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SUBSCRIPTION

THE AETICLES.

GEORGE DUDLEY RYDER, M.A,
RECTOR OF EASTON, HANTS.

( As deceives, and yet true." — 2 Cor, vi. 8.

LONDON:
JAMES TOOVEY, 291, PICCADILLY.
1845.

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.

The condemnation of Mr. Ward, by a majority of
the members of the Oxford Convocation, assembled in
the theatre on the 13th of February last, whether to
be considered legal or not, is a fact that no wishes of
moderate men, or exertions of such as are violent,
can keep in isolation. If it had nothing to do with
facts that preceded it, then might it be hoped that it
would be the cause of none to follow. It was, how
ever, a consequence itself, and will in turn have con
sequences of its own. It was intended to have them :
the measure was proposed that the public might see
the authorities of the University, and a large majority
in her Convocation strenuously opposing themselves to
certain views, and that van effectual stop might be put
to the maintenance of such views by Oxford men.
The measure was intended to have these consequences ;
it has had the former: how far it may be able to
achieve the latter remains to be seen ; perhaps, too, it
may have others, and these not such as were at first
expected. But I have no present concern with its
general results ; indeed no speculation of mine upon
such a subject would be worth publishing. What
follows, viz. a statement of the view under which I
consider myself as subscribing the Articles, is one of its

4 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
results, the only one with which I am now concerned,
and perhaps, to any but myself, one of no importance
whatever. Before I state it, however, I must say what it is
that induces me to make it public. It has hitherto
been universally acknowledged that those before whom
subscription is made have nothing to do with it, be
yond seeing that it takes place. Each of us has sub
scribed as he thought he best might ; he may have
had scruples, and asked advice of friends, or he may
have reasoned himself out of them without assistance ;
at any rate, he has felt himself concerned with- the
honesty of his own subscription alone, and not ven
tured to impugn that of others. Things are now
changed : between seven and eight hundred Masters of
Arts have assisted the authorities in Oxford in con
demning Mr. Ward as guilty of dishonest subscription ;
they have placed on record their conviction that to
subscribe as he does is utterly inconsistent with good
faith. Of course there is a great difference between a
view held privately, although acted on, and another
which is both acted on and maintained publicly ;
authorities naturally and properly regard the one with
a different eye to that with which they regard the
other. And had the course adopted in Mr. Ward's
case been simply to censure his view, or even gone so
far as to punish him for publishing it, the understand
ing to which I have referred might still have continued.
But, as all know, this is not what has been done :
the University has not only censured Mr. Ward's view,
but has also gone further, and censured and degraded
him as a dishonest man for holding it. The courses
are evidently different in kind and in effect upon the
individual and the public : either might have been

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 5
chosen, and the preference of the one to the other
arose of course from the intentions of the proposers
being such that they would be furthered by the one,
not, or more than by the other. We are bound to
presume that the course adopted, putting an end so
immediately and necessarily as it does to the tacit un
derstanding I have mentioned as previously existing,
was intended to do so ; that those who proposed or
forwarded the measure foresaw this consequence, and
desired it. I ,am far from complaining that such should
have been the case; what they put an end to was
anything but a satisfactory state of things ; but, in
putting an end to it, more has been done than simply
to notify to all present and future subscribers the
possibility of authorities inquiring and punishing if
they suspect subscription to have been made under a
view of which they do not approve. Graduates, lay or
clerical, are not like schoolboys, we may hope, con
tent to do in silence what, if known, might subject
them to punishment, but men who would rather risk
the loss of temporal advantages, however important to
them, than endure the impression that, if the sense in
which they subscribed were avowed, they might pos
sibly be deprived of them. When the conduct of men
is made subject to inquiry, and praise or blame, those
who are anxious to act in an honest and straightforward
manner, feel they are called upon to exercise a degree
of openness that they would never have dreamt of
otherwise, — to make confessions, and offer explana
tions. In the present case, I cannot but think that
men are bound in honor, after what has happened, to
see that the view under which they subscribe is either
by their own act, or that of others, sufficiently pre
sented to the notice of authorities, for themselves to feel

6 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
that they enjoy whatever they hold on condition of
subscription, henceforward not from -any ignorance on
the part of such authorities of the sense in which they
have subscribed, but from their voluntarily conniving
at or approving it. It is with this feeling that I now
offer to every one who may be concerned to know it,
in my case, the following statement of the sense in
which alone, as I am at present minded, I can sub
scribe the Articles. I publish it, because doing so
may possibly induce some others to do the like, who
would not otherwise have thought of it ; but, as I
have written to confess what some might think a
crime, and suppose they had the right and power to
punish, not to press for the adoption of the view I
state, I have endeavoured to be as brief as I could
make consistent with being explicit.
1. To speak of subscription generally : it is in all
cases a significant act ; by it you commit yourself to
something, — lay yourself under some obligation. The
degree, however, in which you do this, is evidently
not the same in all cases : e. g. your signature, as
affixed to a letter, commits you much more than it
does when attached among many others to a petition
or protest. What may be the obligation incurred in
a given case, the contents of the paper subscribed,.
with its other circumstances, must determine. Neither
those before whom you subscribe, nor your own inten
tion at the time, can do it ; thus, for example, a travel
ling agent, in a bookselling speculation, may represent
to you that signing an order for his work will not oblige
you to take it, when brought, if you do not like it, and
you may sign with this idea ; but you have neverthe
less made yourself legally liable to be forced to take
it, because the agent was not authorised to say what he

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 7
did, and you had no right to suppose he was. The
opinions, therefore, of those before whom the Articles
are subscribed, whether only probably known to you
or expressed at the time, for as much as such persons
are only officers seeing that a law is obeyed, and the
particular sense in which you have subscribed, for as
much as the legislature did not authorize it, however
valid they may be as excuses for subsequent laxity or
needless scrupulosity, neither increase or diminish the
obligation you have incurred. The circumstances es
sential to the case determine that — not its peculiarities.
These may have tended to make it more or less diffi
cult to discover what that obligation was, but cannot
have altered it.
2. Now, of these circumstances, the first to be
considered in the case before us, is the document we
subscribe. It contains 39 Articles or Decisions on Re
ligious questions passed by an English Convocation in
1562, with their ratification by the King, and 3
Articles from the 36th Canon, passed in like manner
in 1603. An English Convocation is a Provincial
Council. To estimate its decisions aright, therefore, we
must know what are the powers of such a Council;
and turning for this to the Corpus Juris Canonici, we
find them described as follows :
" Provincialia concilia sunt, quae propter Ecclesi-
" asticas causas, et altercationum sedationes per sin-
" gulas provincias, convocanti Metropolitano Episcopo
" omnes provinciales Episcopos, et Cathedralium Eccle-
" siarum Capitula, celebrari placuit. Hsec autem
" neque definiendi, neque generaliter constituendi vim
" aliquam habent : sed tantum curandi, ut id servetur,
" quod alias statutum est, et quod generaliter seu
" specialiter observari praceptum est : licet interdum

8 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
* et qua? ab his recte statuta sunt etiam Catholica
" Ecclesia suscipiat."*
It may indeed be maintained from the same work
that the powers of an English Convocation were
lessened, and even became none at all by our separa
tion from the Pope,f — a point in which of course we
do not allow its authority. Still we must admit it to
be a valid witness as to the powers of provincial
councils when in communion with the Pope, — powers
for the exercise of which alone the English Convoca
tion was originally constituted. And if so, how can
a good title be made out for the possession of greater
powers after separation from the Pope than before?
Should it be held that the councils of a Provincial
Church are to it as general councils during a schism,
then we have J. Taylor's authority for thinking that
general councils themselves have no more power to
determine in matters of Faith J than such as are Pro
vincial. So that the powers of the English Convocation
are either as above stated or less. Supposing them,
however, to amount to what is stated, then it is evident
that while, on the one hand, it was competent for the
English Convocation to make decisions for the avoiding
diversities of opinion, and establishing of consent in
true religion, — it was, on the other, not competent for
it to define — and, of course, not either to originate,
innovate, or develope in religion ; it could not declare
in new matter what was truth, and what not ; it was
limited to the applying old admitted truth to existing
circumstances. It might attempt more, for it might
err : it might do so unconsciously ; but, so far as it
* Institut. Juris Canon, tit. iii. comp. Gratianus Decret. i. dist. xviii.
+ Decret. dist. xvii. o. 6.
Ductor Dubitantium, Book iii. c. 4, t. 22.

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 9
did so, it lacked authority, and neither could, nor can
bind any man's conscience, whether subscribing or
not. Surely, to suppose that subscription obliges us
to adherence to anything in the Articles, if any such
there be, which the Convocation had no right to place
there, is to suppose it analogous to the oath of a rebel
to a usurper, which the circumstances require him to
understand as obliging him to support his leader in all
he undertakes to obtain the crown whether just or
unjust. It must be much more for the credit and
interest of the Church of England to maintain an
analogy between it and the oath of a loyal subject,
who swears indeed that he will obey his sovereign,
but would not be foresworn, though he refused on
finding he was commanded to do what his duty to
God, or the known laws of his country forbad.
So much as to the general character of the Arti
cles : I will speak now of how they appear to me on a
nearer inspection.
a. They may evidently be divided into two classes.
Some are long admitted indubitable Articles of Ca
tholic Faith. These, occurring as they do at the com
mencement of the document, form a preface to what
follows, similar to those we find in Ancient Conciliar
Acts. I suppose, however, that they owe only their
situation to their serving this purpose, and the higher
dignity of their subject — that they are not merely a
formal preface, but have been placed in the document,
notwithstanding their abstract appearance, because the
circumstances of the time required their enunciation
by a council seeking to establish consent in true reli
gion. We are certainly not to suppose that they
are all the Articles of Catholic Faith which the Con
vocation intended to admit, but those only the declara-

10 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
tion of which it thought was then required : for had
it been otherwise, we should undoubtedly have had
amongst them one on the inspiration of the Bible.
Others, again, bear on their surface a reference to the
times in which they were written, which there is no
mistaking : thus e. g. the Homilies are said to con
tain doctrines necessary for these times — meaning of
course those of Queen Elizabeth, not all succeeding
times. b. About the class of Articles last mentioned,
there is evidently more or less of obsoleteness. Thus
in that just referred to, what is obsolete, if the Homilies
are not ? A man might as well hope to escape a
stare, a laugh, and a whisper, if he went about in
trunk-hose and doublet, as expect that he could read
the Homilies in his pulpit word for word, Sunday after
Sunday, without occasioning irreverence, horror, ap
peal to Bishop, commission de lunatico inquirendo.
The book can no longgr be used for the purpose for
which it was written ; its place is no longer in the
pulpit. Where is it then ? undoubtedly wherever its
intrinsic merits in the eyes of each man fit it to be.
Because the Church once placed it in our pulpits, and
it can no longer be there, can it therefore claim to be
a standard book in divinity, in the hands of our
students, — a purpose for which it was never intended ?
It contains a godly doctrine ; — doubtless, — so do thou
sands of books, and the Homilies not more than they : —
a wholesome ; — yes, to the listening patients of the
16th and 17th centuries; but one which, if adminis
tered now, would produce most violent and dangerous
effects : and necessary ; yes, once, but anything rather
than necessary now. Here there is obsoleteness of
subject master.

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 11
Again, there is obsoleteness of fact. In the 37th
Article, the Bishop of Rome is said to have no juris
diction here. When this statement was made, though
there were persons in the country, not a few, who
maintained his right to it, yet he was unable to exer
cise it except very irregularly and by, stealth. He had
it not, though he was endeavouring to have it, — and
therefore the statement was quite true, and relatively
to that time is so now, and will ever be. But nothing
is more notorious than that the Article does not give
a correct account of the state of things amongst us at
the present day. The Pope has jurisdiction here, and
exercises it by means of his four Vicars, with the full
knowledge and permission of the civil power, and
with far less interference from it than our own Bishop's
experience. The first of the three Articles states that the king
has the same supremacy in Ecclesiastical matters as in
Temporal. Every one must see. how very far this is
from describing the state of a country in which, on
the one hand, the temporal supremacy is so univer
sally and instinctively admitted, and felt to be so far
removed from almost the possibility of check that
rebellion is not hopeless but childish ; and on the
other, the Ecclesiastical has men, in all our towns,
and far the larger number of our villages, many and
influential, who deny and deride it, who are known to
do so, and yet till the other day were the pet sub
jects of the civil government. Here is obsoleteness
as to fact dating from early times, ' but becoming for
mal and certain from the repeal of the acts for securing
uniformity. c. There is another obsoleteness besides these, and
one which requires to be noticed by itself. The lapse

13 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
of time since the Articles were written, with its mul
titudinous variations in religious error, has not indeed
produced an obsoleteness of doctrine, that neither
it nor anything else can do, but it has produced one
of doctrinal statement. A council such as that of
1562, intending bond fide the preservation of the
truth and the correction of error, would never confine
itself to statements of doctrine abstract and entire ;
it would make them constantly, if not always, so far,
and in such a way only as seemed most likely to
effect what it had in view. Its decisions would very
naturally have a definitive form; but not only would
they not be definitions from want of authority in the
Council to make them such, but we indulge, so I
think, in a slanderous supposition when deceived by
that form we think its fathers could have so in
tended them. Our Articles then do not present us
with the whole truth in array, but with such
portion of it as the particular character of the error
with which it was then in collision had called into
its front rank. Hence the partial, fragmental, barely
trueish appearance of some of them to men of an
other age, when time's kaleidoscope presents truth
and error in such different dresses, and related to
one another in such different ways to what they
formerly were : and hence, me judice, the demand on
the part of many to be allowed to understand them
each in his own sense, — to head, tail, and piece them,
not that they may better express what they originally
meant, but what the subscribers can best bear them
to mean.
The 19th Article "of the Church" is an instance
in point. If we look upon it as a definition, what
Churchman does not feel it to be meagre and un-

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 13
satisfactory? yea worse, what Churchman does not
see that such is the position of the Church amongst
us at present, that taken as a definition ifr favours
dissenters and latitudinarians, and effectually silences
himself? History, however, happily, not to say provi
dentially, supplies us with proof that,, notwithstanding '
its definitive form, it never could have been intended
for a definition. No Roman Catholic canonist, simi
larly circumstanced, could have taken greater pains
than Elizabeth and her Council to perpetuate the
Apostolic succession in the Church they were severing
from Rome. All the Reforming bodies on the continent
recklessly abandoned it, — the English alone, though
they had no slight difficulty in doing so, would keep it.
Years, centuries pass away, and the English colonies
in America desire, amongst their various sects, to have
the Church of the mother-country. What more easy?
if this Article is the English definition of a Church,
they had only to take our Prayer Book and Arti
cles, with our translation of the Bible, and they
would have had a complete transatlantic representa
tion of the Anglican Church; but so indubitably is
the possession of Apostolic succession an essential
part of the Anglican's idea of a Church, that they did
not think possession of our Prayer Book, Articles,
and Bible would give them any real connexion with
us unless they also had our Orders. Surely then
the Article was never meant as a definition, but as a
decision that the particulars therein mentioned are of
the essence of a Church, such declaration being called
for to correct certain mis-statements and erroneous
impressions of the time. The effect of this argu
ment is increased not a little, if we bear in mind
that our Articles are not merely a compilation by

14 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
the heads of the Church, — those very heads who
were so particular as to our canonical ordination, —
though this is sufficient; but that they have the
imprimatur of Convocation, — the body of the Church
from which, let the Reformers do what they would,
there seemed no eradicating an instinctive Church-
manship, — that body but for which Cranmer and his
friends would have given us a very different Prayer
Book from what we have, only he said he found he
was matched with so Popish a Clergy it was impos
sible. An Article already referred to states not only that
the Pope has no power here, but that he ought not to
have any : the statement of fact has been noticed
above as obsolete ; that of doctrine appended to it
seems no less so. The power of the Pope ceased in
England because a Monarch, " who never spared man
in his anger, nor woman in his lust," found it, as then
existing, to interfere disagreeably with his own. He,
with consent of the other two estates of his realm,
assembled respectively in Convocation, and Parliament
annulled it ; and whether the act was a wrong one, as
Pole, More, and Fisher thought, or not, still " quod
" non fieri debet, factum valebat," and, being but of
positive obligation, when so annulled, its exercise be
came unjustifiable. In itself it was not so ; for
Patriarchal power does not so differ from Metropo-
litical, that if the one is right in Canterbmy, the other
can be necessarily wrong in Rome, — and the exercise
of supreme Ecclesiastical power in England, by a
foreign Bishop and his conclave of Cardinals, can
hardly have been per se wicked, if that of Supreme
civil power by a British Queen and her Parliament,
over such distant countries as Canada and the Indies,

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 15
is righteous. So far, then, as the Pope has been per
mitted to resume his authority here, he has also re
covered his right to it ; and the obsoleteness of the
doctrinal statement in this Article is co-extensive with
that of its statement of fact.
And now it may be as well, before leaving this part
of the subject, to notice the obsoleteness in the Article
" of Purgatory," — the 22nd. Let theologians deter
mine its degree, — I, who am certainly none, only
venture to assert that obsoleteness more or less at
taches to it. In January 1562, the English Convo
cation notices doctrines on the subjects mentioned
in the Article as "the Romish," — i. e. those then
existing in the Romish Communion as contra-distin
guished from such as might be found elsewhere —
e. g. amongst themselves or the Greek Church, — and
scouts them in toto as vain and fond, and rather
than otherwise repugnant to Scripture. In Decem
ber 1563, the Council of Trent, then holding its
twenty-fifth session, reviews these identical Romish
doctrines, prunes them of excrescences, cutting away
— so at least it professes — all that was superstitious
or profane about them. The English Council re
jects certain doctrines existing in a foreign branch
of the Church Catholic, and thereupon of course
Anglicans are bound to reject them too. But sub
sequently a Council of that branch reforms these
doctrines, and makes them other than they were
when the English Council rejected them. Can there
be a doubt that the rejection of the English Convo
cation was affected thereby ? The practical question
of whether these doctrines, after their reformation
were made tenable by an Anglican depends, I sup
pose, on the view taken of the amount of change

16 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
produced theoretically by that revision upon what
they were jointly in practice and theory when 'our
Council denounced them, and is, I should have
thought, to be left to, private judgment, till the Eng
lish Church speaks again about it. If any one cares
to know my own, it is that the Article is no longer
valid as a prohibition, but is so as an authoritative
caution. These instances will perhaps be sufficient to shew
what I mean, when I say that on nearer view I
find the document to be subscribed to contain mat
ter obsolete more or less in facts and doctrinal state
ments. I proceed now to consider, —
3. Its subscription.
a. This I think is attached to it in its original
sense, whatever that may be, and no other. It is
true there are parts, perhaps many, in which it may
be impossible to discover what that is, yet this does
not appear to warrant the putting upon it any sense
other than what it had at first. I cannot conceive
how the Articles are an authority in any other sense
than that in which the Convocation past them.
They oblige a subscriber, not in that they are Arti
cles which he has subscribed, for then subscription
would be significant only of his opinions at the mo
ment he subscribed; but they oblige in that they
are "Articles agreed upon by the Archbishops and
Bishops of both provinces, and the whole Clergy, in
the Convocation holden at London in the year
1562 :" and therefore as then understood, and under
no circumstances otherwise.
b. I think, too, that it betokens adoption or reception
of its contents. I do not use these words as identical
in sense; by adoption, I understand a cordial em-

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 17
bracing, with the desire that what is adopted shall be
and be considered as henceforward of and belonging
to you; but reception, though willing and sincere,
seems to denote an act that is less cordial, which
expresses an intention to submit, but no wish for
the establishment of any more intimate relation. I
think it betokens indifferently one or other of these,
because though subscription to Articles such as ours
of three hundred years old is unprecedented, yet
subscription to the Articles of Councils is a most
ancient custom, and we find these two sorts of sub
scription to them to have existed and been recog
nized as legitimate. The account of those following
on the Council of Ephesus,* besides the necessity
of the case, is sufficient to establish this. I think
it is evident too that the original subscriptions to
our Articles were of this mixed kind. Many doubt
less signed in token of adoption, but when we hear
that the Bishops went down into their dioceses, and
obliged their public preachers to sign also, and main
tain the same in their pulpits under pain of revoca
tion of licence, we cannot but feel sure that the
subscription of reception was all that could have
been sought, or in many of the cases obtained. Com
pulsory subscription may be one of adoption, but can
not be counted on as signifying more than reception.
c. The form of subscription does not affect its
meaning, unless it bears evidence of this on its face,
or it can be shewn that it was intended to do so;
neither of which can, I think, with any probability of
correctness, be asserted.
I receive the Articles then in the sense in which they
* Vide Fleury, Book xxvi. chap. 15 — 38.

18 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
were originally enacted, as being in that sense decrees
of Provincial Councils of my Church, and as such, until
abrogated, so far as they may be, binding upon me and
all her children. Knowing nothing to the contrary, I
consider them what such decrees ought to be, and no
more than they should be ; and authority calling on
me so to do, I willingly and sincerely subscribe them
in token that I so think. Difficulty or impossibility
of ascertaining the original sense in particular Articles
does not make me less ready to allow them to be true
and agreeable to God's word, all and every of them,
for I hold them to be this, not from confidence in my
self, as having examined and found them so to be, but
from confidence in God's superintending providence
over my Church's Councils. The obsoleteness of sundry
amongst them, occasions me no difficulty, as it does not
destroy their truth, but merely limits their operation to
the past, and not extending to all, but leaving many
still unaffected by time, as are all those embodied in our
Liturgy and Catechism, it does not make subscription
nugatory. Neither do I hesitate to do what is de
manded of me, because I know my Church may have
erred in this matter as in any other, for I know also
that there is a far greater liability to error in my own,
and every body else's private judgment on the subject-
— and I am not my Church's judge, but her son.
And here I might conclude, for I have stated how I
subscribe the Articles, and my reasons, did I not feel
myself concerned to notice another view of the subject,
not to combat it indeed, but because it has reference,
too exclusively, I think, but still rightly, to an obliga
tion incurred by a subscriber, and to which it there
fore behoves me to shew I am not insensible. It may
be said ; surely the significancy of such an Act as this

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 19
is most clearly and quickly ascertained, for all practical
purposes, by inquiring what it is, by common consent
of rulers and subjects, taken to mean, for this a sub
scriber ought to mean by it, and it can be nothing to
any body but himself, whether he means more or hot.
Granted; — but the inquiry appears much more easy
than it is, — and the matter being one of conscience, I
cannot satisfy myself to let the meaning of subscription
in my ease be determined by its result. I prefer pro
ceeding as I have done above. I readily admit, how
ever, that formal acts like this come to mean different
things at different times, and that what they are gene
rally held to mean at a given time, they do mean then,
although they may, and ought, in the intention of the
individual, also to mean more.
If there was one popular impression as to the obli
gation incurred by subscription, which had existed from
the first, and continued unimpaired to the present
time — one therefore on which we could calculate, then
doubtless a strong case might be made out for con
sidering it to decide the sense of subscription, and to
make the meaning anything further by it gratuitous ;
but such is not the case. A little thought shows us
that with the changes of the religious and theological
aspect of the Anglican world, the popular impression on
this subject has also undergone change. I have already
spoken of the cordial subscriptions of adoption, and
the compulsory ones of reception in Queen Elizabeth's
day. How different was the state of things in the
days of the Carolan divines ! Certain of the Articles
had by that time become irremediably obsolete; framed
originally for avoidance of diversities of opinion, their
sense had become obscure, or they had ceased to be
applicable to the opinions of the day, for, says the Decla-

2Q SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
ration, " Men of all sorts took the Articles of the Church
of England to be for them." This was a strange and
dangerous state of things in the eyes of all who thought
the Articles, and their subscription, essential to the in
terests of the English Church. The king congratulates
himself that it had not led any to refuse subscription
to them ; but as its tendency was evidently to do so,
he, by advice of certain bishops, interfered to prevent
it. The expedient resorted to in the emergency is to
forbid any one to print or preach about the Articles,
i. e. make public use of them except in their full, plain,
literal, and grammatical sense. Not of course that
subscription was henceforth to be limited to them in
that sense, or we should never have had Jeremy Taylor*
insisting upon it that such Articles as ours should be
made in the greatest latitude of sense, and that, so as
the form of words be subscribed, men be allowed to
understand them in any sense they please, that the
truth of God will suffer and the words can be capable
of; but that the sense of the Articles should be no
longer a matter of public dispute between interested
individuals, one making them mean one thing, another
quite the contrary, — that the Articles should be con
sidered a public document, and the ecclesiastical autho
rities its guardians and interpreters, that, as long as
they were silent, men might sign it with their own im
pressions as to its meaning, but must not quote it
against the views of any one else unless they were quite
sure they were using it in its full, plain, literal, and
grammatical sense. The expedient fully answered its
purpose ; it put an end to the then use of the Articles,
which was an abuse, and yet did. not make them useless
* Ductor Dubitantium, Book iii. c. 4, rule 23.

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 21
to the Church at a future period, as was proved by the
disadvantageous position in which they placed the
Arians who subscribed them in Waterland's time.
The form in which we now subscribe was made com
pulsory in 1661, but as the Churchmen then in power
were more or less of J. Taylor's stamp, we cannot sup
pose, in the absence of all direct proof to the contrary,
that it was intended by it to exclude any he would
have admitted. Change however was soon about to
take place : for following speedily upon the Revolu
tion, and its religious complement, — the expulsion of
the non-jurors personally and theologically from the
Established Church, — came the Burnet and Waterland
view as to subscription: and strangely did its partial
strictness contrast with the almost licentious liberty
which J. Taylor had, however unwillingly, thought it
necessary to allow. They insisted that it was signifi
cant in every case of adoption in one and the same
sense of all the Articles, except certain about which
they and their friends had differences of opinion : —
of these Waterland said they were open Articles, and
Burnet that they admitted of more senses than one.
But long before the High Church party ceased to
exercise supreme power in church affairs they had aban
doned all attempts to insist on this mode of subscription.
Towards the end of the last century, a most energetic
resistance was made to the continuance of subscription
at all, and was very nearly successful. It failed ; but
from that time to this it has been, in practice, con
sidered as affording no sure index of theological opinion,
but merely as an oath of fealty to the Established
Church, binding him who takes it to as much obe
dience as is customarily required. I know many sub
scribe meaning much more than this ; but, as meaning

22 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
this, subscription has been argued for and against, been
retained at Oxford, given up at Cambridge ; and, as
meaning this, those, I presume, who are heterodox on
the doctrines of the Trinity or sacraments, conform to
its requirement ; and, in present popular acceptation,
therefore, it cannot now be taken to mean more.
The popular meaning of subscription then is not fixed
but variable; and therefore, while I admit that it has
claims on the attention of a subscriber, so that he must
see to it that it is included in his meaning, or protest
against its being attached to his subscription, for that
he is not like the mass of subscribers, and does not
mean what they do. I think it most unfit to be taken
by any one simply by itself as the meaning of what he
does, for how knows he that he may not outlive the
present meaning! if he survives his subscription any
thing like the usual period, he will almost certainly do
so; and then in what an antiquated, unreal position he
has placed himself: he means by subscription what
most certainly subscription no longer means. I con
sent to mean by my subscription, therefore, nothing but
what the act appears to me to mean, considered apart
from the changing circumstances of the day. When I
last actually subscribed, it meant, popularly, adherence
to the Church of England, understood with the greatest
possible latitude, and I might be well content to let
my subscription be understood to mean that, for it did
mean it and much more. A member of the Church of
England I was, and am, by all the ordinances of reli
gion participated in or administered by me, by the life-
. long associations of family and friends, and I trust that
whatever may be my opinions about her, I am much
more than contented to be so. I subscribed, therefore,
in a sense that included the lower one in which I was

SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES. 23
understood to subscribe. I think it very necessary
that I should state this, for, as the popular meaning of
subscription has changed, so will it, and so, to my ap
prehension, is it now undergoing change. As the con
tinuance of the tacit understanding that no one is ac
countable except to God and his own conscience for
the sense in which he subscribed evidenced the preva
lence of the popular meaning of subscription I have
mentioned, so the end put to that by Mr. Ward's con
demnation shows that it is ceasing to be what it was,
and is becoming something else. I will not pretend
to foresee, with any accuracy, what that is ; but when
I consider the composition of the majority on that
occasion, and that he owed his condemnation, not to
any one's thinking him dishonest in the common mean
ing of the term, or to be actually intending to leave
or injure the Church, but to his having expressed
opinions inconsistent with popular views about her, her
duties and interests ; — I cannot but conclude that the
change is to a narrower view than that which has
hitherto obtained, — to one which acknowledges error
and repudiates truth. The condemnation indicates, and
tends to establish a popular persuasion that subscription
to the Articles means, not merely that bare adherence
to the English Church in practice, which it has of late
done, but, in addition, that if you have a theory about
it, it must be that one of blind admiration for it, as a
Protestant establishment, which every one knows to
have been so long and so widely circulated amongst us,
but which till now a gracious Providence seems never
to have suffered us to recognize. If this is not an
unfounded supposition, and it be true that such a
change is really begun, and will continue, then I here
enter my protest against being understood to subscribe

24 SUBSCRIPTION TO THE ARTICLES.
in any such sense. I may, as I do, think, not that my
religious privileges, as a member of the English Church,
are too few for me, for I am confident that they are
just what best suits me, since they are God's own gift,
not my choice, and feel that what I have to do is to
strive to use them aright, not to pine after, or wilfully
seek their increase while I am deserving their loss;
still, lest I fail to inherit the promises, I must study to
be a Cathohc. I do not believe the Church of Eng
land, as I do " the Holy Cathohc Church;" I admire
nothing about it except what makes it Her representa
tive to me. As an establishment, or a national church,
a form of worshipping God ordained by human law,
or the vox pojouli, I acknowledge it to have no claim
upon me for more than outward civility. I am no
Romanist, — I feel it would be necessary to put me into
a crucible, fuse, sublimate me, and what not, before I
became one ; but sooner than forego present Catholic
* aspirations and efforts, and with eyes open, become an
Erastian, whether with the sovereign or the nation for
the autocrat of my faith, I would seek Catholicity else
where ; yes, though
Est iter in silvis; ubi ccelum condidit umbra
Jupiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem,
and though it cannot but be that in most cases con
verts to Rome, from the indelible nature of their early
habits, fail of being Roman Catholics, and are rather
renegades to the end of their lives.
And now I wish my reader farewell, praying only
that God may enable both of us to see what is our duty
in the trials to which it is His will to expose us, and,
seeing it, unhesitatingly to perform it.
Hasten, Lent, 1845.