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A CHARGE
THE DIOCESE OF OXFORD.
A CHARGE
THE DIOCESE OF OXFORD,
AT HIS THIRD VISITATION,
NOVEMBER, 1854.
SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD,
CHANCELLOR TO THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER,
UORD HIGH ALMONER TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN.
LONDON:
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND.
MDCCCLIV.
A CHARGE,
ETC.
My Reverend Brethren and my Brethren of
THE LaLTY
On meeting you thus again officially, after a third
interval of three years, I would first beg you to
acknowledge humbly with me the mercy of God,
Who has kept us through this past time, and
allowed us again to meet together in this house of
prayer. Death has, during these three years, been
very busy round us ; but our time of service has
been still continued — our day of grace prolonged.
Yet, at every place of our gathering through the
Diocese we miss those who, when we last assembled,
knelt and sat beside us, and from whose empty
place there may well seem to come to us the sound
of the midnight cry, and the warning voice — ' Be
ye ready also ; for in such an hour as ye think not,
the Son of Man cometh.' Of the Incumbents of
the Diocese, no fewer than forty-three have been
called to render up their great account since last
we met. Of your more numerous body, my Lay
Brethren, many more must have been taken. Oh !
that this thought might arouse us all to more
active labours for God in our several spheres; for
B
which of us may not be taken before again this
Diocese is visited ; and we know that ' the night
Cometh, when no man can work.'
When I met you last, I endeavoured, before I
surveyed the present state of the Diocese, or the
more general interests of the Church, to re-
view our own Diocesan proceedings for the last
three years; and as I have reason to believe that
you were then interested in that review, I propose,
in my present remarks, to follow the same course.
And, first, I will lay briefly before you the out-
line of suchactsasareespeciall}' connected with my
own ofiice. Since I last addressed you, I have
been able, through God's mercy in preserving my
health, to carry on to a considerable extent that
plan which you, my Reverend Brethren, so cordially
welcomed, of my ministering with you in your several
parishes, and so making the episcopal ofiice really
known in its true pastoral character amongst our
scattered flocks.
I have thus taken part during these three
years in more than 216 parishes. The hearty wel-
come you have given me has made those, seasons
amongst the happiest of my ministry. Never,
I can assure you, am I so well pleased as
when by any means I can strengthen your
hands in your parishes, and join with you in
your pastoral work. There are, I need not tell
you, many accidents belonging to the circumstances
of my office in the Church of this land whicli tend
to withdraw its holders from that direct ministry of
/^\
^ UIUC '
souls, and those spiritual cares, in which are
indeed its truest functions and highest exercise.
And we, in our own inner life, and our church
round us, in the straitening of appointed channels
of grace, are in great danger of suffering by our being
thus drawn to commerce so largely with the outer
and less spiritu il parts of our charge. From these
it is a special blessing to withdraw into the greener
pastures of your direct ministry of souls — to unite
with you in those common acts of worship and
spiritual communion, whence the smaller differences
of our several opinions vanish as forgotten things,
and we are, and feel ourselves to be, all one in
Christ Jesus.
During the last three years, above 14,057 persons
have been confirmed l>y me, and in the same space
150 candidates for the sacred ministry have been
ordained by me to the Priesthood, and 199 to the
office of a Deacon.
Turning from my own special charge to our
common Diocesan action, we shall, I think, find
that these three past years have been very far
from a time of inactivity. In them have been pro-
duced, or perfected, or strengthened amongst us,
various plans and instruments of service, which
will, 1 humbly trust, long prove blessings to the
Church, and mark with no common stamp of im-
portance this period of our Diocesan History. And
first amongst these I may mention the opening, at
Culham, of that Training School for Schoolmasters,
to lay the foundations and complete the building of
B 2
which so many of us have laboured long and hard.
To God alone be all the praise, who put it into the
hearts of his servants to contribute so liberally to
this great work; but to the many donors, both
amongst the laity and clergy, through whose aid
these buildings were reared at a cost of 19,700/., I
desire, on behalf of this Church and Diocese, to
tender thus publicly my grateful acknowledgments.
So far as we may venture at present to speak, we
may trust that this large sum has not been spent
in vain. We are now approaching the close of our
second year's actual work, and we have already
sent out as schoolmasters nineteen young men, who
are winning in their several spheres a high esteem for
their place of training. Of these, ten are employed
within this Diocese ; three in the associated Diocese
of Gloucester and Bristol, and six in other Dioceses ;
two of these having been sent for preparation under
our training for the posts they now fill. Besides
those who have thus gone forth, we had, at the close
of September, sixty-eight scholars in residence, and
their conduct and attainments give us solid grounds ■
for hearty satisfaction.
In the class list of students in the training schools
connected with the Church of England, to whom
certificates of merit Avere awarded, after examina-
tion by Her Majesty's Inspectors at Christmas last,
thirty-three out of thirty-five of our students
gained their certificates, a proportion larger than
that attained by any School but two ; the one so
small a School, that it could not fairly be judged of
by the same measure as our own : the other one, which
sent up for examination only half of its eligible
students. As the result of this examination, we
received towards the expenses of the year, from
the public grant, 1245/., three Schools only stand-
ing before us ; namely, Battersea, Cheltenham, and
St. Mark's, Chelsea, whilst the Diocesan Institution
which stood next to us received 500/. less than
our earnings.* It would be unjust not to notice this
* Tables extracted from Mr. Moseley's Report on Training
ScJiools, for the year ending Christmas, 1858 : i. e., on the first
and, as yet, only completed year of our operations. N.B. These
tables are comparative, and show the relative results with respect
to all Training Schools in the country.
I. Results of Ceetificate Examinations.
Certificates of Merit.
Class List of Students in Training ScJiools connected with tlie
Churcli of ISngland, to lohom Certificates of Merit have been
awarded hy the Committee of Council, after Examination
before Her Majesty'' s Inspectors, at Christmas, 1853.
MALES.
No. of
First
Second
Third
Total
Training School.
Candidates.
Class.
Class.
Class.
Certiiicates.
Battersea
84
3
33
31
67
Carmarthen . . .
27
1
3
14
18
Carnarvon . . .
10
1
2
5
8
Chelsea, St. )
Mark's . . . )
59
1
16
25
42
Cheltenham . . .
59
8
21
16
45
Chester
18
12
6
18
Chichester . . .
9
5
2
7
Durham
16
1
7
8
16
Exeter
25
44
2
2
9
11
7
24
18
37
Kneller HaU
Highbury
39
8
13
21
Oxford
35
i
13
19
33
Winchester . . .
18
1
6
8
15
Worcester . . .
23
6
12
18
York & Hipon
36
1
7
14
22
Here we are first in the ratio of certificates to candidates,
great success as a sterling proof of the ability and
conscientious labours of our Rev. Principal and his
assistants. In reviewing the detailed accounts of
this Institution, I have observed with satisfaction
the great number of applications for masters which
have come from the Diocese and the increased
proportion of pupils whom it has sent up. Few,
however, of these are Queen's scholars, our Queen's
except Durham and Chester, the latter of which did not send in
above half its students who were ehgible, and the former a col-
lection of but sixteen, so small that it scai'cely comes into the
comparison.
II. Amount of Public Gbants on the Accounts of
Certificates and of Queen's Scholaeships, Christ-
mas, 1853.
£ s. d.
Battersea 1963 15 0
Carmarthen 620 0 0
Carnarvon
Chelsea, St. Mark's 1345 0 0
Cheltenham 1540 0 0
Chester 680 0 0
Chichester 285 0 0
Durham 515 0 0
Exeter 705 0 0
KnellerHall
Highbury 758 0 0
Oxford 1245 0 0
Winchester... 615 0 0
Worcester 715 0 0
York and Ripon 750 0 0
From the first of these tables will be seen oui* success as com-
pared with other Colleges in the general examination. From
the second, the amount of public money we earned altogether
towards our first j'ear's expenses. It is observable that in the
second table we aioodi fourth, and the fifth in order are 500^.
behind our earnino-s.
scholars having been draAvn ahuost entirely from
other counties. This has arisen not from our
Queen's scholars having gone elsewhere, but from
their paucity amongst us, since we have in the
Diocese only thirty-three Schools having pupil-
teachers, and in them only forty-two pupil-teachers.*
I would, therefore, once more remind the Managers
of Schools of the great advantages now offered to
them by the pupil-teacher system, under which
they may obtain so much help in providing for the
* The following are the Church of England Schools for Boys
in the Diocese in which Pupil-Teachers are employed, as given
in the Report of the Committee of CouncQ for Education
1853-4 .—
BERKS.
Aldermaston.
Clewer.
Reading, St. Giles.
Speen .
Sunningdale.
Wallingford.
Wantage.
Windsor.
Old.
Park.
St. Mark's.
OXFOEDSHIEE.
Banbury.
Benson.
Bradwell.
Chipping Norton.
Chm-chill & Sarsden.
Cowley.
Cuddesdon.
Henley.
Ibstone.
Nuneham.
Lewknor.
Oxford, St. Mary's.
St. Paul's.
BUCKS.
Aylesbury.
Brightwell.
Claydon.
Great Marlow.
Stoke Pogis.
Stoney Stratford.
Upton cum Chalvey.
Waddesdon.
Witney.
Number of Pupil-Teachers in the Church of England Boys'
Schools in the county of —
OXFOKD. BERKS. BUCKS. TOTAL.
14. 18. 10. 42.
Total Schools having Pupil-Teachers, 33.
Total Pupil-Teachers in Diocese, only 42.
Total Schools Jiaving such, only 33.
8
expenses of their Schools, whilst they open for their
best pupils a useful career for life. The first point
needful for thus raising your Schools is to provide
them with certificated masters ; and though, if our
students could have left us earlier, every one would
have been already engaged, yet, from the Managers
of the Schools who applied for them being unable
to wait the completion of their full term, there will
at Christmas next be several certificated masters
ready for you.
In another way, the Culham Institution may
materially aid your difli'erent Schools : your own
schoolmasters may be received there for a season,
and obtain, even in a short stay, much valuable in-
struction as to managing their Schools. A difi'erent
class of schoolmasters, moreover, may obtain great
assistance from a visit to it ; I mean certificated
masters who have training puj^ils under them ; for
their duties towards these are new and undefined,
and many of them difiicult. To these the Prin-
cipal at Culham has paid special attention; and
there are few masters who might not profit greatly
by observations of his methods and oral consulta-
tion with him on the difficulties of their charge.
During these three years, the Allied Training
Institution for Schoolmistresses has been opened in
the Diocese of Gloucester and Bristol ; and on that
occasion, and at the consecration of its Chapel in
February last, the representatives of this Diocese
were received with a hearty Christian cordiality which
gave no faint promise of that harmonious co-opera-
tion in this good work, which we trust to see long
uniting these connected Dioceses. This School is
now in full operation : seven pupils from the
Diocese have been in it, two of whom are now
eno;ao;ed with Schools in it.
We have been permitted also to complete another
Diocesan Institution, to Avhich I look, under God's
blessing, for the happiest results. The 1 5th of June,
on which we formally opened the buildings which
had been raised at Cuddesdon for assisting in the
Theological and Pastoral Training of Candidates
for Holy Orders, will long live in my memory, and I
doubt not, my Brethren, in the memory of many of
you also, as a day to be much and gratefully re-
membered, and on which we dare not doubt that
there was vouchsafed to our endeavours an abun-
dant blessing from our God. Most encouraging was
it to us that so large and so venerable a portion of
the Episcopate of the English Church joined with
us in holy communion, in prayer, in the ministry
of the Word, and in public exhortation, on our day
of solemn inauguration: most moving was it to
our hearts to see amongst them, to name no others,
where I might mention all, the still youthful
energy which, on the other side of the globe, is
gathering in Melanesia to the Lord ; and the silver
hairs, but still, I thank God, unbent form, of almost
our eldest Bishop : most cheering was it to me, and
I acknowledge it anew this day with affectionate
thankfulness, amongst the many trials of my office,
and of these times, to see so many representatives
10
of every district, and of all opinions, in this
Diocese, assembled around me, to meet those Right
Reverend Fathers of our Church in the services
and actions of that eventful day.* You will rejoice
with me in knowing that we have already within
those walls eight students, who, having completed
their university course, are now preparing there
for the work of the ministry. I beseech you,
my Brethren, in your hours of secret prayer, to
remember us and them in your intercessions before
God; that He may grant us wisdom, power, and
love, and enable us to send out thence many
faithful men to preach boldly the pure Word of
Christ's Gospel ; to minister His Sacraments
faithful!}", and to be, under Him, the blessed
instrument in saving many souls. My experi-
ence as a Bishop during these last nine years
would have proved to me, had I needed such proof,
that there is nothing that we more want than
such institutions, where those who are soon to go
forth to exercise, too often almost without assist-
ance, the perilous ministry of souls, may pursue a
course of sound theological study — may learn by
practice, under wise direction, how to conduct
their pastoral ministry, and may have opportuni-
ties of retirement, thought, and prayer, which it
would be hard for them to obtain elsewhere, and
* A full account of the proceedings- of the day is to be found
in the Appendix to the Sermon of the Bishop of New Zealand,
" A Little One shall become a Thousand." Vincent, Oxford ;
Eivingtons, London.
11
which are so peculiarly precious in the months
which precede their ordination. Such a prepara-
tion, if God vouchsafe His blessing to it, will, I
am persuaded, be the best security we can afford
to our young men against the peculiar dangers of
the present time. To say nothing of other evils,
and they are not few, arrogance, and its natural
result, extreme opinion on any side, whether verg-
ing towards the specious infidelity of latitudina-
rianism on the one hand, or to the poisonous blight
of Roman error on the other, are the natural con-
sequences of men undertaking, without a careful
theoloo;ical trainino;, the difficult work of the
Christian ministry. Private imaginations, the con-
ceits which are bred of the fancy, narrow minded-
ness, a set of shallow opinions, self-willed rashness,
ignorant obstinacy, party spirit, with its shib-
boleths and its unchristian judgments, and its
uncharitable speeches and all its injuries to souls
— these are the natural fruits of men undertaking
to be teachers of others, whilst as yet they know
nothing, or next to nothing, of that whereof they
affirm much, and that much confidently — of men
going forth to teach and to speak, who are really
dependant for their own views on the hasty and
too often muddy current of popular opinion, as it
streams thx'ough the various channels of the reli-
gious journals and passing literature of the day.
Our aim, my Brethren, will be to form in its
strength and its simplicity, in those who come to
us, the marked features of a devout, sober, earnest,
12
practical, well-instructed Churcli of England piety ;
to make them well acquainted, as the foundation
of all other learning, with that pure Word of God
which we acknowledge as our rule alike of faith
and practice, and then to add to this such an
acquaintance with that primitive antiquity to which
our Reformed Church points as the best expositor
of Scripture, and to those great lights of our
own communion, Richard Hooker, Bishop Pearson,
Bishop Andrews, and their fellows, as shall furnish
them with armour they have proved, alike against
the specious novelties of Geneva and the deadly
subtleties of Rome.
Once more, I earnestly ask your prayers, and
wherever you can give it, your co-operation in
carrying out this great work; which we have
undertaken with a trembling sense of our own
insufficiency for its due discharge, but with an
humble trust in God's mercy to accept for Christ's
sake, and bless our undertaking.
Two other Diocesan Institutions, of which I
spoke to you three years ago, have since been
augmenting their strength, and preparing for a
wider range of charitable action. At Wantage,
five sisters are engaged in their work of
Christian charity. Fifty-seven penitents have
here come under our hands, of whom we trust
that thirty-eight have, through God's mercy, been
rescued from a life of sin. An arrangement of
great moment has been concluded with the
Managers of the Oxford Penitentiary, who are to
13
pay 100/. a-year to the expenses of maintaining at
Wantage ten penitents to be drafted into that house
after trial from their own inmates. This enlarge-
ment of its numbers renders new buildings neces-
sary. The estimated cost of this will be 3000/., of
which 1100/. is now raised, and 500/. more ex-
pected ; whilst its conductors are earnestly appealing
for aid in supplying the remaining deficienc}^ At
Clewer, where we have now seven sisters and
twenty-one penitents, funds have been raised for
erecting the first portion of the buildings
necessary to contain seventy-five or eighty
penitents, with provision for receiving penitents
of a higher class, and an infirmary and pro-
bationary ward. Fifteen acres of land having been
obtained for the purpose, the first stone of these
buildings was laid by me on the 27th of last
June. Here, too, help is required; as much as
3000/. more being needed for the completion of
the work.
Out of seventy-seven who have been inmates in
this house, we have good reason to believe that fifty-
two have been rescued from the destroyer, and
given back to life, ' sitting at the feet of Jesus,
clothed and in their right mind.'
To these institutions I look with a deep but
hopeful anxiety. Many causes have prevented
the growth amongst ourselves of those charitable
and relief ious sisterhoods which, both amongst
O ' CI
Romanists and the Reformed communions, have
flourished and done good service in various parts
14
of the continent of Europe. Great in many ways
will be the gain to us, if our Church can pervade
such institutions with her own spirit, and bring
them under her rule, and thus provide in them
fresh opportunities for her children's service, and
carry out through them in new directions her
works of mercy. We have just seen, in the
need of such nurses for the wounded as our
allies possess at Scutari, how great a practical
want of our social system might be hereby
supplied; and there is, moreover, floating at large
amongst us an energetic spirit of exertion, which,
if left simply to itself, is too likely to run into
extravagance and folly; but which, under the rule
and direction of the Church, may be a blessing to
those in whom it dwells, as Avell as to those on
whom it expends its strength.
But I do not disguise from myself, and I would
not hide from you, the great difficulties which
must be surmounted before we can see such
institutions well ordered and indigenous amongst
us. Rather would I state them freely to you,
and seek the aid of your prayers, suggestions, and
co-operation in overcoming these hindrances, and
winning for our Church these new instruments in
advancing the kingdom of her Lord. They are,
then, such as these — first, in their very founda-
tion we are met by the difficulty of finding dis-
creet and sober-minded women to become the
first members of such societies; both because
they are new, and all novelties at first repel
15
the cautious, and also because they are asso-
ciated in the English mind with Popish errors and
abuses, — and next in their conduct. For whilst,
for the reasons just given, amongst the first mem-
bers of such bodies the ardent and enthusiastic are
likely to predominate, we have, from the freedom
of our habits, and the very purity of our faith,
peculiar difficulties in restraining or directing their
impulses. The Church of Rome has no such
difficulties ; for here, as elsewhere, her perversions
of the truth are so craftily devised, that she can
seize and make use of human frailty for her own
purposes. She can preach freely the superior
holiness of virginity and the ascetic life, and thus
allure the enthusiastic to fill her sisterhoods. She
can bind their inmates by vows of chastity and
obedience, she can stimulate and yet govern their
excited religious emotions, by her doctrine of the
meritorious value of acts of devotion and submis-
sion; and thus, however in so doing she may
debase the souls of her children, she can make
them the passive and efficient instruments of her
sagacious counsels and determined will. We can
use no such means, but must with the utmost
clearness declare the simple gospel truth, that
married life is every whit as holy and as accept-
able to God as the service of our unmarried sisters ;
that vows which the Lord has not commanded are
dangerous and ensnaring, if not absolutely un-
lawful; and that the duty of obedience can never
supersede that highest jurisdiction of the indivi-
16
dual conscience which is the necessary correlative
of the inalienable and awful responsibility of pri-
vate judgment. Here then are our difficulties, for
overcoming which we need specially not only wise
counsels, but also the candid judgments and active
co-operation of the sober-minded, and the hearty
prayers of all.
In another work, also, of great importance, God
has graciously prospered our endeavours during the
last three years. When, seven years ago, the
Diocesan Church Building Society was founded, I
pressed as strongly as I could upon the Diocese
our need of many new churches and parsonage
houses ; and our still greater need of so restoring
and rearranging many of our old parish churches,
as to o;ive back that birthrio;ht of a fittino- and com-
modious place in them, of which many conspiring
circumstances had, to a great degree, robbed
our poorer brethren. The mode in which that
appeal has been responded to is a matter for our
deep gratitude to God. Our Diocesan Society has
raised and expended, since its commencement,
9607Z. 55. But this alone would be a most in-
adequate measure of the good which has resulted
from these efforts; for this 9607/. 5s. has led to the
expenditure of 110,000/. more within the Diocese
from other sources. During the last nine years,
thirty-five new churches, and nineteen parsonage-
houses have been built, eighteen churches have
been rebuilt, and seventy-two restored and en-
larged; by which means additional accommoda-
17
tion for more tlian 16,159 persons has Leon pro-
vided, of which places 14,643 are free. Of these,
eleven new churches have been built, nine re-
built, and twenty-one restored, and ten parson-
ages provided, or are in progress of formation, with-
in these last three years.* Yet let no one
think that our work, in this particular, is now
done; so far from this being the case, the returns
furnished me give us a list of fifty-seven new
churches wanted, and very many still remain
needing urgently that work of restoration which
has already given a new impulse to the spiritual
life of not a few of our parishes. AVhilst this is
the case, the funds of our Association are so
exhausted that, with no money in hand, and with
* The Churches built, rebuilt, and restored during the last
three years, are as follows : —
Built. — Colnbrook ; Great Marlow ; Kidmore End ; St. Paul,
Banbury ; South Banbury ; Eastbury ; Clifton (Deddington) ;
Little Tew ; Eton ; Tyler's Green ; Milton under Wychwood, at
the sole cost of J. H. Langston, Esq., M.P., and the Rev,
Antony Huxtable.
Rebuilt. — Culham, and Horsepath (except the chancels) ;
Lamborne-Woodlands ; Hedgerley ; Sandhurst ; Chalfont St,
Peter (chancel and south aisle) ; Chaddleworth (chancel), at
the sole cost of B. Wroughton, Esq.); Pishell, Salford.
Restored. — Oare ; St. Paul's, Oxford, a chancel added; Faring-
don; Wallingford; Shottesbrook ; Winterborne; St. Michael's,
Oxford ; Sonning ; Denchworth ; Wootton ; Marlston ; Kid-
dington ; Dorchester ; Hurley ; Kirtlington ; Harpsden ; Great
Rollright ; Forest-hill ; Aston Tirrold ; Swyncombe ; Steeple
Barton ; Stanford in the Vale.
The Parsonage-houses are at Wardington ; Motlington ; Cud-
desdon ; Speenhamlaud ; St Ebbes, Oxford ; Colnbrook : Cran-
bourne ; Dorchester ; Liuslade ; South Banbury.
C
18
an annual income of only 450L, we have already-
promised grants to works now in progress to the
amount of 5701.
To restore these funds, it has been proposed that
a general effort should be made, by holding
meetings throughout the Diocese; and I would
very earnestly entreat you, my brethren, lay and
clerical, to assist us in this work; by attending,
and getting others to attend, the projected meet-
ings, by obtaining annual subscribers, and by
raising contributions for our funds. I cannot
doubt but that we should at once double our
annual income if the real claims of our cause on
their attention were brought before the yeomen
and gentry of our counties. For this is, indeed, a
work of charity for these our brethren, and
specially for their poorer brethren around their
o-svn doors; and what greater blessings can we
bestow on them than those of a resident ministry,
and a fitting and commodious place within the
House of God? In aiding this work we have,
moreover, the satisfaction, which is too often
withheld from us, of knowing that it is one as to
which no difiPerence or division of opinions can
exist; and that here, therefore, without the pos-
sibility of any compromise as to our peculiar views,
we may enter with entire heartiness upon the
blessed and uniting work of common labours for
our brethren and our Lord. To all Avho are
willing to aid us here, our admirable secretary, the
Rev. R. Gordon, of Elsfield, to whose able and
19
untiring labours we are most deeply indebted for
our past success, will gladly supply every necessary
amount of information. Beyond our intended
meetings the only remaining means of supplying
the resources which we need will be by collections
made within our churches. For this end, I shall
be ready, next year, to issue a letter of pastoral
invitation, if it meets generally the wishes of the
Diocese. Touching on this subject enables me to
thank you for the mode in which you responded to
my last address, by which 1551/. 12-s. 8t/., raised
from 433 parishes, was added to the funds for
buildinof the Culham Training^ Colleofe.
I turn now to what we have been enabled to do
as to another paramount duty of the Church — the
providing for the education of the young of our o^yn
communion. Of the great work effected, in the
completion of our Training School for Masters, I
have already spoken ; and, contemporaneously with
this, many schools and masters' houses have been
built throughout the Diocese. Besides some goodly
structures, the sole work of private founders, I have
before me a list of fifty-nine school-rooins, and
twenty-seven schoolmasters' residences, with ac-
commodation for 5,626 scholars, which have
been built within the last few years, in forty-five
places within the Diocese, at a cost of 22,542/., of
which 1475/. were contributed by the J^ational
Society. Further, an attempt has been begun in
this year to increase the funds supplied by this
Diocese for the Curate Aid Society ; and this effort
c 2
20
will be continued, please God, in the ensuing spring.
Most earnestly do I commend this admirable
Society to your support. It must, by its consti-
tution, be wholly free from every party bias, since
it leaves to the incumbent, for whose parish the
curate is to be supplied, the selection of his
assistant. And it touches the very central heart
of our wants, the deficiency of the pastoral
ministry in our ill-endowed and overgrown parishes ;
yet so small are its means, compared with the
demands made upon it, that whilst it is enabled,
at present, to make 332 grants, it has 264 appli-
cations before it, to which, for lack of funds, it
can grant nothing.
In these three counties it aids six parishes* with
grants amounting to 290Z. a-year, whilst it gathers,
* The following parishes in the Diocese are aided by this
Society : —
Shipton £30
Abingdon 30
Walton, Aylesbury 80
Chipping Norton 30
Windsor, H. Trinity 40
Beaconsfield 80
Total £290
The amounts received from the Diocese in Parochial Collections
and Local Subscriptions since the year 1850, are as follows : —
£ s. d.
For the year ending Easter 1850 166 7 10
„ 1851 176 10 9
„ „ „ 1852 131 11 2
„ „ „ 1853 143 17 8
,. 1854 136 12 10
21
I lament to say, from our Diocese, no more tlian
136/. 125. lOd.
One other institution Avas proposed last year,
and is likely soon to be in active operation, the
benefit of which you will all, I think, appreciate.
It is termed the Clergy Provident Society, and its
aim is to assist those clergymen whose total income
does not exceed 300/. a-year to secure for their
families the aid of ordinary life insurance, as well
as to provide, by payments in times of health, for
the receipt of two guineas weekly in disabling
sickness.
And now. Brethren, let me turn your thoughts
for a few minutes from the past, whilst I endea-
vour, so far as the occasion and our time permits,
to take with you a brief survey of our present
state.
The first feature which has struck me in dwell-
ing recently in thought upon this subject, is one for
which we cannot too heartily thank God ; it is the
amount of internal quietness and mutual confidence
which He has granted to us, compared with our
state three years ago. As to that which upon
this subject immediately concerns myself, I cannot
content myself without expressing before you this
day, first, my humble praise to God, who has put
it into your hearts, my Reverend Brethren, and my
Brethren of the Laity, to render to me as your
Bishop such unvarying assistance, and then my
thanks to you, for your hearty support of the
various plans I have brought before you for the
22
good of the Diocese, for the liberality of your con-
tributions, and the efficiency of your co-operation.
And yet again I must heartily thank you for your
kindness shoAvn on so many occasions towards me
personally, for your charitable judgments, for your
attention to my requests, for your generous aiFec-
tion. Amidst the many toils and trials of a
Bishop's office, no earthly support can be so great
as that loving confidence of his Diocese, which
God has graciously put it into your hearts so
largely to extend to me. May He make me less
unworthy of so great a mercy.
Of this first blessing the present peacefulness of
our Diocese is, I believe, one of the natural conse-
quences. The episcopal office is, by God's appoint-
ment, so much the connecting bond of the Diocese,
which without it inevitably breaks up into a set of
petty principalities, under a multitude of accidental
chiefs, that where the bond is firm between the
Bishop and his Diocese, the Diocese becomes, as a
consequence, itself more peacefully and firmly
united. But further, this peacefulness may, I be-
lieve, be traced to a second powerful cause, for
which I have greatly to thank those most valuable
though unrewarded officers of the Diocese, the
Rural Deans. I have no doubt that to the better
acquaintance with each other which has resulted
from the Rural Chapters ; to the habits they en-
gender of mutual consultation and action ; and
above all to the real Christian harmony which
results from the united worship, for which they
23
afford the opportunity, our present internal peace
is to be in a great degree attributed; and this
is borne out by the fact, that wherever the Rural
Chapter is most flourishing, and its meetings
best attended, there the union of the Clergy of
the district is most complete. May God, my
Brethren, multiply and increase amongst us this
blessing of a city which is at unity with itself:
may He enable us to guard against everything
which in our conduct, our words, or onr thoughts
as to one another, may mar this unity, and so
grieve the Holy Spirit of Peace : may He keep us
from party spirit, from forming or countenancing
any sectional views within our common Church :
may He keep us from uncharitable judgments and
uncharitable language concerning those who, in
things lawful, or in the various allowed shades they
give to truths we hold in common, differ from us and
from our own peculiar views : may He teach us,
whilst we strive simply, earnestly, and without
compromise, to teach truth as we see it, to be ready
to make large allowances for others ; to believe that
they may see some truths which we see not ; and to
refuse, as the very principle of schism, to be banded
into any school or party within the Church, witli
separate interests to defend, party combinations to
defend them, and party watchwords as the instru-
ments of such a treasonable union. Of course, my
Reverend Brethren, when I press thus earnestly
upon you the great duty of cultivating unity
amongst ourselves, I take for granted that in
24
tilings essential we are really one, and that between
the far greater number of us disunion and suspi-
cions (where unhappily they do now to some degree
exist) rest on no deeper foundations than miscon-
structions of each other's meaning, ignorance of
our real agreement, and too exclusive an admission
of our own view of common truths. There are, of
course, exceptions on both sides; but as to the
great majority of our body, every year more con-
vinces me that this is the case. The grounds of
our differences are often abstract difficulties, in-
volved in the very system of Theism, which are
absolutely irreconcileable by human intellects.
Others are differences which far more concern
the use of words than the ideas which those words
so imperfectly symbolize, whilst others have no
deeper root than in the different views which
different minds, from their very constitution, must
take of common truths. Now, if this be so, it
follows that whilst we must state fully and openly,
and act strictly upon our own views of truth, we
may heartily co-operate and cultivate loving inter-
course with our brethren, whose views in many
respects we honestly deem defective or mistaken,
and desire to see amended.
Let me for a moment illustrate my meaning by an
outline sketch of what appears to me to be the rela-
tions between the two chief schools of thought now
within our Church. The one arose from a most
blessed revival of earnest personal faith in Christ,
which led those whom it possessed to protest with
25
all the energy of truth against a system which had
too often taught men to be well satisfied with mere
decency and an earthly morality, provided they had
been baptized and continued members of the visible
Church. The truth, given to these teachers to
maintain, (and nobly, for the most part, in their
earlier days, they maintained it,) was the need of
the renewal of each individual soul, and of the gift
to it of a true living faith in Christ, through God's
Spirit working on it before it could be saved. But
every truth, taken singly, is in danger of leading
men into error ; and the danger accompanying this
revival was, that men's minds should be fixed so
exclusively on the energetic working of God's
Spirit in the individual soul, which He renewed
unto salvation, that the great truth of the peculiar
Presence of God the Holy Ghost personally Avith
the Church of Christ, and all the other truths which
follow from this first, such as the Grace of Sacra-
ments, and the responsibilities and the blessedness
of membership in the Church, should be lost sight of,
and men grow to think of that Grace of God alone
as really present, which was visibly effectual. The
absolute truth lies in the perfect harmony of these
two facts in the Divine economy. But the posses-
sion of absolute truth is a rare gift to such as we
are ; and the one party, therefore, in maintaining
the need of the effectual working of God's Holy
Spirit on the individual soul, are ever necessarily
in danger of practically losing sight of his Personal
Presence with the Church ; the other, in maintain-
26
ing that Personal Presence, of leading men to rest
their hopes -on that Presence, without experiencing
in their own souls His converting and renemng
power. Thus, when members of these different
schools of thought contemplate the position of the
other, they are tempted, the one, to charge their
brethren with encouraging a lifeless formality, the
other, with denying the Grace of Sacraments and
the Church's Hidden Life. Yet surely there is
for all faithful members of our Church, much as
they may seem at first sight to differ, a true
point of concord, in the common meeting-place
of their respective truths. Surely if, instead of
being ready to cast upon one another the mutual
reproaches of infidelity to our common Church,
we would, without compromising one iota of our
conscientious belief, each recoo-nise the other's
truth and then bend all our efforts to convey to
them our own, we should have found out that
master secret of Christ's blessed Gospel — how, in-
deed, whilst ' we loved as brethren' to ' contend
earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the
Saints' — how, indeed, to ' speak the truth in love.'
Or, take a matter of practice, in which the same
difference of opinion is expressed and fixed, and
by which it is too often embittered — I mean the
conduct of our public services. On the one hand
there is, as we are all aAvare, a strong tendency to
multiply their number and to add to them as
much of outward circumstance and beauty, of music
and chanting, as the ritual of our Church allows.
27
On the other hand there is a strong tendency to
resist all such services as innovations ; to maintain
stiffly what is sometimes called the simplicity of
our Protestant worship, to banish from it all that
can appeal to the eye, or the ear, or the natural
taste, to keep it as strictly as possible to reading
God's Word, to preaching its great truths, and to a
distinct utterance of the prescribed words of prayer
and praise, upon absolutely prescribed occasions.
Now from this diversity of practice there is too apt
to grow up amongst us first estrangement, and then
bitterness of feeling, mutual suspicion, and too often
mutual reproach.
For it is easy on the one side to point to the
Puritanical rejection of our ritual as savouring of
the Popish Mass Book, to the verge of which this
extreme simplicity approaches ; to impute to it an
undervaluing of devotion; to charge it Avith re-
ducinof all relio;ion to the intellectual admission of
certain truths ; and to show by the undoubted ex-
ample of others, how such a scheme of religion
tends at no distant period to the disregard of the
very truths which were at first idolized, whilst it
conducts the worshipper by the downward steps of
less frequent prayers, less venerated Sacraments,
and colder and more merely intellectual worship, to
the chill and misty flats of the Genevan heresy.
On the other hand, it is easy to brand as merely
sensual all admission of the objects of the senses
into the worship of God — to urge the facility with
which often-repeated acts of public worship grow
28
into formality, and to point to the pealing anthems,
long processions, sublime spectacles, and wreathing
clouds of incense, with which the noblest paintings,
the most melting strains of music, and the most
perfect artistic skill have filled the greatest
Christian Temple of the West, to show how fatally
the spiritual worship of the humbled soul may dege-
nerate into the gorgeous ceremonial of the Papacy.
But are these mutual reproaches, with all their
consequent embitterment of party strife, just,
charitable, or necessary ? Is there no meeting
point where, for all members of our own commu-
nion, both sections of our Church may rest, without
any sacrifice of that which they deem the more ex-
cellent way, and from which therefore, whilst they
continue their o"\vn mode, they may yet sincerely
respect in each other the true piety which leads
them to an allowed variety of practice?
I have no doubt there is ; and that it lies not
in any formal adjustment, for universal practice,
of any fixed number of services, or amount of
ritualistic development. As to these, our Church
leaves to us — and, I believe, most wisely leaves to
us — a wide liberty on either side ; and provided
that this liberty be not exceeded, and that the
feelings and habits of the body of worshippers in
our Churches are tenderly regarded before any
changes are made, neither party has any right to
impute evil to the other. But for the point of
unity we must go further than this mere absence
of mutual reproach ; and we must, I believe, find
29
it — first, ill being willing to admit the danger
which, from man's infirmity, must beset our o^^m
practice. Secondly, in being equally ready to
allow the truth, which, however mingled with
human error, yet disposes our brethren to cling to
their own practice. And, thirdly, and above all,
in fixing more steadily our view on that great ob-
ject of every faithful mhiistry — the true conversion
to God and the building up in the Faith of Christ
of souls which he has redeemed.
For there is a truth and a danger upon both
sides. There is a truth : for we ought to conse-
crate every faculty, both of soul and body, to God's
direct service ; to ' praise Him upon the lute and
harp, with the cymbals and dances,' as well as with
the living breath of the heart's devotion ; and we
cannot join together too often ' in magnifying our
Redeemer and our God ; though seven times a day
we praised Him for all His righteous judgments.'
And yet, on the other hand, it is the secret ofifering
of the heart in every worshipper which alone He
will accept, and there maybe cases in which this may
be offered to Him most purely in worship the least
assisted by external additions, and where the pro-
portion of secret to public devotions is the largest.
There is, too, on both sides, a danger. For a ritual
rich in the externals with which the senses mainly
are concerned may be acceptable to an unrenewed
heart, and tend to deepen its self-deceiving
slumbers. The mere frequency of services may
have the same eff'ect; and, on the other side, a
so
worship in which the avenues of all the feelings of
our nature are kept closed is in danger of growing
merely intellectual, and infrequent worship chills
the warmth of prayer, and strikes with a benumb-
ing paralysis the very soul of devotion. Nor are
these dangers to be averted by a simple adoption of
the opposite system. For neither will the fewest or
simplest forms destroy formality ; since that obsti-
nate parasite can live and grow amidst the rigours of
the Pole, as well as in the heat of the Tropics, and
men can fix their self-righteous trust as easily on
droning out the dull repetition of the coldest form
as on joining in the richest and most gorgeous ser-
vices; and so, ere this, reformers have found it
easier to kill by outward treatment the devotion
on which formality fastens than to get rid of the
formality itself. Nor will the best appointed and
most frequent services kindle in the unrenewed
soul one spark of genuine devotion.
The safeguard from these opposite dangers is,
indeed, to be found in our higher value for the
common truth — that our whole ministry is vain, un-
less, through it, as God's instrument, souls are con-
verted to Him, and daily renewed to greater holiness.
And in acting on this conviction we shall, even
with allowed diversity of action, find unity of soul
with our brethren. The most developed ritual and
frequent services will lose their danger, and by
degrees even cease to be objects of suspicion to all
reasonable men, if those who conduct them are
indeed full of a burning desire to save souls in the
31
simple Gospel way of Justification by Faith in
Christ crucified; and services of the plainest sim-
plicity will yet be kept free from aridity and chill,
if they are full of love to the person of our Lord,
and are offered in a ministry which is spending
itself in passionate desires to bring souls to Him.
Blessed, my Brethren, were it for us here, and,
oh ! most blessed for us at the day of His appear-
ing, if, laying aside our party judgments and our
uncharitable words, we bent the whole force of our
spirits to win from Him this burning love for souls
— this single-eyed resolution to count all else in vain
until by His Spirit they were converted to Him.
And if, leaving as far as possible the strifes of
these busy times, we were more fully to devote
our energies to dealing in detail with the souls
committed to our charge — to awakening in them
a deep and personal sense of sin — a real value in
their own experience for the work of Christ's atone-
ment, and a resolution never to rest until they had
sought and found Him as their own Eedeemer, we
should soon, my Reverend Brethren, know at once
more strength and more unity in our high and
arduous calling; we should find our own spirits
kept, through God's help, in quietness and confi-
dence amidst all the trials of these dangerous times.
Suffer me to add to these general principles a
word or two of more detailed caution. We should
then, I am certain, secure more abundantly the
blessing of the peacemakers, if we would lay down
for ourselves the rule —
32
I. Of never making or encouraging remarks
upon another's ministry, unless charity or neces-
sity require.
II. Of cultivating all lawful opportunities of
free religious intercourse with our brethren in the
ministry. Isolation breeds suspicion and estrange-
ment; free religious intercourse engenders sym-
pathy, confidence, and love.
III. Of avoiding meetings and societies within
the Church, the bond of which is not her ministry,
her work, or her objects, but peculiar and discri-
minating views on these j for such must soon be-
come, if they are not at first, the gatherings of
partizans, which will infallibly injure our charity,
and too probably divide the common body. The
distinction is simple and important. Clerical
meetings, for example, the mere bond of which is
that you exercise in the same district a common
ministry, and at which, with a due regard to official
position in the Church, you meet your brethren of
all shades of opinion, are a powerful instrument of
union ; whilst such gatherings, if limited to those
who hold, or suppose themselves to hold, the same
peculiar views, and to which others are not bidden,
become direct encouragements of a censorious
spirit, and incentives to schismatical action.
No labour, no watchfulness can be too incessant
and minute, in seeking to maintain around us
and within ourselves a loving spirit. If it shall
please God to give us this gift, great will be our
service for Him; for as divisions in the religious
33
body of the nation are the great impediments
to the nation's religious life and service, so are
our suspicions and uncharitable judgments of
each other in the Church the one master cause
of our Church's weakness in her work. How can
it be otherwise, when such words as these meet
us in every page of God's Word — ' By this shall all
men know that ye are my disciples, that ye have
love one to another.' 'Be ye all of one mind;
love as brethren, having compassion one of
another: be pitiful, be courteous.' That we have,
as I believe, more of this brotherly union than we
had is then first one of God's greatest gifts to us
for the present, and next one of His best promises
for the future.
With this greater peace amongst ourselves, I
trust I do not err in believing that we are doing
our work, upon the whole, with increasing dili-
gence. There are, I believe, very few, if any, of
our present body who are drawn away from their
proper labours to those diversions, against which,
in my first Charge, I felt it my duty to give you
my emphatic warning ; and the returns which you
have made to me show an increase in the number
of our services, our celebrations of the Holy
Eucharist, and, contemporaneously with these, of
our worshippers and our communicants. I shall
not, I trust, weary you by giving you a few of the
figures which mark this improvement.
Whereas, then, in 1848, 191 places in the
Diocese were returned to me as having only a
D
34
single service on the Sunday, there are now, in
Berks, but two parishes which have not double
duty, in almost all cases with a second sermon, or
catechising; and those two adjoin each other, and
with a joint population of less than 500, are under
one rector ; Avhilst in many there are three services
upon the Sunday, and frequent week-day services.
In Oxfordshire, there are only eleven parishes with
very small endo^vments, and a population varying
from sixteen to ninety, which have but one full
service each on Sundays, with, however, a second
in the adjoining parish; and fourteen others, all
with endowments too small to maintain a single
pastor, and sharing, therefore, the services of the
clergyman with a neighbouring parish; and but
four other cases ; whilst, in Buckinghamshire, there
are but twenty-one parishes of the like small popu-
lation and poverty of endowment, in which there
are not at least two Sunday, besides other
services. In the frequency, also, of adminis-
tering the Holy Communion, there has been a
marked increase. In 1848, there were 6 parishes
in which that Holy Sacrament was administered
only three times in the year; 238 in which it
was administered only four times; and only 98
wherein it was administered monthly. There are
now none in which it is administered less than
four times; only 131 parishes in which it is ad-
ministered so infrequently as that; and 233 parishes
in which it is administered at the least once in the
month, and upon the greater Feasts. There were then
35
but seven, there are now thirteen, churches where it
is weekly offered to the faithful worshipper. More-
over— which I think especially worthy of your notice
— the average attendants at the celebrations have
increased in number as these have become more
frequent. The average attendance in 1848, in
112 places, where the administration was only
four times in the year, having amounted to 1706;
whereas, the average attendance at the same
places, at the present more frequent celebrations,
amounts to 1808 persons; so that, instead of the
multiplication of the celebrations having — as some
have feared it might, — diminished, it has directly
increased the number of attendants at every cele-
bration. I do not doubt that nothing but the
laudable desire to introduce even salutary altera-
tions as gradually as possible, has prevented a more
universal increase in the number of the times of
celebration. But I earnestly and aifectionately
entreat you, my Reverend Brethren, to offer, at the
very least, once every month, to the flock intrusted
to you, this eminent means of grace.
To turn now to another point. Not only are
Schools, as we have seen, multiplying in our
Diocese, but they are also increasing in efficiency
and rising in character. This I attribute in
great measure to the results of that system of
Diocesan School Inspection* which is every year
* See in the Appendix the General Instructions for the
Direction of the School Inspectors.
D 2
36
more completely pervading our parishes, and which
has never failed, especially where uniformity in
the subjects of instruction has been adopted by
the School Managers, to raise very speedily the
character of the School. To my Reverend Brethren
of the Clergy who, without any other remuneration
than the sight of the good which they have done,
and the gratitude of their brethren and their
Bishop, have undertaken and so efficiently dis-
charged this important office, I desire here to
tender my public thanks.
In another respect, moreover, I feel certain that
I am not deceived as to the improved condition
of this Diocese. Nothing can be more marked
than the alteration which I observe in the conduct,
manner, and demeanour of those whom you
have at my recent circuits through your parishes
brought before me for confirmation. Levity, once
too common amongst us, has even in its slightest
indications, I thank God, been of late the very
rare exception to the manifest attention, feeling,
and intelligence which have distinguished your
candidates for that holy rite.
With this improvement as to our home interests,
I am thankful to find, as could scarcely fail to
be the case, an increased interest in the Church's
general work: larger contributions, and, what I
prize by far the most highly, multiplied parochial
associations, for promoting the Church's missionary
work, both in our colonies and amongst the
heathen.
37
That I may not weary you with details, I will
contrast the collections of only two years, to show
you at a glance the amount of the increase within
the Diocese.
In 1846 there was collected in it for the Church
Missionary Society, 2267/. 9s. 2<i. ; and last year,
2815Z. Ss. dd. ; and for the Society for the Propa-
gation of the Gospel irrespective of the collections
under the Queen's Letter, in the same years,
1676/. 9s. hd. in 1846, and 2851/. 25. 8^. in the
past year; to which, to complete the amount of
the aid rendered to the Colonial Church, should
be added the subscriptions to various Colonial
Sees which have not passed through the hands of
that venerable Society.
Compare for a moment with this state of things
that which rather more than a century ago a
Bishop of Oxford* had to lay before the Laity
and Clergy of his Diocese, when he spoke to
them as I now do to you, as the picture of the
times — ' Men,' he says, ' have always complained
of their own times, and always with too much
reason; but though it is natural to think those
evils the greatest which we feel ourselves, and
therefore mistakes are easily made in cordparing
one age with another; yet in this we cannot
be mistaken, that an open and professed dis-
regard to religion is become, through a variety
of causes, the distinguishing character of the
* Archbishop, then Bishop Seeker, in 1738.
38
present age. Christianity is now ridiculed and
railed at with very little reserve, and the teachers
of it without any at all.' . . . . ' Such is
the dissoluteness and contempt of principle in the
higher part of the world, and such the profligate
intemperance and fearlessness of committing crimes
in the lower, as must, if this torrent of impiety
stop not, become absolutely fatal. And God
knows far from stopping, it receives .... a
continual increase.' Such was the scene round
him who sat in this chair one hundred years ago ;
such was his augury of coming destruction. Let
us look around us, and with all our evils thank
God humbly for the change, and take new courage
to serve Him in the ministry of that Church which
He has employed as His instrument to work this
blessed change.
Yet whilst I notice with humble thankfulness
to God these signs of good, I must not lead you,
my Brethren, to suppose that we may safely rest
contented with that to which we have already
attained. Far otherwise. Every review of our
work and of its present discharge should deeply
humble us, and stir us up to far more diligent
exertions. Look at it from which side we may,
this conclusion must be forced upon us. Take, for
example, the attendance of our people at the weekly
service of the House of God, and see how far we
can be satisfied with the results with which it
supplies us as to their religious state. The popu-
lation of this Diocese at the last census was returned
39
as 503,072. The returns and calculations of the
compiler of the religious census give us 147,362
as having attended on the census Sunday our
churches, from which estimates your own returns
of your average congregations do not materially
differ, leaving a fearful majority of 354,680 who on
that day did not attend the appointed public
services. From this number are indeed to be
deducted the very young, the sick, the infirm, and
the regular worshippers whose attendance on that
day was specially prevented. But even after
making all these deductions on the most liberal
scale, how large a balance of living souls whom
we ought to win for God still remains against us
in the great account! It is indeed a matter of
thankfulness to know that we may charitably
hope that many of these (the same calculation
would give as many as 91,977* in this Diocese,
* The proportion of these in the several counties which make
up the Diocese is worthy of remark. The population of the
thi'ee counties varies little, though Bucks is the least numerous
and has the smallest town population. It stands thus : —
Oxfordshire 170,439
Berks 170,065
Bucks 163,005
But the numbers of the Dissenting Congregations are exactly
reversed, standing thus : —
Bucks 40,953
Berks 27,102
Oxfordshire 23,922
It is worth inquiring to what this remarkable difference is to be
attributed. Is it not in great measure that Bucks has been so
long left to be the languid extremity of the former vast Diocese
of Lincoln ?
40
and not much short of half this number in one of
its counties) were engaged in worshipping God,
though in separation from us ; but to say nothing
here, because I have already spoken elsewhere on
the subject, of the errors which are likely to have
swelled this number; — nor ao;ain to susf^^est that
many of those who appear in this enumeration as
attendants at the evenino- meetino;s of Dissenters
had probably attended and been already counted
in the morning congregation of some Church; —
nor again, to urge (though it is most true) that we,
as members of the Church of England, ought not
to rest contented until these our brethren of the
separation are brought to that more excellent way
of worshipping the Lord which we doubt not that we
possess, — it is surely enough for us to remember
that, even with the addition of this whole number,
without making any deduction from it, there would
still remain a deficiency amongst us of 262,703
who paid that day no homage in any congregation
to the Lord our God.
Nor can we doubt that the great mass of these
would, if we questioned them, profess that they
belonged to us. I have taken some pains to ascer-
tain what is the relation between the whole number
of those in your parishes who profess themselves
members of the Church, and the averages of your
congregations, and I find that, in a large number
of parishes, the average congregation rarely ex-
ceeds one-fourth of the professing churchmen of
the parish. From which fact may, I think, be
draAvn two important conclusions. First, that all
41
calculations of the relative numbers of Churchmen
and Dissenters based upon attendance at church
or meeting on a census Sunday must, however
accurately they are taken, be utterly fallacious.
For whilst, as we have seen, the ratio of the con-
gregation in the church to the church-people of the
parish is often not more than one to four, the
Sunday's attendance at the meeting is so eminently
the distinctive act in the religion of Protestant Dis-
senters, that their ordinary congregations go far to
exhaust their numbers. But then this follows,
secondly, that remissness in attendance on public
worship is a special sin of those who count them-
selves our people, and that we therefore ought
above all others to labour to rouse all our flocks to
a truer faith and a more earnest piety ; to remove
the many hindrances to the worship of the poor
which the selfishness of wealth, or the decays of age,
have brought into our churches ; and to win by all
lawful means to our appointed services the awakened
affections of our people.
Again, if we test our work by its effect on the
education of the nation, we shall find, I think, no
grounds for any enervating self-gratulation. No
thoughtful observer of the present times will, I
think, doubt that the report on the education census
is correct in saying that ' good schools, on reason-
able terms, for children of the middle classes, are
more needed than any other.' But, alas ! how little
are we doing to supply them ? And yet how readily
this most important class of society would avail
themselves of good schools, if we had them to offer,
42
is sufficiently shown by the great and continued
success of the Diocesan School at Cowley, with its
120 boarders.* To this, then, I would especially
invite your thoughts, and beg you seriously to
consider how we may proceed to wipe off this stain,
and provide, for our great middle class, schools to
which they may with full confidence intrust their
children. In many places I believe that the germ
of such institutions may be found in our existing
endowed schools, if they can be purged from the
abuses which now defeat their usefulness. In other
cases, under the powers of the Charity Commis-
sioners, two or three of these foundations might be
consolidated into one such school. I shall gladly
co-operate with any of you, my Brethren, clerical
or lay, who will give your attention to the subject,
and confer with me upon its details hereafter.
But, again, if we turn to those parochial schools,
in which we are training the great mass of the
population, we shall find, I think, in a calm
* The following advertisement, which appeared some time
since in the county papers, will show at a glance the present
state of this School : —
OXFORD DIOCESAN CENTEAL SCHOOL, Cowley, near
Oxford.— Number strictly limited to 120 Boarders. J. M.
C. Bennett, Head Master. Term commencing Michaelmas,
1854. — Notice is hereby given that all the Vacancies in Cowley
School for the present Term are filled up. Parents wishing to
enter their Sons at Cowley School are respectfully informed that
names can now be received for the Tei'm commencing Christmas
next, or for the Term commencing Easter, 1855. The cost for
a Youth at Cowley School is 27Z. per annum, there being no
extra charge for Books, Stationery, or Tuition.
43
survey of this department of our work, abundant
reasons rather for making fresh exertions than for
resting in our labours. For, first, though the
numbers in our various schools are large, yet they
are not at all so many as they should be. To supply
us with data for examining this proportion, let us
compare the numbers in our schools with the
figures supplied by what appears to be a reasonable
calculation by the author of the Education Census,
of the numbers who ought to pass under our hands.
By the calculation of Mr. Mann, one-sixth of the
population ought to be under instruction, whilst of
this number one-third will be receiving private and
the remaining two-thirds must depend upon the
means provided for public education. Taking,
then, the population of the Diocese at 503,042,
one-sixth of this number, or 83,840 children,
should be under education. But of these, one-third
may be set down as the fit subjects for private
education, leaving 55,892 for public education.
The returns of the Education Census, which, in
sj^ite of some remarkable errors,* appear on the
* The returns of the Oxford Union Education Census Div. III.
p. 92, are strikingly inaccurate. The returns of the Census
Report are : —
OxFOED Union.
Excluding St. Clement's and St. Giles'.
No. of
Schools, Children.
Class III. Church of England 8 ''^^ { 387 females
Sunday Schools 5 563
whole to be tolerably accurate, give the total
number of children receiving public education in
the day-schools of the Diocese as 35,899, of whom
2242 are taught in schools supported by Dissenters,
3480 in schools unconnected with any peculiar
religious teaching, and 30,177 in schools connected
with the Church of England. Your own returns
inform me that nearly 3000 more — that is, in exact
numbers, 32,981 — are actually under education in
your day-schools. Assuming, then, either of these
numbers as correct, it aj)pears that a large number
of children are growing up around us without any
systematic education ; and though we may take to
ourselves the comfort of knowing that Berks and
whereas the actual number of Schools and Children stands
thus : —
No. of
Schools.
Names.
Number on Book.
Total.
Boys.
Girls.
2
1
1
2
1
1
2
2
2
3
1
St. Aldate's
46
150
50
64
50
10
40
56
100
104
60
120
45 )
16 infauts J
10
40 )
40 infants J
102
150
100
154
124
120
111
20
130
120
35
St. Ebbe's
Trinity District
St. Thomas
Floating Chapel ...
St. Paul's
St. Mary Magdalene
St. Michael's
St. Peter-le-Bailey . . .
St. Peter in the East
Holywell
18
1166
45
Oxfordshire stand in the census calculations*
amongst those counties in which the highest ratio
of the population is under training, yet the actual
deficiency in numbers should stir us up into greater
efforts. But still more, my Brethren, should we
be impelled to greater efforts if we duly estimated
what is actually the amount of this education which
we are able to give. This, at the very best, must,
in our agricultural parishes, be of far too poor a
quality from the early age at which the necessities
of their parents, and their small value for educa-
tion, take the children from us. How poor its
quality is, few know better and few lament, I believe,
more than we do. Nothing more convinces me of
its insufficiency as an instrument for duly forming
* The actual ratio given in tlie Education Census stands
thus : —
Proportion per cent, of
Cliurcli Scholars to the Population
in the following Counties.
Wilts 7-27
Southampton 6'87
Dorset 6-81
Hertford 6-67
Berks 6-48
Oxford 6-24
The county of Bvicks
sta ds below several
others as 5"10
— Census Report, p. 38.
Proportion per cent, of
Day Scholars to the County
Population.
*Westmoreland 15'4
*Rutland 14-8
Southampton 14'3
Hertford 140
*Huntingdon 14 '0
Kent 13-9
Oxford 13-8
Berks 133
after others
Bucks 11-6
* The small population of these
counties accounts in a great mea-
sure for their standing so high in
the list.
46
either the intellectual or the spiritual life of our
pupils, than the fact, that whilst the vast propor-
tion of the labouring class are manifestly thus
instructed by us, they emerge into manhood with
so little distinctive mark of any specific religious
training stamped upon their characters. Well may
Mr. Horace Mann declare that, ' as in. many years
past, four-fifths of all the children who have passed
through these public schools must have been in-
structed in the schools of the Church of England.
At first sight it appears inevitable, that in course
of time the mass of the population educated of
necessity in Church of England schools, must
gradually return to that community.'* And surely
that the fact should be so different from this rea-
sonable expectation, should be a matter for the
gravest thought, and a ground for new exertions,
to every one of us ; that, God helping us, we may
so mend the whole system and practice of training
in our schools, that our scholars may learn under
our hands to love their Pastor and their Church,
and may go forth to their several callings with the
distinct character of Church of England religion
stamped deeply on their daily life and habits.
If this, my Brethren, is our lesson from examin-
ing carefully into the effects produced upon the
scholars in our schools, is not the same conclusion
brought even more forcibly home to us, if we turn
from an examination of the mere numbers of those
* Education Census Report, p. 54.
47
who in our several parishes would count them-
selves our people, to the actual results of our
several ministries upon their moral and religious
characters. Deeply have I felt this, my Reverend
Brethren, as I have mused over the thoughtful
and practical answers which so many of you have
given to me, as to the chief hindrances of your
ministrations. Some of these are found by many
of you in our present miserable ' beer-shop system,'
that great demoralizer of our agricultural popula-
tion, with the ' drunkenness' which it produces;
some in ' Dissent,' that bitter legacy from old eccle-
siastical corruptions and long habits of neglect,
which so cripples, wherever it is strong, our eiForts ;
some 'in the need of an increased episcopate;'
many ' in the miserable dwellings of the poor;'
' the labour of women in the fields ;' ' the straw
plaiting ;' ' in the early age at which the children
are taken from our schools;' ' in the want of cor-
dial lay support ;' ' in narrow means, with the need
of curates, schoolmasters, and charity, which those
narrow means render it impossible to supply ;' * in
the length of our services ;' ' in the obstacles
of a scattered population ;' ' inconvenient parish
bounds ;' ' inadequate church room for the poor ;'
' pews ;' ' the irreligion of employers ;' ' the want
of all discipline ;' ' the want of a corporate feeling
in the Church;' 'the looseness of the times.' But
many, too, in matters which most directly concern
ourselves — ' in the want of more devotedness ;' ' in
our own insufficiency ;' ' in the want of cordiality.
48
and a possible uniformity of action amongst our-
selves ;' ' in the straitening amongst us of the gifts
of the Holy Ghost.' How real, and how full of
matter for our thoughts and prayers, is such a
catalogue as this with which you have furnished me !
Which of us, my Reverend Brethren, be he the most
successful Parish Priest amongst us, does not, as
in God's sight he reviews his work, count over
anxiously his flock, and strive in solemn thought
now to see them, and his own prayers and labours
for them, as he will see them when he stands face to
face with them before the Great White Throne, upon
the awful Day of Judgment — which of us does not
feel the poverty and insufficiency of all his efforts.
And if this be indeed the truth as to the most
laborious and successful Pastor, how fares it with
too many amongst us? Are our people truly con-
verted to God, really renewed by the Holy Ghost,
and daily edified in the faith? Do they know and
love their Lord and Saviour? Do they strive
against sin as we would have them do ; or even as,
through the power of God's grace, they would do,
if we all were making full proof of our ministry ?
My Reverend Brethren, I need not answer the
question : we can answer it each one for ourselves.
And that answer I trust will forbid the rising in
any one of our hearts of the benumbing thought
that if there be of God's grace, as I doubt not
there is, some real improvement amongst us, we
may therefore stand still. It will, I trust, stir us
all up, first, to pray more earnestly that we may
49
ourselves know in greater power the blessed truths
of redemption through the blood of Christ, and
sanctification through his Spirit, and then to give
ourselves with a new devotion of every faculty of
our souls and bodies, in our several parishes, to
bring home the Name, and Atonement, and Work
of our crucified and risen Lord to every soul com-
mitted to our oversight.
Nor are these duties in any way confined to us
of the Clergy. Far otherwise. You, my Brethren
of the Laity, and very specially you who bear the
weighty and important ecclesiastical office of
Churchwardens, are bound herein to labour with
us. Besides your immediate functions — -first, of
attending the services of God in your parish
churches, seeing that all in them is conducted
according to rule, keej^ing order in them if need
be, supporting your Pastor in his labours there,
suffering no alteration whatever in the fabric or
internal arrangements of the Church, to which the
Ordinary has not consented (as to Avhich I must
again press on you that every Churchwarden who
permits such alterations to be made, exposes him-
self to the danger of being compelled, at his own
proper cost, to undo them) — besides, I say, all these
immediate duties of your office, you are bound by
the highest obligations to labour in your several
stations, to aid with all your powers the Minister
of God's Word in your parish. You have, many
of you, the greatest conceivable means for marring
or for furthering his work. Your example will
E
50
be, to a great degree, copied by your workpeople
and dependents. If they see you regular and
devout in your attendance at Church and at the
Lord's table — if they gather from your actions and
ordinar}'- words, that you care for your oAvn souls
and for theirs, that you love your Pastor, or
at all events honour him for his office sake, the
like spirit will spread down to them, and the
blessings of an united well-ordered parish will be
yours. And these blessings are, even as regards
this world, so many and so great, that your
reward will not even here be small. Better work,
the labour of those who toil ' not with eye service as
men-pleasers,' but as those who know that they are
serving God, freedom from the destructive system
of secret purloining, habits of sobriety, trustworthi-
ness and decency, in those who serve you, will,
with their love and gratitude, reward you here;
and at the great day you will share the cro^vn of
those who have turned many to righteousness.
On the other hand, any neglect of your own
religious duties will be copied fatally by those
beneath you; a disorganised, unruly, dishonest
parish will be here, with all the loss and suffering
it inflicts on you, an earnest of your heavy
reckoning at the bar of our Great Judge. I
beseech you then affectionately, but with all ear-
nestness, as the Chief Pastor of this Diocese, that
you work with us as fathers, as masters, and as
neighbours in this work of the Lord. There can
be no more fatal mistake than to suppose that the
51
spreading of the true faith of Christ is a matter
merely for the Clergy. Christianity is so built
upon and intermixed with God^s great natural and
social appointments for us, that fathers with their
children, and masters with their servants, have a
charge from God, full as direct and certain, as
have His o-svn ministers. Never, I pray you, forget
this. But go back from this Visitation to work in
these, your own immediate relations to those round
you, the work of Him who died for you on the
bitter cross. I need not enter here into any
lengthened details, because my ta&k will be accom-
plished, if I shall have persuaded you to take
counsel as to the details of the work with your
own Clergyman ; but I would suggest to you that
some efficient moral oversight of the young men
especially who are in your service, seeing where
they are and how they are living during those
hours when they are not actually working for you,
must be a most important part of your duty
towards them, if, as you are surely bound to do,
you regard tliem not as mere animals out of whom
you are to get a certain quantity of work, but as
men with redeemed souls, your brethren in Christ,
for all your intercourse with whom you must at
last give an account. I cannot doubt, but that
a very great part of the vice which ruins them
and injures all of us, arises from the want of a
master's friendly over-sight at these their leisure
times ; and that if you would aid your Clergymen
in giving them useful and improving entertainment
E 2
52
for these times, so as to lead them from debasing
habits of drunkenness, sensuality, or mere brute
idleness, to which they too often betake themselves,
from the mere want of some better employment,
you would see in many cases great and immediate
good resulting from such attempts.
Whatever brings them under your direct in-
fluence in a kindly spirit is good for them, and
there is, I fear, less of this direct influence than
there was of old, when such servants lived more in
their master's house, and shared his board. I say
not now, how far it would be possible or expedient
to restore those arrangements ; but what I press on
you is to seek by some means suited to our present
manners to secure the same advantages. If these
young men saw that you were indeed looking to
their comfort, and providing for their welfare, they
would return you their confidence and affection,
and you would thus become the instrument of
benefiting them here, and in many cases of saving
their immortal souls.
And now, my Brethren, suffer me to lead your
thoughts for awhile from these matters, which more
especially belong to our own Diocese, to others in
which we share the general interests of the Church.
In taking such a survey, we are met at once by a
subject of the utmost importance, which just now oc-
cupies a large measure of attention, on Avhich, there-
fore, you may naturally expect me, and on which
some of you have privately requested me, to give
you my judgment — I mean the teaching of our own
53
Oliurclion the subject of the Holy Eucharist, and our
own duties with regard to it. As to the circumstances
indeed which have given a present prominence to
this matter, or the particulars of the pending con-
troversy, you will well understand my silence. But
the doctrine in question, and the mode in which we
should treat of it in our instruction to our several
parishes, are so important, that no private feelings
would justify my passing them over without notice.
The teaching of the Church of England, then, as to
this great mystery, in strict agreement with the
Holy Scriptures and primitive antiquity, is, I ap-
prehend, simply this. First, that there is a peculiar
and supernatural presence of Christ with His peo-
ple in that Holy Sacrament. That in it He does
in and by the due reception of the consecrated
elements convey to the faithful believer a real
partaking of His body and of His blood, whereby
the souls of His faithful people are nourished and
refreshed. But, secondly, that He has not revealed
to us the mode or conditions of that presence;
which, being Divine and supernatural, is not to be
thought of, or made the subject of argument, as if it
either were governed by the laws, or involved the
consequences of a material presence. To the many
questions, therefore, which may be raised touching
the conditions, or mode of this presence, our Church
gives no answer; but protests against their dis-
cussion as being curious and dangerous; as being
likely to lead, and as having led those who enter-
tained them, into many errors; and as, therefore,
M
to be discouraged as attempts to be wise above
what is written. As to one of these, indeed,
because it specially threatened the faith of her
own children, she has pronounced a distinct and
emphatic censure ; condemning the Papal solution
of the mystery in terms which apply to it alike in
its grosser fonn of an undisguised belief in the
transformation of the bread and wine into flesh and
blood, and in that subtle refinement of the fancy,
whereby — whilst the theory of a material change is
still preserved — its grossness is veiled, for more
educated intellects, by the declaration, that the
substances of the bread and wine, in their highest
essential being, are removed, and for them mira-
culously substituted the essential substance of our
Lord's body, whilst the accidents of that altered
substance, such as taste, colour, shape, and the
like, remain, through God's power, unchanged, so
as to delude the senses. This doctrine of Transub-
stantiation, — ^the fruitful source, or apt ally, in the
Papal communion of so many and such dangerous
superstitions, — our Church condemns in no falter-
ing accents, as being unknown to primitive times,
incapableof proof by the Holy Writ, but repugnant
to the plain words of Scripture, as overthrowing
the nature of a sacrament, and having given
occasion to many superstitions. But this direct
condemnation of the teachers of error is not her
common course. Rather, for the most part, has
she guarded the faith by a simple denial of the
erroneous doctrine, or even by asserting, with
55
authority, the distinct truth, which those who
have maintained the error she condemns, have en-
deavoured to disfigure, or deny. Thus in de-
claring, that ' to such as rightly, worthily, and
with faith, partake of that sacrament, the bread
which we break, is a partaking of the body of
Christ; and likewise the cup of blessing, is a
partaking of the blood of Christ.' And again, ' that
the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed
taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's
Supper ;' and again that ' the wicked do not therein
partake of Christ ;' and once more, ' that the body
of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the Supper,
only after a heavenly and spiritual manner ;' she
asserts those truths which are darkened by the
confusing and erroneous doctrine of consubstan-
tiation, and denied by the cold naturalism of the
Zuinglian -theory, wliich resolves the reality of
Christ's presence into the quickened apprehension
of the devout worshipper ; but whilst she has thus
authoritatively reasserted the truths which were in
peril, she has not stepped aside to censure by name
either the one error or the other.
This, then, being so, Ave may, I think, without
difficulty, gather what should be our teaching as
to this great mystery.
We should first, and above all, in opposition to
the unbelief which is so natural to the heart of
man, insist upon the reality and truth of that super-
natural presence which our Lord is graciously
pleased to vouchsafe in that Sacrament to the
56
worthy receiver. Next, we should discourage, to
the utmost of our power, all speculations as to the
mode of that presence, the reality of which we in-
culcate. Further, whilst we should distinctly con-
demn every specific form of erroneous teaching,
concerning the mode of that presence, which our
Church has actually censured, we should watch
against that dogmatical spirit which would lead us
to anathematize all with whose statements ours do
not exactly harmonize ; remembering the modera-
tion and wisdom which has led our Church to seek
to maintain undefiled the purity of the Faith, by an
unreserved and uncompromising reassertion of the
truth which heresy assails, rather than by a direct
condemnation of the holders of error; and being on
our guard lest we be rashly led, on the mere
strength of our individual judgment, to multiply
censures which she has advisedly withheld. Lastly,
we should labour to lead our people from curious
questions as to that which is eminentl}^ a mystery,
to be received simply by faith, and not argued out
by the subtlety of reasoning, to an humble and un-
questioning belief in the working of the Power of
God, and to earnest longings for the great spiritual
blessings, which, if they come aright, will be vouch-
safed to them in thus partaking of Christ. And if
at any time we are forced to enter further upon this
mystery, we should keep as closely as possible to
the letter of Scripture, and to the inculcation of the
doctrine as a revealed fact in its bearing upon prac-
tice ; remembering, what is admitted even by
57
Bellarmine, ' that though it is a matter of faith to
believe that Sacraments are instruments whereby
God worketh grace in the souls of men, yet that the
manner how He doth it, is not a matter of faith.'*
Surely, to turn our own minds, or the minds of our
people, to such inquiries, instead of seeking simply
that nourishment of our souls which the Lord is
then imparting to us, is as if they whose bodies He
was graciously feeding in the wilderness with the
broken bread and the distributed fishes, had turned
aside from that provision which He was making for
their need, in order to ascertain whether, at the
time of blessing, or in the breaking, or the giving,
or the receiving, was vouchsafed the multiplication
of the loaves and of the fishes ; on which, instead, it
was their wisdom and their duty thankfully to
feed.
Thus, for example, instead of speculating upon
what is received by the unfaithful in the Lord's
Supper, or dogmatizing thereon as to what may
seem to some to be infallible inferences with res-ard
a
to a matter on which Holy Scripture is well nigh
silent, and as to which, if the presence be, as we
undoubtingly believe it is, indeed immaterial, we
have no data for constructing an argument, we
should remember that, though our Lord's promise
is sure, and though, therefore, where the whole
appointed rite is duly performed in all its parts,
* Qaoted by R. Hooker. See Note 22 to Eccles. Pol., V. 6
Edit. Oxford, 1836.
including equally the consecration of the elements,
and their faithful recejDtion, the presence of the
body and blood of Christ are certain to the faithful
receiver, yet that we have no right to stop after
the prayer of consecration, or at any other inter-
mediate point in that which by the Lord's appoint-
ment is one undivided whole, and to argue that at
that time, that Divine Presence must have been
granted, which is promised only to the act of duly
giving and receiving, and not to any of its several
parts. We shall, therefore, do well, as to this
mysterious matter, to confine ourselves to assert-
ing with our Church, that the ungodly are, in par-
taking of the consecrated elements, 'in nowise
partakers of Christ,' and yet, that, in eating that
bread and drinking of that cup unworthily, they
partake not of common food, but, as our church
teaches again, ' to their own condemnation do herein
eat and drink the sio;n or sacrament of so o-reat a
thing,' as the Body of the Lord, and do that, for the
doing of which of old many of the Corinthian
Christians were ' weak and sickly, yea, and many
slept.'
Suffer me before I leave this subject to sum up
all that I would impress upon you in the words of
one, whose devotion, sobriety, and learning, stamp
him as a fit exponent of the views and temper of
the English Church, and whom all posterity have
consented to revere as judicious.
' The fruit of the Eucharist,' says Richard
Hooker, ' is the participation of the body and blood
59
of Christ. There is no sentence of Holy Scripture
which saith that we cannot by this Sacrament be
made partakers of His body and blood, except
they be first contained in the Sacrament, or the
Sacrament converted into them. ' This is my
body,' and ' this is my blood,' being words of
promise, sith we all agree that by the Sacra-
ment Christ doth really and truly in us perform
His promise, why do we vainly trouble ourselves
with so fierce contentions, whether by consub-
stantiation, or else by transubstantiation, the
Sacrament itself be first possessed with Christ
or no? A thing which no way can either further
or hinder us howsoever it stand, because our par-
ticipation of Christ in this Sacrament de^^endeth
on the co-operation of His omnipotent power, which
maketh it His body and blood to us, whether with
change or without alteration of the element, such
as they imagine, we need not greatly to care nor
inquire.'*
* This passage was objected to by the Puritan authors of the
Christian Letter, 34, as ' seeming to make light of the doctrine
of Transubstantiation, as a matter not to be stoode upon or to
be contended for, cared for or inquired into.' Hooker's MS. note
shows how far this was from his meaning : ' Not,' he says, ' to
be stood upon or contended for hy them, because it is not a thing
necessary ; although, because it is false as long as they do per-
sist to maintain and urge it, there is no man so gross as to think
in this case we may neglect it. Against them it is said ....
It sufficed to have believed this, (the Communion of Christ in
the Holy Sacrament,) and not by determining the manner how
God bringeth it to pass to have intangled themselves with
opinions so strange, so impossible to be proved true.' — Hookjee's
Eccles. Fol., Book V. Sect., Note 22, Oxford Edit. 1846.
60
And now, my Brethren, let me turn your
thoughts to the general bearings of an event of the
last three years, which I deem of the greatest
moment to the welfare of our Church : I mean the
practical revival which has taken place of the
deliberative functions of the Convocation of the
Province of Canterbury. On a matter of such
moment, and so directly concerning yourselves,
who may at any time be again called upon to exer-
cise the important privilege of choosing your repre-
sentatives in the Lower House, you will doubtless
feel it right that I should give you my judgment
and its grounds. Perhaps the easiest mode in
which I can at all treat of this great subject Avithin
the narrow limits which necessity prescribes to me
here, will be to survey with you the chief objec-
tions which have been urged against this revival,
and to lay before you the answers by which their
force appears to me to be removed.
The first argument, then, is no less than that all
Church Councils are mischievous ; and that ecclesi-
astical history proves that they have ever abounded
in strife, and even stirred it up, when without
them it would have subsided.
Now to this general objection this general
answer ought, I think, to suffice : That we may
gather from God's Word, as well as from primitive
antiquity, that such Councils are a part of the con-
stitution of the Church of Christ, as it was ordained
by Him. For the government of the Church,
which was manifestly entrusted first not alone to
61
St. Peter, but, to the Apostles as a body, and after
them to their successors, and not to any Pope or
supreme earthly head, required that they in whom
this charge of government was vested in common
should meet for mutual counsel ; and again, their
absolute rule was tempered by the requirement
that, to give full validity to their decisions, there
must be added to them the consultation of the
Elders and the assent of the Brethren. This is the
constitution of the Church as we find it in the
record of the first Council of Jerusalem ; and thus
it was administered by those who were inspired
by God the Holy Ghost, and who had received
personally their own commission from the Lord
himself. And this first example was followed in
the earliest times. Any difficulty which arose
was settled not by the supremacy of Rome, but by
the joint counsel of the Apostles and Elders and
Brethren who came together to consult of the
matter, nothing doubting but that God the Holy
Ghost would aid and direct their counsels.
This answer is surely sufficient for every one
who believes in the Inspiration of the book of the
Acts of the Apostles, and believes further that God
the Holy Ghost has not forsaken the congregation of
Christ's people. Nor has the objection that Councils
were times of strife any weight against this argu-
ment. To a great degree they must from their
nature have been so. They were held because
there was a strife to settle; as well might it be
argued that the presence of the Judge makes the
62
litigation wliicli he settles, as that the Council
caused the strife as to which it pronounced the
judiiinent of the Churcli. I know indeed of no
other colourable plea which can be urged for
an objection which if it had prevailed of old would
have forfeited for us the great doctrine of our
Lord's divinity which was secured untlcr God's
guidance by the Council of Nicani, save a few
hasty words of St. Gregory Nazianzen, when
sniartins: for the moment under recent wromr;
words at variance witli all his own acts, with all
his matured expressions of opinion, and which the
temperate Joseph Milner* not unfairly terms ' ex-
pressions of unbecoming acrimony against Councils
in general' bred of ' disgust' at his own ' treatment.'
But, this objection met, it is iu*ged next, that our
Convocation is not a Council of the Church, but is
a })urcly civil assembly, called together for the pur-
pose of taxation, and having no real business now
that the Clergy, as a separate estate, no longer tax
themselves. I entertain no doubt, that a careful
examination of yet remaining documents, will con-
vince any impartial enquirer, that this objection is
at variance with the early records of our Church.
For no one will deny that we find, from the first
da^vn of our history, the records of Provincial
Synods, held here as elsewhere throughout Chris-
tendom. AVe have absolute proofs of their actings,
and we possess the decrees they enacted both in
Saxon and in Norman times. Moreover we find it
» Milner's Cliurcli Histori/, in loco, Vol. ii., Cap. 24.
63
admitted as a principle from a very early date,
that the body of the Clergy had some share in
these Councils, even when held for purposes strictly
ecclesiastical. It cannot indeed be proved that
they were so far entitled to this participation in
the Councils of this land, as that these were in any
way of less authority, though composed only of the
Bishops of the Church, in whom alone the ultimate
power of passing decrees was here, as elsewhere,
lodged. But practically Presbyters were early
admitted to give their counsel, and in Saxon times
laymen were present, and gave their assent in
these Synods. And though the jealous policy of
William the Norman early severed the Laity from
these assemblies, yet so far as concerned the body
of the Clergy, this principle of their participation
in council was continually more developed : thus,
e. g.^ we find the Canons of the Council of Aries held
314, subscribed by a Priest and Deacon of the
English Church; and later, in the records of our
own Councils, we find the Deans and Archdeacons
attending with procuratorial letters from their
Clergy; and again, not long after, in a.d. 1277,
we find the Archbishop summoning with the
Bishops and greater dignitaries the procurators of
the whole of the Clergy of the several Dioceses.*
Here, then, we have, before the attempt of
Edward I. to compel the attendance of the Clergy
* A Mandate of Archbishop Boniface in 1257, ordering them
to bring these procm*atorial letters, may be found in Wilkins'
Concilia, i. 723.
64
Avith the other members of his Parliament, before
the praemunientes clause of Avhich so much has
been made, the Archbishop summoning as his
proper Provincial Synod, the same body which
■we now term the Convocation of the Province of
Canterbury. Nor did the struggle which suc-
ceeded the attempt of Edward to compel the Clergy
to serve in Parliament at all affect the constitution
of this body. Archbishop Wake, indeed, in the
first heat of his controversy with Atterbury, en-
deavoured to establish a distinction between the
Convocation and the proper Ecclesiastical Synod
of the Province, so far as concerns their original
design ; and he has been followed of late by those
who have fovind it more easy to repeat — sometimes
without observing his nice distinction between
the origin of the body and its character — than to
sift the g:rounds of his assertion. Yet he allows
that the Convocation 'agreed upon Ecclesiastical
Canons and Constitutions, that the Archbishop
ratified them, and that they were forthwith pub-
lished as his Provincial Ordinances :' * that is, he
allows that it did the work, and claimed the power
of a Provincial Council : and he allows further, that
in process of time no other Provincial Councils were
held amongst us. He lived, moreover, as we may
gather from his correspondence, long enough, and
profited enough by the clearer lightf which was
* Wake's State of the Church, Chap. i. Sec. 39.
t Both as to Ai'chhishop Wake's views and the whole ques-
tion of Convocation, the new edition of the Eev. T. Lathbui-y's
Jlistory of Convocation contains most important matter.
65
thrown upon the subject by the deeper erudition of
Wilkins, to modify greatly his earlier views on the
subject of Convocation, and we hear no more from
him of this distinction, which in the heat of contro-
versy he had endeavoured, not without confusion,
to establish. Nor has any essential change since
altered the relation of these Provincial Convoca-
tions to the Church. For their essential character
depended upon this, that they were the Synods of
the Clergy, in their respective Provinces, called
together by the summons, not of the Crown, but of
the Metropolitans, to whom, and not to the Crown,
the writs were returnable. From the first the
Archbishop summoned them, sometimes merely at
his own will, but often also at the King's require-
ment. Then, besides making Canons, they granted
benevolences, and imposed taxes on the Clergy,
which no more transformed these Councils of the
Metropolitan from a spiritual into a civil body,
than the discussion of ecclesiastical affairs can
change the King's great Council of the Par-
liament from a civil into a spiritual body; for
whatever they discussed, or decreed, they assem-
bled as the Body Spiritual, at the summons, and
to the aid of their spiritual chief, the Archbishop
of the Province, as his, and not as the King's
Council; and, as such, they decided upon many of
the highest points of directly Doctrinal Theology.*
* Thus it was Convocation which adopted the doctrine of
Transubstantiation before Wicliffe could be tried for his alleged
heresy.
m
Thus these bodies continued until the submission
of the Clergy in the year 1532, which was, two
years later, confirmed by Act of Parliament. But
neither did that act, which passed before the
Keformation, and which was aimed at the Pope's
power and its legatine exercise, and not against
the Spirituality of this realm, aiFect the ecclesias-
tical constitution of the Convocation of the Pro-
vince. What it did Avas this — it provided, I. That
Convocation should not be assembled without the
King's writ; but it left to the Archbishop, when
he had received that writ, still to convoke it, as
his spiritual council, by his spiritual power. II.
The act prohibited the Council, when so called
together by the Metropolitan, from one particular
exercise of its conciliar functions — namely, the
making of Canons, — until the King's special
licence to enact them was obtained. III. It pro-
vided that even when, in virtue of such licence,
such new Canons were prepared, they should pos-
sess no authority, nor should it be lawful to publish
them, until they had been assented to by the Cro^vn.
IV. It re-asserted by a special enactment the old
common-law principle, that no decree, even with the
Sovereign's assent, should have validity which was
contrary to the laws of the realm. In all other
respects, the act left the Synod unaffected; and
these limitations of its power clearly do not, in
any measure, change its character. When sum-
moned, it is still the Archbishop's Provincial
Council, called together before him by an act of
67
liis spiritual power, to the exercise of which the
King has assented. When deliberating, it is still
as the Body Spiritual, though it cannot exercise
some of its most important functions without the
Sovereign's licence, nor declare its conclusions
without his sanction, nor make them valid without
his agreement, or against his laws. But it is still
the gathering of the Body Spiritual according to its
ancient custom. So argues Bishop Gibson, whom
none can suppose inclined to press this matter too
far : ' Nothing appears in the manner of an English
Convocation but what is truly ecclesiastical ; for as
to the Archbishop exercising his summoning autho-
rity at the command of the King, this is so far from
changing our Convocations into civil meetings, that
it is no more than an obedience, which has been
ever paid to Christian Princes,'* Such it solemnly
declares itself to be, when, in the prayers with
which it opens its deliberations, it does not hesitate
to beseech of God, that He who, by His Holy
Spirit, was present with that first Council at Jeru-
salem, would now, in like manner, brood over, and
direct this holy Synod.
But even if this point is established, and it is
admitted that our Convocation is the solemn ^ather-
ing of our Provincial Council, Ave are met by the
objection, that there is now no sufficient ground
for its assembling. Now this objection must rest on
one of two grounds — either that our existing system
* Synodus Anglicana, &c. p. 19.
F 2
68
is so perfect that it needs no change, or that such
changes can be better made by other means. Yet
which of these two propositions can be seriously
maintained? Every thoughtful member of our
body will noAv admit the pressing necessity of our
being able to adapt our services, our ministrations,
and many parts of our parochial system, to the
work which has gro'UTi up before our Church in its
missionary operations at home and abroad ; to the
duly increasing requirements of our multiplying
numbers ; and, above all, perhaps, to the needs, the
diiiiculties, and the character of that peculiarly
intelligent, and therefore peculiarly tempted middle
class, which is daily increasing around us. Most
men will admit further that, for the efficiency
and peace of the Church, we require some means
of reconsidering a body of Canons such as ours,
which no man can obey, and the existence of
which, therefore, as the Church's written law,
must produce either a licensed anarchy, or the
arbitrary supremacy of those who should be
constitutional Rulers; and of perfecting a set
of Rubrics, which instead of being now, as they
were meant to be, rules securing uniformity of prac-
tice in things indiiferent, have, in many instances,
become, through the nmltitude of unsettled ques-
tions which have grown up under them, occasions
of strife and badges of party difference. For many
of our most troublesome differences concern prac-
tices admitted on both sides to be wholly imma-
terial in themselves, but which as different inter-
69
pretations of disputed rules have grown into the
symbols of opposing views : and this ground of dif-
ference might be removed at once by an authorized
interpretation of the doubtful text, either one way
or the other; since the difference is not about tlie
matter, but about the interpretation of the rule.
All, moreover, I believe will admit that our
present means of enforcing discipline, even amongst
ourselves of the Clergy, are such as must be re-con-
structed. Here, then, are real practical difficulties
to be solved; difficulties which daily impair our
efficiency; which endanger our position in the
nation ; which far above all other evils, by restrain-
ing our spiritual action, prevent the salvation of
souls, and make our Church, if she submits with-
out remonstrance to such evils, surely guilty of
their blood. It is, then, for the remedy of these
practical abuses, which in every institution of
which men form a part must grow up with the
lapse of years, that we need the living action of
the Church's Provincial Council ; for it is for such
works as these, and not as has been suggested for
such mutual consultation as may be found at
Clerical meetings, or for such Diocesan matters as
Boards of Education and Church Building Com-
mittees can transact, that we rejoice to see the
revived action of our Convocation.
There is, then, work needed to be done; but
further, that work, we maintain, can most safely
and most properly be done by this instrument.
For if committed to any other, it must be either
TO
to the Houses of Parliament alone, or to them pre-
ceded by special commissions from the Crown.
Now to the first of these modes there is one suffi-
cient objection, even if no other could be urged,
namely, that every day proves more plainly that
Parliament cannot, without the assistance of some
other body, do the work we need. For such
changes need in their framers much consideration,
great knowledge of details, great acquaintance
with the temper, feelings, and desires of those
whom they would aiFect ; and Parliament has not,
and for the most part know^s that it has not, these
qualifications ; and in the judgment of all men, has
not time for the amount of discussion and delibe-
ration w^hich such legislation, if carried on only
within its walls, would certainly require. Would,
then, all we need be best supplied by the action
of Parliament, aided by the inquiries and reports
of commissions from the Crown ? for many reasons
w^e think not. First, because there would be
about such a mode an arbitrary character wholly
alien from all our institutions. It is true that
such commissions have in former times been
issued, yea, and done good service; but the
chiefest of these were commissions for the
appointment of which Convocation had applied,
and which acted to a large degree with its
delegated power; and as to those which had not
this sanction, we must bear in mind that they
were appointed in times of eminent and pressing
trouble, when for the season it was judged
71
necessary to suspend the ordinary rules of con-
stitutional practice; and such precedents no wise
man would needlessly follow. Secondly, because
the substitution of such a method for the delibera-
tion of the Church's own lawful Provincial Council
would wound needlessly many tender consciences,
and become a new, and too probably powerful
cause of further troubles and perhaps divisions in
our o^vn body, and a ground for fresh triumph to
our watchful and malignant enemy the Papal
schism in this land. Thirdly, because such com-
missions would necessarily want one of the chiefest
requisites for enabling Parliament to proceed after-
wards with successful legislation on such a subject-
matter, namely, that opportunity of free and open
discussion in the face of the Church between the
advocates of various views, which alone can duly
inform the public mind, prepare men for salutary
changes, and at last lead to their peaceful enactment.
We come then to the conclusion, ( 1 ) that by the
constitution of the Church, the due adjustment of
her own internal policy is to be sought from
God's blessing on the deliberations of her Councils.
(2) That we have, of God's providence, still pre-
served to us that which is in all essential points such
a Provincial Council. (3) That there are matters
amongst us needing urgently its present handling.
(4) That to no other body can their due discussion be
so well entrusted. But behind all these there still
lurks the ol)jection which, after all, has with many
minds the chiefest weight, namely, apprehensions
72
more or less undefined of the possible evils which may-
arise from this revival. With some, these are nothing
more than the shadowy forms which every change
conjures up before minds of a certain class. Such
persons must be reminded that there is a special*
' Avoe for feeble hands, and faint hearts which have
not faith :' that no changes are so violent, or so
destructive, as those which at last but surely
avenge the long procrastinations of those who have
timidly allowed the daily upgrowth of evils which
a prudent courage would with safety have severally
abated : that in our own case, the loss of our
whole position may be the result of not in time
adapting the working of our system to the w^ants
of those for whose benefit alone we can defend its
maintenance : that it is in the body politic as in the
body natural ; as to which he who would too closely
scrutinize the possible dangers which await his
moving, and act upon such fears, must sink by an
inevitable necessity into the torpors of a fatal
lethargy. For, as our clear-sighted Paley suggests,
' Were it possible to view through the skin the me-
chanism of our bodies, the sight would frighten us
out of our wits. Durst we make a single move-
ment, or stir a step from the place we were in, if
we saw our blood circulating, the tendons pulling,
the lungs blowing, the humours filtrating, and all
the incomprehensible assemblage of fibres, tubes,
pumps, valves, currents, pivots, which sustain an
* Ecclesiasticus, Cap. 2.
73
existence at once so frail, and so presumptuous?'*
Yet to such a host of dangers we habitually close
our eyes, judging it the wiser course to incur the
perils of living rather than to die of stagnation.
To which this only need be added, that with all our
inaction we cannot prevent the changes which these
advocates of stillness dread; for that these are
daily inflicted on us by those who have neither the
knowledge or the time needful to make them really
beneficial.
But sometimes these objections take a somewhat
more definite form. As for example, the revival
of Convocation is spoken of as a party movement ;
to which we must answer that this is only so far
true, as that it is the movement of that party which
believes in the Church's life, and seeks for its per-
fection ; for that amongst its adherents and strongest
advocates may be found the names of thosef who
have been identified with both the great schools of
thought under which the members of our Church
are ranged.
But again we are met with the confident asser-
tion that this revival of the active powers of our
Synod will inevitably lead to increased strife and
division within our body. Yet why should it do
so? What is there in the character of English
Clergymen which makes them alone of their nation
* Paley's Natural Theology.
t It may suffice to mention that of the late Eev. J. Kemp-
thorne, to illustrate my meaning.
74
unable to deliberate without embittered feeling?
Surely, in the sight of our existing differences,
it is difficult to maintain such an argument. For,
if we may trust at all to experience, should
we not conclude that these differences have been
exasperated by the long suspension of our delibe-
rative powers, and would be certainly abated by
their revival? For what in the body politic so
aggravates the bitterness of party strife, as the
one-sided gathering of eager partisans, at which
men bid against each other for party popularity
with inflammatory language, and thereby disturb
the judgment and inflame the passions of them-
selves and of their hearers ? What, on the other
hand, is more certain and uniform than the quiet-
ness which is breathed over this strife, and the
disappearance of these phantoms of exaggeration
and delusion, as soon as the duly constituted re-
presentative body opens, with fixed rules, well
balanced numbers, and a sense of responsibility,
its authorized debates? And who can doubt that
we are suffering daily from the bitter and in-
flammatory language which our ecclesiastical
agitators deal forth to their applauding hearers,
or that these self-chosen champions of mis-stated
truths would sink into their deserved insignifi-
cance, if, with the solemnizing sense of respon-
sible authority, the grave Elders, the cautious Dig-
nitaries, and the carefully elected representatives
of our Clergy deliberated on these same topics,
under God's guidance, sought by and given gra-
75
ciously in answer to their earnest prayers? In
truth, every argument now urged against the
Church's Synods, may be found put forth with
more ability and equal truth against the holding
of a Parliament in those unhappy days when the
first Charles was deluded into the belief that the
meeting of an English House of Commons would
increase the bitter strifes which it only could allay.
But, again, it is urged that such assemblies Avould
rush at once into polemical strife. Yet why should
this happen? Certainly the experience of the
present Convocation would suggest no such fears;
nor would the great majority of those who would
form such a Council, desire or suffer such a perver-
sion of their deliberations from their true objects.
We have not our Faith to seek. We are well con-
tented with our catholic Formularies, with our
scriptural and anti-papal Articles. Surely we
may trust that the sober piety of the chosen repre-
sentatives of the English Clergy would guard us
from such a danger. No argument can be more
unfair than that drawn from the sad and disgraceful
days which shut in so darkly on the close of the
last active Convocation. A great political revolu-
tion had then irritated every nerve of the great
body politic, and the strifes of that extraordinary
period, with its disputed succession, its family
discords, and its social disruptions, were repro-
duced in the gatherings of the Clergy. But — not
to urge that, at the very time when, to shelter
Hoadly from universal censure the Convocation
76
was silenced, those long strifes were hushed, and
Wake himself, then at peace with Atterbury, was
looking forward with hope and pleasure to an
useful session, — 'why should the troubles natural
to so anomalous a season be taken as the true
type of the consultations of our Clergy, rather
than those long repeated brotherly deliberations
which through so many previous years had ren-
dered such substantial service to the gospel truth
and practical efficacy of our Reformed Church?
At all events the prophets of evil should surely
allow a trial to be made, since a failure would but,
in fulfilling their prophecies, bring to their side
the whole practical judgment of the Church. Nor
could any irremediable evil be thus done; for on
its first appearance the Crown could interpose,
and would be supported in that interposition by
all reasonable men. Indeed, the safeguards which
surround our existing Convocation, ought to pre-
vent any from giving way to the apprehensions that
in thus making trial of its possible usefulness, they
are letting loose powers which, once let loose, it
would be difficult again to restrain. For let it be
remembered how many are these safeguards.
First, the absolute power of adjournment is now,
by the consent of both Houses, vested in the
Archbishop and Bishops, who could, therefore, by
prorogation, terminate at any time any dangerous
deliberations; or if, on the other hand, the dangers
of the Church arose from the Episcopal order, the
Church might be saved from evil by the dissent of
77
the Clergy in the Lower House. Further, if the
whole body of the Clergy were in danger of being
led into incautious action, the Crown can, at any
time, by a writ of exoneration, require the Arch-
bishop to prorogue the whole body. Still more,
when sitting for dispatch of business, the royal
prerogative of issuing a licence for a special object
may be so used as to define strictly the subject-
matters on which the Houses shall deliberate. But
yet, further, when the two Houses have agreed on
any canon, it has, as we have seen, no validity, and
cannot even be published until the Crown has con-
sented to it ; nor can it then have the effect of law
until it has been ratified by the two Houses of the
Legislature. Surely, from a body legally sur-
rounded by this series of jealous and effective
checks, no danger of excessive action need be
apprehended.
It is the more important that we notice this
carefully, because many have spoken as if, in
the revival of our Convocation, it were proposed
to summon a Convention of the Church, Clerical
and Lay, with new and untried powers of uni-
versal change. Of such a scheme few of the
advocates for a restored Convocation would be the
supporters. And here is to be found the justifica-
tion of that limit put last session to the delibera-
tions of the Committee appointed to inquire into
the reform of Convocation, which precluded their
considering the question of the admission to the
S3aiod of Lay representatives. Such a body would
78
manifestly have been a Convention of the Church,
not a Convocation of the Clergy. Now, to the
calling such a body into action all these objections
of the unknown perils, upon which the Church was
entering, would truly have applied; and no prac-
tical man can doubt that they would have had
weight enough to prevent so uncertain a venture.
For this plain practical reason, therefore, and not
from any doubt that the direct concurrence of
the Laity with us in our Councils, if it could
safely be obtained, would add an immeasurable
weight to our deliberations, was this question
wisely deferred until a reformed Convocation of
the Clergy, under the sanction of the Crown, could
practically decide how, in their judgment, that full
co-operation of the Laity, which is simply essential
to our welfare, could be most safely and efficiently
secured. The difficulties which beset that question
do not appear to me to rest chiefly on the admission
of the Laity into Synods of the Church ; to make
the decisions of which binding they have, I believe,
the same rights to give or withhold their assent, as
her Presbyters have to tender their counsel^ or her
Bishops to make their decrees ; but upon the rela-
tions of such a representation of the Church to the
Imperial Parliament. For if the Laymen of the
Church were thus, as a body, directly represented
in her Councils, Parliament could in no sense any
longer claim, as the representation of her Laity, to
act as her interior Legislature. I do not mean that
even this would destroy that connexion between
79
Church and State, from which, in spite of many-
correlative evils, I believe tliat both bodies in this
land receive unspeakable advantages; because the
Parliament, though no longer cognisant of the
interior spiritual concerns of the Church, as the
Council of her Laymen, might, as the Great Council
of the Nation, still legislate for her ah extra^ as the
National Establishment. But it is plain that such
an altered set of relations would be a great step
towards the open severance of the present union
of the Nation and the Church. Just the opposite
will, I doubt not, be the effect of the revival of the
active powers of the Convocation of the Clergy;
for that which now above all things threatens the
continuance of that salutary union, is that Par-
liament, without the knowledge of details, or
acquaintance with the Church's principles and
mind, and above all, without the time essential to
successful legislation for her, is her sole interior
Legislature, and consequently that her essential
interests are intolerably disregarded; whereas,
when the Convocation has considered and publicly
discussed these questions previous to their coming
before Parliament, the members of the Legislature
will approach them with a knowledge of the whole
subject in all its bearings, which can be in no
other way attained. Nor would this, as is some-
times asserted, hand over to the Clergy the settle-
ment of all Church questions ; for though Convo-
cation would consist only of Clergymen, yet it
could decide finally on nothing, until that decision
80
were affirmed by the voice of the Laity in Parlia-
ment.
For these reasons, my Brethren, amongst others,
I rejoice unfeignedly in that practical revival of
the constitutional Council of our Church, which
we have been permitted to witness ; and I would
urge upon you the duty of earnest prayer, that in
all our gatherings God may give us the ' spirit of
power and love and of a sound mind,' and guide
us into such decisions as may best promote His
glory and the salvation of our people.
But, my Brethren, let no man so mistake my
meaning as to suppose that I look to the restoration
of our Convocation, or to any other outward change,
as to that which is to have the chiefest force in re-
viving what is decayed, and strengthening what is
weak amongst us. God forbid that I should so mis-
lead any one. No, my brethren ; to Him only, the
Strengthener and Reviver of His Church, would I
look myself, or point your eyes. These outer
matters, important as the}^ undoubtedly are in
their place, do but incidentally affect our highest
welfare. It is to the mighty working of His Grace
in us, and through us, that we must look for every
truly great result. For this, then, my Brethren,
whether Laity or Clergy, let us seek more earnestly
in every way of His appointing. Let us labour
together to remove whatever may mipede His
working, resist His influences, and drive from us
His quickening, saving presence.
Such benumbing causes we may doubtless find in
81
our coldness and waywardness, in our slothfulness
and secularity, in our self-will and our divisions.
May it please our God in these interior matters to
work His work mightily amongst us. May He
touch our own souls : may He enable us to feel more
deeply in our own experience the energy of His
converting grace. May we more fully understand
how bitter is the curse of unforgiven sin, and
never rest till we have sought and found His pardon
and His love. May we, more than we have ever
done, know in our own experience that the blood
of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin; and having
found for our own souls the unspeakable blessed-
ness of full reconciliation with our God, and had
the love of Him poured into our hearts, producing
in them that love of men which is the true founda-
tion of all persuasive speech, may we go forth with
the unutterable longing bred of such a saving
knowledge in redeemed souls, to witness, by word
and deed, in our several parishes, to young and old,
of His mighty grace and of His great salvation.
GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
GUIDANCE OF DIOCESAN INSPECTORS,
Prepared hy the Suh-Committee on Diocesan Inspection, adopted
hytlie General Committee, and supplied to their Lordsliips the
several Bishops in those Dioceses ichere they may seem to be
applicable.
The duty of a Diocesan Inspector is one of great interest and
importance. He is the medium of carrying the Bishojj's influ-
ence, and of convejdng an assurance of the Bishop's sympathy,
into every school which he visits. Such an office requires consi-
derable dehcacy and judgment to execute it with advantage ;
and it is with a view to afford you assistance in your important
labours, that you ai-e fm-nished with the following hints for your
guidance.
The favour with which the inspection of schools under epis-
copal sanction was generally regarded in those dioceses where
the experiment was made, fourteen years ago, by the National
Society, and the increasing popularity and acknowledged useful-
ness of Diocesan Inspection dm-ing the last few years, aiford
ground to expect that you will usually find clei'gymen and
school-managers ready to avail themselves of yom' services in the
inspection of their schools. At the same time, you should be
careful in assuring them, that j'ou desii'e to claim no control over
them beyond that which they are disposed to admit and to re-
gard as conducive to the advancement of theii" pupils in religious
and secular knowledge and in moral discipline.
Your first duty will be, to ascertain the actual state of each
school by personal examination, aided by the explanations of the
local managers. In the performance of this duty you will derive
material assistance from the forms which are furnished by the
National Society, These forms have been drawn up with great
care ; they have undergone frequent revision ; and they have now
stood the test of use for some years in more than one diocese.
In proportion, moreover, to the degree in which the managers of
different schools adopt one plan of instruction for the same
83
period, will be your power of comparing with facility and accu-
racy tlie relative progress made in the various schools.
As the chief end proposed is, to see that the children ai'e learn-
ing that which is ostensibly taught to them, the first object of
the inspector will be, to ascertain whether the children do or do
not understand what they are learnmg ; and the best method of
accomplishing this is, to encourage the teacher, if he be dis-
posed, to mstruct the chikben in the presence of the inspector,
who, by asking a few questions as the lesson goes on, may easily
acquire the knowledge he desires. Your particular attention is
invited to the importance of carefully examining the lower
classes in every school ; since it is a raost valuable maxim in
itself, as it was also a favomite saying of the honoured founder
of oiu* National System, Dr. Bell, that the character of a school-
master is hest ascertained hy the order and the a/ptness to learn
prevailing in the lowest class in the school.
Another of yom* duties, more delicate than the first, will be
to draw the attention of managers to those points in respect
to which their school is, in your judgment, capable of improve-
ment.
With reference to the arrangement of the time, it is desirable
that you carefully examine the time-tables ; and you may find it
useful to obtain copies of time-tables adopted in schools of good
reputation, for the purpose of recommending any changes which
you may see occasion to suggest on this subject.
In conducting the examination of th^schools on religious sub-
jects, whether in the Chm-ch Catechism or in the Holy Scriptures,
you will do well always to invite the assistance of the parochial
clergyman, giving him the option of undertaking any portion of
it which he pleases, in your presence.
In respect of religious knowledge, it is hoped that you will
usually find the children familiar at least with the words of the
Chm'ch Catechism, and that in most schools a considerable por-
tion of the upper classes will be able to render an intelligent
account of its contents. With reference to the religious instruc-
tion in the lower classes of the school, it may be useful to remind
schoolmasters of those parts of the Catechism to which the
Church ' chiefly' du'ects attention — viz., the Creed, the Lord's
Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. By the directions at the
end of the Baptismal Service, she evidently regards acquaintance
with these as a necessary preliminary to a ' further instruction'
in the remaining portion.s of that formular}'. By attending to
G 2
84
tills direction, the younger children will be made to understand
the more simple and practical portions of that excellent formu-
lary, before they enter upon the study of the deeper and more
difficult ; and they will be spared the discoui-agement of having
their memories loaded with forms of words to which they can
attach little meaning.
You cannot lay too much stress on a familiar acquaintance
with the Scriptm-e History. Children of a very tender age may
be led by oral teaching to take an interest in the story of our
Blessed Lord, and even to retain in their memory a connected
account of his labours of love, and of his death and resur-
rection. As they rise in the school you will of course ex-
pect a general acquaintance with the whole of the Bible history,
which may be acquired from abridgments. It is, however, par-
ticularly important that there should always be combined with
the use of these the study of successive portions of the Scripture
itself with minute care and accuracy ; and that you should
specially inquire how far they have been accustomed to draw
practical inferences from the facts of Scripture history in which
they have been insti'ucted.
In secular instruction your chief attention should be directed
to three points :
1. Reading with distinct articulation, accuracy, proper em-
phasis, and fluency. In proportion as excellence in these points
is attained, children will take delight in exercising this accom-
plishment at home, and convert it into a source of pleasure and
improvement to other members of their families.
2. In addition to accuracy in ciphering, be careful to recom-
mend that it be turned to a practical use — viz., that every child
be taught at the earliest possible period to make out an account.
Where children remain long enough at school to advance far in
arithmetic, they should be instructed in book-keeping, mensura-
tion, or navigation, as most likely to benefit them in after-life.
3. In writing, be pleased to advise that they be much exer-
cised in writing from dictation and from memory, that so they
may gradually acquire the power and the habit of arranging
their thoughts and of committing them to paper. Considering
also the changes of residence which are continually taking place
in this commercial country, and especially in this age of emigra-
tion, it is our duty to provide that every child who has passed
through our schools shall experience no difficidty in communi-
cating with his relatives or others by letter.
85
Above all, be critically observant of the moral discipline of the
school, and the demeanour of the scholars. A meek spirit of
cheerful and prompt obedience is a more graceful ornament, a
more precious treasure, than a sharp wit. A gentle and modest
carriage, with moderate attainments, is to be greatly preferred to
a far higher standard of intellectual cultivation, in the absence of
that best evidence of religious training.
Finally, may you commence your work with such earnest
prayer for the help of God as shall secure you his blessing ; and
in prosecuting it may you exhibit such a spii'it of kindness
towards the children, who are the lambs of Christ's flock, as shall
win their affection towards yourself and towards the Church
which sends you forth ; and at the same time express to them
the earnest desire felt by their Bishop to promote their temporal
and eternal welfare.
THE END.
LONDON :
SAVILL AND EDWAKDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
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