Dear Sir,
It was hoped that the little excitement occasioned by the
debate of last Session on a petition to the House of Lords for
some alteration of our Articles and Liturgy, had been suffered to
subside; and it was with regret we received the announcement of
your recent publication, entitled “What is the meaning of
Subscription?”
I am not aware that any of the clergy of this Diocese, during
the last nine years, that is from the date of your first
publication on this subject, namely, “A Petition to the
House of Lords for Ecclesiastical Improvements with
Explanations,” have shewn any disposition to
intermeddle with your proceedings, or to “condemn you for
doing the best you could in your own cause,” singular as
they may have thought, and singular as you admit to have
been “the mode adopted by you to obtain your object.”
[1]
Whatever they may have thought, they have hitherto been
silent, influenced I am persuaded more by feelings of respect for
your personal character, than from conviction of the strength of
your position and the consequent weakness of their own. I
can answer for myself, and I am satisfied that I am speaking the
general sense of the clergy of the Diocese, in saying that they
not only could, but had it been from any circumstances necessary,
would have borne their ready and willing testimony to the truth
and faithfulness of the eulogy pronounced by your Diocesan on
your “character and conduct as a clergyman and a
gentleman.”
They must naturally therefore be the more inclined to wish
that it had consisted with your views to stop short of a public
avowal that you could not with any regard for “truth and
honesty,” make the declaration to which they hesitate
not ex animo to subscribe.
Richard Baxter has said, “that many are apt to
think that this is right, because the best and strictest
people are of this mind.” [2a] With
“many” therefore, your opinions will have their
weight; and if the Subscription of the clergy is to be judged by
your views of it, their situation would seem to be any thing but
an enviable one.
And as these your views must seem to be strongly corroborated
by the congenial sentiments of our Diocesan; should I in the
course of the following observations, which I take the liberty of
addressing to you, hazard also a few remarks upon his
Lordship’s reasons for deeming an Expansion of Subscription
desirable; I trust I shall find that I have not been misled by
your example, but that to me also, “it may be allowed to
differ from my superiors without disrespect or offence.” [2b]
Allow me
then, to express my regret, that “res dura et regni
novitas,” as you may apply the royal excuse to your
own novel position, should have compelled you to resort in
your own case to a course you so decidedly object to in others;
more especially as you appear to have had your misgivings, to
have foreseen the possibility of “harm accruing from
it,” and very justly to have anticipated that the perusal
of a publication written with the object you appear to have had
in view, would “call forth a painful feeling in the minds
of Christians and Churchmen.” [3a]
“No one,” you say, “can object more
decidedly than yourself to the common practice of publishing
correspondence between individuals on matters relating merely to
themselves.” [3b]
But the practice is usually resorted to by others, as it seems
to have been by yourself, under an impression that the
publication is in some way or other “important to their own
defence.” [3c]
You would however, and naturally enough, persuade yourself
that yours is “a very different case,” a case
“relating strictly to a public question, one
affecting the whole Church, and indeed all Christians in the
nation.” [3d]
I will not stay to enquire whether viewing it in this light,
the voice of the Church ought not to have been heard above your
own. But I must think that something more than you have
advanced is requisite to constitute a public question, and enable
us to see the difference between your own case and that of
others, “who publish correspondence on matters relating
merely to themselves.”
It is true that your case has been publicly discussed in
parliament, and so has the case of many another individual; but
I must think a distinction is to be drawn between a person
dragging his own affairs before the public and a public affair;
and any weight that you would attach to the discussion you allude
to, as giving to your case the character and importance of a
public question, may perhaps be lessened by a consideration of
the manner in which that discussion was brought about. The
Bishop of Lincoln rose, not to the question, but “at the
particular desire of the Rev. Mr. Wodehouse,” wishing to
have his case brought into notice; the Bishop of Norwich said
that he “should not have risen, had not the name of the
Rev. Mr. Wodehouse been introduced;” and the Bishop of
London “would not have entered into the discussion, had it
not been for some observations which had escaped from the Bishop
of Norwich.” No temporal Peer rose.
Strictly relating then as you would consider your case to be a
public question, there appeared but little indication of its
being so considered by the House of Lords, and as to the opinion
of the clergy, the Bishop of Lincoln observed, “I am not
aware that any general desire for such alterations exists, on the
contrary, I believe, that never did the great body of the clergy
deprecate more strongly any change in the Articles and Liturgy
than at the present moment.”
The discussion however seems not a little to have disquieted
you—but having raised the whirlwind, though you have failed
to guide it—ought you not to have been less impatient of
the storm?
Leniter ex merito quicquid patiare ferendum
est.
It is difficult to believe that on calmer reflection, a mind
like yours will experience no uneasiness at the recollection of
having endeavoured to turn an intended kindness to the
prejudice of those who had conferred it, and in that light all
must view the evident wish on the parts of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and the Bishop of London, to resolve your doubts, and
as far as their private opinions could avail—restore peace
to your mind. I allude to the use you have made of private
conversations, I say private, for up to a certain time you
appear to have so considered the opinions that were then given
you. “I have been favoured,” you say in a
letter to one of the Bishops, “with the private
opinions of many persons I am bound to respect.” [5a] I admit that for your further
satisfaction you received permission to mention, or as you
say “make known what passed at these
interviews.”—Still, although it would have made no
difference as to the permission granted, had they even
contemplated such a circumstance; I suspect that the Archbishop
of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, must have felt a little
surprised to find that their every word had straitly been
observed—
Set in a note book, conn’d and got by
rote,
To cast into their teeth—eleven years
afterwards!
Yet, by the aid alone of these communications, you have
endeavoured to fix upon the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Bishop of London the following charge, namely, “that in the
debate of the 26th of May, 1840, his Grace the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Bishop of London more decidedly endeavoured to
crush the very idea of the same latitude, which they had
on other occasions most unequivocally allowed and
approved.” [5b]
I hesitate not for a moment to say that it is a charge
unsupported even by the shadow of a proof. And let us first examine
your evidence as it bears upon the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The points to which you direct our attention in substantiation
of your charge are these:—His Grace’s conversation in
May, 1829—his letters of May 12, 1830—and March 18,
1840—and his speech in the debate on the Petition.
In his letter of March 18, 1840, his Grace says, “I
shall be much surprised if expressions are found in any letter of
mine, which can be considered as an intended justification of
your opinions,” an observation at variance, as you have
persuaded yourself with his letter of 1830, and his conversation
with you in 1829.
In the first place I would submit that a distinction obtains
between not condemning an opinion and intending to
justify it. It is possible that his Grace may take
higher views of the power committed to the stewards of the
mysteries of God than you do. But agreeing perhaps with you
that “the power of the keys” cannot as you have
elsewhere observed, be “beyond a doubt
defined.” [6a] His Grace might be unwilling to
condemn your lower views, but you could scarcely have construed
this into an intended justification of them. He had
besides told you “that the absence of censure did not imply
a tacit acquiescence in your opinions.” [6b]
But what was the latitude which his Grace thought fairly
allowable, and how far will it justify you in saying that in his
speech he endeavoured to crush the very idea of that same
latitude being allowed?
Your conversation with his Grace seems to have turned on the
three points mentioned in your petition,—the Athanasian
Creed, the Absolution, and the words used in a part of the
Ordination Service. Upon your mentioning the different
opinions given by various eminent writers of our church as to the
Athanasian Creed and its condemnatory clauses, his Grace
observed, “Well—none of these opinions has
been condemned, take whichever suits your own views,
and be satisfied.” [7a] But you cannot
be satisfied, and although repeatedly told by his Grace, and also
by the Bishop of Lincoln, that you could not, so long as
Convocation remained in abeyance, obtain the authoritative
sense of the Church on these points, you persist in pressing
for it. To a request to this effect conveyed in a letter to
his Grace, you again refer to the subject of your
conversation. To this his Grace replies, “With
respect to the subject of your letter, I have only to refer you
to our former conversation, in which I expressed an
opinion that, on points where writers of eminence have
differed without slur on their orthodoxy, a certain latitude of
interpretation is fairly allowable. But with respect to the
authoritative sense of the Church on the points mentioned
in your petition, no individual has a right to declare it, if it
is a matter of doubt: and if, during a long succession of years,
some difference of opinion is found among writers eminent for
learning and piety, the silence of the Church, under such
circumstances, may be taken as an indication of her unwillingness
to abridge the liberty of her members on these
points.” [7b]
I can see nothing here like an intended justification
of your opinions. His Grace would give you it appears no
decision in private, he nowhere led you to infer that he even
approved of your opinions, and could hardly have intended
you to conclude that he meant to justify them. He
tells you “he could not see how your position would be
mended by an open declaration of his opinion, even if
favourable to that exposition which would suit your
views,” [8] which seems at least to imply a doubt,
and where there is a doubt, the judge usually directs the jury to
give the prisoner the benefit of it, but this does not involve
the judge’s approval or intended
justification of the prisoner’s case.
Yet this is all that his Grace admitted,—and to what had
this admission a reference? To a certain latitude of
interpretation allowable under certain
circumstances. And I think I can safely defy you to point
out a solitary expression in his Grace’s speech on
the 26th of May, 1840, in which he attempts to evade this
admission, or, in the language of your accusation,
“endeavours to crush the very idea of the same
latitude which on other occasions he had unequivocally allowed
and approved.” His Grace’s
approval however is nowhere apparent.
His Grace addresses himself in his speech to the prayer of the
petition, “which he apprehends their Lordships will not
countenance in the least degree.” And what is the
prayer? “It prays, amongst other things, your
Lordships to consider what measures ought to be adopted to make
the Prayer Book and the Subscription of the Liturgy consonant
with the practice of the clergy, and the acknowledged
meaning of the Articles of the church.” And what is
the imputed practice of the clergy? According to the
statement of the petitioners it is their “general practice
to deviate from the authorised forms and
positive obligations of the Church,”—when with
reference to your own case, the three points on which you
consulted his Grace, you can prove that to deviate from or
omit the Athanasian Creed—the Absolution—and
the words used at the Imposition of Hands—is the
same latitude, which with reference to their
interpretation, he had thought fairly allowable.—You
may then boast that you have convicted the Spiritual Head of the
Church of inconsistency and duplicity, and no one will attempt to
controvert your insinuation that his Grace “has one opinion
at Lambeth, and another in the House of Lords.” [9a]
Your charge as it affects the Bishop of London, rests on
similar evidence. His Lordship’s conversation in
1829—a letter of 1830—and his speech in 1840.
You consulted his Lordship in 1829 on the same subjects, and
received in substance the same reply as had been given to you by
the Archbishop. And I can as confidently defy you to point
out in his Lordship’s speech in 1840, a passage that can
give any colouring of justice to your charge; unless you can shew
that to deprecate an alteration of our Articles and
Liturgy is the same thing as to admit that certain parts of them
may bear a difference of interpretation, or show that
there is no difference between an existing
“elasticity” and a further
“expansion.”
Your evidence then, if anywhere, must be found in his
Lordship’s letter of 1830. The letter of which you
complain to the Archbishop as “unkind and inconsistent
with former advice.” [9b]
But as you seem to me to have conversed with his Lordship on
one subject, and to have written to him, the following year, upon
another, I do not see how you make it appear that his Lordship’s
letter was inconsistent with his former advice.
It does not appear that you had asked his Lordship “in
what sense you would be expected to subscribe” in
future, but whether having subscribed, certain
opinions which you had taken up, were consistent with your
Subscription. His Lordship thought that they were.
But nine months afterwards, on being called upon to
renew your Subscription, you inform his Lordship that you
had determined not to make it again but with a sort of
protest.—By Subscription, you are called upon to
declare that “the Book of Common Prayer and of ordering
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, containeth in it nothing
contrary to the word of God, and that the Articles are
agreeable to it:” but to this you will not assent,
unless you may at the same time be permitted to declare that you
do not believe it. You must explain, you tell his Lordship,
the sense in which you shall have no objection to subscribe, and
that through the medium of a petition to parliament. Now
there appears nothing in your report of the conversation to lead
to the inference, nor can I easily bring myself to think that his
Lordship could have led you to infer that a qualified
Subscription was admissible either from candidates for orders, or
other clergymen. A different exposition of the general
doctrine laid down in several of our Articles, may be fairly
allowable; the letter of our Liturgy may in several parts
admit of a different interpretation, and if taking our own views
of these points, believing them not inconsistent with an
allowable interpretation of the words, we can unreservedly
subscribe, well and good—but for my own part, I should scarcely
expect it of a Bishop to receive a qualified Subscription from
me, the precedent I must think would be a bad one, and the
practice subversive of the very object of Subscription,
independent of the awkward acknowledgement it involves, that our
Church exacts from her members a form of Subscription, which
cannot be made without a salvo.
You scarcely could have inferred from his Lordship’s
advice, that he “unequivocally allowed and approved
of this latitude.” But as he had told you that
he thought your interpretation of certain points admissible, and
that you might openly hold your opinions, you might have
inferred that he also considered them consistent with an
“unreserved Subscription, and that according to the
literal sense of the words”—for the question is, will
not the literal sense of the words bear a different
application? You subscribe unreservedly, at
least you have given us no reason to suppose otherwise, to the
Apostles’ Creed, in which we are told that Christ sitteth
at the right hand of God, but the literal meaning
of the words is at variance with the truth, that “God is
without body, parts, or passions.” [11] I must think that you have
conjured up a greater difficulty on the score of Subscription
than in reality obtains. At all events you must detail some
further particulars of his Lordship’s conversation, before
you will enable us to detect its discrepancy with the subject of
his subsequent letter.
But if his Lordship’s private opinion on the allowable
interpretation of the points on which you consulted him, failed
to remove your doubts and scruples, and you were after all fully
persuaded in your own mind that the words in question could by no
possibility bear the only interpretation with which you could
conscientiously subscribe to them; I cannot see how the
open sanction of the Church could affect you to the
“easing of your conscience.” For surely if the
words will not bear a certain sense, the Church cannot
make them—the sanction of all the Bishops in Christendom
could never make black mean white. If you are
of opinion that it could, for a Protestant you must entertain
rather high views of the power of the Church—and yet such
would seem to be your opinion, for in the “Circular”
which you sent a day or two before the presentation of the
petition last year, to “all the Peers whose London
residences could be ascertained;” after alluding to
these opinions which you had received from the Archbishop
and the Bishop of London, you say, “my answer was, if such
be the case, let these statements be openly sanctioned,
and I am content. But I cannot with truth and
honesty subscribe, not according to the literal
meaning of the words, unless such latitude be
authorised by the Church.”
Now if the Subscription is still to be made to the same form
of words, it is very difficult to see how the authority of the
Church can impart to them a meaning, to which without that
authority truth and honesty would forbid you to
subscribe. If you do not take care, the Editors of the
Oxford Tracts will mark you for their own, in spite of
yourself.
But in what position do you now stand? You have
done what you informed the Bishop of London, you could
“not be comfortable without doing.” You have
made known to the world, and that by the means you proposed to
yourself, namely, a petition to parliament, what your opinions
are, and the world interferes not with them, nor does the Church
condemn them; you have only therefore to arrange the matter with your own
conscience—if that condemns you, your course is a clear
one. But why should it condemn you more for the next
fourteen years, than it would seem to have done for the last
fourteen? During that time you have held your preferment
with your opinions, and why should you not continue to hold your
opinions with your preferment?
You tell us that your object was eleven years ago to
“ascertain with certainty whether you held any
opinion which the Church condemned.” [13] You were informed that the
authoritative sense of the Church on the points you wished
for information could not in the abeyance of Convocation
be obtained; but you were at the same time told, and that, by
many whose opinions probably would have had great weight in
Convocation had it been immediately convened for your
satisfaction, that they considered your opinions allowable, that
the Church did not condemn them; and I think it would have been a
reasonable inference with which to have quieted your conscience,
that had the Convocation been assembled, the authoritative sense
of the Church would not have been against you.
And certain passages in your ministerial career had led us to
hope and to infer that you had come to that conclusion, that
having unburthened your mind, you were at rest. For in
1836, you presented a second petition to the House of Lords, but
from that time, as far at least as we could judge from your
proceedings, you seemed to have given up your pursuit, at all
events, it appears that you rested upon your oars till
1840. And in the interim, in the year 1837, after having
abstained for some years, and in consequence as it was supposed
of your
scruples, we saw you again voluntarily coming forward, and
in your character of a Presbyter, officiating at the ceremony of
the Imposition of Hands, co-operating with the Bishop
during the recital of the very words at which your conscience had
taken such alarm, and with respect to which in your former
petition, “you had humbly and earnestly prayed that such
steps might be taken as should seem good to their Lordships, in
order to effect those alterations in the Liturgy which would
relieve the conscience of their petitioner.” [14a] And we had also subsequently
read the resolution you had come to, and deliberately
published in 1838. In a note to a sermon which you
published in that year, you say, “In the absence of all
authoritative censure, I conclude as many others do, that a
silent change has taken place, ‘from the diversity of times
and men’s manners.’ In that conclusion I abide,
repeating what I have often said, that whenever I am
pronounced wrong on authority, I am ready to meet the
consequences.” [14b]
I can myself say, and I am sure that all who have had any
opportunity of knowing you, will say it with the same sincerity,
in that conclusion we most heartily wish that you would
abide—that you would continue to discharge your pastoral
duties, your deliberate and solemnly accepted engagements to the
“Chief Shepherd” in the same exemplary manner that
has marked your hitherto career, until you are pronounced
wrong on authority—or called from your stewardship
to render up your account with joy. In what estimation you
may hold the opinions of your brother petitioners, the Messrs.
Hull, I know not, but they say, “Our clergy
cannot leave the Church—their ordination vows are upon
them.” And besides, my dear sir, to rush upon
martyrdom in the absence of all persecution, or, as far as the
public can see, any apparent necessity, will at best obtain for
you but an Empedoclean sort of fame. And as nothing has
occurred since you published your resolution in 1838, to affect
your situation differently from what it had been for nine or ten
years before, save the failure of another petition; should you
resign in consequence of that circumstance, it would look almost
as if you resigned merely to spite the Archbishop.
But under the little difficulty that exists of ascertaining
with any certainty what your intentions have been, or even now
are, we earnestly trust they may not result in the alternative of
a resignation, to which in the course of your correspondence you
have made such frequent allusions. “An
alternative,” which as Bishop Heber says, “it is easy
to suggest in the case of a brother, but which every man in his
own case receives with difficulty.” [15a]
A few days before the presentation of the last petition you
wrote to his Grace thus, “If I fail on this occasion . .
. I consider myself pledged to resign my preferment.”
[15b] The result of that petition was
unfavourable. But ten months afterwards, that is, in your
last publication, you call upon his Grace to pronounce that
judgment which he had told you he “was unwilling to
pronounce on scruples which he hoped time might remove,” [15c]—“and should that
judgment require such a step, you will with God’s
permission resign next December, unless a clear expression
of public opinion should intervene appealing against the judgment
pronounced.” [15d]
Let us
hope then that you will abide in this your latest
resolution, for I think from the evidence with which you have
furnished us, we may venture to conclude that no such judgment
will be pronounced as shall call for any expression of public
opinion.
I shall now proceed to hazard a few observations on the
reasons assigned by the Bishop of Norwich in favour of an
Expansion of Subscription, seeing that they are considered
by many so strongly to confirm the correctness of your own views,
and as you have told us that you cannot consistently with
truth and honesty make the required Subscription, we
cannot but apprehend that in the proportion that those views are
believed to be substantial and correct, the character of the
clergy must be prejudiced, at all events in the eyes of those,
who unwilling or unable to investigate the matter for themselves,
take up the opinions of others, and arriving through them at a
corollary of their own, hesitate not to go as far as to declare
that “all the clergy are perjured.”
As I can devise no better, I shall pursue the plan you have
adopted with respect to the speech of the Bishop of London, that
is, giving such extracts from his Lordship’s speech as bear
upon the subject of Subscription, with a running comment of my
own. I will not however, introduce my remarks with the
preface you have affixed to your “plain
story,”—giving us to understand that it is intended
to be “a refutation of almost every statement in the Bishop
of London’s speech.” [16] Lest having
led my readers to exclaim
Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu.
I should leave them to conclude that I had been labouring under what
the faculty, I believe, term “a false
conception.”
His Lordship’s first reason for wishing for a more
expanded Subscription, is that—
“If it be true
that there is anything approaching to the appearance of
insincerity on the part of those making the Subscription,
if we seem to confess with our lips that we do not confess and
believe in our hearts we give our opponents a vantage ground of
which they will not be slow to avail themselves.”
There is said to be much virtue in an IF, and eâ virtute nos
involvissemus, had not his Lordship torn the covering away,
and “left us naked to our
enemies,”—self-convicted of “confessing with
our lips that we do not confess and believe in our
hearts.” For says his Lordship—
“In fact, with
respect to Subscription, I have never yet met with a
single clergyman (and I have spoken with almost numberless
individuals on the subject), who ever allowed that he
agreed in every point, in every iota to the Subscription
which he took at ordination.”
It would not be treating his Lordship with candour to give to
his observation an offensive meaning, which it was not intended
to convey. It is more with reference to the
mal-construction and malicious use of it by our opponents, that
we are led to wish that it had not been made. Since his
Lordship’s subsequent pamphlet, from which we collect the
sense in which he was viewing Subscription, when he made the
observation, a sense in which, for instance with reference to
those clauses of the Athanasian Creed, which are commonly, and
unjustly, called damnatory, few I suspect do subscribe,
being, in my opinion, in no wise bound to an application of the clauses,
so manifestly at variance with the spirit in which the formulary
was imposed on us by our Reformers;—since I say, this
pamphlet can obtain but a very small part of the circulation of
the speech itself, where the observation stands
unqualified; the general impression of his
Lordship’s meaning must be that the clergy subscribe ex
animo, to that which ex animo they do not believe.
At the same time I have never seen the necessity of responding
to those appeals through which the clergy of this Diocese have
been called upon to take some public step, to repel the
observation as an implied libel upon them. I would rather
it should be remembered that his Lordship, comparatively
speaking, has been but a short time amongst us, and that for
anything we can tell, the enquiries of which he speaks may have
been chiefly made amongst the clergy of another Diocese, (indeed,
considering that it is not a likely question for a Bishop to put
to candidates for Orders, or his clergy generally, the inference
must be that they were), and if their “withers should be
galled,” let them respond to these appeals, “ours are
unwrung.”
It must, however, be admitted that any insincerity in
the matter of Subscription, would deservedly expose us to the
contempt of our opponents.—But a generous mind would shrink
instinctively from inferring insincerity from any thing
approaching only to its appearance. Decipimur
specie ought to hold with respect to evil not less
than good. Still, alas! to the jaundiced eye every
object presents itself in colours not its own. And I fear
that the opinion which his Lordship would seem to entertain of
the actuating spirit of our opponents, is but too well founded,
and amply justifies his apprehension that they would not be slow to
avail themselves of the appearance, caring little to
dissipate the “mentis gratissimus error,” by
ascertaining themselves of the non-existence of the
reality. That accomplished, but embittered infidel,
the historian Gibbon, did not scruple to declare that the clergy,
one and all of them, made their Subscription either “with a
sigh or a smile;” but I trust that the clergy, as a body,
can afford to leave such opponents in the unmolested possession
of their imaginary vantage ground. Until Mordecai
was removed from his seat at the gate, the soul of Haman
could not be quieted within him—nor will the souls of our
opponents, until the Church is brought down to a level with their
own sects.
“If it (Subscription) is to
be understood in the literal, most strict, and most
stringent sense, it would create difficulties,
which must weigh heavily upon scrupulous and tender
consciences.”
But even supposing this—where there is no compulsion,
there no violence can be done to the conscience, and no one is
compelled to “enter the church,” and in using the
expression, I confess I cannot perceive with the Messrs.
Hull, that it is redolent “of a very popish
error,” it certainly means, as they observe, “taking
orders;” and I should think that the last persons likely to
present themselves to a Bishop for that purpose, would be those
whose consciences were already overborne by the pressure of their
scruples.
“Tenderness of conscience,” says Bishop Jeremy
Taylor, “is an equivocal term, and does not always
signify in a good sense.” [19] I am far from
meaning to impeach the sincerity of the petitioners, but if his
Lordship applied the term in any other than a good sense,
he might
seem to have paid them but an equivocal compliment, and if he
used it in a good sense with respect to them, the great
body of the clergy who have subscribed, and felt no pang, might
suspect his Lordship of meaning to imply that they were gifted
with consciences of a somewhat tougher texture than is altogether
to be envied. Some have chosen to draw this inference; I
will not however believe that they have done his Lordship’s
deliberate sentiments justice in so doing.
“And by continuing these difficulties
(of Subscription) we should leave the way open only to
those whose consciences have no scruples, and who would
enter the Church only with a view to the profits and secular
advantages.”
I would submit that a man may enter the Church with a
view to its secular advantages, without being justly
involved in the suspicion of insincerity, or of necessity,
laying himself open to the imputation of entering it only
with a view to its profits. For instance, should a
gentleman have in his gift what is commonly called a family
living, he may design it as a provision for a younger son,
who enters upon a course of study and trains himself for the
ministry, and that without necessarily discarding all view to the
secular advantages of his profession, knowing that
“they which preach the gospel should live of the
gospel:” but so far from its following that he enters the
Church with no other or higher motive; how frequently do
we find it the case with those whose lot has thus been cast, as
it were, for them, that they prove not merely exemplary parish
priests, but eventually rise to adorn the Episcopal
Bench. His Lordship will not object to my adducing his
own successful career as a case in point.
But if such characters as his Lordship speaks of, can even
now in the teeth of all the imputed difficulties, enter
the church, if they be so disposed, I do not clearly see how
removing these difficulties will mitigate the evil—how
widening the portal will tend to obstruct the entrance.
Nor, although it stands so recorded in his Lordship’s
speech, will I believe it to be, his deliberate opinion, that by
leaving the matter of Subscription as it now stands, we
leave the way open only to those whose consciences can
feel no scruples. If these expressions of his
Lordship are to be taken only in a good sense, I trust for the
credit of the Church that his Lordship is not the only exception
to the general rule. The Messrs. Hull, in their
animadversions on the Bishop of London’s speech, draw a
nice distinction between “opening the door,” and
“leaving it open.” In cases of burglary I
believe the distinction involves a difference; we may venture
therefore to hazard a guess to which of the brothers, the lawyer
or the divine, we may attribute that contribution to the joint
stock pamphlet. [21]
“But there is an answer commonly given,
and a weighty one, to this objection. The
Church has a sort of elasticity which allows and graduates the
differences that exist.”
Yet on the use of the word “elasticity” by the
Bishop of London, you say, “I confess myself entirely
unable to distinguish between the ‘expansion’ of the
one prelate or the ‘elasticity’ of the other.”
[22a] If there is no difference
between the existing elasticity and the expansion pleaded for,
for what boon did the petitioners pray? I anticipate your
answer, and will reply to it presently.
“It does not become the Church of
England, a Church founded on liberty of conscience and the
right of private judgment, to say that there shall not be
a certain latitude of opinion.”
This observation has been the theme for much discussion.
It has been pretty roundly insinuated that his Lordship’s
meaning had been wilfully misapprehended by the Bishop of
London. I see myself but little ground for the
insinuation. It will at all events be admitted that his
Lordship did not qualify or define the sense in which he used the
observation. He has however explained his meaning and the
extent to which he applied it in his pamphlet, or as you term it
“brief defence” of his speech.
After quoting the “passing remarks of a country
newspaper,” as elucidatory of his Lordship’s meaning,
you say, “I cannot believe the Bishop of London could be
blind to a distinction so obvious.” [22b] For the present, be it so.
In the same page in which this expression of your incredulity as
to his Lordship’s blindness occurs, you quote
another passage from his speech, that in which he observes of
Subscription,—“it is not required from all members of
the Church, but only from the ministers of the Church, as a
security against a greater evil, &c.” Upon which
you exclaim, “can we forget that all graduates at
the universities are required to subscribe, that these are all
laymen?” Not very easily, I admit. And
which would you wish us to suppose? That his Lordship had
forgotten it, or that he was ignorant of it, or that he intended
to palm upon the audience before which he spake such an assertion
as a literal fact? As I am inclined to think that
you suppose neither one nor the other, I must say,
“I cannot believe that you could be blind to his
Lordship’s meaning,” and could not help exclaiming on
reading your ready imputation against the Bishop of
London—“Physician! heal thyself.”
But whilst so many explanations have since been given of the
meaning in which this observation was made by the Bishop of
Norwich, and so many insinuations levelled at the Bishop of
London for not choosing to see it, I am disposed to think that
his Lordship did not feel himself called upon to dive into the
thoughts of the Bishop of Norwich, but intending to give a direct
negative to an unqualified affirmative, meant to re-repudiate the
notion that “the church of England, was founded on
liberty of conscience, and the right of private judgment,”
and to assert with reference to the well-known fruits of
such a principle, that the Church was founded on
“truth.” But the Bishop of Norwich contends
that the expression is an “incorrect” one, and that
had he been speaking of “the only true foundation of the
true Catholic Church itself,” he should have said
that it was “founded on the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus
Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” [24a] The Bishop of London could
scarcely have thought the periphrasis necessary,
considering before whom he was speaking, he would probably reply
to the imputed incorrectness of the expression, that he always
considered the foundation of which the Bishop of Norwich here
speaks, to be “truth,” and that the Church was the
interpreter of the Apostles, and Prophets, and
Jesus Christ, or in other words of the Gospel of
Christ. He meant also I should suppose, to repudiate
the notion, that the Reformation of the Church proceeded
on such a principle, and in effect to affirm that from the days
of Archbishop Cranmer to these of Archbishop Howley, no such
principle had ever been recognized by the Church, as that
of admitting “liberty of conscience and the right of
private judgment,” to have any directive influence
in Church affairs; a fact, which if not sufficiently proved by
the mandate of Edward the Sixth, enforcing under the penalties of
“sequestration, suspension, excommunication, and such
other coercion, as to ordinaries or others having
ecclesiastical jurisdiction, shall seem convenient, straitly
charging and commanding his loving subjects to observe the
injunctions of 1547,” [24b]—would be
amply established by your own observations respecting Bishop
Hooper, for the sending of the good old man to prison in the
matter of the vestments, and that by the Reformers
themselves, would seem but little to favour the notion that our
reformed Church was founded on “liberty of conscience and
the right of private judgment.”
But
that I may not also be accused of misapprehending his
Lordship’s meaning, I will here quote his explanation of
the sense in which the observation was made—
“It is of course plain that I was neither
speaking of the Catholic Church at all, nor even of the
Church of England, except in its character of a Reformed
Church, founded as such on the principles of the
Reformation, which I again deliberately assert to be
liberty of conscience and the right of private judgment,
in opposition to that Church from whence it separated,
in which the authority of Popes, Councils, and
Priests, superseded all appeal to the scriptures
themselves, and by which of course freedom of judgment was
strictly prohibited.” [25a]
Not that it bears upon his Lordship’s argument, still I
would respectfully submit whether our alleged separation
here from the Church of Rome be strictly correct; we threw off
our allegiance to the usurped authority, temporal and
spiritual, of the Pope; we reformed the abuses of our own
Church, but we separated from no mother Church.
The episcopal Church in England existed long before the Pope cast
his eye upon it.—“In the acts of the Council of
Arles, which was held A.D. 314, we find the Subscriptions of
three British Bishops.” [25b]
But I would further question whether in his Lordship’s
qualified sense of the observation it can with any
strictness be said, that our reformed Church was founded
on the principle he contends for.
It will, I think, be admitted that whatever was done with
reference to the Church by that “Postilion of the
Reformation,” as Burnet calls him, the Papist Henry,
was done by him more with a view “to cudgel the Pope into a
compliance with what he desired,” [26a] than from any desire to reform our
religion. At all events, we must give up any attempt to
reconcile his “six acts” with “liberty of
conscience.”
The reformation of our religion had its commencement in
the reign of his successor. Here, if any where, we must
look for the principle in question. But can it be said that
our religion was reformed “in opposition to the
authority of Popes and Councils,” when it is so well known,
that “the Bishop of Rome’s usurped power and
jurisdiction was of most just causes taken away and
abolished,” [26b] in the preceding
reign? Neither can it, I think, in strictness be said,
of that time, that the Priests superseded all
appeal to the scriptures, seeing that it was by the Bishops
themselves that the scriptures were chiefly caused to be
circulated. I am speaking not of the German Protestant
Church, but that of which his Lordship speaks, “the Church
of England, in its character of a reformed Church.”
And I have before shewn on your own authority in the matter of
Hooper, that she recognised nothing so little as the
principle of “liberty of conscience.” That
sectarism or separation from the Church is founded on this
principle, will be admitted.
It has always appeared to me, that the hacknied phrase,
“liberty of conscience and the right of private
judgment,” applied to an associated body, is a pure
fallacy, I had almost said, a cobweb to catch the fly popularity,
quite as valuable as an appeal, “ad captandum
vulgus,” as the cry—“Nolumus leges
Angliæ mutari,” to which
“catch-word,” his Lordship attributes the defeat of
the attempt to revise the Liturgy in 1689. You also
attribute this defeat to “the violence of party;” but
there are those, and the late pious and excellent Bishop
Jebb amongst the number, who ascribe it to the
“special interference of Providence.”
“But the special interference of Providence did not
terminate with the first establishment of our Liturgy . . .
Even within the Church itself, some were found whose integrity
cannot be impeached, who were on the point of introducing
alterations which could not have failed to prove equally
injurious to the cause of truth and piety.” [27a] Even Bishop Burnet, one of the
Commissioners, with reference to the probable result of those
contemplated alterations of 1689, imputes the failure of the
attempt to a “very happy direction of the providence of God
observed in the matter.” [27b]
The Church, however, coerces the conscience of no man, every
one is at liberty to take his own religious course, and I confess
I cannot see why that which is conceded to all other societies
should be denied to the Church—the right of being governed
by her own constitutions, and the right also of judging what
constitutions are most conducive to the welfare and good order of
her community.
If I could not conscientiously conform to the doctrines and
discipline of the Baptist or the Independent, I
question if they would allow me to give my conscience the liberty
to act amongst them according to its dictates. They would
no more deny than we do ourselves, the abstract principle,
neither would they “fine,” nor put me in “the
pillory,” but I suspect they would “exclude”
me, and with very good reason, from their ministry. To talk
of conceding the abstract right of private judgment, has
always appeared to me a good deal like talking of conceding to a
person with sound lungs the privilege of breathing. But to
contend for the principle and talk of certain latitudes
and limits, seems to me to involve a contradiction—once
assign any limits to the “right,” and you
destroy the principle. But although his Lordship pleads for
the principle being, as he contends, that on which our Church is
founded, and ought to be acted upon, he would circumscribe it
within “a certain latitude of opinion.” He
would not have it trench upon “the distinguishing features
and essential doctrines of the Christian Church.” But
who is to be the judge of these doctrines? Two of the
petitioners, the Messrs. Hull, repudiate the very idea of
the Church being the authorized interpreter of the truth.
“If,” say these brothers, in allusion to a remark by
the Bishop of London, “the word ‘authorised’
bear its usual signification, such a remark would indeed be
inconsistent with liberty of conscience and the right of private
judgment.” [28a]
Again, arguing from the abuse of Subscription by
“unconscientious and unscrupulous men,” they say,
“it is on that account that the simplest Creed, and the
truth to which the term ‘necessary’ is directly
applied in our bible, are enough to justify a call into the
ministry.” [28b]
But let any one compare the following passage, from Mr.
Belsham’s first letter to a former Bishop of London,
with his exposition of the Unitarians’ Creed, as it is
given at the end of that lucus a non lucendo—his
“Calm Inquiry.” “That the Unitarians
believe everything that is essential to salvation is
evident from the unequivocal testimony of the Apostle Paul
himself, who in the Epistle to the Romans, x. 9, expressly
teaches that if we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus, and
believe in our heart that God hath raised him from the dead, we
shall be saved.” Here then we have a professed
believer in the simplest creed—but will it
“justify his call into the ministry?” Take
again the case of the Baptist, agreeing with us I believe
on all the essential doctrines of Christianity, admitting the
necessity of Baptism, but differing from us only on
a question of time. With our views on Infant Baptism
should we be justified in admitting him into the ministry? and if
not, what becomes of liberty of conscience and the right of
private judgment? Might not the professed believer in this
simple creed and the Baptist, under the contemplated restrictions
of the principle complain with you “that the same invasion
of Christian liberty remains? Fines, and imprisonment, and
the pillory, have vanished; exclusion remains (to them) in
the same unabated force.” [29] Let us then
remove the corrective remedy of Subscription to Articles of
Faith, and where shall we stay the progress of the
gangrene? How shall we exclude “the naughty
seducers?”
“I consider that by in any way expanding
the sense and meaning of Subscription, a boon would be
granted, and a great benefit conferred upon the scrupulous
and tender consciences of those who are among”—it
might be asked how they came there—“or may become
the brightest ornaments of the establishment.”
But if these ornaments can only be secured at the risk, I do
not say with the “intention” of letting into
the ministry together with them, men who hold things contrary
to sound doctrine, however exemplary may be their lives,
however brilliant their acquirements, still should they be in
error concerning the Faith, shall we not have purchased them at
too high a price?
Brighter ornaments we may never hope to see than that army of
martyrs, those profoundly learned and eminently pious men, the
sanctity of whose lives, the fervour of whose holy zeal in the
cause of Christ have shed an undying lustre on the religion they
professed when living, and who being dead yet speak—and in
the accents of encouragement to the tenderest conscience,
seem to breathe a crede nobis,—the Church in the
holy communion of which WE lived
and died, proffers nothing to be received as an article of faith,
that is “not agreeable to the word of
God,” nothing as a point of discipline “that
is contrary to it.”
“I would remove every obstacle in the way
of Subscription, by which tender consciences of
unquestionable orthodoxy, agreeing on every point
essential to Christianity, might be relieved from
difficulties, which I know weigh much with men of
honourable and high feeling.”
But when Subscription is objected to as it is by the
petitioners, because they think it pledges them to an assent to
things unscriptural, as for instance “the unscriptural
character of the Athanasian Creed,” as it is viewed by
the Messrs. Hull, and the non-agreement of it, and other
matters in the scripture as they are viewed by
yourself—when the alternative is to give assent to matters
that are contrary to scripture, or to sacrifice
“truth and honesty,”—surely the
expression of a tender conscience is incorrectly applied to men
like these. For what must be the toughness of theirs
who could submit to the alternative?
But although the Bishop of Norwich would not allow
“liberty of conscience” to extend so far as to trench
upon the “essential doctrines of the Christian
Church.” Nevertheless, having alluded in his speech
to the difficult circumstances in which the reformers were
placed, and in consequence of which “the Articles of the
Church were framed on a reference to the opinions of a very wide
body who differed among themselves on many important
points.” His Lordship contends in the
“brief defence” of his speech, “that it only
requires the full carrying out of this principle into
practice, to meet the difficulties of the present
case.” [31]
The radical reformer of the State contends that it only
requires the full carrying out of the principle of the
Reform Bill, to give universal suffrage and universal
satisfaction to the people, and I am inclined to think that the
result in either case would be pretty much the same—equally
disastrous to the Church as to the State.
But it has been contended during the present movement, that if
alterations be made in our Liturgy to meet one tender conscience,
a similar boon should be extended to all. Upon this
objection his Lordship argues, “if this be true, it is much
more true that if no latitude is to be allowed in any
subordinate point, we cannot make exceptions in one case more
than another.” But this appears to me to be a
petitio principii, it is assuming that there is no
existing “elasticity,” no departure from an
iota admissible, no latitude in any point,
subordinate or otherwise already recognized, and if so, seeing
that on
most of the points on which your objections hinge, his Lordship
would seem, from his pamphlet, to coincide with you in your
views, it might not unreasonably be asked,—how Dr. Stanley
came to be at this moment, Bishop of Norwich.
Still, I think it may reasonably be asked, as it is, if this
principle of concession in consideration to tender
consciences be once admitted, where are the probable demands
upon it likely to find a limit?
The question would seem then to resolve itself into a choice
of evils, and e malis minimum, we must ask therefore,
which would be most conducive to the welfare and
respectability of the Church, to require Subscription to
be made unreservedly and according to the literal meaning of the
words and sense in which they were imposed, or to allow such a
latitude as may enable every one to subscribe in what sense he
please?—“Quicunque vult, is an ill preface to
a law.”
A proposition similar to the last has been stated and
canvassed by Bishop Jeremy Taylor, and he says of
it—“This is the last remedy, but it is the worst, it
hath in it something of craft, but very little of ingenuity, and
if it serve the ends of peace or external charity, or a fantastic
concord, yet it cannot serve the ends of truth and holiness, and
christian simplicity.” [32]
How far the Bishop of Norwich may be disposed to go in
carrying out his benevolent object (and I speak it in perfect
sincerity, for I believe his Lordship to be actuated by the very
best intentions), of giving relief to tender consciences and
promoting peace and unity amongst Christians, I pretend not to
say—for his Lordship’s pamphlet leaves the matter
more doubtful than his speech, inasmuch as amongst those
whose sentiments his Lordship quotes as being most in accordance
with his own, and with reference to whom “compared with
many of their modern opponents,” he says—
Mallem magis cum Platone errare quam cum istis
rectè sentire.
His Lordship quotes the opinion of Bishop Warburton, namely,
that “schism which all must admit to be an evil, is
one which nothing but the Church widening her communion,
can prevent or cure.” [33]
I confess I could never clearly see how the Church can
conscientiously widen her communion. What are the
pleas for separation? They hinge not on letters and
iotas, nor on this or that particular passage in
our Liturgy, they resolve themselves into two—our
Doctrines and our Church Government. One or other of these
is the plea alleged by every denomination of separatists,
from the frigid Socinian, to the fanatical
Jumper. Giving these separatists therefore credit
for seceding or keeping aloof of us on these grounds, and, that
for conscience sake—we can only expect to
“prevent schism,” by leaving the divinity of our
Saviour “an open question,” and abolishing Episcopacy
altogether.
But may we not ask, if tenderness of conscience is to be
respected when it takes offence at non-essentials, why is
it to be disregarded when it stumbles at the far more important
matters, the essentials of Christianity, the
“distinguishing features of the Christian Church?”
and is not Episcopacy a distinguishing feature? But with
the exception of the Roman Catholic, there is not a separatist in
the three kingdoms who is agreed with us on that
point. Are the divinity of Christ and the atonement
essential doctrines? But the so called Unitarian, in the
exercise of his private judgment, pronounces them to be
falsehoods. Is Infant Baptism a distinguishing
feature? But the Baptist, as he styles himself, condemns it
as a senseless and unscriptural rite, nor will the liberty in
which he indulges his conscience permit him to hold communion
with any Church that practises it. Is the Sacrament of the
Lord’s Supper a distinguishing feature? But the
tender conscience of the Quaker rioting in the liberty wherewith
Christ hath made him free, will not deign to return to these
“beggarly elements,”—“the policy of
Satan busying people with outward signs.” [34a]
Since then we must give up the pleasing hope of bringing
schismatics back to the fold, we may narrow the question,
and limit the proposed revision of our Articles and Liturgy, to
the removal of every “cause of uneasiness” to the
tender consciences of our brethren within the pale.
“This,” as you justly observe, “would probably
occasion some trouble and difficulty,” [34b] not that this ought to be objected if
the charitable object could be effected by any reasonable
sacrifice. You admit that already “more is proposed
that is either necessary or desirable.” [34c] The Bishop of London [34d] “would not be disposed to
go as far as you,” whilst some perhaps with the modesty of
old Richard Baxter, might propose to put the unclean thing
away altogether, and to substitute a new and much improved Liturgy of
their own. Let us once open the commission, institute this
Court of Relief for tender consciences, and we shall have no lack
of appellants.
Utor permisso—caudœque pilos ut
equinæ,
Paulatim vello—demo unum, demo etiam unum,
Dum cadat elusus ratione ruentis acervi. [36a]
The difficulties of the subject seem to be confessed by all,
except it may be by the Brothers Hull, who seem to see
none or very few. But the Bishop of Norwich observes,
“I agree that there are what to some may be deemed
almost insuperable difficulties in the way of any change in the
Liturgy, and perhaps in the Articles.” Nor
would these difficulties seem to be lessened, if his
Lordship’s view of the present state of the Church be
correct, it being his opinion “that there never was a
period perhaps of our Church History with so little harmony
within the pale, and so fearful a prospect of fiercer and wider
dissention.” [36b] “There
is a lion in the way”—and for my own part I am craven
enough to say there let him lie—couchant he is
likely to be less troublesome than rampant. And the
better part of valour is discretion.
And as
his Lordship tells us that “he believes the Clergy as a
body would not consent to any change” in the Liturgy.
We may infer that that absence of harmony to which his Lordship
alludes, from whatever other causes it may arise, originates in
no want of unanimity in the Church on the score of
Subscription, and that there would seem but little
necessity, for the sake of peace, to embark upon the
dangerous experiment of a revision.
It being then admitted that “the Clergy as a body would
not consent to any change in the Liturgy or Articles,” we
must presume that they can unreservedly make the
Subscription in its present form. And putting aside your
own peculiar case, we must also presume of those persons who
recently petitioned parliament, in the character of Clergymen of
the Church of England, that although they might think some
Expansion of Subscription desirable, in consideration to
others, did nevertheless make their own with a safe conscience
and with the honest intention of fulfilling their engagements, by
a general conformity to the prescribed Services of our
Church. They subscribed, we must presume, with no such
latitude of opinion as would admit of an habitual
deviation from, either by alteration or a summary
omission, of such parts of our Services, as they could not
satisfactorily reconcile with their own private opinions.
Mr. Maty, a former seceder from our establishment, could
not consider such a latitude of the construction of his
Subscription compatible with his honesty. In a letter to
Mr. Lindsey, he says, “finally, I can neither submit
to acquiesce in silence, after having made my objections known,
nor take upon me to alter the Service of the Church as long as I
continue to profess myself a minister of it.” [37]
Properly appreciating this sentiment, we must conclude
that the Bishop of Norwich understood the prayer of the
petitioners with no reference to such a practice as Mr.
Maty here condemns, when he represented them as praying
“that that which is consented to and allowed privately, may
be the avowed and acknowledged sentiments of the Church at
large.” Yet in their “explanation of the
statements of the petition,” and the object which
they had in view, the Messrs. Hull, enumerate
amongst these deviations from the authorized forms and positive
obligations of the Church, sanctioned as they
assert by general practice; the omission of the Athanasian
Creed, the change or omission of certain sentences in the Burial
Service, and the substitution of other lessons than those
appointed by the Church. Now I must think, that if a
complaint were preferred against a Clergyman to his Diocesan for
habitually and advisedly deviating thus from his
positive obligations, the complainants would scarcely be
told that such things were consented to and allowed privately
by the Church. If so, for consistency’s sake it
might be as well to expunge in future from the
Churchwardens’ Articles of Enquiry exhibited at Episcopal
Visitations, any such query as the following, “Doth the
Incumbent or Curate regularly read service with the Litany and
Creeds, exactly according to the Rubric of the Book of Common
Prayer, without omission, addition, or alteration?” [38]
You represent the petitioners “as having
presented to parliament the sound and reasonable prayer, that
the law and the practice should be assimilated.”
You mean, I presume, that some regard should be had to the nature
of the thing practised, otherwise I must think your
principle a very unsound one. For instance, it is to
be feared that a habit prevails sadly too much amongst both high
and low, of neglecting the observance of the sabbath day and
keeping it anything but holy. But I would not therefore
assimilate the law to this practice and go to parliament
for an act to legalize sabbath breaking. And even in
respect to the prayer of the petitioners, I should say that the
Archbishop’s proposition that steps should be taken to
assimilate the practice to the law, was the sounder
one of the two.
But the Messrs. Hull in their view of the
matter, represent the Bishop of Norwich—“as pleading
strongly for that privilege which should be conceded to every
ingenuous mind, to mean what it says, and to say what it
means.” A form of Subscription such as would admit of
every one saying what he means, seems to have been the view which
the Bishop of London took of the object of the petitioners, and
called it very truly,—“expansion with a
vengeance.”
But you would make us, by our present Subscription, say much
more than we mean, and mean much more than we say, for instance,
you would contend that we declare by Subscription, “that
every word of the Homilies, is agreeable to the
word of God,” the laity, you say “feel not
what it is to subscribe literally to every word of
the Homilies, Rites, and Ceremonies,” [39a] and again, “if a Subscription to
the Liturgy as agreeable to the word of God is
still maintained to be indispensable,” [39b] and further, the petition states, that
the Clergy are “commonly understood to be bound to
the observance of all the Canons.” [39c] Now, I cannot think that you
give quite a correct view of Subscription. Amongst your
illustrations, you say, “our Subscription literally
taken calls upon a person to declare that the delivery of a
marriage ring and the Apostles’ Creed are equally
agreeable to scripture!” [40] But the very
letter of our Subscription is opposed to this view of
it.—We know of nothing in scripture agreeable to or
agreeing with any part of our marriage ceremony, unless it be a
supper; neither have we any “scripture warrant” for
our custom of kneeling when receiving the sacrament, none for
signing with the sign of the cross, no direct warrant
baptizing infants, in short, literally we do not
subscribe to the Liturgy as being agreeable to the
word of God, but containing nothing contrary to it.
Neither do we “subscribe literally and to every
word of the Homilies” as being agreeable to the word of
God. I could produce you many a quaint passage from their
exhortations, to which we should be puzzled to find anything
agreeable in scripture, though nothing perhaps contrary to the
spirit of them.
And as to the Canons, so far from feeling ourselves
bound to a voluntary observance of them all, I have
no recollection of pledging myself by any Subscription at my
ordination to the observance of any of them. “As to
the Canons,” says Archdeacon Sharpe, “to which
we are not bound by any formal promise, but only by virtue
of their own authority. I believe no one will say that we
are bound to pay obedience to them all, according to the letter
of them.” Say then, that there are amongst them some,
which as the petitioners allege “could not in these days be
acted upon,” if so, they are the less likely to cause them
any grievance. And as to the alleged inexpediency of acting
upon others, let us leave that to be judged of by our superiors,
whom we are bound to obey, at least so I understood my ordination
vows. But our objection to a revision of our Laws
Ecclesiastical arises from no over-weaning affection for these
inoperative canons, but from a desire rather to
“ . . . bear the ills we have
Than fly to others, that we know not of.”
But to the observance of the Rubric, we are unquestionably
pledged. And it is preferred by the Messrs. Hull,
“as a charge against the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Bishop of London, that at their ordination they pledged
themselves to observe the Rubric, and so to confirm in a given
way. But they do not confirm in that way, and do confirm in
another,” ergo valet consequentia. But, after
mentioning in the strongest terms our obligations to a strict
observance of the Rubric, Archdeacon Sharpe says,
“this indeed we must always take along with us, that our
obligations to observe the Rubric, how indispensable soever, are
subject to this proviso—namely, that the thing
prescribed be a thing practicable.” And as the
Messrs. Hull admit that “the Bishops from the
multitudes of candidates, could not confirm according to
the Rubric,” we will leave the Bishops to settle this
matter with their own consciences, believing that their
characters are not so far compromised by the deviation, as to
render it imperative upon them, to plunge at all hazards into a
revision.
Our Articles were agreed upon, as you observe, “for
avoiding diversities of opinions, and for the stablishing consent
touching true religion.” In accomplishing this, you
seem to think that they have signally failed. In those
cases, however, where the Article has advisedly been drawn up for
the purpose of admitting men holding certain differences of opinion on the
general doctrine contained in it, the contemplated result can
scarcely be looked upon as indicative of any failure of the
object. But I cannot see that the existence of one evil in
a system, if the extent to which this latitude goes be
one, which I do not admit, is a sound argument for the bringing
in of many more. “If,” says Dr.
Randolph, “the best method we can think of to avoid
diversities of opinion and establish consent touching true
religion, has through the perverseness and corruption of mankind
a contrary effect, surely not we, but these hypocrites, are to
blame. But we cannot think it a good reason for throwing
down all the fences of our vineyard, because some wild boars will
sometimes break through them.” [42] It appears,
however, that you would only leave a few gaps in the
fence, the thirty-nine Articles you would abolish at one fell
swoop, and from the passing of your proposed BILL for the consolidating the laws of
religious tests, or Subscriptions, &c. “you would have
it enacted, that nothing be required but assent to the doctrines
set forth in the three Creeds, as agreeable to scripture; assent
to the truth of the scriptures themselves; and that they contain
all things necessary to salvation.”
I perceive, however, that you would still have a
“declaration of conformity to the Liturgy of the Church of
England, as it is now by law established.”—By
now, I presume you are speaking of the Liturgy, as it
shall be set forth hereafter, when every pebble of offence
shall be taken away, and “every cause of uneasiness
removed.” But hic labor, hoc opus
est—take for instance the Athanasian Creed, you might
be contented with the proposition of 1689 respecting it; but your
brother petitioners the Messrs. Hull exclaim,
“let Subscription henceforward apply to a Prayer Book which
does not contain the Athanasian Creed.” [43a] Now, if this “erroris
expulsio,” as it has been termed, was considered
indispensable to the exclusion of the Arian “wolves,”
even after the imposition of the Nicene Creed,—are
these wolves exterminated? Or is their nature so changed
that they would harmlessly lie down with the lambs of our fold,
were it not for those invidious fences that prevent their
approach, nor seduce them from the fold, even were it
fenceless? But, argue the Messrs. Hull, fences are
of no use, for a wolf once upon a time got through one, meaning
Bishop Hoadley. But they forget that like that
treacherous one we read of in the nursery legend, the
“Little Red Riding Hood,”—he disguised himself
to effect his purpose. We have lately read of a chimney
sweeper insinuating himself into her Majesty’s private
apartments, but we have not heard in consequence of the abolition
of the police force.
But let it be admitted that our Liturgy, “that admirable
book, next to the bible, the treasure and glory and safeguard of
our reformed Church,” [43b] is not faultless;
still, who when he looks upon the heterogeneous mass of so called
improvements that have been already suggested, would not
exclaim—“Let us but have our Liturgy continued to us
as it is, until the men are born who shall be able to mend it or
make it better, and we desire no greater security against either
altering this or introducing another.” [43c]
But as the subsidence of the dissidia mutuasque
suspiciones, is a consummation more devoutly to be wished, than, I fear,
in these times, to be looked for; I will in conclusion
make a few observations in defence of the Subscription of the
Clergy generally, to those three points which you esteem
so “indefensible;” but as my observations have
already extended far beyond the limit I had contemplated, I must
of necessity, be more brief than I could wish, or than justice to
such subjects might seem to require—and first of the
Athanasian Creed.
“Full of information,” as Hooker observes,
“concerning that faith which Arianism did so
mightily impugn, and which was both in the east and
west Churches accepted as a treasure of inestimable price,
by as many as had not given up even the very ghost of
belief.” [44a]
But my Diocesan tells me, that “literally
understood this Creed makes no distinctions, no contingencies,
but unconditionally and unequivocally asserts that all who
receive it not, are doomed to irretrievable perdition.” [44b] God forbid! But if it be
so, literally the Saviour of mankind has pronounced the
same uncontingent, undistinguishing, unequivocal doom, upon all
who believe not the gospel. “He that
believeth not shall be damned, [44c] whosoever
believeth on him shall not perish, but have everlasting
life,” [44d] the converse is, whosoever
believeth not shall perish everlastingly; for “he
that believeth not shall not see life, but the wrath of
God abideth on him, [44e] they all
shall be damned, who believe not THE truth.” [44f]
But we cannot bring ourselves to think that it can consist
with the goodness of Him “whose tender mercies are over all
His works,” to doom to “irretrievable
perdition,” millions of His creatures for the
non-performance of an impossibility. We consequently
limit this awful sentence against those who “love
unrighteousness,” and wilfully reject the offer of
salvation. The context forces us to this application of the
anathema. But I am not asking in what sense we are to
understand the threat of scripture, but applying to it the
same reasoning through which the Athanasian Creed is attacked;
and I assert that literally understood, the texts which I
have quoted, as undistinguishingly doom to perdition all
who do not believe the gospel, as does the Athanasian Creed all
who do not hold the Catholic Faith.
But if we are to ascertain the sense of scripture by comparing
it with scripture, the text with the context, why are we to be
debarred from ascertaining the sense and meaning of our Church
formularies, by the application of the same canon of
interpretation? Why are so invidious objections to be
conjured up and bruited abroad against our Church, by tying us
down to the letter of her forms, to the utter disregard of
their meaning, and the spirit in which they have been
imposed? I cannot express my own view of these monitory
clauses, better than in the language of a contemporary divine,
“their connection and relative force is this: whosoever
desires to be saved it is necessary that he hold the Catholic
Faith, and if he who has this faith keep it not, for he cannot
keep it except he has first had it or held it, he cannot be
saved, but without doubt shall perish everlastingly. The
warning, therefore, is directed to him only who keeps not the
faith which he has been taught, which has been put into his
hands, which he has had hold of.” [45]
But my
Diocesan affirms, and although it is your own opinion also, I
take the liberty of canvassing it in his Lordship’s
statement, feeling that the sentiments of the Spiritual Head of
the Church in this Diocese, must carry with them even greater
weight than your own. His Lordship says, “granting
(though the Creed makes no such concession) that five hundred
millions and upwards of Pagans and Heathens, out of eight hundred
millions inhabitants of our globe, are not meant to be included
in this sweeping anathema, it should be remembered that the whole
Greek Church, professed Christians as they are, must of necessity
be included, as its members after mature consideration are at
variance with other Churches respecting the procession of the
Holy Ghost.” [46a] As a point
of doctrine I am much disposed to question the
“mature consideration,” I should rather impute the
schism to the imperious and unbending dispositions of the
respective parties, the Patriarch versus the
Pontiff. But be that as it may,—I would
exonerate our Church from the odium of gratuitously condemning to
irretrievable perdition, those who in her own opinion
substantially differ nothing from her in this respect, but do
keep undefiled the Catholic Faith.
“They do not,” says Archbishop Bramhall,
“add the word filioque to the Creed, and yet they
acknowledge that the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Son, which
is the very same thing in sense.” [46b] And again—“Peter
Lombard, Thomas à Jesu, Cardinal Tolet,
and many others, do make the question about the procession of the
Holy Ghost to be verbal only, without reality, and that the
Grecian expressions of Spiritus Filii and per Filium, do signify as much as our
Filioque.” [47a] Bishop
Pearson, Bishop Beveridge, Dr. Waterland, and
many others of our own divines are of the same opinion.
In explication of the doctrine of the Personality of the Holy
Ghost, the Athanasian Creed says—“the Holy Ghost is
of the Father and of the Son,” the Greek Church holds that
which as Bishop Pearson says, plainly contains this truth,
that the Spirit is of God the Father, and of God
the Son. The Creed says, “neither made, nor created,
nor begotten, but proceeding,” and beyond a
procession, distinguishing Him from the Father and the
Son, but whether this procession be temporal,
eternal, or both—whether from the Father and
the Son, or from the Father only, the Creed determines
nothing—and the distinguishing property ascribed by the
Greek Church to the Holy Ghost, is a procession,
Εκπορενσις.
[47b] “The Greek Church,”
says Dr. Bennet, “does unanimously maintain the
temporal procession of the Holy Ghost, from both
the Father and the Son. And since this Creed may be
understood in that sense, therefore in the use of it we do
necessarily declare no more than what the Greek Church
does as cordially profess and contend for as
ourselves.”
“Though the distinction,” says the same writer,
“was so well known to all our Reformers in this nation, yet
their prudence and moderation would not suffer them to take
notice of it in any public and authentic manner. They would
not recede from Rome any further than was necessary, upon
the account of the Roman corruptions, and therefore they
did not reject the filioque from the Nicene Creed
or the Creed of St. Athanasius, nor did they
declare themselves against the Greek Church by adding any
such term, as must necessarily determine in what sense they
understood the procession.” [48a] Literally taken,
therefore, the Greek Church is not of necessity included
in this sweeping anathema, and as his Lordship states it,
“excluded from the merits of the Redeemer’s death
hereafter,” any more than five hundred millions of Heathens
are condemned to irretrievable perdition by the literal
acceptation of Mark xvi. 16.
To affirm the necessity of the Catholic Faith to salvation, is
simply to say what our Lord himself says, in the above
text. To affirm that he who having had the Catholic
Faith rejects it, is to say no more than is said, Heb. vi.
4, Luke ix. 62, Matt x. 13, and 2 Peter ii. 21, with many other
like places.
It would appear then from page 51 of your pamphlet, that we
differ nothing in our application of these clauses; the only
difference between us is, that taking this view of it, I can
unreservedly make my Subscription, and conscientiously
hold with our eighth Article, that this Creed “ought
thoroughly to be received and believed.” But if
in my conscience I believed that such an application of them was
untenable, I confess I could not so easily lay aside my scruples,
as it would appear you were ready to do, provided you could
obtain the “sanction of the opinion of the Archbishop of
Canterbury,” an opinion which being not ex cathedra,
but private and personal, his Grace would not permit you to
consider as “of greater value than that of any other
individual, who may possess in an equal degree the
qualifications of a competent judge in such a matter.” [48b]
But you
ask “whether when we read Mark xvi. 16, we can find in that
awful threat against those who do not receive the Gospel, a sanction for the even more
appalling threat contained in the Creed.” [49a] In what sense it is more
appalling you have left us to discover. But by this
observation, you would seem to aim at some distinction between
not receiving the Gospel and rejecting the “very
essentials of Christianity.”
“The Creed,” you say, “consists of a series
of propositions deduced by fallible man.” This of
necessity would be the case, since the truth was by the
wisdom of God committed to the keeping of fallible man, and with
it, the command to “take heed to THE doctrine.” But the
question is are they correct deductions from the
infallible word of God? You admit that they are, all
“must admire,” you say, “the extraordinary
subtlety and acuteness with which erroneous theories are
rejected, and the correct deductions from scripture are
maintained,” [49b] and again
“the matters treated of in this Creed are of such
fundamental importance and so including the very
essentials of Christianity.” [49c] If so, if the deductions be
scriptural, the spirit of the clauses cannot be otherwise,
for “he that believeth not shall be damned,”
and I presume that by believing you would contend for the
necessity of a sound faith—“the truth as it is
in Jesus.”
“You are not,” you say, “so feverishly
sensitive as many good men of our Church as to Trinitarian
definitions, esteeming a lively ‘faith working by
love,’ the grand desideratum of the gospel,” [49d] and so no doubt in a right sense it
is. But South draws a distinction between a lively and
a living faith, “our faith must not only be
living but lively too.” Admitting this
distinction, how far behind you does the Unitarian (or rather
Humanitarian, if sects would but assume their most
appropriate designation), fall in the profession of a like
faith? He holds after a fashion, St. Paul’s
“word of faith,” Rom. x. 9, and in works of kindness
to his fellow creatures and morality, falls nothing behind
the most orthodox Trinitarian. In this sense his faith is
lively, and artlessness and simplicity are the
boasted characteristics of his Creed. He “confesses
with his mouth the Lord Jesus”—but then it is that he
“was a man constituted in all respects like other men,
subject to the same infirmities, the same ignorance,
prejudices, and frailties, that he suffered death,
not to appease the wrath of God, not as a satisfaction to
divine justice, not to exhibit the evil of sin, nor in any
sense whatever to make atonement to God for it; for this
doctrine, in every sense, and according to every
explanation they explode as irrational,
unscriptural, and derogatory from the divine
perfections, but as a martyr to the truth, and as a
necessary preliminary to his resurrection.” [50] They confess Jesus with the
mouth, but they deny the gospel of Jesus Christ our
Redeemer. And is this believing to the saving of the
soul? is this a “confession unto salvation?” Is
this THE doctrine? But the
rulers of Christ’s Church are to charge some that they
teach no other doctrine, than the doctrine which is
according to godliness, and great is the mystery of
godliness. They are to rebuke sharply that men be
sound in the faith. We must in short teach the truth
as it is in Jesus,—THE
faith and not A faith; and woe to
us if from any mistaken notions of Christian charity, of that
charity which “rejoiceth in the truth,” we hesitate
to declare that to reject “the very essentials of
Christianity,” is a “drawing back unto
perdition.” At the same time when in the fulfilment
of our bounden duty, our positive obligations, we declare the
threat of scripture, for we declare no more, we might hope at all
events from those whose every sentiment would seem to breathe of
Christian benevolence, to have credit for declaring it in the
spirit of that charity which “hopeth all
things.”
Of the form of absolution in the Service for Visiting
the Sick, you say, “no small harm is done to our reputation
by sanctioning that which in plain honest language cannot be
defended.” [51a]
The Roman Catholic will tell you that you cannot in plain
honest language defend any construction of the words “this
is my body,” but their own. You put, however,
a different construction upon them, and with no harm done to your
reputation.
The Bishop of Norwich says of this form, “I have heard
many Clergymen express the pain they felt in uttering it,
shrinking, as conscientious minds ever must, from the assumption
of a power of so awful a character, while others from equally
conscientious motives, abstain altogether from pronouncing
it.” [51b]
I hope I do not misapprehend his Lordship; but the impression
of his opinion left on my mind by this passage, is, that no
conscientious mind can comply with our ordination vows but
with pain to itself. With what pain and reluctance
then must his Lordship cause these solemn vows to be
administered, and trusting that they are conscientiously
made, how from conscientious motives a man can abstain
from the observance of them, I confess I cannot clearly
see. Nor, can I think it quite just to the great body of
his Clergy to take a weak conscience as the standard by
which to measure the integrity of, perhaps, a better informed
one.
But if his Lordship so construes our formularies, as
implying an assumption on the part of the Minister, of a
power, the arrogating of which can fall nothing short of
blasphemy, namely, that “unless we as Ministers of the
Church, ‘do forgive’ and ‘absolve,’ the
sins of a dying man must descend with him to the grave, with all
their fearful pressure; and that if we choose to retain
them, he cannot escape their consequences,” [52a]—in other words, assuming a power
like the false Prophets of old, “to slay the souls that
should not die, and save the souls alive that should not
live,” [52b]—if such be his Lordship’s
view of our forms, a man need not be gifted with an
over-sensitive conscience to shudder at the arrogance, the use of
them must involve.
Yet in such a sense, his Lordship would seem to say, that our
Church’s absolution was viewed and “believed by many
of our earliest Reformers.” Let us then try the
Service in question, not by its iotas, but by its obvious
sense and meaning. Let it be made its own interpreter, and
we must at once be convinced that such was not the spirit in
which it was imposed by our Reformers, that they contemplated no
such construction of its words, as that of implying a power, of
“loosing of the debt of eternal death,”—or as
Bishop Burnet says, to “pardon with relation
to God.”
For if
so, why remind the sick person, that “after this life there
is an account to be given to the righteous Judge, by whom all
must be judged without respect of persons.” [53a] Does the form objected to imply
any such arrogant assumption on the part of the Minister?
On the contrary, is not the commencement of it precatory?
to the effect that Christ, not the Priest,
“would of his great mercy forgive the penitent his
offences.” Does the Priest pronounce the absolution
in his own name? On the contrary, he pronounces it in the
name of Him who sent him to declare the forgiveness of
sins. Does he declare it on any other than the gospel
terms? He declares it only to those who “truly
repent and believe in Christ.” But can he see the
heart? How then can it be supposed that he should himself
believe, or what danger is incurred of deceiving the dying person
into the fond hope, that he shall, in virtue of the
Priest’s absolution, be clear when he is judged
hereafter? Or if for a moment, the dying person had so
deceived himself, must not the delusion be dissipated, on hearing
the Minister after he had pronounced his
absolution, put up to the throne of mercy that earnest and
affecting petition, in behalf of him “who most earnestly
desireth pardon and forgiveness”—but to what
purpose, if he believed that he had but the moment before
forgiven him? what can be more utterly at variance than this
prayer, with the imputed arrogance of the form of
absolution? “The truth is, that in the Priest’s
absolution, there is the true power and virtue of forgiveness
which will most certainly take effect—nisi ponitur
obex—as in Baptism.” [53b]
“But who,” you ask, “shall venture to
put these words into the mouth of fallible men, and authorize
them in any sense to apply them.” [54a]
“You believe us,” you say, “to be in the
fullest sense ambassadors of Christ, charged with a message of
reconciliation.” [54b] But say that
you were delivering this message at the bed of a dying person,
and he replied to it, yes sir, so I read in my bible. How
would you lead him to believe that your ambassadorial declaration
of his forgiveness, was likely to be of more avail to him, than
his reading the message for himself? “Sin,”
says Hooker, “is not helped unless it be
assured of pardon.” [54c] But what
assurance can you give the penitent, beyond that he can read for
himself, unless you have authority to declare his pardon
in virtue of your official character? If it be not so, the
distribution of the bible may be considered as having in a great
measure superseded the further necessity of a Christian
Ministry, and rendered our Saviour’s institutions of
none effect.
“But why,” you ask, “assume to
execute our commission in terms which under any construction are
presumptuous.” Under their proper construction
I would submit that they argue no assumption or presumption
whatsoever.
Let us say that you had recently been sent out as “an
ambassador in the fullest sense,” to Canada, in pardoning
the rebels in accordance with your instructions, and a compliance
on their parts with the terms, should you have deemed it a
distinction involving any important difference, implicating you
in an act of presumption, or derogating any thing from the
prerogative of your sovereign,—had you said, I remit you
your outlawry, and absolve you from all your offences.
But I should much question, supposing the rebels had by some
means possessed themselves of your instructions, and having
ascertained from them the terms on which pardon was offered to
them, whether they would have considered reading this document to
each other, the same thing as having the gracious message of
pardon delivered to them on authority. The former is
the principle of sectarism. But if you believe that there
is any virtue in your office, if you believe that you are
empowered to declare the message of reconciliation with more
effect than a layman, define your position with regard to your
heavenly Master, assert your delegated authority, that of being
in the “fullest sense an ambassador of Christ;” prove
that it means something, or give up your claim to an empty
title. If there is nothing analogous in the office, why
assume to be an ambassador? or why should the Apostles have led
us to infer a delegated power, by declaring themselves to be
ambassadors, ministers of the gospel, and stewards of the
mysteries of God?
But for a weak and fallible man to assume a power in any
sense, to remit or retain the sins of another, how shall we
divest such a notion of presumption, or reconcile it with the
enlightened and enquiring spirit of the nineteenth century?
We are baptized, as I have always understood, for the
remission of sins. Say then, that a person desired
baptism at your hands, but that on examination you thought you
had found him wanting in the necessary qualifications, that he
had not faith. Would you baptize him? But if part of
the grace of Baptism be the remission of sins past, by
withholding from him the sacramental means whereby they are
remitted, do you not retain them? And under such
circumstances, would not the virtue of your commission—the
“power of the keys,” be brought home to you?
And considering the life-giving effect of Baptism, if you are
tempted to measure God’s ways by our ways, must it not
strike you as the very height of presumption, to say as you
do—I baptize thee? But as the remission of
sins is a result of Baptism, and as we have not according to the
old puritanical objection, any “scripture warrant”
for the words with which we administer that mystery, would it
argue greater presumption to say in words that mean no
more, “I absolve thee of all thy past
offences?” The Greek Church seems to have viewed the
matter in this light, for as we learn from Bingham, they
perform the rite in the optative form.
“Baptizetur servus Christi in nomine Patris,
&c.—let the servant of Christ be baptized,
&c.” [56]
But say, that you had mistaken the thoughts of the heart of
the would be convert, would not “the tremendous
responsibility” of which his Lordship speaks be neutralized
as it respected both the convert and yourself, by the comforting
consideration that there is an after appeal to One that judgeth
righteously, at whose tribunal the act or sentence of His
official on earth will be reversed, if pronounced in error, but
everlastingly confirmed if otherwise? Is absolution
therefore a matter of indifference? Why then was the
Christian ministry ordained, and its authority sealed by the
assurance of its divine Founder,—“he that despiseth
you despiseth me, and he that despiseth me despiseth Him that
sent me?”
Your
third objection lies against the words, “Receive ye the
Holy Ghost,” as they are used in our Ordination
Service.
The old cavil, as it is mentioned by Hooker, was
“The Holy Ghost we cannot give, and therefore we foolishly
bid men receive it.” [57a]
Your objection to the use of these words would seem to be,
that in their literal sense they imply a power of commanding his
gifts. But surely there is a wide distinction between the
dispenser of a spiritual gift, and the giver of
it. “God,” says Jeremy Taylor, “is
the fountain of the power, man conveys it by an external rite . .
. God is the consecrator, man is the minister; the
separation is mysterious and wonderful, the power great
and secret.” [57b]
Now, if a Bishop really believes that the Imposition of
Hands is a divinely instituted rite, the means ordained by
inspiration of Christ, and used by his Apostles, whereby the gift
of the Holy Ghost is conveyed and received, for the ministration
of the mysteries of the gospel dispensation:—if he believe
that he is a minister of the Spirit, an apostolically appointed
steward of these mysteries, I can see nothing
“foolish,” nothing presumptuous in his saying at the
very moment that he believes that he is dispensing the
gift—“Receive ye the Holy Ghost for the office and
work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto you by
the Imposition of our Hands.” It would, at least,
tend to show that he had faith in the efficacy of his
ministration. But to imitate the significant act of our
Saviour and his Apostles, ever performed by them with a specific
object, and ever resulting in a blessing, in the communication
of some spiritual gift, to have recourse to the sign, with
no faith in the thing signified, esteeming it but a barren
ceremony,—would seem to me to be but little short of an
“indefensible” mockery of an external rite, hallowed
to spiritual purposes by the authority of inspiration.
If you can believe in the mystery of the sacraments, if
you can believe that “the bread which we break, the cup of
blessing which we bless,” do, by the prayer and solemn
invocation of the Priest, become, in some inexplicable and
mysterious manner, the “Communion of the body and blood of
Christ, which are verily and indeed taken and received by the
faithful in the Lord’s Supper:” if, in this
faith, you hesitate not to give the consecrated elements to
the communicants, manifesting the signification of the rite, by
the words, the “body and blood of Christ, take,
eat—drink:”—I can see but little reason why you
should stumble, at the not more mysterious communication of the
spiritual gift for the office ministerial, by the Imposition of
Hands. They are mysteries; but the whole gospel
dispensation is a mystery:—we must become as “little
children” or we cannot receive them—for no sooner do
we grow wise enough to ask “how these things can
be,” than we are certain to reject them as
“foolishness.” Some boldly, like the Socinian,
as requiring a “prostration of intellect,” too
humiliating to be submitted to—others hiding from
themselves their want of faith, under the garb of humility, under
which garb, I wish, that frequently something more of rationalism
may not lurk, than its wearer would either willingly suspect or
acknowledge.
But you request the Archbishop of Canterbury, “that it
may be allowed by his Grace’s authority or sanctioned by his
opinion, that in this form, all that relates to the gift of the
Spirit” (the ministration of it rather, since the
Bishop is not the fountain of the power—not the
giver), “may be considered precatory.” [59a]—Precatory!—“the
great mysteries of our religion are all by way of solemn
prayer.” “The form of words,” says
Jeremy Taylor, “doth not alter the case, for Ego
benedico, and Deus benedicat is the same, and was
no more, when God commanded the Priest in express terms to
bless the people.” [59b]
But what is there in the words, “receive ye the Holy
Ghost,” to prevent your taking them in the sense which
would seem “to suit your own views?”
You take, I doubt not the form, in which the bread and wine in
the sacrament are administered in a precatory
sense.—“The body of our Lord Jesus Christ which was
given for thee, preserve thy body,” &c.—but in
the absence of any auxiliary verb, you must imply the precatory
sense—you might mentally substitute shall or
will, for may, for anything that there is in the
form itself to prevent you.
But you object also to the words as being an innovation, and
contend that the use of them was unknown in the purer ages of
Christianity. This, however, you must permit me to say, you
have signally failed in your attempt to prove. The
authorities you adduce, are those of Morinus and Bishop
Burnet. On these authorities “you hope to make it
appear beyond all doubt that no such form of ordination was ever
thought of, nor any resembling it for eleven centuries after the
publication of Christianity.” [59c]
“Prayer and the Imposition of Hands, were the only rites we
find practised by the Apostles,” says the
Bishop. But they were two distinct rites: “when they
had prayed, they laid their hands on them.” [60a] But they have left us no form of
prayer used by them upon the occasion—how then do we know
what form they used? And are we to suppose that the
Imposition of Hands was given in silence, unaccompanied by
any words to indicate its signification to the person ordained,
or to the faithful who were present? But nothing is left on
record. How then can you undertake to say that they used
not, as they most probably would, the very form of the primitive
commission? Christ was designated for his ministry by the
visible descent of the Holy Ghost, and by an efflux of the
Spirit: He, having received the gift without measure, in like
manner designated his Apostles for theirs—“As
my Father hath sent me, even so send I
you”—Receive ye the Holy Ghost. And there can
be no doubt, that the Apostles in ordaining others, would declare
both by word and deed: “As Christ hath sent us,
so send we you.” “Stir up the gift of
God that is in you by the putting on of my hands.” [60b]
But Morinus is to set this question at rest.
“His authority must, you suppose, be considered conclusive
on this point.” [60c] But to what
does it amount? His collected MS. forms of Ordination take
you back to about the middle of the eighth century; and these you
adduce as conclusive evidence of the practice of the
primitive Church. Now admitting, as in candour we
must, that his earliest authority is a proof of still earlier
usage,—still, as to any evidence of the practice of
the primitive Church, he leaves you with a yawning and
somewhat unmanageable hiatus upon your hands.
Could
no written summary of the Christian faith, or any traces of such
summary be discovered, anterior to the date of that of Nice; you
would hardly argue that for the three preceding centuries the
Church had always used the Nicene Creed:—the
inference would be that no human explication of the “word
of faith,” had been found necessary:—and in like
manner, the absence of any proof to the contrary, affords a
strong presumption, that the primitive Church had adhered
to the use of the words of the primitive commission.
At all events, before you undertake to inform us what form was
not used in the ordinations of the primitive Church; it is
incumbent on you to show what form it did
use.—“But,” says Bingham, whom you quote
thus far,—“the solemnity in giving superior orders,
was always performed by the Imposition of Hands and
prayer.” This has never been disputed, but he also
observes—“It is not to be imagined that one and the
same form was used in all Churches, for every Bishop having
liberty to frame his own Liturgy, as there were different
Liturgies in different Churches, so it is reasonable to suppose
the Primates or Metropolitans had different forms of
consecration, though there are now no remains of them in being,
to give us any further information.” [61a]
Throwing you in two centuries and a half beyond your earliest
authority, I dare not attempt with Bishop Burnet and
yourself to jump the remaining hiatus, with any hope of reaching
your conclusion,—“that if we ask of the antient time
what is best, and of the latter time what is fittest, some
alteration of the form of ordination is both proper and
expedient.” [61b]
Our
compilers thought it both “best and fittest” to
adhere to the words of the primitive commission, nor attempt to
define the mystery, or enquire “how can these things
be:”—and they would probably have replied to the
modern cavils in the spirit of Hooker’s
observation—“Seeing therefore that the same power is
now given, why should the same form of words expressing it, be
thought foolish?” [62a]
To this form of words the Clergy do literally and ex
animo subscribe, and notwithstanding your objections, I trust
without impeachment either of their truth or
honesty.
In a note to your Sermon published in 1838, speaking of
“controversial publications by Clergymen in defence of our
Church,” you observe, “the occupation is in most
cases neither happy nor improving.”
Ought not such a consideration to have withheld you from
challenging your brother to take so questionable a course as you
consider its defence, by publishing such opinions of the
Subscription required and made by the Clergy, as must, if
correct, involve them in the suspicion of being either ignorant
of its meaning, indifferent to its obligations, or insincere in
their acceptance of them?—warning them at one time against
the unhappy occupation of self-defence, and leading your readers
at another, to draw an inference to their prejudice, from their
silence; for you say with reference to “your objections, no
attempt at a refutation of them has appeared, so far as you know,
from any quarter,” [62b] and further, that
our Diocesan’s pamphlet, in “defence” of his
speech on Subscription, so strongly corroborative of your own
objections “remains unanswered.” [62c]
I must,
therefore, request of you to share any blame that may attach to
us, in consequence of the courses, offensive and
defensive, which we have respectively taken in this
matter.
I am fully conscious of the very questionable position in
which it places me, as one of his subordinate Clergy, with
respect to my Diocesan. And I trust I feel it with as
becoming a sense of the doubtfulness of its propriety, as you
must your own with its reference to our venerable and universally
respected Metropolitan.
But when his Lordship is informed of the alacrity with which
our opponents have availed themselves of his published opinions,
to cast them “unbated and envenomed” against the
bulwarks of our Zion, I feel assured that the well known
liberality of his Lordship’s sentiments, will dispose him
to make for me every allowance.
I could have wished that the silence the Clergy have hitherto
preserved, and which has been construed to their disadvantage,
had been broken by some one better qualified than I am to do
justice to the subjects I have presumed to handle; by some one,
whose name would have carried with it, far more weight than I
have the vanity to imagine can attach to my own. Indeed, I
have sometimes hesitated whether to affix it to this Letter, but
as you have shrunk from no responsibility by withholding your
own, from your published objections to our Subscription, I have
felt it due to you not to shelter myself under the
irresponsibility of an anonymous address. In penning which,
if I do not deceive myself, I may hope to stand acquitted of
having been influenced by any unfriendly feeling. If in any
part of it my style may seem to border upon anything savouring of
discourtesy—let me hope it may be considered by you as
seeming only. And should I have misapprehended your
sentiments and done you thereby any injustice—
Let my disclaiming of a purposed evil
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts,
That I have shot mine arrow o’er the house
And hurt my brother.—
In which light, as a Clergyman of the Church of England, I
hope long to have the opportunity to consider you, believing as I
do, that your scruples, though the creations of a
conscientious mind, are more imaginary than
substantial—and with this persuasion and in that hope, I
beg to subscribe myself,
Very faithfully yours,
CHAS. CAMPBELL.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GOWING,
PRINTER, SWAFFHAM.