as indeed it undeniably was, they should withhold subscription from Articles which party dogmatism was accustomed to interpret in its own exclusive sense. The mere personal history of the Reformers is in their favour — from Prynne to Toplady they are right here. But the Thirty-nine Articles,* and the exclusion from them of the Lam beth propositions, have always been overwhelmingly against them. Nor does it appear, that, in Mon tague's case, the House of Commons relied mainly on the grammatical and natural meaning of the Articles, but on extrinsic evidence, and supposed acts of the Church, which, in reality, were no au thoritative acts at all. Laud was right in his resist ance, and in the ecclesiastical and constitutional grounds on which he rested it. Henceforth, however, both Calvinists and Arrai- * This is clear from Whitgift's decision in Barrett's case, though, at Lambeth, Whitgift adopted Whitaker's theology, and not Barrett's. 72 nians have a common brotherhood in the Church — both, if not in extremes, are in perfect consistency with the Articles. And it remains only to say of the Calvinistic type, as of the Arminian, that some of the mightiest names of the Church, have in all ages, illustrated it. Calvinism has its full portion of our theological giants. And, finally, it is mainly to this temperate wisdom upon scripture mysteries, and not to a tendency to split doctrines with Rome, still less to abandon the great Reformation principles, that, with the exception of a few of the Laudian controver sialists, a large proportion of our divines refer, when they speak of the moderation of the Church of Eng land. It is hardly fair of Mr. Oakeley, and unworthy of the candour with which, on the whole, he fights, to suggest, for it is no more, the case of Bishop Mon tague, and his acquittal by the committee of bishops appointed by the king, as an authoritative act of the Church of England. And though the differ ence between the cases is distinctly admitted, yet the general impression at which he would appear to aim, is one not in harmony with the truth. " It is remarkable," he adds, in a note, " that this decision in the case of Bishop Montague was pronounced by a body constituted precisely in the same way with that which originally sanctioned the Thirty-nine Articles — namely, a committee appointed by the king." Granting the fact, though it is disputed by Heylin, it shakes not in the least degree the eccle siastical and national authority of the same Articles, 73 as formally sanctioned in 1562 and 1662." (Vid. Oakeley, p. 36.) Montague was, in fact, a Papist,* though, in his " Appello Caesarem," he had the best of the argu ment against the Puritans ; and he was in commu nication with Panzani. But let us suppose again, for argument's sake, that Laud's personal belief and profession, do of themselves, confer upon all future churchmen the same freedom, however interrupted may be the continuity of the doctrinal succession. For on some points, the Nonjurors, his legitimate de scendants, did vary very considerably from the Lau- dian type. But even so, it cannot at all be ex panded into the right now contended for, — the hold ing of the whole Romanist doctrine with the Articles. In spite of the liberty which Laud accorded and en couraged in his subordinates to vilify the Reforma tion, and, under the plea of candour and Catho licity, to smooth down the corruptions of the Romish creed and practice ; though, as good Bishop Hall describes him, he seemed to be sometimes in one camp and sometimes in another, yet, anyhow, he was not a total Romanist. He and Heylin, and his true school, rejected, honestly, the Roman doc trine, and still venerated the scriptural founders of the Reformed Church. Laud was superstitious by temperament, and Arminian by conviction ; and in trigue and crooked policy seduced him to go a cer tain way, in outward conformity to the Romish type, to tempt and flatter the return of the Eng- * Save, perhaps, on predestination, vide Hallatn, vol. ii. p. 86. 74 lish Catholics into the Church. But he was made of stout and manly materials at bottom, and he died solemnly asserting his Protestantism.* If I read Mr. Oakeley aright, he would regard Laud with pity as a theologian, on the hypothesis that his ceremonial tyranny arose from any conviction of the essential importance of the forms on which he insisted; and with contempt as a politician, if, on the hypothesis that he really wished to Romanize Church and State, he jeoparded a mighty scheme, by outward resemblances, contemptible as instruments of unity, but quite enough, by the suspicions they engendered, to raise a tempest beyond his laying. And he is forced to confess a fact which, could it have been denied, would have been of infinite importance to his line of argument ; a line which, meagre and feeble, even as applied to the time of Laud, has not a shadow of fact by which to support it afterwards. He allows that the recorded eccle siastical acts of the Archbishop are anti-Romanist. The canons of 1640, the canons of Laud, condemn, distinctly, as a body, the Romanist doctrines. Though, as he truly says, they present a somewhat perplexing combination of Catholic regulation in external things, with the solemn disclaiming of the dogmas which alone can give any value to such usages. So much for Laud. I will only add a passage from Bishop Bull, to whose authority both the Arians, Tractarians, and Latitudinarians * Vid. his will and last speech, — Heylin's Life of Laud — Le Bas' Life of Laud. 75 appeal ; and would fain persuade those unac quainted with the-writings of this great theologian, and unsuspicious of polemical artifice, that his principles of articular interpretation arc identi cal with those now vehemently forced upon the Church. Whereas he reasons, as all have hitherto reasoned, on their legitimate and natural interpre tation ; and claims a liberty from Puritan dog matism, not a right to hold Romanist doctrines, with subscription to Protestant Articles, and the enjoyment of Protestant dignities. He thus repels the charges of Romanizing, which his adversary, Tully, had so unsparingly used against him. " Ad me vero quod attivet, adjuvante domino centies emori mallem, quam fidem in conciliabulo sive conspiratione Tridentina, cusam amplecti" — that very Tridentine Romanism which the refusal to ratify the statute and the ancient principle of the Reformation, will practically pronounce compatible with the Church of England. " Quoscunque Pon- tificium errores sive in articulis suis, sive alibi dam- navit Ecclesia Anglicane (non temere hsec effutio sed consulto loquar) et ipse penitus damno." (Bull, Apol. sect. 1, § 7.) " Deo Op. Max. gratias ago, quod me peccatore instrumento uti dignatus fuerit, ad animos quosdam, ex Oreo et Barathro errorum et superstitionum papisticarum extrahendos." (Bull, Ap. sec. 1, § 7.) XII. And now, how does this historical survey bear upon our subject, and the ratification now asked, at the hands of convocation, for the Articles of the 76 Church of England in the sense of the composers and imposers, never yet sundered ; as the Church and University intend to impose them, and in which all mi nisters of the Church, and fellows of colleges, have unquestionably signed them? More than this is not asked, — the right to demand the subscription, on suspicion, is already given by the statutes, and is an essential part of the University code, and made a test therein, by Archbishop Laud ! It bears thus directly, and powerfully upon it, though ex abun- danti I and as illustrative of a position already by other proof established. It removes the sole his torical ground on which a latitudinarian interpreta tion in the Romanist sense, can find the shadow of a resting-place, even by the confession of the Trac- tarian divines themselves. For even the Nonjurors abandoned not their protestations against Rome and her doctrinal corruptions, and Archbishop San- croft was ready to act with the Nonconformists, as brethren in a common cause, against the re-intro duction of Romanism; not merely on account of the foreign jurisdiction, but the corruption of the faith in separable, from it, — purgatory, the doctrine of the mass, with its accompanying blasphemies, the wor ship of relics and images,— in short, the Tridentine Creed ever rejected and denied by the Church. Prove that the Laudian Creed does not go the lengths of the neo-Romanists, and, on the confession of these divines themselves, the whole system of im posing and receiving the Articles, according to the intention of the imposers and their literal meaning, 77 to the exclusion of Romanism, as a fundamentalprin- ciple, is complete ; and the power to administer them as an anti-Romanist test, from the beginning, is without a break. From Edward to Elizabeth, from Elizabeth to James, from James to Charles, from Charles to William, there is no variation in the public acts and solemn signatures of the Church. Even the rubrical alterations, looking, if you please, the Catholic way, made in 1662, were accompanied by a solemn and decisive negative, — in the very formulary to which they are supposed to give a Ca tholic meaning, — of that corporeal presence which is an essential part of the so-called Catholic faith !* And this, too, is worthy of observation, that the Articles of the Church of England derive their validity, as a national formula of faith, not from an ecclesiastical synod only, but from the joint consent of the State, embodied in an act of Par liament. And the lay adherence to the Protestant sense, — a thing quite as important in a joint cove nant, as that of the Church, — has, in like manner, been uniform and consistent. Nay, in former times, that lay attachment to the principles engrafted on the stock of the Reformation, has alternately re buked the wavering attachment of its prelates, and supported them in resisting the tyrannical invasions of its kings. It has survived the tumults of civil war, and the languors of indifferentism ; and, as I believe, in the main, with a firm and unbroken * In the same Protestant spirit was the rejection of Cosin's rubrical amendments — Vid. Cardwell's Conferences. 78 attachment, both to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, it still claims that the ancient inheritance of Englishmen be maintained inviolate. The only attempts to shake the Protestant authority of the Articles have been those of professed Jesuits and the Tractarian divines, Santa Clara and Mr. Newman. And these divines, whilst they freely draw upon all schools of theology for scraps of authority, and verbal coincidences, are, indeed and in truth, not of the school of Laud, and Andrewes, and Ken, but constitute a distinct sect. And if, though they symbolize in doctrine with Rome, they yet refuse to communicate " with her as a church, while at the same time they renounce the Church of England, they become only a camarilla, — a new class of dissenters, forming a quasi-Church of themselves. If, after denying to the Church in which they were born, and whose ministers they still are, the com mon marks of a Church of Christ, they do find what she lacks, in Rome ; why then they are not only doctrinally Romanists, but formally Papists. Toleration, charity, sympathy, they may claim. But to require from the Church and the University the renunciation of the Protestantism of Church and State, and the de facto establishment of a Ro manist test, is too great a sacrifice to make. XVII. A few more remarks and I have done. I frankly avow, then, that I, my Lord, like yourself, cherish the union of the Church and State as at pre sent established. I consider it, so long as it can be 79 maintained, without the surrender of vital truth, quite as essential to the spiritual peace and efficiency of the Church, as to the preservation of the moral unity of the Commonwealth. But it must be ob vious to the most careless observer, that the present state of ecclesiastical feeling and opinion, threatens its disrupture — not as a possible contingency, but almost as a necessary consequence. Yet, I am afraid there are many who would fain preserve this union, and yet will blindly reject the last rem nants of our Protestantism ; and establish in its stead a Catholicism, which, in any other than the definite sense of the Church, is de facto and de jure Romanism. I ask then, if, quasi-synodically, you substitute for the ancient test, Tract 90 expounded by Mr. Ward and Mr. Oakeley, which you directly and inevitably do ; and if Romanism therefore is no longer a distinguishable creed from Anglicanism; what becomes of the covenant between the Church and the State, which was ratified on the contrary supposition ? What will become, as a matter of right in the eyes of the nation, of the dignities and emoluments of the establishment, secured to her, on condition of her Protestantism, and the yet unviolated security of the Protestant Articles? What becomes of the Protestant Church of Ireland, bound indissolubly, for life or death, with her English sister? I might put many more questions of the like nature, but these are enough to indicate the line of inquiry ; and the solemn interests dependent, as I believe, directly or indirectly, on the rejection 80 or acceptance of the present decisive but necessary measure. 2. Does the affirmation of the statute by the con vocation necessitate the retirement from their ancient mother of those among the Tractarian divines, who, hold indeed the Romanist doctrine, and reject, as uncatholic, the old traditionary teaching of the Church of England, but still desire to tany within her pale, and communicate at her altar ? I reply, certainly not. Such communion, lay -communion, was pressed earnestly, after the Reformation, upon the yet unconverted members of the ancient Church, as a duty. Such a retirement, in case of any reason able approach to a synodical resolution against the articular interpretation of Tract 90, (a condition since fulfilled in the unanimous sentiments of the bishops,) was publicly avowed by Mr. Keble long ago, to be a necessary step for conscientious men to take. It is the course which their own dignity and consistency, the opinions of friends and foes, and the safety of the Church, command them to adopt. 3. But it may be said, that the Church needs all the talents and graces of her children, in a time of unparalleled difficulty and danger. That it is an awful measure to eject men, who, however opposed to the received theology, are yet holy and devoted, and are willing to serve at her altars, and minister to her flock. I grant this entirely. I yield to no one, in a candid and Christian appreciation of the talents, the graces, and the learning of many of 4 81 these theologians. A conflict of principles may be a decisive, but it need not be an ungenerous or in temperate one. I think it a grievous necessity, a calamity to be mourned over in dust and ashes, to castfrom the bosom of their spiritual mother, talents and self-devotion, which might do noble service in extending her influence, and strengthening her foundations ! But the necessity is of their own im- posing. She cannot retain them, without perishing as a Protestant and National Church — without sur rendering her characteristic doctrines, belying her formularies, dishonouring her founders, her con fessors and martyrs, and taking and cherishing in her bosom, the very elements, which, in the very furnace of fire, she has resolutely abjured. I am not insensible to the danger of drawing off so much as a drop of the life's blood of a Church, its earnestness, and reverence, and devotedness. But here it is turned to poison ; and a temporary shock and par tial maiming, are preferable, after all, to the morti fication of the whole body, and a miserable death. 4. Again, it is impossible for the stoutest heart to look upon the present temper of the people at large, upon this question, without the most serious disquietude. It is impossible not to discern a growing distrust and alienation, exhibited, not in the turbulent and disaffected, not in the lax church man, or secular politician, but in the builders of schools, and founders of churches, the opposers of dissent in the times gone by, and the very heart and G 82 strength of the establishment. It is alarming to perceive, what will always happen when men's pas sions are aroused into fanaticism, what new ingre dients of confusion are daily thrown into the ferment ing mass ; and projects are moved, and measures contemplated, which, unless men's minds be reas sured, threaten to overwhelm all that sober church men have been accustomed to reverence. And, finally, if it be objected by those who know not the true theory of ecclesiastical power, or the practical working of Church claims, that, by sternly repellingybrmaZ Romanism, though we freely tolerate all else up to that point, we are yielding ignominiously to the popular dictation, and abandon the prerogatives of the Church ; I reply, that it is just the contrary. We uphold our authority, we establish our just prerogative. These are the very grounds upon which I would urge the support of the statute. I am sure, that, if we shrink from a most painful but imperative duty, the time is not far distant, when the most legitimate church-autho rity, will, nationally, become an empty name. I support the statute, then because I value the epis copal constitution of the Church, as an ordinance of the apostles, and a divine treasure ; and, because I see that it is utterly impossible to maintain it in its integrity and rightful power, as the centre of our organic life, if it be cumbered even with the well- grounded suspicion of a Roman despotism. I support it, because I value holy discipline 83 and a reverend order ; and I see that no approach to its restoration or its reasonable invigoration upon any system can be made, so long as Romanism, — sacramental confession, and priestly absolution, — are cherished in her bosom. I support it, because I would fain maintain the continuity of the Church, from the beginning until now; because I wish to maintain the reverence due to primitive antiquity, and to the chain of saints, which connects the ancient with the modern Church — looking at our common faith, rather than specu lative diversities, or partial errors. And I see and know, that it is impossible so to do, while the na tional mind is apprehensive that we value, not the common faith, but the superstitions, of our ances tors, and are introducing Rome under the disguise of antiquity.I support it, because, albeit in scriptural subor dination to justification by faith only, I would main tain the proper arrangement and subordination of the means of grace ; because I venerate the blessed sacraments, the baptismal laver, and the commu nion of the body and the blood ; and I see that it is impossible to maintain either, in their scriptural dignity, so long as the one may be confounded with the infusion of justifying grace, and the other With transubstantiation. I support it, because I would fain not exchange the safe comprehension of the Church of England, either for an Arian latitudinarianism, or a Roman- 84 ist exclusiveness ; and because I would uphold to the utmost that rightful authority both in the Church and the University, without which the integrity of our faith is hopeless, and the main tenance of a struggle with Rome and dissent an impossibility and a dream. And now, my Lord, I have done. I have written warmly, because I feel deeply ; and unmethodically, because I have written hastily ; but yet I hope with Christian charity and moderation, for I should be sorry to wound a brother. We are fighting not with men but principles. I fear the very worst for the Church of England. And may God grant that I and you, my Lord, may not have to mourn both over her doctrinal corruption, and her national ruin ! I remain, my dear Lord, With every sentiment of affectionate respect, Your faithful servant, JAMES GARBETT. P.S. As this is passing through the press, the correspondence of the Bishop of Norwich and Mr> Wodehouse offers an awful confirmation of the views adopted in the preceding pages. Sure I am that, if the evangelical body reject the legitimate test of the Articles, and the Prayer-book interpreted by them and de veloping them, they will not win Christian liberty, but a lawless Latitudinarianism. Far better maintain the moderate discipline of the Church than be thrown forth, naked, to combat Romanism, not as a Church, but as individuals, and distinct voluntary associations. LONDON : PRINTED BY G. j. PALMER, SAVOY STREET, STRAND. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 08837 0714