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.\WEUNIVER% A>;lOSANCELfj> h-OFCALIFOM^/^ ^^.OFCALIFO;
A LETTER
TO
ARCFIDEAOON HARE,
ON
THE JUDGMENT IN THE GOllHAM CASE.
FROM THE
IION°^^ RICHARD CAVENDISH
^j^icO lEDition,
WITH
REMARKS ON THE ARCHDEACON'S POSTSCRIPT.
LONDON:
JOHN OLLIVIER, 59, PALL MALL.
1850.
A L E T T E R.
My dear Archdeacon,
Among the many trials incident to a time of
controversy like the present, one not the least
distressing is that we are often compelled to differ
from those whom we love and honor. Still more
painful is it to be forced not only to differ, but
publicly to declare that difference. Such, however,
is the position in which I most reluctantly find
myself placed by the letter which you have lately
addressed to me. I need scarcely say that I have
been much consoled and gratified by the kind and
affectionate tone in which you have spoken of
myself in that letter. Indeed, the motives which
impelled you to write it are evidently such that I
cannot but feel that you have established a fresh
claim on the gratitude, the respect, and the affec-
tion with which I have for so many years regarded
you. If I could think that by openly avowing
the great and serious differences which exist be-
tween us, I should run any risk of forfeiting your
friendship, my reluctance to discharge what seems
to mc a plain duty would be much increased. But
as I know you too well to entertain any fears of
the kind, I shall not scruple to set forth the full
extent of our disagreement on a subject which
threatens to bring upon the Church of England
consequences so disastrous that I would most
gladly abstain even from contemplating them as
possibilities.
It is far from being my purpose to defend either
the substance or the wording of the resolutions
which called forth your letter from the strictures
which you have passed upon them. I have no
wish to make any presumptuous attempt to do that
feebly which I have no doubt will be vigourously
performed by some one of those among the signers
who, as you truly say, stand in the foremost rank
of our contemporary divines, if he shall deem it
necessary to reply to your observations. Still farther
is it from my intention to go through the judgment
and give my reasons for dissenting from it in toto.
Any such proceeding has been rendered wholly
superfluous by the unanswerable letter of the Bishop
of Exeter, and the equally unanswerable preface to
Mr. Badeley's corrected impression of his speech.
The object at which I shall aim is of a much
humbler character. It will be simply to state the
grounds on which I felt it to be my duty not to
neglect the opportunity which presented itself of
signing those resolutions, and on whiv-h I should be
prepared to sign them at this moment, had I not
already done so.
In tlic first place tlien, I must express to you the
great satisfaction which it has afforded me to be
told by you that on the general points at issue you
did not differ from us. You say that when you put
together the various passages in our symbolical
books bearing on the question, you cannot come to
any other conclusion than that our Church does
plainly assert the regeneration of every infant.
Nor, in yoiu' opinion, is this truth a mere abstract
proposition. You believe it to be of great practical
moment for our christian teaching and education.
When, therefore, notwithstanding this your belief,
you proceed to say that you are most thankful to
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for
their wise decision, I really expected that you were
about to maintain that the whole effect of that
decision w^ould be (as some by a strange effort of the
imagination have endeavoured to pursuade them-
selves) to put Mr. Gorham into the possession of
certain civil rights. But no, you go on to admit
that by this sentence the Church of England (not
of course in her spiritual capacity, but so long as
she shall remain in connexion with the State) will
eventually be bound, and this, too, precisely in the
manner and to the extent which I contemplated
when signing the resolutions, namely, "In the same
way as the law on other matters is held to be
defined by the judgment of the courts, at least
vmtil some opposite or different judgment be
obtained in a similar case, or unless steps be taken
to procure an alteration or amendment of the
law by proper authority*." It is only when you
state the grounds on which, notwithstanding the
important points of agreement between us, you see
a cause of thankfulness and rejoicing in the same
event which to us is a cause of the deepest sorrow
and anxiety, that the very serious differences, which
exist between yourself and those who signed the
resolutions, start forward in a prominent and
unmistakeable manner.
You are thankful to the Judicial Committee for
their wise decision, " because they have done what
in them lay to preserve the peace and unity of
the Church, and to keep that large body of our
so-called Evangelical Clergy within it, who might
otherwise have deemed themselves compelled to
retire, at least from its ministry." In assigning
such reasons for your thankfulness, you are but
acting in accordance with the instincts of a warm
and generous heart, but you avowedly rest your
satisfaction, simply and solely, on a ground of
expediency. No one, 1 think, could be found so
imbued with party spirit, as not to find matter of
rejoicing in the preservation of the peace and unity
of the Church, and in the fact, that sincere and
devoted servants of their Lord and Master, should
not feel themselves compelled to withdraw from
* I cordially concur, too, with you in wishing that some measure
could be adopted which would remove the misconception respecting the
meaning of the word, regeneration, which deters some from accepting
the Church's doctrine touching Holy Baptism.
9
the sphere of their labours, provided only that so
desirable an object were not to be attained by the
sacrifice of that which they must value above
peace, and without which, all peace and unity
would be but empty names, I mean, by the sacrifice
of any portion of revealed truth. On what grounds
we believe that an acquiescence in the late judg-
ment would involve so fatal a compromise, on a
subject which admits of no compromise whatever,
is a point which I shall touch upon shortly. At
present I only insist upon the fact, that for persons
who appreciate the gravity and importance of this
judgment, to be deterred from the course which
they feel it to be their duty to pursue by any
such considerations as induce you to rejoice in it,
would be, in very truth, the grossest breach of
charity which they could commit. For what, if in
their tenderness towards clergymen Avho have
sought Holy Orders in the English Church, and
continue to hold their preferments, although they
cannot use the baptismal services except in a non-
natural sense, they should altogether overlook the
effect of the necessary teaching of such pastors on
their flocks ? If it be true that there is such a thing
as one Faith once delivered to the Saints, as w^e
believe, and that the Church of England would be
giving up part of that Faith if she should submit to
the recent judgment, how can we be indifferent
whether or not that Faith be taught " whole and
" undefiled" to the poor of Christ's Church ?
10
iSurcly it' there be any one plain christian dnty
more binding than another on the rulers of the
Chiu'ch, it is to take jealous care that persons, the
character of whose faith must so materially depend
on the oral teaching of the Church, should not be
robbed of any portion of their christian privileges.
To overlook their eternal interests out of regard to
the comfort and happiness of any number of clergy-
men, however excellent and devoted to their duties,
would be morbid sentimentality.
Now it is under this feeling that I am wholly
unable to regard the question, as though its object
were merely Avhether certain opinions of Mr. Gor-
ham's ought to be visited with ci\il penalties.
You speak of the possible case of a Bishop who
should desire to check the spread of Mr. Gorham's
opinions, supposing they should spread : and again
you say, that, so long as Mr. Gorham declares that
he believes the Article " one Baptism for the re-
mission of sins," he cannot legally be condemned,
because he does not agcept our interpretation of it.
Ours may be the legitimate interpretation, his an
erroneous one ; but this, you say, is a matter for theo-
logical discussion, not for the interference of the law.
You speak, too, of the maxim of our jurisprudence,
that the accused is to have the benefit of every
doubt, of the patience and forbearance manifested
by our judges at the trial of even notorious crimi-
nals; of the principle, that it is better that ten
guilty persons should be acquitted, than a single
11
innocent one condemned. You remind us that
even Rush had every possible indulgence granted
to him by the exemplary judge, who yet shewed,
when passing sentence, that he had the fullest con-
viction and a righteous horror of his crimes. Now,
not to revert to the important consideration which
I have already advanced, that such a way of argu-
ing leaves out of view the most sacred interests of
the congregations entrusted to the care of Mr.
Gorham and those who agree with him, I assure
you that I know of no persons who Avould not
deprecate the infliction of civil penalties, in the
cause of religion, as earnestly as yourself.
But the question is not as to the moral guilt or
innocence of Mr. Gorham, nor whether he inten-
tionally denies the doctrine of our Church and an
article of the Creed. If it were, God forbid that
we should any of us forget that in such matters as
these, it is not the province of any human being
to set himself up as a judge over his brother. Had
the parallel between Mr. Gorham and Mr. Rush
been more complete, and had the judges been called
upon to decide a case of moral delinquency, I for
one, should have had no desire that Mr. Gorham
should have met with less indulgence than was
granted even to that great criminal.
Not only am I unconscious of any wish to injure
Mr. Gorham, but I sincerely wish him every possible
good. Although every one who is acquainted with
the circumstances of the case, must admit that the
i:3
examination was forced on the Bishop of Exeter, who
could not have failed to institute it Mdthout failing
at tlie same time in his bounden duty as the chief
pastor over Christ's flock in his diocese : yet if it be
true that Mr. Gorham be, as you describe him, a
man of high-minded integrity as well as of remark-
able ability, who for nine and thirty years has
been serving faithfully and laboriously in the
ministn* ; let him receive any compensation which
the government or his partisans may think fit to
bestow, let those secidar honours and emoluments
be conferred upon him, which Her Majesty has
authority to dispense. But let not the character of
the Chui'ch of England as a teaching body be en-
tirely changed because Mr. Gorham is worthy of
commiseration. Supposing a penniless scholar were
possessed of the highest attainments in literature
and science, but laboured under the very unfortu-:
nate delusion that to break one of the command-
ments was not only not blameworthy, but highly
conducive to virtue, should we not think it rather
too bad if in comj^assion to his penury, the Lord
Chancellor were to impose him as tutor on some
defenceless ward of Chancery 1 And this may
suggest to you why I cannot sympathize in the
satisfaction which you express, because the Court
of Appeal plainly admitted that Baptismal Regene-
ration was the doctrine which was favoured by the
formularies of the Church. I have heard men say,
is it not enough that the Court of Appeal itself im-
13
plied that belief in baptismal grace was the Cliurch's
rule and unbelief its exception? This might do
well enough, if it was proposed to impose penalties
on those who thought amiss : it would be a natural
argument for toleration. But how can this prin-
ciple be applied, when the question is whether the
Church of England shall be compelled to give
spiritual mission to one who teaches error"? In
the case which I just supposed, would it be any
alleviation of the evil, that while assigning a vicious
tutor, the Lord Chancellor professed himself fully
alive to the importance of appointing one who was
virtuous ■?
The question then, which really arises, is whether
if there be such a thing as the Catholic Faith and
the Church of England really hold it as she pro-
fesses, Mr. Gorham and those who agree with him
are henceforth to be at liberty to teach opinions of
their own contrary to that Faith, and that too on a
point which you yourself admit to be of great
practical moment. The passages which I have
quoted from your letter would be overwhelmingly
convincing if we could bring ourselves to admit one
assumption, which I am sure you would be the first
to disclaim, viz., that the Faith is a matter of
opinion, — my opinion, — your opinion, — Mr. Gor-
ham's opinion, — and that to decide which it is, is
merely matter of intellectual discussion, just like
any question of politics or science.
It would be in perfect consistency with such an
assumption that we ought to beware of using those
" ominous terrible words," heresy and heretic ;
words, by the way, not to be found in the resolu-
tions which you censure. Why, if there be no
such thing as the Catholic Faith, should we venture
to call any opinion heresy"? for, in that case, it
would be only that the opinion of another does not
agree with our own. And why should not others
have as much right to their opinions as we have to
ours"? If there be no such thing as the Catholic
Faith, why is any opinion on any subject to be
caUed heresy 1 ^-'^ 9 w ilomw o3 bm
And on such an assumption, the late judgment
must be admitted to be a most fair and wise one.
To declare a particular statement to be heresy
would be wTong, if there be, and can be indeed,
no such thing as heresy. No one would require
evidence to induce him to believe that a jury had
done right in acquitting an old woman of witch-
craft, if he believed the crime itself to be impossible.
And this leads me back to your statement,
that the purpose of this suit has been merely to
visit Mr. Gorham mth a civil penalty. No one
would consider ^if*^ a? ^ civil penaly to refuse the
office of cook to an estimable and skilful person,
whom, from some inexplicable idiosyncrasy, he
knew to hold and act upon the opinion, that
arsenic is a most agreeable and wholesome condi-
ment. And how can the present case be regarded
merely as the imposition of civil disability, unless
if
the Church's office, as a witness to the tyuth, be
forgotten, and an heretic have as good a right as any
one else to claim mission in her name'?
One effect of this way of looking at the Faith
as a matter of opinion is, that it ascribes to the
clergy so exaggerated an authority, as I am sure
that you yourself would be the last to claim. But
you must have observed that some who rail at the
priestly office in general are the first to claim its
privileges for themselves. For what is more com-
mon than to hear from the pulpit solemn warnings
and admonitions to which we are adjured to take
heed as we value our immortal souls? Now, on
what principle are we laymen called on to listen to
such addresses to our consciences'? We cannot,
however highly we may esteem the preachers of-
fice, bring oui'selves to look upon every one who
fills it as specially inspired with a wisdom and a
learning, which no layman can claim. You are
possessed of great learning and ability, as well as
piety, and therefore to whatever falls from you as
an expression of your personal opinion we can listen
with the deference justly due to it. But however
gladly we would recognize the same qualifications
in all other clergymen, we cannot shut our eyes to
the fact that they are not of every-day occurrence.
I have indeed heard persons gravely argue on
the supposition that those who value the aposto-
lical succession, intended to maintain that every
priest was instantly transformed into an infal-
lible oracle of truth. Such a notion has probably
16
not found its way into so many minds as to make
it inii)oitant to dispel it. But really, if we discard
it, unless there be some definite standard of doc-
trine, in accordance 'vvith which we must suppose
that the clergy are bound to teach their congre-
gations, I know not on what principle we are
called upon to submit ourselves under such terrible
penalties to the instructions which we receive in
our churches. The authority to which you of the
clergy yourselves submit, must be the basis on
which you claim deference from your congregations.
Now what right has the Church to impose such a
standard of doctrine ? You yourself tell us that
it is the right of authority. But how does the
Church possess this authority ^ If she be nothing
more than a mere human institution, it would be
impossible to perceive how she can lay claim to any
authority whatsoever as binding on the consciences
of her members. If she have nothing to refer to but
human logic, she must maintain herself as she can
against other disputants. But if, as we believe, she
be in very truth the Body mystical of our Lord and
Saviour, then we can understand how it is that, by
reason of the indwelling of God's Spirit, she has,
as our Articles express it, authority in controversies
of faith. It is on this principle of authority, pos-
sessed in its proper measure by the Church of Eng-
land as a particular Church, that her ministers
possess the right of teaching and warning us of
the laity. We conclude that they only tell us that
17
which is in accordance with the doctnnes of the
Church to which they belong. The same principle
of authority existing in tlie universal Church, has
led to the formation of those catholic creeds to
which our Church requires all her members to
assent. On what other principle can she demand,
not only from every one of her ministers, but from
every one of her members on his admission into
the Church by baptism, and during his whole
future existence in this mortal life, a profession of
faith in those creeds ? Now, if we believe that there
is such a thing as the Catholic Faith as expressed in
the catholic creeds, we must also believe that there
is such a thing as heresy. We believe that heresy
is the denial of the faith ; and that the faith is
not the mere letter of the Holy Scriptures or of
the creeds, but the meaning of those creeds held in
the consciousness of the Catholic Church, more or
less explicitly, from the beginning of her existence,
implied in the Holy Scriptures themselves, and
shaped and moulded into an explicit form as the
Church has gone on her way, by the action of the
minds of holy men directed and enlightened by the
indwelling Spirit— the Pentecostal gift. To deny any
part of this faith implies that the Catholic Church
— the habitation of the Holy Spirit— has erred in
bearing witness respecting some vital point con-
cerning the faith. But if she has erred in her tes-
timony on one such point, she may have erred in
hei testimony on any and every such point. Thus
18
the Faith is one, because it is a consistent body of
belief, drawn out into form indeed by human intel-
lect and expressed in human words, but exhibiting
the meaning and intention, not of man, but of
Holy Scripture, the work of God the Holy Ghost.
This is " the principle of authority on which the
Faitli rests ; " and as to deny or abandon one
article of the creed would deny either the authority
of the Divine Spirit, or the fact of His indwelling,
such denial does destroy that " divine foundation."
To him who denies one article, that foundation no
longer exists, however firm it is in itself Such
denial is heresy. We should indeed beware of
using such a w^ord falsely in proportion as the
charge is grave. Not to use it at all would be most
reasonable if we thought it imaginary ; for why
should we condemn a man who, after all, only in-
teiiu'ets Scripture differently from ourselves % We
ought indeed to be slow to say that a man is a mur-
derer, but that is no proof that the word., murder, is
the real evil, and that we must above all things
avoid chargmg a man with that crime whether truly
or falsely.
To ascribe such authority to the Church is by no
means derogatory to Holy Scripture, On the con-
trary, it is part of faith in our Divine Saviour him-
self, grounded on his o^\^l repeated word and pro-
mise, to believe that there is a body or society with
which His truth is unfailing and perpetual to the
world's end. All the prophetical Scriptures are
19
full of the representation of such a society. This
truth is recognised by our greatest diidnes. Bishop
Beveridge says, " The Eternal Son of God having
with his own blood purchased to himself an Uni-
versal Church, we cannot doubt but that He takes
sure care of it, that, according to His promise, ' the
gates of hell shall never prevail ' against it.' For
which end, He, the head of this mystical body,
doth not only defend and protect it by His Almighty
power, but He so acts, guides, directs, and governs
it by His Holy Spirit, that though errors and here-
sies may sometimes disease and trouble some parts
of it, yet they can never infect the whole ; but that
is still kept sound and entire, notwithstanding all
the malice and power of men and devils against it.
So that, if we consider the Universal Church, or
congregation of faithful people, as in all ages dis-
persed over the whole world, we may easily conclude
that the greatest part, from which the whole must
be denominated, was always in the right ; which
the ancient Fathers were so fully persuaded of, that
although the word KaQoXiKSe properly signifies uni-
versal, yet they commonly used it in the same sense
as we do the word orthodox, as opposed to an
heretic ; calling an orthodox man a Catholic, that
is, a son of the Catholic Church : as taking it for
granted that they, and only they, which constantly
adhere to the doctrine of the Catholic or Universal
Church, are truly orthodox ; which they could not
20
do, unl(^ss tlioy had believed the Catholic Church
to be so. And besides that, it is part of our very
creed that the Catholic Church is holy, which she
could uot be, except free from heresy, as directly
opposed to true holiness." (Sermons on the Church.
No. ().) So, too, Bisliop Pearson says, " To believe,
therefore, as the word stands in the front of the
Creed, and not only so, but is diffused through
every article and proposition of it, is to assent to
the whole and every part of it, as to a certain
and infallible truth revealed by God." (Exp. of
the Creed. Art. 1—12.;
1 . Such, then, being the reasons why the creeds are
binding on the Church and all her members, we
cannot choose but think that for any Church to
abandon the principle of authority on which she
demands belief in them, must be an act of unfaith-
fulness to her Divine Head. You say that you are
astounded at the conduct of those who have taken
on themselves to assert, upon the strength of their
own private judgments, that a certain proposition
concerning original sin is an " essential part " of
the article in the creed. You say, too, that it is
plain that there is no manifest essential repugnance
in ISIr. Gorham's doctrine to this article in our
creed, because, so far as you recollect, it was not
even pleaded by the counsel against him. You
must of course have read a very inaccurate report
of that admirable speech of Mr. Badeley, of which
91
any one may now happily procure a corrected im-
pression. For, as you will sec if you will refer to
page 205 of that book, he not only did plead the
point, but he actually reserved it as the very strong-
est of all till the conclusion of his argument. He
said, " If ISIr. Gorham holds, as I contend he does,
doctrine which derogates from the effect of Bap-
tism,— if he does not allow that Baptism of itself,
and as Baptism, confers all these benefits which
the Church has uniformly and universally attri-
buted to it, — he is contradicting, not merely the
Articles of our Church, not merely our services
and the Catechism, but something more sacred
even than they ; he is contradicting the Nicene
Creed, and annulling one of its articles." The
judges of the Court of Appeal, indeed, took no
notice of this argument, but neither did they take
notice of any other argument of the Bishop's coun-
sel. As Mr. Badeley most justly says, " For any
thing that apjjears in this judgment, it might
have been written just as well before the case
was argued, or by some person who was uncon-
scious of any thing that had been urged."
In addition to the passages from Bishop Bull and
Bishop Pearson, adduced by Mr. Badeley on this
point of the Nicene Creed, I will refer you to
Hooker, (Eccl. Pol. v. 64,) who caUs Baptism " the
well-spring of New Birth, wherein original sin is
purged." I may also call your attention to the
quotations from ancient writers and councils to be
32
fouiul ill Bishop Bevoridge's Discourse on the
Articles, lut xxvii. After citing Origen, who says,
" Young chikhen are baptized with the remission of
sins," and St. Augustine*, who, he says, spends a
whole chapter in proving, " That by the price of
tlie blood of Christ in baptism, children are
washed, freed, and saved from original sin pro-
pagated from the fii'st parents," he proceeds to
refer to the second council of Milevi. It is well
known that baptismal grace was never denied in
primitive times except by the Pelagians. The
second council of Milevi was held in order to con-
demn the new opinions concerning original sin,
then recently broached by Pelagius, and among
the Bishops present at it, was that great father of
the Chui-ch, St. Augustine, to whom are generally
attributed the important declarations contained in
its decrees. I will give the whole of that from
which Bishop Beveridge has dra^vn the extract
which he cites : " Whosoever denies that infants
newly come from their mother's w^ombs are to be
' « A recent gerraan >\Titer has remarked that St. Augustine does
a<Ht 80 much deduce the necessity of infant baptism from the ti'uth of
the doctrine of original sin, as the truth of this doctrine from the
universally acknowledged necessity and practice of infant baptism.
He quotes a number of passages to this effect ; for instance, " The very
sacraments of Holy Church shew sufficiently that even new-born
infants are freed by the grace of Christ from the service of the devil."
(de pecc. orig. 45.) Nothing can more clearly shew that if " the
remi>sion of sins" had not been held to apply to the remission of
original sin in the case of mfants, the practice of infant baptism would
never have been adopted. See Hifiiiuj. Das Sacrament der Taufe,
v. i. p. 121.
23
baptized, or says, that although they are baptized
for the remission of sins, still they derive from Adam
nothing of original sin which is to be expiated by
the laver of regeneration ; whence it must follow
that in theii* case the form of baptism for the re-
mission of sins must be imderstood, not truly but
falsely, let him be accursed. For the Apostle's
words ' By one man sin entered into the world, and
death by sin ; and so death passed upon all men,
for that all have sinned,' are not to be understood
otherwise than as the Catholic Church everywhere
diffused has always understood them. For on
account of this rule of Faith, even infants, who
cannot themselves have as yet committed any sin,
are therefore truly baptized for the remission of
their sins, in order that what they have derived
by generation, may be cleansed by regeneration*."
Indeed so clearly does Mr. Gorham deny the
article in the Nicene Creed, even in the opinion of
his defenders, that one, certainly not the least able
among them, has recently written a letter in a
* Item placiiit, ut quicumqiie parvulos receutes ab uteris matrum
baptizandos negat, aut dicit, in remissionem quidem peccatorum eos
baptizari sed nihil ex Adam trahere originalis peccati, quod regene-
rationis laTacro expietur : unde sit conseqnens, ut in eis forma baptis-
matis, in remissionem peccatorum, non vere sed false intelligatur,
anathema sit. Quoniam non aliter intelligendum est, quod ait apostolus :
'■' Per unum hominem peccatum intravit in mundum, et per peccatum
mors, et ita in omnes homines pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt,"
nisi quemadmodum ecclesia catholica ubique diffusa semper iutellexit.
Propter banc enim regulam lidei, etiam parvuli, qui nihil peccatorum in
scmetipsis adhuc committere potuerunt ; ideo in peccatorum remissionem
veraciter baptizantur ut in eis regeneratione mundetur, quod gene-
ratione trrt.\crunt. — Mansi Condi. Florcut. 1760. T. iv., p. o-27.
24
newspaper*, in which he says " I am free to confess
tliat as this article of the Creed is usually read, I
do not see how the Bishop of Exeter's argument
is to be answered." He therefore gravely pro-
poses tliat the words of the original should be
newl)' translated, so as to give them a sense con-
trary to that in which they have always been held
tnroughout Christendom.
Independently, however, of such evidence, there
is one consideration sufficient to assure me, that, as
a member of tlie English Church, I have not been
guilty of any very outrageous or extravagant abuse'
of the rights of private judgment, in maintaining
that the remission of original sin to all baptized
infants, is an essential part of the Article in ques-
tion. It is this. In our Baptismal Service, remission
of original sin to infants is unmistakeably spoken of as
one of the special benefits confeiTed in and by that
Sacrament. In the first prayer, the congregation
prays, " wash and sanctify this child with the Holy
Ghost, that he, being delivered from thy ivrath,
may be received into the ark of Christ's Church,
&c." In the next prayer occur these words,
" We call upon thee for this infant, that he, coming
to thy Holy Baptism, may receive remission of
his sins by spiritual regeneration." Now the
concluding part of the ser\dce plainly affirms that
the bles^sings prayed for are granted by Almighty
God. Again in the catechism, in answer to the
* See Letter in Record of Ajiril 22, sighed M. Hobart Seymour.
m
question, " What is the inward and spiritual grace
of Baptism?" it is said, " A death unto sin, and a
new birth unto righteousness : for bein^ by nature
horn in sin, and the children of wrath, we are
herebi/ made the children of grace." Thus we
were perfectly warranted in asserting, not on the
strength of our o\vn private judgment, but on the
strength of the judgment of the Church of Eng-
land, that the remission of original sin to all bap-
tized infants is a benefit conferred in and by bap-
tism ; and to that, therefore, according to the
Church of England, the Article in the Creed must
have had reference. In truth, the weight of your
censure ought to fall on such persons as, on the
strength of their own private judgments, have taken
on themselves to dispute the meaning of the Article
which our Church evidently recognises as true,
catholic, and essential. You say, indeed, that, " if
Mr. Gorham actually denied the ' one Baptism for"
the remission of sins,' the case would be decided
ipso facto. But so long as he declares that he does
believe m that Article, he cannot be condemned
legally, because he does not accept our interj^reta-
tion of it." Now, on this principle, how can you
object to call Socinians orthodox Christians X Many
of them do not, I believe, object to use the Apostles
Creed. None of them object to the use of the
words " Son of God" in reference to our Lord, but
they do not accept our inter]3retation of these
words. They only attribute to them a meaning
26
Avliith is at vanance with that which has ever been
held by the Catholic Church to be their essential
meaning:.
Ihit, you tell us, the proposition which is selected
as the heresy sanctioned by the sentence of the
Judicial Committee, is not even mentioned in it.
Now, in the first place, I have heard lawyers
assert that the effect of the judgment is, that
every opinion contained in Mr. Gorham's book may
be henceforth maintained with impunity by every
clerg}Tnan of the Church of England. The state-
ment of his opinions in the judgment would, in
that case, be merely part of the argument by which
it was sustained. Mr. Gorham was pronounced by
his bishop unfit for the cure of souls, because he
claimed to hold and teach the opinions contained
in it ; and he was pronounced by the judges fit for
the cure of souls, though he did make such a claim.
But even if this be not so, it would seem impossible
to deny that tliis very proposition is virtually in-
cluded in the statement of the judgment. For if
" in no case is regeneration in baptism uncon-
ditional," how can there be any certain benefit at
all in the case of infants ? Now you admit that
" our Church does plainly assert the regeneration
of every baptized infant," and we have seen that in
our Church Services and Catechism, the " remission
of sins" to infants is inseparably connected with
" spiritual regeneration ; " but, according to Mr.
Gorham, the reception of any benefit in the case of
m
infants depends on certain qualifications already
existing in them, respecting which we are utterly
at a loss to know whether they exist or not.
Therefore, if we admit his premises, we can have
no reason whatever for thinking, with respect to any
baptized infant, that he is delivered from the wrath
of God, and that he has received remission of
his sins. >di jijn
We have been frequently accused of want of
charity, of bigotry, and I know not what other
qualities of the like nature, because we are not
content that clergymen holding such opinions as
Mr. Gorham holds should be allowed to teach in
the name and with the authority of the Church
of England, although they have been tolerated in
the same Church for the last three hundred years.
Now, in the first place, the fact on which these
accusations are built, is mis-stated. Whatever may
have been the case before the Savoy conference,
(and certainly the misquoted citations from our
divines, which were adduced in the judgment, will
not have convinced many persons that it was such
as the judges represented it to be,) there can be no
question that on that occasion the doctrine of the
Church of England on the subject of Baptism was
fully declared. Persons holding opinions of the
same class as Mr. Gorham's sought at that time for
an alteration in the baptismal services, expressly on
the ground that they could not minister in the
Chiu'ch of England if compelled to use them.
28
Tlu'ir petition was refused, and tliey eventually
retired from the Chureh. The judges found it
couA enient to pass o^•er this argnment, but, never-
theless, the fact remains as it was before their
judgment was given. Therefore, as a fact, these
peculiar opinions have not been tolerated in the
Church of England for tlie last three hundred
years. In the middle of last century, the Church,
(owing mainly to the shameless system of prosti-
tuting ecclesiastical patronage for political pur-
poses, which was adopted after the accession of
the House of Hanover.) was sunk in sloth and
apathy. A revival of religious zeal took place,
which, because it was not directed, as it should
have been, by the responsible rulers of the Church,
was all but compelled to assume a schismatical
character. Then again started forth the wild and
mischievous theories which must always spring
from a denial of the regenerating grace of Baptism,
when that denial is held in conjunction with zeal
and earnestness. These notions were insisted upon
with a fervour and a perseverance which, however
mistaken, must always command respect. Some
ministers of the Church, while they caught the
fervour, became imbued with the error. So lax
and imperfect has been the discipline of the Church
of England, as administered by her bishops for the
last iifty years, that they have for the most part
been content to look on, without an attempt at
discouraging the error as they might have dis-
29
couraji^ed it, while, at the same time, they need not
have interfered with the zeal manifested by its
propagators further than to have directed it into
safer channels. The dangerous condition of the
Church at this moment forms the best commentary
as to the consequences which must ever arise from
such episcopal quietism.
Even if the fact were as it is attempted to repre-
sent it, the inference sought to be drawn from it
would not bear examination, Imagine the case of a
Bishop refusing institution on the ground of drunk-
enness and immorality, and the highest Court of
Appeal deciding, " It has been proved that Mr. A.
is an habitual drunkard and an open profligate.
We are far from defending such habits, but we are
not here to decide what is right and what is wrong,
but what the Church of England has declared to
be ground for objection. Now most passages which
denounce these practices are devotional or exhorta-
tions, not laws. On the other hand, we can produce
a catena to shew that there have been always
drunken and profligate incumbents, and the rubric
requires the Burial service to be read over all such,
if not formally excommunicated. On the whole,
without inquiring what learned men may deduce
from Holy Scripture and the practice of the Primi-
tive Church, we think that no principle of the
established Church justifies Mr. A.'s rejection."
How after such a judgment could the discipline of
the English Church as regards drunkenness and
so
iTinnorality bo ndministevod in the same way as
toiniovly I So, too, it is in vain that we attempt to
disguise from ourselves that the Church of England,
so long as she remains in connexion with tlie State,
must be affected by this judgment, unless it can be
counteracted by a new decision. " The effect of the
decision in Mr. Gorham's case," says Mr. Badeley,
" is that every Bishop is now liable to have forced
upon his diocese as many clergymen, holding the
same opinions, as may happen to be presented
to benefices ; Avhatever his conscientious scruples
may be, and however firmly he may believe that
such opinions ' are erroneous and contrary to God's
Tvord.' " Henceforth, then, the discipline of the
Church of England, as by law established, must,
unless the mischief caused by the judgment can be
undone, be administered on the understanding that
a denial of an article of the Nicene Creed, an use of
the most solemn services and addresses to Almighty
God in a non-natural sense, and a system of teaching
in accordance with such proceedings, that all these
things on the part of her clergy are lawful, and
may therefore be committed with impunity. How
then, if she shall submit to this judgment, can the
Church fulfil her office as a teacher and witness of
the Catholic Faith 1
I cannot but deeply regret that you should have,
I will not say insinuated, because insinuation is a
thing altogether foreign from your nature, but used
expressions which may have suggested to your
31
readers that you thought the resolutions would be
taken as a call to quit the Church of England and
take refuge in the Church of Rome. I will only
remind you that during the time that the resolu-
tions were under discussion, one of the most eminent
among their authors, one who has deservedly ac-
quired a reputation as a worthy successor of the
Hookers and Pearsons of former ages, took occasion
in a noble sermon*, preached before the University
of Cambridge, on the subject of the Judgment, to
address a forcible and touching appeal to his hearers
not " to abandon at this crisis the mother who had
borne them and nourished them with the sacra-
ments of Jesus Christ." Those who signed the
resolutions were not called on to take into conside-
ration the Church of Rome, but the state of the
Church of England, such as it would become if she
should not resist the late judgment. If, as we
believe, the Church of England, by acquiescing in
it, would be abandoning an article of the Creed,
they who warn her of the danger of submission are
not certainly to be accounted untrue to their duty as
members of her body. For if there is any thing
which is likely to deter men from joining the Church
of Rome, it must be that they perceive the danger
of heresy to be appreciated among ourselves.
That such an abandonment of the article, *' One
Baptism for the remission of sins," would be at-
* Human Policy and Divine Truth, a Sermon by W. H. Mill, D.D.
tondc^l by such conseqiioncos as are pointed out
in the resolntions. must result from the very nature
of tlie case ; and that the authors of them acted
M-itli no oxti'avagant exercise of their own private
jndtjment^ in dramng" this conclusion, will appear
from a statement which I am about to cite from
a learned writer, whose competence to speak on
the subject will not be disputed. I have specially
selected his testimony, because it is well known
that he wrote not only not with a roman bias,
but with a very strong anti-roman bias. " If it be
now inquired," says Bingham, (Antiquities b. xvi.
ch. i.) " what articles of faith, and what points of
practice were reckoned thus fundamental or essen-
tial to the very being of a Christian, and the
union of many Christians into one body or Church',?
the ancients are very plain in resolving this. For
as to fundamental articles of faith, the Church had
them always collected or summed up out of Scrip-
ture, in her creeds, the profession of which was-
ever esteemed both necessary on the one handy^
and sufficient on the other, in order to the admis^'
sion of members into the Church' by baptism ; an(Ji,i^
consequently, both necessary and sufficient to keep>'
men in the unity of the Church, so far as concerns^'
the unity of faith generally required of all Christ-
ians, to make them one body and one Church of
believers. Upon this account, the creed was com-
monly called by the ancients, the icavwv and Regula
Fidei, because it was the known ' standard or rule
88
of faitli,' by which orthodoxy and heresy were
judged and examined. If a man. adhered to this
rule, he was deemed an orthodox Christian, and in
the union of the catholic faith ; but if he deviated
from it in any point, he was esteemed as one that
had cut himself off, and separated from the com-
munion of the Church, by entertaining heretical
opinions, and deserting the common faith." The
same principle that applies to particular persons
must, of course, apply equally to particular Churches;
and if any one were to maintain that the Church
of England might deviate from the Catholic faith
in any one point, and yet not cut herself off
from the Catholic Church, he would certainly be
guilty of the most extravagant exercise of private
judgment of which the world has yet heard.
Such, then, being our convictions, no one has
a right to brand us as seditious or peace-breakers,
because we desire to ward oiF the fearful danger
which is threatening us. You remind us that our
Church declares that particular Churches may err
in matters of faith. You agree, therefore, mth
us in thinking, that it is possible that the
Church of England may err in a matter of faith.
Would to God that it were possible to feel that
there could be no danger, that the sins of our
nation and of our Church, had not been so great
as to render such a judgment undeserved! But
never, till sad experience shall have convinced us,
will we believe that, in this perilous crisis, the
c
84
Chnrcli of our fathors will be untrue to herself.
\Vc all reiriembor that some twenty years ago,
the Church was tlu'eatened with a confiscation of
her property by the democratic party in the state.
Our bisliops, on that occasion, were not slow to
stand up in manful defence of the Church's rights
to the possession of property bequeathed to her
by the piety of former ages. They did no more than
their duty. Can it be possible that they will now
present to astonished Christendom, the incredible
spectacle of a hierarchy contending for the secular
rights of the body over which they are rulers, but
Slink in apathy, and keeping an ominous silence,
when its faith is endangered '? We will not believe
it ; we will not believe that the rulers over God's
heritage, who have deliberately vowed, at the most
awftd moment of their lives, "with all faithful
diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous
and strange doctrine contrary to Ood's word,"
shall now, unmindful of the strict and solemn
account they must one day give of their steward-
ship, not count all other considerations as dross
in comparison >vith the one great duty which they
are so plainly called to fulfil. If the State shall
threaten them with the loss of their revenues and
endowments, as consequent on the performance of
that duty, we are confident that they will not
be slow to flings back the implied insult, and say
^^' the Church'^ oppressoi^/-^^" Thy money perish
with thee." Our hearts have alreadv bounded
85
with joy and thankfulness as week after week,
and day after day, has brought us tidings of the
courage of our priesthood in protesting against
the usurpations of the State, and repelling the
slander which has been cast upon their beloved
Church. We feel sure that they, remembering
the saying, " He that loveth houses and lands more
than me is not worthy of me," are prepared to
give up all earthly possessions and comforts in
defence of God's truth, are prepared, as one of
them has nobly said, " to give up every thing but
principle, to sell eveiy thing but truth." "^oRv+ff^jh
Still, we may well be awed and saddened at the
prospect before us. A time of conflict such as that
before us, must needs be a time of painful and se-
vere trial. Many ties will have to be broken ; many
hearts torn asunder; works of piety and charity
must suffer, nay they are suffering, a grievous inter-
ruption and hindrance until the victory shall be won.
One benefit, however, we may all derive from such
a state of things, if we will. When we are called
to battle for God's truth, we shall be more than
y^yer constrained to feel that we are but mere out-
posts, few in number it may be, and despicable
in the eyes of the world, but bold beyond our
numbers, because supported by chariots of fire
and horses of fire round about the mountain of
the Lord of Hosts, under which we stand. We
shall call to mind more than ever that the visible
Church depends on the invisible; not on civil
36
power, not on princes, or any cliild of man, not
on (Mulowments, not on its numbers, not on any
thinfT that is seen. What we see is but the "out-
>\ ard shell of an eternal kingdom ;" and on that
kingdom we shall now be impelled more intently
than ever to fix the eyes of our faith. The time
of dai'kness, of disputing, and of anxiety, must
soon cease to be to all of us now on earth. Mean-
while we may every one of us take comfort if
only, amidst the clouds and the gloom which are
daily thickening around us, we can learn to say
frppa our hearts, " Thou art my lamp, O Lord,
and the Lord will lighten my darkness." r^ r
^rf^ Believe me, my dear Archdeacon,2ffi99a {lsHqI
i ^"^^ Ever your grateful and affectionate frietid,
.basil)2£i3. \o lijiiju ^ .
; ^ , EICHARD CAVENDISH.
^^P^T^Sj^^^^^i^^r 1--^ - - - -''^
. April 30, ISfiJO.^^^^^ ^^ ^"^^ xfoidw aifliJiit oaoiii
T woa'A oi 9w SIS woxl jWoM Si biBgsi oa
-luo'i uoY ? dfisii \o t Jon e-in iBd'rr hns ^sin edisrii
P.S. — Since writing the above, I have re'ceived 'the 'first
part of Dr. Pusey's work on the Royal Supremacy, in an
appendix to which are some observations on yojir letteir.
You will, I am sure, do justice to the true spirit qf
christian charity and meekness wliich breathes through
them, and join with me in the earnest hope that the eflforts
of the learned and pious author to dispel mlsunder-
ptandings, and to promote peace inf'-owr'X^hiu'ch, may be
crowned' with succesgji I) iijujxiJ o'doib^u vdj hjulu
J- f" '^'>.;:/:io3 sifl iJO'{ iadi S8 .q £d\B8 jjo'{ lol
itBi9n9^9f ^di ji988fi aeob doiudO luo
87
iRffi lo blido xflfi to .eaoniiq no ion ,i9woq
/i- :i ,8i9dmjjn ati no ion ^eiaamwobns no
liiu" tJiiJ iijd ax 998 9W iadW .a99a ai iadi ^nidi
isdi flo bflB "; mob^nbf lBfli9l9 hb "io lisde bisw
Xltn9ini 91oot h9ll9qrai 9d won Ilsxfa 9W raob^niii
9mil sxIT ,diiBi iiro lo 89^9 9ffi xh oi i9V9 xiBri:»
iairm e^igixnB lo Lab ^^nbirqail) "io ^aagAjTiBb Ito
-nB9M .if j'is9 no v^on bis lo IIb oi 9d oi 9a£9D nooa
Another edition di this pamphlet being called
fef, I take the opportunity of adding a few re-
marlis on your postscript. ""' "= ' '~ ^ \
h IT" pifBed ii^jo ffio'iT
The real difference between yo'u.^ aiia those who
signed the resolutions which called forth your
letter, seems to be this ; you do not regard the
doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, which you
admit to be both held by the Church of England,
and to be of great practical importance, as one of
those truths Avhich are of faith (p. 81); they do
so regard it. Now, how are we to know what
truths are, and what are not, of faith ? You your-
self tell us that these great fundamental truthsiare
summed up in the Creeds — the rule of faith alw^yfe
recognized by the Church. You admit m pp. 4^,
50, the right of the Church to bear witness to
their true meaning, and that the English Church
in particular does interpret the article " one bap-
tism for the remission of sins," in the same sense
w^hich the Catholic Church has ever affixed to it;
for you say in p. 65 that you are convinced that
our Church does assert the regeneration of every
is
baptized infant. How, then, are we to escape from
tlio conclusion that the truth thus maintained by
our Cliurch is among those which are of faith!
Indeed, it may well be asked why, if the
Englisli Churcli does not esteem this doctrine as
indispensably necessary to be taught to all her
members, she has so clearly laid it down in her
Catechism ? and why has she thus enforced its
inculcation on every one of her ministers'? You
believe with us that this doctrine is clearly laid
down in the Prayer Book; and there can be no
question that, by compelling all her priests to use
it, the Church does make the acceptance and in-
culcation of that doctrine necessary conditions of
their holding office in her communion. This latter
you admit to be the case, and, indeed, so plain is
it, that those clergymen who do not hold that
doctrine, and yet consent to use the Prayer Book
which contains it, are driven to deal with words
in a manner which would not be tolerated for an
instant in the common affars of life. Men who
put a distinct and definite sense on the language
which they use in reference to the things of this
world, are content to have recourse to evasions, and
to what in any other matter would be accounted
duplicity, when speaking of the kingdom of hea-
ven. How long, if such a non-natural system of
interpretation is to be permitted in sacred minis-
trations, will the laity continue to place any con-
fidence in the words and acts of theu* pastors ?
39
The Judicial Committee may have disclaimed
all intention of pronouncing any opinion as to what
is, and what is not, the doctrine of the English
Church. Such a disclaimer is not without its value;
but surely to persons of plain and simple under-
standings , it ,- will always seeni clear, that , by
undertaking to decide what is, and what %.not
to be enforced as necessary to be taught by her
ministers, they did in fact decide what is, and
what is not, the Church's doctrine. You quote
(p. 62) with approbation the following words in
Lord Campbell's letter to Miss Sellon, " I assure
yqu^ ti^ia;t.^e, h^yg giyen,not o;p^ioi^^ contrary to
your's on the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration."
Lord Campbell undoubtedly disclaims here the
function of deciding what was in his own opinion
true ; but how does it follow from this that he
did not decide what wa,s the doctrine of the Church
of England 1 ^ . .. , a- ^ • a ' j - t
But, in point of fact, we have reason to complain
of the judgment, not so much because it mis-states,
as because it refuses to enforce the Church's doctrine,
because, by it, men who have solemnly professed
their adherence to the doctrines of the Church of En-
gland and still more solemnly vowed to drive away
all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's
word, (in which phrase is eminently and expressly
included [see article viii.] the doctrine of the three
creeds) are set at liberty to teach without let or
hindrance what in our vieW directly contradicts
40.
a main article of those creeds. And this is suioly
enoiigli. But, as you express your astonishment
at tlie prominence wliich has been recently given
to tlie argument from the Nicene Creed, I must
take tlie liberty of pointing out a distinction which
seems to have escaped you. The question to bo
decided by the Court of Arches and the Judicial
Committee was, whether Mr. Gorham's doctrine
was contrary to that of the Church of England.
This question was to be decided by reference to
the formularies of the English Church, of which
the Nicene Creed is not the most explicit part^
The article of the Creed, therefore, did not fonn
the strength of the argument, and was not so
relied upon. But, at present, the question is not
the fact of Mr. Gorham's error, but its gravity. It
is the gramty of the error, and this alone, which
justifies the agitation which you deplore. And
to slievv this latter point— to shew that the errori>
error if it be, is one of paramount importance, we
point to the Creed, and to the interpretation which
itohas always received; we point out that the
Remission of Sins in Baptism, in the ti*ue meaning
of these words, is a doctrine of such importance/
that the Church thought it necessary to embody
it in her Creed; and we shew what that true
meaning is by pointing to a criterion to which you
yourself appeal (p. 49)— the words of the Church
— the words which she -has: elsewhere used in
speaking on the same subject. And we think
41
it results undeniably from the whole mass of testis
mony which exists in the councils and canons of
the Church Catholic, the writings of the Fathers;^
and the formularies of the English Church in par-
ticular, all which have been fully quoted in this
controversy — that all infants are cleansed from
original sin by the Sacrament of Baptism. It is^
needless to add that Mr. Gorham's doctrine, even
as stated in the judgment, renders this remissiorf
of sins, and all other benefits of the Sacrament,
wholly uncertain and precarious, if not impossible,'
in the case of infents."'^ *" ^ ^- ^-^"^^^ ^^^'^^^ '^^^
'You blame me for stigmatizing Mr. Grorham'S
opinions by the illustrations which I used of a law
breaking tutor and a poison-loving cook. It ceri
tainly was not my intention to use any expressions
which could be deemed offensive to Mr. Gorham,
and I should have hoped that no one could hav^.
supposed that I wished to institute any comparison
between him and those imaginary personages.*
At all events I gladly seize this opportunity
of disclaiming any such intention. But you say
that both these comparisons, as you 'term them,
blink that which is the main point in the argument,
for neither the law-breaking tutor, nor the poison-^
loving cook, has any legal claim to the proposed
officeuaixiw oi noiisjiio ii o^ gnunioq ^c fei
No^^ Mu6su|)poseu'fcorniriOnr dale' iJi 'the aiFairs
of this world. Let us suppose that a man, noniina-
ted by the proper electors tobe treasure? of a tbi-
42
])()ration, is (lisqiialified by statute from holding
that oHice, unh>ss ho possesses property of a certain
value. According to your view of the matter this
statute would be penal, and, consequently, every
part of it should be strained in favour of the trea-
surer elect. Be it so. But still no judge would
argue that he was at liberty to apply the same
favoiu'able construction to the instruments under
>Nhich his claimant held his alleged quaUfication.
He would feel himself bound to give those instru-
ments ?i fair and honest consti'uction ; he must not
be over subtle in finding excuses for making them
out to be good, when they were in fact bad, on the
ground that their invalidity would have a penal
effect on the would-be official. Granted that ac-
cording to the principles of the English laws he
may take any advantage for discovering a loop-hole
in the (supposed) penal statute, he must still con-
strue fairly the documents on which the applica-
bility of that statute depends. So, too, a statute
punisliing contrariety to the doctrine of the English
Church, ought to be construed strictly, but in any
case the investigation as to what that doctrine is
should be conducted, neither strictly nor loosely,
but fairly^ like any other investigation. This is
what we contend for in Mr. Gorham's case. If his
doctrine be not in accordance with the plain gram-
matical sense of the Prayer Book, he has no more
legal claim to be instituted to a living, and so en-
trusted with the pastoral care of a portion of
43
CJhrist's flock, than, in the supposed case, a pauper
would have, to be elected treasurer of the corpora-
tion, and to take possession of the municipal chest.
i ' This leads me to observe, that, when you quote
niy words, to the effect that your way of arguing
the question left out of view the most sacred inter-
ests of the congregations entrusted to the care of
Mr. Gorham and those who agree with hiih, you
find fault with them because they do not prove
what they were never meant to prove* You had
said that the judges were bound to judge with a
bias, to look out for some possible escape from the
necessity of enforcing a strict definition of heresy ;
first, because penal laws should be construed strictly;
secondly, because heresy involves iio- moral guilt.
In answer to this, I replied, " No, other questions,
besides those of guilt and punishment, come in,
viz., the interests of the congregations." I am
really unable to see that you dispose of this con-
sideration by pointing out that m^ argument does
not disprove your statement that the pidpnent was^' A
legal act. Of course it was never intended to have
that effect. My object was simply to remind you
that, in a case of this kind, the interests of the
taught are to be considered, as well as those of the
teacher. I cannot, therefore, perceive that I have
fallen into the misapprehension which, you say,
runs through my letter.
Feeling, as I do, quite as strongly as ever the force
of this consideration, I must adliere to my opinion.
that, to overlook the interests of their congregatioiisi
out of regard to the comfort and happiness of any
number of excellent clergymen, would be " morbid
sentimentality." Certainly if I had used such an
expression simply in reference to any deep interest
that might be felt for the comfort and happiness of
excellent and zealous clergymeiif *^^ should most
justly have laid myself open tb'yoiir strictures.
But how does the matter really stand "? On the one
hand we have to consider the interests, not only of
the flocks entrusted to the care of Mr. Gorham and
those who agree with him, but the interests of the
flocks in every parish in England, and that, too,
not only as regards the present time, but as regards
the future also. You believe that our Church does
plainly teach that every baptized infant is regene-
rate, and that this truth is one of great practical
moment. Of course you teach ^tixr' your parish-
ioners, not merely as a dry intellectual dogma, but
you bring it to bear upon them practically. You
teach the children committed to your care that
they are " members of Christ, children of God, and
inheritors of the kingdom of Heaveii^^^^our suc-
cessor may, if he pleases, (supposing that this judg-
ment shall stand,) teach them that they are chil-
dren of the devil, and heirs of everlasting damna-
tion. He may appeal to the late judgment as a
proof that such teaching is sanctioned by the
Church of England. The same thing may happen
in every parish in England. On the other hand
\Y^,)i^ye,, a,, number of clergymen who either ,d,^7
nounce this doctrine which you teach as " a soul-
destroying heresy," or who, if they do not go this
length, at least teach their flocks just as if this
truth had not been revealed, and was not held by
the .ChlitKcltj of wliich they are ministers. Many of
them are, I doubt not, earnest and zealous men,
and I have already expressed my concurrence with
your wish that some measure could be adopted
wliich would tend to remove the misconceptions
which impede their reception of the Church's doc-
trine. I trust that if any such clergymen had felt
compelled to retire fi:om their posts, I should not
only, not have been indifferent to their sufferings,
but most anxious to mitigate them by any means
that might have been in my power. But I must
still be at a loss to understand how a doctrine of
such importance can be both true and needless, a
sort of esoteric truth not fitted for the laity. I
cannot perceive why those who are sure that the
doctrine in question forms a part of revealed truth,
and who are, therefore, desirous that it should not
Joe suppressed or denied by those whose office it is
to teach it, are to be looked upon as persecutors.
Therefore, I really must persist in thinking that
true charity would compel us to have a regard to
the "most sacred interests" of the people rather
^than to the comfort and happine^^^ji^ ^jxj^eagp^:,
^ut mistaken, clergymen. ,,,,.r,,,,-T \o xioirjrfO
hiUi^^Fj)^^^^ us, indeed, that the schism, ^QUJ^^Jiaye
46
boon botwocn STibjoctivo faith find objoctive faith.
Now, I am most ready to admit tliat all true doc-
trine may bo licld intellectually without influencing
the heart. I fully admit the truth of Archbishop
Leighton's remark which you quote, that " He is
the fittest to preach who is most like his message ;"
but I must protest against the charge which you
bring against the great mass of those who dis-
approve of the late judgment, as if they must
necessarily be destitute of that faith which yearns
after a living union with Christ, and the living
graces of His spirit. On the contrary, it -is natui-al
to suppose that the more they yearn after this
union, the more they will value the divinely-
appointed means for attaining and nourishing it.
Unless the objective faith of the Church be main-
tained whole and undefiled, on what at last is the
subjective faith of men's hearts to rest"? Surely
the history of religious revivals has taught us that
if it be accounted a matter of indifference whether
we rightly apprehend or not the great realities
which have been revealed to us, the earnestness
which gives rise to them will soon evaporate in a
lifeless system of empty phrases and party watch-
words.
July 5th, 1850.
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uoA( doidw sgifido 9d;t ieitiisgB ieojoiq :>3ura I .1nd
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an f.vj^ doidw diisi iudi lo oinfih^i
gfli/il 9di bnjs jiahdO dJxw no'mu ^l
Ifiujififi ai fi ,1(161:^1100 odi nO .ihiqa aiH \o soofii^]!
aidJ ' odi iadi ssoqqir
/■ t-r,'::; oii: gjjij^v ll;// '(odJ 9ioin 9d-
^'^dahxjoff basi "gaimGiin idi eassm L,:..
; 9d doiirdO odi lo diifil 97iJ09ido 9di aa:
odj ai ;taj5l is itsdw no ^bolh^ban boB alodw b .
T(l9iif8 fi89i oi eiTiSsd a'noin lo dijjsi 9viJ09[di;e
vtfidi air ddgUvG* a^d alsvlToi eisoi-gilsi lo ^loiaid odi
lediadw oonsislibni ^o 10;^^^ b h9:^imooofi od ii 11
89i;^Hs9i :^B9fg sdi ion 10 bxredgiqqB ^J-^^dgh ew
889flia9fns9 sdi ,8n oi bahoYst med svGd dohk/
Si ni siBioq^Ys nooa Iliw madi oi 9ah esYig doidw
iotew ^ixsq bn^ esaiiidq ^iqma lo maia^a aaafolil
sbiow
/I
ARCHDEACON HARE'S LETTER
TO
THE HON. RICHARD CAVENDISH.
A LETTER
TO
THE HON. lUCHAliD CAVENDISH,
ON THE RECENT JUDGEMENT
OF THE COURT OF APPEAL,
AS AFFECTING THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH :
JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M.A.,
ARCIIPEACON OF LEWES.
SECOND EDITION, WITH A POSTSCRIPT.
LONDON:
JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, WEST STRAND
SOLD BY MACMILLAN, CAMBRIDGE.
1850.
LONDON:
Printed by S. &• J. Kentlet and Henry. Fley,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
TO
THE HONORABLE RICHARD CAVENDISH.
My dear Cavendish,
I HAVE just seen your name attacht to a docu-
ment, which I have read with deep pain, as it seems
to me to tlireaten much evil to our Church. Hence
I feel an impulse, which I camiot resist, to remonstrate
with you on this act. Will you forgive me, — will you
forgive your old Tutor, if the recollections of his former
relation to you impell and encourage him to address a
few words of friendly counsel to you at this critical
moment in your life, as well as in that of our Church?
Of the pupils who sat in my Lecture-room when I was
at Trinity, several have been among the chief friends
of my subsequent years ; and it has been a happiness
to me that I have been allowed to reckon you in this
number. Let me make use then of the privilege which
rightly belongs to an old friend, and without which
friendship would be little better than a shadow, of
speaking the truth to you, at least what I firmly
believe to be the truth : and I have the less scruple in
making this request, because I know that I can speak
it in love.
U' 1 liavc to find laiilt with tlu> paper to which your
name is subscribed, the bhxinc will fall but slightly
on you. For it is clear that you can have had very
little, if anything-, to do with the composition of that
paper. Among the subscribers to it are three Arch-
deacons, two Regius Professors of Hebrew, four beneficed
Clergymen, and two Civilians ; and some of these stand
in the foremost rank of our contemporary divines.
You are the only simple layman in the list. In such a
company, I well know, your modesty would not allow you
to express an indejjendent opinion, on matters on which
you would deem your collegues so much better qualified
for pronouncing. You must assuredly have been in-
fluenced by your deference and respect for some of
them, ^\■ho indeed on ordinary occasions well deserve
much deference and respect. Do they deserve the same
in this instance ? This is a question of no slight im-
portance ; because, from the nature of the document,
as well as from their personal position and influence,
it is plain that they have put themselves forward, — nor
does their doing so imply any improper assumption,
— as the leaders and guides of a large party in the
Church at this time of trouble. I am not going to
canvass their pretensions, as grounded on their charac-
ters and pre\dous acts. For several of them I feel much
respect, though at times I may have been brought
into painful collision wdth tliem : one of them is a
friend whose friendship has been a precious blessing to
me. But of them personally I am not intending to
speak. I am merely purposing to examine the docu-
ment ihey have issued, as the declaration or manifesto of
the principles which will determine their conduct at this
crisis. By the publication of this manifesto, they evi-
dently invite the concurrence of their brethren, that is,
of all who love their Mother Church, in the principles
there enunciated ; and hence it challenges the strictest
examination. Nor ought one to be deterred from so
examining it by any consideration for the eminence of
the j)ersons by wliom it is issued. Should this mani-
festo appear to ])e utterly unworthy of them, it is to
be borne in mind, that, according to the old adage, it
is mostly injurious to a writing also to have too many
authors. Unity of idea and singleness of purpose, the
first merits of a composition, are hereby lost ; and while
one person is introducing this correction, and another
that limitation, while one wishes to strengthen this sen-
tence, and another to soften that, the result may easily
become contradictory, and almost unmeaning. In this
manner strange oversights and contradictions, it is
notorious, have slipt, through careless amendments,
into Acts of Parliament ; as they do likewise into
the declarations of inferior bodies. Therefore let me
not be charged with presumption, should our exami-
nation lead us to conclusions derogatory to the
honour justly due to several among the avithors of this
manifesto.
It is a document of such importance, considering
the feverish state of the Church, and the authority which
will be attacht to its promulgators, that there is a kind
of obligation to go through it step by step. Hence I
will take the nine Resolutions, of which it consists,
successively, and will subjoin such remarks to each, as
may seem to be needed.
The first of these Resolutions, as they are termed,
is as follows : " That, whatever at the present time be
the force of the sentence delivered on appeal in the
case of Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter, the Church of
England will eventually be bound by the said sentence,
B 2 .
unless it shall optMiiy and expressly reject the erroneous
doctrine sanctioned thereby."
Now you will have seen from Note K to the Charge
which 1 have just publisht, that, on the general point
at issue, I agree with you and your collegues. When
I put together the various passages in our symbolical
books bearing on this question, I cannot come to any
other conclusion, than that our Church does plainly
assert the regeneration of every baptized infant : and
that every baptized infant is indeed regenerate, under
a right acceptation of the term, I fully believe. Nor
is this truth a mere abstract proposition. I believe it
to be of great practical moment for our Christian
teaching and education. It is because their sins are
forgiven them for Christ's name's sake, that St John
writes to those whom he terms little children. It is for
the selfsame reason, that we are empowered to train
up our children as members of Christ, and children
of God, and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Nevertheless I am most thankful to the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council for their wise
decision, whereby they have done what in them lay
to preserve the peace and unity of the Church, and
to keep that large body of our so-called Evangelical
Clergy within it, who might otherwise have deemed
themselves compelled by their consciences to retire, at
least from its ministry.
By this sentence, it is true, " the Church of England
will eventually be bound," in the same way as the
law on other matters is held to be defined by the
judgements of the Courts ; at least until some opposite
or different judgement be obtained in a similar case, or
unless steps be taken to procure an alteration or
amendment of the law by the proper authority. But,
as judicial decisions in othtT (Ifpartnicnts, even when pro-
nounced by the highest tribunal, may be modified, or
even reverst, by a subsequent decision in pari materia ;
so, when we have gained a more satisfactory Court of
Appeal, may a like case be tried by any Bishop who
desires to check the spread of Mr Gorham's opinions,
supposing that they should spread : and then the whole
question, as to what is the actual law of the Church,
would be reconsidered, though certainly at some dis-
advantage in consequence of this previous decision. Or
attempts may be made to modify the law, or to bring-
out its force more distinctly and explicitly, by an
ecclesiastical Synod. I am not saying that I should
hold this to be desirable or expedient : but it would
be a legitimate mode of correcting what may be deemed
defective in the law of our Church. There would be
nothing schismatical, nothing reprehensible in such a
procedure. Only they who engage in it should do so
with a solemn determination of submitting to the
decision, whatever it may be, and not setting up their
own will against the law ; which no man can rightfully
resist, unless it be under the constraint of Conscience
uttering its supreme voice with reference to his own
personal actions.
But when we speak of the sentence as " sanctioning
erroneous doctrine," we ought carefully to weigh what
its real force is. Many people have fancied that the
question at issue was, whether the Bishop of Exeter's
doctrine concerning Baptism, or Mr Gorham's, is that
of our Church ; as though the only alternative were
to choose between the two, so that one of them was
to be pronounced right, the other wrong. Others sup-
pose that the effect of the decision is to declare that
the Church halts between the two opinions, and does
6
not caiv wliich her ministers hold : and this seems to
be the view taken by the authors of your manifesto.
That there would be nothing monstrous or imheard of
in the allowance of such a latitude, we may learn from
what Horsley has said in his Charge for the year
1800, concerning the spirit of our Church, with regard
to another main question of theological debate : "I
know not what hinders but that the highest Supralap-
sarian Calvinist may be as good a Churchman as an
Arminian ; and if the Church of England in her mode-
ration opens her arms to both, neither can with a very
good grace desire that the other should be excluded."
Would that all the members of our Church, more
especially the Clergy, — whose occupations naturally ren-
der them tenacious of their peculiar opinions, — were
rightly imprest with the same conviction, enforced
as it is by a number of sayings in the New Testament,
and that they knew how to apply it to the other topics
of dispute ! For this has ever been the course of true
wisdom ; and that of our Reformers is evinced by
their endeavouring so carefully to tread in it. Still
this, it seems to me, is not the inference to be drawn
from the decision of the Court in the present matter.
That decision, although the Judges wisely and dutifully
abstain from pronouncing a dogmatical opinion, feeling
that this was not their business, and lay beyond their
competence, plainly implies throughout, that the doc-
trine of our Church is to recognise the universality of
Baptismal Regeneration. It merely pronounces that the
Judges could not deduce from her symbolical books,
that this doctrine is laid dow^n so positively and peremp-
torily, as to exclude every divergence of opinion in the
persons who are to minister at her fonts.
Your second Resolution, — " That the remission of
oi'igiiuil sin to alJ infants in, and by the grace of,
Baptism is an essential part of the Article, One
Baptism for the remission of sins," — states the dogmatical
ground upon which the subsequent ones are founded.
For the next proceeds to assert that the sentence of
tlie Court sanctions the denial of this " essential part
of that Article ;" after which you enumerate what you
conceive will be the consequences of that sanction, if
adopted by our Church.
Here in the first place let me observe, that, although,
when we declare our belief in One Baptism for the
Remission of Sins, we undoubtedly imply that through
this One Baptism we obtain the remission of all sins,
whether actual or original, so far as the term is appli-
cable to them both, yet the Article in the Creed, taken
by itself, does not determine the mode of this connexion.
It does not lay down in what cases the remission is
conditional or unconditional, or what the conditions are,
or how the remission may be frustrated, nor again in wliat
cases it is immediate or subsequent. Yet it is through,
or in consequence of, our Baptism, " as generally neces-
sary to salvation," that forgiveness of sins is granted
to us, not merely at the time, but afterward. It is
through our Baptism, as Luther is continually urging,
— by throwing ourselves back on our Baptism, and
claiming the privilege then bestowed on us, — that we re-
ceive forgiveness of our post-baptismal sins. As Jeremy
Taylor expresses the same truth, in his Discourse of
Baptism (§. 18), at the end of the first Part of the
Life of our Lord, " Baptism does not only pardon our
sins, but puts us into a state of pardon for the time
to come." And he there quotes Augustin's declaration
to the same effect : *' That which the Apostle says, —
Cleansing him loith the loashing of water in the word, —
is to be understood, that in the same laver of regeneration
and word of sanctiiication all the evils of the regenerate
are cleansed and healed ; not only the sins that are
past, which are all now remitted in Baptism, but also
those that are contracted afterward by human ignorance
and intirmity : not that Baptism be repeated as often
as we sin ; but because by this, which is once admin-
istered, is brought to pass, that pardon of all sins, not
only of those that are past, but also those which will
be committed afterward, is obtained."
I have quoted these passages, though they do not
bear on our immediate point, because they shew the
wide extent of the power of the One Baptism for the
Remission of Sins. Now the Article in the Creed no
way defines the various modes in which this mighty
power manifests itself, in which the remission of sins
is bestowed. It merely states the great spiritual fact, —
to use Butler's word, — that through Baptism we obtain
the remission of sins. It requires our belief in this,
such a belief being essential in order to our en-
trance into the state of Grace, and to our continuance
therein: but that is all. It does not declare that the
sins of all persons who are baptized are straightway for-
given : for it cannot be supposed to imply that the sins
of adults are forgiven, if they receive Baptism without
repentance and faith. Nor does it comprise any defini-
tion of the particular effects of Baptism on infants.
All that it asserts is, that Baptism is the appointed
means whereby, generally and ordinarily, we receive
the forgiveness of our sins ; that by Baptism we are
brought into that state of Grace, wherein, if we rightly
claim our baptismal privileges, we shall obtain for-
giveness. Nor does this assertion imply any impeach-
ment of the necessity of Faith as a condition of
Justification. Hence those who are called to admi-
nister the laws of the Church, have no right what-
soever to impose any particular interpretation of this
Article, any exposition of the mode in which the re-
mission of sins is conveyed, except so far as they may
be directed to do this by the authoritative Formularies of
the Church. Much less has any knot of men such a right,
however eminent they may be individually, when they are
merely gathered together by an act of their own will.
In truth, my dear Friend, I am quite astounded at the
conduct of your collegues, who have taken upon them-
selves to assert, on the strength of their private judge-
ments, that a certain proposition concerning original
sin is an *' essential part" of the Article in the Creed, and
solely thereupon to condemn the decision of what at
present is the supreme tribunal of our Church, and
therefore is entitled, as the ordinance of God, to our
submission, — nay, further, have gone on to declare that
unless our Church adopts this their private exposition,
she will " forfeit her office and authority to witness
and teach as a member of the universal Church," will
"become formally separated from the Catholic body,
and can no longer assure to her members the grace of
the sacraments and the remission of sins." I have heard
many vehement denunciations of late years against the
abuses of private judgement: a more extravagant instance
of that abuse, proceeding from a sane person, I never
heard of. That there is no manifest, essential repug-
nance in Mr Gorham's doctrine to this Ai'ticle in our
Creed, would seem to be plain, because, so far as I
can recollect, it was not even pleaded by the Counsel
against him, able and subtile and elaborate as their
arguments were ; although this single point, had there
been any real force in it, would have settled the matter
10
without I'lirtluT (K-hate. At all rvents no notice is
taken of suth an argument, either by the Court of
Appeal in tluir .ludgement in favour of Mr Gorhani,
or by Sir Herbert Jenncr Fust in his Judgement against
him, although he enters so minutely into the details
of the case, and would have saved himself much trouble
and diiliculty by this one argument. This proves that,
if any of the Counsel ventured to suggest it, the Judges,
though taking opposite sides, concurred in dismissing
it as irrelevant. Most probably too the advocates were
too well aware that such would be its fate, to adduce it. 1
have heard it indeed mooted in conversation, and have
already exprest my astonishment at it in the Note to
my Charge. It was left for the authors of your manifesto
to bring it formally forward as the one ground for con-
demning, not Mr Gorham merely, but the Judgement of
our Court of Appeal, and for threatening our Church
with excommunication unless she submits to their
dictation and adopts it.
I am no way controverting your proposition concerning
the remission of original sin, nor defending Mr Gorham's,
whatever it may be. This would be a distinct argument,
into which we have no call to enter. But I wish to
urge upon you, that we have no warrant for demanding
assent to any particular explanation of an Article in
the Creed, or to any particular consequence deduced from
it, except so far as the Church has defined or expounded
the Article in her Formularies. Inferences, which may
appear to us essential and irrefragable, may not be seen
in the same light by minds differently constituted and
trained. Above all is a Court of Law precluded from
thus straining and stretching the law, which it is called
upon to interpret and enforce. The rule both of justice
and equity, a deviation from which would open a gate
11
to all manner of arbitrary injustice, is that laid down by
the Court of Appeal for its own guidance in this case,
in the words of that great Judge, Sir William Scott,
that, " if any article is really a subject of dubious in-
terpretation, it would be highly improper that the Court
should fix on one meaning, and prosecute all those who
hold a contrary opinion regarding its interpretation."
Of course, if Mr Gorham actually denied the One Bap-
tism for the Remission of Sins, the case would be de-
cided ipso facto. But so long as he declares that he
believes in that Article, he cannot be condemned legally,
because he docs not accept our interpretation of it.
Ours may be the legitimate interpretation, his an er-
roneous one : this is a matter for theological discussion,
not for the interference of the law. The Church indeed
may deem it right to define the Article further, with the
direct purpose of excluding his interpretation, according
to her uniform practice of defining the Faith more and
more precisely, as one errour after another led her to
do so. Had the Court of Appeal assumed this right,
it would have been taking upon itself to determine doc-
trine, to do the very thing for doing which it has been
so much blamed, but from which it has scrupulously
abstained. Would that our self-constituted Popes and
Courts of Appeal partook in the same scruples ! They
fling about their sentences of Heresy, as readily as if they
were squibs. Are they not in so doing incurring the
woes denounced against those who call their brother
Raca and thou Fool ?
The third Resolution, as it states the supposed fact on
which all the others hinge, is of course, with reference
to the immediate matter of our consideration, the most
important of the whole series : " That, — to omit other
questions raised by the said sentence, — such sentence.
12
while it docs not deny the liberty ol" holding that Article
in the sense heretofore received, does equally sanction the
assertion that original sin is a bar to the right reception of
Baptism, and is not remitted except ^vhen God bestows
regeneration beforehand by an act of prevenient grace
(whereof Holy Scripture and the Church are wholly
silent), thereby rendering the benefits of holy Baptism
altogether uncertain and precarious."
This Resolution, I said, contains the one fact, on
which all the others turn. The first two lead the way
to this : the next four set forth the terrible consequences
which will result from it, unless prompt measures
are taken to avert them, — how hereby our Church will
abandon a main Article of the Creed, — how she will
thereby " destroy the divine foundation upon which alone
the entire faith is propounded by her," — how she will
thereby " forfeit, not only the Catholic doctrine in that
Article, but also the ofiice and authority to witness and
teach as a member of the universal Church," — nay, how she
will thereby " become formally separated from the Catho-
lic body, and can no longer assure to her members the
grace of the sacraments and the remission of sins." Then
the last two Resolutions suggest the remedial measures
by which these dire calamities are to be averted.
Berkeley's famous Siris would seem to be the model,
which the compilers of these Resolutions have set them-
selves to follow. Yet that procedure, which may be
legitimate in a series of speculative propositions, wherein
Christian thought may mount by a Jacob's ladder from
every point of the earth to God, does not hold out
the same stable concatenation in practical matters, in
which manifold forces may come across us at any moment,
and break the chain. Surely, my dear Friend, it requires
an inordinate faith in one's own logical dreams, an
13
idolizing worship of one's own opinions, to l)clieve that
the Church of England, blest as she has been by God
for so many generations, raised as she has been by Him
to be the Mother of so many Churches, with such a
promise shining upon her, and brightening every year,
that her Daughters shall spread round the earth, — that
she who has been chosen by God to be the instru-
ment of so many blessings, and the j)resence of her Lord
and of His Spirit with whom was never more manifest
than at this day, — should forfeit her office and authority
as a witness of the Truth, should be cut off from the
body of Christ's Church, and should no longer be able
to dispense the grace of the sacraments, or to assure
her people of the remission of sins, because her highest
Law-court has not condemned a proposition asserted by
one of her ministers concerning a very obscure and per-
plexing question of dogmatical theology. Surely, this
would be an extraordinary delusion, even if the facts,
as stated in the third Resolution, were perfectly correct.
For whatever the dogmatical value of the opinion there
maintained may be, the errour is not one which indicates
any want of personal faith or holiness, or any decay of
Christian life in the Church. On the contrary, among
the persons who agree more or less with Mr Gorham's
view on this point, are many of our most zealous, faithful,
devoted ministers. Indeed it is through their jealous
zeal for spiritual faith and holiness, that most of them
have been led to adopt their opinion, and through their
shrinking from the superstitious, pernicious notion of
the efficacy of the mere opus operatum in the Sacraments.
But what shall we say, if the fact on which these
awful consequences have been piled, mountain upon
movmtain, Ossa upon Pelion, and Olympus upon Ossa,
has no existence in reality ? if it is imaginary and fictitious ?
14
When wo take away tlu> louiulation, the superstructure
must needs tumble into nonentity. Now such, 1 am
thankful to say, is the real state of the case.
For iirst, whatever may be the opinions held by Mr
Gorham, which the Court allows him to hold without
incurring deprivation thereby, it does not, as I have
observed already, "sanction them equally" with those
more generally received. It carefully abstains from
deciding anything on this point. The Court felt that
tliey were not called to determine what is the true
doctrine, or that generally received in our Church.
They declare this more than once in explicit terms,
and confine themselves strictly to the one point be-
fore them, whether Mr Gor ham's doctrine is " contrary
or repugnant to the doctrine of the Church of England
as by law establisht," so as to " afford a legal ground
for refusing him institution to the living to which he
had been lawfully presented." Now this is something
totally different from placing the two views on the same
level, from " sanctioning them both equally." Your
not turning a man out of your house would not be
equivalent to receiving him as a bosom friend. Our
divines, accustomed to the latitude and laxity of theo-
logical argumentation, cannot bring themselves to attend
to the minute strictness of judicial decisions, which keep
close to the immediate point, and require cogent evidence
before they pronounce a condemnation. They are
not duly aware how careful our Judges are in refraining
from laying down anything like general j)rinciples. The
Judges in other countries are not so : this is a peculiar
feature of our English practical understanding : and in
the present question it was especially incumbent on them
to tread cautiously in a region which lies so far out of
their beat.
15
But further, what is still more surprising, the very
proposition which is here selected as the heresy sanctioned
by the sentence of the Judicial Committee, — a heresy so
atrocious that this sanction of it, unless we make haste to
protest against it, will cut off our Church from the Body
of Christ, and will deprive her of her evangelical power,
— this awful proposition, " that original sin is a bar to
the right reception of Baptism, and is not remitted,
except when God bestows regeneration beforehand by
an act of prevenient grace," —not only does not receive
any sanction from the Judgement, but is not so much
as mentioned in it. You, my dear Friend, will of course
have read through the Judgement carefully, before you
signed this strong protest against it : whether the authors
of the protest did, does not appear from any evidence
on the face of it: in fact such evidence as may be
deduced from it would rather lead to an opposite con-
clusion. But you will of course remember the peculiar
form in which the Judges found themselves compelled
to draw up their Judgement, in consequence of the
manner in which the case was brought before them.
They complain, you will remember, as the Court of
Arches had already complained, and surely not without
reason, that no definite issues had been joined with
regard to " the particular unsound doctrine imputed
to Mr Gorham," — that, instead of this, Mr Gorham
had been charged with divers unsound opinions con-
cerning Baptism, in proof of which the only evidence
adduced was the volume containing the Report of his
Examination, — and that thus they had been " called upon
to examine a long series of questions and answers,
— of questions upon a subject of a very abstruse nature,
intricate, perplexing, entangling, and many of them not
admitting of distinct and explicit answers, — of answers
IG
not given phiinly and directly, but in a guarded and
cautious manner, with the apparent view of escaping
from some ajiprelicnded consequence of plain and direct
answers." Such being the form under which the case
was presented to them, the Court proceed to state the
course which they had found themselves compelled to
adopt. " In considering the Examination, which is the
only evidence, we must have regard not only to the
particular question to which each answer is subjoined,
but to the general scope, object, and character of the
whole examination ; and if, under circumstances so pecu-
liar and perplexing, some of the answers should be found
difficult to be reconciled with one another (as we think
is the case), justice requires that an endeavour should
be made to reconcile them in such a manner, as to obtain
the result which appears most consistent with the general
intention of Mr Gorham in the exposition of his doctrine
and opinions."
No one, I think, who has any sense of justice and
equity, will question that this was the right course for
the Judges to adopt: at least no one will do so, who
has meditated on the awful responsibility incurred by
men sitting to administer justice, and on the exceed-
ing candour and impartiality, and the caution not to
strain any point of evidence beyond its palpable purport,
which form the glorious characteristics of our Courts
of Law. It is a maxim of our jurisprudence, that the
accused is to have the benefit of every doubt, whether
on the face of the evidence, or of the law : and I hardly
know any grander indication of national character, than
the patience and forbearance manifested by our Judges
at the trials even of notorious criminals, especially for
political offenses, their scrupulous care lest any particle
of an argument, which may make for the culprit, should
17
not have due weight attacht to it. I never read such a
trial, without being moved to reverence for the majesty
of our Law, v/hich thus tempers justice with mercy. The
principle on which they administer it, as is well known,
is, that it is better that ten guilty persons should
be acquitted, than that a single innocent one should be
condemned. Accordingly, in the present instance, the
.Tudges felt that Mr Gorham, and those who agree
with him, — for they could not be ignorant that many
other persons would be affected by their decision,
and this could not but make them still more cautious
than they otherwise might have been, — were in a
manner placed under their protection; so that, if they
could detect anything, either in the wording or the
history of the law, which seemed to admit of a con-
struction favorable to him, he was to have the full ad-
vantage of it. Hence they may perhaps have ascribed
too much importance to certain changes, even very slight
ones, in our Articles or Prayerbook, as indicative of an
intention to relax their stringency. In like manner, as
a judge will often throw his shield over a witness, who
has been worried and baited into contradicting himself
by a browbeating advocate, so did the Court of Appeal
deem themselves bound to give the most favorable
construction to Mr Gorham's answers, extorted from
him in the course of his vexatious and inquisitorial
examination.
Hence it is only reasonable to expect that the opinions
which the Judges deduce from Mr Gorham's book,
looking at it with their calm, cold, judicial eye,
should differ more or less from the deductions drawn
by persons searching it with the eager eye of a contro-
versialist to detect the remotest, faintest indications
of heresy. It is true that persons who have not been
c
IS
vorst in coiUrovorsial divinity, may easily overlook
heretical symptoms, \vhich a more practist eye would
discern ; lor w liicli reason tliere ought to be a certain
number of learned theologians in a rightly consti-
tuted Court of Appeal ; though at the same time
it is no less requisite that there should be a due
admixture of lay judges, to moderate and correct the
zeal and partialities to wliich profest theologians would
be prone. No one however, I trust, would dare to
insinuate that our Judges in this case have decided
otherwise than with strict conscientiousness and right-
eousness, according to their insight into the matter
proj)ounded to them. Their personal character, as well
as that of the Bench generally, precludes such a sup-
position. Now their statement of the doctrine held
by Mr Gorham, as ascertained by the above-men-
tioned process, is this : — " that Baptism is a sacrament
generally necessary to salvation, but that the grace of
regeneration does not so necessarily accompany the
act of baptism, that regeneration invariably takes place
in baptism ; that the grace may be granted before, in,
or after baptism ; that baptism is an effectual sign of
grace, by which God works invisibly in us, but only
in such as worthily receive it, — in them alone it has
a wholesome effect ; and that, without reference to the
qualification of the recipient, it is not in itself an effec-
tual sign of grace : that infants baptized, and dying
before actual sin, are certainly saved ; but that in no
case is regeneration in baptism unconditional." These,
and these alone, are the propositions in which the Court
sum up their account of Mr Gorham's doctrine. These
therefore, and these alone, are the propositions, which
they declare not to be " contrary or repugnant to the
doctrine of the Church of England as by law establisht,''
19
so as to " afford a legal ground for refusing him insti-
tution to tlic living to which he had been lawfully
presented."
Now these propositions differ considerably from the
one stated in your tliird Resolution. It may be that
yours is also to be found in Mr Gorham's volume :
but that is immaterial to our present point ; and so
I will not take the trouble of searching for it. At
all events it has not been extracted by the Judges in
their Judgement, and therefore has not obtained that
qualified sanction which the Court has granted to the
others. Hence you may rejoice with me in thinking
that we have no ground for anticipating the tremendous
evils, which it has been supposed to portend. Do not
say that this is quibbling. In discussions of this kind
the utmost precision is indispensable. A slight change
in the shade of meaning of a word may completely
alter the character of a proposition. Every logician
is aware of this ; and in no department of science has
it been more manifest than in the history of Theologj',
Above all is such precision necessary when these awful
consequences are said to ensue from the proposition.
It may be contended indeed that the representation
of Mr Gorham's opinions in the Judgement is much
too favorable. I have admitted that it is likely to be
much more favorable than that which would be drawn
up by a controversial theologian. I have referred to those
noble features in the character of our Courts of Justice,
their shrinking from straining any point of evidence
against a culprit, their aptness to err, if any way, on
the side of mercy, their determination to take care
that the meanest and worst criminal shall not suffer
wrong. Even Rush had every possible indulgence
granted to him by the exemplary Judge, who yet
c 2
20
showed, when passing sentence, that he had the fullest
conviction and a rigliteous horrour of his crimes.
What then must needs have been the bias of such a
tribunal, when they were called to pronounce a sen-
tence whereby they would have deprived Mr Gorham
of his living, — of whom personally I know nothing,
but whose Examination proves him to be a man of
highminded integrity, as well as of remarkable ability,
and who has been serving nine and thirty years faith-
fully and laboriously in the ministry, — when they were
called thus to eject him, not on account of any offense
against morals, or even against discipline, not on
account of any heretical book that he had publisht,
not even on account of a heretical sermon that he
had preacht, — but on account of a series of answers,
wrung from him, in a manner unprecedented in our
Church, and which, I trust, will never be imitated, by
a kind of logical thumbscrew. Surely the righteous
indignation which such a procedure must needs excite,
would constrain the Court in such a case to put the
most favorable construction on his opinions. This how-
ever greatly lessens the importance of the Judgement,
as affecting the Church. Nor can it be held to convey
the slightest sanction to any opinions that Mr Gorham
may have exprest, except so far as they are compre-
hended in the statement which the Court has given of
them. Among the incidental observations and arguments
which the Court has made use of, there may be several
questionable positions : it could hardly be otherwise,
when they were speaking on matters with which they
were not familiar. But the obiter dicta of Judges have
no binding force, and, in such a case as this, would
not be held to have any force at all. The only part
of the Judgement by which the Church is affected, is
21
the decision that a person entertaining the opinions
ascribed in it to Mr Gorham is not thereby precluded
from holding preferment.
Moreover from this statement we further see, that
Mr Gorham's doctrine, at least according to the view
of the Court, — and to this point I desire to confine
myself, lest my Letter should swell to an inordinate
bulk,— cannot "render the benefits of Holy Baptism
altogether uncertain and precarious ; " seeing that he
accepts the assertion in the Rubric, " that, infants
baptized, and dying before actual sin, are certainly
saved."
As the next four Resolutions are merely successive
amplifications and exaggerations of the consequences to
be apprehended from the fact misstated in the third, I
might here say, Cadit quaestio, and drop my pen. Nor
should I be diverted from this course by the mere desire
of exposing the fallacies in them, unless it were plain
that these same fallacies are exercising a wide influence
in this calamitous dispute, and are luring many into the
fatally delusive notion that our Church is in danger of
forfeiting its Catholic, Christian character. Seeing how-
ever that this is so, I must still trouble you with a few
more remarks.
On the fourth so-called Resolution, — " That to admit
the lawfulness of holding an exposition of an Article of
the Creed contradictory of the essential meaning of that
Article is, in truth and in fact, to abandon that Article,"
— I will merely observe, in addition to what has already
been said on the subject of it, that it requires two im-
portant limitations. First, not only must it be demon-
stratively clear and certain that the exposition is con-
tradictory of the essential meaning of the Article, but
the collective body, or the individuals, of whom it can
22
justly be said that they abandon tlie Article, must be
distinctly aware that it is so. An errour from igno-
rance is ever a venial errour. So long as we are
persuaded that the exposition is compatible with the
Article, we cannot justly be charged with abandon-
ing it. As ignorance, if not wilful, is a plea ever
admitted by righteous human tribunals, so, we are
taught, will due weight be allowed to it at the seat of
Divine Judgement. Secondly, it is no way essential
to our holding any Truth, even an Article of the
Creed, that we should enforce it upon others with
penalties. He who sincerely believes himself to be in
possession of any divine truth, will indeed earnestly
desire that others should partake of the same precious
gift ; he will desire to communicate it to them : but he
will only make use of those means, whereby it can be
communicated; and therefore he will not use any con-
straint, except that of Reason and that of Love. The
spirit of your Resolution is lamentably alien from that
of St Paul's exhortation to the Philippians : Let tis,
as many as he perfect, he thus minded : and if i}i any-
thing ye he otherwise minded, God will reveal this also to
you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained,
let us walk hy the same rule, let us mind the same thing.
What blessings would descend on our Church, if we
could be brought to act thus !
Wliat your fifth Resolution was intended to mean,
I am sorely puzzled to divine. It asserts " that, inas-
much as the faith is one, and rests upon one principle
of authority, the conscious, deliberate, and wilful aban-
donment of the essential meaning of an Article of the
Creed destroys the divine foundation upon which alone
the entire faith is propounded by the Church." These
words were doubtless intended to mean something awful ;
23
but what ? That the Faith is One, according to the
meaning which St Paul attaches to the words, is indeed
certain : that is, those great primordial Truths, which
are set before us in the Scriptures, are expansions
or emanations or manifestations of one great central
Truth, and, as such, constitute that One Faith, which
man is called to believe. But, as the unity of the stem
does not prevent the tree from expanding in the variety
of the branches, — as the unity of the central sun is no
way inconsistent with the diversities of the planets, and
of their satellites, — so has it ever been with Truth. It
has expanded diversely in different ages ; as we see, in
the Scriptures themselves, how different its expan-
sions were in the Patriarchal Age, in the Law, in the
Prophets, and in the Gospel. So again, even after the
Incarnation of our Lord, even after His Passion, many
truths were still reserved for the teaching of the Spirit
of Truth. Thus the Faith, though primarily One, was
diverse in its manifestations down to that time : nor has
it ceast to be so to a certain extent since, as it has spread
itself out to embrace new spheres of life, and ampler
regions of thought. Therefore we must beware of
confounding the primordial principles of our Faith with
their ulterior developments and consequences, and of
claiming the same luiity and identity for these, which
rightfully belong to the others. Exceeding caution is
necessary in this matter ; because, as the ignorant man
in the state of nature makes himself and his own ex-
perience the measure of the universe, so, even in our
most cultivated state, the proneness to this fallacy does
not pass away : man is still apt to substitute his own
will for God's will, his own faith for the Faith. Hence,
when we are applying the principle of the unity of the
Faith to any particular doctrine, it behoves us carefully
24
to (.onsidt'i- whctluv that doctriuo is indeed one belonging
to the central stem, or to the diverse, multitudinous
branches, under which the nations are gathered, each see-
in«x more ol" such branches as stretch in its own direction,
and loving them more for the shelter it receives from
them. As each individual man attaches an inordinate
value to those truths which are the most congenial to his
peculiar frame of mind and temper, or which the circum-
stances of his life have imprest most forcibly upon him, so
is it, more or less, with nations and Churches, and with
different ages of the Church. Each will be apt to exag-
gerate the importance of its own favorite body of truths,
and to depreciate the opposite truths, which are no less
necessary to the harmonious unity of the whole : and one
extreme ever tends to produce the other. Thus, with
reference to our immediate question, the enormous ex-
aggerations of the power of baptismal grace, to the dis-
paragement, and almost exclusion, of the subsequent
converting influences of the Spirit, have driven people
into the opposite extreme, where baptismal grace has
been unduly depreciated. The monstrous assertions con-
cerning a change of nature in Baptism have impelled
those, who could not veil their eyes to the fallaciousness
of these assertions, to deny anything beyond an outward
change of state. These and other like considerations
need to be fully weighed, before we give our assent
to any special application of the assertion that there
is One Faith, or deal severely with those who, in their
zeal for some one neglected truth, may be led to
disparage another.
But what is meant by the next assertion, that the
one faith " rests upon one principle of authority ?" How
does it rest upon a principle of authority ? I can under-
stand what is meant by saying that our faith rests
25
u])on authority. In the subjective sense of the word
J'ailh, the faith of children rests upon the authority of
tlieir parents and teachers, the faith of the Christian
Church rests upon the authority of the word of God :
and that whicli is said correctly of our subjective faith,
may be transferred to the Faith in its objective sense.
This however does not explain how the Faith rests upon
a principle of authority. And what can be the one
principle of authority ? One may guess that the words
were intended to mean, that the faith of the Church is
to be determined by the Church ; though I see not how
they express this. But by what Church ? The whole
protest shews that the writers of it think their mother
Church, the Church of England, is in danger of falling
into such errour as would cut her off from the Church
of Christ. To her voice therefore they cannot attach
much value as having authority to determine the faith.
Or is the Church of Rome a less fallible witness ? Our
nineteenth Article declares that, "as the Church of
Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred, so also
the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their
living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters
of Faith." Surely they who would be so severe against
Mr Gorham for what they suppose to be a doctrine
repugnant to our Liturgy, are not themselves contra-
vening the direct assertion of this nineteenth Article.
What then is the one principle of authority ? Is it the
authority of their own private judgements ?
Nor does the latter part of this Resolution, which
is introduced as an inference from the mysterious pro-
position we have been considering, solve my perplexities.
It states that, inasmuch as the one Faith rests upon one
principle of authority, " the conscious, deliberate and
wilful abandonment of the essential meaning of an
26
Article of the Creed destroys tlie divine foundation
upon whieh alone the entire faitli is propounded by
the Church." What is this " divine foundation, upon
which alone the entire faith is propounded by the
Church i " Can it be the word of God, which in our
twentieth Article is declared to be the rule the Church
is bound to follow in determining controversies of Faith ?
But how is this to be " destroyed," and that too by
the abandonment of an Article of the Creed ? Nay,
how can a divine foundation be destroyed ? As the
critics say, locus est plane conclamatus : and I will not
weary myself or you any longer by conjecturing its
possible meaning. I will merely add that the epithets,
conscious, deliberate, and luilful, applied to our supposed
abandonment of the essential meaning of an Article of
the Creed, altogether neutralize the evils, whatever they
may be, threatened in the latter part of the Resolution.
For assuredly we may say, that, through God's grace,
and with His help and blessing, the Church of England
will not consciously, deliberately, and wilfully abandon
the essential meaning of any Article in the Creed. If
she does abandon it, she will do so in ignorance, un-
consciously, from not conceiving it to be essential.
There seems to be an intention in this Resolution, so far
as I can catch any glimmering of its purpose, to apply the
declaration of St James, that ivhosoever shall offend in one
point, is guilty of all, to errours of doctrine. The truth
however, which is exprest in this verse, that a single
wilful sin implies the alienation of the will from God,
does not hold in like manner of errours of the under-
standing, which, in its best estate, at present only sees
through a glass, darkly and partially.
The sixth and seventh Resolutions are little more
than amplifications of the fifth, giving a wider and
27
wider range to the evils denounced as impending on
our Church in consequence of the recent Judgement,
and intended to declare that, if she acquiesces in it,
she will '' forfeit the oflice and authority to witness
and teach as a member of the universal Church," and
will become " formally separated from the Catholic body,
and can no longer assure to her members the grace of
the sacraments and the remission of sins." And who are
they, my dear Friend, who take upon themselves thus
to pronounce a sentence of condemnation against our
Church ? By what authority do they pronounce it ?
Who gave them that authority ? One thing at all events
is clear, when we compare this hypothetical Judgement
with that of our Court of Appeal, that the Church will
not gain much in the wisdom and caution of her tribunals
by the substitution of clerical for lay Judges. The falla-
ciousness of the logical process by which these cumulative
Resolutions are constructed, might be exemplified by
our supposing a sopliist to argue, that, inasmuch as the
nails are essential parts of the hand, a man who has been
cutting his nails has been cutting his hand, — and that,
inasmuch as the hand is an essential part of the arm,
he has been cutting his arm, — and that, for a like
reason, he has been consciously, deliberately, and wil-
fully, cutting his body, — ergo, that he who has been
consciously, deliberately, and wilfully cutting his nails,
has been cutting his throat. The objections, which
have been lu-ged against the preceding Resolutions, apply
with still greater force to these. Since it is not evident
on the face of the Article, One Baptism for the Remission
of Sins, that the remission of original sin to all infants
in and by the grace of Baptism, solely, immediately,
and unconditionally, is an essential part of it, — and since
this has not been ruled to be so by any authoritative
28
declaration of our Church, — our acquiescence in tlie
Judgement of the Court of Appeal cannot be con-
strued into a conscious, deliberate, wilful abandonment
of that Article in the Creed. Since the proposition
stated in the third Resolution is not sanctioned or even
mentioned in the Judgement, the Church cannot be
liable to the evil consequences boded from it. Since the
Courts of Law are not warranted in assuming any
particular interpretation of an Article of the Creed,
unless it be unmistakably palpable on the face of the
Article, or laid down by some decree of our Church,
the dismissal of such an interpretation, even if it
was urged upon them as an argument to determine
their decision, was the course prescribed by all sound
principles of law and equity, and therefore, we may
trust, will not bring down any evils on our Church ;
except so far as evils may accrue from the intemperance
and insubordination of her individual members. Nor
will our adherence to the One Faith of Chiist be for-
feited by the admission of diversities of opinion concerning
derivative points of doctrine. Through God's blessing,
and through the power of His Spirit, who has been
moving visibly in our Church of late years, and through
whom many of its dry bones have sprung up and been
clothed with life, our Church, we may feel a confident
trust, will still continue a member of Christ's Holy
Body, will still retain her office and authority of witness-
ing and teaching as a member of that Body, and will
still be able to preach the Gospel of salvation, and to
administer the sacraments which her Lord appointed,
as means for the conveyance of His Grace, and as
pledges to assure us thereof.
There is something to my mind quite shocking in the
notion, which in the exaggerations of our imagination,
29
irritated by personal discomfort, people are so ready to
assume, that the world is to go to rack, because a man's
shoe pinches him. In the Church, in which the providen-
tial order of events is far more clearly discernible than in
secular history, this utter disproportion and incongruity
between causes and effects is peculiarly offensive. How
unlike are these prognostics to the causes which are to
produce the destruction of the Churches in the Vision of
St John ! The doctrinal differences between the Greek
Church and tlie Latin did indeed lead to a schism, owing
partly to the hierarchal ambition of the latter, and partly
to the influence of the dogmatical spirit, which con-
founded identity of opinions with unity of Faith. But
surely the Greek Church, though her differences relate
to more important questions, did not thereby forfeit
her Christian character and privileges. Or do the
authors of your manifesto hold that she did ? If not,
why should the English ?
Thus I cannot but regard the string of Resolutions,
to which you, my dear Friend, have been induced to
subscribe your name, as utterly worthless, whether we
examine the jjarticular propositions which severally they
are intended to assert, or look at them in their logical
connexion and sequence. But, alas ! they are not mere
abstract propositions. Had they been nothing more,
I should hardly have troubled you with any objections
to them ; or, if I had, it would have been done
briefly and privately. Unfortunately the moment at
which this manifesto has been issued, and the names
appended to it, give it an importance which bodes no
good to our Church. Hence, from the very moment
when I first read it, I conceived an earnest desire
to do what I could, if I could do anything, to
check the mischief it seemed to threaten, by exposing
30
llu' t'allacics coutaincil in it ; and 1 sat down almost
ininiediately to write this letter to you, if so be
your regard for your old Tutor might induce you to
listen to his voice of warning. The same motive
induces me to publish it, in the hope that it may
perhaps help a reader here and there to extricate him-
self from the confusions and delusions which have
been rushing like a thick fog upon our Church.
I have been looking forward for some time with
niany^ fears to this crisis, and have already endea-
voiu'ed to utter a few peacemaking words, in a Note
(K) subjoined to tlie Charge which has just been pub-
lisht, and in the Dedication prefixt to it. My chief
fear has been, lest, if the decision of the Court of
Arches had been confirmed by the Court of Appeal,
that large body of our ministers, who agree more or
less with Mr Gorham in their views on Baptismal
Regeneration, — having reconciled themselves to the use
of our Baptismal Service by adopting the hypothetical
interpretation of its declarations, — should deem themselves
compelled thereby to resign their cures, and to retire into
lay communion. Such a result would have been most
calamitous to our Church. Numbers, hundreds, if not
thousands of our ministers, of the best, most faithful, most
devoted among our Clergy, might have been placed in a
condition, in which they would have deemed themselves
bound in conscience to withdraw from their ministerial
office, under the conviction that they could no longer
discharge its functions honestly and conscientiously, when
the decision of the Supreme Court in our Church had
decided that their interpretation of the Baptismal Service
was incompatible with the holding of a cure. Hence
I felt deeply thankful for tlie very wise, temperate,
considerate Judgement of the Court of Appeal, which
31
averted this danger, and which, thougli it may be re-
garded unfavorably by the opposite party, does not impose
any constraint on their consciences in the performance
of their ministerial duties.
You, my dear Friend, have signed this vehement pro-
test against that Judgement. Why have you done so ?
Do you, can you really wish to drive a thousand of
the very best, most zealous, most devoted ministers,
who are now labouring in our Church, out of the
ministry ? Is this the way in which you would prepare
our Church for the terrible conflicts awaiting her ? Has
the angel that appeared to Gideon, come to you, and
told you that the army of the Lord in this land are
too many, and that it is necessary to diminish their num-
ber ? Are we not hearing every day that we want more
ministers, more clergy, yea, by thousands, in order to
meet the enormous increase in the masses of our popu-
lation ? It may be that those who would have relin-
quisht their office, would not quite have amounted to a
thousand. But, unless some remedial measure had been
adopted, many hundreds would have retired ; and thou-
sands would have been placed in sore straits whether
to do so or no. That ministry, which they now discharge
with joy and thankful alacrity, would thenceforward
have been troubled by doubts in their own minds as
to the rectitude of their conduct, and by frequent inso-
lent gibes from those, who, having little living faith,
and scarcely knowing what it means, are ever the greatest
sticklers for forms and the letter of dogmas, the Scribes
and the Pharisees of our age. Remember too, the
ministers whom we should have lost, would have com-
prised a very large proportion of those who are now
exercising the most salutary, blessed influence on their
people, of the shepherds who go before their sheep,
32
ami whom their shoe)) foUow, hceausc they know their
voice.
O but tliey are heretics ! My dear Friend, let us
beware of using that ominous, terrible word, which in all
ages has been a source of such woes and crimes in the
Church, and which, I believe, has mostly been used
by the ungodly against the godly ; which whetted the
sword of Simon de Montfort and of Alva, which kindled
the fires of the Inquisition, which murdered Huss, and
Cranmer, and Latimer, and Ridley, and those
" Slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lay scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Slain by the bloody Picmonteso, that rolled
jMotlier with infant down the rocks ;"
yea, which has poured out the blood of God's saints,
like water, on the earth. It wall not indeed do the
same now : but, unless the power of Christ's spirit
in the Church silences those who are clamorous in
using it, even now it will rend hearts, and wring con-
sciences, and dissolve holy bonds, and sever the loving
shepherd from his loving sheep. And what are these
heretics ? what is their heresy ? Do they deny the
Lord Jesus ? or the Father ? or the Spirit ? or the power
of Christ's Death ? or that of His Resurrection ? Are
they not the very persons Avho are the most zealous for
the glory of the Lord, the most active in winning souls
for Him, and in spreading the knowledge and the power
of His salvation ? Nay, does not the source of their
errour in this very matter lie in their zeal for the
Spirit ? Is it not mainly caused by the exaggerations
and extravagances of those, who lose sight of the
power of the Spirit in their veneration for an outward
ordinance, substituting a momentary transformation for
an abiding presence, — and by the misfortune which has
S3
given us an equivocal word, as the point for the whole
controversy to turn on ? I am not speaking at random,
my Friend. I know many, whom an opposite judgement
would have placed in terrible straits ; and they are among
our best ministers, the most diligent, the most loving,
the holiest in their lives, the saintliest in their spirits.
While you and your collegues have been composing
your manifesto, you have not reflected what agonies you
were preparing for thousands of God's most devoted
servants throughout the land, what wounds for our
Church, — unless, as I hope and trust, it proves utterly
futile and ineffectual.
You, I know, my dear Friend, would not harm one
of God's servants. Their hearts and consciences would
be as safe, for any injury you would inflict upon them, as
the bodies and garments of the three men in the firy
furnace. My persuasion is, that, in signing the protest,
you have acted partly under the influence of your friends,
partly through indignation that a question so intimately
affecting the doctrine of the Church should be brought
before a lay tribunal, and partly from your often exprest
wish that we should have a properly constituted Eccle-
siastical Legislature. On this last point I will say a few
words anon. With regard to the tribunal, I see no
need of adding anything to what I have already said
in the Note to my Charge. But, though I am most
willing to acquit you of all blame, except that of adding
a somewhat hasty signature to a paper drawn up by your
friends, — and most people are too apt to do this wiih-
out examining the wording, when they concur in its
general objects, — yet, much as I should desire to find a
like excuse for your collegues, I cannot. From their
position they ought to have a far clearer knowledge of
the mischief which an opposite Judgement would have
D
34
caused. Tlu'v must kuow too wliat kind of effect tlu-ir
inauifosto i.s likely to produce in the feverish condition of
our Church. Nay, it is evidently proniulofated with the
very purpose of producing that effect. When I look
at the names subscribed to it, I should expect to find
a paper which aimed at quieting men's minds, at cahning
the troubled waters, at extinguishing the morbid ferment;
which gave a sober view of the real bearings of the
Judgement; which called on us to revere and love our
spiritual Mother, and to abide patiently and dutifully
until the fever has abated, and the time comes for
taking the steps best fitted for the removal of our
grievances. But when I raise my eyes from the sig-
natures to the Resolutions, what do I find? No-
thing soothing, nothing healing, nothing pacific ; but
a vast exaggeration, as I think I have proved it to
be, of our present evils, and not one merely, but ex-
aggeration upon exaggeration, and threat upon threat,
that, if the Church does not adopt the course they pre-
scribe for her, she \vill forfeit her divine privileges, and
be cut off from the Body of Christ. How has it come
to pass that they, who but a short time since were
dutiful and loving children of our dear Mother, can
use such Avords concerning her ? Duty and Love would
shrink from the yery thought, would cast it from them
as though it were a scorjiion. Have they no faith in
Christ's watchful care for His beloved Church in this
land ? for her to whom He has shewn so much love ;
whom He has so richly endowed ; to whom He has
given, and is still giving such a glorious mission ; a
mission in our days more glorious than ever before.
Think too, my Friend, what is the time at which these
words are thrown about. Will a rational man toss a
firebrand into a powder-mill ? All manner of loose,
35
vagrant, uncontrolled desires, and wild dreams, and
visionary fancies, discontent with the present, and blind
longings for the restoration of some imaginary past, are
fermenting in the religious mind of Young England.
There are divers elements of fine promise in it, if they
can be brought into order, — if men will be content to
do their duty in that state of life to which it has pleased
God to call them. But that is the very thing they
will not do. They will not put on the harness of
ancient, establisht ordinances : they choose to frisk about,
and to fashion a new sort of harness for themselves.
And at such a time as this, when every man is desiring
to build a Babel of his own, — at such a time as this,
when every one deems that he is called to remould
the Church according to his own fancies, — at such a
time as this we find grave Doctors and Dignitaries of
the Church telling their followers and disciples that
the Church of England is on the very brink of forfeit-
ing her Christian character and privileges. How will
this be understood ? Will it not be regarded by many,
— who knows how many ? — as a call to quit the foun-
dering ship, and to take refuge, — where ? . . in the lap
of Delilah . . amid the inipostvires of Rome. There
are they to seek for Christian liberty, for purity of faith,
for fulness of unalloyed truth.
I said at the beginning that, if I found much to
blame in the manifesto, it would probably be attribu-
table in great measure to its having a multitude of
authors. In confirmation of this, let me remark that
the Guardian of the 20th of this month contains two
letters, which, if the initials subjoined to them do not
deceive me, are by two of your co-protesters : and the
tone and spirit of those letters are very different from
the manifesto, and far better, more in accordance with
D 2
36
what one ini»jlit expect iVom tlie persons whom 1 conceive
to be the writers.
I have not toucht yet on your last two Resolutions,
which su'^uest the measures to he taken for the deliver-
ance of our Church from the evils complained of and
threatened. You recommend " that all measures con-
sistent with the present legal position of the Church
should be taken without delay^ to obtain an authoritative
declaration by the Church of the doctrine of Holy
Baptism impugned by the recent sentence ; as, for
instance, by praydng license for the Church in Con-
vocation to declare that doctrine, or by obtaining an
Act of Parliament to give legal effect to the decisions
of the collective Episcopate on this and all other matters
purely spiritual ; " or else, "that, failing such measures,
all efforts must be made to obtain from the said Episco-
pate, acting only in its spiritual character, a re-affirmation
of the doctrine of Holy Baptism impugned by the said
sentence."
These Resolutions happily will not require many-
words from me here. As practical measures, they may
be discust hereafter, when the course of events brings
them before us. With regard to the desirableness of
an Ecclesiastical Synod, you are well aware that on
the general principle I cordially concur with you ; and
it was a great pleasure to me to find a layman speaking
with such warm interest on the subject, as you have
evinced in your Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In that letter you have referred to my argument to
the same effect in a long Note on my Charge for 1842,
The Means of Unity. The opinions there exprest, I
still adhere to. If I hesitate in some measure about
the expediency of convening a Synod or Convocation
at the present moment, my doubts have been caused
37
by the violence of the controversies which have been
carried on since that Note was written, by the painful
agitation on the appointment of Dr Hampden to the
See of Hereford ; by the blind prejudices and the
intemperance displayed so wofuUy at the last two
Anniversary Meetings of the National Society, and at
the recent Meeting in Willises Rooms : and now this
manifesto is come to shew that the very persons to whom
I should have lookt, in the hope that they would calm
the temper of our discussions, and think it their special
duty motos componere Jluctus, are taking the lead in
spreading exaggerated statements of the grievances which
we desire to have redrest. In such a condition of things
the path of Wisdom becomes obscure, if we search for
the signs of present expediency : but I believe that,
in this as in other matters, it will brighten before us,
if we can bring ourselves to look forward with faith and
hope. Therefore, although our perils would be greatly
augmented by our having to enter upon such a work,
as discussing and legislating for the affairs of the Church,
at a moment when men's minds are in this state of
hostile irritation, I would fain trust that what would
be right at ordinary times, may likewise be so now,
and that, if we act upon this general principle, God
will direct the issue to the good of His Church.
But as to the more precise definition of doctrine,
which is sought, I would hope that, if any measure be
adopted, by whatsoever authority, to render the declara-
tion of the universality of Baptismal Regeneration more
explicit and more stringent, care will also be taken to
clear up the ambiguous meaning of the word Regene-
ration, and to declare that, in its ecclesiastical sense,
it is no way to be understood as identical with, or in-
terfering with, or precluding the necessity of Conversion ;
.'J8
whifh requires a t'Diiscious, rc-spoiisibk- subject, and
is iicccsstiry, through the frailty of our nature, in all
at a later period of life. The popular confusion of
these two distinct acts, which are almost equally indis-
pensable for all such as attain to years of personal re-
sponsibility, is the main ground of the cver-renew'ed
disputes concerning Baptismal Regeneration : and a brief
authoritative exposition on this point, if we have the
wisdom to di'aw up one, would be of inestimable value
to the Church. Without this, the increast stringency in
our assertion of it would be incalculably disastrous.
The two ulterior schemes do not seem to need any
observations at present. My desire and aim in writing
this letter have been to clear up those mistaken notions
concerning the nature and effects of the recent Judge-
ment, which seem to me to have dictated your manifesto,
and which are so lamentably prevalent. When we see
the present rightly and clearly, we shall be better able
to pro\'ide for the future.
This is the week of our blessed Lord's Passion : this
is the day on which He offered up His divine Prayer
for the Unity of His Church. O when will that Prayer
be fulfilled ? Eighteen centuries have rolled away ; and
still its fulfihnent tarries in the distance. No sign of
its coming brightens any quarter of the horizon. The
world seems to be learning the blessing of peace. The
votaries of Mammon are learning it. But the redeemed
servants of Christ, the soldiers of Christ, the ministers
of Christ, — when will they learn it? Shall they alone
obstinately cast it from them ? Shall they alone con-
tinue to believe that the warfare, to which we are
pledged, is, not against sin and Satan, but against each
other ? Selfishness has still far too great dominion over
us ; and Selfishness, which may gain some degree of
39
light in the workl, is ever stone-bHnd in the Kingdom
of Christ. We pursue selfish aims, selfish wills, selfish
notions : we seek each our own things, not the things
of" others. We would impose our own notions by force,
without trying to win our brethren to them, or recog-
nising the truth which is in theirs. But force cannot
convince them : ecclesiastical penalties, deprivation, ex-
communication, carry no conviction : nor do they even
indicate any real, living conviction in those who make
use of such arguments. The arguments whereby we
produce conviction are the weapons of Reason wielded
by the hand of Love. May we ever be enabled to use
such, my dear Friend ! and may it be our desire to
obtain the blessing promist to those who seek peace
and ensue it !
Your sincerely affectionate Friend,
J. C. Hare.
Herstmonceux,
Maundy Thursday, 1850.
So much has been said about heresy on this occa-
sion, and the charge of heresy has been tost about so
unscrupulously, as though the guilt of it were incurred
by a mere errour of the understanding, tliat I will
subjoin an excellent passage concerning it, from the
second section of Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Projihesijing,
which may give a clearer insight into its meaning. *' The
word heresy is used in Scripture indiffei'ently ; in a good
sense for a sect or division of opinion, and men following
it ; or sometimes in a bad sense, for a false opinion, sig-
nally condemned : but these kind of people were then
called Antichrists and false prophets, more frequently
than heretics ; and then there were many of them in the
world. But it is observable that no heresies are noted
40
signanter in Scri})turc, but such as are great errours
practical, in materia pietatis, such whose doctrines taught
impiety, or such who denied the coming of Christ, di-
rectly, or by consequence not remote or withdrawn,
but prime and immediate ; and therefore in the code
dc Sancta Trinitate et Fide CatlioUca, heresy is called
acre/3>)>? ho^a, Kal ade/ji,LTO<i BtSacrKoXia, a wicked opinion,
and an ungodly doctrine. — But in all the animadversions
against errours made by the Apostles in the New
Testament, no pious person was condemned ; no man that
did invincibly err, or bona mente ; but something that
was amiss in genere morum, was that which the Apostles
did redargue. And it is very considerable, that even
they of the Circumcision, — who in so great numbers did
heartily believe in Christ, and yet most violently retained
circumcision, and, without question, went to heaven in
great numbers — yet, of the number of these very men,
they came deejjly under censure, when to their errour
they added impiety. So long as it stood with charity,
and without human ends and secular interests, so long
it was either innocent or connived at : but when they
grew covetous, and for filthy lucre's sake taught the same
doctrine, which others did in the simplicity of their
hearts, then they turned heretics ; then they were termed
seducers ; and Titus was commanded to look to them
and to silence them. — These indeed were not to be
endured, but to be silenced by the conviction of sound
doctrine, and to be rebuked sharply and avoided. For
heresy is not an errour of the understanding, but an
errour of the will. And this is clearly insinuated in the
Scripture, in the style whereof faith and a good life
are made one duty, and vice is called opposite to faith,
and heresy opposed to holiness and sanctity. So in St
Paul : For, saith he, tJie end of the commandment is charity
41
out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith un-
feigned; from which cliarity and purity and goodness
and sincerity because some have tvandered, — deflexerunt
ad vaniloquium. And immediately after lie reckons the
oppositions to faith and sound doctrine, and instances
only in vices that stain the lives of Christians, the unjust,
the unclean, the uncharitable, the liar, the per j^ired person,
— et si quis alius qui sanae doctrinae adversatur ; these
are the enemies of the true doctrine. And therefore
St Peter, having given in charge, add to our virtue
patience, temperance, charity, and the like, gives this for
a reason, — for, if these things he in you and abound, ye shall
he fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. So
that knowledge and faith is inter praecepta morum, is
part of a good life. And St Paul calls faith, or the
form of sound words, Kar evae^eiav SiSacrKaXiav, the
doctrine that is according to godliness. And veritati
credere, and in itijustitia sibi complacere, are by the
same apostle opposed, and intimate that piety and faith
is all one thing. Faith must be vjir]<; koI dfia>fj,o<;,
entire and holy too ; or it is not right. It was the
heresy of the Gnostics, that it was no matter how men
lived, so they did but believe aright ; which wicked
doctrine Tatianus, a learned Christian, did so detest,
that he fell into a quite contrary : Nan est curandum
quod quisque crcdat ; id tantuni curandum est, quod quis -
que faciat ; and thence came the sect Encratites. Both
these heresies sprang from the too nice distinguishing
the faith from the piety and good life of a Christian :
they are both but one duty. However they may be
distinguisht, if we sjoeak like philosophers, they cannot
be distinguisht, when we speak like Christians. For to
believe what God hath commanded, is in order to
a good life ; and to live well is the product of that
42
lu'licving, and as proiJi-r (.'inanatioii iVom it, as Ironi its
proper principle, and as heat is ironi the fire. And
therefore in Scripture they are used promiscuously
in sense and in expression, as not only being sub-
jected in the same person but also in the same faculty.
Faith is as truly seated in the will, as in the under-
standing ; and a good life as merely derives from the
understiinding as from the will. Both of them are
matters of choice and of election, neither of them an
effect natural and invincible, or necessary antecedently ;
necessor'ia ut fiant, non necessario facta. And indeed,
if we remember that St Paul reckons heresy amongst
the works of the flesh, and ranks it wdth all manner
of practical impieties, we shall easily perceive, that, if
a man mingles not a vice with his opinion, if he be
innocent in his life, though deceived in his doctrine, —
his errour is his misery, not his crime. It makes him an
argument of weakness, and an object of pity, but not a
person sealed up to ruin and reprobation."
While these pages have been passing through the
Press, I have seen the Bishop of London's Answer to
the Address of the Scotch Bishops, in which he states
that he does not believe that Mr Gorham's opinion " is
held by more than a very small number indeed of our
Clergy." This statement being entirely at variance with
that on which I have laid great stress, and have rested
a main part of my argument, I will take leave respect-
fully to remark that a person whose position on the
same level with his brother Clergy leads him to a more
familiar intercourse with them, and in conversing with
whom they are under no constraint, will probably have
better means for estimating their real opinions, than
43
can be attainable by a Bishop, especially in such a
Diocese as that of London. I grant that the number
may not be very large, who adopt the exact scheme of
Mr Gorham's opinions in their entirety, — that is to say,
according to the Bishop of London, " hold that the
remission of original sin, adoption into the family of God,
and regeneration nuist all take place, not in baptism, nor
by means of baptism, but before baptism." So far how-
ever as I can form a judgement from the Clergy in
my own Archdeaconry, what is termed the hypothetical
view of Baptismal Regeneration is still very common
among the so-called Evangelical Clergy : nor do I know
of any reason for supposing that the proportion in this
Archdeaconry differs materially from the average in the
rest of England. Now these persons all conceive that
their own case is involved in Mr Gorliam's, that the
point at issue was, wdiether the Church insists that all
her ministers should hold the doctrine of absolute, un-
conditional regeneration in the very act and moment
of Baptism, or whether she will admit of any diver-
gence from this dogma. No mere authoritative edict
or decree will make them relinquish their opinions :
shame and spiritual impotence would be their portion
if they did. But, as friendly discussion and loving
persuasion have already induced a large part of this
body to entertain correcter notions on questions of
ecclesiastical discipline than they did fifty years ago,
so would it be with regard to the sacraments : so indeed
would it have been ere now, unless the revival of the
opposite errour had repelled them. Whether it would
have been possible so to limit and define Mr Gorham's
opinions in the Judgement, as to insulate him altogether,
and make the weight of the sentence fall on the pecu-
liarities of his own doctrinal idiosyncrasy, I cannot
11
pronounce. If definite issues had been joined, this woukl
have been easier. But it certainly seems to me that,
when we consider the manner in which Mr Gorhani's
answers were extorted from him, the course adopted
by the Court, of taking the most favorable and con-
sistent view of his doctrines, was the most honest and
straiglitforward, as well as the most consonant with
the principles and practice of our Law-courts ; w^hich,
I trvist, will never make a scapegoat of any man, to
appease the rancour of any individual, or of any party.
Mr Gorham felt he was contending for an important
principle : he did so contend bravely : the Court too
seems to have felt this : and thoug-h our Judsces are
perpetually acquitting persons on minor points of law^
and evidence, they do not, nor, so long as God pre-
serves the heart of England in its soundness, will they
condemn any one, except upon broad grounds of law,
and compulsory endence of facts.
J. C. H.
Easter Tuesday, 1850.
POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Having to publish a new edition of this Letter, I feel
bound to correct an inaccuracy in p. 9, where I argued
that there cannot be any manifest, essential repugnance
in Mr Gorham's doctrine to that Article in the Creed,
which confesses the faith in One Baptism for the Re-
mission of Sins, because, among other reasons, " so far
as I could recollect, it was not even pleaded by the Coun-
sel against him, able and subtile and elaborate as their
arguments were." I could not at the time examine the
various speeches made before the two Courts, that of
Arches, and that of the Privy Council, and so was forced
to trust, as I intimated, to my memory ; which I did w' ith
less reluctance as this point was of slight importance, the
main ground of my argument being, that, whether this
topic was urged or no, it was not noticed either by the
Court which decided in favour of Mr Gorham, or by
that which decided against him. Whether the objec-
tion was omitted by the Counsel, or discarded by the
Court as irrelevant, seemed immaterial. Still, as the op-
portunity is afforded me, it behoves me to state that this
point was taken by Mr Badeley. In the Report of the
Case publisht by Painter, Mr Badeley is represented as
winding up his speech by saying that " the most serious
consideration respecting Mr Gorham's doctrine w^s, that
— he was contradicting not merely the Articles of the
Church, but the doctrine of the Nicene Creed, which
said that there was one Baptism for the Remission of
4()
Siiis," From this statcmriit, I'ven it" I liad ri't-ollected it, I
should hardly liavo inlVrred more than that this argument
was brought in by the learned Counsel as a sort of rhe-
torical climax, but without a notion of its having any
real logical force. In the Report which he himself has
since publisht of his speech, we see that it was urged
with a good deal of oratorical emphasis, as it naturally
would be by a zealous advocate ; but the logical con-
nexion is much too loose, to make it a ground for a legal
conclusion.
From a subsequent incident in the case, it would
appear that the Court, though they do not touch on this
argument in their Judgement, yet did not pass it over
without attention, but discerned its inapplicability on
the very same grounds which I have suggested in p. 8.
For, in the course of Mr Turner's Reply, Lord Langdale
askt, " whether an adult unworthily receiving Baptism,
but afterward having faith and repentance, then became
regenerate by means of the Baptism previously adminis-
tered." And on Mr Turner's answering in the affirma-
tive, he continued, " Then, as to an infant. Baptism being
received, grace is administered at the same time ; because,
if he died without committing actual sin, he must be
saved. How far that grace extends, you do not venture
to declare ; but you say it extends to the remission of
sin, because an infant being saved has his original sin
remitted ; and if faith and repentance come afterward,
when he has committed actual sin, even then the Baptism
that takes place before, is effectual to regeneration."
These words may not be reported with strict accuracy,
or, being spoken off-hand on an unfamiliar subject, may
have been somewhat incorrectly exprest: they shew how-
ever that the Judges did not overlook the argument
which Mr Badeley had urged, that they considered it,
47
and found that, whatever it might be theologically
legally it had no force.
At all events, until Mr Badeley arrived at his eloquent
peroration, nobody in either Court seems to have dis-
covered that Mr Gorham had been guilty of contravening
an Article of the Nicene Creed. Dr Addams had made
three long speeches against him, and had never fovuul it
out. Dr Robinson, who supported Dr Addams before
the Court of Arches, had been equally blind. Sir Her-
bert Jenner Fust, who had taken more than four months
to draw up his very careful and elaborate Judgement, had
no inkling of an argument, which, if it had any force,
would have enabled him to settle the whole question at
once, and which is conceived to do so by such as have
never spent five minutes thought upon it. Nay, one may
reasonably presume that even to the Bishop of Exeter
himself it had never occurred ; unless indeed we suppose
that in tenderness to Mr Gorham he supprest what would
have constituted the chief gravamen of his heresy, and
refrained from pointing it out to his Counsel. For the
allegations against Mr Gorham before the Court of
Arches on behalf of the Bishop are, that his doctrine is
" contrary to the plain teaching of the Church of England
in her Articles and Liturgy, and especially contrary to
the divers offices of Baptism, the Ofiice of Confirmation,
and the Catechism." No hint is given of its being
contrary to the Nicene Creed ; though lawyers were never
before known to err on the side of too little. Moreover
in the whole course of the Examination of Mr Gorham
though it extended, with intervals, from the 17th of
December, 1847, to the 10th of March, 1848, — and
though Mr Gorham was prest with 149 questions, bear-
ing on the single doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration,
and with all manner of authorities, drawn, not merely
48
iVoiii our Articles ami Liturtry, but t'roin the Houiilies,
tVom the Institution of a Christian Man, iVoni tlie Report
of the Savoy Conference, — the Bishop never intimates to
him that he was impugning an Article of the Creed. He
does indeed bring this forward as his foremost accusation
against Mr Gorliam in his Letter to the Archbishop of
Canterbury (p. 48), and tries to implicate the Archbisliop
(p. 27), and the Judges (p. 52), in this heresy : he even
asserts (p. 52), that one of " the heresies, which came out
in his examination of Mr Goi'ham, and for which he re-
fused him institution," was, " that, by declaring original
sin to be a hindrance to the benefit of Baptism, he denied
the Article of the Creed, One Baptism for the Remission of
Sins." This however, we may presume, must be a lapse
of memory. Else he would surely have pointed out this
contradiction to Mr Gorham in some one of his 149
Questions, and would hardly have allowed it to pass
entirely unnoticed in the proceedings before the Court of
Arches, a twelvemonth after, and again, nine months
later, before the Court of Appeal, until, in the eleventh
hour, or rather at the close of the twelfth, it was brought
in to give effect to Mr Badeley's peroration. Yet this
so-called heresy, which Dr Addams and Dr Robinson,
which Sir Herbert Jenner Fust and the BishojD of
Exeter himself, though they spent months in poring over
the case, w'cre unable to detect, is brought forward in the
manifesto which I have had to examine, as so flagrant,
that it bodes the destruction of our Church, and has since
been spreading from Diocese to Diocese, kindling a
general conflagration.
That Dr Pusey, in his Letter on the Royal Supremacy
(pp. 172 — 192), should lay great stress on this contra-
diction, is not sui-prising, when we call to mind what
importance he has long attacht to his peculiar views on
49
Baptism. But at all events the facts just stated must
be regarded as fully exculpating the Judges for not
paying more attention to an argument, which neither
the Bishop nor his Counsel had thought of, till Mr
Badeley's ingenuity discovered it to adorn the con-
clusion of his speech. Indeed Dr Pusey himself, vv^hile
he asserts that, " in purchasing tranquil times, as they
deemed, the price which they paid away was an Article
of the Creed," admits that " they did not, could not
know it." As it had been overlookt by so many sharp-
eyed persons, who had been trying to spy out all the
evil they could in Mr Gorham during two years, no
wonder that the Judges, whose business was of a very
different kind, did not detect it. In fact, as I have
observed, they were clearsighted enough to discern that,
as a legal argument, it was worthless. Had they acted
otherwise, their conduct would have been repugnant to
the first principles of our administration of justice. As
the Article in the Creed does not define the mode in
which the Remission of Sins is connected with Baptism,
the Judges were not warranted in defining it, except so
far as they found it defined in the symbolical books of our
Church. Dr Pusey indeed asks in his Postscript (p. 230),
where he is replying to my Letter, " Have the Creeds one
definite ascertainable meaning, the meaning in which the
Church originally framed them ? or may they be con-
strued variously, without limitation, according to the bias
of each mind which accepts them, provided his meaning,
in his own judgement, come within the words ? " and he
adds, " surely, wherein the Church meant them to have a
definite meaning, that is their meaning, to all who belong
to the Church." Hereto it is enough to rejoin by asking,
How are we to know the meaning of the Church, except
from her words ? She did not utter them hastily : she
£
■)()
pondered thtMu maturely : slu' delincd what she thought
needed to he defined. In tlic two primary Creeds more
especially, in which each Article is capable of such vast
expansion, it would be especially dangerous to include
the consequences of an Article within it. We must
confine ourselves, when we are enforcing the Articles
legally, to their strict, hteral sense, along with those
inferences which the Chm-ch has thought fit to deduce
from them. In a theological argument divers other con-
siderations would rightly find place, but not in a legal
one, except so far as may be necessary for the right
understanding of the words. In the Note to my Charge
I have referred to the remarkable instance of this judicial
strictness afforded by the recent Judgement on the Fac-
tory Question, when the Judge felt himself bound by the
words of the Act to decide in opposition to the notorious
purpose of the Legislature. Yet I am not aware that
anybody has impugned the rectitude of his decision :
assuredly no one has insinuated that he had been bribed
by the master manufacturers. This extreme literal strict-
ness, which we rightly deem indispensable in the whole
administration of our law, so that no one is condemned,
for whom the law leaves an escape open, is no less
necessary in prosecutions for heresy, which otherwise
would be altogether vague and indefinite. With regard
to Dr Pusey's other observations on what I have said
upon this subject, I do not see that they require any fur-
ther remark from me than an expression of thanks for
their mild and courteous tone. I should merely have to
repeat what I have said in my Letter, and to urge again
that the Articles of the Creed are of no private interpre-
tation, least of all when they are treated legally, and made
the grounds of legal proceedings. A due attention to
the difference between the legal and the theological view
51
of doctrines will remove all his objections to what I have
said on this score, as it would a number of the objections
against the recent Judgement, which are running from
mouth to mouth through the land. What the Judges
had to decide, was not what is the doctrine of the ma-
jority of the Church, nor even what is the doctrine to
be collected generally from her Symbolical Books, but
merely whether a certain scheme of opinions was so
repugnant to her assertions of that doctrine as to be
absolutely prohibited and excluded from her ministerial
communion. Had this been duly attended to, our
Church would not be in its present state of irritation
and confusion.
One might have supposed that this hasty flaring up
and blazing at the touch of a spark was inconsistent
with the practical habits of the English mind. But
alas ! we have seen too often of late years, that, in
matters in which religion is supposed to be concerned,
the English have abandoned that fairness and delibe-
rateness which used to be their special characteristics,
and are as apt, as the most fanatical nation, to take
up a violent prejudice without enquiring whether there
are reasonable grounds for it, and almost to run mad,
as Coleridge says of the bulls in Borrowdale, at the
echoes of their own noise. Among the latest instances
of this are the outcry excited through the land by Dr
Hampden's appointment, propagated as it was by thou-
sands who never thought of asking what evil he had
done ; and still more recently the pertinacious clamour
against the Educational Committee of the Privy Council,
on account of a matter so petty and insignificant, that one
must needs think the bulk of the clamourers have no
notion what it really is, and merely clamour because
their neighbours do. Another instance, the futility of
E 2
5^
wliich has just been exposed in the most satisfactory
manner, is tlie agitation wliich was excited at the begin-
ning of hist winter against the Post-office ; when charges
of wilful desecration of the Lord's day were brought,
without the slightest evidence, and in defiance of authori-
tative testimony, at a number of public meetings, against
a man who has earned a high place among the practical
benefactors of his countrymen, and to whom every letter-
writer and reader has continual causes for thankfuhiess.
It now appears that this wdly sabbath-breaker was quietly
devising a series of measures, by wliich near six thousand
persons have been relieved from a large part of their
Sunday -work, at an average of more than five hours each.
Yet I fear that few of the clamourers against him feel
shame or repentance for their groundless calumnies.
The most part probably plume themselves on their godly
zeal, and will be as eager as ever to catch up the next
calumny, and to join in the next agitation, that comes
across their path.
I have referred to these painful events, because a
person, unacquainted vrith the inflammable temper of
the English religious mind, might deem himself warranted
in inferring that, when such a ferment is spreading
through the length and breadth of the land, with the
clergy, who ought to be the inculcaters of temperance
and sobermindedness and order and peace, taking the
lead, there must needs be some valid, substantial ground
for it. Whereas the instances cited prove that it may
exist, wuth very little, if any, rational cause, and that, of
all objects of fear, an imaginary one is the most terrific.
Cages have indeed occurred, in which the attempt to
undeceive a person under a strong delusion, has only
strengthened it, and brought on a fatal crisis : still,
though in dealing with individuals one may humour the
53
peculiarities of the patient, when one is writing for the
Church, the only method is to declare the truth simply
and nakedly. In the present instance, if one can but
prevail on people to look at the real facts calmly and
steadily, they will find that the passionate fear by which
they have been borne along, has made them magnify and
distort the object whereby it has been excited, so that a
mere declaration of the law on a particular case is con-
verted into a formidable, wilful assault on the primary
doctrines of the Church.
Among the mischievous features belonging to these
agitations, is the proneness to speak evil of dignities, and
of all whom we regard as agents in the matters whereby
we are provoked. Thus the excellent reformer of the
Post-Office became the object of much abuse. Thus
too the controversy with the Educational Committee
of Council has been aggravated and inflamed by pain-
ful personalities. They whom we assume to be our
enemies, are straightway regarded as the enemies of
religion, or at least of the Church : and a like systematic
enmity is perpetually imputed to the Government ; al-
though they have not shewn any indications of it,
but have rather manifested a desire to conciliate the
Church, and to help and strengthen her, as far as she will
allow them. In the present case this spirit is venting
itself in the most unwarrantable condemnation of the
Judges, who have pronounced sentence in favour of Mr
Gorham. It matters not that the five Judges who con-
curred in the sentence, are men of admirable legal
ability, and exemplary in their judicial character, men
on whose integrity one would contentedly stake one's
fortune, or one's life : it matters not that they are sup-
ported by the two Primates of our Church : they are
assailed with all manner of abuse ; and the host of their
54
assailants is headed by a Bishop, who with character-
istic propriety aims his fiercest blows at the Archbishop
of his Province. So obstinate is our belief in our own
infallibility, that we will rather cliarge these seven men
of unblcmisht, unimpeachable character with giving
unrighteous judgement, than suspect the possibility
of our being mistaken. They pondered the matter
anxiously for months : their condenmers, most of them,
have scarcely spent ten minutes in weighing and balancing
the arguments which make for the opposite sides : nay,
many are thoroughly persuaded that there is no argument
to be alledged against them : therefore, seeing that we are
quite right, they must be utterly wrong ; and, if their
errour did not arise from want of understanding, w^hich
can hardly be imputed to men of such sagacity, — why,
then it must have sprung from dishonesty. It goes for
nothing, that hundreds of pious, conscientious, godly men,
in generation after generation, have deemed that they
could honestly interpret our Formularies in the sense
\fvliich the Judges assign to them ; though a modest man
would surely regard this as a proof that there must be
some speciousness in such an interpretation. No : all
those men were utterly wrong ; and the Judges too were
utterly wrong ; and everybody is utterly w^'ong, who
dares to differ from us.
Yet, for my owai part, at the time when the proceedings
were going on, I was strongly imprest, even by the report
in the new^spaper, with the pains which the Judges took
to gain a right apprehension of the arguments submitted
to them : and one of my brother Archdeacons has written
to me : ** I was present during the whole hearing of the
case ; and it was impossible not to feel the highest ad-
miration of the patience, earnestness, and strict equity,
with which the Judges received every part of the
55
pleadings, as men pervaded with the one all-ruling desire
of judging righteously on the matter before them." Mr
Dodsworth too, though he expresses very strong dis-
approbation of the Judgement, says in his Pamphlet on
the Gorham case : " Having been present during ahnost
the v^^hole of the argument, — I hope I may be permitted
to bear my humble testimony to the unwearied patience,
care, and application, with which those high functionaries
fulfilled a difficult, and in some respects, as it must have
been to them, a very irksome duty. Any one present —
must have felt that nothing was wanting in this respect.
Most unwearied pains appeared to be taken by all the
Judges without exception to arrive at the meaning of
terms and statements of doctrine, with which they were
obviously not familiar."
I have cited these witnesses, not merely to vindicate
those whose conduct has been so violently attackt, but
also because hardly anything is so irritating as the notion
that we are suffering a wrong. When we are convinced
that a judgement is just, even though it be solely ac-
cording to the letter of the law, we submit to it. In
ordinary cases, — such is the well-merited, loyal confidence
of Englishmen in the Judges of the land, — the voice of
Law at once puts an end to strife. Or, if it be deemed
requisite to procure a more distinct enunciation, or an
alteration of the law, this is sought by constitutional
methods, without any reproach to the Judges. Their
discretion in nisi prius cases may of course be often
questioned : but, when they pronounce collectively on an
appeal, their interpretation of the law, according to its
actual state, is acknowledged to be right. Why should
we act otherwise now ? Because Religion is concerned.
But surely Religion herself inculcates obedience to the
laws, reverence for all lawful authorities. Have those who
56
have been laying such stress on the exposition of Baptism
in the Catechism, forgotten that tlie same Catechism gives
a clear and simple account of our duty toward our
neighbour, and that one main branch of it is, to honour
and obey the Queen, and all who are put in authority
under her ? Or has tlie Catechism no claim to our
deference and obedience, save when it treats of inscrutable
mysteries, with regard to which it must needs be very
difficult to attain to any absolute precision of language or
thought ? May we despise it, as though it were an old
woman's rigmarole, when it speaks of plain practical
duties, which all can understand, and all are called to
fulfill ?
I am not wishing to recommend servile submission
in a case where truth is at stake. I am not claiming
infallibility for our Judges, any more than for any other
body of men. All may err ; all have erred often ; and
the age of errour will not soon pass away. But if any
mischief has been done to the Church by the recent
Judgement, only let us cherish the conviction that it has
not been done intentionally, wilfully, maliciously, — that
they who gave the Judgement gave it under a conscientious
purpose to judge according to right, according to the
recognised principles and practice of our Law-courts,
with no further bias than is always found in them, in-
clining them to protect the accused from any heavier
penalties than the strict letter of the law imposes : let
us be thoroughly persuaded of this, and at the same time
dismiss all other bugbears of State-interference, and
hostile governments, and secular tyranny ; and not only
will the peace of the Church return ; but we shall have
made considerable progress toward the attainment of a
remedy.
When such counsels are given, one is sure to be told
57
that we are to obey God, ratlicr than man ; and a
polemical zealot will cry out, that, as the Wisdom from
above is declared to be first pure^ and then peaceable, it
is clear that we are not to cultivate peace, until we
have obtained a recognition of the truth in its dog-
matical purity and entireness. A more complete perver-
sion of a divine text than this latter can hardly be found.
Purity, in the verse of St James, like all the other
characteristics there predicated of heavenly Wisdom, is
evidently a moral quality, even as peaceahleness is, and
gentleness, and mercy, and impartiality. It does not re-
quire the cultivation of the intellect, but may be found
in the babes, to whom the Gospel is revealed. According
to the above-mentioned interpretation, this blessed verse
would become the motto and watchword of the Inqui-
sition, of all such as are set on extirpating whatever is
opposed to their notions of dogmatical purity, and
then, ubi soUtudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. As to the
declaration of the Apostles, that their obedience to God
was of higher obligation than that to any human autho-
rity, there never was a case to which it was less applicable
than to the present. For the human command, which they
deemed themselves bound to disregard, was the prohi-
bition to preach God's truth and salvation, as made
manifest in His Son Jesus Christ. But the decision of
the Court of Appeal no way trenches on the right of
every minister of our Church to preach the doctrine of
Baptismal Regeneration. It allows him the fullest liberty
of doing so ; and it admits by implication that his
doctrine is that of our Church.
Had the sentence been the other way, then indeed the
case would have been diiFerent. At present no one
is prohibited from preaching what he believes to be the
truth. We are merely precluded from expelling those
58
among our bretliren wlio do not aj^ree with us. We are
precluded from using any other weapons against them
than those of calm, reasonable persuasion. Surely we
ought to give thanks that we are thus preserved from a
temptation, which the contentiousness incident to theo-
logical controversies would have found it difficult to
resist. We ought to give thanks, both in our own behalf
and in behalf of our Bishops, that they are preserved
from the temptation to erect an Inquisition in every
Diocese. But, if the decision of the Court of Arches had
been confirmed, then it would indeed have behoved that
large body of our Clergy who participate more or less in
Mr Gorham's opinions, to bear in mind that they were
bound to obey God rather than man. Nor would they
have been allowed to forget this. The spirit which has
been manifested by many of their opponents on this
occasion, — a sad counterpart of that w^hich from the op-
posite side has for years been urging our Romanizing
brethren to quit the Church of their Baptism, — proves
that there would have been no lack of persons to re-
mind them of this duty, nor even of those who, if hints
were neglected, would gladly have called in the aid of
the \a.\v. We may indeed feel assured that no other of
our present Bishops would have followed the disastrous
example set them in the Diocese of Exeter, — that most
of them would rather have cast their mitres on the
ground, than been the authors of such a terrible calamity
to the Church. But still, while men's passions are blind,
and their will obstinate, while Faith and Love have no
place in so many hearts, the desire to tyrannize, the ap-
petite for persecution, if they had found the means of
gi'atification, would have made use of them, even in these
days. An imperious Dogmatism wovild have lorded it
over our Church. Faith and Godliness would have waxt
59
cold, — as is ever the case, by a judicial retribution, in a
persecuting Church, — or would have fled away into the
arms of Dissent.
That the view which 1 have taken in my Letter as to
the bearings of the Judgement on the doctrine of our
Church is correct, I cannot doubt. They who have been
greatly disturbed by it, they who have been put into a
fever of disappointment or anger, look upon it, as might
be expected, in a different light ; for it is the property
of such feelings to exaggerate and distort their objects.
Thus they charge it with impugning an Article of the
Creed, although that Article was not set before the
Court in the pleadings, nor even suggested until the
closing paragraphs of the last Advocate's speech, and
although it would have been utterly inconsistent with the
principles and practice of our law to found a condemna-
tion of Mr Gorhani on the words of that Article. But
this shifting of the ground of the case renders it
better fitted to furnish matter for a popular outcry.
The Judges have been impugning an Article of the Creed !
Therefore it behoves every sound Churchman to defend the
Church from the effects of this wicked^ heretical sentence.
These words are easily uttered, readily caught up : and
who, when he feels his churchmanship boiling over
with righteous indignation, will think of asking whether
such is indeed the fact ? The very doubt would betoken
that there is a pernicious spirit of scepticism and
infidelity lurking in his breast.
In like manner it is said with clamorous repetition
that the Court of Appeal has been presuming to deter-
mine the doctrine of the Church. The Court itself
indeed asserts the very contrary. It states, " The ques-
tion which we have to decide is, not whether Mr Gorham's
opinions are theologically sound or unsound, — not whether
()()
upon soiiH' of the doctriiu's comprisi'd in the opinions,
other opinions opposite to them may or may not be held
with equal, or even greater reason, by other learned and
pious ministers of the Church ; but whether these opinions
now mider consideration are contrary or repugnant to
the doctrines which the Church of England, by its
Articles, Formularies, and Rubrics, requires to be held
by its ministers ; so that upon the ground of those
opinions the Appellant can lawfully be excluded from
the benefice to which he has been presented." Again
they say, " It must be carefully borne in mind that the
question, and the only question, for us to decide is,
whether Mr Gorham's doctrine is contrary or repugnant
to the doctrine of the Church of England as by law
estabhsht. — If the doctrine of Mr Gorham is not con-
trary or repugnant to the doctrine of the Church of
England as by law establisht, it cannot afford a legal
ground for refusing him institution to the living to which
he has been lawfully presented." The Judges seem to
be thoroughly aware of their true position, and of the
duties belonging to it. They urge reiteratedly that their
business is not to determine doctrine, but to administer
law ; that they are to decide, not according to the doc-
trines of the Church generally, but according to those
of the Church of England as by latv establisht, — that the
question before them is to ascertain whether there are
legal grounds for refusing institution to a living, to which
there has been a lawful presentation. One might have
supposed that the lawyers who are placed on the judicial
Bench, would probably have known something about
their own craft. But no : it is the well-known practice
in our Courts of Law, that the most ignorant lawyers are
always placed on the Bench : and those who had to give
judgement in tliis cause are notoriously the most ignorant
Gl
in the whole body of ignoramuses : and besides their
personal character is such that no one of them was ever
known to refuse the paltriest bribe ; and they wanted to
curry favour with the Government, and with the re-
ligious newspapers, and with the Primate : and each of
them had secretly formed a plot to get the reversion of
the Registrarship for the Province of Canterbury, with
its uncurtailed twelve thousand a year, for his son, or
for his niece's husband, or for his housemaid's brother
therefore, seeing that all these hindrances, intel-
lectual and moral, incapacitated them for forming a right
Judgement, we need not care what they say, and may
interpret their words by contraries whenever it suits our
purpose. When they say that they have no authority
to determine doctrine, the real meaning of their words
is, that they are just going to determine doctrine. Wlien
they talk about that which is legal and lawful, they are
thinking all the while of doing that which is illegal and
unlaAvful.
Yet Sir Herbert Jenner Fust, in laying down the rules
for his own procedure, used nearly the same terms. " Now
I would here state, — and I am particularly anxious to
have it understood, — that I guard myself against being
supposed to offer any opinion as to the disputed point
of Theology between the parties. I am not going to
pronounce an opinion as to whether unconditional Re-
generation in the case of Infants is or is not a doctrine
deducible from the Scriptures. It is no part of the duty
of the Court, nor is it within its province, to institute
any such enquiry as that. All that the Court is called
upon to do, — and all that it can properly do, as coming
within the limits of its authority, — is to endeavour to
ascertain whether the Church has determined anything
upon this subject; and, having so ascertained, to
62
prouoimce accordingly. TJie authoritative declaration of
the Church constitutes the law of this Court, to which it
is bound to conform, and wliich it is incumbent upon it
implicitly to follow ; without indulging any speculative
opinion of its own as to whether that declaration is
founded inerrour or in truth. The Courtis to administer
that law as it finds it laid down, and is not to give any
opinion as to what the law ought to be. Therefore I
desire to be distinctly understood, in the observations I
am about to make, as confining my attention and direct-
ing my observations to the doctrine of the Church solely,
so far as I am able to ascertain it ; without any allusion
to those passages of Holy Writ which are, or are sup-
posed to be, applicable to the effects of Baptism on those
to whom it is administered." Surely the distinction here
laid down is perfectly clear and intelligible. Moreover
Sir Herbert Jenner Fust's Judgement has been the object
of high praise from the very persons who are the most
vehement in condemning that of the Court of Appeal :
nor have I heard of their raising any exception against
it, on the score of its taking upon itself to determine
doctrine. Such a strange difference does it make in the
aspect of things, whether we look at them with favorable
or unfavorable eyes. In the one case wrong becomes
right ; in the other right becomes wrong.
This view of the Judgement, resting, as it does, on
the declarations of both the Courts, has been confirmed
by everything I have heard or read or thought on the
subject since : and it seems to me establisht irrefragably
by what Lord Campbell says in his excellent letter to
Miss Sellon : " I assure you that we have given no
opinion contrary to yours on the doctrine of Baptismal
Regeneration. We had no jurisdiction to decide any
doctrinal question ; and we studiously abstained from
(¥3
doing so. We were only called upon to construe the
Articles and Formularies of the Church, and to say
whether they be so framed as to condemn certain opinions
exprest by Mr Gorham." Surely the Chief Justice of
England may be supposed to understand the nature and
purport of the Judgement, which he himself has just
been delivering, — at all events when his interpretation
of it is confirmed by such men as the four Judges who
concurred in it. The assailers of the Judgement may be
much more learned men, much more clearheaded, much
more intelligent and sagacious in all other matters ; but
on this one point at least the five Judges are likelier to
be in the right. If this however be so, what plea is
there for all this agitation and irritation. The Judge-
ment does not sanction Mr Gorham 's opinions. It does
not declare them to be conformable to the general doc-
trine of our Church. All that it pronounces is, that the
law of the Church, as collected from her symbolical
books, does not so distinctly and peremptorily condemn
that scheme of opinions, which it ascribes to Mr Gorham,
as to exclude him from her ministry. This last consi-
deration is of such importance, that I have laid great
stress on it in my Letter. The qualified sanction im-
plied in the Judgement does not extend to any opinions
that Mr Gorham has exprest in the course of his Ex-
amination, except so far as they are comprised in the
summary of them drawn up by the Court. If the cause
had been conducted in a regular manner, — if definite
issues had been joined, — if the particular passages
in Mr Gorham's Book which the Bishop regarded as
especially heretical, had been distinctly cited in the
pleadings, and the judgement of the Court had been
sought upon them, — it would have been recognised that
the Judgement of the Court did not extend to any
passages beyond those thus set before them. In like
manner, — tliough it may seem presumptuous for a clergy-
man to speak confidently on such a question, — I cannot
believe, — and my conviction has been confirmed by high
legal authority, — that the present Judgement embraces
any other doctrines than those expressly stated therein. It
would probably bar further proceedings against Mr Gor-
ham on account of this same Book : but if he were to
publish a volume tomorrow, reasserting all the opinions
exprest in his Examination, I cannot doubt that he might
be prosecuted for those opinions, except so far as they
are specified in the present Judgement, and that it would
be of no avail whatever to shield him from condemnation
on account of them.
It has been argued indeed, that the distinction for
which I have been contending, nay, for which both the
Court of Appeal and the Court of Arches contend, —
that they have not been determining the doctrine of
the Church, but merely pronouncing a judicial sentence
according to that doctrine as already determined by
the Church, — is luitenable. This proposition has been
maintained at length and with much ingenuity by my
dear Brother Archdeacon in his Speech at a Meeting of
the Clergy held some six weeks ago at Chichester. Yet
surely the distinction, as laid down in the two Judge-
ments, especially in the earlier one, is very clear and
intelligible. Surely there is a broad difierence between
the power which would belong to a legislative body, such
as a Synod of the Church, and that which is committed to
her Courts of Law. For instance, the former, while it
felt itself bound by the principles of practical wisdom to
pay great reverence to the existing laws and institutions,
would nevertheless deem itself warranted and author-
ized, nay enjoined, should occasion arise for defining or
65
modifying any part of tliem, to seek counsel from the word
of God, from history, from the decrees of Councils, and
from the teaching of the greatest divines. On the other
hand a Court of Law is obliged to regulate its decisions
altogether by the existing Formularies of the Church.
Even if the Judges individually should think the For-
mularies erroneous, they are compelled to pronounce
sentence according to them. It is true, though the judi-
cial province and the legislative are essentially distinct,
there is a border-land between them, where they meet and
run into each other ; and this border-land may become in-
juriously extensive, when the body politic is not rightly
developt, and the two powers do not exist in due co-
ordination. But it is mostly a calamity, when the
judicial power has to exercise the functions of the
legislative ; and still more certainly, when the legislative
power usurps the functions of the judicial. A Synod
properly constituted would be the fittest body to wield
the legislative power : but the principles of justice would
often be perverted and violated, if it were to assume
the judicial.
Here I will take leave to explain a contradiction,
which some persons, with no unfriendly purpose, have
fancied they have perceived in my remarks on occa-
sion of this unhappy controversy. I have exprest my
conviction that our Church does assert the regene-
ration of every baptized infant, and my own belief
that, under a right acceptation of the term, every bap-
tized infant is indeed regenerate. I have further stated
my persuasion that this is not a mere abstract proposition,
but a truth of great practical moment for our Christian
education and teaching. Nevertheless I have on the
other hand exprest great satisfaction and thankfulness
at the decision of the Court of Appeal in favour of
F
Mr Gorliam. Now on this account, 1 would hope, no
one will tax nie with inconsistency. For surely the
stronger our conviction of a truth is, the more shall
we shrink from calling in a Court of Law to inculcate
it. Even over the asses bridge one would not drive
a man by Balaam's method : and he who tries to do
so in the region of moral and spiritual truth, will find
an angel with a drawn sword standing in the way.
But I have further said, in note K to my last Charge
(p. 97), after making a like statement concerning the
doctrine of our Church, that, " if we do not believe this,
we cannot minister in her Baptismal Service, without a
twofold delusion, without deceiving others and ourselves."
These words, taken alone, may appear less easily recon-
cilable with an approval of the Judgement. But here
also, when they are viewed in connexion with their
purpose, the inconsistency will vanish. In the passage
in which they stand, I was addressing the so-called
Evangelical Clergy, while the judgement was still pend-
ing ; and I urged them earnestly not to take any hasty
steps, should the decision be against Mr Gorham. For
I knew of many, and believed there were hundreds, if not
thousands, of our best working Clergy, who wovild be
grievously disturbed by such a decision, and who were
looking forward to the necessity of resigning their cures ;
unless indeed the Judges had taken pains to limit
their sentence to the peculiar form in which Mr Gorham
had exprest his opinions. At the same time I felt it in-
cumbent on me to avoid the slightest appearance of
advising them to do that, which they could not do " with
perfect conscientiousness, with singlehearted honour, wdth
unequivocating, uncompromising truth." Hence, after
stating what seemed to me necessarily implied in our
Formularies, T added : " If we do not believe this, we
G7
cannot minister in the Baptismal Service without a two-
fold delusion, without deceiving others and ourselves."
In these words I was appealing to their consciences : and
when we speak to a person's conscience with regard to the
present or the future, it behoves us to set forth the truth
plainly, firmly, according to the strict letter of the law of
Duty. It behoves us to say, Thou art hound to do that
tohich is purely, thoroughly/ right, — to refrain from that
which has the slightest taint of lorong in it. This is the
rule which we ought to apply to our own conscience,
and to set uj) for the guidance of others.
When however one is called to deal with an actual, in-
dividual case, and to pronounce sentence upon it, Mercy
comes in, and ought to come in, to temper Judge-
ment. The strictness of the general rule requires to be
modified by a regard to the peculiar circumstances. No
one will exercise the same severity in condemning a
particular ofi^ender, as in condemning a vice generally.
No reasonable man will make his own conscience the
measure of his neighbour's. Hence, although I feel that,
in my own case, with my own notions concerning the
meaning of our Formularies, if I held the opinions con-
cerning Baptism, which Mr Gorham has exprest in some
of his answers, I could not conscientiously discharge the
ministerial office in our Church, — and although, in
speaking generally to others, on the natural assumption
that my interpretation, if confirmed by the Judgement of
both the Courts, ivas correct, I could not but declare that
such opinions seemed to me incompatible with that office ;
yet I cannot deem myself warranted in condemning Mr
Gorham, even by a private exercise of judgement, for
acting otherwise ; seeing that he, by certain logical
processes, applied to a mystery which lies beyond the
reach of strict reasoning, has been led to a different
F 2
()8
conclusion. A person who has over reflected on the in-
nmnerable varieties and diversities to be found in men's
intellectual constitutions and habits, will be very slow
to {pronounce concerning any form of errour, that it
cannot be entertained conscientiously. Doubtless Simeon
Stylites deemed that he was doing what was right and
well-pleasing to God.
In like manner, as we are bound to modify our general
rule, before we pass judgement on any one, even within
our own minds, equally great, if not still greater, modifi-
cations are indispensable, before we take any outward step
in consequence of what we regard as contrary to that
rule, thus setting up the law of Conscience as the law of
a political or social body. How many offenses against
morals are there, which, when speaking or wa'iting as
moral teachers, we are bound to condenm severely, but
which, if we had to discharge a judicial or legislative
function, we should hardly notice ! The two codes are
totally distinct. We do not condemn a man judiciall}^,
because he does not obey the law of Conscience, or that
of Honour, but because he has oifended against some
determinate, positive law of the State, or of the Church.
Among other important differences, a main one is, that
the former laws look chiefly to that which is in the heart,
the latter almost exclusively to the outward act, — a dis-
tinction of great importance in connexion with the present
case. For if Mr Gorham had of his own accord publisht
a book promulgating all the same opinions that he has
exprest in his Examination, — or if evidence could be
produced that he had preacht all the same doctrines in
his Sermons, — then, as his act would have been overt and
wilful, it seems to me that, if the case had been con-
ducted with legal strictness, if the passages most
repugnant to our Formularies had been adduced in the
69
pleadings, and definite issues had been joined on them,
the result would probably have been different. Wliereas,
seeing that the subject matter of the charge against Mr
Gorhani was not any voluntary, independent act of his
own, for which therefore he would justly have been
responsible, but a series of answers wrung from him by
a long, subtile, inquisitorial examination, the Judges,
knowing how easily people may be driven in the course
of an argument to assert propositions which they would
never have thought of maintaining otherwise, rightly
held that, wdien opinions thus extorted were brought
before them as the ground for a severe judicial sentence,
they had a claim to the utmost latitude of favorable
construction. This is a consideration of great moment
in estimating the character of the Judgement, both in
its bearings on the doctrine of the Church, and in
reference to the subject matter on which it was pro-
nounced. Yet this consideration has been almost over-
lookt by those who have been so vehement in con-
demning the Judgement, in their eagerness to kick down
and trample on whatever came athwart their prejudices
and their wilfulness, even though it was invested with
the majesty and sanctity of law.
Nor, if I may say so with all rightful deference, does
it seem to me that sufficient weight was ascribed to this
consideration in the Judgement of the Court of Arches :
for which reason that Judgement, even if it was literally
legal, — a question into which I have no call to enter, —
could hardly be otherwise than morally unjust. For no
due allowance was made for the very peculiar circum-
stances of the case ; and Mr Gorham's expressions were
treated as stringently as if they had been a wilful attack
on the doctrine of the Church. This is a matter of great
practical moment, in connexion with the rights of the
70
whole body of the iulerior Clergy. For, even if there be
ci legal ground, — Nvhich, after the deeision of the Court
of Arches, I am not warranted in denying, — for the right
assumed by the Bishop of Exeter to examine Mr Gor-
hain previously to his institution, it can never have been
intended that the right should be exercised in so inqui-
sitorial a manner. Mr Badeley himself, in trying to
vindicate this right, goes back to a Statute belonging to
the age of Edward the Second, a reign in which, through
the weakness of the soverein, ecclesiastical tyranny was
allowed to encroach on the liberties of the Church : nor
does it seem to have been exercised for centuries ; so that
it had become obsolete, and incongruous with the present
condition of our Church ; as incongruous as the Wager
of Battel claimed some years ago was with the present
condition of civil society. Hence one of the measures
which ought to result from this calamitous controversy,
and which is indeed indispensable for the pacification of
the Church, is the abolition of this obsolete right. Wlien
a man is a candidate for orders, the Bishop has a right
and is bound to examine him, for the sake of ascertaining
whether he holds the faith of the Church, and is duly
qualified for her ministry. But when he has once at-
tained an ecclesiastical status, he should not be deprived
of it, or of the rights pertaining to it, except on account
of some overt, voluntary act. He becomes responsible
for the opinions which he publishes or preaches, but not
for those which he keeps in his own breast. To make
him legally responsible for the latter violates the first
principles of Justice, and is a crime which has only been
committed by the worst tyrants, unless within the pale of
the Church. If such a right were conceded to a prelate
with the logical powers of the Bishop of Exeter, and who
used them in the same manner, he would be able to
71
entangle three-fourths of the clergy, who came to him for
institution, in sundry heretical propositions, whereby he
might deprive them of their ecclesiastical rights ; and
thus he, who w^is set to be the father of his Diocese,
would be apt to become its torment and curse. For
these reasons I hope that, when the Church resumes her
state of peace and order, the Statute of Edward II. will
be abolisht, or at all events so limited and restricted,
that the mischievous right conferred by it shall be pre-
cluded henceforward from bringing such dire calamities
upon us.
Be this as it may, I trust I have shewn that it no way
follows from a person's holding a determinate conviction,
however strongly, on any subject, — nor even from his
thinking that others ought to hold the same conviction,
as he of course must if he deems it of importance, — that
he should desire to enforce that conviction by civil or
ecclesiastical penalties. Rather, if his conviction be
deep and living, will he shrink from what can only repell
both the understanding and the heart, and will rejoice at
the removal of every penalty by which the attractive
power of Truth is only hindered and obstructed. He
will desire that she should no longer go forth attended
by janizaries, who, while they compell men to bow
to her, in fact keep them at a distance ; but that she
should pass freely, from mind to mind, and from heart to
heart, winning them all by her own irresistible light and
beauty. Had the recent Judgement been condemnatory
of the hypothetical view of Baptismal Grace, it would
assuredly have repelled many from the true doctrine,
wdio have of late been approaching gradually toward it.
At present, were it not for the irritation of this blind
and blinding controversy, the Judgement itself would
have inclined many to adopt a more conciliatory spirit.
72
As the Trutli is to makt' us fVcc, so must avc be tree
from all human constraint in receiving it.
Through the darkness and dreariness of this grievous
controversy, a hope has been dawning upon me, that in
the end it may be overruled by God to the clearing up of
confusions and to the healing of divisions in our Church.
For generations the chief part of the dissensions by
■which her ministers have been agitated, have turned on
this very point of Baptismal Regeneration. Seldom do a
dozen Clergymen assemble at a Clerical Meeting, but
some difference will arise concerning this very ques-
tion. Now the conclusion which my observations have
forced upon me, is, that these disputes are in great part
owing to a certain ambiguity and indeterminateness in the
use of the word Regeneration. By many on both sides it
is interpreted as involving a complete change of nature.
One may wonder that a person, who knows anything
about children, should conceive that such a change can
take place in them at their Baptism : but one cannot
wonder that they who have a discernment and reverence
for facts, should deny the Regeneration of children, when
such a meaning is ascribed to it. Now, when a dispute
arises from the ambiguity of a term, the natural remedy
is to define that term. Such a process however must not
in this instance be carried too far ; else those who hold
strong views on each side might be offended and excluded.
It is enough if we shew that the meaning, which has oc-
casioned the controversy, is not necessarily implied in the
term. The course adopted by the Bishop of Exeter
could only drive Mr Gorham into more determined oppo-
sition. But let it be declared that Regeneration is the
initiation into the Christian life, not, as by some it is
represented, the angelic consummation of that life, — that
it is the primary incorporation into the Body of Christ,
73
which ought to be followed by a continual, progressive
assimilation therewith, — that, though we are brought by
it into a state of salvation, we need the constant help of
the Holy Sjjirit to keep and advance in that state. It
has long seemed to me that a simple, clear, authoritative
exposition on this point would quiet many troubled con-
sciences, and put an end to many disputes : and the
time for such an exposition would seem to be now come.
We must not allow of any decision, by which the
great body of our Evangelical Clergy would be driven out
of the ministry. But on the other hand it is desirable
that those who are persuaded, however erroneously, that
the doctrine of our Church is materially corrupted by the
recent Judgement, should be deprived of such a plea for
leaving us. They too, who, while they continue faitliful
in their allegiance to their spiritual Mother, are griev-
ously disturbed by a sentence, which they regard as
repugnant to our Formularies, deserve the tenderest con-
sideration. Let neither party be sacrificed to the other.
Let us endeavour to keep both within the fold, to recon-
cile and unite both. This has mostly been the wisdom of
the rulers of our Church, except in that calamitous f)eriod
which followed the Restoration, when they indulged their
bitterest animosities, and revenged themselves on their
adversaries, sacrificing the peace and well-being of the
Church to the gratification of their vengeance.
The hope that something may be eifected in this way
to allay and heal the difierences in our Church, has been
brightening before me almost daily during the month
since the publication of my Letter. For I have been
involved by it in a correspondence with a number of
persons on both sides, several of them taking very strong
views : yet they have all strengthened my belief, that, if
a judicious, authoritative statement as to the meaning of
71
the word Regeneration eoulcl be drawn up, corresponding
in some measure to the suggestions in pp. 37, 38, the two
parties, which are now standing in hostile array against
each other, will discern that their opposition is far greater
in word than in reality : and the main part of those,
whose understandings are not fevered by passion, or palsied
by bigotry, will be ready to adopt an explanation, which
will reunite them to their brethren, and relieve them from
the necessity of straining the language of one portion of
our symbolical books, to bring it into conformity with
their view of the meaning of the other part.
Thus, for instance, on the one hand, Professor Schole-
field, in his able, well reasoned sermon On Baptismal
Regeneration, after asking, " Is the Baptism of the infant
a mere sign, of no value or power, and bringing with it
no blessing? and does the blessing begin, not from the
time of his Baptism, but only from the time of its
visible development, in the framing of his life, and
moulding of his character in conformity to the will of
God?" replies (p. 15), "Nay, we doubt not that it is
the doctrine of our Church, and a doctrine according to
truth, that, as in the covenant then sealed God engages
to bestow the grace of life, so He does bestow an earnest
of it at the time, — a measure of that mysterious power
and unction, with which the Baptist was filled even from
his mother's womb; — a tender seed it may be, and not
to be discerned by the eye of man, but yet the begin-
ning of spiritual life, w^hich, strengthened by Christian
instruction, and watered by Christian prayers, gradually
ripens with the expanding mind, and bears fruit at last
unto life eternal." And four pages after he says that,
if it be contended, " that the guilt of original sin is there-
by washt away, — as the inestimable value of this blessing
is disputed by none, so neither is it doubted by any that
it is conveyed and sealed in Baptism. Nor again do any
question that, as a consequence, baptized children, dying
before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly savedJ'^
On the other hand, the necessity of Conversion, as an
act subsequent to infant Baptism, independent of Rege-
neration, and posterior to it, is inculcated almost as
strongly in the last volume of Archdeacon Manning's
Sermons, as by any so-called Evangelical preacher.
Now, when there is such an approximation between
the opposite parties in our Church, why should it not
become still closer in the unity of the Spirit, and the
bond of peace ? Nay, but, with God's blessing, it shall
do so. The Bishop of Exeter has done all that one man
could do to rend our Church in twain. Mr Dodsworth,
in his Sermon on A House divided against itself, has
drawn the extraordinary conclusion from our Lord's de-
claration concerning such a House, that, whereas the
opposite parties have hitherto been permitted to coexist
within the pale of our Church, this must now no longer
be allowed, — in effect, that half the house must be pulled
down as the best way of strengthening the other half.
But, under God's blessing, we will not suffer the authors
and preachers of division to domineer in our Church.
Let them talk of indifference, of latitudinarianism, of
what not, — Avith God's blessing we will still seek peace
and ensue it.
When we turn to Dr Pusey's work, which I have
cited above, we breathe a different atmosphere. It has
been a great pleasure to me to find him approving of the
remedial measure which I have suggested in my Letter,
and have just been speaking of. He is quite right in
assuming that, when I spoke of the necessity of Conver-
sion, I did not mean to express any approval of the
delusive notion, which has been a source of so much
16
j)i'rpli.'xity and distress to earnest seekers after ri<,diteous-
ncss, that it is necessary tor every Christian to he con-
scious of a determinate, sudden change, whereby his
heart was turned to God. Indeed, at the very time when
I was writing my Letter, I happened to preach a Sermon
of warning against this noxious delusion, shewing that,
though the sudden Conversion of Saul is an exami:)le
sometiines followed in God's dealings with His servants,
His ordinary dealings with them are rather exemplified
by the gradual growth in grace, with occasional back-
slidings, seen in the lives of the other Apostles. Never-
theless we both acknowledge that, in consequence of the
power of the world over those who have been regenerated
in Baptism, it is necessary in almost every case, — if we
should not rather say in every case, — that there should be
a change, more or less evident, a conversion, more or less
gradual, by which the old man shall be turned into the
new man, the carnal heart into the spiritual.
At the end of his Volume (p. 258), Dr Pusey has
drawn up a statement, " in words taken fi'om Hooker,
Bishop Davenant, and St Augustin," which he proposes
as an exposition of the meaning of Baptismal Regene-
ration : " By the Sacrament of Baptism all infants arc
incorporated into Christ, and through His most precious
merits receive remission of original sin, as also that in-
fused Divine virtue of the Holy Ghost which giveth to
the powers of the soul their first disposition toward
future newness of life. Yet this regenerating grace,
although sufficient for their salvation, as infants, doth
not suffice for them as adults, unless througli the con-
tinual grace of God they with their whole hearts turn
to the Lord their God, and cleave to Him, and abide in
that conversion to Him unto the end." This statement,
as Dr Pusey himself says, requires to be " maturely
77
weighed by a Conference of those who long for union
in the Church." I will not enter upon a critical ex-
amination and discussion of it here, but will merely say
that in the main I should heartily approve of it, and that,
from its similarity to the statement which I have cited
above from Professor Scholefield's Sermon, we may
reasonably believe that, possibly with some slight modi-
fications, it would satisfy the chief part of those who
cannot recognise the universality of Baptismal Regene-
ration, from attaching a different sense to the term.
Should this be so, the present controversy, which looks
so threatening, would indeed be brought to a blessed
issue : and our Church, which now hath sorrow in her
travail, would no more remember her anguish, for joy
that such peace was born into the world.
Such a statement, if it is to be authoritative, must
emanate from a Synod of our Church ; and if we were
to meet in Synod for such a purpose, God's blessing
would assuredly rest upon us. Let us make it manifest
that our hearts are earnestly set upon promoting true
peace in the Church, not by exclusion, but by compre-
hension ; and we may trust that He will stir the hearts
of our secular Rulers to allow us to meet in Convocation,
if not in a better constituted Synod.
For the present we may feel thankful to our Bishops
for the Bill which they have brought forward to remedy
the objectionable features in the present constitution of
the Court of Appeal. In the Note to my Charge I have
already observed, that, it is only through accident and
inadvertence, in consequence of the rarity of trials for
heresy, that the decision of cases, in which doctrine is
concerned, appertains to the present Court of Appeal.
Hence the Government are not urged by any so-called
point of honour to resist the Episcopal Bill : and surely,
78
as a mattei' of principle, it is riglit and just that the
decision on questions of doctrine sliould not be committed
to laymen, who arc no way conversant therewith, but,
mainly at least, to the chief pastors of the Church, the
appointed Guardians of her faith, witli the aid, if need-
ful, of some of her Professors of Divinity. Nor can
we well doubt that the lay Judges themselves would be
thankful to be relieved from their present irksome and
distressing task, which can only subject them to
reproach from one side or the other.
It will indeed be necessary to adopt all possible pre-
cautions, lest the interpretation of the doctrine of our
Formularies committed to the Episcopal Tribunal should
lajjse into new determinations of doctrine. For such a
Court would be much apter to fall into this errour, than
one composed of lay Judges ; both from the jDersonal
interest which each Bishop would feel in the doctrine
he was called to pronounce on, and from their not having
been trained, as Judges are, to distinguish between the
law as it is, and as they may conceive it ought to be.
The observance of the distinction between the judicial
function and the legislative would be more difficult,
when the question propounded concerned doctrine only :
and since much weight would be attacht to their decision
by the Church, we should be liable to have fresh de-
terminations of doctrine on the sole authority of a
majority of the existing Bench of Bishops at any time ;
without the corrective force of the inferior Clergy in the
Lower House of Convocation, — or of the Lay members
of the Church, who, it begins now to be generally acknow-
ledged, ought to have their place in a rightly constituted
Synod, — or even of the Crown, acting as their repre-
sentative and protector, by giving or withholding its
sanction to the proceedings. These difficulties however.
79
if the Law-lords will concur with the Bishops in
adapting the Bill to the exigencies of our present con-
dition, may doubtless be overcome. Nor does it seem
unreasonable to hope that, if such a Bill holds out a
prospect of allaying the deplorable agitation in our
Church, the Government will thankfully do what they
can to pass it.
Hitherto, in this Postscript, my dear Cavendish, I have
dropt my personal address to you; for I was writing
on matters in which, though they arose out of my Letter,
you were not directly concerned. But, as you have
found it necessary to publish an answer to my Letter,
— a trouble I had no intention of imposing on you, —
I cannot conclude without thanking you heartily for
the very kind and aifectionate spirit which pervades it.
In this respect it is everything I could have wisht, and
just what I expected from you.
Of course however I could have wisht, — though I can
hardly say I expected, — that my Letter should have
produced some little effect upon your opinions with
regard to the present crisis in our Church, — that it should
not, as far as relates to you, have been so utterly vain
and futile. To me, I own, it seemed, that the irrelevance,
the inconsecutiveness, the iiiconclusiveness of your Re-
solutions had been fully demonstrated in my Letter, —
that they had been shewn to be grounded on a mis-
apprehension of the Judgement which they impugned,
and therefore, even if they had been of any worth as
abstract propositions, to be inapplicable to the present
condition of our Church. Hence I could not but feel
regret on reading your declaration (p. 6), that you would
still "be prepared to sign them at this moment, had
80
you not already done so." The meeting with siieli a
difference, nay, a pertinacious contrariety of opinion on
questions so plain and simple as the chief part of those
treated in my Letter, — in which I purposely avoided
matters of doctrine, and tried to confine myself to
matters of fact, and to the plain meaning of a few
plain words, — the finding that on points, which to me
seem clear, a friend, the fashion of whose mind has in
some degree been modified by mine, and who has every
inclination to listen to me with favorable attention, can
only see black where I see white, even after some
weeks of reflexion on the arguments placed before him,
— would almost discourage one from attempting to act
upon any person by means of words, and would make
one fancy that to build up a pile of reasoning is scarcely
a more profitable task than to roll ujd the stone of
Sisyphus, which aurtV eirena irehovhe KvKlvhero. But
at all events we ought to learn one lesson from this
fact, — a lesson of great price always, and especially so
for our present discussion, — that, when such obstinate
differences exist between two persons, in whom one
might reasonably look for agreement, it must be the
wildest of all dreams to fancy that, notwithstanding
the innumerable diversities of men's minds, aggravated
as those diversities are by the multitudinous combina-
tions of their circumstances, all shall be brought to an
agreement on a number of the most obscure, profound,
intricate, complicated propositions. This has often been
urged before, by no one more eloquently, or, consider-
ing the age when he lived, more conclusively, than by
Jeremy Taylor, in the invaluable Dedication of his
Liberty of Frophesyiny, which contains golden words of
wisdom well fitted to guide us aright in the bewildering
controversies of our times.
81
Jt is contended indeed that the charitable allowance ot"
diversities of opinion does not rij>htly apply to matters
which belong to the Faith ; and this you also maintain.
Doubtless there are limits to it in this respect. There
are certain primary, fundamental truths, which arc
essential parts of Christianity, of the Revelation which
God vouchsafed to manifest in the Incarnation and Sacri-
fice of His Only-begotten Son, — trutlis, without the
recognition of which it is impossible to be a Christian at
all, and which are at once light and life, which by their
light kindle and foster life, and by their living power
awaken and expand the understanding, — in other words,
which are of Faith. The confession of a certain number
of these truths, the Church has from the first ages
declared to be indispensable, before any person can be-
come a member of the Body of Christ. A somewhat
fuller statement of nearly the same truths, she drew up
to be the Rule of Faith for those who had become
members of that Body. With these for centuries she
was content. Her subsequent Confessions, whether me-
dieval, or belonging to the age of the Reformation,
were in the main negative, drawn up to exclude errours
wherewith the Faith had been corrupted, through the
speculative, systematizing, dogmatical tendencies of the
human mind. Hence these pertain rather to theologians
than to the common people. The Church too herself
was at times infected and misled by the dogmatical,
systematizing spirit, which led many of her members
into errours branded with the name of heresies, as we see
especially in the Canons of the Council of Trent. Few
things shew the wisdom of our Reformers more clearly,
than the contrast between our Articles and those Canons,
and the comparison of them with the great body of the
Protestant Confessions. That which has lately been
G
82
made the ground of roproncli against onv C'luiicli, tlu'
scantiness of her dogmatical teacliing, is rallicr one of
her pecnliar, Providential blessings. Onr Reformers dis-
cerned that the business of a Church is not to lay
down a system of Dogmatical Theology, but to bring
her members to Christ, and to train them up in His
knowledge and fellowship, merely setting her mark of
exclusion on those errours of doctrine and practice,
which would draw them away from that spiritual
communion.
But I must not pursue these remarks, which would
soon lead me into a long discussion, and which I have
merely introduced here, because he who asserts a neglected,
disputed truth in these days, is almost sure to be accused
of disparaging, if not denying, its opposite or comple-
mentary truth. Of course, when any branch of the
Church, whether following the general voice of antiquity,
or acting on its own independent authority according
to the exigencies of a particular age, lays downi any
propositions explicitly and absolutely, they must be
deemed binding on the consciences of its ministers. As
the Church is not infallible, it may admit of question
whether her conduct in laying down certain jiropositions
imperatively has been wise and expedient : but, when
they are so laid down, their obligatoriness camiot be
disputed. He who cannot conscientiously accept them,
must not seek to enter her ministry. In order however
to their being thus obligatory, it is necessary that they
should be exprest so distinctly, and fully, as to leave no
room for doubt : and this is above all indispensable, when
their obligatoriness is to be enforced by a Court of Law.
This brings me to the main point of controversy be-
tween us. You and your co-protesters have asserted that
the recent Judgement impugns the Article of the Nicene
83
Creed, in wliicli we declare our belief in one Baptism
for the Remission of Sins : and your assertion has been
repeated in vociferous cries from one end of England
to the other. This assertion I have denied in my Letter.
I have denied the fact. I have shewn in the first part
of this Postscript, how it was only at the last hour, when
every other argument was exhausted, that Mr Badeley
hit upon one, which nobody had hit on before, and thus
gave a solemn emphasis to his peroration. He, as an
Advocate, was quite justified in doing so : but this
fact in itself is a strong presumptive proof that there
was nothing in the argument to which a Court of
Law could attend. A Judge cannot pass a sentence
of condemnation on the strength of that which is said
to be implied in a law : he must be guided solely by
that which is expressly declared in it. To act otherwise
would violate all rules of justice. He cannot defer even
to the known purpose of the lawgiver, but merely to
that which he has exprest. The known purpose of the
lawgiver might indeed be used in some degree to mitigate
the severity of a law, but not to enhance it. .Even
though it were known that every Bishop at Nicaea had
in his private capacity declared that Original Sin is re-
mitted in the Baptismal Act, this would not have been
sufficient to prove that the remission is legally involved
in the Article of the Creed. Mr Badeley 's complaint
that the Judges gave no heed to his argument on this
point is of a piece with the rest of his hasty, intemperate
Preface. They could hardly have noticed it, unless by
shewing its irrelevaiice ; and this, as so little stress had
been laid on it in the proceedings, they had no special
obligation to do. But if they could not allow this argu-
ment to influence their decision, their decision cannot
rightly be said to impugn that Article.
G 2
84
I'iVen l)r Puscy, tli(nt!;h he still iii;iiiitaiiis that the
ArticK" is contravened in tlic .Iiulucnient, — allowinji; at
the same time that tliis was done in ii>novanee, — cannot
extract this contravention from the Judgement itself.
lie tries indeed (in p 5248) to construct such a contra-
vention, and to attach it to tlie Judgement. "The
Judicial Committee (he says) kept themselves as clear
from laying down heresy, as they could, consistently
with acquitting it. — They state as Mr Gorham's doctrine,
' tliat in no case [neither of adults nor infants] is rege-
neration in Baptism unconditional;' that the Articles
do not determine what is signified by * right reception ; '
that Mr Gorham says, ' in the case of infants, it is with
God's grace and favour.' Of course it is. But this —
would be niliil ad rem, unless it meant that some infants
brought to Baptism were not in God's 'grace and favour;'
and such a statement again would have no bearing upon
that of ' right reception,' without Mr Gorham's theory
that ' infants are by nature w??worthy recipients, being
born in sin and the children of wrath ; ' and so original
sin, which the Church has ever believed to be remitted
by the Sacrament of Baptism, is to be an obstacle to
its ' right reception,' unless it have been previously
remitted by God's grace and favour."
Blackstone, after giving an account of the Statute of
Edward the Third on high Treason, says, " Sir Matthew^
Hale is very high in his encomiums on the great wisdom
and care of the Parliament, in thus keeping Judges with-
in the proper bounds and limits of this Act, by not suf-
fering them to run out (upon their own opinions) into
constructive treasons, though in cases that seem to them
to have a like parity of reason, but reserving them to the
decision of Parliament. This is a great security to the
public, the Judges, and even this sacred Act itself; and
85
leaves a weighty lueinento to Judges to be careful and
not over-hasty in letting in treasons by construction or in-
terpretation, especially in new cases that have not been
resolved and settled. He observes, that, as the authorita-
tive decision of these casus omissi is reserved to the King
and Parliament, the most regular way to do it is by a
new declarative Act : and therefore the opinion of any
one, or of both Houses, though of very respectable weight,
is not that solemn declaration referred to by this Act, as
the only criterion for judging of future treasons." How
exactly do all these observations apply to that which
in the ecclesiastical law has been regarded as the coun-
terpart of treason, heresy ! How important is it, that
similar and equal caution be exercised, before " new
cases, that have not been resolved and settled," are de-
clared to be heretical ! How dangerous would it be to
truth and freedom, if any man, even such a man as Dr
Pusey, were allowed to condemn a person for construc-
tive heresies! There is no heresy, no contradiction
to the Creed, in the words which Dr Pusey quotes from
the Judgement. But, as on the one side he inserts a
number of additional determinations into the Article of
the Creed, which are not exprest or indicated by its
words, so here he foists in divers clauses into the Judge-
ment, of which there is no hint in it; and thus by a
twofold construction he produces a contradiction between
them. It no way follows by any logical necessity from
the assertion that a right reception in the case of infants
lies in God's grace and favour, that some infants brought
to Baptism are not in God's grace and favour. For all
may be so. Indeed the very act by which a child is
brought to be baptized, is an eminent proof of God's
grace and favour, as he himself would assuredly grant,
and as is implied throughout the Epistles, where the
86
Apostles speak oi" those who are called. 1 am not saying
that this is Mr Gorham's meaning ; but it is a meaning
which the words cited from the Judgement may legi-
timately bear ; and therefore they cannot legally be pro-
nounced heretical. Wherever a sound meaning can be
deduced from the words, the law will not presume an
unsound one. Hence, I remarkt above, the only answer
wliich Dr Pusey's reply to my Letter seemed to me to
require, was a repetition of the assertion that tlie Judge-
ment is a legal act, of Judges sitting to declare what the
law of the Church is, or rather whether a certain j^erson
for a certain act has incurred a sentence of deprivation
by that law. They did not sit to determine generally
what the doctrine of our Church is, still less what it
ought to be : and therefore Dr Pusey's citations from
the Fathers concerning the Remission of Sins do not
bear upon the Judgement, any more than a large portion
of Mr Badeley's speech, which he complains that the
Judges took no notice of, but which, however valuable
it might be in a doctrinal controversy, was of no force
in a judicial one.
Indeed I cannot see how it can be legally maintained
that there is any essential reference whatsoever to Original
Sin in the Article of the Creed. Dr Pusey (in p. 246)
would foist the same train of consequences into the
Apostles Creed. He finds the oak in the acorn. Yet
a boy who pickt up an acorn, would hardly be con-
demned by a Court of Law, even one composed of doctors
of divinity, for carrying off an oak. Surely a Pelagian
might with perfect good faith profess his belief in the
Forgiveness of Sins, and even in one Baptism for the
Remission of Sins. Learned doctors may pronounce that
these words involve a long series of consequences ; but,
unless these are manifestly implied in the words, a
87
legal tribunal cannot enforce them, till they have
an express sanction from some ulterior decree of the
Church : in which case tlie contravention would be, not
to the Article of the Creed, but to that subsequent
decree.
You too, my dear Friend, seem to be still under
the influence of this same misapprehension, which, I
believe, is the main cause of the difference between us.
Thus, after referring to a series of arguments which I
had adduced to shew that the Judgement was a legal act,
and that, as such, it had been, and could not but be
pronounced in conformity to the principles generally
recognised in the administration of our laws, you tell me
(p. 11), that " such a way of argument leaves out of view
the most sacred interests of the congregations entrusted
to the care of Mr Gorham, and those who agree with
him." But, however important this consideration may be,
t he Judges had nothing to do with it, and could not take
it into account, without violating the principles of our
jurisprudence. As their business was not to determine
doctrine, neither' was it to enquire and decide what was
for the good of Mr Gorham's parishioners, but, — I am
forced to repeat the assertion over and over again, — solely
whether there were legal grounds why he should not be
instituted to a living, to which he had been lawfully
presented. You ask me (p. 12), whether it would not
be too bad, if the Lord Chancellor were to impose an able
scholar, who laboured under the delusion that it was an
act of virtue to break one of the commandments, as a
tutor on a ward of Chancery. Again, in p. 14, you say,
in reference " to the statement that the purpose of the
suit was to visit Mr Gorham with a civil penalty," that
" no one would consider it a civil penalty to refuse the
office of cook to an estimable and skilful person, whom
8S
— he know to hold — tlie ophiiou that arscMiic is a most
agreeable and wholesome condiment." This latter com-
parison has been quoted in a review of your Pamphlet,
as though it settled the question. Yet, — not to speak of
the manner in which you here stigmatize Mr Gorham's
opinions, and which is no less unworthy of you than of
him, — both your comparisons just blink that which is
the main point in the argument. Neither the law-
breaking tutor, nor the poison-loving cook has any legal
claim to the proposed office. He who engages either
is free to exercise his own option. Mr Gorham, on the
other hand, had a legal claim to be instituted, and could
not be rejected, except on account of some adequate
legal disqualification. If the Bishop had been the patron
of the li\-ing, then your parallels might have held water :
but then, for whatsoever motive he might have refused to
present A or B to the living, even though it liad been
for their having, or not having red hair, no suit could
have been brouoht against him.
This misapprehension, which lay at the bottom of your
manifesto, and which seems to me to run through your
Answer to my Letter, has also run through the main
part of what has been written against the Judgement.
The Judges are reproacht by the selfsame persons,
at one moment for having presumed to determine the
doctrine of our Church, and the next moment because,
under the conviction that they had merely to determine
a question of law, they did not enter sufficiently into the
examination of doctrine. Surely how'ever a misappre-
hension of this kind on so plain a matter cannot last for
ever. May I not still hope, my dear Friend, that even
you will at length open your eyes and see through
it ? To be sure this cannot happen, so long as you
call the Bishop of Exeter's Letter to the Archbishop
89
" unanswerable" (p. G), and Mr Batleley's Preface
''equally unanswerable." As to the latter, it is not likely
that any one will think it worth while to expose the
hasty, groundless assertions contained in it. But so
far is the Bishop's Letter from being " unanswerable,"
that it has received a very able answer from Mr Goode, —
which perhaps has caught too much of its tone, as
was scarcely avoidable, — but which at all events has
thoroughly demolisht the chief part of its assertions and
arguments. Surely ere long the soberminded members
of our Church will recognise the justice of what the
Bishop of Glocester has said, in his Reply to an Address
from the Laity of his Diocese : " I am inclined to hope
that the late Judgement of the Court of Appeal will not
produce any practical effect, — beyond that which we
must all lament, — the excitement in the minds of
Chui'chmen, and a state of uneasiness which militates
against peace, unity, and concord. This at least is
certain, — the doctrine of the Church respecting In-
fant Baptism remains the same as it was before that
Judgement was pronounced."
To a like effect the Bishop of Salisbury says in his
Reply to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Wells :
" Whatever be the effect of the decision of the Court
in the particular case submitted to it, the doctrine of the
Church remains written as before in the Articles, Cate-
chism, and Liturgical Formularies ; and these speak in
such express terms of the Remission of Sins by spiritual
Regeneration in the case of all infants duly brought to
Baptism, that I feel assured that even the present un-
happy controversy will in the end but the more firmly
establish the truth, which appears to be placed in peril.
In the mean time may we have grace given to us, in
holding the truth and speaking the truth, to. do so in
90
U)Vo. J.c't us hciw ill luiiul that (liircrences on tliis
subject inc not un frequently apparent, rather than real,
arising-, not from an actual denial of the gift of God's
grace in Baptism, but from a different mode of defining
Regeneration as a theological term. And knowing that
some, w lio are reluctant to use the expression Baptismal
Regeneration, arc influenced by the erroneous idea that
this doctrine tends to the denial of the great truths of
the necessity of the Conversion by the grace of God of
those who are living in sin, and of the actual renewal
by the Holy Spirit of the will and affections of all, let
us ever be careful so to speak, as to prove that no occa-
sion can rightly be given for so injurious an imputation."
The same view of the Judgement is taken by the Bishop
of Lichfield, who, in a similar Reply, says that he trusts,
the teaching of the Church concerning Baptism "will be
no ways affected by the late Judgement of the Committee
of Privy Council." Indeed the great majority of our
BishojJS seem to concur in this opinion ; since their late
Conference has not led to any measures with a view of
counteracting any injury done to the doctrinal statements
of our Formularies. 1 have also had much pleasure in
reading an excellent letter by Archdeacon Churton in
the Guardian of the 8th of May, whose views, though
taken from a different point, coincide in the main with
those exprest in this Letter.
With such encouragements to hope that this correcter
apprehension of the character of the recent Judgement,
when confirmed by such authority, will ere long quiet
the extravagant agitation which has been so grievously
disturbing our Church, I should here conclude, but
that I have observed two expressions in the earlier part
of your Letter, which are such j^lausible fallacies, that
1 doubt not they have exercised a good deal of power.
91
not only in warping your judgement on this question,
but that of many others also.
In p. 8, you tell me, that, " in assigning tlie reasons
for my thankfulness " on account of the Judgement, I
"avowedly rest my satisfaction simply and solely on a
ground of expediency." Very true, my dear Cavendish :
I do so. Nor do I know what other ground to take in
estimating the worth of the Judgement, when its legality
has been establisht. I rejoice in it, because I am firmly
persuaded that it is greatly for the good of Christ's
Church in this land, and because it has preserved us
from terrible evils which threatened us. There is a
fallacy in the use of this word expediency , which I
have had to point out more than once, in connexion
with measures of pubHc utility, when the opponents
of those measures have bolstered up their prejudices
by the notion that they were contending for principles,
against the advocates of a paltry expediency.
Now thus far I would heartily concur with you, in
condemning all so-called systems of morals, which profess
to deduce the principles of morality from a consideration
of general consequences, — which stifle Conscience, and
dethrone Duty, and bid a man look solely to that which
is expedient. For, though that which is expedient for
the human race at large, will coincide ultimately with
that which is according to the dictates of Conscience and
Duty, — seeing that Godliness has the promise of this
world also, — yet it is an inversion of the proper, simple,
natural course, to draw the water of life from the
measureless ocean of general consequences, instead of
from the fountain springing up within the heart : and
there are woful tendencies to biass the judgement in the
calculation of that which is so incalculable, tendencies
which weed to he irpri'st by the sevt-ic and solemn voice
ol" the moral Law iVoui within.
But the moment we proceed from the principles of
morality to realize thein in any outward act, whereby
others are to be affected, it innnediatcly becomes
necessary to take account of the eifect which is likely to
be produced upon others : and this must ever be a
question of expediency. We all feel this in every
relation of life, even in the most familiar, to the members
of our own family, to our servants, especially to children.
In our dealings with others we do not regulate our
conduct by a hard, lifeless. Stoical, categorical impera-
tive. The office of practical wisdom is ever to determine
the point of union between the law from within and the
good of the persons on whom we are to act. This is no
compromise of the law, no sacrifice of it to expediency.
It is the carrying out of that divine principle of Christian
Ethics, that Love is the fulfilment of the Law. It is the
principle on which St Paul ever acted, and which he
continually lays down and inculcates, when he speaks of
our relative duties. Nay, it is the principle which our
Lord Himself, He Himself the Truth and the Life, the
perfect Incarnation of Divine Love, set before us by His
example, when He spake the word to the people in
parables, as they ivero able to hear it. This rule He thus
laid down for the guidance of His Church ; but the
Church, under the sway of dogmatical self-wdll, has
frequently sinned against it.
In the present case, as in all others, the duty of the
Church is to place the truth before the people, as they
are able to hear it. There is no divine voice commanding
us, Ye must compell your ministers to believe, — or at ail
events to say that they believe, — in the universal, un-
conditional regeneration of all baptized infants; else
93
tje must cast tlieni out of the miiiistrij. It' any such voice
is lu>av(l, it comes not from God, but from him who
mocks tlie voice of God, that he may bring ruin and
dcsohition on His Church. The voice of Conscience
does indeed command us to preach those truths, the
knowledge of which has been vouchsafed to us ; although
even with regard to this, our own individual act, some
attention is due to expediency, to the good which our
preaching is likely to effect. He who rejects such con-
siderations stands on the verge of madness. Hence is
it so needful that the Church should be endowed with
the wasdom of the serpent, as well as with the simplicity
and harmlessness of the dove : mark the word, my dear
Friend, with harmlessness, with the harmlessness of the
dove. We are to preach the truth ourselves, according
to the measure of it which has been granted to us, and
with a due regard to times and seasons ; but it is no part
of our commission to make others preach the selfsame
truth. Rather, as we desire and claim that the rights of
our own conscience should be resj)ected, so let us learn to
respect the rights of conscience in our brethren. Or, if
there must be persecution, if there must be oppression on
either side, let it be our desire and prayer to be on the
side of the persecuted and opprest, rather than on that of
the persecutors and oppressors. Let us desire this, even
on the ground of expediency, for the good of our Church ;
because no Church has ever grown or thriven by inflict-
ing, but only by suffering persecution. Let us desire it,
that we may obtain the blessings which our Lord has
promist to those who endure persecution for His sake.
Let us desire it, because hereby we shall be likened to
the Son of Man Himself, whose Church, after the ex-
ample of her Lord, even now cannot pass, except through
much tribulation, into glorv.
94
This brint^'s luc to tlic second j)assage, on whicli I wish
to add a few words. You not only condcinn my motive
lor rejoicing at the Judgement on the ground of expe-
diency ; but you add (p. 9) : — " For persons who appre-
ciate the gravity and importance of tliis Judgement, to
be deterred from the course wliich they feel it to be
their duty to pursue by any such considerations as induce
you to rejoice in it, would be, in very truth, the grossest
breach of charity which they could commit. For what,
if in their tenderness toward clergymen who have sought
Holy Orders in the English Church, and continue to
hold their preferments, although they cannot use the
Baptismal Services except in a non-natural sense, they
should altogether overlook the effect of the necessary
teaching of such pastors on their flocks ? If it be true
that there is such a thing as one Faith once delivered
to the Saints, as we believe, and that the Church of
England would be giving up part of that Faith if she
should submit to the recent Judgement, how can we be
indifferent whether or not that Faith be taught 'whole
and undefiled' to the poor of Christ's Church? Surely,
if there be any one plain Christian duty more binding
than another on the rulers of the Church, it is to take
jealous care that persons, the character of whose faith
must so materially depend on the oral teaching of the
Church, should not be robbed of any portion of their
Christian privileges. To overlook their eternal interests
out of regard to the comfort and happiness of any number
of clergymen, however excellent and devoted to their
duties, would be morbid sentimentality."
My dear Friend, I wish from my heart you had not
written this last sentence. The speciousness in it is
gained by a mere sophism. For, instead of overlooking
the eternal interests of the congregations, out of regard
95
to the coniiort and happiness of tlie so-called Evangelical
Clergy, it is for the sake of the congregations, quite as
much as for that of the Clergy, that I rejoice that the
she])hcrds have not been torn away from their sheep,
before whom they go, and who follow them, because
they know their voice. The pastors who would have
been driven out of the ministry if the Judgement of the
Court of Arches had been confirmed, would have com-
prised a very large proportion of the best, the godliest,
the most faithful and devoted in the whole compass of
our Church, those who have exercised, and are exercising
the most salutary influence on their people. That my
estimate of the number who would have been thus affected,
is not exaggerated, but the contrary, I have been assured
from divers quarters, among other persons by some of
the highest dignitaries in our Church. The schism would
have been, as often before in the history of Christ's
Church, as more than once in that of our own Church,
between subjective Faith, so to say, and objective Faith,
between that Faith which yearns after a living union
with Christ, and the living graces of His Spirit, and that
which is made up of a system of dogmas and ordinances.
Doubtless on your side also there are holy, saintly men :
the very names attacht to your manifesto prove this.
Doubtless there are several amongst them whose teaching
exercises a powerful and salutary influence, especially
over the higher classes. But for " the poor of Christ's
Church," whom you select as the chief objects of your
solicitude, lest they should be '' robbed of any portion
of their Christian privileges," all my observation, and
all the information I have received from others, combine
in persuading me, that the preaching and teaching which
lead them to a lively apprehension of the power of Christ's
death, and of the Redemption He has wrought for them.
and to sfrkiiiu' Inmibh and rcr\cntl\ atU'i' a livinj>-
e-oiniminion with lliin, arc to be found in iar larger
proportions among those wlio rejoice with thankfulness
at the late Judgement, than among those who are ex-
citing such an oj)})()sition against it. They who arc slow-
to recognise the adoption whereby we become cliildvcn
of God, except in those in whom they see some evi-
dent fruits of tlie Spirit, would seem, as a body, to be
more diligent in endeavouring to cultivate those fruits,
than they who believe that the adoption has already taken
place at Baptism. Therefore it was not for the Clergy,
apart from their congregations, but along with their con-
gregations, that I pleaded so earnestly in my Letter. I
did not weigh the eternal interests of the latter, against
the comfort and happiness of the former, because I knew
that they were identical, or at least wrapt up in each
other.
But even if this had not been the case, if that large
body of our Evangelical Clergy, who would have been
driven out of the INlinistry by a Judgement peremptorily
condemning the conditional or hypothetical view of Bap-
tismal Regeneration, had not comprised so large a pro-
portion of our most efficient pastors, still I cannot think
without deej^ pain that you should call a regard to the
comfort and happiness of a number of excellent men,
devoted to their ministerial duties, "morbid sentimen-
tality." Surely, my dear Friend, these words bear no
mark of the spirit of Him who, when He saw the multi-
tude a-hungred, had compassion upon them, and wrought
a miracle to feed them. He did not look with scorn
even on our least sufferings or sorrows. It is said that
some of the fiercest persecutors had been men of a
gentle, tender, loving nature, until the withering spirit
of dogmatical bigotry dried up the sources of feeling,
97
and made them fancy that the blood of heretics was an
offering acceptable to God. Even in these days too
I have seen indications in men of noble and gentle
characters that such an awful transformation is not im-
possible ; wherefore it is necessary to keep watch against
the first approaches of such a mind. When we have once
taken that dismal downward step, to confound the living
Faith, whereby the heart and soul and mind are to be
united to God in His Son, with the mere intellectual
reception of a certain number of dogmatical propositions,
then, — inasmuch as our Conscience is ever telling us
that there is no moral worth in the mere intellectual
reception of any truths, — we may easily lapse, as the
Church of Rome has perpetually, into the supersti-
tious notion, that the mere outward acknowledgement
of those truths with the lips will have a saving power.
Thus intellectual errour becomes an object of fiercer
hatred than the very worst crimes, and is stampt with
the name of heresy, even when it is pure from all taint
of that moral perversity, which in the Apostolic times
formed the main evil of heresy.
You, my Friend, call it " morbid sentimentality," to
feel any deep interest in the comfort and happiness of a
large body of excellent, zealous clergymen, who hold
an erroneous view concerning Baptismal Regeneration.
You do indeed introduce a saving clause : in comparison
with the eternal interests of their flocks. But this is the
very self-delusion by which persecutors blind themselves.
They tell themselves that they are contending for the
eternal interests of those who might have been deceived
by the heretics. Yet, though you wrote sincerely, and
were not aware that you were deceiving yourself, surely
you cannot mean that the congregations under the
care of our Evangelical Clergy are in greater peril of
H
98
conclcinnation, are worse fed witli the word of God, worse
supplied with the waters of life, than the average of our
congregations. In a subsequent passage (pp. 15, 16), you
speak as if the efficiency of our preaching rested mainly on
our having the authority of the Church to lean on. But
it is not so. The preachers who have stirred the heart
and roused the conscience, who have convinced men of
sin and of righteousness and of judgement, have not gone
to the dogmas of the Church for the sources of their
doctrine, but to the word of God, and have drawn
copiously from its living waters, whereto mankind may
come, and di'aw from its exhaustless fountains, as long
as the world endures. Nor have "great learning and
ability," as you seem to imply, anything to do with the
power of the preacher, especially over the poor. As
Leighton beautifully says, in his Sermon on the Parable
of the Sower, portraying what he himself fulfilled, " He
is the fittest to preach, who is himself most like his
message, and comes forth, not only with a handful of seed
in his hand, but with store of it in his heart, the word
divelling in him richly.^''
You indeed disclaim all persecution: you say (p. 11),
that you " know of no persons who would not deprecate
the infliction of civil penalties, in the cause of religion,
as earnestly as I myself should." In saying this, I have
no doubt, you are perfectly sincere. Yet in the passage
before quoted you call it " morbid sentimentality" to
feel anxious about " the comfort and happiness" of a
number of excellent clergymen. Have you realized to
yourself what you mean by their "comfort and happi-
ness?" The words would seem to imply that you were
thinking about their having to give up their preferment,
to quit their parsonages, their comfoitable homes, their
happy parochial lives, the most blessed mode of life
99
perhaps that has ever been vouchsafed to man. Now
even this, when falling upon husbands and fathers, upon
their wives and children, would be a grievous calamity ;
and the infliction of such a calamity on good and holy
men, for no sin, no fault on their part, would be a cruel
persecution. Think of such a fate befalling any friend
of your own, any near relation : would you deem it
morbid sentimentality to deplore his calamity ? In one's
own case one should desire to endure the loss patiently
and submissively : but one should hardly even wish to
do so in the case of a friend or relation : in his case
one should do all one could lawfully to avert or remedy
it. But in the case we are considering there would be
still bitterer ingredients. There would be the severance
of those holy ties, by which the loving pastor is bound
to his loving people. There would be the compulsory
exclusion from a work, to which in the fulness of his
heart and soul, he had consecrated his whole life. Is
it " morbid sentimentality" to mourn over such losses,
to shrink from the thought of their befalling good and
holy men ? O may one never be healthy, if this is
morbid !
You seem indeed half to imply that they have brought
this evil upon themselves, "by seeking orders in our
Church, and continuing to hold their preferments, al-
though they could not use the Baptismal Services except
in a non-natural sense." But, when they sought orders,
they did so with perfect conscientiousness. They knew,
as we all do, that for near a century the best, most
pious, most active and faithful of our Clergy had held
the same opinions concerning Baptism, without any
authoritative reproof; that at one time there were very
few faithful and active ministers who did not hold these
opinions. Therefore usage justified them in looking upon
100
tliis as one ol" the questions which our Church has not
peremptorily decided : and, though 1 cannot enter into
a discussion on the point here, you may see from Mr
Goode's very able Review of Sir Herbert Jenner Fust's
Judgement, and from his Letter to the Bishop of Exeter,
as well as from Mr Turner's masterly Speech before the
Privy Council, that a very strong case may be made out
in their favour, a far stronger than I had imagined.
Accordingly, if it \vas to be determined by the ruling
body in our Church, under whatsoever form, that the
latitude which had so long been allowed in the interpre-
tation of the Baptismal Service, and which had been the
source of so much blessing to it, should henceforward be
abridged, it would surely have behoved the Church to
pro^vide that the enforcement of this strictness should
only take place gradually, and that the large number of
godly men, who entered her ministry with thorough con-
scientiousness, and who have been discharging its duties
faithfully and diligently, should not be rooted up at one
earthquake-shock from the places where they have been
growing as trees of life in the garden of the Lord. This
would not have been " morbid sentimentality," but
nothing more than a due regard to justice and honour,
qualities which dogmatical bigotry will often violate
unscrupulously.
Here I have great pleasure in strengthening my argu-
ment by a beautiful passage from Dr Pusey's Letter
on the Supremacy. " We had been content that the
question should not be raised. We felt that the evils
and confusions of the Church did not lie in her mere
present neglect of discipline ; nor could they be remedied
by any sudden restoration of it. The evil and the remedy
lie far deeper. The evil was the neglect and luke-
warmness of the last century ; the remedy, not by might,
101
)wr by -power, but by My Spirit, sait/i the Lord of Hosts.
We felt and had seen with our eyes, that God's Holy
Spirit was working through our whole Church ; and we
waited patiently until He should, as the Church prays
continually, ' lead all into the way of truth,' that ' they
should hold the Faith in unity of Spirit, in the bond of
peace, and in righteousness of life.' Meantime there is
nothing (which is not of faith) more certain, than that
good men, even amid partial errour of understanding, or
amid invincible prejudice, believe far more truly than
they speak, or dare even to own to themselves. And
the hope of the Church is, not in any being severed from
her, even though they do not yet believe all which she
teaches ; but that God would open their minds, as He has
the minds and hearts of so many, to the full reception of
His truth. Better, for the time, that uncertain and per-
plexing language should be used, even by some of the
priests, whose mouths should keep knotoledge, than that
souls should be led to part from the Church itself, the
Body of Christ, the Sacraments, and the very hope of
being led into the full truth."
From these words one might have hoped that Dr Pusey
would have greatly deplored and deprecated the act by
w^hich this disaster seemed so likely to be forced upon
our Church ; nay, that he would almost have been
thankful for the Judgement, by which for the present
it has been averted ; more especially as he recognises so
amply (in pp. 5 — 9), that "a judicial decision, even of
the highest Court, cannot affect the doctrine of the Church
of England : the plain meaning of her Formularies must
be the same. The Judgement could affect discipline
only." And the sudden restoration of this, he had said,
" could not remedy our present evils and confusions."
When the ministers of Charles the Tenth in 1830 made
their attack on the Press, Niebuhr said, tliat they had
burst the talisnum which held tlie demon of the Revolu-
tion in eliains. In like manner has tlic Bishop of Exeter
burst the talisman which bound the evil spirit of Schism,
in our Church. Parties holding widely different opinions
existed in it side by side. Such has always been the case,
and always must be, while men's minds and hearts retain
their strong-, determined, limited individuality. On divers
points these differences had been exasperated ':to decided
opposition, through a variety of causes, opera ang during
three centuries, — to some of which Dr Pusey has alluded,
as you too yourself have in p. 28, — through errours
on both sides, through misconduct on both sides, bvit far
more culpable on that of the High Church party, whose
lifeless doctrine w^as mostly used chiefly to suppress and
stifle living faith. In such a state of things what was
the course of Wisdom ? even of human Wisdom ? )iot to
speak of that which would have become a Bishop of
Christ's Church. When opposite opinions are held
honestly and conscientiously. Wisdom will trace them up
to the point of their divergence, and shew how this is
also the point of their coincidence. This would indeed
be a remedial, healing process. On the other hand the
course adopted by the pseudo-catholic Church has usually
been to chop off every ramifying opinion : and thus,
instead of a branching tree, bearing all manner of fruit
and all manner of leaves for the healing of the nations,
it sets up a naked pole, much like that which in these
latter days by a like misnomer is termed a Tree of
Liberty.
From this arbitrary, tyrannical course, we have been
preserved by the Judgement of the Court of Appeal : and
therefore do I rejoice and give thanks for it. A number
of persons, who entered the ministry of our Church in
108
godly earnestness, wlio were not forbidden, l)iit encouraged
to do so by all our best Bishops, and whose faithful
labours have for near a century been the chief means of
blessing to her people, cannot now be driven out of her.
In an extreme case of a wilful denial of her doctrine,
discipline, I doubt not, might still be enforced by law.
But the Inquisition shall not establish its tribunals in our
Church ; and for this we may well give thanks to God,
and to the Judges who have preserved us from it.
The only efficient means of spreading the Faith, the
word of God in its whole fulness, and the exercise of all
our gifts upon it under the guidance of the Spirit, — the
means by which the Apostles spread the Faith, the only
means by which it has been spread ever since, — remain to
us. Let the Wisdom from above reign in our Church,
let it reign in the hearts of our Bishops, with all its divine
attributes, pure, and peaceable, and gentle, and easy to he
entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, vnthout partiality,
and without hypocrisy ; and the truth will be acknowledged
in its twofold power, as light and life. But the wisdom
which exhibits the direct contraries to all these attributes,
will never benefit the Church, how^ever fiercely it may
fight for dogmas, with the sword, the rack, or the stake.
Before I conclude, since you express yourself grieved
by my having spoken of your Resolutions as likely to
encourage persons in going to Rome, I feel bound to add,
that, after reading over the paragraph in which I have
said this, when I think what your Manifesto declared and
threatened concerning our Church, I cannot conscienti-
ously retract or modify a single expression in it. I have
not said that this was your purpose : I have only said
that this must needs be the effect of your Resolutions.
They who reject considerations of expediency, in their
zeal to proclaim what they believe, may tell me that they
iUl
had notliinjf to do with the const'quences of their act.
Tht'v said what they btdii-vcd, and tlius delivered their
souls. To me, with my stroiit,^ persuasion that it is a
priniarv duty of Wisdom to observe times and seasons,
and with the conviction, — which I deemed demonstrated,
and which everything since has confirmed, — that your
representation of the evils and dangers besetting our
Church was enormously exaggerated, the Manifesto could
not but seem a dislo3^al and unfilial act. It was an act
of private judgement, whereby a knot of persons, some
of them very eminent, but invested with no manner of
authority, took upon themselves peremptorily to condemn
the highest authorities, spiritual and judicial, in our
Church. You indeed repudiate the imputation of p^i-
vate judgement ; yet it is assuredly quite as much such
an act to take upon oneself to interpret the doctrine of
the Church in opposition to her constituted authorities,
as to take upon oneself to interpret the Bible in like
manner. There may be necessities justifying both these
acts : indeed the latter is often a paramount duty : still
such they are. Nor can I see anything short of extreme
imprudence, in a denunciation that the Church, unless
it adopted the measure which you prescribed, would
forfeit her Christian privileges and power, in proclaiming
this at a time when so many of our younger Clergy,
through the erroneous teaching they have been subject
to during the last fifteen years, have been so grievously
disturbed in their allegiance to their spiritual Mother,
and so deluded by fantastical notions of an unreal, nomi-
nal Catholicity, that they are ready to let slip the sub-
stance in grasping after the shadow, and have learnt to
prize dogmas and ordinances above Christian faith and
a Christian life. Should my anticipations prove erro-
neous, should your act be the means of keeping our
105
bietlueu in the Church, which you have represented to
be in such imminent peril of extinction, — however 1 may
be perplext to discover the relation between the cause
and the effect, — I shall at all events be very thankful for
the latter.
There are several other points in your Answer, about
which I would gladly talk to you. But I must not
prolong this overgrown Postscript. They may perhaps
furnish matter for quiet discussion the next time we
have the pleasure of seeing you at Herstmonceux.
Ever yours affectionately,
J. C. Hare.
May 27th, 1850.
The success of the Episcopal Bill to secure that the
doctrines of the Church shall not be interpreted, except
by a rightly constituted Tribunal, is of such moment for
the sake of peace, that I will add a remark here, in con-
nexion with what I have said on the subject in p. 78.
In the Bishop of Salisbury's reply to an Address from
his Clergy, he says, speaking of this Bill : " It commits
the decision of points of doctrine to the judgement of
those, to whom, in virtue of their sacred office, this
function especially appertains, and who, we may hope, will,
under the guidance of divine grace, pronounce their sen-
tence in careful conformity to God's holy word, as the sole
and sufficient standard of revealed truth, and in accordance
with the Creeds and Articles and Liturgy of the Church,
as its safe and authoritative expositors." Now the words
printed in italics seem to me to prove the great pro-
bability of the danger pointed out in p. 78, and the
great need of guarding against it. I have no doubt
that my honoured Friend would agree with me that the
10()
sole business of a Court of Appeal should be to decide
what is tiie true meaning of our Formularies. But in
that case the decision ought to be drawn exclusively
from the words of the Formularies, elucidated, when
necessary, by their history, not from the word of God
in the Scriptures; which, if it is taken into account,
immediately becomes paramount, as we perceive by the
Bishop's expressions concerning it. Both the Courts saw
this clearly, as 1 have shewn in pp. 59 — 62 : yet a Bishop,
unless he exercises the utmost watchfulness, can hardly
speak on the subject, without being led by his love and
reverence for the Bible to overlook this most important
consideration.
The folloiving are the Resolutions discust in the foregoing
Letter.
1. That vvhiitcver at the present time be the force of the sentence
delivered on appeal in the case of " Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter,''
the Church of England will eventually be bound by the said sentence,
luiless it shall openly and expressly reject the erroneous doctrine
sanctioned thereby.
2. That the remission of original sin to all infants in. and by the
grace of, baptism is an essential part of the article, " One baptism for
the remission of sins."
3. That — to omit other questions raised by the said sentence — such
sentence, while it does not deny the liberty of holding that article in
the sense heretofore received, does equally sanction the assertion that
original sin is a bar to the right recej)tion of baptism, and is not re-
mitted except when God bestows regeneration beforehand by an act
of prevenient grace (whereof Holy Scripture and the Church are wholly
silent), thereby rendering the benefits of holy baptism altogether
uncertain and precarious.
4. That to admit the lawfulness of holding an exposition of an article
of the creed contradictory of the essential meaning of that article is,
ill truth and in fact, to abandon that article.
5. That, inasmuch as the faith is one, and rests upon one principle
of authority, the conscious, deliberate, and wilful abandonment of the
essential meaning of an article of the creed destroys the divine foun-
dation upon which alone the entire faith is propounded by the Church.
6. That any portion of the Church which does so abandon the
essential meaning of an article of the creed forfeits not only the
Catholic doctrine in that article, but also the office and authority to
witness and teach as a member of the universal Church.
7. That by such conscious, wilful, and deliberate act such portion
of the Church becomes formally separated from the Catholic body, and
can no longer assure to its members the grace of the sacraments and
the remission of sins.
8. That all measures consistent with the present legal position of
the Church ought to be taken without delay to obtain an authoritative
declaration by the Church of the doctrine of holy baptism impugned by
ihe recent sentence ; as, for instance, by praying license for the Church
in Convocation to declare that doctrine, or by obtaining an act of Par-
liament to give legal effect to the decisions of the collective Episcopate
on this and all other matters purely spiritual.
9. That, failing such measures, all efforts must be made to obtain
from the said Episcopate, acting only in its spiritual character, a re-
affirmation of the doctrine of lioly haj)tism impugned by the said
sentence.
LONDON:
Priored by S. & J. Bentley and He.nkv I'lev,
Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
L^ t^ /f^ ^ ^y
BRIEF ANALYSIS
OF THE
DOCTRINE AND ARGUMENT
IN THE CASE OF
GORHAM «. THE BISHOP OF EXETER;
AND
OBSERVATIONS
ON THE
PRESENT POSITION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
WITH REFERENCE TO THE RECENT DECISION.
By lord LINDSAY.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1850.
PRI.NTED Br W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFOHD STBEtT.
INSCRIBED
TO
fffie Wtalit lacbinciUj ifatfirr in (Soil,
CHARLES JAMES, LORD BISHOP OF LONDON,
•' THE TWO GREAT SECTIONS OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH,
WHICH HOLD THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL
DEARER THAN THEIR LIVES." *
Dr. Pusey on the Royal Supremacy, p. 170.
B 2
ANALYSIS,
The point at issue in this very important case is so inade-
quately appreciated by a very large body of the members of
the Church of England, that it may be useful to lay before
them a brief Analysis of the argument on both sides, and of
the Judgment of the Privy Council — a statement of what is
conceived to be the true nature of the embarrassment in which
the Church is placed by the judgment in question — some notice
of the efforts which have been made and are making to extri-
cate her fi'om that embarrassment — and some further observa-
tions and considerations which naturally occur and may be
useful at the present moment-
The facts of the case are simply these. The vicarage of
Brampford Speke, in Devonshire, a living in the gift of the
Crown, having become vacant in 1847, the Rev. George Cor-
nelius Gorham was appointed by Her Majesty thereto ; but on
examination by the diocesan, the Bishop of Exeter, he was
found to hold, in the Bishop's opinion, unsound doctrine on the
subject of Baptism. The Bishop consequently refused to induct
him into the living. Mr, Gorham appealed to the Arches'
Court, the chief consistory of the Province of Canterbury for the
debating of spiritual causes, instituting what is called a duplex
querela, which had the effect of bringing the whole matter of
the examination before the Court. The matter was argued
before Sir Herbert Jenner Fust, the Dean of Arches, who pro-
( <'^ )
nounced Mr. Gorliam's doctrino iiiisoiuid and dismissed the
appeal with costs. Mr. Gorliani then appealed to Her Ma-
jesty in Council, — the cause was heard hy the Judicial Com-
mittee of the Privy Council in December last ; and on the 8th
of March the Judicial Committee delivered their judgment,
declaring that Mr. Gorham's doctrines were not repugnant to
the doctrines of the Church of England, and that their Rejwrt
to Her Majesty would be for a reversal of Sir Herbert J.
Fust's decision.
Analyses of the doctrine and argument on the side of Mr.
Gorham, of the doctrine and argument on the side of the
Bishop of Exeter, and of the judgment of the Judicial Com-
mittee of Privy Council, are here subjoined.
Doctrine and Argument on the side of Mr. Gorham.
That " no spiritual grace is conveyed in Baptism except to
worthy reci-pients^^ * — or, in other words, " where there is no
WORTHY reception THERE IS NO BESTOWMENT OF GRACE." ^
That " infants are by nature wnworthy recipients, being
' bom in sin and the children of wrath.' " •=
That infants therefore " cannot receive any benefit from
Baptism except there shall have been a prevenient act of grace
to make them worthy." ^
That faith,® forgiveness of sins,^ justification ,s regeneration,''
the new nature,' and " adoption, or the filial state," ^ consti-
tuting the character of the " member of Christ," the " child of
" ' Examiuntion,' published by Mr. Gorham, p. 83. (Hatchards.) The
Italics and Capitals are Mr. Gorham's.
^ Ibid., p. 60; also pp. 90, 91. " Ibid., p S^.
"* Ibid., p. 83. ' Ibid., pp. 81, 111, 197.
' Ibid., pp. 9.3, 95. K Ibid., j.. 197. " Ibid., p. 85.
' Ibid., p. 88. * Ibid., pp. 93, 94, HI.
( 7 )
God," and the " inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," are con-
ferred on " worthy recipients" — " not in Baptism," but by an
act of prevenient grace bestowed by God " before Baptism/' thus
making them worthy,^ — and so far are these blessings from
being "tied to " or " equivalent to" Baptism, that "justifica-
tion, faith, and adoption" "may take place before^ in, or after y
that Sacrament." *"
That " Baptism is a certification, pledge, and public mani-
festation by the individual who is baptized, that he believes,
with ' all his heart,' in the Divine nature, mission, and atone-
ment of the Son of God. It is a ' Sign' that the person baptized
has professed that belief. It may be, and very often is, a Sign
of nothing more. But if it be received ' rightly, worthily, and
by faith,' it is an ' effectual Sign ' of God's ' grace * bestowed,
which " previously had " implanted a new nature and produced
the faith both professed and possessed ; and it is also a Sign of
' God's good will towards us,' by which he ' strengthens ' and
confirms our ' faith ' in Him." " — This strengthening and con-
firmation of faith is the whole amount of spiritual grace that
Baptism can confer even on worthy recipients, — faith, forgive-
ness of sins, justification, regeneration, the new nature, and the
filial state, having been conferred on such before Baptism."
That " if adoption " and the blessings which accompany it
" were, not co-existent with, or instantly consequent on. Faith,
but were relegated to the period of Baptism, then the believer
would be ' born of the will of the flesh' and ' of the will of man,'
' Examination, p. 113.
■" Ibid., p. 197. — Dr. Bayford, Argumevf for Mr. Gorhmn. p. 217,
(Seeleys.)
" ' Examinoiion,' p. 86. Sec also pp. 93, 94.
° " Est miserabilis animae servitus. Sigim pro Rebus accipere!" -S.
Augustinus. — 'Motto, title-page of Mr. Gorhani's ' Examination.'
( 8 )
since man can will to select the time," — whereas " the believer
is ' born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but
of God ; for faitu is the gift of God." «' — In other words, if
" EVERY infant" were made by God, in Baptism lawfully ad-
ministered, " a member of Christ, the child of God, and an
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," " the Spirit would, of
necessity, effect Plis operation in every infant at the moment
when man tliinks fit to direct He shall effect it," i which is not
to be supposed, and is against Scripture.
That adoption through the remission of sins, and Baptism,
are therefore quite distinct and separate, the one unconnected
with the other.
That infants who have been baptized and die as infants are
saved, not through Baptism, but because they have been
regenerated by prevenient grace. The rubric, " It is certain
by God's word that children which are baptized, dying before
they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved," is not incon-
sistent with this.' " But if such infants live to a period when
they can commit actual sin, the declaration of regeneration
must be construed hypothetically."^ Prevenient grace there-
fore is not necessarily bestowed on such infants as survive to
the age of responsibility, and on some such infants, being
unworthy and remaining " children of wrath " after and not-
withstanding their Baptism, Baptism confers no grace or
benefit, and they perish. In other words, God only grants
prevenient grace, the regeneration which accompanies it, and
P ' Exam.; p. 172.
'^ Ibid., pp. 109 (text and note), 172.
' Ibid., p. 85. — Mr. Gorham " holds that infants may be saved without
the Baptism of water ; and therefore he most fully accedes to the decla-
ration in the Rubric, that baptized infants dying before they commit actual
sin are undoubtedly saved." — Bayford, p. 217.
• Exam., p. y5.
( 9 )
consequent salvation, to some infants and withholds it from
others, and regeneration is withheld from such even though
they be baptized.'
Mr. Gorham further pleads,
That, whereas the Prayer-Book or Formularies of the
Church of England — " less theologically exact " than the
Articles" — form "the mere code of her devotion," the Thirty-
Nine Articles, on the contrary, form her " code of doctrine,""
her "direct, positive, rigid, dogmatical assertion of Divine
truth,"y her " severely precise Standard,"^ the "Umpire""
in all cases of diversity of opinion or ambiguity, — that these
Articles are to be interpreted according to the opinions of
those who drew them up, and who held the doctrines of Calvin,
(including the doctrine of election and reprobation,) which
doctrines they necessarily intended to inculcate in drawing them
up, as well as in revising the Formularies,^ — and, as a
general principle, that " the Formularies are not to
GOVERN the construction OF THE ARTICLES, BUT THE
Articles must decide the construction of the Formu-
laries."*'
That where the Articles speak doubtfully or undecidedly
on any point, the Church intends thereby to decline giving any
* " Mr. Gorham . . , holds that God is not tied to Baptism as a means and
channel of his grace even with infants ; for that He gives his Spirit as He
will, when He will, and to whom He will — whether before, or in, or after
Baptism, or not at all." — Bayford, p. 217.
" Exam., p. 200.
" Argument of Mr. Turner, on behalf of Mr. Gorham. Full Report of
the Arguments of Counsel, Sfc. before the Judicial Committee, y>. 25, (Painter.)
"" Ibid., p. 25. y Exam., p. 102.
' Ibid., p. 156. "" Ibid., p. 128.
^ Bayfoi'd, Pref. p. xi., and passim, — Conf. Sir Herbert J. Fust's Judg-
ment, pp. 29, 72 sqq. (Seeleys).
•= Exam., p. 200.
( H) )
jiulgment on that point, and to leave it an open question for
luM" members to form their own opinion u])on it by the con-
struction of Scripture according to the light of private
judgment.'*
That a clergyman is not required to hold or teach any doc-
trine which is not clearly and expressly defined and laid down
in the Articles.®
That the Articles speak with the indecision and doubt
alluded to on the question of Baptism, — and
That he, Mr. Gorham, is consequently entitled to hold and
teach the doctrines above stated, and has a right to institution
at the hands of the Bishop of Exeter.
Doctrine and argument on the side of the Bishop of Exeter.
That Mr. Gorham's doctrine refutes itself. For " if a
child, being born in sin and the child of wrath, is unworthy to
receive Baptism without prevenient gi'ace, and this prevenient
grace does that which Baptism generally has been declared to
do," why is not that child unworthy in the first instance to
receive prevenient grace ? ^
That if no gi-ace is conferred in and by Baptism, it must be
presumed that Baptism would have been deferred to the age
of responsibility — not conferred in infancy.^
That the grace of adoption and regeneration, the gifts of the
Spirit, cannot be said to be at the command and " will of
man " in Baptism, since the " grace " sought is through the
'' Mr. Turner's Argument, pj). 28, .'?1, 32.
' Ibid., pp. 28, .32.
' Mr. Badelerjs Argument, on behalf of the Bishop of Exetor, p. 202,
(Murray.)
B See Dr. Pusey, Royal Supremacy^ p. 187, (Parker.)
( 11 )
'* means " or channel, and at the time, which God hath Him-
self appointed.
That the doctrine of the Catholic or Universal Church on
the point in question is expressed in the Nicene Creed as
follows, — " I ACKNOWLEDGE ONE BaPTISM FOR THE REMISSION
OF SINS ;" by which dogmatical decision Baptism and the
remission of sins, the sacrament and the grace, with all the
privileges and benefits attaching to the Christian covenant, are
indissolubly coupled together.*'
That the teaching of the Catholic Church in all countries
and in all ages has been strictly in accordance with this article
of the Nicene Creed.'
That the Church of England, as a branch of the Catholic
Church, not dating from the Reformation but then reformed —
not according to the opinions of this or that individual or body
of men, but — by the light and authority of antiquity, and
professedly resting her faith upon the Bible, the Three Creeds,
and the Six CEcumenical Councils, necessarily holds the
doctrine of " one Baptism for the remission of sins," as ex-
pressed in the Nicene Creed.'^
That the Church of England teaches this same doctrine, in
accordance with the Nicene Creed, in her Catechism and her
Baptismal and other services.^
That the Church of England teaches this same doctrine in
her Article " of the Three Creeds," which affirms that those
Creeds " ought thoroughly to be received and believed ; fo7'
they may be proved by most certain warrants of Scripture."
The dogma of " one Baptism for the remission of sins " is
therefore a clause of one of the Thirty-Nine Articles.
'■ Bp. of Exeter s Letter, pp. 19, 27, 48 ; Badeley, p. '205.
' Badeley, pp. 103 sqq.
" Ibid., p. 96, ' Ihiil,, pp. 50 sqq.
( 12 )
Tl)at the Sixteenth Article, "Of Sin after Baptism," further
inilissolubly couples the reception of the Holy Ghost with
Baptism."
That the phraseology of the Twenty-Fifth Article similarly
affirms that the Sacraments are channels of grace."
That if the Reformers individually held the doctrines of
Calvin, as represented by Mr. Gorham, they would have
expressed them in the Articles and Formularies as then re-
formed— whereas they have not done so ; the Seventeenth
Article decides nothing regarding Election and Predestination,
and their language everywhere, taken in the plain, literal
meaning, is utterly irreconcilable with those doctrines, and can
only be explained in a Calvinistic sense by taking it in a
strained and non-natural sense."
That, so far from the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of
England being her " direct, positive, rigid, dogmatical assertion
of truth," her " severely precise standard," her " umpire " in
all cases of diversity or ambiguity — and as such entitled to
govern and decide the construction of the Formularies — the
latter beinjj the devotional as the former are the doctrinal
code of the Church ; the fact is, that the Articles are not
drawn up with the severe precision asserted, p — many doctrines
of high importance enunciated in the Prayer-Book are not
mentioned in them, as, for example, the office of the Holy
Ghost, the duty of public prayer, a particular providence,
the existence of Satan, and the doctrine of marriage and
incest, — " they leave us on many points to collect the doctrine
of the Church elsewhere." 'i In a word, erroneous doctrine on
each and all of these points might be taught, and exemption
" Gorham, Exam., p. 212. " Badeley, p. 38.
° Sir H. J. Fust's Judgment, pp. 73 sqq.
p Baddeij, p. 26. i Ibid., pp. 29, 30, 35.
( 13 )
from the consequences claimed, on the argument of Mr.
Gorhani, viz. that a clergyman is not obliged to hold or teach
a particular doctrine, even though expressed in the Formularies
of the Church, because it is not explicitly laid dow^n in the
Thirty-nine Articles.' It is an error moreover to represent
the Formularies as less doctrinally exact than the Articles, —
they were intended for the instruction and rule of life of the
laity as the Articles were for the clergy f and " lex orandi
lex credendi " has been the maxim of the Church in all
ages.' — The truth in the matter is, that "the Articles and
Formularies are of equal value," " stand " on an equal
footing," "^ and have " equal sanction and authority," " — " both
emanate from Convocation, both are confirmed by Statute," y —
if there is any difference in their relative authority, that dif-
ference is in favour of the Prayer-Book, as having undergone
the latest revision,^ and been the last authorised in order of
time ;* and, while the Prayer-Book has been amplified from
time to time, the Articles have not.*' But this pre-eminence
is not claimed for the Prayer-Book, and, as a general rule, if
the Articles are ambiguous on any point, the Rubrics and
Formularies decide it, and vice versa, and the doctrine so
decided is the law of the Church and the land.'= — Further, the
Articles are supplementary to the Creeds, the Six (Ecumenical
Councils, and the Prayer-Book — they do not supersede them ;
but stand on the footing of a statute in pari materia with pre-
' Badeley, p. 30. — The Inspiration of Scripture might also be questioned,
and the doctrine of the universal restoration of the wicked affirmed and
taught, on these grounds. — Pusey, Royal Supremacy, pp. 8 to 12.
• Badeley, p. 34. ' Ibid., p. 11. " Ibid., p. 6.
«- Ibid., p. 21. * Ibid., p. 21. y Ibid., p. 7.
' Ibid., p. 21. " Ibid., pp. 21, 25. ^ Ibid., p. 35.
" Ibid., p. 4.
( M )
vious statutes, all of which arc to be taken and intcrju'eted in
connexion with each other.'' Mr. Gorhani's view of the rela-
tive superiority of the Articles as the standard of doctrine is
consequently erroneous.
That the Bible, therefore, the Three Creeds, the Six OEcu-
uienical Councils, the Prayer-Book, and the Thirty-nine
Articles form the source fi-om which the doctrine of Baptism,
as held by the Church of England, is to be derived, and that
doctrine, so far as is involved in the present question, is as
follows : —
That there is " one baptism for the remission of sins," —
That infants having no actual sin, but only original sin,
oppose no hindrance to the reception of baptismal grace,
and are worthy of Baptism, —
That original sin is therefore remitted to all infants in
Baptism, —
That every infant, rightly or lawfully baptized, becomes
ipso facto a " member of Christ, the child of God," or
" of grace," one of the " elect people of God," and an
" inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," — or, in other
words, is " regenerate ;"'' that is to say, he becomes a
member of the Mystical Body of which Christ is the
Head, and as such shares individually in the Life
flowing through that Body ; and retains that Life, or,
as it is stated in the Catechism, " continues " in that
" state of salvation " for ever after, in this world and
the next, unless he forfeits it before temporal death by
" deadly sin " *" unrepented of.
That Mr. Gorham denies this doctrine in declaring original
sin to be a hindrance to the benefit of Baptism, in entirely
'' Badeley, p. "JS. ' Baptismal Service. ' Article XVT
( 15 )
separating regeneration from Baptism by ascribing it to pre-
venient graee, and in holding that God withholds Ilis Spirit
from some infants even though they be baptized ; whereby he
rejects an article of the Nicene Creed s — not merely as such,
and as witnessed to by the other dogmatical authorities of the
(Church, but as embodied and enforced in the Thirty-nine
Articles themselves, the standard and umpire to which he
himself appeals with respect to the point in question, — that
he therefore holds unsound doctrine on the subject of Bap-
tism, and has no right to institution at the hands of the Bishop
of Exeter.
Judgment of the Privy Council.
That Mr. Gorham's doctrine appears to the Judicial Com-
mittee of the Privy Council to be as follows :^ — *' That Bap-
tism is a sacrament generally necessary to salvation ; but that
the grace of regeneration does not so necessarily accompany
the act of Baptism that regeneration invariably takes place in
Baptism ; that the grace may be granted before, in, or after
Baptism ; that Baptism is an effectual sign of grace, by which
God works invisibly in us, but only in such as worthily receive
it ; in them alone it has a wholesome effect ; and that, without
reference to the qualification of the recipient, it is not in
f' Bp. of Exeter's Letter, pp. 48 sqq.
^ This summary of Mr. Gorham's doctrine is prefaced by the following
statement : — " In considering the Examination, which is the only evidence,
we must have regard not only to the particular question to which each
answer is subjoined, but to the general scope, object, and character of the
whole examination ; and if, under circumstances so peculiar and perplexing,
some of the answers should be found difficult to be reconciled with one
iinother (as we think is the case), justice requires that an endeavour should
be made to reconcile them in such a manner as to obtain the result which
appears most consistent with the general intention of Mr. Gorliam in the
exposition of his doctrines and opinions." — Full Report, &c., p. 117.
( 16 )
itself an clFoctual sign of grace. That infants baptized, and
(lying before actual sin, are certainly saved, but that in no
ease is regeneration in Baptism unconditional." '
That the question to be decided is " not whether " these opi-
nions " are theologically sound or unsound," " but whether "
they "are contrary or repugnant to the doctrines which the
Church of England by its Articles, Formularies, and Rubrics
requires to be held by its ministers, — so that upon the ground
of these opinions " Mr. Gorham " can lawfully be excluded
from the benefice to which he has been presented." ^
That this question must be decided by the Articles, Formu-
laries, and Rubrics, as interpreted by the same rules of con-
struction which have been established from time immemorial as
applicable to all written instruments.^
That " there were different doctrines prevailing and under
discussion at the times when the Articles and Liturgy were
framed ; but we are not to be in any way influenced by the par-
ticular opinions of the eminent men who propounded or dis-
cussed them ; or by the authorities by which they may be sup-
posed to have been influenced ; or by any supposed tendency to
give preponderance to Calvinistic or Arminian doctrines. The
Articles and Liturgy, as we now have them, must be consi-
dered as the final result of the discussion which took place — not
the representation of the opinions of any particular men, Cal-
vinistic, Arminian, or any other ; but the conclusion which we
must presume to have been deduced from a due considera-
tion of all the circumstances of the case, including both
the sources from which the declared doctrine was derived,
and the erroneous opinions which were to be corrected."™
' FuU Report, &c., p. 118. " Ibid. ' Ibid., pp. 118, 119.
"' Ibid., p. 120.
( 17 )
That in framing " Articles of faith, as a means of avoiding
diversities of opinion, and establishing consent touching true
religion," the Church " must be presumed to have decided such
of the questions then under discussion as it was thought pro-
per, prudent, and practicable to decide," selecting for that pur-
pose such points as she deemed " most important to be mad(^
known to and to be accepted by " her members, and " those
upon which " they " could agree," and to have left " other
points and questions for future decision by competent authority,
and in the mean time to the private judgment of pious antl
conscientious persons." That " it would have been impos-
sible, even if desirable, to employ language w^hich would not
admit of some latitude of interpretation," and " if the latitude
were confined within such limits as might be allowed without
danger to any doctrine necessary to salvation, the possible or
probable difference of interpretation may have been designedly
intended even by the framers of the Articles themselves. And "
that " in all cases in which the Articles, considered as a test,
admit of different interpretations, it must be held that any sense
of which the words fairly admit may be allowed, if that sense
be not contradictory to something which the Church has else-
where allowed or required." "
That "if there be any doctrine on which the Articles are
silent or ambiguously expressed, so as to be capable of two
meanings," it must be supposed " that it was intended to leave
that doctrine to private judgment, unless the Rubrics and Formu
laries clearly and distinctly decide it. If they do, it must be
concluded that the doctrine so decided is the doctrine of the
Church. But, on the other hand, if the expressions used in the
Rubrics and Formularies are ambiguous, it is not to be con-
" Full Report, &o., p. 120.
( IH )
chilled that tlie Church meant to establish iiulirectly as a iloc-
trine that wliich it did not establish directly as such by the
Articles of faith, the code avowedly made for the avoiding of
diversities of opinion and for the establishing of consent touch-
ing true relicion." °
That, with respect to the Articles, it appears that, while those
of 1536 affirm positively that infants receive remission of sins
and the gift of the Holy Ghost in, by, and through Baptism,
those of 1552 and 1562 "have special regard to the qualifica-
tion of worthy and right reception." •'
That the Articles of 1562 do not determine "what is signi-
fied by right reception" or "regeneration," and leave other
points undecidcd.i
Tliat differences of opinion upon such points " were thought
consistent with subscription to the Articles," as appears from
the royal Declaration prefixed to the Articles in the reign of
Charles I.^
That " if the Articles which constitute the code of faith, and
from which any differences are prohibited, nevertheless contain
expressions which unavoidably admit of different constructions,
and members of the Church are left at liberty to draw from the
Articles different inferences in matters of faith not expressly
decided, and upon such points to exercise their private judg-
ments :" it may " reasonably " be expected " to find such
differences of opinion allowable in the interpretation of the
devotional services, which were framed, not for the purpose
of determining points of faith, but of establishing (to use the
expression of the statute of Elizabeth) a uniform order of Com-
mon Prayer, and of the administration of the sacraments, rites,
and ceremonies of the Church of England." ^
" Full Report, &c., p. 121. f Ibid., p. 122. ' Ibid., p. 124.
' Ibi<l., p. 125. ^ Ibid.
( 19 )
Tliat tlie Formularies of the Church having been framed for
the purpose above stated, and with the view of being " nion^
earnest and fit to stir Christian people to the due honouring of
Ahnighty God," " cannot," as rightly urged by Mr. Gorham,
" be held to be evidence of faith or of doctrine without refer-
ence to the distinct declarations of doctrine in the Articles, and
to the faith, hope, and charity, by which they profess to be
inspired or accompanied." '
That " the services," including the Baptismal service,
" abound with expressions which must be construed in a cha-
ritable and qualified sense, and cannot with any appearance of
reason be taken as proofs of doctrine," "
That " those who are strongly impressed with the earnest
prayers which are offered " in the Baptismal service " for the
Divine blessing and the grace of God may not unreasonably
suppose that the grace is not necessarily tied to the rite, but
that it ought to be earnestly and devoutly prayed for, in order
that it may then, or when God pleases, be present to make the
rite beneficial."''
That the Rubric, " It is certain by God's word, that children
which are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are
undoubtedly saved," at the end of the Baptismal service,
" does not, like the Articles of 1536, say that such children
are saved by Baptism." '^
That " this view of the Baptismal service is confirmed by
the Catechism, in which, although the respondent is made to
state that in his Baptism ' he was made a member of Christ,
the child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of heaven,'
it is still declared that repentance and faith are required of
Full Hrpoif, kc, p. 126. " Ibid., p. 1.31. "■ Ibid., p. ].3L
' Ibid.
c 2
{ -20 )
l>iM->;ons to be baptized ; ami wben tlie question is asked,
' W by tben are infants baptized, wben by reason of their ten-
ik>r age they cannot perform them,' the answer is — not that
infants are baptized because by their innocence they cannot be
innvDrtby recipients, or cannot present an obex or hindrance to
the grace of regeneration, and are therefore fit objects for
Divine grace — but ' because they promise them both by their
sureties, which promise wlicn they come to age themselves are
bound to perform.' The answer has direct reference to the
condition on which the benefit is to depend. And the whole
Catechism requires a charitable construction, such as must
be given to the expression, ' God the Holy Ghost, who sancti-
fieth me and all the elect people of God.' " >'
That the Articles, the Formularies, and the Rubrics speak
therefore in such terms on the question of Baptism, that Mr.
Gorham's doctrines cannot be considered " contrary or repug-
nant to the declared doctrine of the Church of England as by
law established." '
That many illustrious prelates and divines — among whom
are enumerated Jewell, Hooker, Usher, Jeremy Taylor, Pear-
son, and others — " have propounded and maintained opinions"
which " cannot in any important particular " be distinguished
" from those entertained by Mr. Gorham," " unblamed and
unquestioned," — which proves " the liberty which has been
allowed of maintaining such doctrines." ^
That Mr. Gorham consequently " ought not, by reason of
the doctrine held by him, to have been refused admittance to
the vicarage of Brampford Speke." ''
That, further, " there are other points of doctrine," inde-
y Fvll Report, &c., p. 130. ' Ibid., p 134. -^ Ibid., pp. 132 sqq.
»> Ibid., p. 134.
( 21 )
pendently of those previously noticed, " respecting the Sacra-
ment of Baptism, which are hy the Rubrics and Formularies
(as well as the Articles) capable of being honestly understood
in different senses ;" " and that upon these points all mini-
sters of the Church, having duly made the subscription required
by law (and taking Holy Scripture for their guide), are at
liberty honestly to exercise their private judgment without
offence or censure," "
This judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council having been embodied in a Report to the Queen and laid
before Her Majesty, Her Majesty issued an Order in Council
on the 9th of March, the day following the date of the Re-
port, approving of the Report, reversing the decree of the
Court of Arches, and commanding that the usual steps should
be proceeded with for admitting, instituting, and inducting
Mr. Gorham into the vicarage of Brampford Speke.
The effect of this judgment, in the opinion of the Bishop
of Exeter and his friends, is this : —
AVhereas it has hitherto been understood that the Church
of England prescribes absolute acceptance of the Nicene
Creed, including the article on Baptism, indissolubly asso-
ciating remission of sins with that Sacrament ; it is now
RULED, FOR THE FIRST TIME, THAT THE ChURCH OF ENG-
LAND DOES NOT PRESCRIBE ABSpLUTE ACCEPTANCE OF AN
ARTICLE OF THE Creed, (the article on Baptism above alluded
to,) and that she allows her ministers to hold and teach doc-
trine in direct opposition to it — in other words, to hold and
TEACH HERESY.
= Full Hepotf , &c., p, 131.
( t>2 )
T\m, in the view taken by the Bishop of Exeter, eoinprd-
mises, or at least impugns her Catholicity, and it behoves her
to vindicate it by reasserting the truth.
It may be questioned, however, whether this view of the
effect of the judgment is well grounded. The judgment is at
all events extremely embarrassing.
The compiler will not here enter into the question whether
this judgment is to be considered authoritative and final, or
not. He will merely mention,
i. That, with the view of extricating the Church from the
embarrassment in which she has been placed by this judg-
ment, the Bishop of Exeter has applied to the Court of
Queen's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, and the
Court of Exchequer, successively, for a rule to show
cause why a prohibition should not be granted to pro-
hibit the Court of Arches from carrying out the Order
in Council made by Her Majesty on the 9th of March
— on the ground that by two Acts of Parliament, of
the 24th and 25th Henry VIH., still subsisting, unre-
pealed, the appeal in causes which affect the Crown
(such as the present) is to the Upper House of Con-
vocation, and not to the Sovereign, and that the de-
cision by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
and by Her Majesty is consequently of no effect, as not
emanating from the proper tribunal. Rule has been
refused by the Court of Queen's Bench and Court of
Common Pleas, — it has been granted by the Court of
Exchequer.'! — And
An analysis of the arguments and judgments in these Courts u]) to the
present moment will be found in the Appendix, w/ra, p. 45. It is neces-
( 23 )
ii. That, with the view of guarding against a recurrence
of the embarrassment in which the Church has just been
placed, and in sequence to his exertions during the last
three years in anticipation of such an embarrassment, the
Bishop of London has introduced a Bill into Parliament,
entitled, '* An Act to amend the Law with reference to
the Administration of Justice in Her Majesty's Privy
Council on Appeal from the Ecclesiastical Courts," —
providing that " on Appeals from Ecclesiastical Courts
involving Matters of Doctrine, the Privy Council shall
refer the Question to the Archbishops and Bishops of
Canterbury and York, whose opinion shall be binding "
*' and conclusive for the purposes of the Appeal in
which such Reference shall be made, and shall be
adopted and acted u})on by the said Judicial Com-
mittee, so far as may be necessary for the Decision of
the Matter under Appeal, and shall be specially re-
ported by the said Judicial Committee to Her Majesty
in Council, together with their Advice to Her Majesty
upon such Appeal," — leaving it to the wisdom of the
Crown to adopt or not the Report of the Judicial Com-
mittee, embodying the decision of the Bishops.
The following are among the principal heads of argument
in support of this measure : — it has been rejected for the
moment, but must be regarded as virtually in a state of dor-
mancy, not extinction : —
That the mode of conducting appeals in matters eccle-
siastical, since the sixteenth century and as at present
sarily too much abbreviated to afford a full view of them, but may give a
tolerable idea of their scope and bearing to the general reader, which is all
that the compiler aims at in these pages.
existing, is as follows : — 'J'lie tirst statute regulating
sut'li appeals was that of the 24th Henry VIII, , chap. 12,
which regulated the coiu'se to he adopted in certain
cases affecting wills, matrimony, divorce, tithes, and
oblations of laymen. It referred, in its preamble, to
the prerogative of the Crown as supreme in its autho-
rity to render justice in all cases temporal and s])iritual ;
but expressly recognized the authority of the spirituality
as sufficient and meet of itself to determine all doubts
when any cause of the law divine happened to come in
question, or of spiritual learning. It directed that
appeals should be made from the Archdeacon to the
Bishop, and from the Bishop to the Archbishop, and
there the appeal was to be final in the cases to which it
related, except where the King was concerned ; and
where the King was concerned, the appeal was to
be made to the Upper House of Convocation, whose
decision also was to be final. The next statute, the
25th Henry VIII., chap. 19, was passed in the follow-
ing year, 1533 ; it enacted, that for lack of justice in
any of the courts of the Archbishops of this realm an
appeal should lie to the King in Chancery, and that in
such cases the Sovereign should appoint a Court of
Delegates to determine the cause, whose decision should
be final,*' No further appeal was granted in the statute ;
but there was one in practice by means of a Commission
of Review. In the following year, 1534, the statute of
* The plea of the Bishop of Exeter, that, in cases touching the Crown,
the appeal to the Upper House of Convocation still stands good, is under
this statute, 25 Henry VIII., chap. 19, as tal;en in connection with the
statute of the preceding year.
( 25 )
tlie 2Gth Henry VIII. was passed, which declared tlic
King to be Supreme Head on earth of the Church of
England, and gave him authority to visit, repress, and
correct errors, heresies, and abuses, which by any manner
of spiritual authority might be lawfully reformed. That
statute was repealed in the reign of Queen Mary, and
was never revived ; but the 1st of the reign of Eliza-
beth, chap. 1, gave the same power to the Crown, and,
what the former statute did not, the means of exercising
it, viz., the High Commission Court. That Court was
afterwards abolished by the 16th Charles I., chap. 11.
But its jurisdiction being original and not appellate, the
ancient appellate jurisdiction remained in the Court of
Delegates untouched till recent times, when the 2nd and
3rd William IV., chap. 96, abolished the Court of Dele-
gates, and enacted that the appeal should be made to the
King in Council, that the decision there should be final,
and that there should be no Commission of Review. An
act of the following year constituted the Judicial Com-
mittee of the Privy Council as a Court to hear all
appeals, and to make a report or recommendation to
His Majesty. And so the law now stands.*"
That the relations of Church and State, and the circum-
stances under which appeals were, as above, originally
constituted, have essentially changed during the last
three centuries. Chancery was originally an Eccle-
siastical court, and still partook of that character in the
reign of Henry VIII. — the Court of Delegates for
seventy years after its institution consisted of Bishops
' Bishop of London s Speech, Monday, June 3, 1850.
( '^^ )
only, to the exclusion of civil judges — the possibility that
judges in spiritual matters should be other than Church-
men was utterly inconceivable. It is not to be sup])0sed
therefore, that, in acquiescing in such appeals to the
King in Cliancery as are enacted by the statute of
Henry VIII., the Church anticipated that she was de-
livering over the deposit of the faith committed to her
to the interpretation of judges not necessarily in com-
munion with her. And this applies a fortiori to appeals
to the King in Council, from which Bishops are excluded,
where (as premised) there is no Commission of Review,
and where decrees are final : ? —
That a tribunal of lay lawyers, whose habits and studies
have been devoted to other matters fi'om their youth
upwards, and who may belong to any religious body
whatever, and hold doctrines condemned by the Church,''
can hardly be expected to adjudicate or advise the
Crown on questions involving the interpretation of Doc-
trine (frequently extremely abstruse and deep) as held
by the Church of England, without falling into error
through insufficient acquaintance with Christian an-
tiquity in the first instance, and misapprehension of the
true character and position of the Church of England
as connected with antiquity in the second : —
That it is candidly admitted by those who abolished the
Court of Delegates and Commission of Review, and
established the present Judicial Committee, " that the
Judicial Committee was framed without any expecta-
>= Conf. Speech of Lord Retksdak.
'■ Speeches of the Bishops of London and Oxford.
( '^7 )
tion whatever that cases of the present kind would come
before it," " with a view to totally different classes of
cases," — that " had it been otherwise, in all probability
some different arrangements would have been intro-
duced,"— and that " it remains to be seen whether
alterations or modifications cannot be adopted to obviate
this objection." '
That the presence of " three" or " four" prelates, selected
in order to sit along with the Judicial Committee as
advisers in spiritual cases, would be no sufficient
guarantee for the soundness of the judgment given, —
for " quis custodiat ipsos custodes ?" who could answer
for the orthodoxy of the prelates themselves — as Bishops
are now appointed ? — those prelates moreover being
admitted only on sufferance, and at the choice of the
minister of the day. And, granting their orthodoxy,
their advice, necessarily mere advice ab externo, could
not compensate to such a tribunal for the want of that
intimate and entire familiarity with the whole scope and
character of Christian antiquity and doctrine, which is
indispensable for calm and solid judgment in such
cases, although a less degree of it may suffice for
forensic or controversial argument. If the Bishops sit
as assessors in order to advise the Judicial Committee
on points of doctrine, and their advice be disregarded,
their presence is a mockery. If, contrariwise, the judges
defer to their opinion, it is the Bishops who judge,
not the Committee — and " three " or " four " of the
Bishops, not the whole bench."^
' Speech of Lord Brougham, who expressed his concurrence with Lord
Lansdowne in these opinions.
'' Conf. Lord Stanlci/'s Speech.
( ->8 )
That, (111 till.' other liand, there can he no hody of men s(»
eoiiii)eteiit for the decision of questions of doctrine as
the Uj)j)er House of Convocation, the Bishops, as repre-
senting (for this purpose) the Church of England.
In the first place, the Church possesses an inherent
right to that office. The Church is a body instituted
by the Almighty for the purpose of maintaining a tra-
dition of saving truth upon the earth, and to be a wit-
ness of that truth in all generations. This truth is
embodied in a written revelation, Holy Scripture; and
the office and duty of the Church is — not to enlarge or
develope that truth, but — to declare and define it when
impugned or denied. ' This office belongs to the
Church by inherent and indefeasible right, inherent
iu her by her very constitution, and expressly dele-
gated to her by her Divine Head in the words of the
Apostolic Commission,™ — and this office requires to be
exercised.
Secondly, in accordance with this inherent right, it
has been a principle of the English constitution from
time immemorial, that the decision of special cases of
false doctrine should be left not only to Ecclesiastical
but to Spiritual judges ; and the Royal Declaration of
1562 fully affirms the intention, that from time to time
a spiritual body, convoked under authority of the
Crown, should — not introduce fresh articles and innova-
tions, but — explain and expound the doctrines and
teaching of the Church of England."
Thirdly, the free exercise of her peculiar functions
' Bishop of Oxford's Sjjcccli.
Bhhop of Lotidon's Speech. " Lord Stanley's Speech,
. ( 29 )
by ihe Chureli, without let or hindrance, is essential to
the health and stability of the Constitution. " Certain
it is," says Lord Coke, " that this kingdom hath been
best governed, and peace and quiet preserved, when
both parties, that is, when the justices of the temporal
courts and the ecclesiastical judges have kept them-
selves within their proper jurisdiction without encroach-
ing or usurping one upon another ; and where such
encroachments or usurpations have been made they
have been the seeds of great troubles and incon-
venience.""
Fourthly, the theory of an Ecclesiastical tribunal of
appeal implies — on the part of the State, the inviolate
preservation of the original status of doctrine and
discipline agreed on by Church and State, and the
restriction of all Ecclesiastical judges within the
terms of that settlement and the bounds of their lawful
jurisdiction, — on the part of the Church, the preservation
of her doctrine, purity, spirit, and discipline inviolate,
and the possession in the last resort of a bond Jide
power of correcting errors in that respect in the civil
courts of appeal without a collision with the State.''
This theory would be constitutionally carried out by
the restoration of Synodical action in Convocation,'' — the
plain remedy for existing anomalies.
But, if it be deemed inexpedient at present to sum-
mon Convocation, it cannot be admitted that it is right
or just to deprive the Church of any means whatever
of authoritatively setting forth her doctrine when
° Bishop of London'' s Speech. p Ibid.
•1 Ibid.
( .'30 )
iinpugnod or ileniod.' On the contrary, it ought to
possess the power to refer any (juestion of false doc-
trine to its Bishops, whenever an incvitahle necessity
arises for a decision upon it." The Established Church
of Scotland possesses Synodical power — and the Church
of England is the only church in Europe to whom it
is refused.
That it is not however proposed by the Bishop of London
to substitute for the existing court of appeal a new
court ; but merely to confer on the existing court
additional powers, to enable it to direct its proceedings
and to form its decisions on grounds which will stand
the test of inquiry* and secure for itself the respect and
confidence of the people.
It is a maxim in all courts of law, that " Cuique in
arte sua credendum est." In courts of equity, when
disputed questions of common law arise, it is the
practice to obtain a judgment from the common-law
court for the guidance of the court of equity, — when
questions of foreign law arise, the opinions of sworn
witnesses practically conversant with foreign law are
taken and acted upon, — in questions of nautical science,
the judge of the Court of Admiralty calls in to his
assistance some of the Elder Brethren of the Trinity
House, and almost invariably decides upon their
opinion, — in questions of patents, the law lords simi-
larly take the testimony of men of science conversant
with that particular science, in which they themselves
are ignorant." And by the same analogy, but on
' Lord SUw/ci/'s Speech,
liixhojj fif Lnmhiift Sper.rli. ' Ibid. " Iliid.
( 31 )
indepondont and superior grounds, needing no apology,
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are
entitled to possess (and Churchmen to demand for them,
for their own security) the like privilege, of receiving
assistance in forming their judgment and offering their
advice to the Crown upon questions of doctrine,
from those on whose competency to judge of such
questions, as men learned in the science of theology, it
would be impertinent to comment, — from those whose
collective wisdom, as assembled in Synod, the Third
Person in the Trinity is believed peculiarly to en-
lighten and guide — in a word, from that venerable and
august body, the Episcopate of England. — And surely
a most inestimable privilege and comfort it would be,
to be thus preserved from responsibility and the pro-
bability of error in matters of such awful and super-
human moment.
That the embarrassment in which the Church has been
placed by the recent decision in the case of Gorham
t'. the Bishop of Exeter, is the strongest possible argu-
ment in favour of the measure introduced by the
Bishop of London. If the Judicial Committee have
(to take the most favourable supposition) overlooked
or misapprehended the peccant point in Mr. Gorham's
doctrine, and sanctioned the teaching of a heretic
(though they may not have sanctioned his heresy), the
next step may be worse — heresy itself may be affirmed
as truth, and the vital doctrines of Christianity be
made open questions — unless something be done to
prevent this evil.^^
" Conf. thp Bishop of Lontlons Speech.
( ■■^■i )
Tlial to porpctuato tlio present t^tate of thingj^ iiiulei-
the existing change of circumstances, and with the
hazard just alluded to, would he to take undue ad-
vantage of the confidence and faith reposed hy the
Church in the State at the time of the Reformation,
and since.
That the measure proposed disavows all infringement of
the Royal Prerogative or Supremacy. The Royal
Supremacy, constitutionally held and exercised, is not
a burden but an advantage to the (Jhurch, — it has the
sanction of antiquity, — it is, in the words of the Bishop
of London, " a jewel of the ancient Crown of this
realm, plucked from it and transferred to his own tiara
by a foreign potentate, and claimed for the Crown and
regained by its rightful owner shortly before the
Reformation." It is that prerogative which, in the
language of our Articles, " we see to have been given
always to all godly princes in Holy Scriptures by God
himself; that is, that they should rule all estates and
degrees committed to their charge by God, whether
they be ecclesiastical or temporal, and restrain with the
civil sword the stubborn and evildoers." But this
Supremacy is not a personal or arbitrary quality or
right in the Sovereign, which may be delegated to any
subject, — it must be exercised by legal and constitu-
tional tribunals, or as expressed in the statute 24
Henry VHL, " in causes spiritual by judges spiritual,
and in causes temporal by judges temporal," — in causes
temporal by means either of the courts of common law
or of the courts founded under statute law ; in causes
spiritual by the Ecclesiastical courts, M'hicli administer
( 33 )
law enacted with the consent of Parliament, and of the
Church's Parliament, Convocation.'' All that is now
demanded is, that tlie Crown should have the assist-
ance on matters of faith of the Spiritual Judges of the
land,^ and should exercise its Sujiremacy and Preroga-
tive in conformity to the spirit (at least) if not to the
strict letter of the Constitution.'-
That, finally, the measure proposed, so far from attacking
or infringing the Royal Supremacy or the liberties of
the subject, is in fact a measure for the protection of
the Crown, of the Church, and of the Laity — whose
rights and liberties are all equally concerned — against
the three contingencies, of the Crown being called upon
to appoint persons to offices in the Church who hold
doctrines at variance with those of the Church, and
which, as Head of the Church, the Crown is bound to
discountenance * — of the Church being called upon and
compelled to institute such persons to such offices^ —
" Bishop of London's Speech. Conf. Speeches of the Bishop of Oxford ^
of Lord Lyttclton, mid of Lord Stanley.
y Bishop of Oxford's Speech.
'■ Lord Stanley wishes that the Bishop of London's Bill should be so far
modified as not to withdraw from the Judicial Committee the power of
j)assing the sentence. " I would not," he says in his speech to the House
of Lords, " constitute the Bishops a Court for the purpose of passing their
sentence, but would suggest whether it would not be well if the Bisho])s,
with regard to all matters of doctrine and teach'ng of the Church of
England, were placed upon the same footing on which, with regard to
matters of civil law, the Judges of the land are placed when they are called
upon to advise your Lordships as the highest tribunal with regard to any
matter of intei'pretation of law. Practically, your Lordships are always
guided by that advice of the Judges, — though there have been some
memorable exceptions ; and so in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the
Judicial Committee would be guided by the opinion of the Bishops, if
such a reference was made to them upon questions of doctrine.''
" Speech of Lord Hedesdale. ^ Ibid,
( 34 )
.intl (il tlio fi.'uty Neiiig ('mTi])ello(l to rrceivc the
tearhing of such persons, teaching which the Church
condemns as false and liereticjil, to the peril of their
souls/ l^e piTsent system can only he maintained hy
a violation of religious liherty unworthy of England,
and unparalleled in the case of any other church in
Christendom.
in conclusion, the writer of these pages would offer a few
considerations to those who may he so moved by recent events
and disappointments as to hesitate about remaining within the
Church of their baptism. He would address those on the one
hand, who believe that the Church is hopelessly committed to
heresy by the recent decision ; and those, on the other, who
may have come to the conviction recently expressed by Mr.
Maskell, " that the Evangelical clergy, as a party, no less than
the Anglican or High Church party, represent and carry out
the spirit and system of the English Reformation, as declared
hy contemporary authorities and sanctioned by the existing
Formularies,"*^ and who, like him, may demand dogmatical
teaching on every conceivable point of doctrine as the sine qua
non of Catholicity in the Church of England.^ The object of
the following observations will be to show,
1. That the avowal of Mr. Maskell ought to be considered
as the earnest of a more general recognition of the true
and peculiar character of the Church of England, as
distinguished from every other Christian communion : —
• Speech of Lord Redesdale.
^ Second Letter on the Present Position of the High Church Party in
the Church of Enylofid, by the Rev. William Maskell, p. 74, (Pickering.)
• Ibid., pp. 33 sqq.
( 35 )
2. That, constituted as the Church of England is, dog-
matical teaching to the extent demanded by Mr.
Maskell is not to be expected from her, and could only
be attained at the sacrifice of her distinctive and privi-
leged character: —
3. That this question of Gorliam v. the Bishop of Exeter
is not, as many seem to suppose, a question between
the High Church and Low Church, or Evangelical
party ; but that Mr. Gorham stands detached from the
Low Church, with whom he is usually associated, —
and that the question is in reality one between the
Church, as inclusive both of High Church and Low
Church, on the one hand, and Mr, Gorham, as pro-
fessing heresy, on the other : — And, lastly,
4. That the Church is not compromised in the manner
supposed, by the recent decision.
The writer will submit these considerations with the utmost
possible brevity, — and if he commences with some very abstract
propositions, it is simply because the true and comprehensive
character of the Church cannot (as it appears to him) be
understood otherwise. They are as follows :^ —
That Truth is Essential, Absolute, and Universal ; but that
Human Nature, constituted as it is (by Divine pre-ordinance)
since the Fall, has a tendency to perceive and recognise it
partially, imperfectly, and antagonistically, according to the
predominance of what has been termed the Objective or Sub-
jective element in the Individual or the Society, — in other
words, that Truth Objective and Truth Subjective s are merely
' For fuller illustration of the following propositions, the writer must
needs refer to ' Progression by Antagonism,' a small volume published hy
Mr. Murray in 1846.
'^ That is to say, Truth viewed objectively and subjectively.
D 2
( 36 )
[inrtial aspects of Universal Tmtli, as soon and appreliondocT
by Unman Natnre — Tnith Universal (as approlicnsihle l»y
Man') ri'siiling at the point where Truth Objective and Trnth
Subjective meet in equipoise and reconciliation : —
Tliat Human Nature rises towards Truth and Perfection
through the antagonism thus provided between the Objective^
and Subjective elements of its being ; and that, in guidance^
and assistance to Man, thus constituted, the Almighty has.
Revealed to liim the knowledge of Truth Universal so far
as essential to his salvation — which Truth is summed up in
Christianity, as proposed to him ab externo in the Holy
Scriptures, the Creeds, and the decisions of the Six CEcu-
menical Councils, and imperative on his belief and acceptance
ah intcrno. But the full vision and recognition of Truth
Universal cannot be enjoyed till Man has completely recovered
all that he lost in Eden, and soared too beyond it to the fiill
Btature and glory of Christianity : —
That Individuals and Societies approach nearest to Truth
Universal in proportion to the degree in which the Objective
and Subjective elements are balanced and reconciled in their
constitution, — that this balance and reconciliation are only
found complete in the Human Nature of Our Saviour, the
" perfect Man " as well as " perfect God," the " Second
Adam," and the model, type, and ideal of all excellence under
the sun, — and that this balance and reconciliation will be an
essential mark and prerogative of the Church in its corpo-
rate or collective character, as the Mystical Body of Christ,
after it has attained its fulness and perfection : —
That the Objective element, carried legitimately out in
Human Nature, apart from the corrective influence of the Sub-
jective, implies — a bias towards Synthesis or Combination, and
( 37 )
ca merging of the Individual in the Society to which he belongs
— the instinct of Acquiescence or Submission, predominant over
that of Voluntary Choice — a tendency to Strict or Absolute
Law, as distinguished from the Law of Equity, to the Letter
as opposed to the Spirit — a longing for Unity, Perfection,
Peace, and Repose in everything — a predominance of the Past
over the Present — Order, the principle of Government, Autho-
rity descending from God and centred in One, Loyalty the
response of the subject — a love of Mystery, Allegory, and
Symbolism, and a tendency to exalt the Imagination and de-
preciate Reason in religion and philosophy — hierarchies, for
the most part hereditary, as mediators between God and Man,
the channels of Grace through the administration of Sacra-
ments, and trustees and intcrpretei's of religious truth — a sub-
ordination of the Civil to the Ecclesiastical Authority, of the
State to the Priesthood — in a word, a tendency (in excess, as
above premised) to absolute Abnegation and Dereliction of
Individual Judgment, Right, and Responsibility ; ending in
Despotism, Slavery, Superstition, Pantheism, Practical Atheism,
and utter final Sensuality : —
That the Subjective element, carried legitimately out, apart
from the corrective influence of the Objective, similarly implies
— a bias towards Analysis or Schism, vindicating the Inde-
pendence or Freedom, in Person and Thought, of the Indi-
vidual, and admitting only of Voluntary Association — the
instinct of Voluntary Choice predominant over that of Acqui-
escence— a tendency to the Law of Equity as distinguished
from Strict or Absolute Law, to the Spirit as opposed to the
Letter — a longing for Variety, Saliency, War, and Excitement
in everything — a predominance of the Present over the Past —
Liberty the ])rinciplc of Government, Authority ascending
( 38 )
tVoin Man, and vcstod in Many, Patriotii^ni or tlio Common
Good the inspiration of the noble-hearted — a hatred of Mystery
and Reserve, and a tendency to exalt Reason and depreciate
Imagination in religion and philosophy — a jealousy of hierar-
chies, and assertion of the Personal Priesthood of every man,
and of his direct access to God without a human mediator, and
independently of Siicraments ; Private Judgment and Religious
Toleration — a Subordination of the Ecclesiastical to the Civil
Authority, of the Priesthood to the State, — in a word, a ten-
dency (in excess, as above premised) to the Absolute Rule of
Self-will, ending in Anarchy, Licence, Scepticism, Deism,
Theoretic Atheism, and, as before, utter final Sensuality : —
That in Christianity, practically considered, the Objective
element has developed itself more j)eculiarly in what is termed
Catholicism, and the Subjective in Protestantism — each in
principle opposed to the other, each of them attributing inor-
dinate value to that portion of Truth which they recognise
with special congeniality, and in so far erring and tending
towards the extremes just indicated ; the former referring tin;
salvation of the Christian substantially to his being made n
member of the Church or of the Body of Christ through the
Sacraments ; the latter, to immediate communication between
himself and God, and to his individual responsibility : —
That the Church of England, through her peculiar consti-
tution, both Catholic and Protestant — Catholic, though Pro-
testing against the errors of Catholicism, and Protestant, though
legitimately descended from the Apostolic stock and deriving
her doctrine from the universal consent of Antiquity — recog-
nises both the Objective and Subjective elements as legitimately
comprehended within her constitution, and thus comes nearer
Universal Truth and the ideal of Christianity and of Human
( 39 )
Natui'o, as exemplified in tlio Perfect Manhood of our Saviom ,
and nearer consequently to the theory of the Church in its cor-
porate or collective character as the Mystical Body of Christ,
than any other existing communion of Christians : —
That, while the Church of England recognises both the Ob-
jective and Subjective elements as comprehended within hei
constitution, and is thus in theory co-extensive with Human
Nature, and the imperfect (though loftiest) type on earth of
what is perfect in heaven, those elements are practically repre-
sented by two great parties witliin her pale, commonly styled
the High Church and Low Church, the former leaning towards
the Objective or Catholic side, the latter towards the Subjective
or Protestant, each having a corresponding tendency to exag-
gerate their favourite tenets, though each is held in check and
prevented from excess and disruption by the other : —
That, so far from being detrimental, the co-existence and
antagonism of these two parties, the High Church and Low-
Church, have been most advantageous and beneficial to the
Church of England. Each party has alternately asserted the
great truths which more peculiarly animate its existence — eacli
has alternately prevailed— and every struggle has left the
Church on a higher vantage-ground than before, and nearer
the recognition of Universal Truth — the Church (as compre-
hensive of both the parties in question) recognising impartially
and adopting as her own whatever wisdom or clearer percep-
tion of Truth has been contributed by either side or elicited iu
the collision. The experience of the last few years justifies
this assertion. The Church, after a long struggle with Puri-
tanism and Romanism, ending with the seventeenth century,
had vindicated her position, rooted herself in the land, and im-
pregnated the people with reverence for her authority. But,
( -i^' )
while tlofemling licr outworks, with but champions too few for
the duty, it had been impossible adequately to tend the moral
soil — the eiFort had been too great, and after the enemy had
retired, she sat languid and exhausted till the middle of last
century. By that time she had recovered herself, and, with
God 8 blessing and obeying his impulse, she arose and girded
hei*self to the work of evangelizing the nation— and from that
moment till the present all has been renewed and continued
progress. First came the Subjective, or, as it is popularly
styled, the Evangelical movement** — awakening the sense of
Individual Guilt, Redemption, and Responsibility ; and then,
in necessary sequence and relation to it, the Objective, or,
as it is similarly styled, the Puseyite — restoring the true idea of
the Church, as the Mystical Body of Our Saviour, — the former
converting us individually from sin as "children of God," the
latter expanding our sympathies and duties as " members of
Christ," and both unitedly preparing us for Eternity as "inhe-
ritors of the kingdom of heaven :" —
That, as might be expected from this comprehensive charac-
ter of the Church of England, she confines her dogmatical teach-
•• This Evangelical movement in the Church must be distinguished from
the Methodist movement, as developed during last century. It may be
remarked, as a general rule in the history of religion (whether Christian,
Jewish, or heathen), that towards the expiration of every great struggle
between the Imagination and Reason, the my?tic or spiritual element asserts
itself in hostility to both, with a tciidcnry to dissociation from the Church,
and a revival of religious piefy ami enthusiasm among the uncultured and
the lower classes, — while ;i couuier reaction generally takes place among
the intellectual to Infidelity. The struggle of Nominalism and Realism,
for example, was followed by a development of Mysticism in the Mendicant
Orders, and by the philosophy of MachiavcUi. Methodism and Infidelity
were similarly the cuncluding phases of a great religious struggle in the
Knglish Cluuch. EvangcliCiUism was the commencement of a new struggle,
•till in progreas.
( 41 )
ing to such points as are absolutely ruled by direct Revelation
and the judgment of Catholic Antiquity as tests of salvation ;
and, even in these, makes allowance, so far as permissible, for
the diversity of Objective and Subjective vision incidental to
the present constitution of Human Nature — demanding only
in such cases that neither view be held so absolutely as to ex-
clude the other : —
That, applying the preceding principles and considerations
to the question now at issue, it would appear — That the High
Church dwell so earnestly on the Sacramental virtue of Bap-
tism as conferring grace on the recipient infant, and incorpo-
rating it with the Church, the Body of Christ, as comparatively
to under-estimate the condition of faith and repentance re-
quired from him, and on the redemption of which, on attain-
ment to the age of responsibility, the preservation of the grace
in question depends : — And that the Low Church, on the
contrary, dwell so earnestly on the condition on which grace is
given, as comparatively to under-estimate the Sacramental vir-
tue of Baptism, and the benefit of incorporation above stated as
thereby conferred : — AVhereas, the doctrine of the Church, as
comprehensive both of High Church and Low Church — the
doctrine expressed in her recognised formularies and authorities,
and stated in the preceding summary of the Bishop of Exeter's
argument, though perhaps more fully than the Bishop or his ad-
vocates have thought it necessary to enunciate it — lays equal
stress on the grace conferred, and on the condition upon which
it is conferred, and by non -redemption of which it is forfeited : —
That individual members of the High Church and Low
Church parties, who through their peculiar Objective or Sub-
jective idiosyncrasy attach inordinate importance either to the
one or the other view of the question, are not guilty of heresy.
( 42 )
so long as thoy do not assert oitluM- view to tho exclusion of
the otlier : —
That Mr. Gorhani, intlividually, has asserted Subjective to
the utter and absolute exclusion of Objective Truth as regards
the grace of Baptism, and in so doing has diverged into heresy,
— but that in this he differs, as it is believed, from the majority
of the Low Church party, — who ought, if such be the case, to
vindicate their orthodoxy by expressing their dissent, not from
his opinions in general, but from his special error : —
That the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council have, as
it is conceived, overlooked this heresy, but they have not
sanctioned it. They have merely sanctioned certain opinions
which they attribute to Mr. Gorham, and which, though they
separate Baptism and Grace in point of time, still connect
them substantially with each other, but which opinions are not
Mr. Gorham's opinions in their full extent. — do not, as his
do, absolutely separate Baptism and Grace — do not therefore
deny the Nicene Creed — and do not consequently amount to
heresy. The Judicial Committee do not moreover assert that
the opinions which they attribute to Mr. Gorham are the doc-
trine held and intended to be taught by the Church, but rather
the contrary, — their sanction therefore amounts to nothing
more than a grant of legal toleration to such opinions.' But
even had the sanction thus given included the whole of
Mr. Gorham's doctrines and affirmed heresy, such sanction,
weighed against the Creeds and Catholic consent inherited
by the Church from the Apostolic ages — fallibility, in a
word, weighed against infallibility — could not blot out the
Truth, thus binding upon her, nor compromise her Catho-
' Dr. Hook ^On the Present Crisis of the Church,' pp. 12, 13. — Letter
to the Bishop of Exeter, by a Larjnian. Privately printed. Pp. 5 sqq.
( 43 )
licity, so long as she did not, by a forn)al, conscious,
deliberate act, of her own free will, rescind and repudiate what
she at present professes to hold :^ —
That Churchmen ought not to be discouraged by the failure
of the measure recently introduced by the Bishop of London,
inasmuch as the perils to which the Church is exposed by the
present system of appeals, and the necessity of such a measure,
are as yet but very imperfectly known or appreciated. The
principle is in the meanwhile conceded, that the present system
is objectionable, and this is of itself an instalment of justice.
" Endure " ought therefore to be the motto of the Church at
the present moment, — Time and Truth will work together in
her cause, and failure may be followed up by success. — The
Bill itself, supported by a very large majority of the Bishops,
is likewise, in the interim, a protest of the Church, repudiat-
ing the interpretation supposed to be affixed by the Privy
Council to her formularies and articles — a protest, to be
followed, it is to be hoped, by a manifesto of the Bishops
declaring and reaffirmmg the faith of the Church — which,
though not perhaps strictly necessary, is most desirable in
■^ " A judicial decision, even of the highest court, cannot affect the doc-
trine of the Church of England, The meaning of the article of the Creed,
' one Baptism for the remission of sins,' must be that one meaning in which
the whole Catholic Church ever understood it. The Faith of the Church
is determined by herself in her decrees and canons : the office even of the
highest court is only to apply her decision to the particular case before it.
No authority less than that of the Church can decide in her name, that she
does not receive the Creeds which she uses in the sense in which the Church
has ever received them. If any authority, not co-extensive with herself,
decides wrongly, he condemns himself, not her. He may embarrass her,
may cripple her functions ; he cannct alter her faith. The Faith which
the Church of England has received in the Creed and Prayers of the
Catholic Church, is hers, so long as by some contrary act (whicli God
forbid !) she does not disavow it." — Dr. Pusey on the Royal Supremacy,
pp. 4 &qq.
( 44 )
order to calm the public mind, — But under any circumstanccf
it must be insisted upon, that neither the sanction given b)
the Privy Council to the teaching of one whom it is sad to
be compelled to term a heretic, nor the defeat of the Bishop ot
London's Bill, nor any conceivable (or ratlier, inconceivable)
accumulation of oppression, can furnish cither cause or excuse
to any one for quitting the] Church for another communion.
The duty of her chivalry is to stand by her, to defend her to
the death : —
That, finally, if any persist in quitting the communion of the
Church of England in consequence of the recent decision, Rome
can afford them but slender consolation, inasmuch as she is
more grievously and hopelessly compromised on the question
of Baptism than such persons suppose the Church of England
to be,^ — to say nothing of her mutilation of the Eucharist in
denying the cup to the laity, and other points of difference
with ourselves. Whereas, on the other hand, if our friends
must leave us, they may find refuge in the communion of the
Episcopal Church of Scotland, a daughter of their mother
Church, holding the same doctrine, and possessing the same
comprehensive character, but untrammeled by State influence,
and in no wise affected by the recent decision.
' " Tho Church of Rome contends that not only the guilt but the very
essence and being of original sin is removed by Baptism, — the Church of
England declares that this corruption of nature remains even in the rege-
nerate We, in common with all Protestants, regard this as a great
and fundamental heresy in the Church of Rome, laying the foundation of
their grand error, viz. justification by inherent righteousness." — Bishop
Bethdl on Rrfjeneration, quoted and commented on by Dr. Hook, Piesait
Crisis (if the Church, p. 8.
( 45 )
APPENDIX.
Analysis of the Arguments and Judgments in the Courts of Quee7is
Bench and Common Pleas, and of the Argument in the Court
of Exchequer,-— referred to siqrra, p. 22.
The argument for the Bishop of Exeter in moving for a rule nisi
m the Court of Queen's Bench was as follows : —
That a statute was passed, 24 Henry VIII., c. 12, by which
appeals to the Pope were forbidden in causes testamentary, causes
connected with matrimony and divorce, and causes connected with
tithes, obventions, and oblations,— appeals in such cases to lie first
from the Archdeacon to the Bishop, and from the Bishop to the
Archbishop of the province, there, in the case of a subject, to be
finally adjudged and determined ; but if any of the matteis so in
dispute should toucli the King or his successors, the appeal
was given from any of the said courts to the Upper House of
Convocation : —
That this Statute was followed up by another, passed the succeed-
ing year, 25 Henry VIII., c. 19, by which it is provided, " that all
manner of appeals, of what nature or condition soever they be, or
what cause or matter soever they concern, shall be made and had
by the parties aggrieved after such manner, form, and condition as
is limited by the Statute 24 Heniy VIII., — in other words, the pro-
visions of the former Act are extended by this later one to all
manner of spiritual causes, leaving the appeal in those matters in
which the King was interested untouched.
That these two Statutes were repealed by the 1 and 2 Philip and
Mary, c. 8, but revived and re-enacted in precisely the same terms
by 1 Elizabeth, c. 1.
That these two Statutes being iti pari materia, the latter refer-
ring to the former, and merely extending, not annulling or infring-
ing its provisions, they must be taken together and considered as
one statute, and the appeal to the Upper House of Convocation
( M) )
must still hold g^ood in all cases in wliicli tlio Sovereign is a ])arty
interested : —
That the existence of these two Statutes luid been overlooked and
forgtUten at the time when the appeal was made to the Privy
Council by Mr. Gorliam and tiie decision was given ; l)ut that they
iiave never been repealed, and have been recognised and referred
to by all subsequent legal autlioritius, and are consequently still
binding and in force: —
That the Queen has a direct interest in the matter in question,
the vicarage of Brampford Spcke being in the gift of the Crown : —
That the appeal to the Queen in Council in the case of Gorham
r. tiie Bishop of Exeter was consequently illegal, and the decision
IS null and void.
The rule moved for has been refused by the Court of Queen's
Bench, on the following grounds : —
That the first of the above statutes " was passed when Sir Thomas
More, a rlgiii Roman Catholic, was Lord Chancellor, and when
Henry had not yet broken with the see of Rome, — it therefore still
allows an appeal to the Pope in all spiritual suits, and was framed
upon the principle, that, while all temporal matters which were
discussed in the Ecclesiastical Courts should be finally determined
by courts sitting within tlie realm, the spiritual jurisdiction which
belonged to the Pope, as Supreme Head of the Western Church,
should remain unaffected." " An appeal from the Archbishop's
Court in a suit upon duplex querela " (such as the present insti-
tuted by Mr. Gorham), "involving the question whether the clerk
presented to a living by the King was of unsound doctrine, would
still have gone to Rome."
That " in the following year Henry, finding there was no chance
of succeeding in Ins divorce suit with the sanction of the Pope, and
being impatient to marry Anne Boleyn, resolved to break with
Rome altogether, and, preserving all the tenets of the Roman
Catholic faith, to vest in himself the jurisdiction which the Pope
had liitherto exercised in England. Sir Thomas More had now
resigned the Great Seal, and it was held by the pliant Lord Audley,
who was ready to adopt the new doctrines in religion, or to adhere
to the old, as suited his interests." The statute 25 Henry VIII.,
c. 19, accordingly " put an end to all appeals to Rome in all cases
whatsoever ; and enacted, by section 3d, ' that all manner of ap-
( 47 )
peals, of what natiiroor contlition soever they be, or wliat cause or
matter they eonceni, sliall he iiiadeaiKl had by the parties aggrieved
after such manner, form, and condition as is limited by ' the former
statute, — that is to say, from the Archdeacon to the Bishop, and
from the Bishop to the Arclibishop. No exception is introduced
respecting causes which touched the King ; and, on the contrary,
tlie enactment is expressly extended to all causes, of whatever
nature they be and wliatever matter they may concern. But all
doubt is removed by the following section, the 4th, which creates a
new court of appeal for all causes in the Ecclesiastical Courts.
Instead of allowing the decision of the Archbishop to be final, as it
was by the 24 Henry VIII., the legislature now enacted that * for
lack of justice in any of the courts of Archbishops, it shall be law-
ful to the parties aggrieved to appeal to His Majesty in the High
Court of Chancery,' where delegates are to be appointed under the
Great Seal, who are to adjudicate upon the appeal. This appeal is
given in all causes in the court of the Archbishops of this realm, as
well in the causes of a purely spiritual nature, which might hitherto
have been carried to Home, as in the classes of causes of a temporal
nature enumerated in 24 Henry VIII., c. 12. The meaning of the
legislature is still further proved by section 6th of the new statute,
which enacts that ' all manner of appeals hereafter to be taken from
the jurisdiction of any abbots, priors, and places exempt from the
ordinary, shall be to tlie King's Majesty in the Court of Chancery,
in like manner and form as heretofore to the See of Rome,' — no ex-
ception being introduced respecting causes which touch the King,
although it was then notorious that causes touching the King might
be taken to Rome, Pope Clement having recently revoked Henry's
divorce suit from before Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio, sitting
at Whitefriars, to be determined by His Holiness in the Vatican :" —
That " the construction which the words of the statute seem to
require is expressly put upon them by Lord Coke. In his fourth
Institute, p. 340, commenting upon the statute 25 Henry VIII. c. 19,
he says : — ' A general prohibition, that no appeals be pursued out of
the realm to Rome or elsewhere. Item, a general clause, that all
manner of appeals, what matter soever they concern, shall be made
in such manner, form, and condition within the realm as it is above
ordered by 24 Henry VIII. in the three classes aforesaid ; and one
further degree in appeals for all manner of causes is given, viz. from
the Archbishop's court to the King in Chancery, when a commission
( -^8 )
sliall 1)0 awardetl for the tletcrmi nation of tlpo said appeal, and from
tln'jioc no further:" —
That, ''in practice, such is the construction that has been in-
variably put upon tiie statute for above tliree centuries, without any
doubt being started upon the subject till the present motion was
made. During this long period" " there seems every reason to be-
lieve that the appeal has uniformly 1)een to the King in Chancery" —
not to the Upi>er House of Convocation. Two instances, in which
cases aftecting the Crown were decided by the King in Chancerj',
and one in which a similar case was decided by the King in Council,
without appeal to the Upjier House of Convocation, are cited: —
That if" the language of 25 Henry VIII., c. 19," was "obscure
instead of being clear, we should not be justified in differing fron^
the construction put upon it by contemporaneous and long continued
usage. Tiiere would be no safety fur property or liberty if it could be
successfully contended that all lawyers and statesmen have been
mistaken for centuries as to the true meaning of the Act of
Parliament:" —
That •' 110 reason has been alleged to invalidate the sentence in
this" (the Gorham) "case, on the ground that the Queen in
Council and the Judicial Committed had no jurisdiction over the
appeal," — and, consequently.
That " a rule to show cause why a prohibition should not be
granted to stay the execution of the sentence ought not to be
sranted."
The Bishop of Exeter, subsequently to this decision, moved for a
rule nisi in the Court of Common Pleas for a prohibition as in the
former instance, — and on the following plea and argument: —
Tiiat, whereas the Court of Queen's Bench has ruled that because;
no exception is .introduced in the statute 25 Henry VIII., c. 19, sub-
sequent to the 24 Henry VIII., c. 12, the appeal to the Upper House
of Convocation in the earlier statute is abrogated ; it is contended
that the statute 25 Henry VIII., in extending the provisions of the
statute 24 Henry VIII. to all spiritual causes whatever, and in provid-
ing for appeals from the Archbishop's Court into Chancery, or as it was
sometimes called, the High Court of Delegates, does not in anyway
touch or affect the appeal to the Upper House of Convocation in
matters touching the Croion — which consequently still remains in
force, the two statutes, as before stated, being in pari tiwteridy and
( 49 )
falling to be taken together as one statute. The words, ' that all
manner of appeals should be made and had after such manner, form,
and condition,' as was limited in the former statute, of themselves
prove this : —
That, whereas the Court of Queen's Bench, without discussion
and sub siletUio, assumes that in matters touching the Crown these
acts of Parliament are altogether without effect, the fact is that
every writer of authority, from Lord Coke to Blackstone, has laid
it down, without doubt, and in precise terms, as the law still in
force, that appeals in matters touching the Crown are still to the
Upper House of Convocation. As regards Loi'd Coke, the passage
referred to in the judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench is in ex-
tenso as follows : — " First, in cases testamentary, matrimony, and
tithes," appeals lie " from the Archdeacon or his official, if the
matter be there commenced, to the Bishop of the Diocese, and
from the Bishop Diocesan or his Commissary in such case ; or, if
the matter be there commenced, within fifteen days after sentence
given, to the Archbishop of the province, and no further. Item :■ —
From the Archdeacon or Commissary of the Archbishop, if the
matter be there commenced, within fifteen days, &c. to the audience
or arches of the said Archbishop ;" and from thence, within other
fifteen days, &c., to the Archbishop himself, and no further ; and,
if the cause be commenced before the Archbishop, then to be there
definitively determined, without further appeal. Item : — where the
matter toucheth the King, the appeal within fifteen days, to be made
to the higher Convocation House of that province, and no further,
but finally to be there determined. A general prohibition that no
appeals shall be pursued out of the realm to Rome or elsewhere.
Item : — a general clause, that all manner of appeals, what matter
soever they concern, sliall be made in such manner, form, and con-
dition, within the realm, as is above ordered by 24 Henry VIII., in
the three causes aforesaid ; and one further degree in appeals for all
manner of causes is given, viz. from the Archbishop's Court to the
King in his Chancery, where a commission shall be awarded, for the
determination of the said appeal, and from thence no further." —
Statements moreover from later writers are given in support of the
view thus taken. The fact of the appeal, as given by the statute,
has never been contradicted or controverted hitherto : —
That this appeal, as asserted, is in accordance with the acknow-
ledged rule of law that a man ought not to be judge in his own
E
( -^0 )
cHusc ; and tlie law caiinut be* cuiistrued tu autliorise such an anomaly
where it can be made to bear any other interpretation : —
That tiie historical facts stated in the judgment of the Court of
Queen's Bench, as illustrative of the character of the two statutes
in question, and inHuential on their interpretation, are incorrect.
That so far from the statute 24 Henry VIII. having been passed to
secure the authority of the Pope as Supreme Head of the Western
Church, botii Houses of Convocation only three years before had
solemnly declared that the King of England was sole Head of that
Church, to the exclusion of every other ; and moreover in the very
recital of thisstatute 24 Henry VIII., c. 12, it is stated that " by the
ancient common law of England the King was Supreme Head of
the Church,' and that it was a grievance that the Pope claimed
jurisdiction therein ; and from the beginning to the end of the
statute there was no language but such as excluded the right of in-
terference by the Pope, and solemnly proclaimed that spiritual
Supremacy in this realm was vested by law, and ought to continue,
in the King as the Head of the Church : —
That, further, so far from Sir Thomas More having been Chan-
cellor when the 24 Henry VIII. was passed, he had ceased to be
Chancellor, and the " pliant Lord Audley" had succeeded him as
such, several months before the statute passed. Both statutes were
passed after Lord Audley had succeeded to the Great Seal : —
That, further, whereas it is stated that before the second act
passed, Heniy VIII., being impatient to niarrj' Anne Boleyn, re-
solved-to break with the See of Rome, to avoid the danger of going
through their courts with his divorce, and thereupon the second act,
the 25th Henry VIII., was passed under the auspices of Lord
Audley ; the fact is, that before the session of Parliament began in
which this act was passed, as it is said, from the King's impatience
to marry Anne Boleyn, Henry had not only married Anne Boleyn,
but the issue of that marriage, Elizabeth, afterwards Queen of Eng-
land, was then actually born.
That, whereas the judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench men-
tions two cases which it treats as authorities on the subject, in
neither of those cases was the question whether the Crown was in-
terested or not at all raised, and, consequently, there was neither
discussion nor decision upon it. In a third case mentioned in the
judgment, it never occurred to any one whether the appeal lay or
not, and the appeal was determined by Her Majesty in Privy
( 51 )
Council. Cases like these cannot be considered decisions or au-
thorities. If it had occurred to the judges in any of these three
cases that the appeal was ratlier to the Upper House of Convocation
than to the High Court of Delegates, then these proceedings might
have been something lilce authority. But considering that it is
found in all the books of authority, from Coke to Blackstone, that
the appeal ever did lie to Convocation, it would be unjust to those
learned judges to suppose that the point had ever occurred to their
minds, because, if it had, they could not but have thrown it out
for consideration and for argument at the bar. The fact would
appear to be, that a statute of three centuries ago had been for-
gotten. But that surely would not be considered as an au-
thority : —
That, whereas it is asserted, that life, and liberty, and pro-
perty would be unsafe if the practice based on three centuries, and
the opinions of the highest luminaries of the law, could be set aside
by a construction to be sought for in an old statute ; it may be
more justly argued, that neither life, nor liberty, nor property
would be safe if that which appeared in every text- book to be the
law was to be set aside as bad law, and as repealed, without express
statutes, and all this without argument, and on a motion for a rule
to show cause : —
That, upon what has been stated, the Bishop of Exeter is entitled
to a rule, as moved for.
The rule moved for was refused by the Court of Common Pleas,
on the following grounds : —
That the words of section 3rd of the 25th Heniy VIII., c. 19,
which are relied upon as having the effect of incorporating by
implication the appeal to the Upper House of Convocation in mat-
ters which touch the King, enacted by distinct expression in the
former statute, 24 Henry VIII., c. 12, are as follows: — "after
such manner, form, and condition as is limited for appeals to be had
and prosecuted by the statute of the 24th."
That the words " manner and form " in this passage occur in the
fifth section of the statute 24 Henry VIII., which provides (the
fifth, sixth, and seventh sections forming, strictly speaking, only
one section or enactment) for certain appeals, but not for the
appeal given in suits which touch the King. The latter appeal to
Convocation is given in the ninth section, which (differently from
E 2
( 52 )
tlie sixth and seventh sections) is precedwl by express and distinct
words of enactment. The '* manner and form " nientionetl in sec-
tion third of 25 Henry VIII. would not therefore appear to
have reference to the appeal given in suits which " touch the
King."
That the word " condition " is used in the statute 24 Henry VIII.
in the sense of " character," " state," or " quality," not in the
more common sense of " restriction " or " qualification," and the
oliject of its introduction is obviously rather to amplify than qualify
the other language. The word " condition " in the third section
of 25 Henry VIII. has reference, therefore, to the character and
nature of the cause to which the enactment was directed, and
did not point at any restriction or exception in the case of the
Crown : —
That it would seem, therefore, that the words " manner, form,
and condition," in the third section of the 25 Henry VIII., were
intended to incorporate the manner of proceeding in appeals in
general indicated by the former statute both as to time and other
circumstances, but not to re-enact a particular provision in that
statute distinct from the general manner and form of appeals to
which those words made no particular reference. At any rate, the
Avords may be thus construed ; it is a construction which satisfies if
it does not exhaust them ; and in such a case it may be doubted
whether we are at liberty to give them a larger signification, in
conformity with the rule of law which requires that the Crown should
be touched, if at all, by express words: —
That, practically, appeals in causes touching the Crown have been
made to the King in Chancery, or King in Council, and determined
by the Court of Delegates, and no instance has been discovered of
an appeal in such cases to the Convocation. This course would
not have been pursued if the ninth section of the 24 Henry VIII.
had been deemed to be in force to the exclusion of the appeal given
by the statute 25 Henry VIII. to the King in Chancery. All
the cases named, except the last reported, occurred when the Court
of Convocation was in more active operation than it has been in
modern times, and were heard before eminent judges ; and it cannot
reasonably be doubted that reference must have been had to the
statutes in question, and their true construction considered, and that
either no doubt was entertained that the appeals to the Delegates
were well founded, even though the Crown was touched by them,
( 53 )
or that the construction must have been discussed and deter-
mined upon judicially. In either view they are consistent with
the construction now adopted by the Court, and inconsistent with
any other : —
That all the passages cited from text-books in support of the
present application are referable to the single authority of Lord
Coke's Fourth Institute ; but that the effect of the several passages
quoted has not been correctly appreciated, and upon due considera-
tion they will not be found entitled to the reliance which has been
placed upon them. It will appear that in the passage quoted from
pp. 339, 340, Lord Coke merely sets down the effect of the two
statutes in succession, and where he speaks of appeals to Convo-
cation it is under the head of the statute 24 Henry VIII., — that
what Lord Coke thus stated as the provision of one statute, subse-
quent text-writers have adopted as the joint result of both statutes
— a result upon which Lord Coke himself expressed no opinion, —
that it was not understood when the motion was made, that the
passages then read referred to particular statutes noted in the margin,
— that the passage at pp. 339. 340 of the Fourth Institute is the
foundation of all the extracts cited from later writers, — that none
of them refer to or are founded upon any judicial decision or dictum,
nor do they appear to be the result of an examination of the effect
or construction of the tw^o material statutes in connection : — they
cannot, therefore, properly have any effect in controlling a con-
struction which appears to the Court to be warranted by the language
of the statute 25 Henry VIIL, and to be supported by, and conso-
nant with, a course of construction and practice beginning in the
reign of Queen Elizabeth and continued in 1812: —
That, in considering the circumstances under which the present
application comes before the Court, the litigant parties have con-
curred in prosecuting the appeal to the Judicial Committee, and,
after a decision has been come to, an objection is for the first time
made upon the ground of a want of jurisdiction in the tribunal.
That nothing has been alleged to induce a doubt of the wisdom and
accuracy of the deliberate judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench
upon the construction of the statutes 24 Henry VIIL and 25
Henry VIIL That under these circumstances there is every reason
to conclude that further discussion will not furnish additional
information or light upon the subject, and that it would only tend
to prolong an useless litigation to grant a rule."
Rul*:" therefore is refused.
( ^^ )
The Bishop of Exeter has subsequently moved for a rule nisi in
tlie Cojirt of Exehequer, for a jjroliibition as in the two former
instances, and on tiie following- groimds : —
That, wliereas it is heUl by tlie Court of Common Pleas that
section third of the 25 Henry VIII. does not extend to all the
provisions of the 24 Henry VIII., but only to those embraced in
the tifth. sixth, and seventh sections, and that, therefore, the ninth
section in the 25 Henry VIII., giving the appeal to the Upper
House of Convocation in cases where the Crown is concerned, is
repealed : it is contended,
1 . That the ninth section in question, restricting the Crown
and protecting the subject in cases where the Crown is con-
cerned, could only be repealed by express enactment. But
no such enactment is to be found. On the contrary, the
ninth section is incorporated, along with the whole of the
statute 24 Henry VIII., into the statute 25 Henry VIII.,
without exception or qualification.
2. That the statute 1 Elizabeth, c. 1, which revived both
statutes in question after they had been repealed by 1 and 2
Philip and Mary, c. 8, does not except the ninth section at
all ; and, as it excepts certain clauses and sections in some
of the revived statutes, the inference is strong that if the
legislature meant to reject the limitation imposed on appeals
in causes where the Crown was concerned, they would have
so expressed themselves.
3. Tliat, if the ninth section of the 24th Henry VIII. can only
be imported into the 25th Henry VIII. by implication, it is
only by implication that that latter statute can be held
to apply to the fifth, sixth, and seventh. sections of the 24th
Henry VIII., which all agree in holding must be imported
into tlie 25th Henry VIII.
4. That, whereas the Court of Common Pleas holds that the
words " manner, fonn, and condition " must receive the
same meaning in the 25th Henry VIII. as they do in the
fifth, sixth, and seventli sections of the 24th Henry VIII, ,
and that only, — it is contended that these words ought to
receive the same construction as if found in one statute ;
they refer, not merely to the mode of procedure, that is. to
( 55 )
the time in which, or the condition on which, the appeal
should be granted — but imply, when duly weighed, ^rom
and to the same courts, and subject to the same conditions
as are provided in such matters by the 24th Henry VIII.
If they are held as limited to the time for the appeal, they
do not provide the courts to which the appeal is given ;
and, if the rule sought for be granted, the opponents of the
Bishop of Exeter will be called upon to show that these
words do not apply to the courts from and to which the ap-
peal is given in all spiritual cases whatsoever. If they do
not mean everything relating to the courts and to appeals,
the enactment is incomplete. If read as originally written,
that is, free from breaks or stops, and from end to end as
one composition, it is impossible to deny that those words
apply to all the sections of the statute 24 Henry VIII.
That Lord Coke and subsequent writers all take the same view
of the two statutes, considering them as one, and the appeal to
Convocation as holding good in cases where the Crown is con-
cerned : —
That, as regards Lord Coke having been followed by later writers
in his view of the two statutes in question, if the comment of the
man living nearest to the time when an act is passed is not to be
appealed to for an accurate exposition of what that law means, it
may be said that Magna Charta does not exist as the law of the
land. All subsequent writers refer to and quote Lord Coke, no
doubt, but so with any other subject. Bracton, or he who wrote
next after Magna Charta, would necessarily be referred to by all
writers in modern times as the best expositor of that statute : —
That, while all the writers cited take the view above stated and
held by the Bishop of Exeter, no other writer is known to have
maintained the contrary view : —
That, after much research, not a single appeal has been dis-
covered under the statute 25 Henry VIII. from 1533 to 1677, — the
absence of such instances tells as much one way as the other ; and
there are only five cases from 1677 to 1797 in which any such
appeal was had — all of them in matters testamentary. The only
inference deducible from the absence of appeals to the Upper House
of Convocation is, that the existence of the statute 24 Henry VIIL,
then an old statute, in the time of Charles II.. never once sug-
( 5<! )
gested itself to the parties concerne<i in those cases, — there was no
more reason wl»y they should remember it, than that the counsel
eng:aged in this very cause should have done so. To the latter it
certainly was never suggested till after the judgment was pronounced
in the Privy Council ; and it may equally have escaped the re-
search of the counsel in the earlier period. But this non-recollec-
tion is nothing as compared with the clear and distinct authority of
Lortl Coke and other subsequent writers as to the construction
contended for : —
That the construction in question gives a full, fair, and reasonable
construction and effect to the whole statute 25 Henry VIII., and
no other will do so : —
That, finally, it is the usage, by every day's experience, to grant
a rule in all important caries where doubt exists, — that it is presumed
that doubt must be admitted to exist in the present instance, and
that if a rule be now refused, the Bishop of Exeter will be de-
barred from that discussion which the constitution of this realm
holds out to all its subjects as a right in all cases of doubt.
Rule has been granted.
PRINTED BY yr. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMTOKD STRTFT.
A SERMON
ON JOHN III. 5,
PREACHED IN
THE CHURCH OF ST. THOMAS, APPLETON,
ON SUNDAY, APRIL 7, 1850,
IN REFERENCE TO
THE RECENT LEGISLATIVE DECISION
IN THE CASE OF
GORHAM V. BISHOP OF EXETER.
BY
EDWARD ARTHUR LITTON, M.A.,
PERPETUAL CURATE OF STOCKTON HEATH, CHESHIRE, AND
LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD.
LONDON:
J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY;
SMITH, HODGES, & CO. DUBLIN; VINCENT, OXFORD;
HADDOCK & SON, WARRINGTON.
1850.
Price Is.
LONDON :
G. J. CALMER, PKINIER, SAVOY bTKKET, STRAND.
SERMON.
John iii. 5.
" Jesus answered, Verily, verily I say unto thee, Except a
man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter
into the kingdom of God."
You will bear me witness, brethren, that it is
but seldom that theological controversy is intro-
duced into the ministrations of this pulpit.
The impropriety which exists at all times, and
under all circumstances, of converting an or-
dinance, which is intended to promote the
practical interests of religion, into an instrument
of speculative discussion, is, in our case, enhanced
by the fact that but few amongst us are either
acquainted with, or interested in, the disputes
which agitate the theological world. Little is
B 2
lost by Ix'iuii- iiiiioiaiit of what too often ministers
(o tlie |)ri(lc of reason, and the evil })assions of the
heart ; seldom advances the life of God in the
soul. Happy Me, if in simplicity of faith, and
Mith an honest and good heart, we walk humbly
with our God, his word our outward, his Spirit
our inward guide ; and exhibit, in the lowly walks
of life, the power of true religion to elevate man
to the highest measure of dignity and happiness of
which his nature is cai)able.
There are, however, particular seasons, and
conjunctures of circumstances, in which it be-
comes expedient, and even necessary, to deviate
from the rule of not engaging the attention of a
mixed congregation with purely doctrinal discus-
sions. When theological questions of great public
interest are agitating the minds, not only
of the clergy, but of the laity, and when contro-
versy passes from the volume of learned research
into a contest about vested rights, and the actual
standing of a large body of the ministers of our
Church, it seems but natural that he who is
placed over you in the Lord should, as far as his
knowledge and ability permits him, afford you at
least the materials for arriving at a decision upon
the point in controversy. The suggestions thus
offered it will be your duty to weigh carefully,
and to compare with the word of God ; that so,
" proving all things," you " may hold fast,"' amidst
the fluctuations of luuuau o|)iiiioii, that wliich
alone " is ofootl," because it is of God.
The present appears to be a season of the kind
just mentioned. The difficult question concern-
ing- the effect of the sacrament of baptism when
administered to infants, a question which has long-
divided parties in our Church, has at length been
brought to a practical issue by the refusal of one
of our bishops to institute to a living a clergyman
whose views upon this point were alleged to be
incompatible with honest subscription to the for-
mularies of our Church. With the sequel of the
case you are probably acquainted. It has been
decided by the highest court which can take cog-
nizance of such matters, that the opinions enter-
tained by this clergyman are not such as to justify
the withholding from him, on the part of the
ordinary, his legal rights ; or, in other words, that
that interpretation of our baptismal formularies
which is adopted by what is commonly called the
evangelical pai-ty in our Church, is a legitimate
and admissible interpretation. It is earnestly to
be hoped that this decision will for ever set the
practical question at rest ; that, however opinions
may continue to diifer upon the doctrine to be
connected with infant baptism, the measure will
never again be resorted to by either party, of
attempting to drive their opponents from the
public exercise of their ministry, if not into total
0
secession from the Churcli. Wore tlic question
Miiicli has thus acquired a painful prominence
confessedly one of mere rubrical interpretation, it
would bo equally unnecessary and unprofitable to
take up your time and attention in discussing it ;
for the lay members of our Church are not called
upon to subscribe to the Prayer Book, nor, except
in certain cases of necessity, to use its formula-
ries ; so that whether any particular interpretation
of expressions in these formularies, or of the rules
laid down in the rubrics, is to be esteemed the
right one or not, is to them comparatively a
matter of indifference. But in tlie present in-
stance, it is very far from being admitted that
the clergy alone are concerned. On the contrary,
it is loudly proclaimed in certain quarters, that by
merely abstaining from pronouncing the opinions
entertained by one large section of our Church on
the effect of infant baptism to be heretical, (for
be it observed that no positive declarations on the
subject were advanced,) the supreme court of
appeal in causes ecclesiastical has by its decision
impugned a fundamental article of the faith once
delivered to the saints, and made an essential
doctrine of Christianity an open question. These
are grave allegations, and, whether correct or not,
they bring the point in debate home to all Chris-
tians, lay as M'^ell as clerical ; for of course every
doctrine which is really a fundamental part of
Christianity, is a matter of interest to the whole
Church, and should be contended for as zealously
by the laity as by their spiritual guides.
Cordially concurring as I do in the principles on
which the legislative decision lately pronounced
is based, I propose in this discourse to offer some
considerations in abatement of the uneasiness
which the strong statements alluded to may have
produced in the minds of some ; and, with this
view, to examine the grounds upon which it is
asserted that the doctrine of infant baptism sup-
posed to be placed in peril by the recent decision
is a fundamental article of the christian faith.
In conducting this inquiry, I must presume
that we are agreed upon the great Protestant
principle, that whatever is really an essential
doctrine of Christianity, must be capable of being
either read in Holy Scripture, or proved thereby.
(See Art. 6.) Whatever weight we may assign
to the testimony of the early Church in matters
of fact, as, for instance, whether a certain ordi-
nance or institution be apostolic or not, on points
of doctrine we recognize but one authoritative
source of information, viz. Holy Scripture. A
doctrine which is not traceable to the word of
God can never constitute a fundamental article
of the faith. Upon this, the distinctive tenet of
Protestantism, I take for granted that no doubt
is entertained. For it is impossible to argue, ex-
8
co]it on some common ground or basis of argn-
niont ; the source of revelation must be matter of
agreement before we can attempt to adjust differ-
ences of opinion respecting the contents of reve-
lation. Hence it should seem that arguments
between Protestants and Romanists can seldom, if
ever, be conducted to a successful issue ; the two
jiarties differing, not merely on particular points of
doctrine, but upon the ultimate authority by which
all doctrinal statements are to be tried. The rule
of faith is not the same to both ; no wonder, then,
that no agreement can be come to respecting the
articles of faith. Romanists must give up their
doctrine of tradition, that is, become Protestants,
or Protestants must admit it, that is, become
Romanists, before any attempt to reconcile their
differences can prove ultimately successful. Pre-
suming, then, that it is an admitted principle
amongst us, that " Holy Scripture contains all
things," especially all doctrine necessary to salva-
tion, I propose, in reference to the question now
before us, to examine, first, what Scripture teaches
us respecting the connexion of baptism in general
with regeneration ; and, secondly, what its doc-
trine is on the same point in reference to infant
baptism.
I. I will not spend time in discussing the diffi-
cult question of interpretation, whether, in the
9
passage from vvliicli the text is taken, our Lord
referred to the actual sacrament of baptism or
not. If I may venture to express my own
opinion, I should say, that neither in this, nor in
the well-known passage in the sixth chapter of
St. John's Gospel, is there a direct reference to
the christian sacraments as ritual ordinances,
neither of them having been instituted at the
time when the words of Christ were spoken ; but
that, nevertheless, in those passages the idea to
be connected with baptism, and the Lord's Supper,
respectively, is expressed, the two great truths
which are taught by those ordinances being, that
both the commencement and the maintenance of
the spiritual life flow from union with Christ,
whatever be the conception we may form of such
union : consequently, that mediately and indirectly
the passages do contain an allusion to the two
sacraments to be afterwards instituted. But there
is the less necessity for dwelling upon this point,
because so many other passages are found in the
New Testament in which the connexion of ba[)-
tism with regeneration is clearly and unequivo-
cally expressed. Some of these we shall refer to
hereafter.
Of more importance it is to endeavour to fix
the meaning of the word regeneration, or its equi-
valent, new birth, which so strikingly occurs in
10
the ch.iptcr before us. To this point I would now
particularly direct your attention.
The attentive reader of Scripture will soon
discover that, while in respect to many truths of
revealed religion which in the Old Testament
were only obscurely taught or symbolised, such as
the atonement of Christ, sauctification by the
Spirit, and the resurrection of the dead to life, or
to death, eternal, the New Testament communi-
cates full and luminous information ; one great
distinctive doctrine pervades the latter, to which
nothing exactly corresponding is found in the
elder revelation, and that is, the mystical union
of Christians with Christ. The Christian is " a
man in Christ ;" he is one with Christ : he is
united to Christ as the branch is to the tree ; nay,
in the still stronger language of the apostle Paul,
he is a member " of his body, of his flesh, and of
his bones." Every reader of the christian Scrip-
tures will recall to mind how inseparably this idea
is interwoven with the whole texture of those
Scriptures. The idea itself is peculiarly chris-
tian: nothino' resembling it is found in the. Old
Testament. The reason why it could not form
part of the Jewish circle of religious ideas is
obvious : — under the law, the eternal Son had not
assumed our nature, had not become " God mani-
fest in the flesh ;" the second Adam, the ap-
11
pointed Head of a new creation, or race of spiri-
tual sons, had not yet appeared ; consequently no
such idea as that of the union of believers with
Christ, the incarnate and glorified Son of God,
could fitly be presented under the legal dispensa-
tion. Under the christian economy, union with
Christ comprehends every spiritual blessing : jus-
tification, sanctification, the earnest of eternal life,
the future glorifying of our bodies, all are com-
prised in, all flow from, the one great fiict, that
the Christian is one with Christ.
If the christian life be rightly described, as a
life in Christ, it obviously includes two principal
ideas, incorporation, and continuance in Christ :
the union between Christ and the believer must
have a beginning, and it must be maintained.
There must be first the transfer into a new state,
and then the abiding in that state.
The first incorporation of the believer in Christ
is what is meant by the word regeneration, as
used in the New Testament. And as the general
notion of union with the incarnate Son was un-
known to the elder dispensation, so neither is the
full idea conveyed by the phrase, " new birth"
nor the expression itself, to be found in the Old
Testament Scriptures. For the true, the specific,
idea of christian regeneration is, such an union
with Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, in his
glorified human nature, as confers upon the be-
7
^'2
liovor tlie like i)rivilogo of sonsliip : Cliristians are
CMirist's brethren, heirs with God, and joint heirs
with Christ ; sons of God through adoj)tion and
grace; their bodies, as well as souls and spirits, bein,;-
taken up into spiritual union with Christ, that in
due time they may be made like unto his. This is
a real new birth ; for it is a transplanting out of
the old Adam, not merely into a new moral con-
dition, but into the second Adam, the glorified
Head of regenerate humanity. And the incorpo-
ration is effected, not by carnal admixture, but by
that special efHux of the Holy Spirit which was
withheld until Christ was glorified, and which
may with the utmost propriety be termed, by way
of distinction, the regenerating influence of tlie
Holy Ghost.
Regeneration, in this full sense of the word,
involves a twofold change, a moral and a mystical
one ; a change of heart, as we call it, and a
change of state. Like his spiritual ancestor, the
pious Jew, the Christian has a new lieart and a
right spirit : but more than this, he is in Christ.
His standing, or position, is different from that
which belonged to a believer under the law.
Regeneration, so far as the word expresses, or
implies, a moral change, the repentance of John
the Baptist, must of course have existed under
the law, not less than it does under the Gospel ;
for it is with this moral change, or new heart,
13
that salvation is connected ; and salvation be-
longed to the pious Jew equally with the pious
Christian. In this sense, which no doubt is the
most important one, regeneration, though the
word does not occur there, is an Old Testament
idea ; for the Jews were taught, as we are, that
the true sacrifices of God are a broken heart and
a contrite spirit : but it is not so in its christian,
or, if we may so express it, its technical accepta-
tion, for this latter is founded upon the distinc-
tively christian doctrine of the Church's mystical
union with Christ.
Hence it appears that the answer to the ques-
tion, Can believers who lived before Christ be
said to have been regenerate, turns entirely upon
the meaning which we connect with the word
regeneration. If we use it to signify that great
moral change which must take place in every
child of Adam before he can have fellowship with
God, then unquestionably the ancient believers
were regenerate ; but if the word be taken in its
full christian sense, as denoting incorporation in
the glorified Redeemer, they were not, for they
could not be, in this sense regenerate. They were
morally, but not mystically, regenerate ; they were
penitent believers, but they were not in Christ,
in the New Testament sense of that expression.
Doctrinal prepossessions have in this, as in other
instances, prevented a due recognition of the vast
14
(.lirt'ereuce between the spiritual state of a Chris-
tian, and that of the believer under the law : but
there is nothing extraordinary in the supposition
that as the exjilicit revelation of the Gospel M'as
reserved for Christ and his apostles, so a special
spiritual blessing is attached to the dispensation
which the Saviour came to introduce.
Our Saviour himself, in the discourse with
Nicodemus recorded in this chapter, first declared
this great mystery of the Gospel dispensation.
There was some excuse for Nicodemus' surprise,
or incredulity, when he was told, that " except a
man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of
God ;" for although the Jewish nation, as distin-
guished from heathens, had been sometimes spoken
of collectively as enjoying the privilege of adop-
tion, as in the passage, " Israel is my son, my
first-bom," (Exod. iv. 22,) the idea of an indivi-
dual regeneration by the Spirit does not appear in
any part of the Jewish Scriptures : it was a strange
thing to Nicodemus to hear that even a Jew
must be born again before he could see the
kingdom of God. But wlien the further ex-
planation was given, " Except a man be born
of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the
kingdom of God," Nicodemus' slowness of un-
derstanding became culpable ; for as a master
of Israel he ouoht to have surmised our Lord's
meaning. What was it that Nicodemus ought
15
to have known ? He slioukl liave recol-
lected the ninnerous jnissages of the Old
Testament, in which the necessity of a great
moral change, symbolized by the cleansing effect
of water, is inculcated ;*' and the numerous others
in which a special out-pouring of the Spirit is
connected with the coming of Messiah : he should
have so far understood the well-known terms
" water " and " spirit " as not to put the question,
unworthy of an enlightened Jew, " How can
these things be ?" The mystery, however, lay
not so much in the use of these particular expres-
sions as in the whole phrase, " born of water and
of the Spirit ;" conveying, as it did, an idea which
Nicodemus, however clearly he ought to have
divined our Lord's general meaning, could not be
expected at once to comprehend. For, in truth,
what Christ here alludes to is a special preroga-
tive of the christian dispensation, a special gift
derived from his own heavenly life at the right
hand of God. That gift is the (in the strict
sense of the word) regenerating influence of the
Spirit which, with creative energy, must trans-
form the penitent disciple of the law into a mem-
ber of Christ, before he could be said to " see the
* e. g. Isa. i. 16 ; Ezek. xxxvi. 25 — 27 ; Zech.xiii. 1. It
is obvious that in none of these passages does " water " de-
note the instrument of cleansing : it is merely a figure of the
internal change itself.
IG
kingdom of God;" i.e. belong to the christian
dis[)ensation. To the " water," the preparatory
contiition and repentance produced by the disci-
l>]ine of the law, and symbolized by John's bap-
tism, hence called the baptism of water unto re-
pentance, there is superadded, under the christian
dispensation, the participation of Christ's own
heavenly life, derived from union with Him, and
the effect of the indwelling of his Spirit; in the
combination of which two elements of the life in
Christ, the putting off the old man and the put-
ting on of the new, lies the essence and the pecu-
liarity of Christian regeneration, as distinguished
from the same thinof under the law.
From the fores'oinof remarks it will be seen
that while regeneration, in its moral sense, may
exist, and did under the law exist, apart from re-
generation in its mystical sense, mystical cannot
exist apart from moral regeneration. Just as his-
torically the ancient people of God were made
to pass under the discipline of the law, convincing
them of sin, and awakening in them a longing for
redemption, before the full blessing of union with
Christ was proposed to their acceptance ; just as
the regenerating Spirit was to brood, not upon
the torpid surface of heathenism, but upon " a
people prepared for the Lord ;" so, in the inner
life of the individual Christian, the same process
takes place : in every truly and fully regenerate
17
person the moral change precedes the mystical.
Repentance, faith, and then full union with
Christ, is still the order of salvation, as it was in
the apostles' times ; this order never having been
changed for another. (It will be remembered
that at present we are viewing the subject in a
general wa}% and without reference to the excep-
tional case of infants.) The idea of a person's
being in Christ, who has not, and never has had, the
quickening and sanctifying influence of the Spirit
of Christ, is a most unscriptural one. Even a
branch, which is now dead, nmst once have had
life, otherwise it could never have been a branch ;
a piece of withered wood, fastened by external
ligatures to a living trunk, is not, never has been,
and never can become, a branch of that tree.
No passage can be cited from the New Testa-
ment in which the expression, " being in Christ,"'
may not be shown necessarily to pre-suppose re-
pentance and faith, or a change of heart. The
uniform testimony of Scripture is, that if " any
man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; old
things are passed away, beliold all things are be-
come new." A state of salvation is the state of
those who are in the way of being saved ; and no
one is in the way of being saved who is not sanc-
tified by the Spirit of God. The law and the
promise must still, as of old, prepare the heart for
the reception of Christ; the union with Christ
c
18
wliicli is effected by faith must precede that
M'hieh is effected by the sacraments. The only
dilVerenec is, that ^vhat, in the case of the Jews,
nationally considered, took place in successive in-
tervals of time, the nation passing through several
protracted stages of religious training before the
full blessing of redemption was revealed to it,
now takes place simultaneously (or nearly so) in
the individual ; it not being necessary that, in a
case of individual conversion, any lengthened in-
terval should be interposed between faith and
baptism. Still, as of old, it is true that " as many
as " receive " Him, to them," and to none else,
does he give " power to become the sons of God,
even unto them that believe upon his name."
The very analogy between natural and spiritual
birth teaches us this truth ; for the child must be
quickened in the womb before it is born into the
world.
Having ascertained the meaning of regenera-
tion, let us now jDass on to inquire, what is the
instrument of the new birth ? The Spirit of God
is, of course, the ultimate efficient cause of regene-
ration ; but the question is, what are the external
instruments which the Holy Spirit employs in
bringing it about? Two classes of passages are
found in Scripture, in one of which the new birth
is ascribed to the word of God, while in the other it
is connected with the sacrament of baptism,
19
Thus, our Lord, in the parable of the sower, says,
" The seed is the word of God ;" St. James testifies
that " of his own will begat he us through the word
of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of
his creatures ;" and St. Peter reminds the Chris-
tians, to whom he wrote, that they " were born
again, not of corruptible seed, but of incor-
ruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and
abideth for ever." Besides these direct passages,
there are others which indirectly express the same
truth. Thus St. Paul, in Gal. iii. 2G, says, " Ye
are all the children of God by faith in Christ
Jesus ;" but faith and the word are correlative
terms, for faith comes by hearing, and hear_
ing by the w^ord of God. So again, we
are said to be justified by faith ; but surely
a justified state is, if not a fully regenerate
one, at least the commencement of it. On
the other hand, there are passages which con-
nect regeneration with the sacrament of bai>
tism. Putting aside the text, the meaning of
which may be considered doubtful, in the fol-
lowing passages we find St. Paul coupling rege-
neration with baptism : — " Christ loved the Church
and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify
and cleanse it with the washing of water by the
word ;" (Eph. v. 25 ;) " Not by works of righte-
ousness which we have done, but according to his
mercy he saved us by the washing " (literally, the
c 2
•20
laver, or batli,) " of rogeneration by the word."
(Titus iii. 5.) Again, the passage in which Ana-
nias is recorded to have said to Paul, " Arise, and
be bajitizcd, and wash away thy sins," appears to
establish a connexion between the remission of
sins, or justification, and baptism. Above all,
union with Christ is repeatedly said to be the
effect of baptism. " We are buried with him,"
(says St. Paul in Rom. vi. 4,) " by baptism into
death; that like as Christ was raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father, even so should we
also walk in newness of life ;" the allusion obvi-
ously being to the immersion of the catechumen
in the baptismal font, and his subsequent emerging
therefrom. If the same apostle, in the passage
already cited, tells us that we are the children of
God by faith in Christ Jesus, yet, in the very
next verse, he says, — " As many of you as have
been baptized into Christ have put on Christ."
But if baptism be, I will not say Me, but an, in-
strument of union with Christ, it must be an
instrument of regeneration.
What, then, does a comparison of these two
classes of passages teach us respecting the ques-
tion at issue ? Plainly, that neither the \vord,
nor baptism, is the sole instrument of regenera-
tion, but that both contribute a share to the new
birth. This is a truth which we cannot give up
without, at the same time, running counter to the
21
express statements of the word of God. Most of
the errors prevalent on the subject have arisen
from the attempt to put out of view one class of
the passages alluded to, and to insist exclusively
upon the other. TJms, one extreme party main-
tains that regeneration takes place j)reviously to,
and irrespectively of, baptism ; while another af-
firms that that sacrament is the sole and exclu-
sive instrument of the new birth, everything that
has taken place previously being only of a prepa-
ratory nature. If Scripture is really to be our
guide, neither party can be in the right. To the
word of God, as a means, the new birth is most
unquestionably attributed ; but not to the word
exclusively of baptism. It is not merely that re-
pentance, faith, conversion, or a change of heart,
is ascribed to the word ; regeneration itself is as
explicitly connected with it as it is with baptism,
nay, if anything, more explicitly. If baptism be
the sole instrument, how is it that Scripture ex-
pressly makes mention of another instrument ?
If we are at liberty to explain away all the pas-
sages which speak of the word as the means
whereby souls are born again, why may we not
equally explain away all the passages in which
baptism is mentioned in connexion with the new
birth? What ground have we for saying that
the regeneration ascribed in Scripture to the word
is not regeneration, not even a part of it, but
something merely introductory to the properly
oo
regenerating- rite? It lias, I confess, always ap-
]ieared to nic incomprehensible how they who
profess to regulate their opinions by Scripture
can maintain that baj^tisra is the one, sole, and
exclusive, instrument of the new birth.
We must act in this instance, as in many
others of a similar kind ; we must allow both
classes of passages their full and fair meaning, and
endeavour, by comparing and combining tliem, to
elicit the full mind of the Spirit. If we do this,
we shall probably arrive at the conclusion, that
the change of heart (repentance and faith) pro-
duced by the preaching of the word, is, not merely
a preparation for, but an actual part of, regenera-
tion ; that it is a real constituent of the new
birth, though not the only constituent ; and that,
consequently, it is the commencement of our
union with Christ. For if it have anything of re-
generation in it, it must, to the same extent, have
a faculty of uTiiting us to Clu'ist. We shall pro-
bably be led to what is indeed the true doctrine
of Scri})ture, that union with Christ is begun by
personal faith and repentance, the word being so
far the instrument of regeneration ; but that it is
perfected by the sacrament of baptism, which in
this respect claims its share in the new birth.
Thus alone can the statements of Scripture on
the subject be combined so as to harmonise with
each other, each being allowed its full weight.
An illustration is sometimes employed which is
23
sufficiently accurate for its purpose. Two per-
sons may be betrothed to each other, and yet
they are not legally united in holy wedlock until
the marriage ceremony has taken place. So it
may be said that the believer possesses indeed,
before baptism, the inward (and therefore essen-
tially saving) union with Christ, but is not for-
mally in Christ, — the union is not perfected, until
he is buried with Christ in baptism. On the one
hand, therefore, it is erroneous to say that a re-
pentant believer before baptism is in no sense re-
generate, and on the other, to affirm that he is
fully regenerate before he receives the sacrament
of the new birth. Both the word and the sacra-
ment must combine to incorporate us in Christ.
If it be objected, that the pious Jew, not less
than the Christian, had repentance and faith, and
yet, as we have seen, was not on that account
called regenerate, it must be recollected that
faith in a crucified and risen Saviour may have a
different effect from faith in a promised one ; but
above all, that the ordinance of the ministry of
the word possesses, under the christian dispensa-
tion, a sacramental character which did not belong
to it under the law : indeed, it would be more
correct to say that no such ordinance existed
under the law, the prophets being only occasional
and extraordinary messengers from God to his
peo])le.
24
II. UltliLMto we have been discussing the sub-
ject in that general i)oiiit of view in which it is
found presented in Scripture ; and have pur-
posely abstained from the mention of particular
or exceptional cases Unless we proceed in this
manner, taking what we actually find in Scrip-
ture, and reasoning upon its recorded facts and
express statements, it will be impossible to arrive
at any clear or satisfoctory views on the connexion
of baptism with regeneration. The contrary
course has been too often followed. An excep-
tional case, such as that of infants, is put forward
as the normal one on which w'e are to reason ;
the consequence of which, as might be expected,
is a failure to adjust the several parts of the
divine testimony so as to produce a connected
and harmonious view of the subject. We now
approach the second part of the inquiry, viz.
what is the doctrine of Scripture on the connexion
of regeneration with the i)articular case of infant
baptism ?
The short and simple reply to this question is,
that Scripture contains no doctrine whatever upon
this point distinct from its general doctrine of
baptism as before explained ; and this for the
best of all reasons, viz. that it does not present
us with any actual instance of infant baptism.
Tile doctrines of Scriptuie are invariably founded
upon, or connected with, facts ; no wtmder, then,
that when the fact is not recoided, the inspired
25
comment ujjon it is wanting. Even if Scripture
did j)resent us with such instances, it would still
be a question whether we are entitled, without
an express warrant for so doing, to apply the
doctrine of adult baptism, Mithout limitation, to
that of infants ; but the fact is, that the word of
God furnishes no exj)licit proofs of the apostles
having either practised, or sanctioned, infant
baptism. Consequently we search in vain for
what we are to believe respecting the effects of
baptism thus administered. We may deem this
a strange omission, seeing the case of infants must
have arisen from the very beginning of the
church, but we cannot alter the fact ; and a fact
it is, that the Holy Spirit has not thought fit to
cause to be recorded any instances of baptism
upon which we can reason but those of adults.
It is here that the want of candour in the mode
of conducting the inquiry is sometimes painfully
apparent. Nothing is more common than to see
the passages cited in the former part of this dis-
course ostentatiously brought forward to prove
what no one denies, — the connexion of baptism in
general with regeneration ; no sooner, hoM^ever, is
this point gained, than a transition is tacitly made
to the case of infants, and the passages in ques-
tion are applied to this case without the slightest
recognition of the fact that, in their original
meaning, they relate to adult baptism, and to
26
that only. Aiul thus the reader, or the hearer,
Avho is unacquainted with the real difficulties of
the subject is led to conclude, tirst, that Scripture
has pronounced a judgment where it is really
silent, and then that they who demur to so
summary a method of settling the question are
contradicting an essential article of the faith. As
if there Mere no difference between the case of an
adult and that of an infant ; or as if the difference
between them might be passed over in silence.
As if the peculiarity of the latter case, viz. the
necessary absence in infants of that faith and re-
pentance which Scripture pronounces to be gene-
rally necessary to the efficacy of the sacraments,
were a circumstance quite unnecessary to be
taken into account in forminof our conclusions.
If infant baptism were a divine ordinance, if it
were expressly declared in Scripture that, whereas
in the first planting of a church adult bajitism
must necessarily be the normal one, in an already
constituted christian society tlie sacrament is to
be administered to the infants of christian parents,
this mode of proceeding might be justifiable ; for
then it might fairly be argued, that since the
same divine authority which instituted baptism in
general prescribed also infant baptism, without at
the same time connecting therewith any modifi-
cation of the general doctrine of ba^^tism, we are
warranted in applying the latter doctrine in all
27
its integrity to the case of infants. But Christ,
the divine institutor of the sacraments, has left it
doubtful whether He intended either of them to
be administered to infants ; nor do the apostles of
Christ decide the question for us any more than
their divine Master.
Nay, if, in the absence of any express law upon
this point, we could prove, either from Scripture,
or from extra-scriptural sources, that infant bap-
tism is an undoubted apostolical appointment,
there would then be some ground for us to go
upon in fixing the doctrine to be connected with it
But, as has been already observed. Scripture gives
us no information respecting the practice of the
apostles on this point. For it is better at once
to acknowledge that such instances as the baptism
of Lydia's houshold, or that of the gaoler, (Acts
xvi. 15, 33,) are wholly insufficient to sustain the
contrary assertion : there may have been infants
in these households, and there may not ; where
there can be nothing but conjecture, it seems
most prudent to let things remain in the obscu-
rity in which Scripture leaves them. The slen-
derness of the support which instances like those
just mentioned furnish to the apostolicity of in-
fant baptism may be gathered from the fact, that
the houshold of StejDhanas, which St. Paul tells
us he baptized, (1 Cor. i. 16,) consisted of adult
persons only ; the apostle recording it of this
28
lioiisholil collectively, that they " addicted them-
selves to tlie ministry of the saints/' (1 Cor. xvi.
15.)
Nor do we gain much, in point of evidence, by
transferring the inquiry to the pages of uninspired
history. The age immediately following that of
the apostles is as silent upon the apostolicity of
infant baptism, indeed upon the practice itself, as
Scripture is. Were it really an apostolic appoint-
ment, why did it not at once and universally prevail
in the Church ? Take the analogous case of episco-
pacy. The purely scriptural evidence for episcopacy
is extremely scanty ; nevertheless, no reasonable
doubt can be entertained of its having proceeded
from apostles. Because, not only are the early
fathers unanimous in ascribing to it an apostolical
oriofin, but it is a fact that no other form of
church government is found to have prevailed in
the age immediately succeeding that of the apos-
tles. The moment we pass out of Scripture into
early church history, we find ourselves surrounded
with episcopacy ; and it is impossible to account
for this its early and universal diffusion, except
on the supposition of its having emanated from
some commanding authority recognized by the
whole Church. No such evidence can be alleged
for the practice of infant baptism. Wall, who
has exhausted this subject, finds no trace of it be-
fore Ireneeus, (a. d. 167,) who has a passage in
29
which infants are said to l)e capabk\ not of bap-
tism, but of regeneration, though it is probable
that by regeneration he meant baptism.* Against
Origen affirming that the baptism of infants was
ordered by the apostles, is to be balanced Tertul-
lian, who advises that baptism be delayed (except
in apparent danger of death) to years of maturity.
Baptism was, in fact, constantly so delayed in the
early chm-ch ; nor is it is easy to believe, as Wall
wonld have us, that all such cases were those of
persons whose parents had been unbelievers. In
short, the practice of the Church on this point
seems to have been by no means settled until
about the close of the third century, which is
hardly compatible with the supposition of its
being really an apostolical ordinance. When it is
urged that the apostles, being accustomed to the
circumcision of infants, would, as a matter of
course, baptize them, and we must hence, though
Scripture contains no mention of it, infer that
they did so, it should be remembered that by the
Christians of Jewish origin circumcision, as well as
the other rites of the ceremonial law, continued
to be practised until the cessation of the temple
services at the destruction of Jerusalem, a. d. 70 ;
and that, consequently, it is not likely that before
that era they would generally practise a rite
which, from its signification, must have appeared
* History of Infant Baptism.
30
to tlicm to interfere with, and supersede, the di-
vinely appointed one by which they were accus-
tomed to dedicate their chikh-en to God.
On the Mhole, the evidence, both internal and
external, is altogether in favour of the supposition
of infant baptism being a custom of the Church,
dating, in its first beginnings, from a very ancient
time, and gradually establishing itself throughout
Christendom. As such, it stands on its own suffi-
cient grounds. For not a word that has been
advanced militates against the practice of infant
baptism, as both scriptural and edifying : an ordi-
Dance may be both, which yet cannot be proved
to be of divine, or even of apostolic, appointment.
The Church adopted this practice, if not on the
express warrant of Scripture, yet, as on the whole,
agreeable to the course of God's dealings both in
providence and in grace. If there is no positive
scriptural precedent for it, still less is there any
prohibition of it ; hence, there being no injunc-
tion on the one side or the other, general analo-
gies, both natural and scriptural, and considera-
tions drawn from the nature of the case, from the
goodness of God, and from the wide extent of
gospel blessings, were suffered, most properly, to
decide the question. It was observed that cir-
cumcision, the seal of the righteousness which
Abraham had by faith, was commanded to be ad-
ministered to infants ; that Christ received and
31
blessed little children ; that St. Paul calls the
children of believers " holy ;" — on such grounds as
these, abundantly sufficient to sustain the practice,
it was thought " most agreeable to the institution
of Christ" that the infants of christian parents
should be baptized. On the same grounds we re-
tain the practice still, and believe it to be both
justifiable and scriptural.
These being the historical facts of the case, it
becomes the more imperative upon us to be cau-
tious how we at once apply the scriptural doctrine
of baptism, which, as has been observed, is based
upon the case of adults, to that of infants. Where
the practice itself rests upon such slender evi-
dence of Scripture, it seems most prudent to
avoid appending to it any particular doctrine as
an article of faith. Still greater cause is there for
hesitation, if the doctrine thus propounded appear
to be inconsistent with other undoubted doctrines of
Scripture, and to contradict the facts of expe-
rience. Under such circumstances, what is not
written must bend to what is written ; the eccle-
siastical custom must not be permitted to super-
sede the express statements of the word of God,
but rather tUe dogmatical theory of the custom,
if any such be propounded, must be accommo-
dated to those statements. The Scriptures may
as well be at once set aside, if we are at liberty to
annex to ecclesiastical customs doctrines which
8
32
uro ii\eoni|)atibIo witli those clearly set fortli in
tho inspired volnme.
In the present instance, the doctrine which is
declared, with considerable vehemence, to be an
essential article of the faith is, that every jiroperly
baptized infant is, in the full sense of the word,
regenerate ; regenerate in such a sense as that he
never can be afterwards addressed as needing to
be born again. Conversion, renewal, renovation,
and their equivalents, he may indeed need ; but
regeneration is invariably, and once for all, be-
stowed upon him when he is brought by parents
and sponsors to the baptismal font. Such is the
dogma we are to receive, or else make ourselves
liable to the charge of heresy.
Even were there nothing in this doctrine of an
apparently anti-scrijjtural tendency, it will be
seen from the foreofoinof observations that an arti-
cle of faith we never can account it. At best,
it can but claim to be a pious opinion, one among
other theories respecting the effects of infant
baptism ; a revealed doctrine it certainly is
not. Neither thepractice nor the doctrine of infant
baptism is matter of revelation. We must stre-
nuously resist every attempt to impose upon us
as an article of faith wdiat is not found in Scrip-
ture, nor even in the ancient creeds. That the
doctrine alluded to is not found in Scripture has
been already shown ; but neither does it form part
33
of the creeds : for though they speak of " one
baptism for the remission of sims," upon the
effects of infant baptism they are equally with
Scripture silent.
It is very far, however, from being the case
that such a view of the effects of infant baptism,
when set forth as an article of faith, involves no-
thing inconsistent with the statements of Scrip-
ture. On the contrary, its direct tendency is to
make the word of God of none effect through our
traditions. In the first place, it effectually dis-
places, in all actually constituted churches, that
word from the function which properly belongs
to it. If regeneration is to be regarded as in-
separably connected with the baptism of infants,
then of course the word can never, in re-
ference to adults who have been baptized in in-
fancy, be spoken of as possessing a regenerating
power. Under such circumstances, its use must
be confined to the edifying, or converting, of the
regenerate ; an instr'ument of regeneration it no
longer is in any church which practises infant
baptism, and infant baptism is now the general
practice of Christendom. Consequently, the pas-
sages before cited, in which the word of God is
expressly said to be a means of regeneration, be-
come applicable only to the particular case of the
first planting of a church in a heathen country,
when, of course, the parents must be baptized be-
D
34
lore their children : in an existing- Christian
Church like our own, they lose all their import.
But on what warranty of Scripture is it affirmed
that those adults only who have not been bap-
tized in infancy can, without heresy, be addressed
as needing to be regenerated by the M'ord of
God ? Upon what authority is it that we are to
believe that the scriptural connexion between the
word and regeneration has been, since the apos-
tles' times, completely dissolved and abrogated ?
If nothing more were maintained than that
God, not being tied to the use of his own ap-
pointed instruments, may so convey regeneration
to an infant in baptism as that he shall not, in
after life, need a further regeneration by the
word, no objection could be made to the state-
ment ; but to affirm it to be a necessary doctrine
of the Gospel that He does do so in every case is
to affirm, surely without any scriptural warrant,
that the same divine authority which once esta-
blished a connexion between the word and the
new birth has formally dissolved that connexion.
Nor should the modification which this tenet
necessarily introduces into the doctrine of justifi-
cation by faith be overlooked. Regeneration in-
cludes justification, as tlie greater includes the
less; if, therefore, every infant is necessarily re-
generated in baptism, every baptized infant is also
necessarily justified ; so that the faith which
35
comes by hearing is no longer the, nor even an,
instrument of justification, but merely a means
whereby a justified state, otherwise obtained, is
preserved : by faith we are no longer justified,
we only continue in a state of justification. Where
is our authority for introducing this modification
into the doctrine of St. Paul in reference to the
office which faith holds in justifying ?
These, however, arc objections of inferior mo-
ment compared with that to which I am now
about to direct your attention. The dogma in
question makes regeneration in its full sense a
morally indiffereiit thing ; the communication of
a new principle of life which is not necessarily a
holy one. Here it is that its incompatibility with
Scripture becomes chiefly apparent. Nothing is
moreevidentthan that multitudes of those who have
been baptized in infancy never exhibit in after
life the moral signs of regeneration, never prove
themselves to be new creatures in Christ. It is
not a question oi falling away from the grace of
regeneration once received ; it is too plain that
numbers amongst us pass their whole life in a
state of alienation from God, and have never
known what it is to have spiritual fellowship
with Him through Christ. Nevertheless we are,
on pain of being deemed heretics, to believe of
all these persons, without exception, that they
have been truly born of God, and are therefore in
D 2
3G
union ^itli Christ ; are heirs of God and joint
heirs with Christ; are sealed with the Holy
Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our in-
heritance ; have the Spirit of adoption, crying,
Abba, Father ; are risen with Christ, and set down
with llini in the heavenly places : — for all this
they are, if they are fully regenerate. What,
accordino: to such teachinfjr can re^ifeneration be
but, as we have just said, a morally indifferent
thing, since the unrenewed in heart may possess
it to as full an extent as the renewed ? It is in
vain that attempts are made to stave off this in-
evitable conclusion by saying that the life of God
remains, in such cases, shut up, as it were, in the
soul ; all such phrases do but faintly disguise the
revolting features of the real doctrine, which is,
that the inner change involved in regeneration is
not necessarily a holy one, and that the same in-
dividual may be, in the fullest sense of the words,
a child of God and a child of the devil at one and
the same time.
The shock which such statements convey to
the biblical Christian's mind is evidence enough
that their source is not Scripture. If there are
any truths taught more plainly than others in
Holy Scripture, they are these : — that he who is
truly born of God sinneth not habitually and wil-
fully : that the regenerating grace of the Holy
Spirit can never be separated from his sanctifying
37
influences: that he who is truly a member of
Christ, receives from Christ the Head quickening
grace : that he who is truly an heir of glory has the
pledge and foretaste of glory in his heart. Whe-
ther or not a person can fall finally away from
this state is not now the question ; we are only
speaking of what he is while he remains in it.
" By their fruits ye shall know them ;" " whatso-
ever is born of God overcometh the world ;" we
know that whosoever is born of God sinnetli not ;
but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself,
and that wicked one toucheth him not :" — these
are the true scriptural tests of regeneration, and
wherever they are not exhibited by an adult, we
must conclude that regeneration, in its full scrip-
tural sense, is not present.
I know not whether tlie maintainors of the
moral indifferency of regeneration are aware to
what their dogma inevitably tends, but it is cer-
tain that, if pushed far enough (and extremes try
principles), it would lead to the conclusion that
Satan himself may be regenerate. For if regene-
ration may exist in an adult without exerting the
smallest perceptible sanctifying effect upon him ;
if it consist merely in the communication of a new
spiritual capacity, or higher nature, in itself
morally indifferent ; what is there to prevent the
father of evil himself from receiving the gift, and
being termed a child of God and an lieir of glory ?
38
In very truth, the dogma of which we are speak-
ing is nothing but the Romish one under a more
repulsive form, viz. tliat baptism impresses upon
the soul a character or stamp, which, however, has
nothing moral in it, and merely confers a i)assive
sj)iritual capacity of receiving the sacraments and
other benefits of the Church.
If the case were so that scripture unequivo-
cally connected such a doctrine with infant bap-
tism, we should of course be bound to receive it,
and regard its apparent inconsistency with other
statements of the word of God, and with the facts
of experience, as one of the many instances in
which the higher harmony of divine revelation
presents itself to our apprehension in the shape of
seeming contradictions. Every reader of Scrip-
ture will be able to recall to mind statements, espe-
cially as regards the relation of divine to human
agency, which, taken literally, contradict each other,
and yet which, since they are equally revealed,
Ave are bound implicitly to receive, and reconcile
as we can. Only we must take care that what
does thus seem to contradict Scripture, be itself
Scripture. In the present instance we have the
wx)rd of God on one side, and on the other a
dogmatical theory of human origin ; where these
two appear to be irreconcileable, we can have no
hesitation in rejecting the latter : it is but a
theory which we are rejecting. And what shall
39
we say of the temerity of those who, not satisfied
with peremptorily ruling a point upon which
Scripture is silent, propound their dogma as an
article of faith, and denounce as heretics all whose
reverence for Scripture will not permit them to
receive what apparently nullifies the written
word, unless it be itself a portion of that word ?
Whenever, then, the full regeneration of every
baptized infant is propounded as a doctrine, that
is, as a revealed truth or an article of faith, we
are abundantly warranted in rejecting it : as a doc-
trine, universally true, it cannot be set forth with-
out contradicting what is expressly written in the
word of God. And yet, in each particular case,
we may act upon the judgment of charity, as it is
called, or presume the fact to be as alleged,
while no evidence to the contrary as yet appears ;
we may presume the infant whom we are actually
baptizing to be thereby regenerate, so far as
an infant can be regenerate, until we have deci-
sive proof that our presumption is unfounded.
For, as has been remarked, God is not tied to the
use of his own instruments, and it is quite con-
ceivable that he may, in the case of an infant,
make baptism, irrespectively of the word, the
means of regeneration. If we believe the prac-
tice to be a " charitable work," favourably allowed
by Christ, we may surely presume that some
blessing attends it, and why not the highest bless-
40
iiig ? Tlio case of an infant is favourably distin-
guished from that of an adult destitute of per-
sonal repentance and faith : in this latter case
baptism conveys no spiritual benefit, the unre-
newed heart presenting a bar, or hindrance, to its
etiect ; but in the case of an infant no such bar
exists. There is nothing, therefore, so absolutely
contrary to Scripture in the presumption that
the infant may by baptism be regenerate, as to
lead us at once to reject it, as we do the presump-
tion that there may be a purgatory. Only we
must remember that the negative fitness of in-
fants, or the absence in their case of positive dis-
qualification, for baptism, is a mere fact ; and that
we have no exj^ress scrijjtural warrant for aflSrm-
ing that the mere absence of a bar is, in any case,
equivalent to the positive preparation of a change
of heart. The whole theory of the " non ponere
ohicem " comes not from Scripture, but from the
schoolmen. So completely are we in the dark as
regards the pj'ecise effect of baptism when admi-
nistered to infants I This negative fitness of the
infant is, however, an important fact, though of
its doctrinal value we are ignorant : it is a fact
which warrants a present presumption in each
particular case. True it is that experience proves
that God does not generally dispense with the
word as a means of regeneration, most of those
who have been baptized in infancy needing a sub-
41
sequent change of heart ; still each case, as it
arises, may be one of the exceptions to the rule,
and because it may be so, we may presume it to
be actually so, as long as the presumption can
fairly be cherished. In so doing we pronounce
no doctrine w^hatever upon the subject, we only
make an allowable supposition : we make it in
each new case as it occurs, though we are con-
stantly compelled by subsequent facts to abandon
it as untenable.
I have said that we may presume the infant
whom we are bajjtizing to be regenerate, so far
as an infant can be regenerate ; for it should seem
that the regeneration of an infant, suj^posing it
actually to take place, must be something very
different from that of an adult. That it is suffi-
cient to save is admitted on all hands ; but that
in the judgment of our Church it does not, by
itself, render the subject of it capable of the full
privileges of the Church, seems evident from the
fact, that she does not permit persons baptized in
infancy to partake of the Lord's Supper until
they have ratified in their own persons the vows
made for them at their baptism. What is this
but a confession that the baptismal regeneration
of infants is at best, though saving if they die,
imperfect as compared with that of an adult ; and
needs, if the infant lives, a subsequent act of the
conscious will to perfect it ? Otherwise, why
42
sliould not the Lord's Supper be administered to
infants as well as baptism ? If the absence of a
bar makes them fit recipients of the one sacra-
ment, \vliy not also of the other ? Scripture, as
regards this point, makes no distiction between
the two sacraments. Every church which prac-
tises confirmation, not as a sacrament, but as a
preparation for the receiving of the Holy Com-
munion, does thereby tacitly confess that the bap-
tismal regeneration of infants needs, if they arrive
at years of maturity, some supplement to com-
plete it.
It only remains to show that in refusing to be-
lieve that they who, in after life, give no evidence
of a change of heart, were by baptism fully rege-
nerate, we do not contradict the decisions of our
church any more than those of Scripture. In
her article on baptism, where her real dogmatical
conclusions are to be sought, she pursues the same
course exactly which has been followed in this
discourse: — She first determines the nature and
effect of baptism in general, and then proceeds to
the exceptional case of infants. Baptism, in
general, she declares to be, " not only a sign of
profession, whereby christian men are discerned
from others that be not christened, but also a
sign of regeneration or new birth, whereby as by
an instrument they that receive baptism rightly
are grafted into the church," &c. She does not
43
define what it is to receive it " rightly ;" nor does
she declare that this doctrine of baptism, which,
from the mention of " faith's being increased," is
evidently founded upon the general and normal case
of adults, is to be applied without limitation to the
case of infants. On the contrary, haying pronounced
her judgment on baj)tism as aforesaid, she dis-
misses the exceptional case of infants with the
significant intimation, that, " the baptism of young
children " (the practice) " is in any wise to be
retained in the Church as most agreeable to the
institution of Christ." In her services, it is true,
she uses stronger language ; but it is easy to see
why she does so. In a service for baptism, as in
every other liturgical formulary, some presump-
tion, some theory upon the subject, must be
adopted ; our church adopts the most favourable
one. That she is warranted in presuming in each
case t\\efact of regeneration, though not in trans-
forming the presumed fact into a doctrine, has
been already shown. No devotional formularies
can be constructed except on a presumption :
what is our daily service but one continued pre-
sumption throughout? We address the whole
congregation as beloved brethren in Christ ; we
put into their mouths the language of penitence,
prayer, and praise ; we make them express senti-
ments which none but true Christians can sin-
cerely utter ; and yet we know that not all pre-
sent are faithful followers of Christ. How erro-
44
neons would be the conclusion, tliat because our
formularies are, and must be, constructed upon
this principle, we are to hold it as a doctrine, a
part of God's truth, that every member of the
congregation is a true penitent, and a true be-
liever ! Apply the same reasoning to the bap-
tismal service, and the supposed difficulties con-
nected with it will disappear. Having prayed
that the infant may receive such regeneration as
he is capable of, we believe that our prayers are
heard, we thank God for his presumed favourable
acceptance of our charitable work, we pronounce
the infant, 07i that presumption, to be regenerate :
but what the actual effect is none but the
Searcher of hearts can know. This view may be
called rationalistic : we may be accused of want
of faith in not believing that a few drops of water
and a few words do invariably effect so marvellous
a change as the new birth ; but it is no part of
christian faith to believe where God has not
spoken. We do not doubt that a few drops of
water and a few words may be the means of spi-
ritually regenerating the infant : we only hesitate
to say that it must be so. God may employ the
most insignificant means to bring about the
mightiest results ; we only need the promise, the
declaration, the doctrine, to induce us to believe
that in any given case He invariably does so.
Let this be, in the present case, ])roduced, and
our doubts are at an end. 5
45
Meanwhile there is a common ground upon
which the different parties in our church may,
and it is hoped will, in future, be content to
meet. That the bai)tized infant be brought up
" agreeably to this beginning," is at once the ex-
hortation of our church, and the dictate of chris-
tian faith and hope. If we presume the fact of
his regeneration, we must, of course, carry on that
presumption until we are compelled to abandon
it. Hence we bring up the child on christian
principles ; we teach him from the first to call
God his Father, and Christ his Redeemer. We
cannot treat those whom we have admitted to
baptism as if they were heathens, or wholly unin-
terested in the spiritual blessings of the new co-
venant. It will be found, I conceive, that, in
point of fact, such is the practice of all parties in
our church, whatever their speculative differences
of opinion may be. On all sides our baptized
infants are brought up in the nurture and admo-
nition of the Lord. If the aim of our opponents
be a simply practical one, let them be assured
that in the practical use of infant baptism we are
one with them.
To return, then, to the point which has given
rise to these observations : — you need be under
no apprehension, my brethren, that by the recent
legislative decision any essential doctrine of Chris-
46
tianity lias been placed in peril. The connexion
of baptism in general ^vitll regeneration has not
been denied ; tlie practice of infant baptism has
not been called in question : — all that has been
denied is that a dogma which, not only cannot be
proved from Scripture, but which, "when pro-
pounded as a revealed doctrine, involves conse-
quences contradictory both of Scripture and ex-
perience, is to be accounted an article of the
christian faith. The rights of conscience have
not been in the slightest degree infringed, for
there is nothing in the decision which compels
any one to abandon the theory, whatever it may
be, which he had previously held respecting the
spiritual effect of infant baptism ; we are still at
liberty, if we please, to suppose that regeneration
invariably accompanies such baptism. Nothing
has received a check but the dogmatism which
would be wise above what is written ; which
would place the customs of the Church on a level
with divine ordinances, and transform the opi-
nions of man into revealed doctrines of the word
of God. Liberty of thought has not been
abridged : it is only intolerance of every dogma
but our own on a point not revealed that has
been discountenanced. Nothing more has been
declared than that the false assertion that the
regeneration of every infant in baptism is an ar-
ticle of the faith, taught in Scripture and wit-
47
nessed to by the creeds, is a false one. With
great wisdom, as it appears to me, have the two
heads of our Church abstained from pronouncing
any particular view of the effect of infant baptism
to be a doctrine necessary to be believed, and
virtually declared that henceforward that must be
regarded as an open question. That no other
conclusion could, on scriptural grounds, have been
come to, appears to follow from the foregoing
observations ; which have been directed, not so
much to establish any particular view, as to
point out the obscurity in which the whole sub-
ject is involved ; how little is the aid which we
derive from Scripture in the investigation of it ;
and how unwarrantable, therefore, it is to pro-
pound any particular theory respecting it as a
part of the deposit of the faith once delivered to
the saints.
If the result of the decision shall be the prac-
tical settlement of a controversy which has always
called forth an unusual degree of acrimony on the
part of those who have engaged in it, both the
Church and the nation will have great reason to
be thankful to Almighty God for this, as for every
other, token of his good-will towards us.
LONDON :
PRINTED BY G. J. PALMER, SAVOY STRKET, STRAND,
^^ - ^ . ^^^^.
^-
A
REMONSTRANCE
TO THE
BISHOP OF EXETER.
LONDON :
GILBERT & RIVINGTON, PRINTEKS,
ST. John's square.
REMONSTRANCE
BISHOP OF EXETER,
SMS remit %ttUr
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
BY THE RliV.
L. VERNON HARCOURT, MA.
LONDON:
FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON,
ST. Paul's chukcii yard, and avaterloo place.
1850.
REMONSTRANCE,
My Lord,
Your letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury
appears to me so replete with injustice to that pre-
late, and so pregnant with mischief to the Church,
that I feel myself constrained to take up the gauntlet
in his behalf, and offer myself to break a lance with
your Lordship in the arena of controversy which you
have chosen, partly with a hope, a faint hope, of in-
ducing you to reconsider the subject, and partly from
serious apprehensions of the danger which may arise
from your misrepresentation, as it appears to me, of
the whole matter in dispute ; for many, I know, have
been led astray by your Lordship's astuteness to
think and speak injuriously, not only of our excellent
Metropolitan, but of the position of our Church ;
and already schism growls at a distance, and some
sad drops are falling here and there, which are the
prelude to a coming storm. How many more will
a2
rush to the rescue 1 know not ; nor whether the
Archbishop will think it necessary to don his un-
wonted armour, and defend himself. If he should,
he, assuredly, needs not my assistance ; but if, feeling
himself above the resentment of injustice, he should
decline the challenge, I may claim without presump-
tion three (lualifications for undertaking the task :
in the first place, I am not intimate with his Grace,
and never w^as in his company, except at his conse-
cration to the see of Chester, and cannot therefore
be biassed by private friendship ; in the next place,
I am in a position which forbids the imputation
that I am actuated either by fear or hope ; and,
lastly, I have publicly given in my adhesion to the
doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, in a work ',
which, however, your Lordship has perhaps never
seen, and therefore cannot be influenced by that
odium theologicum, w^hich is apt to arm disputants
with more animosity than love of truth.
Your Lordship has already acknowledged two
errors into w^hich the hastiness of your attack has be-
trayed you, and perhaps I shall be able to point out
a few more ; but first allow me to submit it to your
calmer judgment, W'hether it is not a captious piece
of criticism to find fault with the Archbishop for
saying, that Regeneration is not accurately defined
in Scripture, when you yourself assert that it goes
far towards a definition. Why, is not this an
' The Doctrine of tlie Deluge.
acknowledgment that there is no accurate definition^?
and when the Archbishop speaks of a change of
state, you surely have no right to assume that he
excludes every thing spiritual from that change,
merely because he wishes to guard men from the
error of supposing, that because they have been
baptized, they must necessarily continue in a state
of sanctification all their lives, whether they have or
have not the marks of a new creature \ Again,
consider whether it is not a captious objection which
you offer to the explanation of " Regenerate," by
the periphrasis of " accepted in the Beloved," when
you yourself propose to substitute for it, " accepted,"
because " in the Lord '? " w^hat is the difierence ?
is not the Lord the Beloved Son of God ? and is
not the same corollary as regularly deduced from
the one as from the other ? for none can be accepted
in Christ without partaking of His Spirit, or of
" the divine nature ;" for, if we have not the Spirit
of Christ, we are none of His. And again, when
the Archbishop has admitted most explicitly ^ that
our Church considers Baptism as conveying Rege-
neration, is it not captious to quarrel with him for
using the term " pronounced regenerate," instead of
regenerated, in speaking of those who afterwards
revolt from their Baptismal vows ?
When the Archbishop dwells upon the benefits which
might accrue from the faithful prayers of parents at the
' Page 9. ' Page 9.
' Page 10. ^ Page 7.
Baptism of their children, and regrets their frequent
ahsence, you say that tliis is " an absolute identity
with the error, of late charged, whether justly or
otherwise, on the Church of Rome"." But nobody
ever charged this as an error on the Church of
Rome ; for every w^ell-instructed Christian knows,
that " the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous
man availeth much." Tlie error of Rome consists
in teaching, what it is well known that many of her
casuists do teach, that the efficacy of the sacrament
depends upon the intention of the priest. The effi-
cacy of prayer, w^hether offered by priest or parents,
is as certainly true, as the necessity of the priest's
intention is false. But nothing is more surprising
than the forgetfulness and confusion of ideas w^hicli
must have obscured your mind, when you broke out
into that strange tirade against this doctrine, where
you say that it is "rank Popeiy and worse than
Popery '." How is it that you have need to be re-
minded, that Popery consists in looking for other
intercessors, beside Christ and the Spirit, not on
earth but in heaven ? Was St. Paul a rank Papist,
when he prayed for the brethren, and desired their
prayers for himself, and exhorted that intercessions
should be made for all men ? If, indeed, it were
true, that the Archbishop insists upon the pre-
liminary prayers of parents as necessary to salvation,
that would in truth be a new and unheard-of heresy,
but no more connected with the errors of Popery
' Page 13. ^ Page 14.
tlian with those of Mahomet or Confucius. But it
is not true ; he only regrets that the hlessings which
might be obtained by prayer, when chikh'en are
baptized, are not sufficiently considered by parents ;
and is there any seriously minded man who will not
join in this regret ?
I wish indeed he had dwelt also upon their sub-
sequent responsibihty, and the culture which is re-
quired to preserve the vitality of the germ which
has been implanted ; the neglect of which is quite
sufficient to account for so many afterwards revolt-
ing from their baptismal vows, forfeiting their bap-
tismal graces, and living apparently without God in
the world ; but all subjects cannot be handled on
all occasions, and there would be no end to book-
making, if every author was obliged to insert what
every reader wishes to see.
The next objection of your Lordship, to which
I entirely object, is that which you make to the
statement, that to rely on prayers in Baptism is
" primitive, scriptural, and reasonable." Chris-
tian prayer of course means the prayer of faith,
and it is of no consequence in the sight of
God, whether that faith is expressed in words,
or lives only in the heart ; it was the qualifi-
cation for obtaining mercy, on which our Lord
almost always insisted, however feeble or unenlight-
ened it might be ; and therefore, even where the
open avowal of it was not required, we may take for
granted that it existed. St. Ambrose tells us that
8
" at Easter pious parents, through fixith, followed
their new-born progeny in great numbers to be born
under the tree of faith from the womb of the font."
They desired, whether in words or not, that their
children should be regenerated ; and w^hat they
desired, they believed. On this principle, and on
this principle alone, is it right to say, that Justifi-
cation is the fruit of Baptism. It might seem, at
first, as if sanctification and justification must be
the same thing ; for w hat is the difference betw^een
being made holy, and being made just or righteous ?
But justification is a forensic term, signifying ac-
quittal from guilt in the sight of God, so that he
can treat the justified as if they were really just.
When a man is baptized, faith enables him to lay
hold of that privilege, and his sins being w^ashed
aw^ay through the water and the blood, he is reputed
holy ; and if he dies without forfeiting it again, he is
saved. When an infant is baptized, the faith of the
parents, or of the sponsors, or of the minister, or of
the congregation, is accepted vicariously, and he is
justified by that faith, inasmuch as he is acquitted
from the guilt of his sinful nature : original sin is
then forgiven. In this sense, it is true, that "justi-
fication and newness of heart are contemporaneously
given in Baptism ;" but it is an unwise and danger-
ous language to employ. For what is the dogmatic
teaching of our Church ? Does it tell us that we
are justified by Baptism or by faith ? Truly the use
of such language introduces an unnecessary con-
9
fusion of ideas into our terminology, and an offen-
sive appearance of contradiction, not only to the
great principle of the Reformation, but to our own
articles and homilies. Perhaps your Lordship will
" stand aghast " at the heretical views which I thus
maintain, and will agitate the Church so to define
justification in your own sense, as to drive me out
of its communion. I only hope, that if I am to be
condemned as an unsound member of the Church,
it may be grounded on some better criticism than
that by which you prove to the Archbishop that
justification is the fruit of Baptism ; for you quote
St. Paul, as saying that w^e are saved " by the wash-
ing of regeneration, and of the renewal of the Holy
Ghost ^" In our version, w^e read — " and the renew-
ing of the Holy Ghost." The object of sliding in
this little change, is to connect the renewing of the
Holy Ghost more immediately with the waters of
Baptism. Now, though I agree w^ith your Lordship
in the concomitance of the two, so far as the recep-
tion of some spiritual grace goes along with the
washing of regeneration, yet I cannot consent to
support that conclusion by evidence which I know
to be false. T am aware that the words in the ori-
ginal are barely capable of that construction ; but
your Lordship is too good a scholar to maintain its
correctness, especially since several of the most
ancient manuscripts, and the Syriac version, show
' Page 15.
10
lu)\v they were generally interpreted in those clays,
by rcpcatini:; the preposition — " and bi/ the renewing
of the Holy Ghost^"
In making this remark, I am not afraid of being
charged with being hypercritical, when 1 am answer-
ing a person who has taken such uncommon pains
to detect as many motes as he can in the eye of the
Arcbishop's style. Your Lordship should remember
the proverb, that " they who live in glass houses
should not be the first to throw stones " But this
leads me to notice another error into which you
have fallen, on the subject of the primitive Church.
You quote a Canon of the Fourth Council of Car-
thage, W'hich, however, was not the Fourth Council
of Carthage, though reckoned so by the Church of
Rome, for a reason to which I shall have occasion to
advert again before I conclude ; and you say that
those Canons were adopted by the General Council
of Chalcedon ; and you argue, that having the autho-
rity of the whole Catholic Church, they are binding
upon all Bishops ; and of course you must own the
obligation to be most stringent upon yourself. But,
my Lord, have you duly weighed the consequences
of your ow^n argument? Do you really mean to
abide by the Sixteenth of those Canons, wdiich for-
bids Bishops (and a fortiori, the inferior Clerg}0 to
read the works of hciithens, and those of heretics,
except in cases of necessity ? Alas ! I fear that this
* See Wetstein.
11
Remonstrance, not coming under that exception, will
be placed in the Index Expurgatorius of Exeter.
But there are other Canons, which the Clergy of
your diocese will be still more startled to hear of
your intention to enforce : three of them order the
Clergy to get their living by some honest trade.
The only one of your Clergy who will have reason
to rejoice in this new-found determination is Mr.
Gorliam ; for, by the Sixty- sixth, those who consider
themselves harshly treated by their Bishop, may
appeal to a Synod. To release your Lordship, how-
ever, from this dilemma, allow me to suggest, that
the Canons of this Council were not adopted by the
General Council of Chalcedon : the Canons of many
Councils were then confirmed ; but only those of the
Greek Church. The code of Canons was then con-
fined to Greek Councils, and there was no " Codex
Canonum Ecclesise Universa," containing those of
African Councils, till 691-2.
2, I beseech you to reconsider your next allegation
against the Archbishop, and see whether you do not
repent of charging him with perverting Scripture,
and making an awful addition to its truth. It is a
very serious accusation, and one at which, it is to be
hoped, on reconsideration, you will " shudder." It
would be more suitable to such reasonable remorse,
than to any alarm which your imagination can con-
jure up in answer to your questions'. Let it be
' Page 19.
12
remembered, that a })rayer is just as mueh a prayer
before Cod, whetlier it be expressed in words, or
only implied. Now, the infants whom Jesus took
in his arms came, not by any mysterious ageney left
unexplained, nor did they (for they could not) come
of themselves : we are told that they were brought ;
and we are told why they were brought : their
parents or friends desired that Jesus might touch
them. Was this the effect of folly, or of piety? To
suppose the first would be a gratuitous calumny in
the highest degree improbable. It follo^vs, then,
that they desired it, because they felt assured that it
would be attended by a blessing : they desired it
wath so much importunity, as to provoke a rebuke
from the disciples : and, further, the great displea-
sure w^hich that rebuke excited, was the strongest
proof how much he approved the conduct and faith
of those importunate suitors. To say, therefore,
that their zeal was approved, is not a perversion of
Scripture, nor an awful addition to its truth, but a
natural, obvious, and inevitable infei'ence from the
context.
Before I quit this subject, I must notice your
Lordship's extraordinary interpretation of the state-
ment deduced from these transactions in the Article
on Baptism, which speaks of the Baptism of children
as most agreeable to the institution of Christ; " that
is," you say, " more agreeable with it than the
Baptism of others-." Now, if any comparison at
' Page 13.
13
all is intended in it, it is, that it is more agreeable to
that institution to retain the practice than to omit
it. But, in the Latin Article, optime congruat does
not contain any comparison ; it means no more than
very well, or excellently.
3. Let me ask you, my Lord, why you choose to
confound two things so utterly dissimilar as a reason-
able mode of Baptism, and the rationalizing neology
of Germany ? Why make such a parade of appeal-
ing to the Law and the Testimony, — as if the Arch-
bishop did not rely upon Scripture as much or more
than yourself? You acknowledge the existence of
one mode of Baptism, which, however primitive,
you dare not deny to be unreasonable when it was
deferred to a death-bed, in order to secure salvation
when further guilt was impossible. But you have
not noticed a still more unreasonable practice, which
is not related by "an infidel historian," but by one
of the most celebrated Fathers of the Church ; prac-
tised, indeed, only by the Marcionites, but defended
by them as scriptural. We learn from Chrysostom ^
that when a Catechumen died unbaptized, they
placed a living man in concealment under the
bed of the dead man, to answer for him, when he
was asked whether he would be baptized. They
defended this practice by appealing to the Law and
the Testimony, and claimed the sanction of St, Paul,
because he asks, " Why are they then baptized for
^ Chrys. Horn. xl. in 1 Cor.
14
the dead ?" May not any one deny that this was a
I'casonahle mode of Baj)tisin witliout being accused
of rationahsm ? Perliajis yon will say, that you have
nothing to do with the opinions or practices of here-
tics : allow me to say, that they affect you very mate-
rially. For I invite your Lordship's most serious
consideration to this inquiry : Is it possible, think
you, that such a device could have entered into the
head of the w'ildest and most extravagant heretics,
if the Christian world at large had not acknowledged
previously the efficacy of vicarious faith ? for, under
every error, there must be some substratum of truth
upon which it is built up ; or it would not have
verisimilitude enough to deceive any one.
But as I have no reason to hope that you will
consider these strictures worthy of an answer, I
must take for granted that you wall be satisfied by
my arguments to receive the view of Baptism which
I have propounded as primitive, scriptural, and
reasonable ; for tw^o corollaries folloW' from this
proposition, which effectually remove both the
objections which you advance against the system
erroneously attributed to the Archbishop ; for, 1st,
it follows that the miserable uncertainty of which you
complain is reduced to the lowest minimum of pos-
sibility, and De minimis non curat lex; and, 2ndly,
that even if an extreme case should occur, in which
all the parties concerned or assisting at a baptism
' Page 19.
15
should be destitute of every particle of faith in that
transaction, and the ceremony were only a mockery
of the Sacrament, and a vile affront to the Holy
Trinity, no Christian need shudder at relegating an
infant so treated into the category of the children of
Quakers and Baptists, and the uncovenanted mercies
of God : for, to affirm that pardon of sin under all
circumstances can only be granted through Baptism
is to determine a question which Scripture has left
undetermined, in the sense most opposite to that
charity which hopeth all things, the salvability, not
only of the heathen world, but of a considerable
j)ortion of professing Christians.
It is true, that you do not enunciate this dogma
in explicit terms ; but you strongly insinuate it by
dwelling so much upon one Baptism, one, and one
only, for the remission of sins', as if it w^ere the
only channel through which sins are remitted abso-
lutely and universally ; but why need I remind your
Lordship, (for you know it as well as I do,) that the
remission of sins was not connected with Baptism
in the creeds till towards the end of the fourth
century, and belongs more to the Council of Con-
stantinople than to that of Nice, which took no
notice of Baptism at all ? and why should I remind
you, that the phrase on which you insist so much,
the oneness of Baptism, was only introduced as a
protest against the error of some Catholics, who
' Page 19.
IG
rebaptized heretics, and of the Donatists who ic-
haptized Cathohcs, and of the Marcionites, who
permitted the ceremony to be repeated no less than
three times ? But, in the next pUxce, if you refuse to
admit the possible exception which I have suggested,
you subject yourself to the grave imputation which
attaches to the practice of these heretics in baptizing
the dead, and to the practice of those Catholics,
who deferred their Baptism till they w^ere on their
death-bed ; in each of these cases the error is the
same, the opiis operatum of the Romish Church ".
You say, indeed, that reliance on deferred Baptism
bears no more resemblance to rehance on the
opiis operatum than that reliance on deferred repent-
ance unfortunately too common now ; but, surely,
the difference between them is this : the latter is a
vain reUance upon spiritual privileges already
granted, the former is a reliance upon an outward
ceremony ; the latter is founded upon the persuasion
that the grace of repentance will be granted to them
as members of the Christian covenant w henever they
shall seriously desire it ; the former refers every thing
to the work of man, without any regard to the state
of the heart.
I agree with your Lordship in thinking this a
strong proof of a generally received opinion, that
those who died after Baptism without committing
actual sins before their death were undoubtedly saved ;
" Page 21.
17
but then they took not into account what is required
of persons to be baptized, and thought that salvation
might be cheaply ])urchased in the last extremity,
by sprinkling of water from the hands of a priest, and
a formula from his mouth without any change in the
state of the heart : does this bear no resemblance at
all to the ojjus operatum of Rome ? You proceed
to taunt and chide the Archbishop for ignorance,
inaccuracy, and inconsistency; the lofty superiority
with which you take upon yourself to teach him
things which must be quite famihar to him is
merely amusing ; but with respect to his inaccuracy,
it is necessary to examine whether that imputation
attaches more to him or to yourself. The accusation
which you prefer against him is of a very serious
character, and ought never to have been advanced,
unless you were prepared to support it by the
most irrefragable proof. Let us see whether it is
not like an arrow shot upright, which in its fall
endangers the head of him who discharged it.
You accuse him of having misled the Privy
Council, not only by mis-stating the matters on
which he advised, but also by mis-quoting all, or
almost all the authors cited by him in confirmation
of his statement'. Any one would suppose from
this, that the Archbishop had written a letter to
the Privy Council on the Gorham controversy, full
of inaccurate information and false advice ; but what
' Page 2."^.
18
is tlic fact ? The ])ublic liaviiiL;' called for another
edition of his work iijion A})ostolical preaching, in
which he had briefly and judiciously noticed the
question of Infant Baptism, it was incumbent u])on
him, on account of the present excitement on that
subject, to explain more fully his present sentiments
with regard to it ; his book was directed against the
Calvinistic tenet of special and indefectible grace,
and therefore, the question naturally arose, whether
in these Procrustean days, those who diflfered from
him could be considered consistent members of our
Church. Unwilling to exclude from its communion
a large body of its most laborious and pious minis-
ters, he takes the line of charity, and in defence of
that line, adduces some passages fi'om divines of the
highest authority, who had made more or less con-
cession to the Calvinistic view, although, like him-
self, not concurring in their opinions ; these passages
therefore are quoted, not in reference to the case of
Mr. Gorham^ but to a question of much larger
importance : and thus all your attacks upon those
quotations are, to use your own expression, " 7iihil
ad rem, they have nothing to do with the case of
Mr. Gorham'."
Your extreme surprise then was much misplaced ;
especially since I hope to show before I have done,
that you are as inaccurate in your notion of Mr.
Gorham's "peculiar heresy," as you are as to the
Archbishop's object in his preface.
» Page 27. ' Page 28.
19
But T must proceed to your criticisms upon his
authorities.
1 . With respect to Usher, it must be granted that
he has fallen into an error in quoting a work as his,
which was disowned by him ; but it is no less inac-
curate to state that the writer was " Cartwright, the
notorious leader of the Nonconformist party," when
you had before your eyes Usher's own declaration
that the Catechism from which you suppose it to be
taken, was compiled not only from Cartwright 's, but
from Croom's, and some other English divines; nei-
ther does this triumph over the error of mistaking
the genuineness of a book, come with a good grace
from one who mistakes the authority of a Council.
2. It is quite true that the Archbishop has
misquoted Hooker, by inadvertently substituting
charity for piety ; but even this ought not to be
severely visited by a writer who cannot even quote
St. Paul correctly ; and the meaning must be much
the same, whether the one or the other word is
used, in the mind of him who was pleading for a
charitable presumption in favour of infants, and for
their election as " a probable and allowable truth."
But in the other passage of Hooker, quoted, what
can your Lordship mean by saying, that it does not
allude to the opinion of the divines of whom the
Archbishop was speaking? Is it not plain, that
when he says, "Baptism is a seal, perhaps, to the
grace of election before received," this is a con-
cession to his Calvinistic opponent, a granting of
b2
20
the possibility that electing grace may have [)re-
ceded it ? So that all which you say to prove that
his own opinion was far different, is nothing to the
purpose ; nihil ad rem, and has nothing to do with
the case of Mr. Gorham.
3. Tiie quotation from Bishop Taylor is precisely
in the same predicament ; it is a concession to those,
who upon the general question thought differently
from himself; for he was not a Bishop of Exeter.
Your Lordship chooses to assume that the Arch-
bishop is profoundly ignorant of Taylor's works, in
order that you may the more decorously accuse the
citation of being " palpably fraudulent ' ;" if he had
tried to deceive the world by persuading them from
this specimen, that Ta^^lor was a Calvinist, it would
indeed have been a foolish and fraudulent attempt ;
but that was necessarily the ver}'^ last thing that he
could have wished, for it would have furnished a
strong argument against the design of his whole
book. Is it, then, that the admission by a writer
of any opinion, differing from his own, appears to
you to be utterly incredible ? even this explanation,
natural as it may seem, will not serve to solve the
enigma : for you admit, that the Calvinists were in
the habit of making "statements, which taken in
their plain meaning, flatly contradict one another;"
and it is refreshing to find that you commend the
charity of "taking words in their best meanings,"
and "overlooking the real differences^" between
' Page 33. ' Pages 34, 35.
21
them and us. One thing however is certain, that
nothing can be more inaccurate than to say, that
the passage from Taylor is either mis-stated or mis-
quoted, and the whole argument is nihil ad rem,
and has nothing to do with the case of Mr. Gorham.
4. With respect to Bullinger, it is needless to ex-
pose the inaccuracy which you yourself acknowledge :
I will only add, that since three editions ol' his
Decades appeared in ten years after their introduc-
tion, while the same length of time produced only
one edition of tlie Second Book of Homilies, which
we know were ordered to be read in every Parish
Church, it is highly probable, that the Archbishop's
inference of their authority is more accurate than
your own. Indeed your own admission convicts you
here ; for the positive evidence of Archdeacon
Aylmer inquiring at his Visitation about the use of
this book by the Clergy far outweighs the negative
evidence of Whitgift's omission. Your whole argu-
ment about Bullinger's contradictions only shows
that our Church was less Procrustean then, than
your Lordship would make it now ; it is nihil ad
rein, and has nothing whatever to do with the case
of Mr. Gorham.
5. You object to the citation from Pearson, that
he is not speaking of infants, because he does not
expressly mention them ; but neither are they men-
tioned in the passage which you produce : if the one
* Page 44.
99
is said of Baptism "of itself," and simpllciter, so is
the other. Ikit a Uttle attention to the context
will show that tlie Baptism of Infants, was much
more in his tlioui^hts than that of adults \ " Bcini^,"
says he, "that Baptism is a washing away of sin,
and the purification from sin is a proper sanctifica-
tion ; being every one who is so called and baptized
is thereby separated from the rest of the world, which
are not so — and all such separation is some kind of
sanctification ; being though the work of gi*acc be not
perfectly wrought, yet when the means are used, with-
out something appearing to the contrary, we ought
to presume of the good effect ; therefore, all such as
have been received into the Church, may be in some
sort called holy''." And then he goes on to say,
that something " more than an outward vocation,
and a charitable presumption is necessary to make
a man holy." Now, is it not obvious that all this
applies much more to infant than to adult Baptism ?
Again, therefore, I am compelled to say, that your
argument is inaccurate, and nihil ad Tern, and heis
nothing whatever to do with the case of Mr. Gorham.
6. But I cannot say the same of your objection to
the extract from Bishop Carleton : it has, indeed,
much to do with Mr. Gorham ; but its inaccuracy is
more glaring than ever. You say he does not teach
that young childi-en baptized are delivered from ori-
ginal sin'. Why, my Lord, one of his answers is :
' Page 43. ' On tlie Coinnmnion of Saints. ' Page 46.
23
' ' If baptized infants die before they commit actual
sin, the Church holds, and I hold, that they are
undoubtedly saved **." To place such contradictions
side by side within the compass of a few pages, is to
presume upon the obtuseness or forgetfulness of
your readers, in a degree which is absolutely uncour-
teous, and, therefore, very unlike your Lordship.
Lastly, in your reply to the Archbishop's remark
upon the Savoy Conference, you attribute to him
language which he never used. He speaks not of the
" charitable presumption," with which the Confirm-
ation Service was defended, but of that " favourable
construction" of all the services, which the Preface
to our Common Prayer inculcates ; and the mode-
ration with which the Baptismal Seindce was de-
fended by the Episcopalians, (for they were not all
Bishops, which is another inaccuracy,) certainly
deserves that title.
I have now gone through all the counts of the
indictment against the Archbishop on this subject,
and I leave it to your Lordship's candour to decide,
which of the two parties in this cause is most ob-
noxious to the charge of inaccuracy, mis-statement,
and mis-quotation.
I now proceed to the other branch of your accu-
sation. The charges of inconsistency are two : —
one is, that having acknowledged it to be certain
from the word of God, that infants who have been
" Page 50.
24
baptized, and die before they commit actual sin, are
undoubtedly saved, he says, that Scripture has not
determined the actual effect of inlant Bai)tisni, and
does not speak detiniti\ ely on that subject : and
such is your horror at this statement, that you will
not believe it to be intended, without an open
avowal of the fact^ But, my Lord, you need not
wait for an answer to this challenge : the answer is
obvious ; it lies upon the surface. Scripture docs not
speak definitively of infant Baptism, nor determine
its actual effect, for this plain reason, that it does
not speak of infant Baptism at all : can your Lord-
ship produce a single passage, where it is even
mentioned ? But this is not at all inconsistent with
our Rubric ; for our moral certainty of the salvation
of infants arises not from any positive statement,
but from the comparison of many passages, and
many principles of Scripture, which lead inevitably
to that conclusion.
In mathematics it is most certain, that in a right-
angled triangle the square of the side subtending the
right angle is equal to the squares of the other two :
but look at the problem ; from one end of the de-
monstration to the other, there is no hint of the
effect of the proposition, no definite statement of
the abstract tinith. In like manner it is evident, that
a conclusion in theology may be most certain, be-
cause it is plainly deduced from Scripture, without
' Page 25.
25
being determined by any express declaration ; and
that this was the Archbishop's meaning no one can
doubt.
Your second charge of inconsistency, is grounded
upon the Archbishop's charity : that is a point in
which you have no sympathy with him. You cannot
understand how it can have betrayed him into coun-
tenancing unsound doctrine in contradiction to his
own behef ; how he can allow the ministers of our
Church to declare that not to be, which, he says, the
Church declares to be her doctrine'.
My Lord, it is well known, as well known to your
Lordship as to any body, that some of our clergy
maintain that high tone of Calvinistic doctrine,
against the preaching of which, thirty-five years
ago, the Archbishop published his valuable work.
Now, if one of these should present himself to his
Grace for institution, and declare that he espoused
your own views on the subject of baptism, would
you again address the Archbishop in similar terms,
and insist upon his rejecting that minister, because
he interpreted the doctrines of the Church in a dif-
ferent way, and that he should agitate the country
from one end to the other, by reviving all the con-
troversies about the meaning of the Seventeenth
Article ? And remember, that this is no impossible
case ; for the history of theology abundantly proves
that both opinions are compatible ; both have been
held together.
^ Page 24.
20
Tlie ancient Predestinarians never questioned the
certainty of Baptismal Regeneration ; they doubted
not that the doctrine was (juite consistent with their
theoF}'. Augustine, the tirst great advocate of those
doctrines which have since been denominated Cal-
vinism, has been follow^ed by many divines, both
before and since the Reformation, in reconciling
both, by imagining, as it would seem, a double elec-
tion ; an exterior circle, consisting of all those who
were elected into the visible Church, and an interior
and much smaller one, comprising only those who
are elected to everlasting life, and to whom alone
indefectible grace is granted. The argument, there-
fore, against Baptismal Regeneration, from the sup-
posed Calvinism of those who compiled the Liturgy,
is absolutely good for nothing. But this difference
of views necessarily produces a difference of senti-
ment with regard to the efficacy of prayer ; and,
consequently, " the same words of prayer do cover
conflicting opinions ^" But this by no means im-
plies any "inward hollo wness" or "uncertainty:"
each party prays sincerely and with confidence in
his own sense, the Calvinist for himself and his co-
elect, his opponent with a larger charity for all the
Church.
This diversity of positive doctrine has been held
by some, more or less, ever since the Reformation,
without detriment to the Church, except now and
=• Page 87.
27
then, when it has fought with a zeal, my Lord, as
intolerant as your own. But there is another in-
stance, in which, I am sure, your Lordship must
wish that the members of the Church may be allowed
to differ, without one party launching anathemas
against the other : the Eleventh Article says, that we
are accounted righteous before God only by faith ;
and that it is a most wholesome (or salutary) doc-
trine, that we are justified by faith only.
Now suppose that I, indignant at some one who
insisted that we are not justified by faith only, but
by Baptism, should, following a high example, burst
forth after this fashion: — "If what is declared so
earnestly to be truth is not, what is ? Why are they
not to doubt of any other article of the faith, if
they are to doubt of this ? If the Church is not
in earnest in this, which she teaches so earnestly,
where is she earnest ? When is she to be supposed
to teach what she says? If those are ambiguous
words, where are there any which are unambiguous"?"
If, I say, I were to use such language as this, would
you not sympathize with the person thus accused
of false teaching, and protest against the tyranny of
being obliged to walk upon the edge of a sword over
the abyss of heresy, into which the smallest devi-
ation or unsteadiness of judgment would infallibly
precipitate you ? Moreover, though I am a great
stickler for baptismal regeneration, I cannot shut my
' Page 86.
28
eyes to the faet, that tlic hini>;uage of the liturgy,
even in that most earnest persuasion to which you
allude, is most plainly conditional, and based on
charitable presumption ; for it exhorts us earnestly
to believe, not only that the child will be received
with favour and mercy, but that Christ will give
unto him the blessing of eternal life, and make him
partaker of his everlasting kingdom. Can we really
believe this of every infant that is baptized, except
upon the charitable presumption, that he also will
perform his part of the covenant, and keep the pro-
mises made in his behalf ?
But I must now proceed to take a nearer view
of the unsound doctrine, which the Archbishop is
charged with countenancing, not for the purpose of
defending it, for I am not one of the five or six who
alone symbolize with Mr. Gorham, according to your
Lordship's calculation^, but in order to show some
considerations which might justify his Grace in
coming to a different conclusion from yourself.
Mr. Gorham is accused of limiting the mercies of
God, of stating that original sin is sometimes not
remitted at all to an infant when baptized, and that
by declaring original sin to be a hindrance to the
benefits of Baptism ', he denied the article of the
Creed, " One baptism for the remission of sins ^" "If
it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously
hath Gorham answered it." I have neither had the
* Page 81. ' Page 18. * Page 52.
29
wish nor the opportunity of winding through all the
intricacies of his examination. All that I know of
it is from the passages produced by your Lordship,
and selected, no doubt, because they were the most
to your purpose ; and I must say, that they do not
appear to me to bear out your allegations. It would
be too tedious to go through all your citations,
neither is it necessary, for they have all the same
drift, all centre in one point, the peculiar crotchet
of Mr, Gorham, and the five or six who share his
opinions — namely, that an act of prsevenient grace is
always necessary to make infants worthy recipients
of Baptism,
This strange fancy, that worthiness is a predispo-
sition indispensable to a participation in the graces
of a sacrament, is neither warranted by Scripture,
nor acknowledged by our Church : as Christ died for
us, while we w^ere yet sinners, so the benefits of his
death are applicable to those who are in the same
sad state, provided it be not wilfully entertained.
But if the unworthiness attributed to infants dis-
qualifies them for the reception of sacramental
grace, who can hope to be qualified for the other
Sacrament ? For our article on original sin tells us,
that the infection of our nature cleaves even to them
that are regenerate ; and in adults, it is not wrapt
up in a mystery and in darkness, as it is in infants,
but is visible in action ; and the most faithful peni-
tents, w^ho draw near to the table of the Lord, after
confessing the intolerable burthen of their sins, too
30
otttMi incur fresh i^uilt, before the reception of the
elements by the admission of some vain thought,
some wanderings of imagination, some momentary
defect of faith and repentance ; upon Mr. Gorham's
principle therefore, a pi-sevenient act of grace must
always be granted to them immediately before they
partake of the Sacrament, in order to make them
worthy communicants.
In the case of infants, there is no positive ob-
struction to the reception of grace by actual guilt ;
and when our Lord w^elcomed them, and pronounced
them to be the materials of wdiich his kingdom w^as
composed, he plainly intimated that they needed no
other qualification for the blessing which their
parents entreated for them, than their simplicity
and the absence of unworthiness. But w-orthiness
is a term which ought not to be introduced into this
question at all ; when the Twenty -fifth Article speaks
of the wdiolesome effect of the Sacraments depending
upon the worthiness of the receiver, the context
shows that it must be limited to the Sacrament of
the Lord's Supper. For that is the only Sacrament
which is or can be "gazed upon" and "carried
about," and which w^e must and can "duly use ;"
it is the only Sacrament, by receiving which unwor-
thily we can " purchase to ourselves damnation."
It is to the Twenty-seventh Article, which treats of
Baptism alone, that we must look for the dogmatic
teaching of our Church on that subject ; and there
the privileges of the Sacrament are appropriated to
31
those who rightly receive it ; and with respect to
this no one speaks more to the purpose than Bishop
Taylor: "Infants," he says, "are rightly disposed
for the receiving the blessings and effects of Baptism.
For the understanding of which, we are to observe,
that God's graces are so free, that they are given to
us upon the accounts of his own goodness only ; and
for the reception of them we are tied to no other
predisposition, but that we do not hinder them.
For what worthiness can there be in any man to
receive the first grace ? Before grace there can be
nothing good in us ; and, therefore, before the first
grace there is nothing that can deserve it ; because,
before the first grace there is no grace, and conse-
quently no worthiness. But the dispositions which
are required in men of reason, is nothing but to
remove the hindrances of God's grace, to take off
the contrarieties to the Spirit of God. Now% because
in infants there is nothing that can resist God's
Spirit, nothing that can hinder Him, nothing that
can grieve Him, they have that simplicity and
nakedness, that passivity and negative disposition,
or non-hindrances, to w^hich all that men can do in
disposing themselves are but approaches and simi-
litudes ; and therefore infants can receive all that
they need, all that can do them benefit'. The inhe-
' Tlie benefits which children receive at Baptism are ex-
plained more fully in another place. "The sanctification of
children is their adoption to the inheritance of sons ; their pre-
sentation to Christ ; their consignation to Christ's service, and to
ritaiu'c and the title to the promises re([uire nothing
on our part, but that we can receive them, that we
put no hindrance to them ; for that is the direct
meaning; of our blessed Saviour, ' He that doth not
receive the kingdom of God as a Uttle child shall in
no wise enter therein ;' that is, without that naked-
ness and freedom from obstruction and impediment,
none shall enter ^"
Mr. Gorham, therefore, is clearly wrong in con-
tending, that infants must be pardoned before they
can receive the benefits of Baptism, especially since
the same unworthiness, which, in his view, would
disqualify them for Sacramental grace, must equally
disqualify them for preevenient grace. But it does
not appear from his answers, that he can be fairly
charged with any Calvinistic limitation of the mercies
of God. What may be his private sentiments I can-
not tell ; but you have produced no evidence to show,
that he considers some infants specially predestined
to salvation, and therefore allowed to be regenerated,
while others are excluded : on the contrary, he
avows his adhesion to the doctrine of our Church,
that infants who have been baptized, and die before
they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved.
This is an unUmited and universal proposition ;
what is true of one, is ti-ue of all equally. And here
resurrection ; their being put into a possibility of being saved ;
their restitution to God's favour, whicli naturally, that is, as our
nature is depraved and punished, it could not have." Works, ii.281.
' Tavlor's Works, viii. 207.
33
I congratulate myself upon being able for once to
agree with your Lordship, in your amazement at
that extraordinary specimen of ratiocination in the
judgment of the Judicial Committee ; who, having
cited this Rubric, straightway follow it up by deny-
ing the inference from it, that those infants are
saved by Baptism. If, on the one hand, nothing is
said about the state of unbaptized infants, and there-
fore there can be no assurance that they are un-
doubtedly saved, and on the other hand, it is averred
as a most certain truth, that baptized infants are
undoubtedly saved ; to deny that baptism is the
means by which they are saved, merely because they
are not said, totidem verbis, to be saved by Baptism,
is a specimen of that hardy sophistry which has
hitherto been considered the peculiar property of
the Jesuits. But to return to Mr. Gorham. I
cannot think that he intends to reject the doctrine
of St. Peter, who exhorted his hearers to be bap-
tized for the remission of their sins ; nor is any such
intention necessarily implied in his answers. He
does not say that sins are not remitted to infants
when they are baptized, but in baptism. Now, if
the effect is invariably the same, — if baptized infants
always have original sin remitted to them when they
are baptized, — what does it matter whether the re-
mission takes place at the same moment as the Bap-
tism, or a moment before ? If a man were to deny
that hghtning and thunder are simultaneous, because
the flash appears to him to precede the report, and
34
could not be pursuudecl by all tlic reasonings of
sound philosophy, — were it not a pity to punish
that man tor his innocent obduracy, acdemptus per
vim mentis yratisaimuii error ? If Mr. Gorham
chooses to imagine, that God always paves his
way for granting one grace by imparting previously
another, so long as it is admitted that He re-
wards the faith of his Church in bringing chil-
dren to the laver of regeneration by granting them
his Holy Spirit, what is the harm of this figment ?
It is, indeed, too curious a prying into the secret
method of God's operations, and a gratuitous as-
sumption, and a wild and useless vagaiy : but it is
not a heresy ; it is not Zuinglianism ; it does not
rob parents of their comfort, nor children of their
hopes, nor the Church of her faith'. And still less
does the refusal to punish it sanction the inference,
that " our Church is no part of the Church of
Christ." To suppose, indeed, that all infants who
die are regenerated, and not all who live, (if that
could be proved against him, of which there is no
proof at all,) would be a monstrous paradox, with
no w^arrant from Scripture, no countenance from the
Church, and no colour of reason ; for if any one be
haunted by an objection, which presses like a night-
mare upon his conscience, that many are thus pro-
nounced regenerate, who grow^ up without any marks
of regeneration, let him be assured that it is a
' Page 26.
35
visionary terror, a phantom arising from ill-digested
ideas of the grace of that sacrament. For, as Bp.
Taylor says: "The outward act of man, unless
we make ourselves unworthy, is certainly assisted
with the increase of God ; if the good effect come
not, the sacrament doth not want its virtue, hut the
receiver marred it '." And again, " The Holy Spirit,
which descends upon the waters of Baptism, does
not instantly produce (all) its effects in the soul of
the baptized ; and when He does, it is irregularly,
and as He pleases — no man can conclude that the
spirit of sanctification is not come upon infants,
because there is no sign or expression of it. It is
within us, it is the seed of God ; and it is no good
argument to say. Here is no seed in the bowels of
the earth, because there is nothing green on the
surface of it^" And again, "The seed of God is
put into the ground of our hearts, and repentance
waters it, and faith makes the ground apt to pro-
duce fruits — the seed may lie long in the ground,
and produce fruits in its due season, if it be re-
freshed with the former and the latter rain '." And
this is quite in accordance with the language of
Scripture in the parable of the sower ; for the seed
of the Word is the seed of grace planted in the
heart, as it then always was, by preaching : but it
matters not by what instrumentality it may be sown,
whether by preaching or by Baptism. The seed is
- Works, V. i. 151. ' Ibid. ii. 266. * Ibid. 265.
c2
36
still tho pwco of Cod, which sometimes falls on
s;round that is never tilled, and then is removed by
the arts of the Devil ; sometimes it withers away,
when the heart is not softened by the love of God,
and sometimes it is choked by the cares and plea-
sures of the world, and brings no frnit to perfection;
on this subject I have the satisfaction of beheving
that your Lordship agrees with me ; and on this
subject there is no evidence that Mr. Gorham
dissents, if the passages produced from his examina-
tion fully represent his opinions ; for the peculiarity
of his scheme seems to be this, that he divides the
gi'ace of regeneration into two parts, of which one
must of necessity precede the other, but without as-
signing anv specific interval between them.
Now I should be glad to know from your Lord-
ship, in what precise instant of the rite the Holy
Spirit descends upon the infant. It is a point upon
which there may be some considerable difference of
opinion, for some maintain that the grace cannot be
separated from the water : but, on the other hand,
the sprinkling does not occupy so much time as the
invocation, and till the formula is concluded, the
baptism is not completed. If, then, Mr. Gorham
w^ill allow that his praevenient grace accompanies the
affusion of water, all parties may rest contented; for
his theory is then satisfied, and he does not deny the
Article of the Creed, and does not separate entirely
the inward and spiritual grace from the sacraments
' Page 52.
37
By viewing the process of regeneration as a whole,
without dividing it into two parts, he might be con-
tent to say, that it takes place in Baptism as well as
before it. But even if he is unreasonable enough to
refuse this compromise, I still am bold enough to
say, that the Judicial Committee acted wisely in not
fettering the freedom of conscience, and driving all
diversities of opinion into one narrow passage, from
which no one is at liberty to diverge one inch to
the right hand or to the left.
Even the Church of Rome, notwithstanding her
claim of infallibility, and notwithstanding the minute
preciseness with which all knots have been cut by
the Council of Trent, still has her open questions.
One of these is the question where her infallibility
resides, which the Council of Trent was too discreet
to touch ; another, which never would have been
a question if she had taken Scripture for her guide,
is the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary.
In support of this tenet, a powerful party is appeal-
ing to their infallible head with vehement expostula-
tions ; they declare it to be of vital importance to
their Church ; they say, that it must be either true
or false, it cannot be both black and white ; and
they call for a solemn decision in their favour. But,
my Lord, Pius IX. wisely thinks that there are some
questions which had better not be resolved.
"Variety of opinions," says Bishop Taylor, "is
impossible to be cured ; and although inconveniences,
which every man sees and feels, are consequent to this
38
diversity of persuasion, yot it is but accidentally and
b\ chance, insomuch as we see that in many things,
and thcv of great concernment, men allow to them-
selves and to each other a liberty of disagreeing, and
no hurt neither." And, " Men are, now-a-day, so in
love with their own fancies and opinions, as to think
faith and all Christendom are concerned in their
support and maintenance ; and w^hosoever is not so
fond, and does not dandle them like themselves, it
grows up to a quarrel, which, because it is in materia
theoJogifc, is made a quarrel in religion, and God is
entitled to it^"
Your Lordship's answer to this will be, what
indeed you have said \ — the efficacy of one baptism
for the remission of sins is a fundamental article of
the Creed. That it is an article of the Creed called
Nicene, though, as I have shown, the Council of
Nice did not think it necessary to insert it, is un-
questionable ; and happily it has a better foundation
than the assertion that it is fundamental, if you
mean that it is essential to salvation, that it should
be believed in a certain sense. The code of faith is
threefold ; the first, and that to which we are most
bound to attend as sons of the Church of England,
is, however undutifully your Lordship may doubt it,
that which consists of the Articles and Liturgy ; the
second, is the code of the Western Empire, and
comprises the three Creeds, over which the first
* Works, vii. Mo, 1. ' Page 5.
39
claims jurisdiction by pronouncing them to be scrip-
tural ; the third is the Apostles' Creed alone, which,
for more than three centuries, was the only code,
the only rule of faith ; and therefore the articles of
this creed are the only articles which can fairly be
called fundamental. I will not offend you, my
Lord, by the uncharitable presumption that you are
ignorant of Taylor's " Liberty of Prophesying," but
perhaps you have forgotten the extract which I now
beg leave to present to you.
" If this (the Apostles' Creed) was sufficient to
bring men to heaven then, why not now ? If the
Apostles admitted all to their communion that be-
lieved this creed, why shall we exclude any th^t
preserve the same entire ? why is not our faith of
these articles of as much efficacy for bringing us to
heaven, as it was in the Churches apostolical, who
had guides more infallible, that might, without
error, have taught them superstructures enough,
if they had been necessary ? And so they did : but
that they did not insert them into the creed, when
they might have done it with as much certainty
as these articles, makes it clear to my understand-
ing, that other things were not necessary, but
these were ; that whatever profit and advantage
might come from other articles, yet these were
sufficient ; and however certain persons might
accidentally be obliged to believe much more, yet
this was the one and only foundation of faith, upon
which all persons were to build their hopes of
40
heavell^" And so stronu,- was tliis iinj)ression upon
tlie mind of him whom you acknowledu;e to have
been " the most judicious, the most accurate, and
one of the most learned of all the theologians of
whom our Church can boast','' tl^at in his treatise on
the Remission of Sins, Bishop Pearson very briefly
mentions baptism, and the baptism of infants not at
all. And if this were not true, if the three creeds
were indeed the code of faith indispensable to salva-
tion, and every contradiction to wdiich is unpardon-
able heresy, the consequences would be such as I
scarcely think you can have contemplated : is your
Lordship prepared to excommunicate the whole of
the Eastern Church, which some are so eager to
unite in communion with our own ? for you are per-
fectly aware that they contradict a fundamental arti-
cle of the Nicene Creed, by denying the procession
of the Holy Ghost from the Son as well as from the
Father.
But there is a still more unpleasant consequence
from your view of this matter, which, I am sure,
your Lordship would be most anxious to avoid.
Some of your w^armest admirers and friends scruple
to allow the funeral rites of the Church to the chil-
dren of Dissenters ; and there are instances in which
they have refused to read the Burial Service, because
they deny the validity of their Baptism. Would
your Lordship refuse these clergymen institution in
' Works, vii. 4\'X * Pa<a> 43.
41
your Diocese ? if you would be consistent, you
must : yes, my Lord, however unconsciously, they
are much more guilty in this matter than Mr. Gor-
ham ; they do more to rob parents of their comfort,
children of their hopes, and the Church of her faith ;
they do all they can to cut off the Church in which
they minister, from communion with the Holy
Catholic and Apostolic Church of all ages, by as-
cribing to her the contradiction of an article of the
Creed, " I acknowledge one Baptism for the remis-
sion of sins'." For since they would debar such
persons from the privilege of Christian burial, be-
cause, in their estimation, they are not baptized,
there can be no doubt that, if before death they were
requested to baptize them, they would not hesitate
to comply ; the love of an immortal soul committed
to them, and perishing for want of Christian Bap-
tism, would compel them to this course. And yet
this would be in direct contradiction to the article,
which says that there is but " one Baptism for the
remission of sins." They are therefore virtually
chargeable with the heresy, as your Lordship would
call it, for it contradicts a fundamental article of the
Nicene Creed, but which I call the error of the
African Church, which this clause was expressly
inserted to correct. For we know from Cyprian
himself what was the judgment of the CathoHc
Church : he tells Pompeius that Stephen, then
^ Page 37.
42
Bishop of Rome, "has tbrhidden one coming from
any heresy whatever to be l)ai)tized in the Chiu'ch ;
that is, he has adjudged the baptisms of all heretics
to be right and lawful." Stephen, indeed, went a
step too far when he included all heretics ; but
wherever the Catholic form of baptizing in the
name of the Trinity was used, the validity of that
Baptism by heretics was recognized by the Councils
of Laodicea, the 2nd of Constantinople and of Aries,
and most of the ancient writers ; and Augustine
challenges the Donatists to produce any instance in
which the Catholics ever re-baptized a person who
had been baptized in the name of the Trinity ^ But
though this error may be acquitted of heresy, it was
certainly reckoned schismatical ; for none of the
Councils of Carthage were recognized by the Catholic
Church before the year 348, when Gratus presided,
and a canon w^as passed, forbidding to re-baptize
those who had been baptized in the name of the
Holy Trinity ; for till then the African Church had
been in schism. Nor will it avail you to say, that
the objection to the Baptism of Dissenters rests
upon the invalidity of their Orders, and that they
are in fact lay-baptisms*. For not only the Council
of Ehberis in Spain, and Jerome, and Aug-ustine,
and many other waiters, have maintained the vali-
dity of lav-baptism under some circumstances, but it
is recognized by the Lutherans, W'hich must have
' Adv. Fulgent. * Page 61.
43
great weight with your Lordship, since you refer
the Judges to the Confession of Augsburg for the
meaning of our Articles, and it was not disapproved
of in this country till the Hampton Court Conference ;
and in 1597, Archbishop Abbott, in his Theological
Lecture before the University of Oxford, condemned
indeed its irregularity and unlawfulness, but admitted
it to come under that rule, Fieri non debet quod
factum valet.
Perhaps, my Lord, you are not aware how nearly
you are concerned in the truth of the proposition
which I have now proved ; but the 70th Canon
of the Fourth Council of Carthage, which you
believe to have the authority of the whole Catholic
Church, and therefore to command the obedience of
all bishops, forbids the Clergy to keep company
with heretics and schismatics. How many of your
friends you may lose by this canon, it is impos-
sible for me to guess ; but, by this time, you must
see what sad consequences are likely to follow
from that strait-laced orthodoxy, which aims at an
unity of opinion as impossible as the attempt which
amused the leisure of Charles V. after his abdication
of the imperial crown. He was disappointed that
with all the pains he took, he could not make all
his clocks strike the hour precisely at the same
moment ; and you will be equally disappointed, if
you expect to compel all varieties of opinion to
follow in the same track, or speak in unison, without
some discords.
44
'' For 'tis with our jiuljrmonls ;is our watches, noiip
Go just alike, vt't each believes his own."
As in music some discords are reckoned necessary
to the completion of harmony, and as opposite
electricities are the cause of cohesion, so some
disag:reements and varieties of opinion within cer-
tain limits may tend to the perfection and sta-
bility of our Church. Would to God, my Lord,
that you would direct the energies of your acute
mind to consolidate and unite it, rather than to
rend it asunder. For now, what justification is there
for the alarm which your warlike trumpet sounds
at the close of your letter, when you tell the
Archbishop that you will hold no communion with
him if he has the courage to perform his duty ;
if it is a threat of excommunication, it can only
excite a smile ; if it is an intimation that you mean
to secede from our Church, and aim at the honours
and sufferings of martyrdom, it is to be hoped that
you \^ill change your mind, now that the very
battle-ground which you had chosen has been cut
away from beneath your feet. At all events, be not
offended, my Lord, if I presume to recommend to
your imitation the example of a Bishop with whom,
I have shown reason to suppose, that you may have
some sympathy. Cyprian was indeed a martyr ;
but he was prepared for martyrdom by a heavenly
spirit ; though he was Metropolitan of a large pro-
vince, and supported by synods of seventy or eighty
bishops, and therefore in a position to hold a high
45
tone in maintaining his opinion against his brother
in the Roman episcopate, who on his side was
arrogant and imperious ; yet we learn from Au-
gustine, who sided with his opponents, that " He
uttered it so mildly and peacefully, as to maintain
the peace of the Church with those who held other-
wise, appreciating the healthfulness of the bond of
unity which he loved so much, and upheld it in
sobriety, and saw and felt that they too who held
otherwise could so hold without injury to charity ;
and he maintained so much moderation, as by no
taint of schism to maim the holy society of the
Church of God^" The compilers of our Liturgy
acted upon this principle ; for they tell us, that in
carrying out their undertaking, they did that " which
they conceived would tend most to the preservation
of peace and unity in the Church ; and the cutting
off occasion from them who seek occasion of cavil
or quarrel against its Liturgy." And may all who
use that Liturgy ever bear in mind, that we are as
much bound to be zealous pursuers of peace, as to
be earnest defenders of the faith !
' De Bapt. 5. 1.
THE END.
V
!.<)N DON :
GILBKKT & RtVINGTON. I'KlNTF.liS,
ST. John's squark.
THE PRACTICAL EFFECT OF THE GORHAM CASE.
A CHARGE,
TO THE CLERGY OF THE EAST RIDING,
DELIVERED
AT THE ORDINARY VISITATION,
A.D. 1850.
ROBERT ISAAC WILBERFORCE, M.A.
ARCHDEACON OF THE EAST RIDING.
LONDON :
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET ;
J. AND C. MOZLEY, PATERNOSTER ROW;
ROBERT SUNTER, YORK.
\_Price One Shilling.']
TO THE
CLERGY OF THE EAST RIDING,
THIS CHARGE,
rUBLISIIED AT THEIR REQUEST,
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.
JOHN AND CHAKLES MOZLEY, PRINTERS, DERBY.
A CHARGE.
My Reverend Brethren,
The period which has passed since we last
met, has not been without its contingent of Ch.urches
restored, and Schools founded. St. Laurence's, Sig-
glesthorne, now presents an admirable model of what
may be desired in a Parish Church, chiefly through
the liberality of the Rector ; and St. Mary's, Scar-
borough, is recovering that ancient splendour, which
those who have known it of late years could hardly
suppose that it ever possessed. The interesting
Norman structure at Fangfoss, and, with some ex-
ceptions, that at Givendale also, have been rebuilt in
a satisfactory manner ; and the internal arrangements
of St. Mary's, Watton, and of the Chancel at Scray-
ingham, have been wonderfully improved, through
the laudable exertions of the respective Incumbents.
A School-house has been built at Wansford, and two
at Beverley, and schools, under trained masters, have
been opened at Sutton near Hull, at Weaverthorpc,
Sledmere, and Wetwang. Neither must I omit to
niciition that a system of School Inspection has been
introduced, through the exertions of the Rural Deans,
and of various clergymen who have assisted them,
and that near seventy schools have been inspected.
The subject of National Education would open a
large field, were there time to pursue it. The
National Society has printed a set of Trust-clauses
in its ^lay Paper, which may be substituted for those
of the Privy Council. The compulsory enforcement
of the last by Government, continues to be a great
obstacle to the cause of education ; for to render an
elected Committee \'irtually necessary, would, in
many cases, stir up the elements of discord. A less
unpleasing subject is that the Yeoman School at
York, which we owe chiefly to the exertions and
liberality of our noble Lord Lieutenant, has this year
been doubled in size. ^lay it continue to be popular
with the yeomen of this county : if the middle classes
are brought up in the fear of God and the love of
their country, we shall have the best guarantee for
the safety of the whole community.
But I am recalled fi'om dwelling on the external
machinery of the Church by the consideration of that
great contest, which is to decide what doctrine must
be taught in her schools and preached in her pulpits.
It has now been a subject of debate during many
years, whether the Sacrament of Baptism is the
means, whereby God bestows His regenerating gifls
of grace ; and while some have censured our rulers
for allowing words used at the font to be contradicted
in the pulpit, others have affirmed that baptismal
regeneration is contrary to Scripture, and is not
inculcated by the Church. At length the different
parties have come to issue. I need not weary you
by detailing how the cause, after being decided in the
highest of the Church's own Courts — the Arches
Court of Canterbury — was brought by appeal before
the Queen in Council. It was long doubtful whether
the judgment of the Archbishop's Vicar General, or
the decision of the Queen in Council, would take
effect ; at length the Judges would appear to have
determined that the Appeal has been conducted in
strict conformity with the laws of the land. So that
here, for the first time during three hundred years,
we have the decision, on appeal, of a great doctrinal
case ; conflicting elements have come into collision ;
and we are enabled to estimate the exact nature of
that system under which we live, to ascertain its
laws, and appreciate its tendencies.
Such cases as these are of the utmost moment,
as indicating what is the set of the current in more
tranquil periods : they show in what hands the final
decision of affairs is really placed, and thus interpret
the true character of institutions. Was it uncertain
what was to be the system of the Primitive Church,
when it first allied itself with civil gov^ernments ? —
the Council of Nice showed that the settlement of
doctrines lay in the Episcopate. What Act of Par-
liament is clearly understood, till its effect is shown
by a decision ? Plainly, then, the first great cause,
in which the Church's doctrines have been brought
into question before our present Court of Appeal,
must test the soimdness of our state, and the nature
of those changes which have befallen us.
6
Ndw two questions may be asked respecting the
leeent jiulgnient — first, what is its authority ? secondly,
wliat does it decide ? On both of these questions
tlic greatest ditlerence of opinion prevails. For some
have spoken of the judgment as virtually a decision
of the Church, which Churchmen are bound to
accept in its place, as much as any other specimen of
her teaching. Others have assumed it to be wholly
nugatory, and by public protest have declared that
they v/ould yield it no obedience. While a third
part}', again, says that the judgment sanctions a false
interpretation of our formularies, and sustains it by
unsound arguments, but that the Church's wisdom
is to acquiesce without complaint, because it is im-
possible for her to resist without injury. Among
such a diversity of opinions, I would ask, first, not
what is wise, but what is right ? not whether the
judgment be theologically true, but what deference
it can claim from you and me according to that rule
and order of the English Church, under which we
exercise our functions ? " Will you minister the
Doctrine and Sacraments and the Discipline of Christ
as the Lord hath commanded, and as this Church
and Realm hath received the same ?" So long as
we are bound by such a promise, we must ask
whether the judgment be the expression of that
authority, which we are pledged to obey, before we
have a right to examine into its truth and wisdom.
Now, that the judgment is so far effectual that it
will put the complainant into real and corporal
possession of the emoluments of Brampford Speke is
denied by none. But this is not all which it will
effect. The Archbishop of the rrovince will proceed
to give him spiritual mission for the care of souls,
and will thus authorize him to teach those doctrines,
which he has avowed, as a Persona EcclesicB or repre-
sentative of the Church of England. Further, the
Church's highest tribunal will not only reverse its
own judgment, but it will proceed to compel every
Bishop in the Province to bestow spiritual mission on
those who entertain the opinions to which it formerly
objected. Several Bishops, indeed, have expressed
disapprobation of the recent judgment ; but are they
prepared to refuse institution to the parties whose
opinions it sanctions ? True, a Bishop may bestow
Holy Orders according to his OAvn conscience. But
will the public be satisfied if the Bishops have one
rule in ordination, another in the admission to bene-
fices ? Men's thoughts are best interpreted by their
actions ; and how can a Bishop be supposed to
believe a doctrine, if he gives mission to those
whom he acknowledges to deny it ?
All this, however, affects the Bishops, not the
Clergy : how are you and I interested in the case ?
Does it alter our opinions, or abridge our liberty ?
Now the answer to this depends upon the notion
which we entertain of the authority of the Church.
There are persons who look upon the Church
as nothing more than a convenient name, bestowed
upon the aggregate of those who use the same
prayers, and profit by the same endowments. They
recognize no authority in the Church, as superior to
their individual will : they suppose themselves at
liberty to teach what their private wisdom discerns
8
in iSoripture, and enter the Establishment as a
sort of track, along Avhich tiiey travel, so long as
it coincides with the direction which they wish to
pursue. This error has its origin in unbelief of
the actual presence of God the Holy Ghost, whose
merciful operation, through the Sacraments of His
grace, renders the living members of the Incarnate
Word His earthly temple. But ^Yithout dwelling on
the nature of this error, it is plainly inconsistent
with the profession, that " the Church hath authority
in controversies of faith." None therefore who sub-
scribe our Articles can consistently adopt it. If
nothing is required, but that every one should make
out his creed from Scripture, what room is there for
the authority of the Church ? And why should we
undertake to teach what our hearers may know as
well by themselves ? How comes it, brethren, that
I speak to you to-day ? Xot, I trust, out of conceit
of my private wisdom, or of my peculiar insight into
God's Word, but because I am under public authority,
and because it is inseparable from all social institu-
tions to express themselves in such words and acts,
as require the agency of individuals. Now there is
one only Being in the Universe, who so concentrates
all authority in His single existence, that His Word
is law, and His Will is fate. This attribute of
Deity, absolute monarchs have attempted to imitate.
But it has been the wisdom of every well-constituted
society to divide the organs, through which its will
is expressed, that so the collective mind may not be
overborne by individual caprice. And the two func-
tions, through which this mind is expressed, are the
Legislativx' and Judicial powers. The first of these
supersedes the second, because new enactments annul
previous decisions ; but in the abeyance of its legisla-
tive functions, its judicial acts express the ultimate
mind of every society. For the two are co-ordinate
means of expressing the sovereign will, and rest
ultimately upon the same basis. Even the settle-
ment of individual questions may be traced back
finally to the collective authority of the commu-
nity, because power cannot be divorced from re-
sponsibility. By the law of England is meant that
which is propounded by the Judges at Westminster.
The legislative power of Parliament may alter the
law, if its effect proves to be alien to the national
intention : but till it is altered, the law means that
which the Judges declare it to mean.
Now let us apply this to the case before us. If
the statement, that the Church hath authority in con-
troversies of faith, be not an idle phrase, she must
have some means of giving expression to her will.
Like other societies, she may alter her laws by
legislative enactments, but till they are altered, their
judicial exposition is final. She must give utterance
to her voice by those courts of her own, to which
her public order has committed jurisdiction. As the
power of awarding life or death has always indicated
the state's judges, so the Church armed her courts
with the only authority which she possessed, that of
severing men from her communion. Such is that
Court at which you have been summoned to appear
to-day, and which is the highest usually held within
this archdeaconry : such is the Court of Arches, the
10
highest to wliich a spiritual person presents, or which
is held under his jurisdiction.
Supposing, then, that the Court of the Arch-
bishop's Vicar General, as seems to be its intention,
should adopt the decision of the Privy Council, and
reverse its former judgment, will not the Church be
committed by its act ? The Church, it is true,
possesses legislative functions, which might super-
sede the judgment by altering the law. The 139th
Canon declares that the Sacred Synod of this realm
is the Church of England by representation. But so
long as the legislative function is in abeyance, what
is there higher than the judicial, by which the will
of any community can be expressed? And what the
Court of Arches does, it does for all Courts subordi-
nate to it ; its will is their law, because all cases in
the Province are liable, on appeal, to be taken into it,
Xow, if her Courts recognize this sentence as binding,
and the Church sits still, and by no legislative act
declares her disapprobation, how can she be under-
stood to dissent? And how^ can those who affirm
that the Church hath authority in controversies of
faith, deny that their position is altered by her
conduct ?
But, it is said, the Church's written standards re-
main unaffected. What matters it how our Courts
decide, so long as our formularies are uncorrupted?
And the present is no Ecclesiastical sentence : it has
been forcibly obtruded upon us by the civil autho-
rity; the Church is not expressing her own will, but
suffering under the persecuting will of others.
There is a measure of truth in these objections.
11
but they do not neutralize the fact, that " the Church
hath authority in controversies of faith ;" and that a
Society which has authority must not only possess a
rule by which to judge, but exert its authority in
judging. If it were said, the Prayer-Book or the
Articles have authority, every one might exercise his
own discretion in their interpretation : but how, then,
should we differ from the Dissenters, of whom each
individual, under the idea of following the guidance
of Scripture, makes Scripture follow his private will?
If " the Church has authority in controversies of
fiith," I ask, not w^hat is the rule, but w^ho is the
Judge ? And unless this question admits of an
answer, we are using unmeaning words on the most
sacred subjects. It were profaneness to call on men
to recognize such an authority by their subscrip-
tions, if
" Chaos umpire sits,
And by deciding, more embroils the strife
By which he reigns."
(,)n this supposition every curate w^ould have as
much right to interpret Scripture and the Prayer-
Book as our Primates. Whereas, observes the
statute for restraint of appeals, "the King's most
noble progenitors, and the antecessors of the nobles
of this realm, have sufficientlj^ endowed the Church
with honour and possessions," in order "to declare
and determine all such doubts, and to administer all
such offices and duties, as to their rooms spiritual
doth appertain." The emoluments and dignities of
the Church, that is, have been bestowed upon her
rulers, in order that greater weight might be given
12
to those decisions, which it belongs to them to pro-
mulgate. The two Primates, in particular, possess
not indeed an authority to determine questions by
their private will, but Courts, in which the Church's
laws are explained, and the power of assembling
Synods, by which they may be altered. Now, the
existence of such authorities is a plain recognition of
the flict, that in this manner the Church utters her
mind. And during the abeyance of her legislative
functions, what is there except her judicial to express
it ? It cannot be said, therefore, that her formularies
remain the same which they were before, if the
Church allows her Courts to put a new sense upon
them. For it is the established maxim of all societies,
that the meaning of laws is not fixed by the private
will of the individuals who obey, but by the public
authority of the community which enforces them.
" Ejus est legem interpretari, cujus est condere."
What would be said if a prisoner professed to explain
the law, and told the Judges they mistook its mean-
ing? What the Judges declare, that is the meaning
of the law, until their decision is reversed. And
therefore it cannot be said that our formularies re-
main unchanged, when their meaning has been
altered.
I need not inquire whether the Committee of Privy
Council is, as it professes to be, an Ecclesiastical
Court ; and whether it has a right to claim this title
from those who allow the Queen's Supremacy. For
however this may be, the Church plainly makes that
her own act, in which her own Courts acquiesce. It
may be said, that she is in the condition of a weaker
13
state, which is coerced by a stronger. But coercion
does not exempt from responsibility, unless it be such
physical coercion, that the apparent ceases to be the
i*eal agent. When Dioclesian ordered Christians to
sacrifice to idols, those who were forcibly dragged to
the altar by their friends were excused, but those
who approached it voluntarily, to escape death, were
excluded from communion. We live in a free
country, where such physical coercion cannot be
pleaded. If regard to the Church's worldly wealth
or temporal influence prevent her rulers from assert-
ing her rights, or her clergy and laity from demanding
them, this is no coercion which either in the sight of
God or man will exempt her from concurrence.
But, it will be said, consider the strange results
to which such a state of things conducts us. The
Church asserts a claim to authority in controversies
of faith, to which the laity virtually, and the clergy
have formally, assented. If the Church, therefore,
subjects herself by voluntary act to the dictation of a
lay-tribunal, she transfers to it that divine authority,
with which she herself claims to be invested. True,
all which she commits to it is judicial power, but
we have seen that in the abeyance of the Church's
legislative functions, the judicial are ultimately
supreme. And such has practically proved to be
the case in innumerable instances. The system of
feudal legislation w^as almost got rid of by our Courts
of Equity, through the intervention of cestuique
trusts ; and the Statute of Frauds became w^ll-nigh
a dead letter in the Statute Book, because the Judges
opposed its operation. Unless its legislative func-
14
tii)ns, thcrcibiv, can be appcaUd to, the C'luiivli has
virtually transtcrred its whole authority to those to
whom it has surrendered its judicial power. But by
appointing its Primates, the same party altogether
suspends its legislative action. So that there would
seem to be some reason in the claim lately made by
the Lord Chief Justice, that Henry VIII. had vested
in himself, and as is implied m his successors, the
whole Papal Jurisdiction in England. For this juris-
diction did not interfere with the performance of
sacred functions, which the Papal system supposed
to reside equally in all the Apostles, and which our
Kings never undertook. Its essential feature was the
claim of the Pope, as the Patriarch of the West, to
be the fountain of spiritual jurisdiction; and in par-
ticular to be the last earthly appeal in respect to the
interpretation of God's Word and Will. And this
it is which the Church claims to possess by the asser-
tion in her Articles, while she allows the civil power
to exercise it.
It may be doubted whether all who are satisfied
with the present arrangement have realized every
thing which these considerations involve. The body
to which they are contented to commit " authority in
controversies of faith," can of course claim no higher
character, than the pow^r from which it emanated.
We are led back, then, to the majority in Parliament,
A.D. 1832, when the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council was constituted. Now what is the majority
in Parliament but an expression of the opinions and
wills of those thirty millions who inhabit the British
Islands ? Of this population, the larger part are not
15
even members of the Church of England. On what
conceivable principle can we allow that the persons
who possess their political confidence have " authority
in controversies of faith ?" And the matter might
be carried much further. The present tendency of
things is to open the government to men of every
class and opinion. Now the Queen's Heathen, far
outnumber her Christian subjects. If the national
religion is nothing but a reflection of the national
will, on what principle can we defend Christianity
itself, and why should not the Yedas come to be
substituted for the Gospel ?
But was this, it will be said, the arrangement to
which the Church of England assented at the Refor-
mation, and which has received the sanction of so
many saintly names ? Our enemies wull no doubt
say so, and the charge will be strengthened by the
concurrence of those, to whom the late verdict tastes
so sweet, that they are careless what bitterness it
may engender. It is true, that the English Clergy,
to save their fortunes and lives from a cruel tyrant,
agreed, by the Act of Submission, a. d. 1534, to
allow their legislative action to depend on the royal
will. Again, their acquiescence in the 25th Henry
VIII. c. 19, by which the appointment of Judges was
left to the King, might be represented to be a
renouncement of judicial authority. But these acts
were coincident w^ith that solemn declaration of the
Legislature in the Preamble of the 24:th Henry VIII.
c. 12, by which the decision of all questions of doc-
trine was affirmed to belong to the Spiritualty.
" The body spiritual having power, when any cause
of the law di\ inc happened to come in question, or
of spiritual learning, that it was declared interpreted
and showed hy that part of the said body politic,
called the Spiritualty, now being usually called the
English Church." The great powers then, which
were vested in the crown, were vested in it upon an
understanding that they should be exercised through
the Church. As the Queen is the nominal source
of all civil jurisdiction, which yet cannot be exercised
without the assent of the people ; so the Royal su-
premacy over the Church was qualified by a proviso,
that doctrines should be interpreted by those who had
" authority" from Christ " in controversies in faith."
And so long as the Royal authority was vested in
members of the Church, this proviso was perhaps
a sufficient security. But the last quarter of a cen-
tury has introduced a new order of things — first, by
virtually transferring the Royal supremacy from the
Sovereign himself to the minister who has the con-
fidence of Parliament ; and secondly, by divesting
Parliament of all claim to represent the Church. To
refer the Church's doctrines to a lay-court, not con-
sisting necessarily of members of our communion,
was never thought of, till the British Constitution
was changed, by the repeal of the Test and Corpora-
tion Act, by Roman Catholic Emancipation, and by
the Reform Bill. The Queen has bound herself by
her Proclamation, to allow Convocation to act when
the Clergy desire it ; but the representative of a Par-
liamentary majority knows no such obligation. The
Queen is bound individually, as a member of the
Church, by the principle that the Spiritualty has
17
right to judge of doctrine — an admission, on the
strength of which her Supremacy was conceded.
But how can this admission be expected from those
members of Parhament who dissent from the Church ?
The thing which we need then, is, to reclaim those
rights which the ancient settlement was intended, as
we believe, to assign, and to adapt the laws of the
Church to the altered posture of the nation.
And this it is which the protests made in many
places are calculated to effect. We must not deceive
ourselves by imagining that private protests are a
substitute for the Church's authorized acts. They
neither alter that construction of her laws, which is
given by those whose office is to interpret them, nor
do they exempt the protesting individuals from par-
ticipation in public acts. When the Slave Trade was
a legal traffic, individuals were not required to share
its profits ; but the sin attached to the nation as a
whole, till it was purged away by the national Abolition.
Much more is this the case with the Church, the
members whereof are not merely connected by the
accident of neighbourhood, but profess to be united
into one spiritual body in Christ. Our protests
cannot undo the fact, that we belong to a body which
has imperceptibly divested itself of its inalienable
rights, and that according to the present constitution
of things, our religion is dictated to us by Act of
Parliament. But by testifying our conviction that
such a state of things is dangerous and degrading,
that it threatens the existence of the national Church,
and is an infraction of the rights of conscience, they
may, by God's blessing, be the means of our release.
B
18
And wc have no little encouragement from the
manner in which our rulers have come forward to head
us in this attempt. The great mass of the English
Episcopate are understood to have been united in
demanding the abatement of this grievance. This
step is in itself a sufficient justification for those who
have thought that nothing was to be gained by con-
cealing the danger. The judgment of the Privy
Council has force, so soon at least as the Courts of
the Church recognize it : it musf: have force, till it is
rescinded by some act equally formal and authori-
tative. It alters the position of those who believe
that the Church hath authority in controversies of
faith, unless it is superseded by some other public act,
either judicial or legislative. We must allow time
enough for such steps, before we can say what is its
exact effect upon the Church of England. So nuich
only I will predict, that it is a crisis m her history,
by w^hich future times will decide whether she is a
portion of Christ's Catholic Church, or a department
of the secular government.
Let us now turn to our second topic — what this
judgment decides. Now the language of the Judg-
ment ought not to surprise us, for it is much the
same w^hich the state employed to the Church, as
long ago as the time of Constantine. It would seem
to be modelled on the Emperor's letter to the Arch-
bishop of Alexandria, whom he forbade to disturb
the peace of the Church, and the quiet of the empire,
by opposing Arius. " All men cannot think alike,"
said Constantine ; " if you dispute, therefore, about
these trivial questions, the decision should be left to
19
private opinion, and the public tranquillity should
not be endangered." With this feeling the Privy
Council professed to abstain cautiously from giving
an opinion, whether the sentiments of the complainant
before it were "theologically sound or unsound."
But the circumstances of the case necessitated that,
which the judges would gladly have avoided. For
by determining that an individual should have com-
mission to teach on the Church's behalf, that he
should be the " Persona Ecclesi^," by whom it should
be represented, they could not help delaring that his
sentiments were such as the Church approved ; and
were compelled therefore to enter upon an inquiry
into her intentions. So that while they left it to
individuals to choose their doctrines for themselves,
they took upon them complete and unlimited autho-
rity to decide what should for the future be the
doctrines of the Church of England ; and did all,
and in point of fact more than all, than could pertain
to those who were not entrusted with legislative
functions.
There can be no doubt, then, that the decision was
designed to mean that which is popularly understood
to be its meaning — that Baptismal Regeneration is
determined on authority to be an open question in
the Church of England, w^hich its ministers are at
liberty to affirm or deny, according to their private
judgment. Such a state of things may have been
connived at formerly ; it is now for the first time sanc-
tioned by a public tribunal. Let us consider how
far this ought to be satisfactory to either of the two
parties, between whom the doctrine has been disputed.
20
Take first the case of those who deny Baptismal
Regeneration. Here are persons who for years have
declared tliis doctrine to be a soul-destroying lieresy,
and liave made its rejection the very characteristic of
tlieir creed. And that Almighty God has promised
to bestow gifls of grace through the ordinance of
Baptism, is so serious an assertion, that unless it be
a certain truth, it must surely be a most hazardous
error. Now, can men be contented to be told that
they are allowed to deny this assertion ? For the
judges speak as though conscious that the Church's
words incline the other way : all which they profess
is, that it does not appear to them that the opinions of
the party who claims relief are " contrary to the
doctrine of the Church of England," so as to " afford
a legal ground for refusing him institution." And
they add, in justification of this verdict, that " it is
not the duty of any court to be minute and rigid in
cases of this sort." Now, ought men to be satisfied
to belong to a Church w^hich uses expressions ob-
viously calculated to teach heresy, because she is not
rigid in excluding those w^ho assert the truth ?
If the Church's words, taken in their natural sense,
denied Our Lord's divinity, would it be enough that
she was not "minute and rigid" in silencing those
who maintained His Godhead ? Surely those who
think that Baptismal Regeneration is an untrue and
dangerous dogma, ought not to be contented unless
it is distinctly repudiated.
Again, the imposition of needless oaths has of late
been justly censured. To make solemn declarations,
which require to be qualified by consideration of the
21
sense in which they are understood, and the intention
with which they are exacted, though convenient per-
haps for the pubhc service, is a snare to individual
consciences. But here is a solemn assertion in God's
presence, and in the face of the congregation, which
every minister who baptizes an infant is required to
make, but not required to believe. Every time he
baptizes pubhcly or receives into the Church, he is
compelled to affirm that "this child is regenerate."
And to add stringency to the assertion, every incum-
bent is required to " declare his unfeigned assent and
consent" to the above w^ords. What can be more
unreasonable, or less fitted to satisfy conscientious
men, than to require such declarations to be made,
and then to qualify them by a judicial explanation
that they mean nothing ? Is less nicety required in
Church than in the custom-house ; or are the Clergy
supposed to be more indifferent to truth than men of
business ? Surely it were better, as a matter of com-
mon honesty, that men should be allowed to omit
such expressions, rather than to evade them.
But how does the Judgment affect the other party ?
If no interpretation can completely explain away
those expressions, which are still to be used in Holy
Baptism, persons who take them in their natural
sense may be thought to stand as they did before.
But the negative force of a judicial explanation is far
greater than its positive force. No explanation will
satisfy a conscientious man to affirm that which
individually he believes to be untrue ; but a judicial
explanation of the law deprives men of the right of
referring to it as an indication of the mind of the
22
c'omiminitv. Those who do not bchcvc iKiptismal
Kcgvncnitioii may still scruple to atlirni, respecting
every child, that it is regenerate : but those who
believe the doctrine to be true, cannot affirm that
they teach it, as they formerly did, on the authority
of the Church. So that the Judgment docs far less
benefit to the first party than it docs injury to the
second.
But it is objected, that the Privy Council did not
really decide so much as has been attributed to it.
It abstained from any professed settlement of the
question of Baptismal Regeneration, and evaded the
main subject in dispute by a partial and ambiguous
statement of the views of the complainant. Such a
proceeding w^as delusive, for since the book excepted
against has escaped legal censure, the effect of the
decision upon the public mind, supposing the question
to rest where it is, is equivalent to its final settle-
ment : yet it may be said that the Church is not
bound to more than the Judges state themselves to
have affirmed. Now, looking at their own account of
the opinions before them, the statement w^hich they
supposed themselves to sanction would seem to be
this, tliat the limitations confessedly applicable to adult
Bapjtism^ are applicable to infant Baptism also ; and
tliat since the efficacy of adult Baptism is avowedly
affected by extraneous circumstances^ therefore it
cannot be affirmed that baptized infants are regenerate^
except by virtue of some process irrespective of
Baptism .
In vindication of this statement, the Judges entered
upon various explanations of the language of the
23
Church. Let us sec then First, how their decision is got
at ; — Secondly, What it involves. It presents at first
sight an obvious contrast to the language of the Prayer
Book. For not only is the minister required to de-
clare that " this child is by Baptism regenerate," but
the whole baptismal office assumes this ordinance to
be the peculiar medium, through which Almighty God
bestows His regenerating grace. How is this con-
trariety to be got over ? To meet it the Privy
Council lays down a rule for the interpretation of
the Church's words, which I notice, not with a view
of discussing its justice, but of observing its effect.
The Church's ancient principle had been that her
prayers were one of the most important means of
ascertaining her doctrine : " legem credendi lex
statuat supplicandi :" a principle which is sanctioned
by our 57th Canon, that the doctrine of Baptism is
sufficiently set down in the Common Prayer to be
used at its administration. But the Privy Council,
without positively rejecting the authority of the
Prayer-Book, virtually supersedes it, by stating
" that devotional expressions, involving assertions,
must not be taken to bear an absolute and uncon-
ditional sense." Now it is well known that our
authorized Formularies consist of two parts : those
ancient portions, which we share with the whole
Church Catholic ; and the Articles which were
added in the sixteenth century. Hitherto they have
been supposed to be of co-ordinate authority : it is
an entire and hazardous change in our system, that
the one should in this way be subordinated to the
other.
24
lUit the- L'rivy I'oiiiifil, while layini»- down this
general rule, produecd a partieiilar instanee in de-
fenec of it. It has long been matter of complaint
that the tuSth Canon is enforced upon the Clergy,
while the 22nd, to which it bears a necessary relation,
is not enforced upon the laity. Since " those who
break the laws cannot in reason claim any benefit by
the same" (Canon 08), it seems unjust to enforce
a Canon compelling the Clergy to use our funeral
service, in cases to which it is inapplicable by the
Church's laws. For an adult non-communicant could
have no claim to participation in the Church's funeral
office, were not her laws obstructed by the 1st
William and Mary, and other statutes. So that the
Clergy are liable to punishment by the letter of the
Canon, because they act according to its spirit.
The difficulty mider which they labour arises, of
course, from the occurrence of two sets of expres-
sions ; one the declaration of " sure and certain hope
of the resurrection to eternal life," the other the
statement of " our hope that this our brother rests in
Jesus," and of our " hearty thanks" for his deliverance
" out of the miseries of this sinful world." Both of
these have been felt to be inconsistent with a state
of things in which the Church's discipline is interfered
with by the civil power : and the obvious profaneness
of applying them to parties who die in open sin, has
led to repeated instances in which Clergymen have
refused at any hazard to employ them. But the
expectation which is " sure and certain," it has been
reasonably urged, refers only to the common resur-
rection; and some general hope may be fitly enter-
25
tained respecting all who do not die in open
impenitence, and whom the Church sees no ground
to separate from her communion. A present fact
cannot honestly be asserted when men do not know
it; but when nothing is known to the contrary, they
may fitly hope for future blessings.
Such have been the considerations by which the
use of the Burial Service has hitherto been main-
tained. Numerous have been the objections made
to it; among others, the late Mn Scott, of Hull,
proposed its alteration, because its " ambiguity," he
says, "offends many, and in many may conduce to
self-deception." Now these ambiguous expressions,
the present enforcement of which is repugnant to the
Church's intentions, and is felt by numbers as their
heaviest grievance, is selected by the Committee of
Council as the key by which all our Offices are
to be explained, and our whole position estimated.
To which must be added, that the Avords " sure and
certain hope" are declared by the authority of this
decision to be applicable to the salvation of every
individual. And the Clergy are told that they need
not scruple to assert that every baptized infant is
regenerate, since they affirm the salvation of every
one whom they inter. Their submission to the com-
pulsory decision of the ecclesiastical Courts is dwelt
upon as a proof that in this matter the Clergy are
already practised casuists. For this, observed the
deciding Judge, with no little emphasis, is what " in
every case," even in that of those who " die in the
actual commission of flagrant crimes," " the priest is
directed to say, and he does say." It is true that
26
the Jiidi;incnt proceeds to excuse those who make
such assertions, on the same principle on which
persons are justified, it is said, in affirming that every
infant is regenerate, even though they do not beheve
it. But the decision increases tenfold the difficulty
of complying with the hnv. For if this Judgment
conveys the Church's mind, the hope expressed
respecting every individual is a " sure and certain
hope of the resurrection to eternal life." In this
sense how could the w^ords be generally applicable ;
and what benefit is it to conscientious men, that they
have a legal sanction for uttering falsehoods ?"
The interpretation thus given to the Burial Service
may be said, how^ever, to be only an obiter dictum of
the Court, and not entitled to much authority. But
it is the basis of an important principle which is
asserted to be applicable to all our services. They
express the dealings of God as well as the dealings
of man, so that whatever uncertainty attached to
the conduct of the human, none, it was thought,
could be ascribed to that of the Divine actor. But
the Judgment decides that our services are in all
cases to be understood as hypothetical ; that however
positively a blessing is promised, some condition
must be assumed, on which it is dependent. And
in the case of Infant Baptism, we are told what that
condition is : in this ordinance it is said, " the benefit
is to depend" upon the subsequent compliance of
the baptized party with the conditions of faith and
repentance. So that the Privy Council laid down a
complete system for the interpretation of the Prayer-
Book — first, by denying the dogmatic authority of
27
its devotional statements ; and secondly, by asserting
its positive assurances to be mere hypotheses.
And now let us consider what conclusion is in-
volved by these novel rules of interpretation. In
our baptismal Offices occur certain statements of
those spiritual gifts, which Almighty God bestows
upon infants. But since, according to the Privy
Council, the words of the Prayer-Book can never be
taken unconditionally, and since the act of Baptism
is alike to all infants, therefore God's gifts cannot be
bestowed through Baptism itself, but by virtue of
some process, which admits of a diversity between
one child and another. On what does such diversity
depend : does it arise on the side of God, who gives
grace, or of man who receives it ? For since the gift
is not allowed to be bestowed equally upon all, there
must be something on which to build the diversity.
One party would find it in the will of Almighty God,
who by arbitrary decree selects some children to be
the objects of His favour, while He excludes the rest
from profiting by the grace of Baptism. This would
seem to be the view of Mr. Gorham (though some-
what modified by the assumption, that all the baptized
who die in infancy are of the number of the elect);
it appears to be implied in the necessity of that
prevenient grace, for which he contends. But the
Privy Council, though admitting his conclusion, says
nothing respecting his premises. It was felt, probably,
that to suppose helpless infants to be in certain cases
debarred from profiting by that offer of grace, which
yet is made to all of them, is revolting to natural
conscience. For to rest the invalidity of Baptism on
2S
sucli an arbitrary decree, is to attribute an act to the
(iO(l ot' truth, wliich would be abhorred as a breach
of promise, even by mortals.
Nor is it necessary that all who call themselves
Calvinists should assent to so harsh a dogma. Many
Predestinarians have supposed, as was the opinion of
8t. Augustin, tluit wliile Almighty God bestows the
grace of Perseverance on those who are finally saved,
lie yet in Baptism bestows upon all infants grace
sufficient for salvation. Such an admission may be
inconsistent with the full rigour of the theory of
Calvin. But the inconsistency is not greater than to
admit the doctrine of absolute decrees, and yet to
regard man as an accountable being. For the
doctrine of absolute decrees, pushed to its logical
results, would destroy man's responsibility, and
reduce him to the level of the beasts. In like manner,
if taken strictly, it is incompatible with the nature of
God, whom it robs of His crowning attribute of truth.
But if a happy inconsistency leads Calvinists to admit
human responsibility, and thus to allow man to be an
accountable creature, why should not the same
inconsistency lead them to admit the doctrine of
sufficient grace, and thus to allow reality to the
promises of God ?
Such has been the conclusion adopted by many
Calvinists, who, if they agree with Mr. Gorham's
premises, have yet rejected his conclusion as incon-
sistent with the Church's words. But the Privy
Council, by sanctioning his conclusion, must either
sanction his premises, or some others, which lead to
the same result. Since they allow it to be denied
29
that children are all capable subjects for the grace
of baptism, they must allow the existence of some
principle, by which the capable are severed from the
incapable. And if this principle does not lie, as
Calvinists affirm, on the side of God, the Giver of
grace, it must lie on the side of man, its receiver.
And such seems to be the theory adopted by the
Privy Council, in their explanation of the words
of the Catechism. All children would appear to
come equally as helpless receivers to the ordinance
of Baptism. Exclude the Calvinistic theory of an
absolute decree passed by the Almighty, and no
difference is to be seen among them. But there
exists, it is said, a real diversity, so that some are
not capable subjects for this ordinance, while others
are. Wherein then lies the difference ? It rests,
says the Privy Council, upon a consideration of the
future conduct of the parties baptized. " The
answer" in the Catechism, which is averred to
express the title of children to Baptism, " has direct
reference," it is said, " to the condition on which the
benefit is to depend." So that the grace of Baptism
is affirmed in reality to depend upon God's foresight
of the character of the candidate : grace is given if
the child's temperament be such as to deserve favour
in the eyes of Him who reads the future. This is
the Privy Council's interpretation of the alleged fact,
that some children receive Baptism without partaking
of grace ; and unless the matter be rested upon an
absolute decree, this, or some corresponding inter-
pretation, it must adopt. For it is impossible really
to admit a conclusion without admitting the premises
iijX)!! which it is built. And the Privy Council
docs not deny that Baptisni sometimes confers grace,
because tliis would be to render its application to
infants a mockery. Now if it be a fact that some
infants are capable recipients of grace, others not so,
there must be something: which renders the one case
unlike the other. And this difference must lie
cither on the side of the Being who gives grace, or
of the being who receives it. And as the first
opinion is built upon the Calvinistic theory of
absolute decrees, so the second depends in reality
upon the desert of the receiver, and thus involves
a revival of the heresy of Pelagius.
For all who call themselves Christians allow that
the blessings of salvation are bestowed upon mankind
through Christ. The point in controversy is by what
means men receive them. Some persons suppose
that men apply them to themselves, either through
the exercise of their natural endowments, w^hich is the
Pelagian hypothesis, or by virtue of some specific gift,
which is bestowed by arbitrary decree upon certain
favoured individuals. But the Church has always
maintained, that the gifts of grace and pardon were
not only purchased by Christ's merits, but that by
Christ alone are they applied for man's salvation.
For this very end is He affirmed to have ordained His
Church and Sacraments, that they might be the
media through which these inestimable blessings
might be communicated to mankind. So that to
deny the efficacy of these ordinances, unless men are
provided with some previous resources of their own,
whereby they may go to meet the divine bounty, is
31
to render Christ's acts unavailing, unless they are
preceded by the agency of man.
However widely, then, the Calvinist and the Pelagian
differ in their premises, so far as regards the inefRcacy
of Baptism, they agree in their conclusion ; and the
sentence, which opens the door to one, opens the door
to the other. Now there are three grand doctrines
into which we may resolve the whole objective portion
of the Christian faith ; — the doctrine of the Blessed
Trinity, the source and cause of all ; — the doctrine of
Our Lord's Incarnation, as the means whereby God
and man have been brought into relation ; — the doc-
trine of the Church and Sacraments, as the media
whereby pardon and grace are communicated by
Christ to His brethren. The first of these was the
grand subject of dispute in the earliest age ; then
followed the vindication of the second : but the main
controversy of modern days is the defence of the
third. And this it is, to which the Judgment thus
given in the Church's name is virtually fatal. For it
is a denial of the reality of those channels of grace,
whereby divine gifts are communicated to men.
Infant Baptism is not only one of these channels, but
it is a criterion by which we may test men's belief in
the rest. The efficacy of other ordinances admits of
being attributed either to the Giver or receiver, but
the helplessness of infants throws the whole benefit of
their Baptism upon the power of God. If its efficacy
is denied, unless it can be accounted for on some
principles, which rest it on the faith or feelings of the
receiver, how can we doubt that these, and not the
external agency of the unseen cause, are the true
32
basis on whicli the result of less distinctive ordinances
is rested ?
This may be said to be a mere matter of words,
since the parties in question refer after all to a Divine
power, which may act before as well as in Baptism.
But Pelagius never denied that human goodness must
be referred to God ; his heresy was that the Being, to
whom he referred, was the God of nature, not the
God of grace. The Gospel is not a mere assertion of
the prerogatives of nature, but the coming in of a
new principle, by w^hich nature is re-created. All
infants stand in need of such renewal, by reason of
that guilt of nature, in which they are born ; it is
effectual in them o//, because "their innocency" is
the absence of that actual sin, by which it might be
thwarted. This change was effected once for all
when God the Word took upon Him our nature : it
is applied to every infant, w^hen he is taken through
Sacramental union into the Body of Christ. This is
the doctrme of Our Lord's Mediation, which not only
implies that by one sacrifice He has made atonement
for all His brethren, but likewise that He is the one
medium, through which those graces which had their
origin in God, are communicated to mortals. " There
is one ]\Iediator between God and men, the man
Christ Jesus." So that it is a fundamental article of
the Christian faith — one which it would be heresy to
abandon, that the Holy Ghost bestows His saving
gift upon infants, through that Sacrament of Baptism,
w^hereby they are made members of Christ. " I be-
lieve in one Baptism for the remission of sins."
This is the doctrine, then, which is really denied,
33
when it is affirmed that acceptance with God is not
given through that ordinance of Baptism, which
He has appointed for the purpose of uniting men to
Christ, but at some other season, and through some
other means. To affirm generally " that Baptism is
not in itself an effectual sign of grace," " without
reference to the qualification of the recipient," is
equivalent to a denial of Our Lord's Mediation. It
is true in some sort as respects adults ; its application
to infants involves Fatalism on the one side, or
Pelagianism on the other. For if any infants are
capable of the grace of Baptism (without which the
Church's practice were a mockery), it is impossible,
without admitting one of these alternatives, to deny
the capability of all. The present Judgment, from
an apparent unwillingness to condemn the Calvinist,
in reality opens a way for the Pelagian. Thus is the
new creation in Christ Jesus forgotten, and men fall
back upon that relation to God, which is independent
of the Second Adam. Time would not suffice me
to enter upon argumentative proofs ; but I will cite
the Church's judgment, when this heresy was first
promulgated. For the spiritual efficacy of that
ordinance of baptism, whereby the blessings of
Christ's Mediation are imparted, was never ques-
tioned, till Pelagius, from denying man's wants, was
led to deny their remedy. And this was the sen-
tence of the ancient Church, suggested apparently
by St. Augustin — a sentence, which condemns every
denial of the efficacy of baptismal grace, on what-
ever principles it be founded. " If any man says
that children inherit no original sin from Adam,
c
34
wliich requires to be done away by the laver of re-
generation, whcnec it would follow, that in their case
the words whereby they were baptized for the re-
mission of sins, were not to be understood in their
true sense, let him be excommunicated." And
again, '' this rule of faith is the reason why infants,
who cannot have committed any personal sin, are
really baptized for the remission of sins, that so
that which was contracted by birth, may be washed
away in them by regeneration."*
Such is the meaning and sanction of that Article
of the Belief — " one baptism for the remission of
sins ;" which the recent judgment expunges from
the authoritative Creed of the Church of England.
What effect is to attend the sentence must depend
upon the manner in which it is received by the
Church — a thing of which time alone can inform us.
So much we must remember, that a public act can
only be annulled by public authority. Private
declarations, either by Priests or Bishops, cannot
supersede a judicial sentence, though they may in-
dicate such a state of feeling as will lead to its being
superseded. If the Church of England is to retain
its ancient Creed unimpaired, if its rule is to be the
law of Christ, and not acts of Parliament, its liberation
must be as formal and unambiguous as its thraldom.
It is a step in the right direction, that fourteen Bishops
have demanded that the intei*pretation of the rule of
faith shall be restored to the successors of the Apostles.
The measure proposed may have been defective : and
* Council of Milevis. Can. 2. Hard. i. 1217.
35
considering the unsatisfactory manner in which our
Bishops are appointed, the inferior Clergy may justly
reclaim that influence which they virtually exerted
in primitive times, when the Bishop was their natural
representative. But the unconditional refusal even
of this demand must accelerate the crisis which it
was intended to obviate. For the demand was that
doctrines should be referred to those whom the
Church asserts to possess a commission from Christ,
and who profess to be guided by the teaching of His
Spirit. It was replied that tliis great nation is too
wise to need such guidance, and can settle its
religion by the exercise of those natural powers,
which have proved adequate to the adjustment of
its temporal relations. To acquiesce in the Royal
Supremacy, when thus interpreted, w^ould be an
acknow^ledgment that what is called the Established
Church in this land is no part of that Communion,
which was founded by Our Lord and His Apostles,
but a mere expression of the national mind, working
upon those ancient records, in which it chooses to
place confidence. It would be to renounce the
" Faith once delivered to the Saints," for what may
be called the religion of English Nationality. Such
a system could have no claim to be the medium of
transmitting grace, or witnessing to doctrine.
What should be our conduct, brethren, in such an
emergency, I do not feel entitled to suggest ; until
it be seen whether any practical course is pointed out
by those, who with a higher place possess a heavier
responsibility. Among our many Bishops at home
and in the colonies, there will not be wanting surely
3G
some Athiinasius in the hour of the Church's danjrer.
80 much only I beg- you to remember, that so soon
as the decision of the Privy Council is obeyed, our
Church is already committed to sanction heresy, and
can onl}- be freed by some new law, or some new
sentence. If the Clergy perceive and feel this as
they ought, they will need no directions how to
meet it. Were an assault made upon our property,
we should find means for denouncing its injustice,
and combining to oppose it. Shall we be less
zealous in maintaining that Christian Faith, which
the Church was founded to perpetuate ? We have
an Ecclesiastical Legislature, which has power to
make laws, and Courts to enforce them. Our
Primates could summon the Convocation of their
Provinces to-morrow — they would do so if the
Church w^as serious in demanding it. If the Clergy
do not knock loud enough therefore to obtain relief,
it can only be because they are not in earnest
respecting its necessity. In matters of life and
death no man stands upon ceremony. This must be
my own excuse, if I have spoken with a freedom,
which ma}' offend those whose approbation I desire.
John and Charles Mozley, Printers, Derby.
PASTORAL LETTER
THE CLERGY
THE DIOCESE OE RIPON.
CHARLES THOMAS, BISHOP OF RIPON.
LONDON:
FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON,
ST. Paul's church yard, and waterlog place.
1850.
LONDON :
GILBERT & UIVINGTON, PUINTEUS,
ST. John's square.
LET T E R,
My Reverend and Dear Brethren,
I'l' has not been without much anxious reflection,
nor without a deep sense of the solemn responsibihty
which I should incur in so doing, that I have made
up my mind to address you under the present
troubled circumstances of our Church : but having
received Memorials from different parts of my
diocese, including one signed by twelve of my
rural deans, on the subject of the recent decision in
the case of Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter, and
having also had the most pressing appeals from
clergy as well as laity within it to resolve, if pos-
sible, the painful doubts, and remove the distressing
perplexities, under which so many are labouring in
consequence of it, I have deemed it advisable, in-
stead of replying separately to each communication,
to address this " Pastoral Letter^" to you all;
' This Letter would have appeared three weeks earlier, but
that I was engaged, when I received most of the addresses, in a
long round of Episcopal duties in various parts of my diocese ;
A 2
feeling that I should be uniaithful to the Church,
to my office, and to my people, were I to shrink
from endeavouring, according to my ability, to sa-
tisfy those scruples and remove those difficulties ; or
refuse to give such counsel as might, under God's
blessing, tend to calm agitation and compose dif-
ferences. May He, who giveth to all men liberally
and upbraideth not, grant me wisdom and discern-
ment to guide me in the task of unusual difficulty
which is thus imposed upon me.
In one respect, however, I am thankful to con-
fess that this difficulty is much less than it might
have been ; because the main point in dispute
between those who differ in opinion as to the Judg-
ment recently pronounced, does not depend upon
the definition of the term Regeneration, in which,
when parties attempt to introduce refinements and
subtleties beyond the simple language of the
Church, they may easily differ, and yet all be
consistent churchmen : the real question at issue,
although I think it is as yet scarcely realized by
many, is whether Baptism, as an instrument or-
dained by Christ for that purpose, does convey the
blessings which Holy Scripture and the Church
ascribe to it ; or whether the blessings and graces
must not have been given to the individual pre-
and having, immediately afterwards, been summoned to London
to attend a Meeting of Archbishops and Bishops, I felt it to be
more respectful towards my Episcopal Brethren to postpone its
publication, until our deliberations were concluded.
viously, in order to render him a worthy recipient
of Baptism. For, in spite of all one's anxiety to save
a brother clergyman from such penalties as would
deprive him of his benefice, it cannot, I fear, be
denied, that he, in whose favour the recent judg-
ment has been pronounced, has asserted that as no
spiritual grace is conveyed in Baptism, except to
worthy recipients, and " as infants are unworthy
recipients, being born in sin and the children of
wrath, they cannot receive any benefit in Baptism,
except there shall have been a prevenient grace to
make them worthy'^; " and that prevenient grace he
describes more fully to be, the having been ' ' rege-
nerated by an act of grace prevenient to their
Baptism, in order to make them worthy recipients
of that Sacrament \" He asserts also, that "the
filial state *," that is, the grace of adoption, the
being made a child of God, was bestowed on the
recipient before Baptism, not in Baptism : thus
maintaining that the remission of original sin,
adoption into the family of God, and Regeneration,
must take place, in the case of infants, not in
Baptism, nor by means of Baptism, but before
Baptism. Such tenets as these seem to leave Bap-
tism an empty rite, conveying no real benefit, nor
advancing the receiver one step in the way of sal-
^ Gorham's Efficacy of Baptism, p. 83, Answer 15, and pp.
123, 124; Question and Answer 70; and p. 88, Answer 27.
' Ibid. p. 85, Answer 19.
* Ibid. p. 113, end of Answer 60.
6
vat ion ; they seem to overthrow the nature of a
Sacrament, robbing Baptism ol" all its inward and
sj)iritual grace.
Now, it can hardly be matter of surprise that
such an exposition of Christian doctrme, in con-
nexion with the recent Judgment, should j)roduce
some alarm and much perplexity in the minds of
many : at the same time I am full of hope that
w^ien the real question at issue is more attentively
considered, a calm and dispassionate review of its
leading features may tend, under God's blessing, to
a clearer understanding of its real bearings, and to
more of agreement than we have lately witnessed in
this unhappy controversy. At any rate, I think we
should all, at the present moment, be feeling for
points of union and agreement, and seeking for
some common ground to stand upon. It will be my
endeavour in this communication to speak the truth
in love, and strive, in that spirit, to promote this
much desired end. May it please God, of His infi-
nite mercy, to overrule our present difficulties to
the furtherance of this blessed object ; and to lead
all who acknowledge one Faith and one Baptism, to
be henceforth more united in one holy bond of
truth and peace, of faith and charity !
The perplexities to which I have above referred,
seem chiefly to be these : First, the Church of Eng-
land appears to many to be reduced to the dilemma
of having no doctrine at all, touching the eflfect
of the Holy Sacrament of Baptism on infants, which
seems incredible when they consider the service for
the Baptism of Infants, in connexion with the Cate-
chism ; or that, though it have a doctrine, it is never-
theless competent to any clergyman who pleases to
dissent from or deny it ; an alternative which seems
equally incredible. Secondly, they feel it to be a great
grievance that the supreme tribunal for deciding
questions involving points of doctrine, should have
been constituted w ithout the consent of the Church,
and should be composed of laymen, none of whom
need be members of the Church of England.
Let us first consider the question of the con-
stitution and composition of the supreme tribunal
of appeal. As to its present composition, it un-
questionably does involve a grievance. That grievance
has been felt, and a bill has already been introduced
into the House of Lords, which provides that the
judicial committee of Privy Council shall be re-
quired, whensoever it is necessary to determine any
question as to doctrine or the tenets of the Church
of England, to refer such question to the archbishops
and bishops of the provinces of Canterbury and
York ; and that the opinion of the archbishops and
bishops upon such questions shall be binding for
the purposes of the appeal in which such reference
is made. As regards the point that the judi-
cial committee of the Privy Council w^as con-
stituted without the consent of the Church in
convocation or synod, I think the difficulty arises
mainly from an imperfect apprehension of the nature
8
of the royal siijn'oniacy. Our XXth Article, where
it asserts tliat the Church hath " authority in con-
troversies ot laith" is evidently speaking of her au-
thority to settle and lay down articles of faith ; as
may he gathered from its proceeding to declare that
" it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing
that is contrary to God's written word," adding that
" it ought not to decree any thing against the
same:" thus intending to describe the legislative
power of the Church. But we well know that the
legislative does not necessarily involve the judicial
power. According to our Constitution in Church
and State, the judicial power is vested in all causes,
ecclesiastical as well as civil, in the sovereign of this
realm ; and I apprehend it would be just as great
an act of usurpation on the part of the Church to
claim for the two houses of convocation, juris-
diction, or the power of appointing judges, in eccle-
siastical causes, as it would be for the Houses of
Lords and Commons to insist upon appointing
judges in all civil causes to the exclusion of the
royal prerogative. That this power of appointing
judges in causes ecclesiastical has rested with the
crown, in virtue of the royal supremacy since the
Reformation, W'ill appear from a perusal of the
following statutes :— The 25th of Henry VIII. c. 19,
establishes the power of appeal from the archbishops'
court to the chancery ; the appeals to be there de-
termined by commissioners appointed by the king.
By 26th Henry VIII. c. 1, the king shall be re-
9
puted headof the Church, and shall correct all heresies
and offences. By 1st Eliz. c. 1, commissioners may
be appointed by the crown to exercise all spiritual
and ecclesiastical jurisdiction; especially "to visit, re-
form, redress, order, correct and amend all such errors,
heresies, and schisms whatsoever, which by spiritual
or ecclesiastical power can or may law^fully be
reformed ;" and " such person or persons, to be
named according to letters patent, shall have full
power to execute all the premises." Sir Edward
Coke pronounces the act 1st Eliz. to have been an
act of restitution of the ancient jurisdiction eccle-
siastical, w^hich always belonged of right to the
crown of England, but had been usurped by the
pope ; that it was not introductory of a new law,
but declaratory of the old, and that which w^as, or
of a right ought to be, by the fundamental laws of
this realm, parcel of the sovereign's jurisdiction.
The act 2nd, 3rd Wm. IV. cap. 91, transfers the
powers of the high court of delegates (established
by 1st Eliz.), in ecclesiastical as well as maritime
causes, to his majesty in council ; the decrees of the
council to be final and definitive. The 3rd, 4th
Wm. IV. c. 41, appoints the judicial committee of
Privy Council to take cognizance of these causes :
all appeals from the sentence of any judge in such
causes to be referred by the sovereign to the com-
mittee to report thereon ; and that report is to be
ratified or annulled by the sovereign in council.
The tribunal therefore which decided the case of
U)
Gorhain v. Bishop of Exeter in final appeals was in
strict conformity with our constitution in Churcii
and State. Nevertheless, although it be quite
legally constituted, its present composition is a real
grievance : and while, in the recent judgment, we
most willingly acknowledge the abihty, patience, and
anxiety to arrive at a generally satisfactory decision
which characterized the proceedings of the court, it
is still consistent with the most profound loyalty to
petition the sovereign and the legislature to apply
the fitting remedy to the imperfect composition of
that most important tribunal.
As to that alternative of the dilemma, in which
our Church seems to many to be placed ; viz.,
that she has no doctrine touching the effect of the
Sacrament of Holy Baptism on infants, I would
desire to quiet the alarms of those who have ad-
dressed me under such feelings, by assuring them
that the teaching of the Church of England in
this matter remains exactly what it was ; and that
they both tludil} ttanih. that the remission of sins
is the grace conveyed by Baptism to the baptized
generally, and therefore to infants wdth the rest.
For although the atonement of our Lord Jesus
Christ is of course the sole meritorious cause of
the remission of guilt, and the Spirit of God the
efficient, operating cause, nevertheless Baptism is
the instinimental rite, w^hereby that grace is actually
conveyed.
Let us first see w^hat light Holy Scripture throws
11
upon the subject. The promise of our blessed Lord
himself assures us that Baptism is instrumental to
salvation, when He says, " He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved." Those who were converted
on the day of Pentecost were bidden to " repent and
be baptized, every one of them, in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins." To
St. Paul, although already converted to Christianity,
these words were addressed by Ananias, " Arise, and
be baptized, and wash aivay thy sins." And although
the Holy Ghost had already fallen on those who
were assembled wath Cornelius, still St. Peter com-
manded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord,
doubtless for the same purpose.
Thus, in each of these instances of adult Baptism,
although the several parties had before received some
gi^ace, or they would not have been converted, never-
theless, they lacked the peculiar grace of Baptism ;
namely, the remission of sins. For had this grace
of remission of guilt been actually imparted pre-
viously, then would their Baptism have been an
empty rite, conveying no grace, and therefore no
Sacrament.
It is, then, upon Scriptural authority such as that
above referred to, that the Universal Church ac-
knowledges, in the Nicene Creed, that there is " one
Baptism for the remission of sins ;" thus distinctly
pronouncing that this blessing accompanies the Sa-
crament of Baptism. And inasmuch as the XXVHth
Article of our Church declares that " the Baptism of
12
youni;; children is in anywise to be retained in the
Church, as most ai^reeable with the institution of
Christ," it thereby athrms that the " one Baptism "
which is to be applied to infants as well as adults, is
in each case for the remission of sins, — of original
sin, that is to say, in the case of infants, seeing that
they have been guilty of no actual sins.
Original sin being thus, upon the authority of
Holy Scripture, and of the Nicene Creed in con-
formity with it, remitted to infants, through and by
Baptism as an instrument, our Church, resting upon
this sohd foundation, considers, that whensoever
original sin is remitted in infants, the child must, by
that act of remission, be taken out of Adam and
brought into Christ ; is no longer a child of wrath,
but a child of grace, has undergone a death unto
sin (that original sin in which it was born, and
from whose guilt it is freed), and has entered
upon a new birth unto righteousness ; spiritual re-
generation being the entrance into a state of grace
and salvation, as the natural birth is an entrance
into life. For our Catechism, stating first, that a
Sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an in-
ward and spiritual grace given unto us, proceeds to
describe the inward and spiritual grace of Baptism,
as a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteous-
ness ; for that, being born in sin, and the children
of wrath, we are hereby made the children of grace ;
and the Church bids each baptized child say that, in
Baptism, he was " made a member of Christ, a
13
child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of
heaven."
These ideas, thus distinctly enunciated in our
Catechism, are so clearly expressed by Hooker ^
that I cannot refrain from quoting the passage at
length : " Although in the rest we make not Bap-
tism a cause of grace, yet the gi'ace which is given
them with their Baptism doth so far depend on the
very outward Sacrament, that God will have it em-
braced, not only as a sign or token of what we
receive, but also as an instrument or mean whereby
we receive grace ; because Baptism is a Sacrament
which God hath instituted in His Church, to the
end that they which receive the same might be in-
corporated into Christ, and so through His most
precious merit, obtain as well that saving grace of
imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness,
as also that infused Divine virtue of the Holy Ghost
which giveth to the powers of the soul their first
disposition towards future newness of life." All
who rightly receive this Sacrameht being thus en-
dued with grace enough for their final salvation, if
only they will use and improve it ; and being thrown
upon their own responsibility in after life, to employ
this precious talent for the purposes for which it
was given.
With this view of the effect of Baptism on original
sin, the Homily on Salvation, towards the conclusion
* B. V. § 60.
14
of the second part, entirely agrees, saying, "There-
fore we must trust only in God's mercy and that
sacrifice which our High Priest and Saviour Christ
Jesus, the Son of God, once offered for us upon the
cross, to obtain thereby God's grace and remission,
«^ ivell of our original sin in Baptism, as of all actual
sin committed by us after our Baptism, if we truly
repent and turn to Him unfeignedly again'"'."
As to the Baptism of infants, it is true that our
Ai'ticles say no more than that it is in anywise to
be retained as most agreeable to the institution of
Christ ; but we have ample information touching its
virtue and efficacy in the Service for the Public Bap-
tism of Infants, which we are authorized to receive
as the teaching of the Church upon this subject,
because the 57th Canon expressly refers us to the
Prayer Book for the fullest explanation of the doc-
trine of the Church on this point, saying, that
" the doctrine of Baptism and of the Lord's Supper
is so sufficiently set down in the Book of Common
Prayer, that nothing can be added unto it that is
material and necessary."
But even without reference to the Baptismal Ser-
vice, I must say that any assertion which empties
the Sacrament of Baptism of its grace, is as essen-
tially opposed to the Articles as it is to the Prayer
'' Those who wish fuller information on these points might
consult with much advantage the chapter, " Of Baptizing In-
fants," in Bishop Taylor's "Life of Christ."
15
Book. For the XXVth Article declares that " the
Sacraments are not merely badges and tokens of
Christian men's profession, but rather be certain
sure witnesses and effectual signs of God's grace and
good will toward us, by the which He doth invisibly
work in us." And of Baptism, it is said in the
XXVIIth Article, that is a sign — an effectual sign,
according to the XXVth, by which God doth work
invisibly in us — " a sign of regeneration or new
birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that re-
ceive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church,
the promise of forgiveness of sin, and of our adop-
tion to be the sons of God, are visibly signed and
sealed." These two Articles, therefore, are surely
standing witnesses to the real efficacy of Baptism as
a channel of Divine grace.
I am now, however, directed by the 57th Canon
to refer to the Prayer Book for the fullest instruc-
tion as to the doctrine of our Church touching Bap-
tism generally, and therefore touching the Baptism
of infants in particular. I there observe, that in the
Service for the Public Baptism of Infants, we are
taught to pray, before Baptism, that the child may
receive remission of his sins by spiritual regenera-
tion ; we are bidden to remember God's good will
towards little children, as was proved by Christ
blessing them ; we are taught to pray that the Holy
Spirit may be given to the infant, that he may be
born again, be released from his sins, and be sanc-
tified by the Holy Ghost ; we are reminded that
l(i
Christ has promised in His Gospel, to grant all the
things we have prayed tor ; and that He, for His
part, will most surely keep and perform His promise;
we are taught to pray that the old Adam may be
buried, and the new man raised up in him. After
we have offered up these prayers, and the act of
Baptism, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, has been performed, the Church pronounces
the child to be regenerate, and grafted into the body
of Christ's Church, bidding us give thanks to
Almighty God for these benefits. Accordingly, we
do thank God in the case of every child whom we
baptize ; not doubting, but earnestly believing, that
he is received as a child of God by adoption, and
incorporated into the Church of God.
Thus have we Creed and Catechism, Article, Ho-
mily and Liturg}% all speaking the same distinct,
unambiguous language based upon the sure founda-
tion of Holy Scripture. Nothing that has recently
occun*ed can at all invalidate such combined testi-
mony. Holy Scripture still teaches us that Baptism
is for the remission of sins : the Church still teaches
that infants are to be baptized ; you, my reverend
brethren, are still bound to pronounce each individual
child w hom you baptize, regenerate ; are still bound
to teach every child of your flock that he w^as, in his
Baptism, made a member of Christ, a child of God,
and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. Neither
can any thing that has recently occurred absolve me
from the obligation of protesting against any such
17
strange doctrine as that which would teach that
an individual who comes to Baptism without any
impediment in himself to the right receiving of it,
may, although it is rightly administered, fail of
receiving that particular grace which Holy Scripture
assigns to it ; viz. the remission of sin, the being
born again of the Spirit.
Now, had we been told by the recent judgment
that we were bound to believe, to teach, and to act,
each in our several spheres, in direct opposition to
the teaching of Holy Scripture, the Creed, the
Baptismal Service, the Catechism, and the Homily ;
or were we forbidden to propagate the doctrine so
clearly laid down in them, it would, indeed, have
been a widely different case. But the judgment
leaves the teaching of Holy Scripture and of the
Church, as well as our own position and responsi-
bilities just as they were ; and so long as our Church
does set forth her doctrine in language so scriptural,
so pointed, so emphatic, that language must stand as
a perpetual and living testimony against the contrary
doctrine. What need then, I may ask, of further
protest ? Each time the various congregations
over the whole world repeat the Nicene Creed,
acknowledging " one Baptism for the remission of
sins," does not the Universal Church protest thereby
against the contrary doctrine ? Each time the service
for the Baptism of Infants is repeated, does not the
Church of England protest against the teaching that
children are not regenerate in and by their Baptism,
B
18
as an instrument ? Each time tlic children of mir
tliH'ks arc catechized, does not the Church of
England enter a fresh protest against the doctrine
which would empty Baptism of its inward and
spiritual gi*ace ? To my own mind, I confess, these
are the most comfortable, and at the same time the
most effectual, protests which we can put forth, and
which the Church does put forth for us whenever
the said declarations are made under her bidding.
These will more effectually tend to prevent the
spread of any such doctrine as that which led to
the present controversy, than any means of re-
sistimr it which are not in accordance with our
Church polity. In truth, I cannot help believing,
paradoxical though it may at first appear, that all
which has recently happened, will tend, when the
heat of controversy is somewhat abated, to further
the acceptance of that doctrine of the whole Church
from the earliest ages on this point which our
Church so plainly sets forth : and this would be my
answer to those who fear that henceforth there will
be a general licence to deny the doctrine of our
Articles, and Liturgy touching infant Baptism.
I have thus endeavoured, according to my ability,
to suggest such topics for your consideration as the
present exigency seemed to require. It would cer-
tainly have been far more congenial to my natural
feelings to have abstained from all interference under
the present troubled aspect of the Church : and T
think that, after fourteen years' intercourse, you will
19
have known me well enougli to believe that, in con-
formity with the apostolical precept, it has been my
habitual study to be quiet, and to do my own busi-
ness. But the present occasion seems to me to be
one on which silence would have been culpable ; I
have accordingly spoken to you in all faithfulness,
having counted the cost, and being willing to sacri-
fice much of what might be personally agreeable, in
the hope, under God's blessing, of being able to ren-
der some small service to the cause of truth and of
peace : nor will I willingly believe that a calm and
temperate statement of doctrine, a frank and unre-
served avowal of deep and long-cherished convic-
tions, made in the spirit of Christian love, can ever,
or at least ought ever to excite any feelings of a
contrary character.
This surely is not the fitting season for eager and
angry polemics, or for captious controversy ; but
rather for solemn searchings of the heart ; for prob-
ing the depth of our own convictions as in the sight
of God, and satisfjang ourselves that they rest on the
right foundations : nor can I but believe that we
shall arrive at a better understanding with each
other by mutual interchange of opinion in a spirit
of Christian simplicity and sincerity, than by stand-
ing aloof and shunning each other's society as aliens
and enemies, without effort to come to better agree-
ment.
I have already expressed a hope that the present
controversy, hostile as it seems at this moment to
B 2
20
the peace ol* the Church, may ultimately tend to
[)romote greater unanimity, Avhen the vehemence ot
party feeling has somewhat subsided, and the time
is come for calm reflection. It will then, T think,
be felt by many whose convictions were previously
unsettled, that our blessed Saviour never could have
instituted a Sacrament which was to have no efficacy.
It will be perceived that the same principles on which
a latitude is claimed in one direction, may be used,
and must be conceded, in the case of those who
claim it in every other direction ; much to the de-
triment, as I humbly conceive, of all fixed doctrine.
It will be acknowledged that the language of our
Prayer Book, in the Baptismal Service, is rather the
language of faith than of hope or charity. Further
researches will convince many that those who have,
in times past, held the very highest Calvinistic
opinions, have admitted and advocated the doctrine
of Baptismal regeneration, according to the natural
meaning of the w^ords of our Service and our Cate-
chism ; thus recognizing the truth, that all grace
given need not be accompanied with the grace of
final perseverance. It will be felt that the doctrine
of grace imparted to all fit recipients in Baptism (all
infants in the Christian Church being deemed, ac-
cording to Christ's institution, fit recipients), is the
basis of all Christian teaching, under the direction
of our Church ; and that it is not merely by ex-
punging two or three phrases, but by remodelling
the whole Prayer Book, that it can be brought into
21
agreement with a contrary system. It will be per-
ceived how clear a com^se the Church of England
holds between the Romanizing extreme on the one
hand which maintains that there is a complete in-
herent righteousness in every baptized person, and
that it is not only the guilt, but the power also, of
original sin which is entirely abolished in the Sacra-
ment of holy Baptism ; and the other extreme,
which confounds regeneration (the new birth unto
righteousness, the entrance into the state of gi"ace
and salvation) with the perfect manhood, the mea-
sure of the stature of the fuhiess of Christ ; an
extreme which confounds a part with the whole,
regeneration with final and complete sanctification ;
as though there were no gradual growing up in grace
after regeneration ; as if there were not the same
relation between our natural birth and our natural
growth, as there is between regeneration and pro-
gressive sanctification. It will be felt also, I believe,
that the preaching of Baptismal regeneration in the
sense which avoids each of these extremes, is en-
tirely consistent with the fullest and freest recogni-
tion of that blessed truth, so full of all comfort to
the believer, that we are justified by faith only for
the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ;
and is likewise entirely consistent with the most
powerful appeals to personal responsibility ; a re-
sponsibility fearfully enhanced and aggravated by
the Baptismal grace conferred : entirely consistent,
too, with a teaching which enforces the necessity of
22
a conversion, by the grace of God, of those who are
hvin|2: in sin, and of the actual renewal of the will
and affections of all. It will be felt that it is the
abuse, and not the use, of the doctrine of Baptismal
regeneration which is really dangerous ; that most
unscriptural abuse of it which, in forgetfulness of
the Apostolic model, is ever preaching the privileges
of Baptism without enforcing its tremendous respon-
sibilities, thereby encouraging the reckless profligacy
of Antinomianism.
If those benefits which I am sanguine enough to
anticipate, shall, under the Divine blessing, be the
ultimate result of a more general canvassing of the
questions which are at the present moment exciting
such uneasy feelings among us, it will indeed be
working well for the future peace and unity of our
Church. Only let us beware, as we value our own
souls, that the controversy is not meanwhile working
ill for ourselves, by fomenting angry and uncharit-
able feelings in our ow^n hearts ; let us watch, in the
spirit of prayer, against all bitterness, and wrath,
and clamour, and evil speaking, in our discussions
on these solenm subjects, eschewing every thing
which can foster division and aggravate the spirit of
party. And yet further, let us beware that our
flock take no hurt or hindrance in the midst of this
strife of tongues. The Lord has given us, both
clergy and laity in this diocese, a great work to per-
form ; our lot has been cast amidst an enormous and
steadily increasing population, which, unless we
23
persevere in strenuous exertions, will be growing
up without God in the world or a Saviour in their
hearts. We are not without some gi^acious tokens
that the Lord has, in a measure, blessed our work
in seeking for those sheep of Christ that are dis-
persed abroad, that they may be saved through Him
for ever. May no check be given to this work and
labour of love by our own unhappy divisions ; and
may we each of us, in our several callings, feel our-
selves specially bound to guard against any such dis-
tractions arising from them, as may divert us from
our endeavours, according to our respective offices
and abilities, to win souls to Christ, to build up his
Church, and enlarge his kingdom !
As a help against the evils of our present con-
dition, I desire to recommend for our use, as occa-
sion may admit, that devout Prayer for Unity which
occurs in the service for the day of the accession of
our sovereign to the throne : and praying that the
God of Peace may keep your hearts and minds in
mutual love and concord,
I remain.
Reverend and dear Brethren,
Your affectionate Friend and Servant,
C. T. RIPON.
London,
May 10, 1850.
24
A PRAYER FOR UNITY.
O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our
only Saviour, the Prince of Peace ; Give us grace
seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are
in by our unhappy divisions. Take away all
hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may
hinder us from godly Union and Concord : that,
as there is but one Body, and one Spirit, and one
Hope of our Calling, one Lord, one Faith, one
Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may
henceforth be all of one heart, and of one soul,
united in one holy bond of Truth and Peace, of
Faith and Charity, and may with one mind and
one mouth glorify thee ; through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen.
ADDRESSES
REFERRED TO IN THE PASTORAL LETTER.
I.
To the Right Reverend Father in God, Charles Thomas,
Lord Bishop of Ripon.
We, the undersigned Clergy of your Lordship's diocese, re-
siding in the deanery of Leeds, approach your Lordship with an
expression of our affection and respect, and venture to seek your
paternal advice under the existing circumstances of the Church.
The undersigned receive the Articles of the Creed and the
Formularies of the Church on the subject of Baptism, in their
plain, literal, and obvious sense, — in the sense in which the words
have always been understood by the Church of England, in com-
mon with the Universal Church, from the earliest ages.
It may seem, therefore, that we are only remotely concerned
in the late decision of Her Majesty in Council, in the question
of Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter : a judgment, which, in our
opinion, amounts only to this, — that persons receiving the Articles
of the Creed and the Formularies of the Church on the subject of
Baptism in a non-natural sense, shall not be disturbed in their
26 AIM'liNDlX.
preferments. But \vc beg leave to call the attention of your
Lordship to the fact that the counsellors of Her Majesty, in
advising the judgment, have supported it, not only by arguments
which appear to us to be inconsistent with the spirit of the
Church's teaching, but by miscpiotations (unintentionally made)
from the writings of some of our standard divines, who are made
to express the very opinions, for the refutation of which those
writings were composed and given to the world.
This has caused perplexity in the minds of many of our pa-
rishioners ; and while we feel confident that your Lordship and
your Right Reverend brethren will seek a suitable occasion for
bringing these misstatements under the notice of Her Majesty,
we ask your Lordship's advice with respect to the proper course
to be pursued by us in satisfying the minds of our parishioners.
(^Signed by thirty-nine of the Clergy of the Rural Deanery
of Leeds.)
n.
To the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Ripon.
We, the undersigned Clergymen in the Rural Deanery of Leeds,
and your Lordship's diocese, having learned that an Address to
your Lordship is in circulation among the Clergy of this deanery,
impugning the recent decision of Her Majesty in Council as
supreme head of the Church, desire to express our deep anxiety
for the preservation of the peace of the Church, and likewise that
there should be no compromise of its principles.
We are anxious to maintain in its integrity the Book of Common
Prayer, and to uphold the principle, that the articles of the Church
be interpreted in their plain, literal, and grammatical sense.
While we yield to none in our attachment to this principle,
we could not subscribe our names to the Address now in circula-
tion, which in effect charges Her Majesty in Council with deciding
that the Articles may be held in a non-natural sense, and with
making false quotations from theological writers. We have
carefully read the judgment referred to in that Address, verifying
APPENDIX. 27
the quotations, as far as we have had opportunity, and have seen
nothing to warrant such serious charges.
Looking to the proceedings of the court which advised Her
Majesty in this decision, we cannot refrain from expressing to
your Lordship our grateful admiration of the calm, judicious, and
able manner in which the eminent judges who formed the Judicial
Committee, and the Prelates who advised them, considered the
question submitted to them.
With regard to the question itself, it appears to us, that while
the Church of England plainly holds the sacraments to be
generally necessary to salvation, and teaches that we should use
them as means of grace, it has, in its Articles and Liturgy, wisely
abstained from any exact definition with regard to the grace
imparted.
We fear that great injury will arise to the Church, if at this time
the Clergy should unhappily be arrayed against each other on
questions of difficult and doubtful controversy, endeavouring to
define what the Church has not defined ; or, if they should engage
in a struggle for power against the lawful supremacy of the
Crown.
As our observation and experience lead us to conclude that
the lay members of the Church, far from being unsettled by the
recent decision, are greatly relieved by it, and heartily acquiesce
in it, we earnestly look to your Lordship, in the hope that, by the
blessing of God, your healing counsels will avert so great a
calamity, as a renewed religious agitation in this populous
diocese.
(^Signed hy ten Clergy of the Rural Deanery of Leeds.)
in.
To the Right Reverend Charles Thomas, Lord Bishop of
Ripon.
My Lord,
We, the undersigned Clergy of the deanery of Wakefield,
assembled in chapter, unanimously agreed to lay before your
28 vri'ENDix.
Lordship the t'ollowiiig rcsolulions, oxpressivo of the jfiicvances
uiulor whicli we coiu-civc the Cliureh at present to hiboiir, and
to request your Lordship to permit us to found thereupon
addresses to Her Majesty the Queen, and to the Archbishoj) of
Canterbury : —
Resolved,
1. That, it is a right inherent in the Church of Christ, by the
commission of her Divine Founder, to deline in matters of
doctrine.
2. That, in accordance with the above-named right, no court
ought to possess the power of judicially and finally declaring the
doctrines of the Church, except such as shall be constituted in
agreement with the principles of the Church, and have received
its jurisdiction by formal ecclesiastical sanction.
3. That, the power which is at present vested by Act of
Parliament, without the formal concurrence of the Church, in the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, to interpret the formu-
laries of the Church by a final judicial sentence, and thus prac-
tically to define and declare the doctrines of the Church, is an
infringement of the fundamental right of the Church, to be the
sole judge in matters affecting the Faith, and at variance with
the Law of Christ.
4. That, the existence of this state of things is a grievance in
conscience, and that this grievance is rendered more burdensome
by the fact, that the members of the Judicial Committee of
Council are not necessarily members of the Church of England.
5. That, for the redress of the said grievance, the following
steps are necessary : —
(1.) That, the Church in Convocation or Synod has licence
to deliberate for the special purpose of devising a proper appel-
late tribunal for determining all questions of doctrine, and other
matters purely spiritual.
(2.) That, an Act of Parliament be passed for the purpose of
making the judgment of such tribunal binding on the temporal
courts of these realms.
(3.) That, the Acts of Parliament relating to the Privy
Council be so amended as to exempt questions of doctrine and
APPENDIX. 29
other matters purely spiritual from the cognizance of the Privy
Council.
{Signed by the Rural Dean and fifteen Clergy of the Rural
Deanery.)
IV.
We, the undersigned Rural Deans of the diocese of Ripon,
approach your Lordship with entire confidence in your Lord-
ship's wisdom and judgment at a period of much anxiety in the
Church's history.
Difficulties which have arisen from the recent decision in the
case of Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter, have perplexed the
minds of many, both of the Clergy and the Laity, and we venture,
therefore, to ask your paternal advice as to the proper course to
be pursued by us under the existing circumstances.
(^Signed by twelve Rural Deans.)
V.
To the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Ripon.
We, the Rural Dean, and the undersigned members of the
deanery of North Craven, deeply impressed with the importance
of the late decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
(in the case of Gorham v. the Bishop of Exeter) beg leave
respectfully to convey to your Lordship this expression of our
hearty sympathy ; and also to ask for your Lordship's guidance
and assistance under the difficulties in which as ministers of the
Church we are hereby placed.
We feel strongly how desirable it is for the integrity of the
Church, that measures be forthwith taken to secui-e to her an
effectual mode of giving her authoritative declaration on this, as
well as on other spiritual questions ; and we, therefore, urgently
pray that your Lordship will take such steps as may seem ex-
pedient for that purpose.
no APPENDIX.
That tlio Head of tlie Church may give to your Lordship, and
those who have the rule over us, a riglit judgment in this and all
other things which concern the peace of His Church, is the earnest
prayer of your Lordship's obedient Servants —
{Signed by the Rural Dean, and thirteen Clergy of the
Rural Deanery.)
VL
To the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Ripon.
May it please your Lorship,
We, the Rectors, Vicars, and Curates of the archdeaconry of
Richmond, within your Lordship's diocese, whose names are
underwritten, beg leave respectfully to address your Lordship on
the subject of a recent decision, by the Judicial Committee of
Her Majesty's Privy Council. We have been in the habit of
reading publicly every Sunday the Nicene Creed, in which we
acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins. We have
also been in the habit of administering the Sacrament of Bap-
tism, in which we return thanks to Almighty God, that it hath
pleased Him to regenerate this infant with His Holy Spirit, to
receive him for His own child by adoption, and to incorporate
him into His holy Church. We have also been accustomed, in
using the Church Catechism, to instruct the children that Bap-
tism conveys a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteous-
ness, for that being by nature born in sin, and the children of
wrath, they are hereby (?. e. by Baptism) made the children of
grace. We thoroughly receive and believe these doctrines of
our Church, as they may be proved by most certain warrants of
Holy Scripture. We think that a Minister who denies these
doctrines, ought not to be instituted to a benefice in the esta-
blished Church. We therefore disapprove of the late judgment
of the Privy Council in the case of Gorham v. the Bishop of
Exeter.
At the same time, we acknowledge that the Sovereign is over
all persons, and in all causes ecclesiastical, as well as civil, su-
APPENDIX, 31
preme. And we rely upon your Lordship's wisdom, in conjunc-
tion with the other Prelates of our Church, to promote such
measures, as may preserve the rights, privileges, and Faith of
our Church in matters of Spiritual doctrine, and at the same time
maintain the just prerogative and supremacy of the Crown.
We are, my Lord,
Your Lordship's dutiful Servants.
(^Signed by the Archdeacon and Chancellor of the Diocese,
and Jifty-eujht Clergy of the Archdeaconry.)
London:
fllLBERT AND RIVINQTON, PRINTERS,
ST. John's square.
PRESENT POSITION OF THE CHURCH.
THE BAPTISMAL AND EDUCATIONAL QUESTIONS.
/^
THREE LETTERS
TO THE KIGHT HON.
SIR GEORGE GREY, BART.
H.M. SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT.
Bt THE REV.
WILLIAM HENRY HOARE, M.A
LATE FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
LONDON:
FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON,
ST. Paul's church yard, and waterlog place..
1850.
CONTENTS.
LETTER I.
EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENTS. MR. FOx's HIT,L.
LETTER IL
CONNEXION OF EDUCATIONAL AND BAPTISMAL QUESTIONS.
LETTER in.
EFFECT OF THE LATE JUDGMENT ON THE CHURCH.
CONSIDERATIONS ON BAPTISMAL REGENERATION, CON-
TINUED.
A
LETTER,
Right Hon. and Dear Sir,
Your name has been associated with the brightest
pages of England's history. In the hard conten-
tions of poUtical hfe, no less than on the battle-field,
in public and in private relations, the name you
inherit is justly encircled with imperishable fame.
In addressing you as I now do, chiefly, though
not, I trust, exclusively, on the mere ground by
which Her Majesty's most humble subject has a
right to address a chief minister of the Crown — on
the subject of National Education — it is something
to know, that there is not wanting in you either the
physical or the moral courage to expose an evil, or
to defend a righteous cause, and to see that griev-
ances be redressed and justice done to all classes in
Her Majesty's dominions.
And when, let me ask, could the time be more
favourable for the consideration of such a question
as that on which I am entering ? After a period of
A 2
4
strife and bloodshed among the nations of the Conti-
nent, un[)aralleled by any thing in our own, or
perhaps, for its extent and suddenness, in any other
generation ; and only prev^ented under Providence
from spreading in our own land and capital city, by
the wise precautions of our rulers, and by the unani-
mous co-operation of the flower and loyalty of our
land ; and wdien we now enjoy a profound peace ; —
when all minds are drawn to the question of social
and domestic reforms ; when questions such as these
are allowed the pre-eminence ; when the first place
seems assigned them by the tacit and unanimous
consent of all classes ; when our rulers themselves,
when even Royal personages, take the lead in such
questions ; — surely I am justified in saying, that there
could not be a time more favourable for the calm
and impartial consideration of the all-important
subject of Education. I would even say, that the
patient endurance of our working classes under
admitted grievances, for the sake of peace and order,
and in the faith of having those grievances peaceably
and timely redressed, together with their zeal and
promptitude to think for themselves, and to attempt
to originate plans for their own common good, con-
stitute an actual claim upon the " powers that be,"
to come forward to their help, and to show them all
sympathy and all anxiety to supply their wants.
When we see some among them forming societies of
their own, others inquiring on every side, and asso-
ciating for the purpose of more efficient inquiry and
information on the subject ; when we find so large
a proportion of them gladly availing themselves of
the schools, and churches, and such other means of
improvement as can be provided for them by private
benevolence ; is it not, indeed, the duty of a govern-
ment to lend its aid in such a cause ? to effectuate, by
every constitutional means in its power, these most
pleasing and laudable efforts of the various ranks and
orders of the people ? It is with these convictions,
and not under the momentary influence of any mere
party excitement, that I venture to offer the follow-
ing remarks. And I declare it my solemn convic-
tion, as it must be, one would think, of every
Churchman, nay, almost of every Christian, that if
we hope for the Divine blessing on our labours, we
must boldly give to religion the foremost place in
any scheme for the moral improvement of the
people. And in accordance with this belief, the
proposition which I now put before you is this,
— That, to meet the present exigency, there is required
an Education, which shall be not chiefly of a
SECULAR, but of a RELIGIOUS character.
Religion is every thing, or it is nothing. With
the latter branch of the alternative, you. Sir, I am
sure, will entertain not the remotest sympathy.
You will give no ear to those who would broach for
one moment the monstrous idea. As a faithful and
tried advocate, then, of the other branch which
asserts the truth of our holy religion, may I not call
upon you to lend us your aid in promoting and dis-
seminatiiig this ? Will not you, who, in the confi-
dence of the Sovereign, and your own distinguished
position and othce, have more than the ordinary means
at your command, assist us in raising and iii planting
the banner of our faith on the topmost towers of our
still happy, still glorious constitution in Church and
State ? You would be the last to lower a standard
which you held to be a true one. You would not
willingly hand down to the generation following a
constitution shorn of those honours and high reli-
gious advantages with which you inherited it from
your forefathers. And if perilous times should
recur, you will never allow it to be laid at your
door, that you saw an evil which you did not rectify
— that you left a people, and those your own coun-
trymen, to perish for lack of bread, and to become
the dupes and victims of revolutionary and fanatical
leaders. Do then as Constantine did : raise aloft
the glowing colours of our holy Faith ; emblazon it
on the arms of your country ; plant it on the pin-
nacles of her palaces. It is an old, it may be thought
a worn-out device ; but it w^ill be the signal of
success and of victory. Or take the example of
another monarch ; and of England, as of Israel, be it
said, " In the name of our God we will set up our
banners.'' It was not by an incidental mention of
religion, not by a faint casual reference to its weighty
truths, still less by a mere cold toleration of them,
that the lawgiver of old proposed to hand down the
knowledge of God and the faith of patriarchs from
•generation to generation. No ! it was by keeping
that faith in the forefront of his system ; it was by
})erpetuating it in national rites and ordinances :
and he began with the children. It was to them
that at every Passover, in the full concourse of the
people, in the face of the city and of the crowd, — and
not in retired corners, and at some spare hour of the
day at home, — that the question was to be put and
answered : What meaneth this great festivity, and
why hath the Lord appointed it ? And the answer
was. To make His Name known, and His religion con-
fessed and honoured in all the earth. And to this
end it was commanded them : " Thou shalt teach
them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of
them when thou sittest in thine house, and when
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down,
and when thou risest up \"
In times of trouble we are all of this opinion.
Never was the tone of our public journals so reli-
gious and earnest as during the late political distur-
bances in Europe, and under the threatening aspect
of affairs in England. It was easy to see that France
and the youth of that country were suffering, as
since confessed by M. Thiers, for want of a religion.
This want soon filled the revolutionary prisons with
the victims of revolutionary principles ; while it w^as
obvious that these were but the natural offspring
of a state professing no religious creed, and bound
together by no holier bond than present convenience
' Deut. vi. 7.
and expediency. Or take our own history. Who
does not remeniher, in the Newport riots in 1837,
the testimony of Sir John Piiillips to the nei^leet of
all relii;ious education or worship in the mining dis-
tricts of Wales, as the chief exciting cause of those
disgraceful scenes ? And in the charge of Chief
Justice Tindal, on occasion of the trial of the parties
concerned in those riots, how forcibly and affectingly
was the public attention drawn to this root of the evil,
the prolific source of the worst crimes and disasters !
Is it too much then if we ask you to assist us in
removing the evil by providing the only true remedy,
and thus to hand down to posterity the same sound
and healthful constitution which has been transmitted
to us, under which we have lived, and which has
formed, under Providence, the bulwark of our reli-
gion and of our liberties? Let it not be thought
enough to tolerate Christianity, or to tolerate the
Church ; to give rehgion, as it were, a corner in
our social system. Let us rather seek to have our
manners, and all our institutions, not only coloured,
but tinctured, steeped, and pervaded by it. But to
exact of the Church, on the one hand, that she
should continue to pray daily for the Parliament that
its measures may tend to the promotion of " peace
and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety ;"
— for the Queen, that she may " study to preserve
her subjects in wealth, peace, and ^o^^Ziness;" while,
on the other, you look coldly on all her endeavours
to effectuate this prayer, while you tie up her hands
9
and cripple her resources ; — is this doing justice to
a faithful ally ? Is this the way to cement that good
understanding, that harmony and concord, which are
essential to any efficient co-operation in works of
piety and beneficence ?
But to proceed with our proposition, that the
want of our people is not so much of a secular, as
of a religious education. I say not so much ; for
I am far from being insensible to the good uses of
both. I would not deny the expediency (the neces-
sity, if you please) of imparting ordinary knowledge,
of mixing up much of what is accounted secular,
with what we term a religious course of instruction.
I have no wish to see applied to ourselves, what the
Poet has remarked of another clime, and less genial
soil :
" Whence from such lands each pleasing science flies,
That first excites desire, and then supplies ;
Unknown to them, when sensual pleasures cloy,
To fill the languid pulse with finer joy ; . . .
But all the gentler morals, such as play
Through life's more cultured walks, and charm the way ;
These far dispersed, on tim'rous pinions fly.
To sport and flutter in a kindlier sky."
On the contrary, I am inclined to agree with the
writer of the article from which I had occasion to
quote before, and who says, ' The Bible and Prayer
Book, the Hymn Book, the Spelling Book, and
Arithmetic, with some theological and devotional
tracts [too often] constitute the whole of the village
16
litcTatiire ; and it is far from our purpose to clisi)ute
their value, wlien they are studied witli sineerity and
zeal. But . . . . if literature, science, and other
kinds of seculai* knowledge are allowable, useful, and
necessary for the higher and middle classes, why
not also in some degree for the lower ?"
It is to be remembered, however, that this truth
is by no means overlooked in the present system
either of the National School, or of the British and
Foreign School Society. Both systems provide,
and provide largely, for the supply of secular know-
ledge. An inspection of any catalogue' of the
books, or subjects taught, — and still better, a visit
to any one of the schools during school hours, —
would soon convince us of this. Nay, even in the
teacliing of a Sunday School there would be doubt-
less no unfrequent allusion to points of geography
and of history, and others of a similar description.
Secular acquirements — as of history, the arts and
sciences, gi-ammar, drawing, &c. are indeed neces-
sary, and never more necessary than at the present
day, when they are so much insisted on in the
schools of our Continental neighbours. Nor is the
expediency of teaching these confined to their actual
use and application in life ; it is not denied that,
over and above this advantage, they have a cer-
' One is glad, in Mr. J. W. Parker's Educational Catalogue,
to see at least one hopeful sign of concord between the National
Society and the Privy Council. Mr. Parker's List comprises
the books recommended by both.
11
tain softening and humanizing effect in their own
nature ; they tend to enlarge the mind and elevate
the thoughts. Their effect in subduing national
antipathies, and counteracting petty and insular
prejudices is indeed surprising. What so improving
to the taste, or what so contributive to the universal
enjoyment of life, as some little knowledge of the
musical, or of the poetic art ? In all these we may
well hail the useful handmaids of religion ; but,
surely, no fit or reasonable substitute for it. It
must also be taken into the account, that the effect
we here allow and assign to scientific knowledge, is
and must be chiefly confined to those who pursue it
deeply. As an example, we should point to the
Meetings of the British Association, or some other
such learned and Scientific Societies at home, and
to kindred Associations abroad. But the Members
of these bodies are in general of a higher grade than
the classes to whom we allude, in speaking of edu-
cational wants. They are not the masses ; they do
not represent the bulk of our population : — the
working and industrial classes. For these it is that
we require an education ; and an education gene-
rously aided and supported by the public purse ;
and with these classes it is obvious that the question
is not one of a perfect or highly finished education ;
but it is a question. What subjects out of many,
shall be chosen to instruct them in ? For all, there
would be neither the time, nor the inclination, nor
the means ; and were we to propose to teach them
12
all, tlieir own sense would lead tlicni to reject tlie
oiler as obviously ina})plicable to their peculiar cir-
cumstances and condition.
Here is one consideration then, which would
evidently lead us to the choice of an education
ch'iejlii religious. Another consideration is, that
with this portion of our population, the ojjpor-
tunities for instruction at home are much fewer
than among ourselves. The parents are too much
occupied during the day, and their necessary
labour indisposes them (even were they duly quali-
fied in other respects) to impart religious instruc-
tion to their children. Here, then, is a call for
the hand of charity to interpose, and to supply the
children wdtli that wliich is as needful to them as
their daily food, but which yet the parents w^ho
supply the latter are wholly incompetent to provide
them with.
To carry on the discussion of this point, I per-
suade myself, can hardly be necessary from me •
it would only be occupying your time with super-
fluous disquisitions. At a great pubUc meeting,
it was emphatically declared from the chair, in
words not easily forgotten by those wdio heard
them: "As to the distinction between matters
religious and secular, I laugh it to scorn." I
have no pretence to be the authorized interpreter of
that gentleman's meaning' ; but I do think, that,
in what I have already advanced, there may easily
' The Hon. J. C. Talbot, Q.C.
13
be found reasons sufficient to show that this dis-
tinction is in practice a figment ; that some degree of
secular knowledge is, and ever has been, combined
with religious teaching. Go to any school, and you
will more probably find the little scholars busy at
their slates and their arithmetic, at their writing, or
their tables, or their histoiy ; perhaps even at their
singing or their general and entertaining knowledge,
than in repeating their Catechisms, or in reading
their Bibles. It is not so much the words of
religion that it is sought to impress upon them,
as it is to keep the form of it ever before their eyes,
to give them an early and habitual reverence for it,
and for the teachers of it, and to imbue their whole
lives and earliest associations with its tone and
spirit.
And now, to spare further argumentation, and to
keep to a practical view of the case, let us place the
opposite systems before our mind as in actual
operation ; and thus, comparing the two together,
let us endeavour to obtain a comparative estimate of
their worth and tendency. The two cases I will
take are, First, one of the newly proposed District
Schools under a managing Board of rate-payers ;
and. Secondly, a School in connexion with the
National, or with the British and Foreign School
Society.
I. According to the^rs^ plan, master and scholars
make up the whole idea of the school. For, how-
ever the democratical principle may prevail out of
14
doors, in the constitution of tlic hoard of rate-payers,
witliin tlie walls at least the master is supreme.
And how vast the responsibility, how various the
([ualitications of this functionary we may well
ima^ne, when all the interests of the school are
made to centre in him ! when he alone is entrusted
with the development of all the i)owers, moral and
intellectual, of the youth committed to his care !
Mr. Fox (and to his credit be it spoken) seems
painfully alive to the delicacy and difficulty of the
master's position, and to the amount of quaUfication
required of him. "As of the poet, so of the school-
master it may be said, Nascitur, non Jit.'" And as
" on them" — the schoolmasters — " he relies for the
advancement of" his plan of "education," the
adequate remuneration of these distinguished person-
ages seems a thought that almost overwhelms him !
"Their functions were in reality such," he conti-
nues, " as might well be deemed sacred, and they
deserved the best honours that the State could
bestow." We must have, it appears, a new Poet's
Corner, a new hierarchy, new endowments ! It
were a pity that the highly gifted and highly distin-
guished individuals who are destined to fill the new
posts of honour, should still be left at the mercy, and
subject to the caprices of the district boards, who
would be little likely to equal them in attainments,
or to be very nice judges of their merits ! Such,
however, is the description of persons before whom
we must now imagine the youthful assembly drawn
15
u]). Tlie clock strikes the hour of commencing ;
every voice is hushed in silence, awaiting the master's
command, who now gives out (to some upper class,
we will suppose,) the first lesson for the day, a
cliapter on astronomy. This done, trigonometry,
algebra, mechanics, geography, history, natural and
moral philosophy, and other branches, follow in
quick but orderly succession, till noon brings round
the season of needful refreshment, and the pupils
retire to their home. Mr. Fox would " reserve to
the parents the inalienable right, at certain fixed
times, to have their children instructed in religion."
It is to be hoped they would be more discreet than
to apply to this purpose the present hour, which
would be rather wanted for the ordinary supply of
nature's necessities ! and for once I would venture
to recommend that the instruction be deferred to a
more convenient season. Not that the round of
intellectual labour must be supposed to have at all
wearied the children. On the contrary, they may have
verified the adage, Mutatis requiescunt messibus arva ;
and after the hour of dinner they return fresh as ever
to their work. Readings in poetry, a little drawing,
a little music, a lesson on good-breeding, a dictation
in history, or some other of the lighter accomplish-
ments, agreeably enough beguile the afternoon. A
few lessons in sacred history, or taken from the Bible
itself, may have been interspersed : till the day is
fairly spent, and again the pupils are dismissed, for
the last chance of a few words from their parents or
IG
friends at liomc, should they not he too tired, on
tlie subject ol' reliii;ion !
I have said nothinjj;, in all this description, of any
time set apart for prayers in this school. Let us
ho})e it was intended to begin and end with some
appropriate form : the intention is not expressed in
the programme. And the same of the Bible.
Something of this may or may not have been read
out to the children. But for all that is said about it,
this book appears to be somewhat quaintly reserved
for a token of approbation to departing scholars for
eminent success in aecular learning ! ! It seems a
little ominous to select such a book for such a pur-
pose, and to be so liberal of it, just as the pupil is
going away ! Controversy, however, must be
avoided at any cost. Not a whisper to disturb the
youthful conscience, or to awaken one uneasy
thought. Should any attempt be made to enforce a
single " religious peculiarity," in any existing school
in a parish, master and minister and school, are all
to be cashiered — the rate-payers called instantly
together — and a new district school provided ! But,
that nothing be spared to make the latter pleasant
and attractive, such new schools are all to be free :
' ' Every inhabitant of the parish or district shall have
the right of sending his children, without charge,
without distinction in the treatment or education of
the children, and without any religious peculiarities
being inculcated upon them.''''
We have now, then, before us the working of this
17
sort of school ; and we cannot deny that much
useful learning might be imparted. Attention to
the principles of order, regularity, prudence, pro-
priety, politeness ; — the acquisition of some refined
moral sentiments, and, above all, a good degree of
intellectual training, may have been accomplished.
But has nothing of importance been altogether
omitted ? — no precious faculties left wholly without
culture ? Due respect to the master, a sort of
kindness to each other, a useful spirit of emulation,
some acquaintance with the wonders of nature; —
these may have been acquired : but where has been
the continual reference to a Higher Power ? where
the abiding sense of His presence? where the
thought of securing His favour? of living to His
glory ? of bowing to His will ? of doing all things
in His name ? Wliere the realization of the future ?
where the continual rising of the heart from nature
to nature's God? where the due regard to that
higher spiritual world to which the present is but
the scene of our preparation ? And as to the
strengthening of the intellectual faculty, it is true
this may have been effected under this method of
teaching ; and so it Would have been under any
other. It is not peculiar to the mere secular system
of education to thoroughly exercise the mind. I
remember an acute mathematician, when for his
College examination he was required to study Bishop
Butler's Analogy of Natural and Revealed Rehgion,
declaring, that the labour his mathematical exercises
B
18
cost liim was as nothing to that which lie found
necessary in preparing " his Butler ;" and that " he
could only manage it hy devoting to this book the
best and most precious hours of the day." This
shows very plainly that a subject may have a reli-
gious tendency, and yet be as conducive to the de-
velopment of the intellectual and reasoning powers,
as if it were of a secular kind.
Though something, too, may have been gained by
the exclusion of religious controversy, I mean some-
thing of a false and spurious liberality, yet how^ per-
nicious may have been the effect of some scenes
which can hardly fail to have passed within the sight
and recollection of the children of such schools !
Some callage Sunday-school ridiculed, some minister
perhaps of the offices of religion contemptuously
treated, reviled, or even denied any influence in the
school ; and this because he has ventured to touch
upon some " pecuUar religious tenets " — he may
have alluded to some such antiquated — yet w^e hope
not exploded — doctrine as the Incarnation or the
Atonement !
II. We have now to compare the opposite system,
viz. that adopted in the older established schools, in
connexion with the National, or with the British
and Foreign School Societies.
Here too, be it remembered, the Arts and Sci-
ences, arithmetic, gi'ammar, history, natural and
moral philosophy, mechanics, and the rest, receive
their due measure of attention. With the exception
19
of Prayers being made the first consideration, and
of tlie Bible and Bible-subjects being oftener and
more prominently introduced, our account of the
former school might serve equally well for this.
The secular attainments may here be somewhat less
in amount, but still sufficient to develope the intel-
lectual faculty in an equal degree. But what an
incalculable superiority in the religious sense ! Here
the Bible, the treasury of all religious knowledge,
is no longer reserved as a reward for literary pro-
gress— it occupies its due place, and receives due
honour, as the Oracles of God, the source of true
wisdom, the fountain of eternal immutable truth.
Here, if the Clergyman of the parish enters, for the
purpose of more particular instruction or inquiry,
what a welcome he is sure to find ! He is in the
company of those who are looking up with him to a
Higher Power ; he is himself received as the delegate
of that Power. Good- will and respect are shown
him ; his tone of conversation with the children is
natural and cheerful ; he can speak with them in the
familiar, the almost colloquial strain, in which he
would address his own family circle. He is not
complained of, he is not deserted and despised, be-
cause he ventures to touch upon the Atonement !
The school reminds us of those seats and porches
within the precincts of the Jewish Temple of old,
where the Rabbies would meet at the appointed hour
for the instruction of youth, and to one of which,
b2
20
it is recorded, the Saviour of the world repaired,
"both hearing them and asking them questions."
And yet, as you entered the school, there was no
air of affected sanctity — no assumption of an ap-
pearance different from what you would observe in
any other school. You would probably find them
at their slates and their cyphering, their writing, or
their musical exercise, — at the same occupation, in
short, that you might have found going on, had you
entered at the same horn* the District School. Yet,
on further inquiry, there would be found to be the
stated Prayer — the stated Catechism — the stated
Creed — " precept upon precept, line upon line, here
a little, and there a little ;" — and thus a prevailing
spirit of religion grows up and is fostered — there is
insensibly inculcated a definite faith. Even in human
affairs, how strong and how valuable this principle
is ! In its higher and spiritual application how un-
speakably more so ! And all this separate from the
question of conduct. But if there has been imparted
a sound knowledge, and, more than this, a practical
sense of what the duty to God and to man is, there
is surely a good hope as to what conduct will ensue.
At least there has been nothing to thwart or to
hinder that salutary feeling of Reverence to religion,
which will be found, after all, the true beginning of
wisdom, the true source of strength to the whole
character through life, and the best omen for the
fulfilment of the promise, " Train up a child in the
21
way he should go, and when he is old he will not
depart from it *."
We may now form some idea of the comparative
value of the two systems. If man be regarded
in his mere worldly capacity as a creature of time,
the course is clear. You have only to give him that
sort of instruction which will fit him to push his
way in this world. Treat him as you would treat
some commodity for the market ; or as though
you would prepare him for the exhibition of 1851,
among the productions of the animal, mineral, or
vegetable world, or as an article of manufacture.
Get him up in the best style ! Put the highest
polish upon him ! Make him astute, cunning,
keen, ambitious, industrious ; but by no means
burden him with too sensitive a conscience, or too
nice a sense of honour and morality : — the more
secular the education the better. But, view him in
his true and higher capacity as the image of God,
as destined for immortality, and how vastly altered
is the case ! A consciousness of his origin and of
his destiny becomes now of chief importance to
him. To keep him in ignorance of these, is to rob
him of his birthright. We dare not so much as
dissociate in his mind the ideas of religion and of
education. And to which kind of education these
considerations direct our preference, I need not stay
^ I may be permitted this reference to the Speech, since pub-
lished, of the Rev. William Sewell, delivered at the Public
Meeting at Willis's Rooms, Feb. 7.
22
to insist. Nothing can compensate for the want
ol" an carUj appeal to those higher principles and
motives, which religion only can supply, and which,
unless you will plead, " Am I my brother's keeper ?"
it is the duty of governments more especially to
enforce upon a people.
But we are met with the objection, that while we
thus insist on the religious element in the education
of the working and industrial classes, our prac-
tice herein is opposed to our theory ; that, in fact,
we prescribe one thing for the children of the
poorer, and practise another wdth the children of
the wealthier classes. This objection has not un-
favourably been represented in an article before
referred to, from a leading public journal : " Many
reasons," the writer puts it, "are urged for secular
knowledge, over and above that which is merely
professional, in the case of a young gentleman ; let
cause be show^n why they do not apply in some little
degi'ee to a young ploughman. The Eton schoolboy
does not spend all his time in reading the Bible, and
committing hymns and collects to memory, with an
occasional lecture on the geography of the Holy
Land, and the manners and customs of the Jews.
On the contrary : these things occupy a very small
fraction of his time ; and it would be thought a
most injudicious and fanatical innovation to extend
much the fraction of time so appropriated. Then
why adopt so different a rule in the case of the poor^?"
* See Times, Feb. 27.
23
Now granting the fact here assumed, I take
leave to deny the conclusion built upon it. Let
the fact be as the objection supposes, as regards the
difference in the education of the two classes ; yet, I
contend, the inconsistency is not proved. On a
closer examination it will be found to admit of a
fair and easy explanation. For proof, I would refer
to the observations before made on this subject,
where it appeared, that some difference in the kind
and mode of the instruction at school allowably, if
not necessarily, follows from the difference of con-
dition and circumstances at home. The want of
fit time and opportunity on the part of the working
classes to instruct their children in the degree they
themselves would wish, — the effect of hard labour
in incapacitating them for such an exertion — the
consequent necessity of their leaving this duty very
much to others to perform in their stead — the im-
possibility too of imparting to their children at all
the same amount of knowledge as ours receive,
whose term of school-time is prolonged so much
beyond theirs — all these considerations must neces-
sarily affect the choice of subjects to which it
shall be most expedient to confine their attention.
Surely, in this case, if ever, religion should hold
the foremost place ; for unless it be taught them
now, it is but too likely they will never learn it at
all ; and it is no " inconsistency" to plead for this, as
we suppose that the same principles of religion, the
same habits of devotion, are imparted to the one at
24
home, as are enjoined upon the other at school. In
the parents of tlie rich it may surely be presumed,
that with some due sense of their Christian vows
and obligations, they wall have attended to the
religious training of their children.
We may meet the objection upon another ground,
and say, that the peculiar studies which are de-
scribed, and justly described, as constituting the
chief employment of our schools, are rather selected
for the discipline they give to the mind and cha-
racter than for the mere knowledge itself; they
form a useful and necessary test of application, and
perhaps no better one could, under the circum-
stances, be found. With the children of the poor,
their course of learning at school is not so strictly
speaking their chief discipline in life. Their term of
school is shorter, — they are draughted off much
earlier in life to their several trades and occupations ;
and their preparation and apprenticeship for these,
forms at least an equal part of their early discipline.
We want a test of progress and of general appli-
cation to their work ; with our own children, and
at school, the test is their Latin and Greek ; with
the children of the working classes, it is their work.
For the sake of argument I have admitted the
fact which the objection supposes. But the fact
itself admits of considerable dispute ; for the growing
attention to the religious element in the education of
our great public schools is even a remarkable feature
of the times. The tendency has long been in favour
25
of a greater attention to this point ; nor has it
been thought ''fanatical" to "extend" very con-
siderably "the fraction of time appropriated" spe-
cially " to religious instruction."
And now I think I have disposed of this last
objection, and we may return to the proposition with
which we set out, — That the great want of the age
for the children of the poor is an Education that
shall be chiefly of a religious, not of a secular
character.
And it follows from this, that it is the duty of a
Government to assist in providing for the people
such an education. As the amount of ignorance,
and destitution of all means of instruction, has so
far outstripped the powers of individual exertion, or
of private charity, to overtake it ; it is agreed on all
hands that the duty of undertaking the task devolves,
with all the weight of a tremendous responsibility,
on those who have the chief seats of authority in the
land. It is a duty they cannot put aside ; it is
bound up with the offices they fill ; they owe it
alike to the Sovereign and to the country — to the
public good and to their own private peace — faithfully
to discharge it. And the only remaining question is,
by what means they can most efficiently do this. It
has been the design of the present letter to show,
that there is wanted something of a far higher cha-
racter than the scheme lately propounded in Parlia-
ment by Mr. Fox. And, this being rejected, there
remain but two other courses : either to place the
c
26
amount that may be required in the way of a
Parhanicntary Grant for the purpose of education,
wholly at the disposition of the Church ; or, to
return to the Act of 1839, by which such a grant
was made available to existing religious bodies in aid
of private efforts, and without attempting to dictate
any other terms than that of submitting, at stated
seasons, to the visits of the Government Inspectors.
I need not be long on the former of these. It
may safely be affirmed, after the repeated public
declarations to that effect, that the Church has no
wish to monopolize the public money, or to be
appointed the sole depository of a Parliamentary
grant for the purposes of education. She wushes
even justice to all denominations, and only desires
her own liberty. All contribute something to the
revenues of the State, all are entitled to a propor-
tionate benefit in the distiibution of the revenue.
The Church would be satisfied to receive her own
share of the grant, and leave to the other religious
bodies the enjoyment of theirs ; to return, in short,
to the stipulation, which received the sanction of
Parliament in 1839. In confirmation of this, I may
once more refer to the words of the Chairman * at
the late public meeting. "The Church looked for
no especial favour; all that she asked, was to be
left to instruct those committed to her charge in her
own way. This was her right, her privilege, her
duty."
' The Hon. J. C. Talbot, Q.C.
27
On the other plan, then, which is all that remains
to us, viz., a return to the Minutes of 1839, by
which the Privy Council were to act in aid, but not
to the superseding, of existing institutions for the
instruction of youth, I have only to add, that as far
as I am aware, there has been no objection made on
the part of the Church to the Government plan of
Inspection. On the contrary, the notion has been
adopted in the Church itself, and the proposition
successfully made to create a second order of Dio-
cesan Inspectors to complete the scheme ^ Return
to the Minutes, and the Church is satisfied. Violate
the engagement, and who is to blame, if discontent
and angry feeling ensue ? But as the attention of
the whole Church seems now so powerfully directed
to this point, I may well leave the discussion of it to
abler hands, or defer it to another opportunity, and
remain.
Right Hon. and Dear Sir,
With every sentiment of esteem,
Very faithfully yours,
WILLIAM H. HOARE.
^ See " Hints on the Duty of Diocesan Inspection, &c. &c.,
with Letters from several eminent Prelates, by the Rev. Sir H.
Thompson, Bart., Vicar of Frant." Second Edition.
THE END.
Gilbert & Rivington, Printers, St. John's ScLuare, London.
SECOND LETTER,
Right Hon. and Dear Sir,
In a former letter I took a general view of Mr.
Fox's Bill. The particular provisions of it would
require to be the subject of distinct examination.
For the present, however, I beg to call your atten-
tion to the first and, as we may call it, preliminary
proposition, of ascertaining the 'deficiencies' in any
existing schools, and of dealing with them accord-
ingly, either in the way of increasing their efficiency
under the head of secular knowledge, or of cashiering
them altogether, and causing them to be superseded
by the new District Schools upon his own model.
So far the proposition of the member for Oldham
seems plausible enough. But we now come to the
suspicious part of it. For what does he reckon
among the 'deficiencies' alleged? "Either," he
says, "too great costliness in some instances, or some
exclusive religious peculiarity being forced on the
a2
♦•liildroii ill others." And tlieii for liis new schools,
there is, first, to be the right of admission free from
cliarge, (liere observe the sop !) and, next, the con-
dition that " no religious peculiarities be inculcated
upon tliem :" — and here mark the poison lying, as it
were, at the root of his system, and threatening, if
it be allowed to spread, to corrupt and canker, as \
conceive, the very vitals of religion, and to contami-
nate the rising generation with false and pernicious
notions. It is against this, that I desire to direct
my chief arguments in the present Letter ; and I
feel I should be backed by the general feeling in
our own Church, and by the great majority of all
thinking persons of whatever community, in entering
my i)rotest. May it, in union with the convictions
and earnest feelings of such, prove a timely and
acceptable voice of warning, however feeble the
individual who raises it !
It is not, Sir, for any existing schools, where real
deficiencies or real abuses should be found, that I
appear as the advocate. I have no wish to defend
those abuses, or advocate those deficiencies. But
when an objection is brought, which appears to me
to affect the vitals, and to undermine the very foun-
dations of the faith, I feel it is high time to remon-
strate, and to shew proof that the objection is
insidious and fraught with evil; — that the error is
with the objector, and not with his opponents; —
that the blow, which he levels at us, may justly
recoil ujion his own head.
But before we proceed, it wiJl be as well to call
another witness from the speech of Mr. Fox, which
will serve to place his argument in a still clearer
light. The following is an observation on which he
relies, taken, as he tells us, from " the testimony of
an intelligent American gentleman, well known for
his exertions in Boston, and who not long ago made
an educational tour through Europe." His testi-
mony is, " that in those schools where religious
creeds and forms of faith and modes of worship
were directly taught, he found the common doc-
trines and injunctions of morality, and the meaning
of the preceptive parts of the Gospel, to be much
less taught and much less understood by the pupils,
than in the same grade of schools, and by the same
classes of pupils, with us." We see now what are
the liberal (as some will consider them, but, as I
think they ought to be termed, exclusive) ideas of
Mr. Fox on the subject of Education: — and in
favour of these he would supersede the methods
already established, and hitherto recognized by the
State. I shall endeavour to shew, that this new
system of his involves, in particular, two great fun-
damental mistakes ; as it assumes it to be possible,
First, to teach Morality without Religion, and
Secondly/, to teach Religion without forms. By
forms I understand all that comes under the denomi-
nation of creeds, catechisms, and confessions of
faith, stated times, places, and modes of worship; —
in short, all those rites and ordinances, which have
G
groAMi into use in the Church ; and which, however
variable in different countries, have been estabhshed
in general by Cliurch usage and precedent. And
now to return to the two assumptions just men-
tioned ; either of which I believe to be an extreme
absurdity : —
I. As to the First, viz. : — That morality may be
taught without religion.
For surely it is not mis-stating the intention of
Mr. Fox's measure, to say that it contemplates the
feasibility and expediency of this. What is it else,
when he proposes to limit the religious instruction
of the children at school to the ' moral precepts and
injunctions' of the Bible, with some little smattering,
it may be presumed, of sacred history ; while the
doctrinal parts he would leave to the parents or
friends at home? Such a separation, however, ap-
pears to me a grievous and fatal error. It is an
innovation in the science of education, not to be
justified by reason or experience, much less on any
principles of religion. At least it resembles the
childish fancy of plucking off a flower, and setting
it in the ground to grow without a root ! We grant
there are certain fundamental principles of morality,
common to all religious persuasions, and which
indeed form the basis of them : — they answer to the
moral sense and conscience of men, the nata non
scripta lex to which even heathen ])hilosophers could
appeal. But take even natural religion, and who
ever thought of confining the science of it to the
mere study of moral duties ? and not rather extend-
ing it to the knowledge of the being (at least) and
attributes of God ? That great man Dr. Watts, who
certainly knew something of what children require
to learn, in defining the province of natural religion,
says, " Natural religion consists of two parts, viz. : —
1. The speculative or contemplative, which is the
knowledge of God in his various perfections and in
his relations to his rational creatures, so far as may
be known by the light of nature It includes
also, 2. That which is practical or active, i. e. the
knowledge of the several duties which arise from
our relation to God, and our relation to our fellow-
creatures, and our proper conduct and government
of ourselves '." Thus he makes the moral duties
quite a secondary branch of the science ; and if this
is the case in natural, how much more in revealed
religion ! For it is in the knowledge of God, and of
his attributes more especially, that revelation has
extended the boundaries of religious knowledge.
And if the practical duties of life be a part of the
nata non scripta lew^ this knowledge of God is a part
of it too. And it is an insult to our nature to keep
us in ignorance of this, or to throw it into the back-
ground among the subjects of our teaching. There
is even in the child that consciousness of an Higher
Power, that can never be satisfied by mere lectures
on morality. Among his other duties, social and
' Improvement of the mind. — Dr. Isaac Watts.
8
relative, he feels there is a higher duty — the duty to
God. Hide this from the child ; — neglect to culti-
vate his sense of it ; — and his very nature rebels and
resents the fraud :
" The spark of his first deathless fire
Yet buoys him up, and high above
Tlie holiest creature, dares aspire
To the Creator's love'."
He bears about with him the sense of his origin,
the divi?ics particulam aurcs, of which even the
heathen poet speaks : and if reason shews us the
strict connexion between religion and morality, — a
connexion not to be violated without inflicting a
shock on our very natural constitution, — what is to
come of the attempt to separate them, when "weighed
in the balance of the sanctuary?"
It is not that Christianity has not a morality — or
that it could not teach it, without mixing up its own
peculiar doctrines — but it will not. It has received
a commission, which is not to teach morality alone,
but to preach the Gospel : and the Gospel, it knows
well, is more, far more, than a string of moral pre-
cepts, or a revelation of rules for the mere conduct
of life. Nothing can come up to its requirements,
short of the exact fulfilment, by all appointed methods,
of the Saviour's command, " Go ye and teach all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost : teaching
* Christian Year, 13th Sunday after Trinity.
9
them to observe all things whatsoever I have com-
manded you •\"
If, after all, Mr. Fox should say, that he never
meant to exclude religion, but only the doctrinal
parts of it, from the school instruction, I can only
say I wish him joy of his attempt to procure reli-
gious conduct and habits in this kind of way. But
it is worth considering, whether the plan of thus
taking religion to pieces be a thing so very innocent
in itself; and whether religion can be spoken of as
taught in any real sense at all, unless it be taught
in all its fulness, and by continual appeals to the
heart and motives, as well as to the understanding
and outward conduct.
" Non hasc hunianis opibus, non arte magistra
Proveniunt *****
Major agit Deus, atque opera ad majora remittit."
But in any case, and whether more or less religious
knowledge or information be intended to be taught
in the new system, let no one think it has any claims
to superiority over ours in the one point of morality.
To say the least, this is equally insisted on in both,
only with this diiference : — Mr. Fox would enjoin
morality and exclude the creed ; we would include
the creed, and not leave out the morality. It may
be as well once for all to refute the idea, that there
is in the Church system of teaching any negligence
* Matt, xxviii. 19, 20.
10
of the rules of morality. On the contrary, we desire
to embrace the whole com})ass of religion, natural
and revealed, and of course, therefore, morality, as
an essential i)art of both. Revelation aside, we
should not be for excluding morality, as it may be
convenient to our opponents to insinuate, with a
view to discredit our system and advance their own.
Thus writes a learned divine, in relation to this sub-
ject, " From the time of Hooker to our own, the
great divines, by whose labours our literature has
been so wonderfully enriched, never seem to have
thought it possible, that Natural and Revealed Reli-
gion if properly understood," (understood, therefore,
as embracing morality,) " could be in a state of hos-
tility with each other. On the contrary, they be-
lieved that they were contributing to the advance-
ment of divine truth, when they considered Natural
and Revealed Religion as appointed by the Almighty
to ' work together for good' to the human race.
In such sentiments moreover they were sustained
by the most illustrious philosophers that ever ap-
peared to develops the laws by which natural things
are governed. Bacon and Boyle and Newton."
" Nevertheless," he adds, " when the utmost has
been made of natural religion, it can give us no
information on subjects on which Revelation is most
copious : — the various dispensations of God towards
man ; our redemption from the effects of transgres-
sion ; and, ill the language of the Creed, 'the for-
11
giveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and
the life everlasting ^' "
" The peculiarity of the Christian rules," says Mr.
Morier, "does not consist so much in the precepts
which they give for the conduct of mankind, as in
the motives and sanctions, and the power which they
impart to act up to those precepts. . . . The Chris-
tian principle alone excites and assists the utmost
enmlation and zeal to promote all that truly consti-
tutes the greatness of man and the welfare of society,
at the same time that it commands to high and low,
to rich and poor, to kings and people, the most
scrupulous respect for the limits and frontiers of
each other's rights and privileges; teaching all that
there is no real liberty but for those whom the truth
hath set free, and no absolute equality among men,
but as of sinners equally condemned by the justice,
and saved by the mercy, of their common God and
Redeemer \"
Let me in the last place adduce the very striking
remark of the late Mr. Rose ; " All the wit of man
has discovered nothing defective in the system of
Christian morals, and has not been able to add one
jot, or one tittle to that morality. I do not mean
that no fresh systems have been devised — but I
^ Natural Theology , 8^'c. By Thomas Turton, D.D., now
Lord Bishop of Ely.
° What has Religion to do with Politics ? By David R.
Morier, Esq., late Her Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary in
Switzerland. J. W. Parker, West Strand.
12
mean tlint in all these systems not a single imi)rove-
nient has been suggested ; and the only method of
giving them a new appearance has been, by carrying
the princij)les of the Gospel to a pitch to M'hich the
Gospel never commands them to be carried, because
He who taught it knew what was in man, knew
what could and what could not be required of
him "."
II. Let us now pass on to the second feature in
the scheme of Mr. Fox, viz. the notion of teaching
Religion without the admission of particular forms.
I am not unaware that some degree of prejudice
has existed in other quarters, besides (as it appears)
with Mr. Fox, against the creeds and other formula-
ries of the Church, upon account of the apparent dog-
matism in the mode of expression, or for some other
reason akin to this. It will not be irrelevant to the
question, if we begin by noticing how far this prejudice
is founded on a fair and reasonable construction of
the Church's sense and language in these expressions
of her faith. It is not to be expected, that, without
a particular study of the occasion and history of each
clause, it should be at all possible to form an accu-
rate judgment as to the terms and expressions made
use of. Nor, perliajis, is this a necessary or very
edifying piece of knowledge for the majority of
Christian people. All that is required to the lay
communion of our Church, as far as I understand it,
* The Gospel an abiding System. By Hugh James Rose, B.l).,
and Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge.
13
is a cordial assent to the two creeds which occur
the one in our Baptismal, and the other in our Com-
munion Services. Whether this be so or not, the
prejudice we are considering has, I think, very much
arisen from the technical phraseology by which
these formularies are marked. Yet some technical
]ihraseology is common and even necessary in other
subjects, — in most of the arts and sciences, for in-
stance,— and when it occurs in these, the propriety
of it is not disputed : — why, then, in matters of faith
should it not be allowed? why in these alone is it
the subject of complaint and offence ? We admit,
that to dogmatize on any deep subject, still more on
those which are confessedly mysterious, and beyond
our finite understandings to grasp and comprehend, is
of all dogmatism the most odious and repulsive. For
what is a mystery ? Several Christian Fathers have
defined it, ' not a thing absolutely unknown but in-
mco7nprehensible ^' And what is to dogmatize ? Ac-
cording to Dr. Johnson, ' to assert positively ; to
advance without distrust ; to teach magisterially : '
and ' dogmatical,' or ' dogmatick,' (so in Johnson,)
' authoritative ; magisterial ; positive ;' so that the
word is of somewhat ambiguous meaning, and may
therefore convey to some ears an impression not so
favourable as to others, as though it would express a
'' See Suicer, from Isidor. Pelus. Epist. 192, in voce Muotj;-
piov. Also Victor of Antioch, quoted by Maitland, Apostolic
School of Prophetic Interpretation, p. 95.
14
power in man to reduce to the level of his own cog-
nizance the deep things of God, and to pronounce
'magisterially' upon them. But let only a fair
construction be given to the modes of expression in
our creeds, and, I think, the Church will come out
free from blame, and will be acknowledged to have
recorded the great truths committed to her keeping
in the plainest and simplest manner, and one most
befitting the solemnity of the subject. For the
heated and intemperate language of individuals be-
longing to her communion, it is enough to say that
the Church is not responsible. There is no question
but that mysteries there are ; and no difficulty that
may attend the asserting or expressing of them, can
excuse the Church from her duty in maintaining
and enforcing them the best way she can. Nor can
it be denied that, with all the chief mysteries en-
trusted to her teaching, there is, if we attend to it,
a strong affinity in the human breast. There is a
yearning for something beyond ourselves, beyond
the reach of our senses and of our own unassisted
reason, something in which, nevertheless, we feel
conscious of our being greatly interested, and having
a near relation to it. Centred in himself no one is
happy ; nor can he find a resting-place till he centres
upon God. And this, revelation tells him, he can
only do through that Mediator, who is the common
link between God and man. Here is the foundation
of the Christian mystery. And in the development
of this mystery much of a peculiar phraseology (and
15
especially in opposition to notorious heresies as they
arose) has come to be adopted in the Clinrch, which
doubtless, to the unaccustomed ear, sounds harsh
and unpalatable. But surely the same discretion
should be allowed to the Church herein, as in a
matter of human science we should allow to its dis-
ciples. At the same time it must be admitted to
be a decided abuse of this privilege, when persons
take occasion to speak in any thing like a dictatorial
or dogmatical spirit. They should consider that
many phrases convey a different idea, as they are
used in a scholastic and theological, or in an ordinary
and colloquial sense. And therefore it becomes us
to * avoid,' in these things, ' the appearance of evil,'
or at least to be prepared for some little misunder-
standing arising, or even some offence being taken,
when, without sufficient care to explain our meaning,
we depart from the ordinary, and adopt the scholas-
tic acceptation of a term.
To proceed now with the real question at issue,
and which concerns the teaching of religion without
forms. Allowing for the difficulty of pleasing all
fancies, and of avoiding even real grounds of offence,
in the composition of any forms ; yet this proposal
to dispense with the use of them altogether is one
which I think it is our duty to oppose to the utmost,
because it is itself opposed to the first principles of
the nature which God has given us. We cannot
form any ideas of Heaven itself, without some refer-
ence to human forms and modes of worship. Nay,
16
in the representations given us of tlio future state,
Scripture itself is fain to sjieak in language borrowed
from earthly usages in tlie service of God. This
shews how interwoven such ideas are with the very
constitution of our nature. We may go further, and
say, that the forms of religion, and the essence of it,
are intimately connected together by the revealed
word and positive declarations of God. He has
joined these things together ; let not man put them
asunder. Then, as to the Creed, it is an obvious
fact, that Christianity was first taught in some short
form delivered to the Catechumens. This was " the
form of sound words ^ :" or, as it is elsewhere
called, " that form of doctrine which " at their
baptism " was delivered to them ^" And thus from
the beginning God set his own seal upon the Creeds.
Or, take them only as of human composition ; yet,
as the work of duly qualified persons, acting on the
best sources of information, and with consummate
care and reverence, and received in all the Churches,
they are of authority next only to divine. For God
was the Author of that wisdom by which the framers
were led ; and, as a great divine tells us, " The
author of that which causeth another thing to be,
is the author of that also which thereby is caused '."
And in all such matters it is surely wiser to conform
to the will of God than to devise methods of our
own.
"* 2 Tim. i. 13. " Rom. vi. 17.
' Hooker, Eccl. Polity, lib. v.
17
But as we shall return to this subject presently,
let me here take a wider ground, and ask. What is
the whole idea of Christianity itself? What but
the supply of a method whereby we may serve God
in the most acceptable way? This method it gives
us by revealing to us a Mediator, the Son of God,
who for this purpose assumed our nature, and " took
upon Him the form of a servant I" And was not His
whole life upon earth a continual condescension to
tlie wants and weaknesses of our nature, viewed in
this very light of requiring all the aids of language
and other external things, answering to the outward
senses which God has given us? In His constant
appeal to surrounding objects, erecting them (as it
were) into so many signs and witnesses of Himself;
in His action of cleansing the Temple, showing that
He came not to destroy, but to reform and purify ;
in His devout kneeling while engaged in prayer; in
His gracious acceptance from the wise men of the
gifts they brought Him — the gold, the frankincense,
and the myrrh — and from the devout Mary of her
spikenard-offering ; in His special surnaming of some
more highly-favoured Apostles ; in His institution of
the Sacraments, and of a form of prayer : — in these,
and a thousand other ways. He evinced the dis-
position for which I am contending. He con-
demned, indeed, the abuse of ceremonies, as well as
their superfluous multiplication ; but He so far re-
' Phil. ii. 7.
18
cognized and adopted them, as to afford one most
coiivinciiig proof, that as the Creator He perfectly
"knew what was in man;" as the INIessiah, He
perfectly taught what was of God ; and, as the
Redeemer, He brought both into harmony with each
other. " He came," it has been eloquently said, " to
do nothing of singularity, but to ' fulfil all righteous-
ness;' teaching us to submit ourselves to all those
rites which He would institute ; . . . . and that a
life common and ordinary, without affectation or
singularity, is the most prudent and safe An
even life, spent with as much rigour of duty to God
as ought to be, yet in the same manner of devotions,
in the susception of ordinary offices, in bearing public
burdens, frequenting public assemblies, performing
offices of civility, receiving all the rites of an esta-
blished religion, complying with national customs
and hereditary solemnities of a people, in nothing
disquieting public peace, or disrelishing the great
instruments of an innocent communion, or dissolving
the circumstantial ligaments of charity, or breaking
laws and the great relations and necessitudes of the
world, out of fancy or singularity, is the best way to
live holily, and safely, and happily; safer from sin
and envy, and more removed from trouble and
temptation \"
If it were not occupying your time, I might
enlarge on other particular instances of the general
' Jeremy Taylor's Life of Christ, Part I. § 9.
19
truth. Stated forms of prayer must not be omitted,
of which, says a profound scholar and able judge of
the matter, " Well and wisely did the nursing-
fathers of the Church of England do, who still
cleaved to these most venerable elements of congre-
gational worship ; for they were the fruit of an age
when the Spirit of God was abundantly poured forth
upon the Church ; and of an age, too, when bitter per-
secution taught men to cry aloud to their Saviour with
the fervour of those who were girding themselves up
to die. We are not precisely the critics for the
glowing devotions of such stirring times ; for surely
there is nothing in this our generation, wherein the
love of many hath waxed so cold, to fit it for re-
casting our Liturgy, or for improving upon the words
of the Martyr, perhaps of the Apostle *." Stated
times and seasons, commemorative and festive days,
the religion of holy places, and the like, might all be
mentioned here ; they all come under the denomi-
nation of established forms, and are all essential
helps to religious instruction. And though the
great end of the Gospel is undoubtedly to wean our
affections from earthly things, and to fix them on
something higher and more enduring; yet even
earthly things and earthly feelings may be made
subservient to this end : as a living poet has said : —
* Sketch of the Church of the First Two Centuries, By J. J.
Blunt, D.D., Margaret Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, 1836.
B 2
20
*' Yet e'en tlio lifeless stone is dear
For thoiiglits of Him who once lay here ;
And the base earth, now Christ has died,
Ennobled is and glorified *."
Say that such forms are no more than as the prop to
the flower, the husk to the precious seed, or the
casket to the jewel : but can we call this of no value ?
How often would the flower perish, the seed and the
jewel be lost, for want of these otherwise insig-
nificant supports ? Vain is the attempt, in the pride
of reason, to struggle against the first dictates of our
nature, and, sanctified as they are by the word of
God, and by the consent of the wise and good in all
ages, to set ourselves up above the admitted require-
ments of humanity. Hereafter we shall be able to
dispense with these things — nabis sine cortice — the
scaffolding will be taken down, when the building is
complete. But at present we are infinitely indebted
to the aid of those forms which the wisdom of the
Church has appointed. They prove, in fact, the best
helps of the memory, the safest regulators of the
imagination, the most effectual entertainments of
the attention, the liveliest incentives to devotion.
To take but one instance, that of the Christian
Sabbath. The consecration of this day to the public
services of religion surely does more to impress the
great truths, which it commemorates, on the mind, —
^ Christian Year, Easter Day.
21
it does more to convey a practical sense of their
importance — than any mere effort of private medi-
tation could do. Or look at the consequence of dis-
carding, not, happily, the observance of the Christian
Sabbath, but other externals of religion, in the case
of the Quakers. Admirable as in many respects the
intentions and principles of their first founder may
have been, yet how has his system languished and
declined, in point of true spirituality, for want of a
body ? for want of those very externals which it was
the founder's error to have deserted? A writer,
not likely to be accused of blind partiality to any
system, most truly observes, " They have no fixed
forms of prayer, but they have a fixed form of dress ;
they have rejected Sacraments, but they retain a
particular kind of language. They profess to be
guided by the spontaneous movement of the Spirit ;
and yet none are more strict and careful about a
regular education and discipline ' ." To such strange
inconsistencies do they expose themselves, who desert
the guidance of the Church and of her established
formularies.
But to return now more especially to the Creeds.
For I am well aware, that here lies the main objec-
tion of our opponent ; for it is in these we find spe-
cially embodied those 'peculiarities of religion,' which
are so offensive and obnoxious to him. When I say
" See Kingdom of Christ. By Professor Maurice, vol. i,
p. 73, &c.
22
the Creeds, I mean of course to include the Catechism,
and every other sort of confession. The Catechism is
indeed the fullest and most comprehensive form of
any ; and, in one sense, the most important to the
present question, as being more especially intended
for the instruction of youth. In speaking, then, of
Creeds, I beg to premise that what is said of them,
applies equally to the Catechism or any similar form
of confession.
It has been stated then, already, that these vene-
rable forms have received the sanction both of
Scripture precedent and of Church authority; that
they appear to bear the stamp both of reason and
revelation. Their nice subtlety of distinction, or
their seeming harshness of expression, may offend
some ; their appearance of treating mysteries with
too great precision may be displeasing to others ;
but I hinted, that such was never the intention of
them. The spirit of dogmatism was assuredly not
the spirit they were intended to breathe. They
were designed rather to preserve the mean between
too great laxity and irreverence of expression on the
one hand, and too nice a curiosity on the other —
and, as " heresies must needs arise," to be a barrier
against definite forms of error, and a plain record
and assertion of primitive truth. To this general
view of the Creeds I have only now, by way of con-
firmation, to add the authority of one or two eminent
writers on this head. My first shall be that of Dr.
Mill, who says,
23
" It is a mistake of the nature of Creeds, to sup-
])ose, that their definitions pretend to grasp the
whole matter revealed, and to bring unfathomable
depths within the cognizance of the understanding;
they profess only to methodize, and bring into a
compendious shape, easily remembered and repeated,
the great outlines of the faith once delivered to the
saints; a shape of which some brief statements in
the Apostolic Epistles afford a distinct example '.
And as for the more ex[)ress dogmatic definitions
wliich these confessions supply, those, for instance,
which we have in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds,
they are, for the most part, restricted to the denial
of some heretical proposition on the subject, by
which it had been proposed to explain, and so
evacuate, the revealed mystery What might
be, or whence might proceed, the comparative
felicity of times when the truths of religion lay more
in the germ than at present — less developed by the
enquiries of some, the strife and opposition of others,
into fixed and determinate propositions, — are ques-
tions equally impossible for us exactly to determine,
and infructuous for direction under our altered cir-
cumstances, if they could be determined: either
way, ' we do not enquire wisely concerning this ^.'
Whatever might be the happiness — doubtless in itself
^ e. g. I Cor. xv. 1—4. 1 Tim. iii. 16. 2 Tim. ii. 8 (coll.
Rom. vi, 17).
' Eccles. vii. 10.
24
a great one — of being able to dwell on the exalted
mysteries of the Gospel without the deadening feel-
ing suggested by a consciousness of opposed opinions
and controversies respecting them ; however great
might be its advantage, in the less constrained and
technical cast of language, the freedom from the
necessity of even a]>pearing, as in these sad times, to
be setting one truth of religion as it were in opposi-
tion to another ; that happiness and advantage can
never be ours, whose circumstances are different, and
on whom, though less tried than our earliest pre-
decessors in other respects, a trial has come to which
they were strangers ; who are cognizant of the old
heresies against which the ancient confessions were
safeguards, and before whom heresies are ever ap-
pearing and reappearing, which they contradict as
effectually still [But] the idea of halting
between two opinions would have been as repugnant
to the whole character of their mind, as, it is our
firm belief, their recognition of the heretical sense
would be ; however their words, before the notion
was explicitly advanced, might be sometimes such
as would admit both senses. The substantial iden-
tity of doctrine in its undeveloped and its maturer
form, is sufficiently apparent to leave no doubt in
the mind of the attentive and pious observer, where
lay the inheritance of divine truth, and the realiza-
tion of Christ's never-failing promise to abide with
His Church and household for ever. The choice
ever lay, and lies still, between the faith in which
25
saints and martyrs have lived and died, and the
ephemeral jiroducts of human presumption, which,
however flourishing for a while, have no root of true
faith and holiness to sustain them, and either disap-
pear altogether from the face of the earth, or are, to
all purposes of vital Christianity, fading and eva-
nescent ^."
" Let it be admitted," says Professor Maurice,
speaking especially of the Apostles' Creed, "that
there is an obscurity over its origin; that we cannot
say who put it into that shape in which we now see
it. From whatever quarter it may have come, here
it is. It is precisely what it was, to say the very
least, sixteen hundred years ago. During that time
it has not been lying hid in the closet of some anti-
quarian. It has been repeated by the peasants and
children of the different lands into which it has
come. It has been given to them as a record of
facts, with which they had as much to do as any
noble. In most parts of Europe it has been repeated
publicly every day in the year , and though it has
been thus hawked about, and, as men would say,
vulgarized, the most earnest and thoughtful minds in
different countries, different periods, different stages
of civilization, have felt that it connected itself with
the most permanent j)art of their being, that it had
to do with each of them personally, and that it was
' Sermons before the University of Cambridge. By W. H.
Mill, D.D., Christian Advocate, &c., 1844.
26
the symbol of tliat humanity which each shared with
their brethren. Reformers who have been engaged
in conflict with all the prevailing systems of their
age, have gone back to this old form of words, and
have said that they lived to reassert the truths which
it embodied. ]\Ien on sick beds, martyrs at the
stake, have said, that because they held it fast, they
could look death in the face. And, to sink much
lower, yet to say what may strike many as far more
wonderful, there are many in this day, who, having
asked the different philosophers of their own and
of past times, what they could do in helping them
to understand the world, to fight against its evils,
to love their fellow-men, are ready to declare that
in this child's Creed they have found the secret
which these philosophers could not give them, and
which, by God's grace, they shall not take away from
them \"
" The constant tradition of the Church," says
Archdeacon ISIanning, " attests the fact, that some
form or summary of doctrine was professed at bap-
tism by every candidate from the very beginning of
the Gospel. The only question, then, is, do the
baptismal Creeds of the later Church represent the
baptismal summary used by the Apostles ? Are
they lineally descended, and therefore the genuine
offspring of their original oral preaching ? Such has
' The Kingdom of Christ. By F. D. Maurice, M.A., Pro-
fessor of English Literature and History in King's College.
London: Rivingtons, 1842, vol. ii. pp. 5, 0.
27
ever been the universal tradition of the Church.
With the lineal descent of holy baptism has come
dovni to us, also, the baptismal profession or Creed ;
in substance the same as at the beginning ; in lan-
guage, from time to time retouched, so as to con-
demn the false glosses of heresy, as they successively
endeavoured to impose themselves upon the rule of
faith K"
And lastly, says Hooker, "These catholic decla-
rations of our belief, delivered by them which were
so much nearer than we are unto the first publica-
tion thereof, and continuing needful for all men at
all times to know, these confessions, as testimonies
of our continuance in the same faith to this present
day, we rather use than any other gloss or para-
phrase devised by ourselves, which though it were
to the same effect, could not be of the like authority
and credit V
According to all these views, then, there is a
certain special authority attaching to the Creeds :
and this gives them their peculiar weight and im-
portance. It is perhaps a little overlooked by the
abettors of the new system of schools, that the
great thing needed in the teacher is authority/. It
is the authority, which the child feels to be inherent
in the parent, that makes it look up to him with
^ Manning's Rule of Faith, Appendix, p. 65.
' Eccl. Polity, book v. Rose's Advantages of a Confession of
Faith, should also be studied : — See Commission and Duties of the
Clergy, by Hugh James Rose, B.D., Christian Advocate.
28
respect, aud eagerly receive instruction at bis lips.
And if it is felt that the parent deputes that autho-
rity in any measure to another, as to the master of
any school which he selects for the child, respect
is in this way secured for the master also. But
what parent in his senses, and having a just sense of
his own dignity — :especially if he were himself in
those circumstances which prevented his attending
personally to the religious instruction of his family —
would entrust his child to a man, who, he was told,
was authorized to teach algebra or astronomy, but
forbidden on any account to mention the peculiar
doctrines of the Bible ! forbidden, as he valued his
office, to breathe a syllable of any controverted
(though vital) truth, such as the Incarnation or the
Atonement !
I would add, that of all written forms, the Bible,
though I mention it last, is the best, and invested
with a high and peculiar authority of its own, that
of immediate inspiration from above. From it, we
may add, all the other forms are gathered which
have been received in the Church ; from hence we
have the Lord's Prayer, and the germ, at least, of
our Apostolic and Catholic Creeds. It is a book
which cannot be begun too early, nor studied too
late in life. Approached, as Moses was instructed
to approach the burning bush, with due reverence,
and not in a spirit of idle curiosity, there is none
more fit to be i)ut into the hands of old or young,
learned or unlearned. In a former Letter I ventured
29
to represent the necessity, as we value the welfare of
the rising generation, of keeping the Bible continu-
ally before their eyes, as the chief guide of their life.
But what must the effect be, when this unspeakably
precious gift of God is degraded into a mere text-
book of sacred history, or a book of reference for
some useful lessons in morality ! .
But we must come to yet closer quarters with our
opponent. The stake is a great one, and concerns
the welfare of our children for time and for eternity.
In what light, then, let me ask, does he propose
to teach them to regard themselves f With what
thoughts will he fill their youthful minds ? With
what information will he meet their earnest en-
quiries, on the great points of their origin ? of their
destiny? of their relations to God and to each other?
What is the food with which he will satisfy their
souls on these great subjects ? What account will
he offer them of the strange disorders of the world ?
of all the sickness, and all the pain, and all the
sorrow, and all the death ? What clue will he give
them to the labyrinth ? What insight into the ways
and purposes of God ?
On our side there is the ever-ready answer. We
point them to the fall of man, and to his restoration.
We shew them their interest in the latter; we do
more : we refer them again and again to their own
part and lot in it through the appointed rite of their
baptism. And now the clouds begin to clear up to
their view ; light springs from the chaos, and health
30
from tljo troiil>lo(l waters. Wc have now a fixed
point to recal them to. A Father's hand is above
them ; a Father s liouse is before them. Without
regard to their own deservings, before they had done
good or evil, in pure mercy and goodness, God took
them into covenant with Himself. Here is their
stay and their hope, destined, like the rainbow, to
shine out and cheer them amid the fitful gleams of
the storms of life. Do they doubt it ? And is not
the assurance of an Apostle enough for them : —
" The promise is unto you and to your children ^ ?"
Then we point them back to the most venerable
witness of the ancient Scripture, in support and
illustration of this truth : " Ye stand this day all of
you before the Lord your God That He may
establish thee to-day for a people unto Himself, and
that He may be unto thee a God \" Are the chil-
dren in this privileged number? The context will
answer, " Your captains of your tribes, your elders,
and your officers, with all the men of Israel ; your
LITTLE ONES, your wives, and the stranger that is in
your camp ®." Nay, an actual advantage is declared
to have been given to those of tender years : " More-
over your little ones, which ye said should be a prey,
and your children, which in that day had no know-
ledge between good and evil, they shall go in
thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall
* Acts ii. 39. ' Dent. xxix. 10. 13.
•^ lb. V. 10, 11.
31
])ossess it '." Is it objected, that this was spoken
under a different dispensation, and to the people of
the Jews ? But can we think, in a matter of such
primary importance, there should be one rule for the
Jew, and another for the Christian ? Such a thought
found no place, (most likely as it was then, if ever,
to have occurred, had there been any ground for it
in the scheme of the Gospel,) among the early
objections to Christianity. And we would give no
place to it now. Nay, more than ever will we now
rely on the mercy of God, when the message has
come down from the very bosom of the Father,
" God is love." More fondly than ever will we
cling to the assurance, that the Covenant is to our
little ones, as well as to ourselves, now that the
common Saviour of all has taken them up in His
arms and blessed them ; now that amid the bright
attendants who ever " minister to the heirs of sal-
vation " " their angels" also have their appointed
place, and " alway behold the face of their Father
which is in heaven." But rob them of their birth-
right, and with what will the philosophers and sage
men of the world make amends to them for the
loss ? How will they fill up the void ? Where
shall God be placed in their system ? Is there no
light from His countenance beaming through the
clouds ? Is all closed up in silence, in darkness, and
in doubt ? See here, then, the true philanthropy of
' Dent. i. 39.
32
the Chureli of Clirist. Sec licre, her claim to l)e
the nursing-iuother of the little ones. In her bosom
they were " born to God of water and of the Si)irit ;"
to her was committed the initiatory right ; should not
hers also be the fostering care ? There is no more
important office of the Church, — none in which her
hands more deserve to be strengthened, — than this
of carrying out the efficacy of her baptism.
But it may be said, 'the time is ill-chosen for
exalting this ordinance, when the members of the
Churcli are not agreed about it among themselves.'
To this I reply, the disagreement, I am persuaded, is
vastly exaggerated. In exact terms, perhaps, we
may not be agreed ; and the contentious may take
advantage of the difference : but moderate and
sober men will agree with me, that on the real
matter in question there is a very general consent
and concord.
And while I am upon the subject, 1 beg to offer a
few remarks to those, Mliose minds may be troubled
by the somewhat stormy discussions of this important
subject, now, unhappily, so common. And I would
suggest the enquiry, how far our differences may have
arisen from the total absence either of the term
Regeneration, or Baptismal Regeneration, in any
authorized Creed ? Whether the omission of the
word ' Regeneration' were purposely designed or
not, — or whether there be good reasons for omitting
it, — I do not pretend to say. I am simply taking,
the fact of its omission — and I think the question
33
fairly arises, whether, this being the case, we have
any right to ex})ect in our people an exact uniformity
of opinion as to the precise sense of the term, or its
application to Christian Baptism. Such a consent
might indeed be expected, if the expression had
ever been formally adopted in the Creeds, or set
forth with authority in any general synod of the
Church. But till then we can scarcely be surprised,
if we find people claiming some little latitude in the
way of understanding a matter never yet clearly
defined in the Church. It is more of the definition
that I wish here to speak, than of the doctrine. We
know that no battle is so desperate as that which is
fought sub luce maligna, in a mist, or in the dark ; —
friends and foes confounding each other, — all eager
for the victory, but each side expending its strength
in ill-directed and uncertain attacks. For my own
part, when I hear the subject brought forward in
ordinary discussions, I am forcibly struck by its
usually turning on a word, which scarcely two per-
sons understand alike ; and the use of which, till it
is more clearly explained, appears to me to make the
controversy interminable *. Nay, I think it probable,
that were their writings consulted, or opinions taken,
even learned and orthodox divines would exhibit
* In a late important Conference on this matter in London,
the members present seem to have perceived this difficulty, and
to have seen that their safest ground was in resting on the un-
equivocal expression of the Nicene Creed, viz., " One Baptism
for the Remission of Sins," See Documents at the end, No. I.
C
34
ROTiic sliatles of (liflToreiico, — not, certainly, in allowino-
the apjilication of tlie term to Baptism, but in tlic
ex})lanation of tlie meaning of the term itself. That
there is a spiritual grace in Baptism, few will deny,
who really believe it to be an ordinance of the
Saviour. That, whatever the grace be understood
to be, ' the remission of sins' is essentially and neces-
sarily bound up with it, will be admitted, too, in
])roportion as we admit the authority of the Creeds.
But when we come to the use of terms, and bring
up the word ' Regeneration,' as though it carried
with it some determinate self-evident sense, though
no where distinctly pronounced by the Church, are
we dealing quite fairly with our people ? Or are we
not rather putting them to a trial, from which we
ourselves — from which even the greatest theologians
— might almost shrink? And this, as I have suggested,
for the simple reason that there is nothing definite to
guide us in the Creeds ? And hence we have one
person understanding it one way, and another an-
other ; some confounding it with the daily renewal "
of the heart under the influence of Divine grace;
others with that thorough change and co7iversion of
heart to God, which David prayed for, ' 'Create in me
a clean heart, O God ; and renew a right spirit within
' These false senses of the word the reader may see exposed,
and the truer meaning asserted and defended, in the Manual of
Baptism, by the Rev. C, E. Kennavvay, A.M., &c. Second
Edition, pp. 65 — 70.
* Ps. li. 10.
35
me.' And in a popular sense it might not be diffi-
cult to justify the extension of the term to these, or
such like uses. There are instances, (as may be
seen in Dr. Blunt's Course of Sermons ^ before the
University of Cambridge,) where even the early
Fathers allowed themselves this liberty in the use
of the word : though, " undoubtedly," says Dr. Blunt,
" Regeneration is in their language coupled with Bap-
tism, though not universally, yet almost always.
Let the Church, then, meet in Convocation ^ ; and
let them there decide, if need be, what the disputed
term is intended to signify. Let them meet, and
reconcile Bishop Bethell and Dr. Pusey, Mr. Simeon
and Archdeacon Hoare ^ ; much would then be done
towards appeasing and settling the present strife ; or
at least it would be drawn out of that misty region
of ambiguous words and phrases, — ever the favorite
haunt of controversy, — and brought fairly into the
more genial light of day.
I have now endeavoured to show, in the first
place, that morality is inseparable from religion ;
and in the next, that religion itself is indispensably
connected with the use of forms, and other such
helps, as are suited to the present condition of
^ Sketch of the Church of the First 'Two Centuries, Serm. IV.
^ See Document, No. III.
* Peculiar circumstances scarcely allow me to mention two
other distinguished names in this place. Of those which I have
mentioned, none deny the application of the term Regeneration in
some sense to Baptism.
c2
30
liiimanity; tliat this connexion is of Divine sanction
and a]>|)ointmcnt ; that experience amply confirms
the utility of such forms, and shows the bad conse-
quences of discarding them ; that the attempt to
replace them by new ones, so far from being emi-
nently successful, has only tended to establish the
propriety of those, which in former ages, whether by
Divine appointment or Catholic consent, have come
into use in the Church. These general remarks I
have applied to Baptism in particular ; and I might
go on to answer the arguments by which we are met
on the other side. It will be a more pleasant duty,
if in this place, and in justice to Mr. Fox, I merely
advert to his own view of the Lord's Prayer ; for it
is a view in which I heartily agree with him, when
he calls it " that symbol of devotion so dear to every
Christian." Let me only observe, that to admit this
is to admit the very principle for which we are con-
tending, viz., the use and necessity of forms. This
prayer is itself an instance of them — and a more
striking instance than is generally attended to. For
it is well known to be grounded on another and more
ancient form, in common use among the Jews in
the worship of the synagogue. And hence the
adaptation of it to Christian worship has the further
effect of recommending to our adoption, under pro-
per modifications, any other similar usages of the
more ancient dispensation. We may be thankful
to Mr. Fox for an illustration so much to our
purpose.
37
By what countervailing argument he may be pre-
pared to meet our general position, it is premature
to anticipate. But from his reference, before alluded
to in an early part of this Letter, to the report of
Mr. Horace Mann, one is led to imagine, that the
system which has his confidence, in opposition to
ours, is the self-same which that gentleman is known
to have advocated, and which called forth the ani-
madversions of the Bishop of London, in the House
of Lords, in 1839 ^ But here I leave it for the
present, resting our defence on the arguments that
have been already adduced. And if there be any
force in what has been urged, in favour of creeds
and other formularies, as the best and safest vehicles
for religious truth in the instruction of youth, and as
a proper means for carrying out the spirit and inten-
tion of their Baptism ; — what are we to think of a pro-
position being made to the Government of this Chris-
tian country to proscribe the introduction of all such
means by refusing, wherever they are introduced, all
participation in the public grants ; — by discouraging
in every way all schools, where ' religious formularies
are insisted on,' and where the great, and I will say
dangerous, innovations proposed are not put in force ?
And as if it was apprehended, that without special
forcing and persuading, there would scarcely be
found the men to put in practice the innovations —
' See Documents at the end, No. II.
38
it is further and seriously proposed to the Govern-
ment, to train and break in to the work a new
race of instructors, or (as Mr. Fox, for want of
a more appropriate name, is fain to call them)
schoolmasters ; but he feels they will have preten-
sions far above the ordinary run of such. " Their
functions were in reality such as might well be
deemed sacred, and they deserved the best honours
the State could bestow '^." As for their other remu-
neration, he finds it altogether beyond his power
adequately to compute ! However the Government
may be disposed to treat his proposal, the public,
I am sure, will think again before they acquiesce in
supporting such a system. Objections have indeed
been whispered against supporting any privileged
class, out of the public purse ; but the pretensions
of a new class, half-privileged, half-degraded — privi-
leged by reason of the distinguished honour awaiting
them, degraded by reason of the conditions "with
which they are to be saddled, conditions which bind
their hands and tie their tongues in the discharge of
their most sacred duty — the pretensions of such a
class as this will be openly rejected as preposterous
and absurd. Great indeed are the advantages we
enjoy in the laws and liberties of our land, and in
the mild and tolerant principles of our Government.
But I fervently hope, that no love of toleration, no
^ Speech of Mr, Fox, Feb. 27.
39
over-fondness for the praise of imj)artiality, no fear
of being charged with bigotry or prejudice, no ex-
cessive jealousy of the spiritual power, still less any
petty feelings of resentment for supposed abuses of
it, may in an evil hour induce the rulers of this
favoured, (and as I am sure I may call it) this reli-
gious land, to lend an ear to insinuations, which,
under covert of the forms, may have the effect of
overturning the very essentials of religion. Not
that I would on any account impute such an intention
to the movers of the present scheme ; but I think
they are inevitably, though it may be unconsciously,
playing into the hands of those who only object to
the forms because they dislike the reality.
That the State has nothing to do with religion,
is a doctrine I cannot concur in. How speak the
prayers of our Liturgy, where, praying for the Par-
liament, we say, " For them, for us, and Thy whole
Church ? " As a part, then, is related to the whole,
so it would seem, according to our prayers, is the
State to the Church ; and this being the case, how
can we say, ' the State has nothing to do with reli-
gion ? ' But we are not to expect logical definitions
in a Liturgy ! Still observe the spirit of the prayer,
even more than its actual expressions. And if
a strict definition be required, I will furnish one
beyond exception : — " The Church and State are
different names of the same thing ; and the same
men, who in spiritual respects make the Churchy
40
in temporal make the Stated" A man's responsi-
bilities as a Christian do not cease, when he becomes
a statesman. His public duties, some little neces-
sity of consulting expediency, regard to the mixed
interests of the community, the sharing of his ob-
ligations with others ; none of these considerations
can any more destroy his responsibility than they
can his personal identity. On the contrary, he has
rather contracted new responsibilities, proportioned
to his new opportunities, and increased power of
doing good. He is bound more than ever to pro-
mote the greatest good of the land ; and what that
is, his conscience as a Christian must tell him. Let
him only follow it, and he will have his reward in
the happiness of his country, the peace of his own
bosom, and the approbation of his God. But let
him not consent, when ' the children ask for bread,
to give them a stone;' let him not wield the new
powers entrusted to him to the exclusion of religion
from any national system of education, nor yet to
sanction the paring down and mangling of Christian
doctrine, to suit the prejudices of a few, into a mere
catalogue of moral i)recepts, or a mere record of
^ Theophihis Anglicanus, Ed. 4th. Part III. ch. 1, " Church
and State one Society under different names." Coleridge calls
them, " Two Poles of the same magnet ; the magnet itself,
which is constituted by them is the Constitution of the nation." —
Chap. 2, Idea of Church and State. Mr. Gladstone to the same
effect, " The State in its Relations with the Church." Ch. 1, 2.
41
historical facts. There are means enough to teach
the people all useful secular knowledge, without this
unscrupulous dealing with holy things. The chief
of them were touched upon in a former Letter,
where I ventured to represent that the best and
safest way was to act in aid, and not in contraventio7i
of existing religious and educational institutions ;
to strengthen their hands by liberal j^arliamentary
grants, dispensed in just proportion to their several
pretensions, or several needs ; but as to the method
and quality of the religious instruction to be im-
parted— the forms, the creeds, the catechisms, the
other confessions of faith — to leave this entirely to
themselves, and not to interfere at all. They are
surely the best judges, the safest guardians, of re-
ligious truth, whose special vows and obligations
pledge them to the defence and inculcation of it;
whose whole time, attention, and talents, are devoted
to its pursuit. I will not now trespass further on
your time than to give you, in conclusion, the words
of at once a true son of the Church, and faithful
servant of the Queen, before quoted ^.
" Be it, once for all, honestly granted that the real
charter of mankind is Catholic Christianity : let this
be acted upon in all public deliberations and State
measures as a truth ; then, and not till then, will be
established in the hearts of men that efficient self-
government which would render all outward forms
" See p. 11.
42
of social government matter of comparative indiffer-
ence. The instrument of effecting this great work
of social reform is comj^rehended in one short sen-
tence : — the Christian example of the rulers in Church
and State, and the Christian Education of all ranks
and classes of the people by authorized Christian
teachers."
I am,
Right Hon. and Dear Sir,
With every sentiment of esteem,
Very faithfully yours,
AVILLIAINI H. HOARE.
43
DOCUMENTS.
No. I.
See page 33.
The resolutions passed at this Conference were the following.
The Italics are my own.
1. That whatever, at the present time, be the force of the sen-
tence delivered on appeal in the case of Gorham v. the
Bishop of Exeter, the Church of England will eventually
be bound by the said sentence, unless it shall openly and
expressly reject the erroneous doctrine sanctioned thereby.
2. That the remission of original sin to all infants in and by the
grace of Baptism is an essential part of the Article, " One
Baptism for the remission of sins."
3. That — to omit other questions raised by the said sentence —
such sentence, while it does not deny the liberty of holding
that Article in the sense heretofore received, does equally
sanction the assertion that original sin is a bar to the right
reception of Baptism, and is not remitted, except when God
bestows regeneration beforehand by an act of prevenient
grace (whereof Holy Scripture and the Church are wholly
silent), thereby rendering the benefits of Holy Baptism
altogether uncertain and precarious.
4. That to admit the lawfulness of holding an exposition of an
Article of the Creed contradictory of the essential meaning
of that Article is, in truth and in fact, to abandon that
Article.
5. That, inasmuch as the Faith is one, and rests upon one principle
of authority, the conscious, deliberate, and wilful abandon-
ment of the essential meaning of an Article of the Creed,
destroys the Divine Foundation on which alone the entire
Faith is propounded by the Church.
6. That any portion of the Church which does so abandon the
essential meaning of an Article of the Creed, forfeits not
only the Catholic doctrine in that Article, but also the office
44
aiul authority to witness and teach as a Member of tlie
Universal Church.
7. That, by such conscious, wilful, and deliberate act, such por-
tion of the Church becomes formally separated from the
Catholic body, and can no longer assure to its Members the
Grace of the Sacraments and the Remission of sins.
8. That all measures consistent with the present legal position of
the Church ought to be taken without delay, to obtain an
authoritative declaration by the Church of the doctrine of
Holy Baptism, impugned by the recent sentence : as, for
instance, by praying licence for the Church in Convocation
to declare that doctrine ; or by obtaining an Act of Par-
liament, to give legal effect to the decisions of the collective
Episcopate on this and all other matters purely spiritual.
9. That, failing such measures, all efforts must be made to obtain
from the said Episcopate, acting only in its spiritual cha-
racter, a re-affirmation of the doctrine of Holy Baptism,
impugned by the said sentence.
H. E. Manning, M.A., Archdeacon of Chichester.
Robert J. Wilberforce, M.A., Archdeacon of the East
Riding.
Thomas Thorp, B.D., Archdeacon of Bristol.
W. H. Mill, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew, Cam-
bridge.
E. B. PusEY, D.D., Regius Professor of Hebrew, Oxford.
John Keble, M.A., Vicar of Hursley.
W. DoDSWORTH, M.A., Perpetual Curate of Christ-
church, St. Pancras.
W. J. E. Bennett, M.A., Perpetual Curate of St. Paul's,
Knightshridge.
Henry W. Wilberforce, M.A., Vicar of East Farleigh.
John C. Talbot, M.A., Barrister-at-Law.
Richard Cavendish, M.A.
Edward Badeley, M.A., Barrister-at-Law.
James R. Hope, D.C.L., Barrister-at-Law.
45
Compare the following Report: —
At an Adjourned General Meeting of the London Union
on Church Matters, held at the Craven Hotel, Strand, on
Tuesday, the 19th March, Resolved ; —
1. That the doctrine maintained by Mr. Gorham on the subject
of Holy Baptism, and declared by the Report of the Judicial
Committee of Privy Council to be admissible in the Church
of England, is, in the opinion of this meeting, heretical, and
contrary to the Creed, in that it denies, that original sin is
remitted to all infants in and by the grace of Holy Baptism.
2. That it is the immediate duty of all Churchmen to consider
what steps shall be taken, in order to procure a Synodical
recognition of the doctrine, that original sin is remitted in
and by the grace of Baptism to all infants.
Two other Resolutions were passed, but nothing added in the
way of definition of the doctrine in question. The Italics, again,
are my own.
No. II.
See page 37.
I allude to the occasion when the Bishop in the House of
Lords, July 5th, 1839, referred to the same Mr. Horace Mann
as Secretary to a Committee which recommended, " that no
books shall be used in the schools which favour the tenets of any
particular sects of Christians, and announced the publication of a
series of religious works intended to form a school library," —
" and which," said his lordship, " if they were to teach any
religion worthy of the name, and yet to be free from all peculiar
doctrines, he should be curious to see."
From the eloquent speech of Lord Stanley in the House of
Commons, June 14th of the same year, I cannot refrain from
quoting the following :
" It was impossible not to ask the House and the country to
consider, whether or not those great points of doctrine and faith
upon which the several sections of the Christian community con-
46
scientiously diftered, and which yet were so interwoven with the
great scheme of Christianity, and were so important in influencing
Christian conduct and Christian motive, that they could not be
overlooked by the Church, or blinked by the people, or be com-
plimented away, for the purpose of conciliating persons of various
denominations and opinions ; it was impossible," he said, " not to
ask the House and the country to consider this question in its con-
nexion u'ith those points of faith and doctrine. . . . For instance,
the great scheme of redemption, the doctrine of justification by
faith, the efficacy of infant baptism, the solemn mystery of the holy
Eucharist ; and yet one and all of these must be frittered away,
one and all of these they must consent to cede at once, and to put
aside, as matter not to be treated of in public education, if they
insisted on adopting the Government scheme of instruction. For
according to that plan. Baptists, Unitarians, Socinians, Quakers,
and Roman Catholics, all those who differed upon any of these
points, and differed conscientiously, were to be educated together.
Now if these, or any of these points, were mere points of abstract
theory, if they were mere dogmas, the solution of which the one
way or the other was of no great importance, he should say, in
the name of Christian charity, and for the purpose of combining,
as far as we could, all good men, and of softening the animosities
of conflicting sects, let us lay aside whatever is not important,
let us lay aside whatever is not essential, let us give up all points
of curious speculation, and let us be united. But when he saw
that these were not such dogmas, when he saw that they were main
points of Christian faith and doctrine, believing that by them,
mainly, motives must he produced in the hearts of our children, he
could not, from any fancied scheme of conciliation, consent to jmt
into the back ground, — he could not consent to treat as matters of
minor importance, — he could not consent to treat as matters of
indifference, or to put aside those principles which he held to be
among the fundamental doctrines of that system of Christianity,
which was the religion of the Established Church of the country."
— Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, Vol. xlviii.
col. 229—301.
47
The Italics are given from a re})rint of the speech among
sundry Papers on Education, lately printed for the Metropolitan
Church Union. Rivingtons, 1850.
No. III.
See page 35.
As a document illustrative of my meaning, I should here have
introduced the proposal of Archdeacon Hare, but as I have occa-
sion to do so at length in my next Letter, I must refer the reader
to that ; merely stating, for the present, that a wide distinction is
to be drawn between defining terms and asserting or reasserting
doctrines. All I have advanced is, that it might be needful for
Convocation to meet and define the term regeneration in its usual
ecclesiastical sense ; and herein I was happy to find myself sup-
ported by the valued authority of the Archdeacon. But further
than this I do not go : indeed, as to reasserting the doctrine, —
this, I believe, would be most dangerous as a precedent, and
most pernicious in itself. What can be gained by the reassertion
of that which has already been asserted with sufficient clearness?
What but fresh food for controversy 1 creating fresh appetite for
change ? above all, an admission of past incompetence in the
Church to teach clearly, which would be absolutely fatal to her
claim of authority for the future ? But, as the effect of mis-
representation is always to weaken the faith of some, I earnestly
advise the doubtful in this matter to consult Dr. Wordsworth in
his late Occasional Sermons, Serm. VIII., pp. 197 — 199 ; also
Townsend's Ecclesiastical and Civil History, Vol. I., pp. 160,
161.
THE END.
Gilbert & Rivington, Printers, St. John's Square, London.
Just published by the same Author, the Second Edition of
THE FIRST LETTER.
Price One Shilling.
Also, in cover, neatly stitched together,
THE THREE LETTERS.
Price Three Shillings.
RIVINGTONS,
ST. Paul's church yard, and waterlog place, London.
THIRD LETTER,
Right Hon. and Dear Sir,
In resuming my pen to conclude these Letters,
I have to congratulate you on the new and improved
aspect of affairs. When I first ventured to address
you, it was under, perhaps, too gloomy an appre-
hension of what the decision of the Government on
the proposed measure of Education might be. The
Premier has now relieved us from our fears, so far as
this question is concerned, and spoken his sense of
it in a manner worthy of the rulers of this religious
country. The education of the people is not yet to
be taken out of the hands of the parties hitherto con-
sidered the most competent to instruct them, and a
mere secular system of teaching set up, the support
of which should be compulsory on the people, and
effected by a rate levied in every different parish,
at the command of a central authority, vested in the
a2
Privy Council. We heartily rejoice that the Govern-
ment have seen through the evils of this abomi-
nation ; — that they have boldly declared against it,
both as an intolerable burden and encroachment on
the liberties of the country, and also as an insult to
its religious sense and character ', a sure means of
corrupting at its very sources the faith and spiritual
life of the rising generation. In the language of Lord
John, "It was a great fault of this measure, as it
must be of any such measure, to seek to establish
any system of education, in which the pupils would
not be fully informed of the great and leading truths
of the Christian religion. Moral doctrines lost nine-
tenths of their force, when they w^ere deprived of the
weight of religious injunction and enforcement of the
Divine authority, and the Divine sanction, on which
eternal welfare or misery depended." And again, " It
could scarcely, he thought, be doubted, that the
people of this country desired to say, ' Do not inter-
fere causelessly with the liberty hitherto enjoyed by
the great body of the members of the Church of
England, do not interfere with the great body of the
Dissenters; but allow them to continue the system of
education which they have both hitherto supported^' "
We thank the noble Lord for this avowal. He has
' It was on these two points especially that the argument
against the Bill on the second reading was made to rest, by the
Hon. mover of the Amendment, Mr. Stafford, whom the
Church has to thank for his labours on that occasion.
' "Times" Report, Thursday, April 18, 1850.
spoken out his own mind, and the mind of the
country, fairly and boldly. In such dealing with
subjects of this nature, we shall ever find the best
practical answer to the question, " What has the
State to do with religion?"
But suppose it had not been so ? Suppose any
other course had been taken ? If the State had shown
itself indifterent? If, instead of opposing, it had
encouraged the notion of instructing the people with-
out religion, or of fusing all religions into one gene-
ral creed, "free from all peculiarities;" if it had
proposed to send forth from the schools of this
country a youth full of knowledge, and ambitious of
distinction, but with no principles, no motives, no
affections, no sense of obligation derived from reli-
gion ; — it seems scarcely possible to overstate the
danger and degradation of such a position. For,
assuming to itself the right of punishing crime, of
claiming respect under weighty penalties for property,
for rank, for order, for the Crown and all subordinate
offices comprised within its own constitution, and
yet doing nothing tow^ards the furnishing of any
sufficient motive to the obedience and good conduct
required ; what now becomes the position of a
State ? One painful to contemplate or describe. It
is degraded to the rank of the mere executioner !
No longer the guardian of the country's good, no
more the friend and foster-mother of virtue, honour,
and morality, no more the patron of all that can
adorn the private, or ennoble the public character of
a peoi)le, it is to be regarded only as the chief minister
of wrath for crimes committed, — itself the greatest
criminal for neglecting to supply that religious
culture from which alone the w^holesome fruits of
order could be expected to proceed ! A free popu-
lation is sure ultimately to rise against an authority,
which exerts itself only to punish and not to conci-
liate ; Avhich presumes to impose laws without
instilling the obligations to their observance, to
punish transgression without persuading to obe-
dience.
With this limitation, but with no other, would I
admit, that it is incompetent to a State to enforce
a religion or a morality ; or that the utmost morality
which it can enforce is some very low standard,
such as the average of the population might be
got to assent to. Such an assertion appears to me
little short of a libel on the State. Yet, if it be meant
that the State cannot rightfully enforce by penalties,
more than what it has endeavoured by proper
means of instruction to bring the people wdlhngly to
observe, the doctrine is correct. But, beyond this,
there is no limitation to its powers. It is perfectly
competent to it, — it is, indeed, its duty \ — to teach
and to enforce the very highest morality, nay, to
teach religion itself, without which there is no
^ In this I agree with what fell from Mr. Roebuck : " The
education of the people came clearly and distinctly," he said,
" within the limits of Government." "Times" Report, April 18.
The only question is, How is the Government to carry it out ?
morality worth the name. And the duty and com-
petency of a State, in this respect, is not to be
measured by the average notions of the population,
or by what they might propose or assent to. Let
the State but educate her people in any true sense of
the word, and there is no fear that they will question
or dispute her authority, — no fear but they will
yield her the right both of teaching and enforcing
any amount of truth, which the truth itself requires.
The heathen governments of old never waited for the
leave of the people, what doctrines, or what amount
of doctrines they should teach. Solon, Lycurgus,
Numa — even the Pharaohs and Beltshazzars — never
feared to inculcate what they knew of the truth.
Neither Mahomet nor Confucius were held back by
any reserve on this head. It is an empty fear of
this modern age of excessive refinement : those
other statesmen of earlier times felt none of it.
They erred, indeed, in the kind of doctrine ; they
differed in the nature of the several traditions which
they taught ; but, in the principle which led them
boldly to prescribe their respective codes of religion
and morality, they were united, and they were
right. Why should it be different with us, who
have greater advantages, and the purer light of
Revelation ? Away, then, with the notion, that a
State is the mere aggregate of its attorneys and
police ! unable and incompetent to rise above the
sentiments of the constituent mass of the popula-
tion ! Regard it, rather, as having a commission
8
and authority from the great Being who appointed
its existence, to teach His truth ; — a chosen instru-
ment to enforce His rehgion. True, it will not
effectually do this, in presence of a more directly
commissioned body, without the help and alliance
of that body ; in other words, it must teach through
the medium of the Church. But this touches only
the method of its teaching : its duty of teaching
remains unaffected. In the true notion of it. it is
the representative of the collective mind and wisdom
of the whole community, the organ of its power and
of its distinctive functions ; and it acts through the
persons of its several Ministers. Thus it has its
Minister of Finance, of Home and Foreign Affairs,
of War, and other departments ; and, in like manner,
it has its Minister of Religion. Its Minister of
Religion is the Church. For this branch of its rela-
tions is one too solemn, and too important, to be
exercised by, or confided to, a single individual.
It can only be left, where God Himself has left it,
to the hands of a Ministry delegated to this express
office by His own command, and responsible, in the
highest sense, for the due discharge of its duty. It
is possible to take too low a view of the State, no
less than of the Church. In the highest and the
true view of them, they are two co-ordinate powers,
ha\dng one and the same origin, and destined alike
to work out the good of man, and the -glory of
God.
In advocating the claims of Church schools to
9
the support of Government, as a duty which they
owe both to the Church and to themselves, I wish
to avoid saying any thing offensive to other denomi-
nations of Christians. But let it not be thought
that, in contending for the maintenance of her
Creeds and formularies, it is at all peculiar to the
Church of England to insist on these. The de-
nominations too are aware of their value. In Scot-
land, where they still hope for a scheme of education,
acceptable alike to the Establishment and to all
denominations ; it is not that they propose to
dispense with Creeds, but to agree in adopting one *
which shall be agreeable to all, and yet include the
chief distinctive doctrines of Revelation. Should
we be upbraided with the contrast herein afforded
in our own country, the mere statement of the
different circumstances would seem a sufficient
justification of ourselves, and a title to the respect
and defence of any government. It is that we have
an old-fashioned attachment to the Creeds of an-
tiquity ; we do not depart from them in the least,
as thinking it impossible to alter them for the
better; and having once incorporated them into
our forms of worship, we say, nolumus leges Anglia
mutari. And in this attachment, we carry with us
a large proportion of the sense and intelligence of
England, which, with all its admiration for real
improvement, refuses to cast aside, for the sake of
* The one proposed is, I believe, the Creed of the Westminster
Assembly.
10
change, wliat comes down to it recommended by
the wisdom of its ancestors. Nor arc we to be
charged with singularity, or narrow prejudice, on
this account ; for in the first great Protestant
Council in Germany, in the Confession of Augs-
burg, the same principle was laid down. The
Preface to the acts of that Council runs thus : " That
the doctrine here contained, is both supported by sure
testimonies of Scripture, and approved by the old
and received Creeds, and that it is tlie unvarying
and unbroken consent of the true Church of old,
maintained against the multitude of heresies and
errors." The French, Dutch, and Swiss Protestant
Churches drew up similar Confessions. So little
resemblance is there between the Reformers of that
day, and those of the present, who cry out for the
Bible and nothing but the Bible ; by which they
mean the Bible interpreted, mutilated, curtailed,
and abridged, in whatever w^ay they please \
If this were the only objection taken to our
Church system, it would be of little account. But
^ But of all plans, that extolled by Mr. Roebuck appears the
strangest! (See Parliamentary Debates, April 18), o^ merging
all religious peculiarities, and leaving a sort of general religion
behind, which is to contain " all the broad principles of ordinary
morality, and all the statements which aid and assist it, selected
from Scripture!'' Stranger still, that such a proceeding should
be said to show a truly Catholic spirit ! To pick and choose
from the main body of Christian truth sucli parts as please the
individual fancies of men, may pass very well for a definition of
heresy, l)ut certainly not of catholicity.
11
I fear there is a stronger feeling at work against us,
grounded on an exaggerated view of our internal
differences. Suffer me, then, before I bring these
Letters to a conclusion, to recal your attention for a
few minutes to this part of the subject. Most gladly
would I be made the instrument of recovering in
any degree the confidence which I feel to be due to
the Church and to her system of education, not-
witstanding the disputes which are rife amongst us,
but which after all are a sign of life, — that life which
God has given us.
The Government, dear Sir, to which you belong,
had doubtless some sympathy with the late Judg-
ment. Be the merits of that Judgment what they
may (for on this I offer no opinion), it was mani-
festly the intention of the court to deal mercifully
with the parties whom they were pleased to identify
with the party aggrieved, and to give them the
benefit of every apparent doubt. This in the eye
of the law appeared to be the right and merciful
course ; and we probably owe to it the retention
among us of one valued section of our beloved
Church. But the court declined to interfere with
doctrines. These, it declared, were beyond its juris-
diction. It left them to the authority of the
Church. Of course, after this declaration, it is
fairly open to the Church to make any effort to
bring about a better understanding among the peo-
ple, as to her sense on the doctrines thus avowedly
12
left to her own determination, more especially on
that, ahout which the recent controversy has arisen.
In so acting, there can he no cause of offence to the
State. The point is purposely reserved for her
decision, if it be not already decided. Whether by
praying license that Convocation may meet for the
purpose, or by concerting any'' public measure
which may otherwise seem good to them, it is
clearly left to the ecclesiastical authorities to pursue
their own line of poUcy on the occasion ; and what-
ever they propose, there seems no reason to appre-
hend any vexatious opposition from other quarters.
Within ourselves, and as a Church, we have the
same elements as before to work with. Nothing
has been said or done, that can be fairly construed
as disturbing either doctrines or parties. It is still
our advantage to have the benefit of differently con-
stituted minds, and differently formed habits of
thinking, to bring to the consideration of the
matter. And no small advantage it is, notwith-
standing some little difference in the interpretation
of our formularies, that ''all the ministers of the
Church of England are united in receiving the same
Scriptures, in professing the same Creeds, in sub-
scribing the same Articles, in teaching the same
Catechism, in partaking of one bread and drinking
of one cup in the holy communion, and in using
the same Liturgical offices of Baptism and Con-
° A Bill is now before the House.
13
firm at ion ^" What we want is a true and earnest
spirit of hearty co-operation ; not to magnify dif-
ferences, not to exalt parties or persons, but to aim
at truth, and, while we aim at it, not to forget
brotherly love and concord.
My remarks shall be now confined to the one sub-
ject in controversy : a subject, be it remembered,
intimately connected with Education. There is in-
deed no doctrine of the Creed so interwoven with the
business of religious teaching as this of Baptism; none
which so vitally affects the interests of the rising
generation. But what is to be said of our differences
on this subject ? Our adversaries do not fail to
point at them, to upbraid us with them, to make
them the occasion of bringing our whole system into
discredit. For answer, I do not hesitate to refer
again to an assertion of my former Letter, and to
say that the differences within the Church are ex-
tremely exaggerated ; that they exist more in word
than in reality ; and that they will be found mostly
to turn on an ambiguous expression, not found dog-
matically applied in any of the ancient and authorized
Creeds, which, consequently, scarce two persons
understand alike, and in the use of which some even
appear satisfied to attach no distinct signification to
it at all® !" Let others make what use of this they
' Occasional Sermons, delivered at Westminster, by Christo-
pher Wordsworth, D.D., Serm. II. p. 24. Second Ed.
* I might add upon the word in question, that we are not
helped out, by its being one of Saxon, or purely English origin.
14
please; I merely assert the fact. And I am thankful
to perceive the opinion gaining ground, that it is
really on this that our present difficulties chiefly
turn ; and that consequently it is not beyond the
reach of the authorities to bring us to some good
understanding on this matter, either by clearing the
signification of the term, or else by allowing, as far
as may be done consistently with other accredited
expressions of the faith, some little latitude in the
precise way of understanding Baptismal Regeneration.
Appended to my last will be found certain docu-
ments containing resolutions which have since been
made the subject of warm, but not, I think, unpro-
fitable, controversy, and which, if conducted in the
same spirit as it was begun, cannot fail to bring out
the truth in stronger relief, and thus to be of lasting
benefit to the Church. My own concern with the
resolutions was merely so far as they bore on certain
statements of the doctrine we are considering. In
referring to them again, I beg leave to do so, without
making myself responsible for any other statements
they involve regarding the late Judgment. I merely
wish to point out the careful and judicious manner in
which all ambiguity of expression in the statement
of doctrine was avoided in those resolutions, and the
safer path pursued of adhering to the terms of the
ancient Creeds for the mode of expressing the bap-
tismal doctrine. And this position remains perfectlj^
unaffected by what has since fallen from the dispu-
tants on either side. Not that we should speak of
15
that document as a full statement of the truth. It
was clearly not intended, and would be consequently
deficient, as a complete expression of catholic doc-
trine ; but it contains the germ of it, the admission of
which will necessarily infer whatever else is required
to be believed on this head.
I thought I saw in the statement a desire for
peace, and the manifestation of a kindly feeling
towards other members of the Church. And I
have been happy since to learn that such was in
truth the feeling. It was eminently the desire of
" the chief supporter of the resolutions " (and that
"with very little dissent in the meeting"), to
obtain the countenance, and to consult the feelings
of ' ' those who are afraid of making broad state-
ments of regeneration, but would not willingly be
thought to deny God's grace given to infants ^"
The manifestation of such a spirit, is surely not
only matter of thankfulness, but also a ground for
claiming the like moderation in others. To see the
right hand of fellowship thus held out, from a
quarter where some would not have expected it, is
a call upon all to come forward and do their part,
and to exercise the same discretion and forbearance ;
if they do not, the responsibility rests on them-
selves. They will be the parties, who, when there
is a cry for peace, make them ready for war ; — who
set up a new principle of nonconformity, no longer
' From Mr. Dodsworth's Letter.
16
with some newly invented dogmas or expressions of
party, but with the accredited declarations of a
catholic Creed. They will be those who perpetuate
the breach, and distract the Church, in whose
bosom they were born. They will be the parties
who refuse concession, only (as it will appear) lest
they should have to share the credit of it with
others. May God forbid that such a spectacle
should be presented to the world, and provoke the
sneer of the common adversary ! But I anticipate
no such result. In the great dangers which beset
the Church and the nation, — the Church, if our
divisions are kept up ; the nation, if the masses are
left without adequate provision for their educational
wants, — such paltiy considerations will, I am per-
suaded, find no place. The exigencies of the times,
if not any higher considerations, will persuade us to
look at opinions, and not persons ; at the truth itself,
and not the individual teachers of it.
Let us see, now, how the question stands. We
are imated to take, as a first basis of agi'eement, the
unequivocal expression of the Nicene Creed : "I
acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins."
This, it is believed, is a sure foundation for all
needful development of the doctrine. Or, if a fuller
expression be required, we might add the familiar
words in the answer of the Catechism: "Wherein
I was made a member of Christ, the child of God,
and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." And
both these together might be taken as a complete
17
and satisfactory basis for a common exposition of
the baptismal faith. To these we might invite
attention, as comprehending the necessary elements
of that grant of grace which, we teach, is given in
Baptism to those who receive it rightly '. That the
grant is free and unconditional — though in after-
life the continuance of the grace must depend on the
use made of it — might be further insisted on. But
these and such other points might be regarded as
deductions from the main truth, more than as essen-
tial parts of it. So also the necessary distinction
between the grace which regenerates, and the grace
which renews or converts the soul ; between the
first communication of the Spirit, and those abiding
influences which are the fruit of repentance, faith,
and prayer, in later years ; between the sacramental
grant, and those larger outpourings of the Spirit,
when it " witnesses with our spirit, that we are the
sons of God," when we "no longer walk after the
flesh," but when, in the gradual progress of the
Christian life, the affections become purified, the
motives exalted, the understanding enlightened, and
" every thought brought into captivity to the obe-
dience of Christ." These, and such other topics,
would be left to the discretion of the individual
teacher ; for, highly important as they are, they are
' Art. xxvii., " rec^e baptismum suscipientes :" a more gene-
ral word than the " qui digne percipiunt," of Art. xxv. : and
intended to include the case of infants, to whom the rite is duly
administered.
B
18
not properly of the essence of the baptismal faith.
This appears to involve essentially no more than
the two points above proposed, as a basis of. a
general agreement within the Chm'ch. r-'j "o*:!' !
That such a basis would prove acceptable ought
not to be assumed without competent authority.
But such authority I find not in one place only, but
in many, and in far more than I could here adduce.
I find it in a document emanating from a living
authority, and which I append to the resolutions at
the end. I find it in the work of Bishop Bethell, in
w^hat I might call a locus classicus in that w^ork,
from the frequency with wdiich the words have been
cited. They are these : — " In common with the
Church of Rome and the Lutheran Churches, we
hold that Regeneration, or the New Birth, is the
spiritual grace of Baptism conveyed over to the soul
in the due administration of that Sacrament. We
hold, in common with those Churches, that in adults
duly qualified by repentance and faith, the guilt of
sin, both original and actual, is cancelled in Baptism ;
that in infants, wdio have committed no actual or
Avilful sin, and can possess no such qualifications,
the guilt of original sin is done away; and that
infants, no less than adults, are made in Baptism
children of God, members of Christ, inheritors of the
kingdom of heaven, and partakers of the privileges
and blessings of the Gospel Covenant. But the
Church of Rome contends, that not only the guilt,
but the very essence and being of original sin, is
19
removed by Baptism ; the Church of England declares
that this corruption of nature remains even in the
regenerate'-." The same is the testimony of Arch-
deacon Hare : " Nor is this truth a mere abstract pro-
position ; I believe it to be of great practical moment
for our Christian teaching and education. It is be-
cause their sins are forgiven them for Christ's sake,
that St, John writes to those whom he terms little
children ; it is for the selfsame reason, that we are
empowered to train up our children as members of
Christ, and children of God, and inheritors of the
kingdom of heaven '\"
But we can never allow that the Church has no
certain doctrine on this head \ Do we deny, or do
we not deny, the particular propositions just recited
from the Creed and from the Catechism ? My
persuasion is, that few would wish to deny them,
who profess themselves members of our Church.
Some may plead, and not unreasonably, for a lati-
tude of interpretation in the sense they assign to
words, when they come to the more technical ex-
pressions adopted in the services. But this by no
means prevents their hearty concurrence in the
basis above named. And can any deny that there
is evil to be apprehended, by too much confining
the attention to the mere word regeneration? by
- Bishop Bethell on Regeneration, Pref. xvii.
^ Letter to the Hon. R. Cavendish, by Julius Charles Hare,
Archdeacon of Lewes, p. 4,
* See Document at the end of this Letter, No. 2.
B 2
20
appearing to think only of the effects wrought un-
consciously upon infants, and not of those of which
we become the conscious subjects afterwards ? by
dwclHng exclusively on what may be called the
mysterious and miraculous, and omitting what be-
longs rather to the moral part of the Sacrament ?
For from hence it comes, that people have so much
misunderstood the subject. The very word has
begun to be confounded with other gi'aces and gifts
of the Spirit ; or else, in its restricted and sacra-
mental sense, it has been thought to savour of
superstition or of Romanism — to imply a change of
the very nature of the baptized, so that if only they
lead decent and respectable lives, they are straight-
w^ay sure of eternal happiness, and live the special
favourites of heaven ! Indeed, wdthout this, it
seems in itself an evil, when we thrust any part
w^hatever of Christian faith and doctrine into undue
and excessive prominence : for is it not as much a
deformity when a feature of the natural body is
distorted, by being forced into unnatural propor-
tions, as when it is paralysed by total misuse ?
And in like manner, if we so unduly exalt the
initiatoiy sacrament, as to seem unmindful of con-
version and renovation and the fruits of the Spirit
following, which we ought at least equally to insist
upon and enforce, — are w^e not doing \'iolence to
the analogy of the faith ? Are we not making the
baptismal doctrine more like an excrescence which
deforms, than a natural feature which improves and
21
harmonizes the general aspect of Christian truth ?
To bon'ow the illustration of an eloquent writer,
"Absorbed only in the contemplation of the par-
ticular portion of the subject immediately before us,
we are led to overlook its relation to others, and the
relation of each to the whole. We have separated,
as by a prism, a single ray, and see eveiy object
tinged with its peculiar and distinct hue ; but, be it
bright and beautiful as it may, it is not itself the
light. That is a candid, uniform, and perfect glory,
which consists not in the separation, but m the
union and incorporation with each other of every
differing colour; and is the only medium through
which the real proportions of any object can be
discerned ^"
Nor let it be thought that I am peculiar in laying
this stress on the importance of not caricaturing, as it
were, the doctrines of the Gospel. " The enormous
exaggeration," says Archdeacon Hare, " of the power
of baptismal grace, to the disparagement, and almost
exclusion, of the subsequent converting influence of
the Spirit, have driven people into the opposite
extreme, where baptismal gi'ace has been unduly de-
preciated. The monstrous assertions concerning a
change of nature in Baptism have impelled those,
who could not veil their eyes to the fallaciousness
* Sermon delivered at the Visitation of the Archdeacon of
Lewes, by the Rev. James S. M. Anderson, M.A., Chaplain to
the Queen, &c. 1849.
22
of these assertions, to deny any thing beyond an
outward change of state"."
To avoid such dangerous indiscretions in the
statement of Divine truth, would be to remove the
chief impediment to a fair and moderate understanding
on the doctrine now in dispute. And I am further
strengthened in this opinion by the just observations
of an eminent divine. " It may be justly ques-
tioned," says Dr. Wordsworth, " whether the diver-
vengency of opinion would be found, on a calm and
candid reviewal, to be so w^ide as some of the re-
spective advocates seem to imagine. And doubtless
much of the discrepancy would vanish, if the partizans,
on either side, would endeavour, without passion or
prejudice, to examine each other's opinions, and to
state their own. But it cannot be denied that any
difference of teaching, on so vital a subject as this, is
most deeply to be deplored. And it is earnestly to
be desired that the Clergy and Laity would join in
prayer to God to unite them in one heart and mind ;
and that they would attentively scrutinize the grounds
of their difference with charity and meekness ....
It cannot be doubted that the recent judicial decision
has placed the Book of Common Prayer on a firmer
basis than before. Formerly a disposition was shown
in certain quarters to mutilate it ; but now all parties
accept and maintain it. And we shall be greatly
''' Letter to Hon. R. Cavendish, p. 24. And see the Charge,
p. 101.
23
wanting to ourselves and to the cause of unity and
truth, if by any ill-considered and intemperate
measure we forfeit this vantage-ground, and mar this
benefit, and do not endeavour to avail ourselves of
it quietly, patiently, and charitably, for the healing
of divisions, and the establishment of truth and
peace ^"
And it is a hopeful sign of such union being
actually brought about, when we see two other
champions of the cause, differing somewhat in their
school of divinity, yet agreeing on this point. One
of them remarks :
" I would hope that, if any measure be adopted,
by whatsoever authority, to render the declaration
of the universality of Baptismal Regeneration more
explicit and more stringent, care will also be taken
to clear up the ambiguous meaning of the word Re-
generation, and to declare that, in its ecclesiastical
sense, it is in no way to be understood as identical
with, or interfering with, or precluding the necessity
of conversion ; which requires a conscious, responsi-
ble subject, and is necessary, through the frailty of
our nature, in all at a later period of life. The
popular confusion of these two distinct acts, which
are almost equally indispensable for all such as attain
to years of personal responsibility, is the main ground
of the ever-renewed disputes concerning Baptismal
Regeneration; and a brief authoritative exposition
^ Occasional Sermons, preached at Westminster. Serm. II.,
pp. 24, 25.
24
of this point, if wc have the wisdom to draw up one,
\Noiikl be of inestimable vakie to the Church. With-
out this, the increased stringency in our assertion of
it would be incalculably disastrous \"
"I am thankful," says another, and in reference
to the above citation, " to agree, as I hope, with the
remedial measure [here] proposed .... If to distin-
guish ' regeneration ' from ' conversion ' be all which
is required, the way out of oui' present difficulties
would be very easy .... The healing of this misun-
derstanding would be a very deep blessing. And if
(as Archdeacon Hare's statement the more encourages
one to hope) there be, to many of those who do not
receive our services in their literal sense, no greater
obstacle, this might easily be removed. These desire
only what the Church must ever desire, inculcate,
pray for, that her children should stop short of
nothing, until they ' believe in the Lord their God,
and fear Him, and love Him with all their heart,
with all their mind, with all their soul, and with all
theii' strength".' "
On the other hand, those w^ho take upon them to
resist the application of the term Regeneration in
any sense to Baptism, and to a})ply it in an entirely
new sense of their own, seem, unhappily, to offer us
no hope of accommodation. Indeed, in their sense
* Letter to the Hon. R. Cavendish, by C. Julius Hare, M.A.,
&:c. &c., pp. 37, 38.
' Dr. Pusey on the Royal Supremacy, pp. 252. 256. Comp.
also, pp. 178. 188—191. 220. 224.
25
of it, it is even doubtful whether any man ever yet
was regenerate on this side the grave ! To suit,
their own theory, they are obUged to lower the
meaning of the term, even taking their own sense of
it. I If, then. Regeneration, in the Church's use of
it, appear to them too strong a word, why should
they refuse us an accommodation which they demand
for themselves ? Why should they run counter to
the established usage of all the churches in Chris-
tendom, merely to set up a theory of their own,
which, after all, they cannot substantiate ?
But for others, more soberly and more peacefully
disposed, when they come to consider the matter
closely, when they look back on the long-familiar
words of their Catechism, Creeds, and Services —
words, be it remembered, not so much of charity, as of
faith — there seems to be a good hope, that they will
be able ultimately to meet on the ground proposed ;
that mutual suspicions and jealousies will be laid
aside ; and that parties hitherto drawn up in oppo-
sition will find that they have been kept asunder
more by mutual misunderstanding than by real con-
trariety of opinion. Agreeing in so much besides,
in the Canon of Scripture as the rule of faith, in
the Creeds, Catechism, and Liturgy of the Church
of England, it is not unreasonable to hope that they
will be brought in all things to" speak the same
words, and to mind the same thing."
I cannot conclude better than in the fervent words
of one who called us to union, now many years ago :
26
" Jleniember, brethren, that our enemies ai*e many
and mighty. And is tliis a time to divide our
house, and to form parties and factions ? Is this
the season for discord ? Remember tlie sacred tics
which bind us to one another ; as men, we are all
under the same condemnation, we are all heirs of
the same corrupted nature, equally, one and all,
children of wrath ; as Christians, w^e seek for re-
conciliation with an offended Maker, through the
atoning merits of an all-prevailing intercession of
the same crucified, the same glorified Saviour,
through the sanctification of the same Blessed
Spirit ; we worship the same God, the Trinity in
Unity, We are brethren of the same household,
wdth one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God
and Father of us all. . . . As brethren let us act
cordially together, and gradually our differences will
lessen, our agreements will extend '."
This advice has, I believe, already, to a great
extent, been followed : already it was beginning to
produce its fruits, when the recent controversy
mihappily arose. This may, nevertheless, be turned
to good account. It may stir up a more earnest
spirit of enquiry ; it may attach us more to our
venerable Creeds ; it may make us more thankful
for a Church, which requires all to be brought to the
only infallible test of Scripture ; above all, it may
lead us to prove our faith by our practice, by more
' Call to Union, on the principles of the English Reformation.
By W. F. Hook, D.D. 4th edit. p. 35.
27
strenuously exerting ourselves to train up the youth
committed to us, as though we really believed them
to be depositories of a Divine Grace, partakers of
the same holy birthright as ourselves, and fellow-
heirs, through Christ, of eternal life.
I am.
Right Hon. and Dear Sir,
With every sentiment of esteem,
Very faithfully yours,
WILLIAM H. HOARE.
tnr[-w iBrll
DOCUMENTS.
No. I.
Resolutions of Conference, Lancaster Place.
(Reprinted from former Letter; the Italics are my own.)
1. That whatever, at the present time, be the force of the sen-
tence delivered on appeal in the case of Gorham v. the
Bishop of Exeter, the Church of England will eventually be
bound by the said sentence, unless it shall openly and
expressly reject the erroneous doctrine sanctioned thereby.
2. That the remission of original sin to all infants in and by the
grace of Baptism is an essential part of the Article, " One
Baptism for the remission of sins."
3. That — to omit other questions raised by the said sentence —
such sentence, while it does not deny the liberty of holding
that Article in the sense heretofore received, does equally
sanction the assertion that original sin is a bar to the right
reception of Baptism, and is not remitted, except when God
bestows regeneration beforehand by an art of prevenient
grace (whereof Holy Scripture and the Church are wholly
silent), thereby rendering the benefits of Holy Baptism
altogether uncertain and precarious.
4. That to admit the lawfulness of holding an exposition of an
Article of the Creed contradictory of the essential meaning
of that Article is, in truth and in fact, to abandon that
Article.
5. That inasmuch as the Faith is one, and rests upon one princi-
ple of authority, the conscious, deliberate, and wilful aban-
donment of the essential meaning of aw Article of the Creed
destroys the Divine foundation on which alone the entire
Faith is propounded by the Church.
30
G. That anv portion of the Church which does so abandon the
essential meaning of an Article of the Creed forfeits, not
only the Catholic doctrine in that Article, but also the office
and authority to witness and teach as a Member of the
Universal Church.
7. That, by such conscious, wilful, and deliberate act, such por-
tion of the Church becomes formally separated from the
Catholic body, and can no longer assure to its members the
Grace of the Sacraments and the Remission of Sins.
8. That all measures consistent with the present legal position of
the Church ought to be taken without delay, to obtain an
authoritative declaration by the Church of the doctrine of
Holy Baptism, impugned by the recent sentence : as, for
instance, by praying licence for the Church in Convocation
to declare that doctrine ; or by obtaining an Act of Par-
liament, to give legal effect to the decisions of the collective
Episcopate on this and all other matters purely spiritual.
9. That, failing such measures, all efforts must be made to obtain
from the said Episcopate, acting only in its spiritual cha-
racter, a re-affirmation of the doctrine of Holy Baptism,
impugned by the said sentence.
Signed,
H. E. Makning, M.A., Archdeacon of Chichester.
Robert J. Wilberforce, M.A., Archdeacon of the Fast
Riding.
Thomas Thorp, B.D., Archdeacon of Bristol.
(Vide Second Letter.)
Declaration issued by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, to the
Clergy of the Diocese, April 16, 1850.
We, the undersigned, Richard, by Divine permission Bishop
of the Diocese of Bath and Wells, within the Church of England,
being deeply impressed with the great disquietude which prevails
within the said Diocese, in consequence of the decision of the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, in the case of Gorham
V. the Bishop of Exeter, —
31
For the satisfaction of our own mind, and from a desire that
our judgment and intention in this matter may be generally
known to all whom it may concern within our Diocese, do hereby
declare as hereinafter follows : —
Whereas the construction put upon the Articles and Formu-
laries of the Church of England, by the said decision, implies
that the remission of original sin to all infants in, and by the
grace of, the Sacrament of Baptism, is not necessarily the doc-
trine of the Church of England, although such remission of sins
has been always held to be affirmed in anil by an Article of the
Nicene Creed, (to wit,) " I acknowledge one Baptism for the
remission of sins ; "
And, whereas doubt has been cast by the said decision upon
the teaching of the Catechism of the Church of England, that all
infants are " made members of Christ, children of God, and in-
heritors of the kingdom of heaven," in and by their Baptism ; —
We do hereby solemnly declare, that is the doctrine of the
Church of England, as of the whole Church of Christ in all ages,
that original sin is remitted to all infants by the application of
the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in and by the
Sacrament of Baptism ; and that it is the plain teaching of the
Church of England that all infants are " made members of Christ,
children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven," in
and by that holy Sacrament.
R. Bath and Wells.
London, April 15,
1850.
No. II.
The Church of England not chargeable ivith uncertain speaking
on the nature and effects of Baptism.
" From a review of our Articles and Liturgy, we may derive
the following conclusions : —
" 1. They maintain the doctrine of Regeneration iu Baptism
32
in the most decided Jiuinner, grounding it on the same texts of
Scripture from which the ancient Christians had deduced it; in-
cluding under it forgiveness of sin, the gift of the Holy Ghost,
and tlie inheritance of the kingdom of heaven : and never intro-
ducing the word itself except in conjunction with Baptism.
" 2. They teach, in common with the writings of the ancient
Christians, the necessity of faith and repentance as qualifications
for the salutary effects of Baptism. But they never contemplate
any person, how^ever qualified, as regenerate, till he is actually
baptized.
" 3. They suppose that infants, who are necessarily free from
actual sin, are duly qualified for Baptism, and are looked on
by God precisely in the same light as penitents and believers ;
and the/j unequivocally assert that every baptized infant, without
exception, is born again.
" 4. They suppose that all baptized persons, whether infants
or adults, contract a solemn engagement to holiness and newness
of life ; and that their continuance in a state of salvation depends
on their future conduct.
" 5. They lay down a very plain and broad distinction between
this grace of Regeneration, and conversion, repentance, renova-
tion, and such Christian virtues and changes of the inward frame,
as require the concurrence of man's will and endeavours, iinply
degrees, and are capable of increase." — Doctrine of Regeneration
in Baptism. By the Rt. Rev. Chr. Bethell, Lord Bishop of
Bangor. Chap. VI.
" This is the peculiar, distinctive teaching of the Church of
England. Her education, through all her Services, from Bap-
tism to Burial, is the training of a baptized soul. She appeals
on all occasions to the covenant entered into at Baptism ; to the
graces then conferred, and to the duties then undertaken. She
addresses them as Christians .... as regenerate, as adopted
into Christ's visible fold ; as possessed of certain spiritual grace
by virtue of their entrance into the covenant ; and leads them
forward to further steps in the divine life ; to the renewing of
33
their minds, the conversion of their hearts, the amendment of
their lives, and the sanctification of their souls ; and to the dedi-
cation of their bodies, as a reasonable, lively sacrifice unto God."
— Preface to Reprint of a Note in Townsend's Bible, on St. John
iii. 3—6. Rivingtons, 1850.
The late Mr. Simeon's view, taken from p. 259, vol. II. of
his works, will be found at length in Dr. Hook's recent " Letter
on the Present Crisis," p. 14. Also in Kennawat/'s Manual of
Baptism, pp. 146 — 152. " It is clear," says the latter, " that he
held baptismal Regeneration to be the doctrine of the Reformed
Church of England."
John Wesley says : —
" A man may possibly be born of water, and yet not be born of
the Spirit. There may sometimes be the outward sign, where there
is not the inward grace. I do not now speak with regard to in-
fants. It is certain, our Church supposes, that all who are bap-
tized in their infancy are at the same time bor7i again. And it is
allowed that the whole Office for the Baptism of Infants proceeds
upon this supposition." — J. Wesley, Serm. on John iii. 6.
And the late Bishop Ryder : —
" I would wish generally to restrict the term regeneration to
the baptismal privileges, and considering them as comprehending
not only an external admission into the visible Church, not only
a covenanted title to the pardon and grace of the Gospel, but
even a degree of spiritual aid vouchsafed and ready to offer itself
to our acceptance or rejection at the dawn of reason. I would
recommend a reference to these privileges in our discourses, as
talents which the hearer should have so improved as to bear inte-
rest ; as seed which should have sprung up and produced fruit.
But, at the same time, I would solemnly protest against that most
serious error (which has arisen probably from exalting too highly
the just view of baptismal regeneration) of contemplating all the
individuals of a baptized congregation as converted, as having all
once known the truth and entered upon the right path, though
some may have wandered from it, and others may have made but
C
34
little progress; as not therefore requiring (what all by nature,
and most, it is to be feared, through defective principle and prac-
tice, require) that transformation by the ' renewing of the mind,'
that ' putting off the old man and putting on the new man,' which
is so emphatically enjoined by St, Paul to his baptized Romans
and Ephesians." — Bp. Ryder, Primary Charye to his Clergy.
No. III.
On the distinctiun between a condition to be performed beforehand,
and a stipulation made as to character and conduct afterwards.
The reader is advised to consult Kennaway's Manual of
Christian Baptism, pp. 97 — 102, and pp. 88, 89, on the answer
to the question of the Catechism, " Why then are infants bap-
tized, Sec. ?"
On the words of the service, *' This infant must also faithfully
for his part promise by you that are his sureties, &c." Arch-
deacon Hoare observes : —
" We have already spoken of the common and unconditional
grant of grace in the Baptism of infants, how ready we may hope
that Christ will be on His part most surely to keep and perform
this undoubted assurance .... Having, then, made to us, in the
name of Jesus Christ our Lord, all these ' exceeding great and
precious promises,' she proceeds, as a part of the covenant, and a
blessed result thereof, to enjoin a corresponding promise upon
the baptized, a promise amounting to this, that haviny accepted
the promises of the Gosptel, we will now proceed to fulfil its duties.
... It is the proposing of all these [promises] ' without money
and without price,' which constitutes in our Church, no otherwise
than in Scripture, the true overtures and offers of Christian Bap-
tism. ' After that the kindness and love of God towards man
appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but
according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regenera-
35
tion, and renewing of the Holy Ghost ; which He shed on us
abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour ; that being justi-
fied by His grace we should be made heirs according to the hope
of eternal life.' (Titus iii. 4 — 7.) The obligation which follows,
in the words of the Apostle, are those which find their counter-
part in the requirement of the Church ; ' It is a faithful saying,
and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they
which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good
works.' " (Titus iii. 8.) — Hoare on the Baptismal Service, pp.
121—124.
No. IV.
The Latitude allowable in the precise sense of the term
Regeneration.
As for instance, whether " being begotten again," and " being
born again," are figures which express the same or different
ideas : and whether Regeneration expresses one or both of these
ideas : — whether it implies a spiritual or merely an outward
change, or both: a change of faculty, or o? privilege, ov oi re-
lationship ; a change of the condition of our spiritual bein"-,
or of the spiritual being itself. All these have found their
several advocates in the Church, and many other shades of
opinion on the nature of the baptismal grace, which we agree to
call by this term. Thus, in the Letter of the Bishop of Exeter
we find this difference allowed for ; where his Lordship speaks
(p. 80) of " perplexity arising out of a misuse of the word re-
generation ; " and of " allowable and partial differences in stating
the same Divine Truth." Many think, that some little develop-
ment of the natural faculties is essential to any actual inward
change, and that this therefore is impossible in young infants.
That is a noble passage in Bishop Jeremy Taylor : " In every
Christian there are three parts concurring to his integral consti-
tution, body, soul, and spirit; and all these have their proper
36
activities and times ; but every one in his own order, first that
which is natural, and then that which is spiritual. And what
Aristotle said, ' A man first lives the life of a plant, then of a
beast, and lastly of a man,' is true in this sense ; and the more
spiritual the principle is, the longer it is before it operates,
because more things concur to spiritual actions than to natural ;
and these are necessary, and therefore first ; the others are
perfect, and therefore last. And who is he that so well under-
stands the philosophy of this third principle of a Christian's life,
the Spirit, as to know how or when it is infused ', and how it
operates in all its periods, and what it is in its being and proper
nature ; and whether it be like the soul, or like the faculty, or
like a habit; or how, or to what purpose God in all varieties
does dispense it ? These are secrets, which none but bold
people use to decree, and to build propositions upon their own
dreams." — Life of Christ, Part 1. § ix.
" The forgiveness of sin — of original sin, and of all actual
sins committed before Baptism," says Bishop Bethell, " is what
the ancients principally insisted upon, when they spoke of re-
generation in baptism." — Chap. iv. note, and chap. viii.
It appears, then, that whatever " latitude" may be " allowable "
in other respects, we must ever hold, as the great fundamental
part of the doctrine, the " One Baptism for the Remission of
sins."
1 Its mysterious connection with Baptism is assumed in this passage, as
matter of distinct revelation.
THE END.
Gilbert & Rivington, Printers, St. John's Square, Loncion.
A CHARGE
ADDRESSED
TO THE CLEKGY OF THE DIOCESE OF CHESTER,
TRIENNIAL VISITATION,
MAY AND JUNE, MDCCCXLIV.
JOHN BIED SUMNER, D.D.,
LORD BISHOP OF CHESTER.
LONDON:
J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY.
MDCCCXLIV.
DURHAM : PRINTED Bl F. HnMBLE AND SON, SADDLER- STREET.
THE CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE OF CHESTER,
PUBLISHED AT THEIR REQUEST,
IS INSCRIBED WITH SINCERE AFFECTION AND RESPECT
BY THEIR FAITHFUL FRIEND AND BROTHER,
J. B. CHESTER.
A CHARGE.
Meetings, my Reverend Brethren, like that
to which you have been summoned to-day, have an
interest peculiar to themselves ; peculiar to our
office and calling. Other professions, necessary and
honourable as they are, are engaged in the inte-
rests of this present world : and it can scarcely
happen that human partialities and earthly passions
should not intermix with their assemblies. And
at the best, the highest concerns with which they
are conversant are subject to the melancholy re-
flection " Man returns to his earth, and all his
thoughts perish." All his thoughts, which have
had this world for their object, and been bounded
by the life that now is. With ourselves the case
is diff'erent. Our chief interests begin where theirs
terminate. Our sphere is beyond their horizon.
8
We meet together, not to take counsel respecting
events which arc important to-day, and to-morrow
will be as an idle talc : we have to do with Him
who was, and is, and is to come : who is the same
yesterday, and to-day, and for ever : we deal with
truths which are as unchangeable as He who has
revealed them : and the existence for which we
make provision is an existence which is to have no
end. Objects thus transcendant ought surely to
have an influence upon our feelings : to divest
them, as far as man can be divested, of all things
low and earthly : when we remember that the cha-
racter in which we assemble together is as " ser-
vants of the Most High God, who teach men the
way of Salvation." Neither let us regard our
meeting in a formal or official light : but as a so-
lem.n occasion which the Holy Spirit may*- bless,
and which the presence of our common Lord may
render a season of refreshment to those who are
here gathered together in his name.
I cannot now for the sixth time meet you, with-
out recalling to mind the various circumstances
under which we have assembled on former similar
occasions. Some of them were seasons of appre-
hension and excitement, which the condition of our
9
own Diocese was especially calculated to awaken.
And doubtless there arc still overhanging clouds
and portentous signs both in our political and ec-
clesiastical horizon, which if they need not alarm
us, at least give reason for continued and increas-
ing watchfulness. Some of them I have formerly
discussed ; and they are so present to every mind,
and manifest to every eye, that I need not now
particularize. That the nation has its perils is in-
disputable. But w^e ought to be no less thankful for
grounds of hope, than vigilant to see signs of danger.
And I confess that since my first acquaintance with
the Diocese, I have never contemplated our pros-
pects with more satisfaction, than at the present
moment ; or with more hopeful, though humble,
confidence that God may be looking upon us "for
good," and not "for evil."
You will naturally expect my reasons. And I
shall give them with the more readiness, because
the matters to which they allude are connected
with the purposes of our meeting.
First, there is less disproportion than formerly,
between our duties and our means of fulfilling
them.
Our duties are briefly summed up by St. Paul,
10
in his address to the Elders at Miletus : " Re-
member that, by the space of three years, I ceased
not to warn every man night and day with tears."
And again, in his Epistle to the Colossians : " We
preach, warning every man, and teaching every
man, in all wisdom ; that we may present every
man perfect in Christ Jesus." And so our Ordi-
nation Service : " See that you never cease your
labour, your care and diligence, until you have
done all that lieth in you according to your bounden
duty, to bring all such as are committed to your
charge into that agreement in the faith and know-
ledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness
of age in Christ, that there be no place left among
you either for error in religion or for viciousness
in life."
Now, it is evident that, where injunctions like
these are issued, some proportion is implied be-
tween the extent of the flocks and the number of the
shepherds ; some possibility of contact is supposed
to exist between the pastor and his people : with-
out which St. Paul himself, labouring night and
day, could approach only a small section of the
charge committed to him : and without which the
most affecting Liturgy, the most Scriptural articles,
the most faithful ministry must be of small avail.
11
A shepherd who may call his hundred sheep by their
names, and tell them over as he incloses them in
their fold, or sends them forth to their pasture in
the morning, can only see them in the distance,
and toil after them in despair when the hundreds
become thousands. This, as you are well aware,
described our case in regard to the principal part
of the population of this vast diocese ; such was
our state, both as to Church accommodation and
pastoral inspection. And a change in this respect
must be the beginning of all Church prosperity,
because it lies at the foundation of all Church use-
fulness.
We cannot easily determine what number of
persons, on an average, a minister can superintend
according to the proper standard of spiritual over-
sight. It may assist our calculation to observe
that, in addition to the regular demands of the sick
and aged, supposing him to visit thirty-five families
in the week, he may visit the families of about
three thousand persons twice in a year.* How
scanty is such provision ! Yet ten years ago the
ministers in our populous towns had double this
average labour imposed upon them. The cases
of this kind which now remain are comparatively
* See Appendix, No. I.
12
tew. Ill many iustancos the spiritual provision
lias increased four or five fold. Taking our popu-
lous districts throughout, I may say generally that
it is doubled.
Hitherto this increase has taken place through
means which private bencvolencs has supplied ;
cither by the erection of additional Churches, or
by defraying the salary of Curates. Our own
Diocese has greatly profited in both w'ays. The
list of 170 new Churches which I announced three
years ago has now swelled to I96.* And the
seasonable aid of the two Societies for supplying
Curates is giving us, at the present moment, the
services of more than an hundred labourers.
Still, as I have before observed, f there remained
spots of such hopeless destitution as to darken all
our prospects ; barren wastes, apparently pre-
senting an insuperable barrier to cultivation.
Light has unexpectedly burst upon us, and cheered
us w^ith a promise of better things. The re-dis-
tribution of some part of the resources of our
Church, which is taking place through the agency
of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, has opened
the way for a measure exactly calculated to remedy
our greatest evils. I allude to the Act of last
* Appendix, No. II. t Charge of 1841, p. 54.
13
Session for the endowment of new parishes ; which
will soon be brought into effective operation, and
gradually cause an important change in places
where the superintendence afforded by the Church
has been hitherto little more than nominal. Fifty
new parishes, for so they may be justly called,
are already in the course of formation for our own
Diocese. There seems no reason why we should
not carry on the process till every district of two
or three thousand souls has its appointed Church
and Clergyman. The Commissioners will have
means at their disposal : and we may trust that
together with the demand a supply of faithful men
will continue to spring up, content to labour for
the Lord's sake, though with but little except the
Lord's blessing to reward them. But it is one
amongst our many grounds of thankfulness and of
hope, that the Spirit of God still bends the minds
of able and zealous labourers towards a ministry
which offers few inducements except its heavenly
character ; except that being conversant with things
above, it raises men beyond the reach of ordinary
temptations, and places them in more immediate
communion with Him whom they desire to glorify
themselves, and to lead others to glorify. As long
as these considerations prevail with men of talent
14
and education, and overbalance in their choice the
higher temporal allurements which secular callings
offer, we shall possess a testimony of God's fa-
vour on which we can confidently repose. For
such " preparation of the heart is from the Lord."
The circumstance to which I would next allude,
in reference to our brighter prospects, relates to
the important subject of Education. The state of
education has been low and unsatisfactory in the
extreme. It is melancholy to reflect that the ex-
act Return, furnished since we last met by our
Diocesan Inspector, gives an average of six per
cent, only under daily education in the rural dis-
tricts, and in the populous towns not half that
number.* This low number is partly accounted
for by the short period during which the children
are retained at school, averaging nearer two years
than ten. And in many of the towns, we thank-
fully acknowledge that the deficiency of daily edu-
cation is in some degree compensated by the ex-
cellence of the Sunday Schools. But after making
every allowance, it must be owned that under cir-
cumstances like these there is no fair trial of the
effect of education ; and that it is grievous to send
* Appendix, No. III.
15
out a youthful generation into the dangers and
temptations of the world, with no more of moral
or mental discipline, no better religious culture,
than can be bestowed in two short years.
I contemplate, therefore, with feelings of san-
guine hope, the gratifying fact that education is
making a rapid progress throughout those parts of
the Diocese where it has heretofore been most de-
ficient. The unexampled liberality by which the
funds of the National Society have been replenished
has enabled it to supply such encouraging assistance
to local efforts, that day schools are likely to be-
come universal. Fresh means of education have
been provided, during the interval of our assem-
bling, by the erection of additional school rooms,
to about twenty thousand scholars : i.e., to twenty
per cent, upon the population which we may sup-
pose has grown up within that period to the age
for profiting by them.
It may be objected, that education is no new
thing : that National Schools have existed for a
whole generation : and that we have no right to
look for a result in future which has not been pro-
duced already.
We have learnt, however, from past experi-
1(1
cnee, that schools may exist, with very little of
real education : very little of that culture which
brings the mind into a new state, and prepares
it for impressions of good which may be strong
enough to resist temptation, and maintain a course
of righteousness, sobriety, and godliness. That
our schools have been useful, as far as thev have
hitherto proceeded, it would be unreasonable to
doubt : that they are capable of becoming far more
useful, it is impossible to deny. I believe that we
have taken the right step, in applying ourselves
to the education of masters as preparatory to the
education of children. And I look to the Train-
ing College, now happily established at Chester,
and able to send forth its thirty masters annually
to supply the schools now building, and demanded
by our increasing population, as one of the bright
stars in our present prospect : one of the premises
on which I found my hopeful calculations. For the
people themselves readily appreciate the nature
of the education offered them. After all, their
indifference to education has hitherto been the
chief cause of their want of education. Many of
our national schools have languished for lack of
scholars, in the midst of an illiterate population.
When once it is perceived that schools are really
17
telling upon the habits of the scholars ; that the
children through the effect of moral discipline are
becoming orderly, obedient, and intelligent : the
school fills as naturally as water rises in the chan-
nel when the spring receives a fresh supply. The
thirty masters who first left our Training College,
found in their respective schools an aggregate of
1400 scholars. By the close of the first year the
1400 had swelled to 2400.
And here, my Reverend Brethren, you must
sufi'er the word of exhortation. There is a part
of education which the best professional master
can hardly give, and, without which, all that he
can give will be of small avail. He prepares the
soil in which you may sow the seed with a reason-
able hope of its springing up and flourishing. I
am far from advising the clergyman to become the
master, even the quasi master, of the school : the
care of the rising generation must not rob their
parents of that which is due to them. But if the
school is to be eff'ective for its great and important
purposes, he must be the assiduous visitor, the
vigilant inspector of the school in all its depart-
ments. And that scriptural instruction, which is
the mainspring of the whole, he must do more than
superintend : if it is to be usefully inculcated at
18
all, the work must be his own, by a regular and
settled system. I hope that I am not unmindful
of the labours required from the Clergy of this
Diocese. I hope that I shall never be insensible
to the faithfulness with which they are generally
discharged. But one thing is yet lacking ; one
labour must still be added to those which you have
hitherto undertaken, unless you are already in the
habit of bestowing this constant attention to your
schools. What other labour can be made to bear,
at once, upon so large a proportion of your people ?
In the school, we ought to expect that a tenth, or
it may be even a larger part of your whole charge
is brought together before you. And that por-
tion, how interesting, how important ! It is the
description of the spiritual shepherd, that whilst
he feeds his flock, he " gathers the lambs in his
bosom." The test of attachment proposed to the
Apostle was, " Simon, lovest thou me ? Feed
my sheep. Feed my lambs." And how can it
agree with the character of faithfulness in a
shepherd, however diligently he may tend his
grown-up flock, if he leave his lambs to a hire-
ling ?
It is my firm conviction that whoever devotes
several hours of his week to this department of
19
duty, will reap from it a larger harvest than from
any other portion of his labour. The school-
master can secure that the Scriptures be read
intelligently, and that the geography and history
connected with them be generally known. But
the bearing of one part of Scripture upon another ;
the comparison of spiritual things with spiritual ;
and above all, the practical application of Scrip-
ture as the ruling principle of the heart and lip
must be the business of him who is thoroughly
furnished to this good work, and whose office
enables him to " reprove, rebuke, exhort with all
long-suffering and doctrine." And who can
foresee or calculate the extent of blessing which
may rest upon such instruction, not left to the
short space of leisure which can be afforded on
the Sabbaths, not interrupted by the long interval
between them, but systematically inculcated during
the years, few, too few, as these may be, which
the child is permitted to employ at school ? Who
can set a limit to the effect which such teaching
might produce upon the rising generation ? Who
can say whether that neglect of baptismal obliga-
tions which we complain of may not be traced to
the absence of such Scriptural education ? which
too often parents and god-parents are unable or
20
unwilling to bestow, and which the minister, the
spiritual father, can alone efficiently supply.
Some, perhaps, may object, and think that the
pulpit must lose what the school gains : that the
time occupied in these visits to the school can be
ill spared for the preparation which is requisite
for the duties of the Church. My belief is, on the
contrary, that the school is no bad substitute for
the study : and that the adults at Church would
often be gainers by the hours which have been
previously spent upon the children in their school.
Of one thing there can be no doubt : it is com-
monly admitted and regretted. A large part of
the labour bestowed on the pulpit is thrown away.
Not only when the truths inculcated, the ideas
received, are practically disregarded, but because
no idea is conveyed to the mind at all. It is not
so presented as to enter the mind, or leave an
impression. Tt is sometimes wrapped up in too
many words for the hearer to develop : and some-
times expressed in terms so ambiguous or so little
familiar, that no meaning is communicated.* Now
the habit of discussing Scripture with the young
and the uneducated is one mode of obtaining that
difficult art, the art of reaching and interesting
* Appendix, No. IV.
21
the minds of the more educated and advanced in
years. It shows the need of adding line to line.
It shews the need of taking nothing for granted,
in regard to intelligence in the hearers, but of
making sure that we are understood. It acquaints
us with errors which must be guarded against, and
could hardly have been anticipated. It habituates
us to the interpretation of Scripture by Scripture.
It familiarises us to the useful practice of illustra-
tion. Whoever is the best adept in all these
various arts, wdll be the best teacher in the pulpit
as well as in the school ; and will insensibly prac-
tise there those lessons which he has himself learnt,
unawares, whilst teaching others. The proba-
bility is, that the most assiduous catechist will
prove the most effective preacher ; and there
may be a reason not always reckoned on by
those who have left the fact on record, why of
all the labours of their ministry those hours have
been the most profitable which they had spent in
catechising.
I must advert, though briefly, to another fea-
ture of the present day, which may be viewed
with sincere satisfaction. The attention of the
community has been strongly turned towards the
22
condition of those classes, whose welfare must be
in a great degree affected by the conduct of those
above them.
The first aspect of a society like ours has a very
anomalous appearance. We see wealth and poverty
in close contact and violent contrast : both in ex-
tremes. It would be unreasonable to complain of
this, which in long settled and prosperous coun-
tries is the inevitable course of things. Money is
accumulated in large masses : population verges
hard upon the means of subsistence ; or, in other
words, the demand for employment is greater than
the demand for labour. Legislation cannot reach
the case : can neither produce nor prevent it. But
like every other providential arrangement, the
evils which belong to it have a corresponding re-
medy. In a community thus circumstanced, many
possess both the leisure and the means to attend
to wants which ought to be relieved, and to cor-
rect the irregularities and vicissitudes of temporal
condition. And the Gospel, the faith that is in
Christ Jesus, imposes upon those who enjoy such
opportunities the duty of employing them in com-
pliance with the will of God, according to each
man's "several ability." Their talents of fortune,
of leisure, of education are assigned them, not for
23
the purpose of self-indulgence, but of conscientious
occupation, that the Lord, when he cometh to take
account, may "receive his own with usury."* If
wealth is used merely for the purpose of increas-
ing- wealth, of amassing more, the intent is frus-
trated for which it was awarded : but if it is em-
ployed to feed those who would otherwise be an
hungered, to clothe those who would otherwise be
naked, to educate those who would otherwise be
ignorant, to raise up those who would otherwise
have fallen irrecoverably, then the design of God's
providence is answered, and his wisdom justified
by his children. How different a scene we should
contemplate, if this were made the general prin-
ciple of action !
It is some ground of comfort, that there is an
approximation towards it. The truth is more
commonly acknowledged, that " we are every one
members one of another :"f and that if one class
of society suffer, all others "suffer with it." J In
the Metropolis, to which we naturally look as the
centre of action for the country at large, a vast
organization has taken place on the basis of this
principle : and the laity have been made the ac-
credited assistants of the clergy, in the perform-
* Matt. XXV. 28. f Rom, xii. 5. J I Cor. xii. 26.
24
ance of duties wliicli can only be fulfilled by a
general co-operation.* Hitherto, wherever this
plan has been carried out, social improvement,
moral and religious benefits have followed : and
I hail its extension as a step towards the more
general diff'usion of Christian practice throughout
the land : a return to the time when the faith of
Christ was felt as a source of peculiar duties and
obligations, impelling every man to act according
to his profession : to " distribute to the necessity
of saints;" to "rejoice with them that rejoiced,
and to weep with those that wept;" to "labour in
the Lord :" to be " fellow-helpers" with the elders
of the Church : to " warn the unruly, to comfort
the feeble-minded, to support the weak :" " to visit
the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to
keep themselves unspotted from the world. "f
I trust, Reverend Brethren, that we may justly
look upon these various circumstances connected
with the present position of the Church, in the
light of encouragement. Though many things
are still against us, our condition now is very dif-
ferent from our condition at my second visit to
you in 1832. There may not be less opposition.
* Appendix, No. V.
t SeeRora.xii. 13, &c.; xvi. 12; iTliess. v, 14; Jamesi. 27.
25
But there is less ground for it. The spirit of
those who dissent from our estabUshment may not
be less hostile ; there is rather cause to fear the
contrary. But there is far less ground of plausi-
ble complaint against us, as not performing what
we profess : and though the fire may not be ex-
tinguished, it will cease to spread or lose its fierce-
ness in proportion as the materials which nourish
it are removed or cease to be supplied. Such
has always been my opinion, and my practice has
been in conformity with it. Though no one can
be more sensible, than myself, of the mischief of
schism, or more desirous of unity in the Church, I
have considered it as no part of my business to in-
veigh against Dissent, in aDiocese where theEstab-
lishment was avowedly inadequate to supply the spi-
ritual food which the mass of the population needed.
It has been uniformly ray aim to remove the evil,
instead of complaining of its consequences : to in-
crease the powers of the Church, to enlarge its
tents and strengthen its stakes, that it might be in
deed, and not in name only, the people's Church :
and thus to take away all pretext for separation.
I look round, and acknowledge with thankfulness,
that the effort, powerfully seconded as it has been
by yourselves, has not been altogether vain : and
'26
if eontiimed with like energy, and favoured by the
same degree of blessing, the ensuing half-century
may repair the breaches in our walls which time
and change had occasioned, and recover the ground
which had been lost in the preceding age.
My Reverend Brethren, we talk of opposition,
and we feel it : we complain of misrepresentation,
and are vexed by undeserved hostility ; and we
have often cause : but, after all, we can receive
no serious injury but from ourselves. We need
not fear Divine judgments, as long as we are
faithful to Him " whose we are, and whom we
serve ;" and the favour of men will on the whole
be on our side, if they " see our good works," and
experience the benefit of our care. Politicians
will support us, as promoters of prosperity and
peace ; and the people will esteem us, as instru-
ments through whom the gospel is preached to
them. But, no doubt, there may be danger from
ourselves. And you may wonder, perhaps, at the
confidence which I now avow, after the apprehen-
sion which I expressed three years ago, of the
evil then prevailing within our Church.* Upon
this point my opinion remains unchanged : and I
* Appendix, No. VI,
27
still lament the injury which, as I think, the
Church has received from some who profess to
be her warmest friends. From the effects of
this we are still suffering, and shall long suffer :
yet I trust that the crisis is past : that we have
seen and know the worst ; and that no slio-ht con-
solation may be derived from the circumstance,
that the Church at large has determinately re-
sisted the temptation by which it has been tried :
that the great body of our people have shewn
themselves too well grounded in the truth to be
allured by the "form of godliness" held out to
them : or to believe that there could exist that
holiness and self-denying practice which all ac-
knowledge to be the "end of the commandment,"
"without the power" of those principles by which
alone it can be sustained.
When the truth originally delivered to the
Church is endangered, to "contend earnestly"
becomes a duty. But a state of debate concern-
ing doctrines which ought to be settled articles of
faith, and a state of opposition among those who
ought to be closely linked together, is an evil
which cannot be too strongly deprecated. It
should at least be an important truth, and not an
28
aiubiguous word, for wliich brctliroii should make
one another offenders. Yet many of the subjects
Avhich divide us, instead of being like that for
which Paul withstood Peter to the face,* are rather
those which the same Paul would denounce as
questions and strifes of words.
The subject of Baptismal Regeneration, for in-
stance, which seems to have its periodical seasons
of recurrence, is again perplexing our religious sys-
tem, and furnishing material for attack and recri-
mination.f In the few remarks which follow, I
am not so presumptuous to suppose that I can
settle such a question. Indeed, I see no means
by which it ever can be settled. We have not
* Gal. ii. 11.
f I allude to passages like these, to which too many parallels
may be found in the current writings of the day. " As to the
reception of our Church of this doctrine of baptismal regenera-
tion, there can be no rational doubt. It stands broadly, clearly,
definitely, and tangibly part of her ; you cannot reject it with-
out tearing in pieces her prayer book and scattering her formu-
laries to the four winds: you cannot reject it without arraying
against you, ipso facto, the collective honesty and the unbiassed
eyes and ears of the world. And so long as this doctrine being
of the importance which it is, has the position which it has in
her system ; so long must it be clear that those who deny it are
not lawful members of her : stay in her against her will : and en-
tirely depend on the excuse of the strongest prejudice in order to
escape the alternative of positive dishonesty," — British Critic,
xxxii., 2.38.
29
the data, either from Scripture or experience, by
which the actual effect of baptism can be placed
beyond the reach of discussion.* We know the
language of the antient fathers. But we sho know
the nature of that baptism to which their language
was applied : baptism such as Justin describes in
the well-known passage, where he saysf "As many
as have been persuaded that the things spoken by
us are true, and undertake to live accordingly,
are instructed to pray with fasting, and ask re-
mission of their former sins, whilst we fast and
pray with them. They are thus led by us to a
place where is water, and are regenerated with
the same regeneration by which we have been
ourselves made regenerate. For this washing
with water is in the name of God the Father and
* " The difficulty attendant upon it lies, not in showing the
adoption of infant baptism from the very beginning, but in as-
certaining whether in the case of infant recipients moral re-
generation invariably or not invariably attends upon the admi-
nistration of outward baptism. To settle this point, either in
the way of argument from Scripture, or in the way of evidence
from antiquity, is no easy matter ; and its very difficulty ought,
I think, to teach the propriety of much temper and moderation
in those who on whatever grounds have been conducted to
opposite conclusions." — See Mr. Faber's very interesting and
instructive volume on the Primitive Doctrine of Regeneration,
Book iii. 1. ] .
t Apol. i.
30
governor of all things, and of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and of the Holy Spirit." For Christ him-
self said, " except a man be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God." Our own Church, in
her complete service, presumes the like prepara-
tion : presumes that baptism is the result of faith
and attended by repentance : and pronounces in-
fants regenerate, after faith and repentance have
been promised for them by their sureties, and
expressly required of themselves, when come to
age.
Still our Church does pronounce the child re-
generate. Now, if one party maintains that this is
the judgment of charity, as belonging to the prin-
ciple which pervades and must pervade all general
services ; but that the individual now become ac-
countable, and evidently not living in the faith of
the Son of God, was never really endowed with
the Holy Spirit ; that party can never be abso-
lutely silenced. Neither can the opposite party,
who affirm, on the other side, that those whom
we now unhappily see living in sin, were once in
a state of grace, and fell from it through their own
wilfulness or the neglect of others. The dispute
is one that never can be closed.
Our Church declares, further, that "they which
31
receive baptism rightly" are partakers of the bless-
ings conveyed in baptism.* And who can ven-
ture to decide with confidence, whether original
sin, unhappily existing in the infant, may not
prove a let or hindrance to the " right receiving"
of the Sacrament ? Who can say whether the
absence of faith and repentance in those who pro-
fess it in the child's name, may not " frustrate
the grace of God ?" Who can answer whether
the faith of the child or of the Minister shall
suffice, though there be no more faith on the part
of parents or sponsors than there can be in the
infant child ? Upon all these points we may form
inferences, offer plausible arguments, pronounce
strong opinions : but we shall never satisfy those
who refuse to be satisfied, till we can prove from
Scripture the unconditional efficacy of baptism, as
plainly as we can shew the general necessity of
baptism to salvation.
Meanwhile, it is surely one am.ong the subjects
which is calculated to "gender strife," to "minis-
ter questions," rather than " godly edifying."
Practically, the two parties must be " like mind-
ed," though they do not " say the same thing."
All will acknowledge, that in those who are " come
* Article xxvii.
32
to age," there must be signs of " a death unto sin
and a new birth unto righteousness," in order
that there may be a well-grounded hope of God's
mercy through Christ. All must agree that if
no signs of this change appear, the man needs still
to " be converted," or perish. And whether that
conversion be called regeneration or renewal,
what does it avail : when we know that God will
judge of every man not according to " word or
to name," but to "deed and truth :" and that the
regenerate man will be " cast into outer darkness,"
if his works are the works of the unregenerate.
Whilst, however, faithfulness requires us to in-
sist on the signs of regeneration, and not to be
satisfied with the mere assertion or presumption
of it : consistency requires that we speak in ac-
cordance w'ith the language of our Liturgy. There
is no reason why any should contradict it. They
who believe that the act of baptism justifies, and
they who believe that where there is no justifying
faith in the adult, there has been no baptismal
grace in the child, must concur alike in this : that
the life, and not the name, is the evidence to
which appeal must be made ; for that " if any
man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of
his." Say, therefore, that " if any man be in
33
Christ Jesus, he must be a new creature :" must
have " put off the old man, which is corrupt ac-
cording to the deceitful lusts ; and have put on
the new man, which after God is created in
righteousness and true holiness." Say further,
that " whosoever is born of God, overcometh the
world;" "does not commit sin:" and therefore
that if any man be a follower of wicked habits,
and instead of " overcoming the world," allows
the world to overcome him, he is not " in Christ
Jesus :" not " in the faith ;" has " no part nor lot
in this matter :" " the wrath of God abideth on
him." To urge this, as it may be urged with all
the force of reason and of Scripture, is an un-
questionable duty : whilst to denounce the " wick-
ed" or "slothful" servant as unregenerate will
rather open a way to verbal dispute, than enforce
the conviction which it is our object to secure.*
What the preacher has mainly to consider is
the state and character of his people. If he sees
them negligent in the case of baptism, as a multi-
* " If then the end be the same, even the ' turning of souls
from Satan unto God ;' why should good men think or say
unkind things of each other, merely because, after an honest
examination of the question, the points from which they vari-
ously set forth in their common labour of charitv, are dif-
ferent ?" — Faber, on Regeneration, p. 377.
31
Uidc in tlie present day, unhappily, arc negligent:
lie will point out the sinfulness, on the one hand, of
despising an ordinance so strictly commanded by
the Lord, and practised by the Apostles, and by the
Church in every age and country : and, on the other
hand, represent the blessing which may be ex-
pected,— not " doubted of but earnestly believed"
— when the infant is admitted to the privilege of
the Christian Covenant, being solemnly dedicated
to God in the name of Him who " came to seek
and to save that which was lost," whether infant
or adult. His frequent text will be, " Repent
and be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for
the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift
of the Holy Ghost."
It may happen, however, that the danger shall
lie the other way, and that the value of baptismal
privileges may be over-rated, not depreciated, in
the minds of the congregation. According to the
course of human nature, this is not unlikely ; and
that the promise should be claimed as if made to
him that is baptised, and not to him that " be-
lieveth and is baptised." No one can deny that
this error should be guarded against ; and may be
refuted without any disparagement of the Divine
ordinance. The Prophets meant no dishonour to
35
the institution of sacrifices, which were required
and continually offered under the law, when they
reproved the Jews who trusted to these outward
things, in language which would seem irreverent
if it had not been inspired.* But we have even a
higher example. The Lord Jesus, when he ap-
peared, found the Jewish people trusting, among
other outward forms, to their strict observance of
the Sabbath : and often rebuked their hypocrisy
in words which might be supposed to disparage
the institution itself. The spirit in which he said,
"It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day:"
" The Sabbath was made for man, and not man
for the Sabbath ;" arose out of the opinions which
were then prevailing in the nation, and required
correction. The Prophets found the Sabbaths
neglected, and reminded the Israelites of God's
mercy in granting them ; and pronounced a bless-
ing upon those who " kept the Sabbath from pol-
luting it," calling it "a delight, holy of the Lord,
honourable."! The Lord Jesus found that the
strict observance of the Sabbath and other ordi-
nances of the law, was used as a sort of compro-
mise for the want of that love towards God and
* See Ps. xl. 6; 1. 8. Isa. i. 11, &c. Hos. vi. 6.
t Isa. Ivi. 2; Iviii. 13. Ezek. xx. 12.
36
man which alone is " true and undefiled religion."
He therefore alleged the instances when David,
and they that were with him, violated the sanctity
of the law, and were blameless : how *' the priests
in the temple profaned the Sabbath, and w^ere
blameless :"* that the Pharisees might learn what
that meant, " I will have mercy, and not sacri-
fice;" and might be assured that it was "lawful
to do well on the Sabbath day."
These examples justify the preacher, who, if
he sees need, adopts the argument of St. Paul
concerning one Divine Ordinance, and applies it
to another : and does not scruple to affirm, that
" he is not a Christian, who is one outwardly ;
neither is that baptism, which is outward in the
flesh ; but he is a Christian, who is one inwardly ;
and baptism is that of the heart, in the spirit, and
not in the letter. For baptism verily profiteth,
if thou keep the law : but if thou be a breaker of
the law, thy baptism is made no baptism. "f
Another accusation has been brought against
the Clergy, as if they were violating a solemn en-
* Matt. xii. 1-12.
■[ Ai'chbishop Sharpe's Sermons, vol. vi. p. 17. Rom. ii,
25-29.
37
gagement, inasmuch as they do not " say the
Morning and Evening Prayer in the Church or
Chapel where they minister, or cause a bell to be
tolled, that the people may come to hear God's
word, and to pray with him."
There is every reason to believe that this in-
junction, though found in the preface to " the Book
of Common Prayer," was never in any age gene-
rally observed in our Church. Neither can there
be any justice in reproaching the Clergy of the
present day, because they follow the practice of
their predecessors, and do not commence a ser-
vice which is neither "accustomed," nor enforced
upon them by the authority to which deference
would be due.
Granting, however, that the Clergyman is not
bound to these daily services : can he advanta-
geously introduce them ?
And here we may justly say concerning our
people, " O that there were such an heart in
them," such a spirit of piety throughout the land,
as prepared them for these services, and allowed
the Clergy to give themselves more entirely to
the worship of the sanctuary ! It would be well,
also, if the temporal circumstances of the people
were such, as would make them able, even if they
38
were willing, to devote themselves more con-
stantly to " the word of God and to prayer."
But the fact, we know, is otherwise. The situa-
tion of our churches, often remote from the popu-
lation : the length of our services ; the degree of
labour which is required of every man in this
crowded country, in order that he may maintain
his place in whatever position he fills, whether
high or low : these causes render it absolutely
impossible that any except a most inconsiderable
proportion of our people, even if they felt as Da-
vid felt concerning " the courts of the Lord's
house," should be able to attend the morning or
afternoon prayer on week-days. This is not a
matter we can doubt about : it has been expe-
rienced recently wherever the practice has been
tried : it has been long experienced in all Cathe-
dral towns, where, unhappily, it does not appear,
as some have supposed, that the appetite wall
grow with the opportunity.
Such being the case, I cannot think it the duty
of a minister to commence the practice of daily
prayers.* But it is very desirable that, being re-
* Mr. Robertson, who has entered very fully into this ques-
tion, states it as his conclusion, " that daily service was never
general in parish churches, even before the Reformation ; that
39
lieved from this labour, he should invite his people
to such services as many can attend : that in towns
especially, on one, or two, or even three evenings
in the week, his church should be open to maintain
the impression which is made upon the Lord's day.
When there is hunger and thirst after righteous-
ness, some such intermediate refreshment will
be desired : and this, like other appetites, if not
satisfied, will either fail altogether, or seek else-
where for gratification. But I see no expediency
in summoning the congregation to services which
we know they have not the means of frequenting.
There is danger lest the Sabbath bell should lose
its influence upon ears hardened by constantly dis-
regarding it through the week. And, as concerns
the clergyman himself, to say nothing of the limits
assigned to time and strength, that must be an ex-
traordinary mind in which devotion was not rather
lowered than elevated, by daily " calling," while
on Wednesdays and Fridays the Litany was commonly read, in
later times, apparently without the morning prayers : that ser-
vice on the eves of Sundays and holydays was also common :
that the want of a congregation was held an excuse for the
clergy : and that, altogether, according to the notions of earlier
times, our bishops have a right to order in the matter, accord-
ing to their discretion." — On Conformity to the Liturgy, p.
31-42.
40
all " refused," and " stretching out the hand while
no man regarded."*
Unless, indeed, a man console himself in the
discharg-e of his solitary service, under the belief
that his prayers for the people superseded the
necessity of the people praying with him.
Here w^e tread on dangerous ground. We con-
found two things which are essentially different ;
intercessory prayer, and vicarious prayer. The
value of intercessory prayer we cannot doubt : or
rather, we cannot sufficiently estimate : it is among
the secrets to be known hereafter. But vicarious
* " Will tlie single minister of almost the least troublesome
parish be found, in ordinary circumstances, either physically or
morally capable of this increase of duty — superadded to engage-
ments for which he can even now hardly find time and strength
— visits to the poor — visitation of the sick — catechising — lec-
turing— superintendence of school — persuasion of absentees to
come to church — peace making — occasional ecclesiastical duties
— the ordinary business of his parish — his own private devo-
tions— his preparation for the Sunday and holyday sermons —
bis study of divinity — his searching of the Scriptures — all to be
combined with the keeping up his stock of general literature —
looking after his own private affairs — generally so scanty as to
require a vigilant economy — and fulfilling those various engage-
ments of social life which a clergyman must cultivate if he hopes
to maintain the station and influence in his parish which is ne-
cessary not merely to his personal comforts, but to his public
utility ?" — Quarterly Review, No. cxliii., p. 253.
41
prayer, repugnant as it is to our reason, and en-
tirely without countenance from Scripture, must
not be mistaken for those intercessions which are
the highest privilege of the devout Christian.
When Samuel replied to the repentant Israel-
ites, " God forbid that I should sin against the
Lord in ceasing to pray for you ;"* he did not re-
lease them from the duty of individual prayer.
When " prayer without ceasing was made of the
church" for Peter,f we may be sure that he was
himself employed, like his brethren in the same
condition, in " praying and singing praises unto
God."{ When Simon entreated the same apos-
tle to " pray to the Lord for him," it was not to
set aside his own supplication that "the thoughts
of his heart might be forgiven. "§
In truth, when we recognise vicarious prayer, we
touch upon one of the most irrational and debasing
errors of the Church of Rome. The vicarious
worship of the Jewish ritual was sacrifice, not
prayer. The high priest entered into the holy of
holies, and made atonement for the sins of the
people who stood without, as a type of the great
sacrifice once made, and which only one could
* 1 Sam. xii. 23. X Acts xvi. 25.
t Acts xii. 5. § Acts viii. 22-24.
42
uffor, when tlK» just died for the unjust, that he
might bring us to God.* But saeriticc is not
prayer. Vicarious prayer was part of the cor-
ruption which overspread the Church, when hu-
man ambition discovered the power which it might
attain, if it could use religion as a ladder to climb
up by. The object first desired, was influence
and authority ; but the consequence of deserting
the light of Scripture was seen by the evils which
ensued, when piety became transferable and venal,
and superstition was ready to believe what covet-
ousness did not scruple to pretend, that " the gifts
of God might be purchased with money. "f
We who derive our practice from the word of
God find nothing there to justify the notion that
the prayer of the minister is any more efficacious
for the people, than the prayer of the people for
their minister : or that his supplication availeth
otherwise, than as far as it is " the efi'ectual and
fervent prayer of a righteous man. "J Each party
is instructed to pray for and with the other.
* Heb. ix. 7.
t Acts viii. 20.
X James v. 16.
The injunction of St. James (v. 14.) is one of those " Scrip-
tures" which have been " wrested" by those whose interest was
concerned, " to the destruction" of manv. " Is anv sick among
43
Before leaving altogether the subject of prayer,
I ought perhaps to advert to another question
which has been unexpectedly raised concerning
it ; the attitude of the officiating minister. Here,
however, it will be surely enough to remind you,
Reverend Brethren, of the care which we are bound
to exercise, lest we should affront our congrega-
tions by practices which they have identified, and
can scarcely help identifying, with superstition.
We are surrounded by adversaries who neither
want the ability nor the will to misrepresent and
injure us. We must beware of preparing ground
for them to stand on. We must see that it be
no fault of our own, if many who have left us al-
most of necessity to seek elsewhere the provision
which the Church was unable to afford, do not re-
turn to our pastures as fast as we provide folds
you ? Let him call for the elders of the chui'ch : and let them
pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord :
and the prayer of faith shall save the soul, and the Lord shall
raise him up ; and if he have committed sins, they shall he for-
given him." Without resorting to the interpretation of most
commentators, who refer this to the miraculous gifts bestowed
upon the church in that day ; the eifect is no greater than that
which St. John expects from the prayer of "any man." (v. IG.)
" If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death,
he shall ask, and He shall give him life for them that sin not
unto death,"
44
and shepherds for them. It believes us, to "give
none offence :" to "provide things honest in the
sight of all men :" to " commend ourselves to
every man's conscience in the sight of God." St.
Paul supposes the case of an unbeliever entering
into a place of Christian worship, and being so
struck with the devotion which he saw around
him, as to " fall on his face," and acknowledge
that God was in the midst of the worshippers.*
Is this the impression which a stranger or an ad-
versary would receive, who should see the minister
studiously turn his back towards the people who
ought to be praying with him, as if the throne of
Him who fills all space, were to be found in one
direction rather than another ? Perhaps it was
the custom of the early Christians. But so were
many practices which belong rather to the dark-
ness out of which they were happily delivered, than
to the light into which they had advanced. Their
custom cannot make that reasonable for which no
reason can be given : or justify us in studying any-
thing except how we may be " best understanded
of the people." Novelties of dress, peculiari-
* 1 Cor. xiv. 24, &c. The whole argument in that pas-
sage is as apphcable as the moral with which it is concluded.
" Let all things be done unto edifying."
45
ties of gesture, or of posture, can only disturb
the spirit of devotion ; divert the mind from that
on which it ought to be fixed ; and ought to be
carefully avoided, rather than purposely studied,
independently of the offence which they cause, if
connected in the minds of the people with super-
stition.
My Reverend Brethren, the error against which
we have mainly to contend in our ministerial func-
tions is the very error which many of these things
have a tendency to promote : I mean, formality
in religion. This is the error to which the heart
is naturally prone : which, if at all awakened to a
sense of responsibility, desires salvation, but de-
sires it on the easiest terms : often on any terms,
except those on which alone it can be attained, a
surrender of the individual self to God. It is
willing to depend on general redemption, and ac-
quiesce in general promises : to listen while pray-
ers are repeated, rather than to pray ; to hear the
sentence of absolution, rather than to feel the
emotions of penitence. The man will satisfy him-
self, if allow^ed to do so, by being in the Church,
and dying in the Church : and needs to be con-
tinually reminded that, in order to be in the
Church, he must first be " in Christ," and can-
not bo in Christ, when "come to age," except by
personal faith realizing the covenant to which he
was pledged by baptism.
This, therefore, is the error against which we
arc bound to exercise our vigilance ; certainly
not to cherish or encourage it, by paying undue
attention to anything formal or external : — even
to the architecture of the building, independently
of the uses of the building ; much less, to allow
that the tone of voice or studied posture should
give an artificial air to services which ought to
speak the language of the heart, and, unless they
do speak it, lose all their value.
Meanwhile, if we keep constantly before our
minds the great objects of our ministry, all things
will have their right place, and receive their due
importance. Forms and ordinances will rise, not
fall, in esteem and interest.
The Sacrament of baptism, for instance, whicb
we desire to magnify. Act as you w^ould act, if
you w^ere anxious that a friend should seek some
remedy for a disease of which he was unconscious,
but which you well knew must be fatal. You
would gain nothing by extolling the efficacy of the
47
remedy, till he were convinced of the dangerous
tendency of the disease. On the same principle,
men will esteem baptism a holy rite, blessed of the
Lord and honourable, in proportion as they un-
derstand their fallen state ; their need of a better
nature than that which they inherit from Adam.
Keep before the minds of your people a sense of
their ruined condition, and of the mercy of God
in providing a remedy for that condition, which
remedy is in Jesus Christ. Then it will be with
them, as with the Ethiopian to whom Philip open-
ed the Scriptures, and preached unto him Jesus.*
And he said, " Sir, here is water ; what doth hin-
der me to be baptised ?" So it will be with pa-
rents. Having brought a corrupt being into the
world, they will hasten to " w^ash away his sins"
in the "laver of regeneration," "calling upon the
name of the Lord :" they will enrol their sinful
infant in covenant with Him by whom sin is taken
away, that having been born " a child of wrath,"
he may be made " a child of grace."
So in regard to the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper. You desire that all should kneel around
it, and show there a testimony of their faith, and
* Acts viii. 30.
48
seek an increase of grace, a more perfect con-
formity to his image. They will value the me-
morial, according as they value Him M^hom it
commemorates. They will honour the represen-
tation if they honour Him who is represented.
To what purpose should I set up a monument,
even if I could force all men to fall down and
worship it, to one who is either not known or not
esteemed ? The honour is not in the action, but
in the feeling which prompts the action. Preach
therefore the cross of Christ, as the only and
sufficient satisfaction for sin : and they who are
drawn to the cross will not fail to value the or-
dinance which represents it, even though they do
not believe that the body and blood of Jesus are
transferred into the figurative emblems. For if
they were so transferred, or could be, what would
it profit ? " It is the spirit that quickeneth, the
flesh profiteth nothing."* All that the body of
Christ was to effect for us, was accomplished when
he " bore our sins upon the tree." What we now
need, is that the virtue of that sacrifice should be
* John vi. 63. " The body of Christ is given, taken, and
eaten in the Supper only after an heavenly and spiritual manner."
"And the means whereby the body of Christ is received and
eaten in the Supper, is faith." — Art. xxviii.
49
ours : as it will be, in proportion to the faith
by which we realize it in our hearts :* in pro-
portion as we feed upon the remembrance of the
death of Christ, as our life, and apply his blood
to our consciences, as "cleansing from all sin,"
whilst we confess our transgressions and lament
our short-comings. So he becomes one with
us, and we with him ; he dwells in us, and we
in him.
The same reasoning applies to the services of
the Church. You wish, perhaps, for daily, or for
more frequent services, and complain that they
are not appreciated. Apply yourselves, not to
exaggerate the value of public worship : as if " the
form of godliness" could avail in the sight of God,
and the mere attendance at church were meritori-
ous ; rather strive to excite the appetite for that
which the service is, an act of confession, an act
of thanksgiving, an act of supplication and of
praise ; an opportunity of hearing the word of God
declared, and his promises confirmed to us from
* " Sucli as be void of a lively faith, although they do car-
nally and visibly press with their teeth, as St. Augustine saith,
the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ ; yet in no wise
are they partakers of Christ." — Art. xxix.
50
the moutli of" his appointed ministers. It was out
of the abundance of this feeling that David said,
" Lord, I have loved the habitations of thy house,
and the place where thine honour dwelleth." I
was glad when they said unto me, " we will go
into the house of the Lord."
Proceeding: in this course and using these ar-
guments, we shall not be mis-represented, as if
we had any other object than that of glorifying
God, and leading men to act in agreement with
their Christian profession. We shall not be ac-
cused of " preaching ourselves :" it wall be mani-
fest to all that " we preach the Lord Jesus Christ,
and ourselves, for Jesus' sake, the servants" of the
flock committed to our charge :* whose " heart's
desire and prayer to God is," that they may
be "rooted and built up in the faith," "stab-
lished, strengthened, settled," so as to " obtain
an inheritance amongst all them that are sanc-
tified."
I have thus delivered to you, Reverend Bre-
thren, with all plainness of speech, the things
* 2 Cor. iv. 5.
51
which seemed suited to the time and season.
" I speak as unto wise men : judge ye what
I say." And may " our Lord Jesus Christ
himself, and God, even our Father, which hath
loved us, and hath given us everlasting conso-
lation and good hope through grace, comfort
your hearts, and stablish you in every good word
and work."*
2 Thess. ii. 16. 17.
A p im: N D I X .
No. I Page 11.
So much may be effected by system, that I introduce
here accounts of three parishes, each containing about
5000 persons, in the hope that they may afford useful
suggestions. They exemplify, in some degree, St. Paul's
description of the character of a Christian Church :
" From Him which is the head, even Christ, the whole
body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which
every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working
in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the
body, unto the edifying of itself in love."*
The two first are town parishes, the third chiefly
agricultural.
I.
" The district, which is now not much more than a mile
in circumference, contains about 5000 inhabitants, four-
fifths of whom, at least, are persons earning their bread
by manual labour, many of whom are extremely poor.
In the oversight of this population I am assisted by two
* Eph. iv. 15, 16.
i
53
curates. Reserving in my own hands the general super-
vision of the whole, I have assigned one-half of the dis-
trict to each of my fellow-labourers, stipulating that be-
sides the frequent visitation of the sick, he shall visit
every cottage which will receive him, not seldomer than
once a quarter. Then, as to lay co-operation, the poorer
part of the district is distributed into 40 sections, which
are visited by 35 visitors, each section containing on an
average 23 dwellings. Assiduous visitors go through
their sections weekly, interchanging tracts, reading to
the infirm, the uneducated, and those mothers of families
AV'ho are confined at home on the Sabbath day, and
watching to advance both the spiritual and temporal
good of the little flock they tend. Once a month the
visitors meet their minister for the purpose of instruction
and prayer, when cases of distress are reported and re-
lieved, and where collections of deposits for the Provi-
dent Society are paid over to the secretary. In this
connection, it may be added that we have a clothing so-
ciety for the district, the amount deposited in which by
the poor last year was nearly £200.
For the children of the district we have four Sunday
and four daily schools — the latter consisting of a boys'
or infants' and two girls' schools. Some of these have
sick and burial societies, some clothing funds, and some
libraries. There is also an adult Sunday school, where
persons from 30 to 70 years of age are instructed in the
knowledge of Holy Scripture.
With i-egard to religious services, besides four full
services in Church every week, there are three cottage
lectures, and some times a fourth on an itinerating plan,
held in various parts, with a view to arousing attention
54
in different localities. On the Friday evening preceding
each administration of the Holy Communion, opportunity
is afforded to the poor to consult their pastor privately
and individually before they come to the table of the
Lord. Catechetical instruction is provided for the
young, with occasional interruption, every week. Once
at month, a meeting of all the Sunday school teachers
takes place, when they report progress, in vi^riting, ask
any questions bearing on their labour of love, and are
instructed, prayed with, and encouraged.
In reference to the results of these various means, it
may be safely stated that a great moral change has
passed upon the district. From being the most noto-
riously degraded, neglected, and profligate locality in
these parts, it is so improved as now to bear compari-
son with any parish in the neighbourhood. Some time
ago it was remarked at a meeting of our magistrates,
that, instead of supplying the largest number of com-
mittals to our prison, it now furnished comparatively the
fewest. Very lately, also, a worthy man, who has re-
sided for 30 years in the heart of the district, observed,
of his own accord, " Although there is still great wicked-
ness about here, no one that has not lived in the midst
of the people, as I have done, can tell what an altera-
tion has taken place in the last ten years. The place
used to be dreadful ; but now where ten oaths were
sworn there is not more than one, and where there were
seven brawls and fights there is not even one."
It may be added, that the attendance of the poor from
the district at Church is quadrupled, and the number of
communicants increased sevenfold. " To God be all
the praise.''
55
II.
" I consider it a point of Christian policy to enlist as
many members of my flock as possible, in some service
connected with the interests of the Gospel, and their
own immediate Church —
1st. It draws out their energies in behalf of Him who
did so much for them.
2nd. It enlists their sympathies and affection in be-
half of their own church and parish.
Different offices are, as far as can be, allotted to dif-
ferent individuals, so that many experience the feeling
that they have something to do in the congregation of
which they are members. We have accordingly, —
The Sunday Schools — Their superintendants and
teachers. — Connected with these there is a Sick and
Burial Society, which is invaluable as a bond of connex-'
ion with the schools.
21ie Day Schools. — For these there are visitors, who
daily instruct in Testament and Catechism classes.
A Clothing Fund Society connected with the district
and members of the congregation.
There are secretaries and treasurers for all these dif-
ferent objects.
District Visitors' Society, — This is the most import-
ant parochial instrumentality. We have the parish di-
vided into districts, and a visitor assigned to each dis-
trict, who has a number of families consigned to her
charge, varying in amount in proportion to population
and number of visitors. There are two secretaries —
The Tract Secretary, who arranges a monthly supply
of tracts, labels the packet for each visitor, and receives
and regulates the old ones.
56
The General Secretary, w lio receives a monthly report
from each visitor, of sickness or sorrows, distress, deaths,
births, changes in the district, number of tracts circu-
lated, amount of rehef given, number of each family, and
religious profession, &c. ; so that the secretary's book
is the register of the particulars of the whole parish.
It is the business of this secretary to condense the visi-
tors' reports for the Minister at the monthly meeting,
under the foUow'ing five heads : —
1. Number of families visited.
2. Number of relief tickets given.
3. Sums of money to which they amount in each dis-
trict.
4. Number of Tracts circulated.
5. General remarks, and any thing necessary to name
to the clergyman.
Each district visitor is supplied with a number of co-
pies of the three following : —
1st. A printed circular respecting the Sunday and
Day schools, &c., &c., to be given to every new^ resident
in the parish ; for there is constant change.
2nd. Provision tickets, orders upon a provision shop,
for the purpose of relief. There are also tickets or or-
ders upon a butcher, whei'e butcher's meat for broth,
&c., may be needful (the Minister alone has these last).
No money is given.
3rd. Printed forms of monthly reports, as before de-
scribed, to be sent in to the secretary.
Copies of these three are enclosed.
The Minister regularly meets the visitors once a
month — previous to which the visitors have sent in, and
the secretary condensed, their reports — when all cases
57
of sickness, sorrow, or destitution, of difficulty or liope-
fulness, &c., are named and considered, and notes taken
by the Minister for visiting, &c., &c.
In cases of immediate necessity, the visitor sends a
note to the Incumbent or Curate.
The Sunday School teachers are met by the minister,
male and female, alternately once a fortnight.
A Sick and Burial Society ^ on the following terms
of admission and relief: — From 5 years old and upwards,
■|d. per week subscription will give at death £3. ; from
1 1 years old and upwards, Id. per week subscription
will give 4s. per week when sick, and at death £3. ; from
17 years old and upwards, 2d. per week subscription
will give 7s. per week when sick, and at death £5.
Each member, on admission, pays a fee of 2d., for
which he receives a printed copy of the rules, and will
be considered a full member, and entitled to the relief,
as above, after having regularly paid during nine months
into the society. The weekly subscriptions to be paid
in the school-room every Sunday morning, before nine
o'clock.
A Lending Library, containing upwards of 500 vols,
of carefully-selected books. Terms only 3d. per quar-
ter ; open every Monday evening from seven to eight
o'clock.
A Clothing Society. — Deposits from Id. upwards are
received every Monday evening. In the first week of
October a bonus of 2d. on every shilling deposited (not
to exceed two shillings bonus to any single depositor)
will be added by the Committee, and the whole amount
returned in money, or in various articles of clothing, to
suit the convenience or wants of the members."
58
III.
"At your Lordship's request, I send a short account
of the pastoral system which I have now for some years
past adopted in this place. It has been the result of
successive lessons of experience, and, of course, there-
fore, gradually introduced. I am happy to add that the
success which, by the blessing of God, has now attended
its complete adoption, has fully confirmed the opinion
which I have always held, that the public ministrations
of the clergy lose much of their efficiency when not ac-
companied by a system of private visiting, well digested,
and perseveringly carried out.
The cure attached to the parish church contains about
6000 souls, dispersed over a wide area. This I have
divided into three nearly equal districts, one for myself,
and one for each of my curates. These districts are so
contrived that we may each of us have one portion of our
flock near and another at a distance from home, thus af-
fording occupation both for bad and fine weather. Each
of us is responsible for his own district, though not de-
barred from devoting any spare time to the districts as-
signed to the other two. As far as t am myself con-
cerned, I am, of course, always on the watch over the
whole parish, receiving from my curates constant reports
of the state of their respective districts, and often visit-
ing some of their people, as well as my own.
In visiting our people, from house to house, our rule
is, not at once and in every case to force religious con-
versation. We are rather guided by circumstances as
they arise, and often endeavour to win our way, by show-
ing an interest in the secular as well as in the spiritual
concerns of those whom we visit, taking care, at the same
59
time, by tlie whole tenor of our deportment throughout
the visit, to make it clearly appear, that it is that of the
pastor, and for a spiritual purpose. We bind ourselves
thus to visit every family in our district, not less than
once in three months ; the regular attendants at church
and communicants still more frequently; the sick and in-
firm weekly or daily as their necessities require. The
extent of the area over which the population is scattered
and the early age at which children are employed, have
rendered it necessary to establish a number of detached
schools, so situate as to be convenient for the use of very
young children living at a great distance from each other.
We have three Sunday schools, numbering about 500
children, and five daily schools, numbering about 320
children. During the whole time that the Sunday schools
are open we are all of us engaged, either in superintend-
ence or tuition. Each daily school, also, is under the
special care of one of us, and receives a visit at least
once, generally more than once, a week, when the classes
are carefully examined, specially with reference to the
portion of religious instruction appointed for the week.
On Sunday, we share amongst us two full services in
the church, and in the evening two short services, with
familiar exposition of scripture, in the distant school-
rooms. And during the week we are answerable for
three evening "lectures, partly in distant school-rooms,
partly in cottages, some being plain expositions of scrip-
ture, others of a catechetical description ; all accom-
panied with prayer from the liturgy, and generally, with
singing of psalms or hymns.
I believe I have now furnished, a tolerably faithful
sketch of a system, which, with God's blessing, has
()0
proved very successful amongst my own people. It
is, I am well aware, imperfect, and susceptible of much
improvement. Yet imperfect as it is, it may perhaps,
when taken in connection with the results which it
has produced, be sufficient to show as well the advan-
tage as the practicability of becoming more personally
acquainted with our people than is often the case, and
of seeking to become so, not in the first desultory way
which offers, but on a system."
It will be observed that m these reports mention is
made of the exposition of Scripture in cottages or school-
rooms. On this subject, I subjoin what has recently
been written by certain candidates for Priest's orders, in
reply to a general inquiry as to any signs of improve-
ment in their respective parishes, and the means to which
it might be ascribed.
1 . "I know of many instances of persons habitually at-
tending Church who never did so before, and in whose
whole conduct a decided improvement is visible. The
means I have found most efficient in producing any effect
has been cottage lecturing, accompanied by catechizing,
followed up by visiting from house to house as far as,
owing to the number entrusted to my care, it can possi-
bly be done." *
2. " Some promising signs I have noticed during the
past year, especially in one part, where a cottage lecture
has been established since last autumn. Regular private
visiting, and cottage lectures, I find have been the most
useful. I have generally two lectures every week.
i
(][
When I find that, after a while, from various circum-
stances, the interest dies, or much opposition springs
up, I vary the phice of meeting, and return again after
a certain space. This, however, has seldom been need-
ful, as all my lectures are well attended, and with some
especially, there is an apparent thirst to hear the word
of truth and life."
3. "I may truly say that God's blessing has most visibly
descended on our district during the past year. Many,
especially those who had been confirmed drunkards, have
been converted, many who never entered a church or
chapel now attend regularly ; some papists have been
gained over, and of those whom I am privileged to re-
gard as seals of my apostleship, I know of none who is not
consistently walking in love and good works. Diligent
visiting and cottage lectures appear to me to have been
the most effectual instruments in the Lord's hands of
working this blessed change. Affectionate sympathy,
however, during visits, and a full and free manifestation
of the doctrines of grace in the above lectures has done
much to win the hearts of these people in an accidental
way."
4. " Several young persons who work in the mills have
been seriously impressed during the past year, and have
become communicants, and are at present steadfast in
their profession of religion. In some cases they have
been induced to come at first to cottage lectures or to
an adult class on Tuesday evenings."
62
5. " Considerable improvement among a few, which
seems to be especially promoted under God's blessing
by visiting their houses, and calling them together occa-
sionally at my own residence."
0. " Our congregation has been gradually on the in-
crease, and I attribute it in a great measure to cottage
lecturing. On which occasions I always endeavour to
point out the great necessity of a regular attendance at
Church."
No. II.— p. 12.
CHURCHES BUILT SINCE 1842.
CHESHIRE.
Parish.
Chuicb.
Budworth, Great.
Barn ton.
Northwich.
Eastham.
Ellesmere Port.
Macclesfield.
St. Paul's.
Henbury.
Over.
Winsford.
Runcorn.
Western Point.
LANCASHIRE.
Ashton-under-Lyne. Bardsley.
Bolton-le-Moors. Christ Church.
Lever Bridge.
63
Parish.
Cliurcb.
Bury.
Elton.
Cockerham.
Dolphinholme.
Eccles-
Barton.
Kirkham.
Weeton.
Liverpool.
St. Thomas.
St. Silas.
Manchester.
St. Matthias.
St. Bartholomew.
St. Simon and St. Jude,
St. Silas.
St. Thomas.
Holy Trinity.
St. Barnabas.
Stretford (rebuilt).
Ormskirk.
Bickerstaffe.
Prescot.
Knowsley.
Prestwich.
Unsvvorth.
FLINTSHIRE.
Hawarden.
St. John the Baptist.
WESTMORLAND.
Firbank.
(Rebuilt.)
CUMBERLAND.
St. Bridget's.
(Rebuilt.)
64
No. Ill— p. 14.
*' The gross amount of children attending day schools
in the diocese is 83,000. Confining our observations
to Lancashire and Cheshire, the number under daily
education is about three and three-fifths per cent, on the
whole population. The general state of Church edu-
cation in Sunday and Daily Schools stands thus : —
Daily schools 912 ; scholars ... 74,390.
Sunday schools ... 983 ; scholars ... 133,045.
Add to the Sunday scholars those day scholars who do
not attend on Sundays, the whole number will be about
155,000, out of a population of 2,0/2,000, or 1\ per cent.
It is important to remark, that daily education is exactly
in proportion to the amount of pastoral superintendence.
In fifteen large towns, having an average population of
7500 to each of 120 Incumbencies, the number of schools
is 190, and of scholars 26,405, out of a population of
921,000. In 132 places, where each Incumbent has a
population exceeding 3000, the number of schools is
291, and of scholars 23,335, out of a population of
711,000. In 302 places, where the Incumbents have
fewer than 3000 persons under their charge, the num-
ber of schools is 431, of scholars 24,650, out of a popu-
lation of 430,000. No one who has watched the pro-
gress of the Church for the last few years will be sur-
prised at this statement : he will have observed that every
new church, most frequently in the year succeeding its
consecration, is provided with its set of schools." — Re-
port of the Diocesan Board of Education, 1843, p. 9.
()5
No. IV p. 20.
The following observations, recently made, deserve
much attention : —
" We venture with great deference to observe that in
the particular of preaching, rather as to its form than its
matter, our Clergy, as a body, have much to learn, and
that they may, perhaps, acquire a part of it from that
school amongst themselves which in popular language
would be termed Evangelical. Preaching is a great
Christian ordinance, and admirably suited in its own
nature for the propagation of principles ; we grieve,
therefore, to see occasionally a sort of jealousy of this
instrument, and a disposition, as it were, to avenge upon
it the dishonour which its exclusive admirers are so apt
to do to the yet more solemn and elevated offices of the
Church. But, further, will the day ever arrive when
English preaching, in general, shall attain to the natural
ease and freedom, to that pastoral and persuasive cha-
racter, in which we fear it is much behind the preaching
of many other countries and communities both Catholic
and Protestant ? It is not that it fails in matter and in
thought. But the sermon still remains essentially the
written essay. One consequence of this is, that it does
not come with authority. It has many excellencies : the
Clergy strive hard, and in many cases with wonderful
success, against a vicious system ; but yet that which
is conceived according to the idea of a written essay
cannot, by any effort in the delivery, be converted into
a warm and living sermon. We do not, in preaching,
()()
follow the path which nature spontaneously dictates to a
man desirous through the gift of speech to persuade his
fellow-men. A speech of two hours is often heard with
less wandering of mind than a sermon of thirty minutes,
and that hy men whose hearts are interested in the sub-
ject of the sermon to a degree infinitely exceeding their
care for that of the speech : but the latter is a disserta-
tion, and does violence to nature in the effort to be like
a speech ; the former is, at least, more like what nature
prompts. We long for the day when not by mere amend-
ments in detail, but by the prevalence of a new idea of
the proper basis of the practice of preaching, the Church
of England shall avail herself of this mighty engine for
promoting the glory of God, and the conversion, edifica-
tion, and salvation of the souls of men." — " On the pre-
sent aspect of the Church," Foreign and Colonial Quar-
terly, No. IV.
A German writer, M. Ukeden, professing to give a
" View of the Anglican Church in the 19th century,"
speaks of the general mode of preaching as follows : —
" The practice of incessantly declaiming against the
erroneous views entertained by other sects would almost
seem to be an affair of conscience, and they are only the
most distinguished individuals who take leave to preach
a sermon without interweaving their discourse with po-
lemical allusions. The preponderating interest taken in
the controversy upon Church government explains why
English preachers address themselves so little to the con-
dition of the soul. The contrary might have been ex-
pected, when we consider how pre-eminently happy
English authors have been in their delineations of cha-
(37
racter. It is rare to hear the natural inferences from the
text gone into : the extreme value of Scripture in reli-
gious polity is enlarged upon, and identically the same
application is made of a prophecy of the Old Testament
as of an extract from St. Paul's Epistles." — p. 135.
If this were any thing approaching to a just description,
which I do not believe, no one could wonder at the in-
efficiency of the English pulpit. It is singular, how-
ever, and worthy of consideration, that a foreigner should
have conceived this idea of the general style of preaching
from the examples which fell under his observation.
08
No. V p. 24.
ASSOCIATION FOR TKOVIDING SCRIPTURE READERS IN
CONNECTION WITH THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND,
Under the sanction of the Lord Bishop of London and the Lord
Bishop of Winchester .
At a Meeting held on the 18th of March, 1844, the
following Resolutions were agreed to : —
1 . Tliat it is highly desirable to give the fullest eiFect
to the Parochial System, and to supply to the people those
private ministrations which, in populous parishes, the
Clergy of themselves are unable adequately to afford.
2. That in order to advance this great object, an As-
sociation be formed for the purpose of providing, for the
Metropolitan Parishes in the Dioceses of London and
Winchester, Lay Scripture Readers, whose duty it shall
be to read the Scriptures from house to house.
3. That such Lay Scripture Readers shall be Com-
municants in the Church of England — that they shall be
selected by the Clergy of the respective districts, or by
the Committee — that their appointment shall be solely
vested in the Committee, but that the Readers shall be
under the control of the Clergy, who may suspend them
from performing their functions, on giving notice to the
Committee ; that in no case shall any reader be appoint-
ed to or continued in any Parish or District against the
will of its Incumbent or Officiating Minister, and that
the sanction of the Bishop shall be required to each ap-
pointment.
69
INSTRUCTIONS FOll SCIUPTUKE READERS.
1 . You are to visit in your district from house to house,
for the purpose of reading the Scriptures to the poor, ac-
companying such reading with plain remarks, pointing
their attention to the Saviour of whom they testify.
2. Remember that your principal object must be, to
call attention to the Scriptures, strongly urging, upon
their authority, the sin of neglecting them, setting them
forth as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, as
able " to make men wise unto salvation, through faith
which is in Christ Jesus."
3. You are strictly prohibited from carrying about
with you, for the purpose of reading to the people, or
of distributing among them, any book or publication, but
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the
Book of Common Prayer ; taking care to avoid, as much
as possible, all controversy.
4. You are strictly prohibited from preaching, either
in houses or elsewhere.
5. Urge upon all persons you visit the duty of attend-
ing the public worship of God in the Church ; inculcate
upon parents the duty of training up their children in
the way they should go, and of procuring for them week-
day and Sunday-school instruction. In any particular
case which seems to call for the visit of the parochial
Clergyman, report it forthwith to him.
No. VI.— p. '2{).
It has now become unnecessary for me to vindicate
some expressions in my former Charges from the cen-
sure which, in some quarters, they have met with ; as
if it were unreasonable or uncharitable to complain, as I
did complain in 1838, that " the foundations of our Pro-
testant Church were undermined by men who dwelt with-
in her walls," and that we were " threatened with a re-
vival of Popish errors." Subsequent events and writ-
ings, I conceive, have sufficiently shown that where the
principle of Popery evidently existed, it was no errone-
ous judgment to foresee the conclusion.
I desire, however, to be only answerable for what I
have written, and not for exaggerations of what I have
written. I have never called the writers whose opinions
I thought it right to impugn, either " agents of Satan,"
or "instruments of the enemy of mankind."* Lan-
guage such as this could have no proper application
except to men who wilfully pervert the truth, or blas-
phemously revile it. I did, indeed, attribute the at-
tempt to overthrow the great doctrine of the Reforma-
tion, Justification by Faith, to that enemy whose power
is never so successfully assailed as when that doctrine
is preached in all its fulness. And I presume that I
have Scripture on my side, when I represent " the con-
flict which may be traced throughout the whole history
of the Church between truth and error, as carried on
* Remarks on my Charge of 1841, by the Hon. and Rev.
A. Perceval.
71
between the two powers of light and darkness, Christ
and the Devil : and, therefore, wherever there is error
in doctrine, the agency of that great Adversary pro tanto
has been employed. Not all who do his work are con-
scious of being his agents, or else they would cease : but
he beguiles men's minds, and seduces them to " think
they are doing God service," when they are, in fact, op-
posing truth. And these are his " subtle wiles," by which
even good men, i.e.., well-intentioned men, are deceived.
" For Satan himself is sometimes transformed into an
angel of light."*
In point of fact, I have said little more than has now
been virtually acknowledged by some who are more fa-
vourably disposed towards the Tractarian party than 1
pretend to be. It will be enough to allude to one. Mr.
Palmer candidly allows that he early perceived in some
of the writers " sentiments which seemed extremely un-
just to the Reformers and injurious to the Church :"
that he and some others " felt deeply uneasy on wit-
nessing questionable doctrine gradually mingling itself
with the salutary truths which they had associated to
vindicate, and were often driven almost to the verge of
despair, in observing what appeared to be a total indif-
ference to consequences;" and that "it is now admitted
on all hands, that there is a tendency to Romanism in
some quarters;" and "an increasing dissemination of
most erroneous and decidedly Romanising views, under
the assumed name of Church principles." t
* See " A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Russell." In defending- my
own cause, I gladly avail myself of words which are not my own.
i" See a " Narrative of events connected with the publica-
tion of the Tracts for the Times," pp. 23, 24, 49.
I -
Now if the Romish faith be, uhat the history of the
Church of Rome shows it to be, that form of Anti-
christ wh'.h is most decidedly inimical to the religion of
the Gospel, — whatever has " a tendency to Romanism,"
introduced into a Church which avowedly purified itself
from Romish corruptions, must be approved by the
great Enemy whose dominion the Gospel is destined to
overthrow, and must like all other evil be ultimately
ascribed to him. Either the premises are wrong, or
Scripture obliges us to the conclusion. " Sir, didst
thou not sow good seed in thy field? From whence,
then, hath it tares ? He said unto them. An enemy
hath done this." " Questionable doctrine is mingled
with salutary truth :" sentiments " injurious to the
Church," and " having a decided tendency towards
Romanism, are disseminated under the assumed name
of Church principles." From whence come these tares,
in a field whei-e good seed was sown ? " An enemy
hath done this."* This, and no more have I said, in
referring what has been called the Oxford movement, to
" the subtle wiles" of the Adversary who had found his
opportunity of injuring the Church of Christ, and had
not failed to make use of his "advantage:" to disturb
our peace with discussions by which vital religion is
not promoted, and to divert youthful zeal into channels
where it will little affect his own dominion.
* Matt. xiii. 27.
DURHAM : PRINTED BY V. HCMBLE AND SON, SADDLER- STREET.
CHARGE,
DELIVERED TO THE
CLERGY OF THE DIOCESE OF OXFORD,
HIS PRIMARY VISITATION,
SEPTEMBER & OCTOBER, 1848.
SAMUEL, LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD,
LORD HIGH ALMONER TO THE QUEEN :
CHANCELLOR OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER.
LONDON:
FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON,
ST. Paul's church yard, and waterlog place.
1848.
CHARGE,
My Rev. Brethren,
It is not without mingled feelings that I meet you
on this solemn occasion. For whilst on the one hand
I look around me at every one of these our places of
assembling with joy and thankfulness to God, on
many whom I have seen labouring in their several
parishes with a wise and diligent faithfulness, yet, on
the other hand, when I remember — as when I thus
meet the assembled diocese I must remember — the
greatness of the work to which God's providence has
called me, and my own insufficiency for such a burden,
I look around me and tremble. And yet even from
this very sense of feebleness there spring up thoughts
of encouragement and strength. For that very sense
of feebleness must, T think, drive any reflecting man
from all trust in himself to a simple reliance upon
HIS support whose has been the call to such a weighty
and perilous charge. It must force him from all
B
6
notions of personal ability or fitness to a single trust
in 1 lim mIio fouiuled this ministry; who a])pointed
this oftice, who committed it to men, and who w^ill
streng-then their infirmity to whom He gives grace to
plead his promises and call for his aid.
Any practical acquaintance with the duties which
belong to this office must, I think, lead every one to
say from his very heart, " Who is sufficient for these
things ?" for the Bishop's office is the earthly centre
of the Christian ministry, with all its risks and ven-
tures, for our own souls, and for the souls of others
for whom Christ died ; — and for whom we must, each
one, as far as they are entrusted to us, render up a
strict account. Such, certainly, was the estimate
formed of it in early times, and recorded alike by
those who discharged it, and those amongst whom it
■was exercised. This was the reason why, wherever
the Church had the most to do^ to suffer, or to dare,
she cast forth the Episcopate. This was the reason
why great saints, although they were furnished with
every earthly instrument of service, shrunk from the
burden and risk of so great a charge. For then it
was understood and believed that " God" had " set
forth the Apostles last, as it were appointed to death,"
having "made" them "a spectacle unto the world,
and to angels, and to men ' ;" and that they who fol-
lowed them in their office had succeeded, in their
measure, to a like inheritance. It was then under-
stood and believed, that the ministry of Priests and
• 1 Cor. iv. 9.
Deacons was an emanation drawn forth by the Holy
Spirit as the Church's need required from that Apo-
stolic office which the Lord Himself had founded,
and made the especial channel of his grace for
evangelizing the world ; and that, as when Titus
" ordained Elders in every city," he made provision
for that due discharge of the work committed to
him, for which his personal service never could
have sufficed, that so the parochial ministry gave
the like power to those who succeeded to his
charge : — that thus the Bishop laboured through his
Clergy, and that they, in their several ministries,
carried out his necessary lack of service, and so en-
abled him to fulfil the injunction which, at his con-
secration, he receives amongst ourselves, as the " chief
pastor" of his diocese — " Hold up the weak, heal the
sick, bind up the broken, bring again the outcasts,
seek the lost ^"
Thus it was felt to appertain to the office of the
Bishop to weigh with patient care all the Church's
needs, to suggest and direct all her endeavours;
to encourage, to reprove, if need be to punish ; to
preserve the high standard of devotion, to guard
the purity of doctrine, to protect the flock from
evil pastors, to be foremost in every labour, danger,
and self-denial. Thus amidst the multitude of in-
struments was secured harmony of action : and thus
were all the services of His people, and the appointed
channels of His gracious gifts to them, drawn up
^ Service for the Consecration of a Bishop.
b2
8
tof3:other into a visible unity, -wliich pointed directly
to thnt intercession of our Lord through Avhieh alone
any service can be oftcred ; and from which descends
to every member of His Church every -where that
grace mIhcIi unites each one to their only true and
ever-living Head.
Who can -wonder that from such " a care of all the
churches" the vigorous soul of Ambrose, as -well as
the more plaintive piety of Gregory Nazianzen, should
so ardently have panted to escape? And though, my
reverend brethren, the actings of this office amongst
ourselves are greatly circumscribed and narrowed,
yet in its essence it is unchanged, and it ought to be
administered in the same spirit. It still is, or ought
to be, a heavy burden : still before his mind, whom
God has indeed called to it, must pass day after
day the needs, the difficulties, the dangers of each
separate pastor who is labouring under him, and of
each flock committed to them. The diocese lies
mapped out before him ; in his secret jDrayers, day
after day, the several necessities of its different parts
are brought before his God : in that Presence only
can he lay do-wn his burden : for though of God's
great mercy he is filled with thankfulness and joy,
with seeing, in one place and another, the fruit of
the pastor's prayers, and labours, and faithfulness, in
a rich and abundant harvest of souls rescued from
the power of the evil one ; yet too often, alas, his
soul is pierced by the thought of wants unsupplied
in this parish, of a ministry missing its aim in that;
9
of world liness, of inefficiency, of despondency amongst
one or another of those over whom he is appointed
to watcli ; and through whom he is discharging that
fearful trust — the ministry of souls.
The actings of this office are, as I have said, circum-
scribed and narrowed amongst ourselves until there
scarcely is left to it any authority, save that which
man gave not, and which man cannot take away — its
spiritual authority amongst those who believe it to
be God's appointment, and who honour it for his
sake. As far as regards the withdrawal of many of
those external aids which heretofore increased its
sway, it may be, that the wisdom of God has per-
mitted their gradual removal, in order thus to free
it from the secularity which, so soon as the powers
of the world are on her side, is always ready to creep
over the offices of Christ's Church. It may be, that
He is intending thus to call forth within the Church
of this nation a more lively sense of that Dispensa-
tion of His Spirit which He has verily bestowed
upon her ; and to teach her to trust in things divine
more simply to that promised Presence of Himself
with her, in which alone, and not in any arm of
flesh, can be her strength. Certain it is, that where-
ever this apostolic office has been administered in
faith and prayer, with singleness of aim and humi-
lity of soul, and M'here liave gathered around it
a faithful Laity and Clergy, seeing in it God's appoint-
ment, that there it has been ever found to be at once
the living spring and tempering rule of united, and
therefore effectual action for our Lord and Master.
10
it is as holding, however unworthily, such an
ottice, that I eonie to-tlay amongst you ; desiring
greatly to be amongst you, through the aid of God,
as a partner of your labours, a sharer of your griefs,
a lightener of your anxieties, a helper of your joy ;
earnestly entreating your prayers that I may have
grace so to fulfil the duties of my office, that, at the
great day, I may give up my account with joy ; and
bespeaking, my reverend brethren, your forbear-
ance towards the infirmities aud errors w4iich may
attend my administration, your candid interpreta-
tion of much which, as years pass on, suspicion
might distrust, or maliciousness pervert ; your con-
fidence in the singleness and simplicity of my desire
to discharge its duties, as in God's sight, and your
full and cheerful co-operation with me in the due
fulfilment of our great common trust.
It is as havins: this trust in common that we meet
here to take council together as to our common
interests. That we should so consult together, I
deem most important ; for, without such united
counsels, that union which is essential to our strength
must be impossible. And, on this account, I greatly
lament the change w^iich has gradually passed over
these our diocesan gatherings.
Excellent as in many respects is the working of
that law of necessary publicity to w^liich almost all
action is now subjected, it is, undoubtedly, a great
hindrance to takinfi- counsel when it must be taken
in public : and a Bishop's visitation would be another,
and for his diocese, I believe, a far more effectual
11
instrument of good, if he then spoke only to those
immediately concerned with the matters as to which
he speaks, and consulted with those only with whom
he has to work.
Such an institution, however, a visitation cannot
now be ; and the impossibility of its being so makes
me the more desire to supply this lack of free inter-
course by other provisions. It is with this view that
I have proposed to the Rural Deans and other officers
of the diocese, what their kindness has enabled me
hitherto to carry out, that we should spend annually
some days together at Cuddesdon, for common prayer
and common counsel.
Greatly should I rejoice to carry out this practice
further amongst the body of the Clergy, should it
be desired by any number of them. The spirit of
earnest piety has, I believe, been kept alive in other
branches of Christ's Church, favoured far less than
we are in purity of faith and doctrine, by nothing so
much as by such habitual meetings of the Bishop
with his Clergy, for some days of separation from all
worldly business, for mutual counsel and prayer, and
reading God's word, and meditation, and partaking
together of the holy Eucharist.
It is, moreover, to give practical reality to this close
connexion between myself and those who labour in the
several parochial charges of the diocese, that I have
required, — as I have already stated to you through
the Archdeacons, — that I should be consulted before
any unlicensed clergyman officiates more than three
12
times \vitliiii the diocese : and, for the same pur-
pose, I now express my desire that in this diocese, as
in many others, no formal nomination should be given
to a curate until the incumbent has consulted me
upon his fitness for the proposed cure.
To secure further this inter-communion, and, as far
as possible, to make the episcopal office felt in your
several parishes to be a living reality, and not a mere
abstraction, it is moreover my desire, my reverend
brethren, to join as often as possible in your parochial
services. I wish that I could hope to be occasionally
•with all ; but this the extent of an English diocese
makes well-nigh impossible. But it will be my
endeavour to be from time to time with as many
as opportunity allows in their ordinary Sunday
services. These and our other meetings w^ill, I trust,
give us many opportunities for that free intercourse
and closer converse which I am most anxious to
maintain with you, and which many circumstances
render little possible at this our more official meeting.
Whilst, however, it no longer affords scope for this,
■we may, through God's aid, render it not a little
useful. We may profitably take together a more
general view of our position, — of its strength, and of
its weakness, of its duties, and its blessings.
And first, let me speak to you briefly on some
public matters which I think must interest us all.
For though the Clergy should never so lower down
their high calling as to become political rather than
spiritual men, yet, in the true and Christian sense of
13
the word, the highest interests of the itoXiTHa are
their special charge. It appertains to their office, as
instructors and guides of thought and opinion, that
they shoukl closely watch all measures which tend
to promote the general welfare, and, above all, the
morals of the people. The tendency, in many quar-
ters, to multiply such efforts is one of the most
favourable symptoms of the present time ; and you
may greatly aid such good works by being ready to
give them, in your several spheres, your support and
co-operation. I allude, and I can only allude, to
such measures as those for protecting women from the
execrable arts of the pander; for limiting the hours
on which houses for the sale of fermented or spi-
rituous liquors can be opened on the Sunday ; for
maintaining by protective enactments, for shop-
keepers and others, the rest of the Lord's day ; for
preventing the brutalizing sports which inflict torture
on animals, and degrade those addicted to them ; for
correcting the grievous abuses by which so many
charitable trusts are diverted from their lawful pur-
poses ; for improving our system of prison discipline,
and the moral treatment of our convicts^ ; and for pro-
moting in various ways, by sanitary measures and
by improvements in the poor laws, the welfare and
* In these reforms, thank God, the county of Berks, in our own
diocese, has taken the lead. The results obtained in Reading
gaol, under a system of moral and religious discipline, adminis-
tered by the visiting justices, with the able assistance of their
excellent chaplain, the Rev. T. Field, ought to lead to the reform
of all our other gaols.
14
comforts of the labouring pojnilation. In such mea-
sures as these you cannot fail to feel an interest ;
and, as to many of them, your practical knowledge
may enable you to afford to those who bring them
forward much useful information and valuable support.
On another matter which has been before parlia-
ment I must speak somewhat more particularly :
I allude to the proposed alteration of the laws which
take special cognizance of offences committed by
clerks in holy orders.
Of the high moral tone of the body of the Eng-
lish Clergy, taken as a whole, I do not think that it
would be easy to speak in exaggerated terms. It is
of God's special mercy to us, as a Church and a
nation, that they are such as in the mass they are.
I believe that no other nation, and perhaps no other
time, could produce so large a number of men, ex-
posed in many respects to such peculiar temptations,
and tried by so many difficulties, who could be com-
pared with them in purity of life and morals. And
from this, two corollaries follow : first, that as a body
they stand in these respects eminently high in the
estimation of all right-minded men ; and, secondly,
that any exception to their general character of
integrity and blamelessness attracts an attention, and
provokes a scandal, which are searching and inju-
rious, exactly in proportion to the strictness of that
ordinary rule which the offender breaks. Now, as
this scandal, with its consequent subjecting of others
to suspicion, reaches the innocent as well as the
guilty, it is a signal benefit to the virtuous that the
15
opportunities for scandal and suspicion should be as
far as possible removed, by the existence of easy and
certain means for proving or disproving guilt, and
for promptly punishing the guilty.
That no such means exist at present, I believe is
admitted by all who have ever thought upon the
subject. Nothing, indeed, but the great purity of
the mass of the English Clergy, can account for
the long continuance of the law in its present state;
and sorely have they, in some places, smarted under
its present inefficiency ; bearing for years, it may
be, through a whole district, tlie reproach pro-
voked by some one scandalous offender whom, in
the present laxity of the law, it is impossible for
any sufficient punishment to reach. As well, there-
fore, to guard the virtuous as to clear ourselves from
the great guilt of enduring amongst us those "who
make the Lord's people to transgress," ought we to
endeavour to obtain some improvement of the enact-
ments which bear upon this subject ; and however
we may wish, that on such matters the Church was at
liberty to deliberate for herself on the evils which
afflict her and their cure, the only practical remedy
must be by legislation. To introduce such a remedy
was the object of the bill which (after full consider-
ation in a select committee, where its details were
weighed carefully by all the law lords,) was laid upon
the table of the upper house of parliament. Its prin-
ciple was to submit all questions of fact to a jury
chosen by lot from a jury list of incumbents, which
10
jury list slioiikl be filled out of the whole number of
incumbents in the archdeaconry, by their own free
choice, and with a right of challenge given to the
accused, reserving to the Bishop that judicial func-
tion alone which is inalienable from his office.
I need hardly say, that great difficulties must
beset the framing of such an enactment; but we
are compelled to face them by the necessity of the
case ; and I confidently bespeak your assistance
towards devising and carrying through a safe mea-
sure to secure these ends. I thankfully acknow-
ledge the aid which I received by discussing the
bill proposed last session personally with the Rural
Deans, and by receiving through them the ex-
pressed opinions of the great body of the Clergy.
Such assistance I shall seek again if the bill, before
it is proceeded with, should be materially altered.
Upon the supposed danger (on which I was ad-
dressed by some of those present) of the introduction
into the bill of some new definition of heresy, it is,
I think, sufficient to say, that I have no apprehen-
sion of the success of any such attempt. It is one
which I should certainly agree with you in resisting
to the utmost, from the fullest conviction, that for
the Church to allow a body alien to herself, such as
is the legislature of this land, to settle for her what
should be her symbols or her doctrines, would be to
abdicate her highest office ; to abandon the charter
given her of God ; and to declare herself to be a
mere creature of human institution.
17
I now turn, my reverend brethren, to another
matter of mixed diocesan and public interest, to which
I woukl call your most attentive consideration. I
mean the subject of National Education, and our
own duties in relation to it. This subject, at all
times one of the greatest interest, is at this time of
even increased importance, from the position with
regard to it assumed by the government, as well as
from the state of our population. The vast increase
of our population in point of numbers, the new con-
ditions under which it is passing, the political power
lodged in hands unused to the trust, the eager bid-
ding for its leadership by all descriptions of intel-
lectual, social, moral, political, and religious impostors;
ihe widening separation between poverty and wealth ;
the loosening and wearing out of the old bands and
social relations which have so long held together
English society, with the agitating impulses which
have been, and must be, communicated to it from
other countries, all render the due training of our
people the greatest and most pressing question of the
day. How shall we escape the storm in which so
many gallant vessels have already foundered, if, with
the waves waiting for the coming of the hurricane,
we have crews unpractised and unfurnished ; ships
without rudders, and without a compass? Every care-
ful scrutiny of the prisoners in our gaols reveals the
same facts, which are at once our reproach for the
past, and our encouragement for the future. We
find the mass of our criminals composed of those
18
uliom neither Cliristiaiiity nor civilizcation liave
reached ; who have been suffered to grow up beside
us uninstructed and unhealed, to prove, in the ripened
maturity of their vices, our chastisers and their own
destroyers. Of 757 prisoners committed to Reading
gaol, during the twelve months preceding this last
Michaelmas, from that portion of the diocese, 256
were quite unable to read, whilst those wdio had
received such an education as enabled them to un-
derstand easily what they read amounted only to
twenty-six. As to religious training, the evidence
was of the same character: only forty could re-
peat the Apostles' Creed, the Commandments, and
portions of the Catechism ; and not less than 140
were ignorant of the simplest truths of Holy Scrip-
ture, and even (marvellous as it appears) of the very
Name of Christ. Of the whole 757, as many as 415
had been at no school, or at one for too short a period
to make any real exception, and only twenty-four had
been confirmed — had reached, that is, the due close
of a Church of England education. Who can doubt,
after such revelations, that the education of our people
is our most important business ?
To the greatness of this question the civil govern-
ment of the country has been gradually awaking;
Parliament has voted funds for the support of educa-
tion, and successive governments have endeavoured
to form rules for their safe administration.
It was at first proposed to institute a great scheme
of national instruction ; and as our unhappy divisions
19
rendered united religious training manifestly unat-
tainable, it was proposed that tlie State, leaving to
other bands the supply of the religious element, should
provide a secular education for the industrial classes.
But this scheme found no general favour any where.
Churchmen and dissenters both awoke to the true
meanins: of the word Education. It was in vain that
they were told that England was the least-educated
country of civilized Europe ; that their eyes were
pointed to Prussia, where every rustic labourer was
rapidly becoming a philosopher ; they had an instinct-
ive perception that, with all our admitted deficiencies,
England could not be what it was if Englishmen
were in education so utterly behind all other people ;
they distrusted the showy schemes which were sug-
gested for their imitation ; and, though they could
not actually prophesy the contrast which, through
God's mercy to us, uneducated England would in this
very year exhibit to highly educated Prussia, they
could declare that no education could supply the
wants of England which did not teach her people
first to fear God, and then to honour the Queen ;
which did not, that is to say, teach them to base upon
serving God all their other actions ; which did not
set before them, as man s highest honour as well as
greatest happiness, the being under a true law of
duty, and fulfilling its requirements towards their
neighbour and their God. The struggle ended, as
you are well aware, in an agreement under which the
resources of the State were given to assist the various
20
religious bodies which were actually engaged in the
work of education, in proportion to their own con-
tributions, reserving only to the government the
]iower of ascertaining, by a well-devised inspection,
that the public money did maintain efficient schools.
At first the public grants were limited to affording
aid in building school-houses; but the experience soon
attained, both of the important stimulus to private
efforts which a public grant afforded, and of the need
of applying such a stimulus as much to maintaining
as to creating schools, led to further plans, by which
a portion of the annual expenses of schools was to
be defrayed from public grants. This new element
of assistance gave rise to new rules for its con-
duct : a secure conveyance of the site and buildings,
with the assurance of efficiency in the conduct of
the school, w^as all which had been hitherto re-
quired ; but it seemed now desirable to fix, as far as
possible, what should be the future local government
of the schools, which would be annually aided from
the public funds. Hence arose the suggestion of
inserting in the trust-deeds certain clauses, providing
for the future management of the schools. To such
clauses in the abstract, the Church cannot, in my
judgment, reasonably object. If properly conceived,
they may be her great security : it is impossible to
fix too clearly the conditions on Avhich any religious
body is to receive the aid of funds supplied by the
State. But then it is of the utmost moment that
those conditions should thoroughly accord with her
21
fundamental principles. To secure this for the
Church has been the object of negotiations, in
which the National Society has been long engaged
with the Committee of Privy Council. The particu-
lars of this negotiation are now fully before you.
All the material requirements of the Society have
been granted, — with one exception : upon that one
exception it will be for the Church at large to pro-
nounce : it respects the proposed appellate juris-
diction upon questions not relating to direct reli-
gious instruction, as to which the local committee
of a school cannot agree. The National Society
was ready to acquiesce in an arrangement, which
should leave to the local promoters of schools the
power of inserting in the trust-deeds either of the
following provisions, at their own free choice.
1st, That the appeal on all matters, as well as on
those which regarded the direct religious instruc-
tion, should be to the Bishop of the diocese;
or, 2dly, That the appeal should be to two arbi-
ters, the one of whom should be named by the
Bishop of the diocese from amongst his Clergy, the
other by the Lord President of the Council from
the School Inspectors, — who must previously have
received the sanction of the Archbishop of the
province : that these two should, before entering on
the question, nominate a third to act as final arbiter
in the event of their own disagreement ; and that if
they could not, within a limited time, agree in sucli
a nomination, that the final arbiter should be
c
oo
api^ointod by tlio Arclil)isliop of the province, and
the Loril President of the Council conjointly. The
latter of these ])rovisions was fully approved by the
Committee of Privy Council ; but they have finally
refused to admit the first. Practically speaking, I
believe that there Mould be no material ditterence
between the working of the two provisions : l3ut I
deeply lament the spirit evinced in the requirement,
that a Church of England school should be dis-
qualified for receiving public aid, because a large
ascertained majority of its lay founders desired to
give to its committee the right of appealing in all
matters to their Bishop.
This would not be the place for entering further
upon the details of this negotiation ; but I desire
to consider with you, in a very few words, the general
principles which should guide our conduct on this
question at the present juncture.
We should then, I think, endeavour to the utmost
of our power to aid the efforts of the Government in
promoting education ; and with this course we should
allow no needless suspicions or imaginary jealousies
to interfere. We must be ready to waive every
thing short of principle. But no one single principle
can M'e abandon. We have a prescribed definition
of education ; we have a prescribed mode of con-
ducting it ; we can receive or administer no other.
Education means in our mouths the training for
service here, and for glory hereafter, according to
God's revealed will, and by His selected instru-
23
ments, souls which have been brought at baptism
under the operation and influence of the outward
appointments and spiritual powers of the Church of
Christ. This training we know to be the highest
they can receive intellectually, the purest morally,
the best politically : if the State will put into our
hands increased means for carrying out this system
of education, we shall, I trust, gratefully, honestly,
and zealously co-operate with it. In such a work
the Church of England has never yet been a back-
ward or a dishonest instrument of that national
polity which she acknowledges to be as truly, as she
is herself, God's institution. But she can train on
no other system : for the State to seek to use her as a
slave, would be to destroy her faculty of service. For
in the indwelling of God's power is all her might ;
and if her locks are shorn, and her rule broken, her
Nazarite strength would depart from her, and she
would become as others of this earth.
What then individually and collectively we must
insist upon is, that we should be assured that Church
schools should be conducted by Churchmen upon
Church principles. We have, — for I speak herein
with the utmost confidence for all my brethren of the
Clergy, — we have no wish to exclude the laity from
their full share in the duty and responsibility of
conducting Church schools. We have no wish to
monopolize the conduct of education. On the con-
trary, we earnestly desire the co-operation and sup-
port of our lay brethren. We know that we are
c2
24
never so efficient for o;oo(l as wlien they are working-
truly and heartily with us. We have no wish in any
matter, least of all in a matter such as this, to be
" lords over God's heritage ;" but we are bound to
require that those who join us in administering such
a trust should be indeed what they are called.
Church of England laymen. That they should not
be those who by the mere accident of birth, or
from never having joined any religious body, are
loosely classed amongst us, but that they should be
in truth, life, and principle members of our own
communion. Further, we are bound to require that
in the event of any disagreement between the mana-
gers of schools, as to the qualifications of teachers, or
the character of books to be used, or instruction to be
given in them, the appeal should lie to some autho-
rity necessarily within the Church. Thus much we
must require in order that the power may be secured
to us of teaching to all the children committed to us
all necessary truth ; not lowering down our teaching
to suit others ; but maintaining and using our own
sacred deposit of God's word, God's truth and God's
training, in their fulness, as we have received them.
How far those who differ from us should be
allowed by us to send their children to our schools
is another question ; and one which, in my judgment,
should be left to the decision of the managers of
each school. I, for my part, as a parochial Clergy-
man, always have rejoiced, and still should rejoice,
to receive into schools thus constituted all without
25
exception who will come to them ; nay, I would
gladly train in them for six days those who are not
sent to me for seven, or for four days those whom
I could not get for six ; I would willingly give them
some blessing if I could not give them all they
might receive ; and thus we might hope more fully
to discharge the great work of diffusing on all sides
of us some measures at least of Christian training.
How great the work is which we have to perform
in this diocese a very little reflection may show us.
The population of the diocese amounted at the last
census to 478,773 persons. The best calculations
give one-seventh of these as the number for whose
education some charitable assistance ought to be
provided. For so many, then, if we act up to our
character as the Church of the nation, we ought to
be providing. Those returned to me in the answers
to my visitation questions, as actually under the direct
training of the Church, amount to not quite one-half
of this number ; and though, for various causes, this
does not include a full return from every parish, yet
it manifestly leaves merely numerically a very large
deficiency.
But this is far from representing the whole case.
Besides the numbers left untaught, there is a de-
ficiency of any present machinery for the supply or
the wants of whole classes of the population ; and
there is a deficiency as to the quality of that which
is supplied.
Very little provision, e. g., has been made hitherto
for the true education of that large and most im-
2G
portant class (the existence of which so signally
distinouishcs our land) which lies between the higher
gentry and the labourers. A proposal has been
made, as many of you know, to provide on a liberal
scale, in connexion with our own diocesan training
institution, for this want, by founding a thoroughly
good school for the sons of our yeomen and upper
tradesmen, — a school to which they might send their
children with the same general assurance, that they
would receive in it a thoroughly sound English and
religious education, as is possessed by the higher
gentry in our existing public schools and universities.
I cannot but believe that if the great need of such an
institution were more widely known, the funds need-
ful for its establishment would speedily be raised.
But we need also to improve the quality of the
teaching which we do give. To effect this object, the
diocesan institution for training parochial school-
masters and mistresses was framed ; and to the
utmost reach of its means it has in the main faith-
fully fulfilled its task \ But its means are at present
utterly inadequate to its necessities ; and I believe
that at this moment the most important diocesan
move we can make, is to strengthen and enlarge
this institution. For at this time it is not merely
* I cannot refer to the Diocesan Board without returning pub-
licly my thanks to the Rev. the Master of University College for
his services as its Treasurer; and to the Rev. E. Hobhouse,
Fellow of Merton, for the unwearied attention he has given to it,
with his brother Secretary, the Rev. Joseph Dodd, Rector of
Hampton-Poyle.
27
that its comparative inefficiency will in some degree
limit our usefulness, but that it will subject us to
new and serious injury. Constituted as it is at pre-
sent, it cannot satisfy the just requirements of the
Privy Council as to tenure, extent, or provision for
its purpose. It cannot, therefore, be admitted on the
list of those institutions to which the training of
Queen's scholars is to be committed : and I beg you
to weigh carefully the following results, which, under
the new prospects of education, must follow from
our not at once raising it to the necessary standard.
Of the pupil teachers who are now being appren-
ticed in our parochial schools, — and whose numbers
will, doubtless, be increased when the important
assistance to be obtained from their presence towards
the funds of the school is known by experience, —
the best will obtain Queen's scholarships. The
condition of the Queen's scholarship is, that the
scholar shall continue his training at the expense of
the public grant in some training school which reaches
to the prescribed standard. Unless, therefore, our
own diocesan school is so far improved as to be
placed upon the list, our best scholars must be taken
from us, — it may be, to the training of dissenting
institutions; and thus the diocese certainly, and
perhaps the Church, will lose the services of all its
best pupils ; whilst the Diocesan Institute will lose
at once the pecuniary support it would have received
from the payments made for the Queen's Scholars ;
and, what is far more important, it will be lowered in
character by becoming the mere refuge for those who
28
■\vcrc too idle or too dull to rise to the hi^licst level of
attainment. Thus, the quality of Church education
must be fiitally sunk amongst us, unless, by a vigorous
effort, we raise the sum of money needed, once for
all, to put our training institution upon an efficient
footing-. We need, moreover, greatly for the supply
of our own wants, an increase of numbers in our
training school. An union has been effected, as
you are aware, between this diocese and that of
Gloucester and Bristol ; under the terms of which,
we are to train their schoolmasters, and they are
to train our schoolmistresses ; by which arrangement,
each diocesan board paying to the other merely for
its actual pupils, will be saved the cost of main-
taining each two separate institutions. We ought,
therefore, to be able to receive a sufficient number of
training pupils to supply masters for both dioceses.
In the last year, thirty masters have been applied for
in our own diocese. Now, supposing our pupils to
pass through their whole course of three years, we
must have one hundred in the school to supply
annually thirty-three. We have only room in our
present buildings for twenty-nine scholars, or little
more than one-fourth of what we actually need for
ourselves. To say nothing, therefore, of any increased
demand at home, we must, to supply efficiently both
dioceses, make a great effort to enlarge the founda-
tion of our college : once so enlarged, there need be
no continual drain upon the charity of the diocese ;
for it might be annually maintained at a subscribed
income, little if at all greater than that which it at
29
present possesses ; for the payments of the pupils
woiikl defray the cost of their own board, and the
expenses of the staff of the establishment would,
comparatively speaking, be little increased. Funds
to found the institution upon a sufficient basis; to
erect, above all, the necessary buildings upon a free-
hold site, are what we require ; and towards raising
these I would earnestly invite the aid of all of you in
your several neighbourlioods.
The answer made by the diocese to our appeal in
behalf of building new churches and parsonage-
houses, — more than four thousand pounds ^ having
been contributed, — encourages me to hope that the
statement of our necessities, in this kindred cause,
would secure the needful funds. The Clergy, I am
well aware, give already, as a body, to this and almost
all such objects, not only up to, but beyond their
means. It is not, therefore, to increase their own
gifts that I would here urge them, but to bring closely
* The sum raised in answer to this appeal amounts to
4230^., of which 36891. were donations, 541/. annual subscrip-
tions. But of the 36891., 1826Z. were appropriated by the donors
to particular objects, leaving 18731. for the general distribution of
the committee, who have made the following grants : —
I. — Grants for building new churches.
(1) Colnbrook £150
(2) Prestwood Common 200
(3) Rotherfield Greys 300
(4) Linslade 200 .:
(5) Lewknor 50
(6) Witney 300
(7) Headington Quarry 100
£1300
[II. — Grants
30
home to the owners and richer occupiers of the soil
theiirgency of th<3 present necessity, and to endeavour
to convince thern of the great truth, that the money
so expended by them ought to be considered as their
best insurance for handing on to others the trust they
have themselves received as owners of the soil of
England.
Another mode by which we may improve, I am
convinced, the quality of the education we are giving
is, by generally adopting the suggestions recently
made by the Board, for perfecting the system of
diocesan inspection. And here suiFer me to express,
before the diocese, my hearty acknowledgment to
those of you, my reverend brethren, who have
kindly undertaken, in your several districts, the
II. — Grants for repeiving and repairing churches (always with
increased room, which is made an essential condition).
(1) Goring £20
(2) Waltham St. Lawrence 50
(3) Langley (Slough) 30
(4) Hooknorton 150
(5) Ardington 10
(6) BinfieW 50
(7) St. Helen's, Abingdon 100
£410
III. — Grants for building new parsonages.
(1) Prestvvood Common £100
(2) Rebuilding vicarage at Minster Lovell . 20
(3) Wheatley 50
(4) Headington Quarry 150
(5) Sunningdale 50
(6) Rebuilding vicarage at Marsvvorth .... 50
420
410
1300
Sum total of grants . . £2130
31
unpaid and laborious duty of the school inspector.
These labours, I am convinced, may be made far
more effectual by the general adoption of the plan
to which I refer. According to it, the education in
our different parochial schools, will, so far as it extends
in each, comprehend instruction in the same books,
upon a scheme to be issued half-yearly by the Board.
By thus fixing beforehand the books and subjects for
examination throughout a whole district, we make a
great provision for the success of our inspection. The
masters know for what they are to prepare ; the educa-
tion of the school assumes a definite shape ; and when
the examiner comes round, he knows in what to exa-
mine ; and instead of the children being hopelessly
perplexed by being carried over a whole set of
questions on which they have not been prepared,
their actual studies are examined, and their real
attainments tested^.
But, after all, my reverend brethren, in yet an-
other and still closer way the improvement of edu-
cation must be our doing. Nothing can make up
for the absence from his school of the parochial
Clergyman. His presence there, at regular times, — if
possible, I would say, for a fixed hour at least on a
fixed day of every week, — is the one method of
securing an efficient school. In this all school
inspectors are agreed. They report that with every
other deficiency the schools are good schools where
'' This plan is ably stated and enforced in a pamphlet just pub-
lished by the Rev. Sir Henry Tliompson, Bart., Vicar of Frant,
entitled " National Schools, Hints on the Duty of Diocesan In-
spection."
32
the Clcrsiyman attends req-ularly at them : Avitli
every other advantage they fail if he neglects them.
I know well from my own experience as a parish
Priest, the self-denial which is required for such
regular and systematic attendance at your schools ;
and yet I would press it on you almost before all
other matters of parochial duty, as that without
which your parish work cannot flourish, and as that
which, under the blessing of God, will certainly and
signally repay your labour. Only let me add, your
teaching in the school must be that of the pastor,
not of the schoolmaster. The children should feel
this difference : your manifest object must not be so
much the securing theperfectness of this or that lesson
(which is the duty of the schoolmaster), as the Chris-
tian training, the moral and intellectual perfecting
of the young of your flock. Your words and con-
duct in the school must piece in with your sermons,
your catechizing, your confirmation preparation. The
children must feel that they come individually
before you in their spiritual relation to you ; not
that you are the mere rewarder of the quick forward
boy who is ready at answering and eager for dis-
tinction, but that you treat them as though you
remembered that you received the charge of them
from Christ Himself at their baptism ; that you are
watching over them, praying for them, desiring to
see them faithful and happy in all their course here,
and are ever looking on to that glad day when it is
your highest longing for them to see them pre-
sented faultless before their God with exceeding
33
joy. In this work of their training, public catechizing
will prove a most important element ; and if you
will give your diligence to raise it from the dull
routine of the mere repetition of answers learned by
rote to an intelligent questioning upon what they
have heard read, or been taught, (as, for instance, in
one of the Lessons for the day, after which it is ordered,)
you will find it a powerful means of instructing and
interesting both the children and the parents in your
flock. The habit of having thus taught the young ones
of our parishes will impart a marvellous power to our
ministry in our hold on their affections, and on the
affections of their parents. Many are the ungodly
parents who have thus been given through their chil-
dren to their pastor's prayers.
This habitual instruction will, moreover, pass na-
turally and insensibly into the preparation for con-
firmation,— that most important epoch, where it is
diligently used, of the parochial ministry. As to
this, I would say a few words to you, both as
having in the two past years confirmed almost
10,000 throughout this diocese, and as having my-
self, as a parochial Clergyman, several times pre-
pared, both a country parish and a large town popula-
tion for this ordinance. I believe, then, that the expe-
rience of many of you, my reverend brethren, will
confirm my own, when I say that I never knew a
confirmation faithfully and laboriously prepared for,
which passed away without leaving on the parish
a sure and even a visible blessing. I feel i)ersuaded
that our labour and intercessions are never better
34
cx})oik1cc1 than when they arc laid out in prepara-
tion for these seasons. That preparation, and our
observation of our candidates, ought to be long ;
they can scarcely be too long : the preparation
ought to deal with particulars in doctrines, teaching,
and persons. It ought to bring every one, whether
ultimately presented or not for confirmation, seve-
rally and alone before us. It ought to be a season
for bringing before our charge, objectively, those
great dogmatic truths of the Christian revelation, of
which, for the most part, they knew so little ; it
ought to bring each soul before us in its own single-
ness, that we may endeavour, under God's grace, to
arouse, convert, comfort, and strengthen it for serv-
ing Him. And it is that we may thus use the ordi-
nance, my reverend brethren, that I have required,
in the catechumens, a somewhat riper age than some
of you would of yourselves have chosen. For two
views may be taken of the ordinance of Confirma-
tion. It may be regarded simply as the comple-
ment of Baptism, and so, as it does in the Roman
communion, follow during childhood the administra-
tion of that sacrament; or it may be united with a
conscious choice of the service of God. It is in
this last light, manifestly, that it is regarded by our
Church \ which makes no other special provision for
bringing each one of her children as they pass into
^ " The Church hath thought good to order, That none here-
" after shall be confirmed till they can, &-c. ; to the intent that
" children being now come to the years of discretion, &.c, — Con-
"Jirmation Service."
35
the full temptations of the world, the flesh, and
the devil, separately under the pastoi"'s direct influ-
ence and spiritual treatment. If, therefore, a mere
childish knowledge of the facts of Christianity (such
as is possessed by most intelligent pupils in the
upper classes of a well-managed national school) is
regarded as suflScient qualification for confirmation,
this sole opportunity for bringing personally home
to the heart and conscience of each one separately,
as they enter upon life, all the powers of Christ's
Gospel is utterly lost.
It is not, of course, the mere age of the catechu-
men, which, under this view, can make them either
fit, or unfit recipients of the holy ordinance. Until
they have for themselves intelligently resolved, in
the strength of God's grace, to choose His service,
they are at any age unfit, and whenever you can
hope that they have made this choice, they must be
fit to come : and I am therefore always ready to
receive your application, to except such cases from
my general rule. But I would not willingly have
you apply thus specially for any, of whose spiritual
advancement you do not feel so good a hope
that you are prepared to lead them on at once, and
gladly, to the Holy Communion. Our common
temptation at such times is, to be too ready to
admit all who have submitted to instruction, and
are anxious for a ticket. But we lose greatly by
such laxity. We cannot be too earnest in pressing
upon all the duty and the blessing of attending the
ordinance, or too glad to welcome all for preparation ;
30
we cannot labour too hard to bring tlicm, under
God's blessing, to a right mind ; but we must not
shrink at last, in those cases which imply clearly
the want of spiritual earnestness, from using that
godly discipline, which is the truest love to those
who would press lightly into holiest things. This
discipline we cannot hope to employ rightly, without
the labour and anxiety of a separate and individual
intercourse with each one of our catechumens. Useful
as it is for their instruction to meet them in classes,
if we would deal closely with their consciences, we
must see them alone, and search into their sincerity.
Even with such labour, our task is full of anxious care.
No where shall we more than here require the gift
of spiritual discernment, lest we should discourage
the humble-minded, whilst we seek only to stay the
over-confident. But if, after our best endeavours to
satisfy our judgment, we still find those whom we
cannot welcome, and yet dare not reject, we must
be contented with fendeavouring to awaken the in-
dividual conscience to a sense of its responsibility,
and then charge solemnly home upon it the ultimate
decision of the question.
So important do I feel this subject, that I trust
shortly, with the help of God, to put into your
hands some more particular suggestions, than can
here be given, for the due conduct of a preparation
for ordinance.
The Confirmation progress which carried me to
so many places in the diocese, showed me our
parochial system in actual exercise. I saw in the
37
work which God is enabling us to do, much for
vvliich heartily to thank Ilim ; I saw, as was natural
to a fresh eye, charged with such an oversight, many
of the weaknesses which mar our full success.
And of these, my reverend brethren, there is one
upon which, for many reasons, I desire to speak to
you with all plainness — I mean our frequent want
of union amongst ourselves ; a want which too often
grows into absolute disunion.
There is much in his very position which tends,
unless he is watchful against the danger, to separate
the English parochial Clergyman from his brethren.
He has his own charge, his own circle of duties and
difficulties, his own way of meeting and performing
them ; his brethren have theirs. He has no concern
in their parishes ; they have none in his : thus his
sympathies become narrowed : he is a little sovereign
in his own realm ; he views with some dislike cus-
toms which vary from, and perhaps condemn, his
own ; he does not feel that he is administering one
part of a common system ; he has the independence,
and with it, rely upon it, he has the weakness of
individual action. The chief external guards against
this danger seems to be, (1) in the living action of
the common episcopate, by which each separate
ministry may feel itself drawn up into a common
head ; and, (2) in a greater amount of intercourse,
upon directly religious and parochial subjects, between
the Clergy themselves. To promote this, the Rural
Deans have kindly acted upon my request, in in-
D
38
vitiug their bretlircn to the rural chapters, at which
they may partake together of the highest act of
Christian worshi]) and communion, and discuss with
friendly openness all the various questions which
arise in the course of every ministry.
I rejoice to believe, upon undoubted evidence from
every deanery in which the experiment has yet been
made, that the benefits I had anticipated from them
have, to a great extent, already resulted from these
meetings of the Clergy. I desire to thank the Rural
Deans who have so kindly borne the labour, the ex-
pense, and, wiiat I know they have felt far more, the
anxiety of conducting these rural chapters. And I
earnestly entreat you, my reverend brethren, by a
general attendance and a cordial use of them, to co-
operate with the several Deans in seeking to obtain
in yet larger measure the benefits they are intended
to produce.
But, much as this Christian intercourse may do in
promoting union, I believe that w^e need also to
guard against some causes of positive disunion ; and
here, my reverend brethren, I do not speak of those
provocations to disunion which are presented to us
as to other men, by the mere crossing of interests or
clashing of tempers. For protection against these I
may abundantly trust to your right principles and
habits of self-control. Against many such temptations,
to which other men are exposed, we are guarded, not
only by the grace of our high calling, but even by its
accidents ; even the low rule of professional decency
39
would forbid such discords. But, on the other hand,
we have amongst us some pecuHar occasions for dis-
union, against which it specially becomes us to guard.
Of these the most dangerous is that which is to be
found in our righteous anxiety to preserve that
momentous deposit of dogmatic truth, which has
been committed to our safeguard. For, imperfect as
we are, there is the greatest fear lest, instead of keep-
ing the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, we
introduce discord in maintaining truth. We are
herein exposed to a twofold danger, first, that we
deem our own view of truth so absolutely the cer-
tainly exact truth, that we condemn as error every
statement which varies from it ; and, secondly, that
we transfer our zeal for the truth to zeal against the
maintainors of supposed untruth. To guard against
these we shall do well to consider the different laws
by which we should be governed in stating truth, and
in condemning error. In stating truth, the view to
which we have with prayer and study attained must
in all matters, whether of primary or lesser moment,
be our absolute rule. We cannot in any matter, or
for any consideration, vary one iota in our statements
from what we believe to be the truth. If, to disarm
opposition, or to remove prejudice, or to win sup-
port, or to promote peace, or for any other object, we
swerved in any thing from this rule, we should in fact
be endeavouring to promote the glory of the God of
truth by lying in His cause.
But absolute as is this rule in stating truth, it is
d2
40
by no means the rule by which, in such matters as
alone can come into dispute amongst us, we should
judge of what we deem the errors of others. For
these are often but different views of the same truth,
imperfect on the one side, as our own very probably
are on the other ; or they spring from difficulties on
matters which belong to natural religion, and which
Christianity has not decided (such, for instance, as
the master difficulty of reconciling man's responsi-
bility with the sovereignty of God, which is, in truth,
the metaphysical difficulty how there can co-exist
together any two wills, of which one is Almighty; or,
in other words, how there can be an Almighty God
and any true creaturely being made by Him in His
own image), or if they are not thus metaphysical
difficulties, they are matters of degree, turning upon
that less or more of statement which must always be
possible where a truth depends for its exactness upon
the combination of other truths.
Now, as to all these cases, our duty surely is,
whilst we maintain our own view to be as tolerant
as possible of that of other men ; to accustom
ourselves, wherever it is possible, to the charitable
hope that even with their different statement of it
they do hold with us the common truth; to see that
certain and often very considerable discrepancies of
statement are the necessary consequence of present-
ing a great truth to different minds ; that these very
variations are therefore a proof that it is not with us
that dishonest witnesses have agreed upon a garbled
41
statement, but that a living truth has laid hold on
separate souls. Such a belief will greatly aid us in
being heartily at concord with the holders of opinions
differing in many shades from ours ; in giving them
full credit for honesty and truth ; in acting with
them unreservedly whenever we can act together;
and so in guarding us from the deadly and most
practical evil of a separating party spirit. And
this surely is that precious gift of liberality with
which are confounded now-a-days so many worthless
counterfeits. For to be truly liberal, is not to be
indifferent to the superior value of truth ; it is not
to mould our own representation of it in any matter
so as to please others ; it is to be ready to believe,
that statements which do not recommend them-
selves to us, and which therefore we do not adopt,
may yet embody in themselves some view of truth
we need, and do not of necessity imply, in those who
make them, any absolute darkness.
Suffer me, my reverend brethren, — though I feel
the delicacy of the matter on which I now enter,
and my need of your forbearance as I treat of it, —
to take an illustration of the principle I would
enforce from the question which has caused of late —
alas, that so it should be ! — the least kindly differ-
ences within our body; I mean the doctrine of
Baptismal Regeneration. We are all doubtless
familiar with the opposite reproaches cast on those
who maintain one side or the other in the contro-
versies to which this subject has given rise. On
42
these, so far as they are mere charges of insincere
subscription on the one hand to certain of the
formularies, on the other to one at least of the
Articles of the Church, I will only say, that whilst
we cannot be too rigorous in scrutinizing most
closely the perfect honesty of our own subscription,
we cannot, in my judgment, more evidently break
the law of charity, or sinfully usurp the office of
the one Judge and Searcher of hearts, than by in-
dulging in those imputations upon other men's sin-
cerity which it is so easy to make, so easy to retort,
and so impossible to prove. These, then, I need
not dwell upon : but there are other charges which,
though it is painful to state them in words, yet it is
needful for my purpose to have clearly before us.
On the one side, then, it is argued, that to hold the
doctrine in the simple breadth of statement with
which all I believe would allow it to be laid down
for us, if the baptismal offices and catechism stood
alone, involves of necessity the notion, that in bap-
tism the heart of every infant is so thoroughly
changed, that he cannot afterwards, consistently, be
urged to seek a personal conversion by the operation
of the blessed Spirit, as the one condition of enter-
ing into life. That thus, where it is taught, instead
of a lively faith in Christ our Righteousness being-
made the sole ground of each man's hope of salva-
tion, men are led to look for their hope to the having
been baptized, and that so a dead formalism saps
the very roots of the individual spiritual life.
43
Against the opposite view, on the other hand, it is
urged that by it the grace of Christ's sacraments is
absolutely denied ; that men are taught to look to
the workings of their own minds, and not to a true
union with Christ effected for them by the act of
God, as the beginning of spiritual life, and the con-
dition of salvation.
Now, there can be no doubt that each of these
charges may be true. The doctrine of Baptismal
Regeneration may, as a mere dogma, be so held and
taught as to lead men to substitute the having passed
through a certain outward form for the possessing an
inner and spiritual life. It is not allowing too much
to say, that it is difficult to know with any intimate
acquaintance the religious history of the last century,
without entertaining grievous fears that such a palsy-
stricken Christianity was then abundantly and fatally
common. On the other hand, men undervalue the
sacraments from the presence, unallowed even to
themselves, of that essential element of rationalistic
error, which rejects the absolute necessity of man's
being really united by the act of God to a Medi-
ator, who is truly man as well as God, before any
fallen child of Adam can approach to the All Holy,
or begin to hold any accepted communion with Him.
It is not again, I fear, allowing too much, to say that
it is difficult to know much of the present state of
the Protestant communions of Continental Europe,
without seeing reason to fear that, in too many
instances, they have actually passed through this
44
inil>licit rationalism into a conscious rejection, first,
of the verity of Clirist's incarnation, and next, of
the truth of Ilis Godhead.
These errors then, I say, may lurk on the one side
or on the other ; and we must at once allow their
fearful moment; since the one cuts the roots of the
individual spiritual life ; the other implicitly, at least,
rejects the reality of Christ's incarnation, and of His
indwelling in us through an act of God, as the sole
ground of our acceptance with Him.
But are we, therefore, justified in at once branding
with the admission of these errors those who take
the view opposite to ours upon this question?
Surely we are not, if wholly other grounds may lead
to this diversity of statement. If, for instance, those
who gladly accept the broadest statement of Bap-
tismal Regeneration maintain it as the declaration
of that initial act of God, whereby the child, who by
nature is joined only to the first Adam, and from him
inherits guilt and corruption, is now, by God's act
through grace, joined to the second Adam ; so that
the guilt of his fallen nature is forgiven, and there is
secured to him — unless he be a reprobate — the con-
tinual influx of such gracious influences as will, if
be yield to them, bring him to salvation ; and if
they so teach because they believe that this statement
only can maintain, in all its fulness, the doctrine of
Christ's incarnation, and of our being really united
to Him by an act of God, and not by any mere ope-
ration of our own minds, as the very foundation of the
45
life of God within us ; and if, whilst they maintain
this, they are plain, and earnest, and constant, in
teaching also the absolute need, in each one who
will be saved, of a true conversion of the individual
soul by the Almighty power of God's Spirit, — of a
true penitent heart, — of a living faith in Christ our
Righteousness, — and of a daily renewal of the will by
God's grace, — can it be right to brand them with
holding a system of dead formality, because the
doctrine of the sacraments may, like every other
truth, be so abused as to become an excuse for sin ?
And, on the other hand, if we see that our
brethren, who stumble at the breadth with which
we lay down this doctrine, do so because they see
not how it is to be reconciled with that other great
truth, of the absolute sovereignty of God ; or because
they confound the doctrine of Baptismal Regenera-
tion with the grievous error of Baptismal Conver-
sion, and are aiming at the error, whilst they dis-
pute the doctrine ; or, because having a lively sense
of the need of maintaining the true spiritual charac-
ter of the renewed life, they, even morbidly, dread
any statement by which, it seems to them, to be
gainsayed, whilst with us they do hold close, as the
nourishment of their own souls, to the truth of
Christ's Incarnation, and to the first act for our
salvation, being not our own, but God's ; and main-
tain that Christ's sacraments are certain channels of
His grace to every due receiver : surely we must sin
against the law of Christian love, if imputing to
46
thciu errors they deny, avc would sever ourselves
from tlieui, ranging ourselves on one party, and
forcing them into another. Surely, on both
sides, our duties arc the same. We are bound,
first, to state the truth, as God has shown it to
us, unreservedly; further, we must endeavour to
lead on our brethren into any light, which, as
we trust, we enjoy, and which seems to us withheld
from them ; but this we must do, not by separating
ourselves from them, nor even by inveighing against
their errors, but by seeing what is their truth,
and endeavouring to show them how that very
truth can (as it can, if we are right,) be held more
completely and more consistently on one view than on
theirs. And in all this we must guard against party
spirit and division. We must feel that where, even
with verbal difference, our great common truths are
held implicitly, that there, far more than in mere
verbal agreement, the true ground of unity is pre-
sent ; that we are more one with our brethren in
this apostolic ministry, who subscribing cordially our
OAvn confessions, are earnest in love to Christ, devout
in the spirit of their mind, zealous in labouring for
souls, dead to this world, and striving heartily to do
and love the will of God, even though there be
betAveen us a difference in statements, over which
we grieve, than we can be with others who, if such
there be, harmonize exactly with our own words, but
vnthal are colder in zeal, less deep in penitence, less
constant in devotion, less simple in faith, less earnest
47
in love, less stamped, in one word, with the impress
of the Crucified.
Surely, by thus thinking of each other, and in the
strength of such thoughts, by acting heartily together
upon all matters whereon we are agreed, we shall do
more for truth, as well as for love, than by aiding to
break up the Church around us into angry parties,
each with their established test of difference, and
badge of separation.
So much then for this great cause of weakness.
And now, my reverend brethren, let me turn your
attention for a moment to the wide extent of that
work which is committed to us. As the Ministers of
the Church of England, to us is committed in great
measure the social, as well as the religious charge of
the people of this great country. For these two
charges never can be really severed. Amongst the
higher and more intellectual classes of society we
should be forming the tone of thought and action.
As God gives us the power, we should seek to infuse
into the literature of our day the purifying elements
of Christian truth: and in our intercourse with
society we should have the same object ; seeking in
it not merely our own lawful recreation, but endea-
vouring always to preserve, and, if possible, to deepen
upon our social institutions the impress they now
bear of Christian manners.
And amongst our poorer brethren we must labour,
if possible, still more directly in the same task.
We have great facilities for the vigorous discharge
48
of such a work. Sheltered by our professional obli-
gations from the common callings and pleasures of
the world, we ought to be saved from the danger of
spending, either in mere frivolity or in making money,
those talents for action which belong so naturally to
our countrymen, and which are so much fostered in us
by our past education and our free institutions. We
ought, moreover, to be — as a general rule, thank God,
we are — practically acquainted with the wants, the
difficulties, the hardships, and the temptations of all,
and specially of the poor around us. We see them
at unguarded moments, in times of sickness, of dis-
tress, of conviction, when the mere conventionalities
which disguise class from class are, for the time,
thrown off, and the men beneath them may be seen.
We ought to be able to profit by such opportunities.
Conversant, as we must be, with antiquity, through
ecclesiastical history and the fixed forms of the Creeds
and Liturgies, which are ever taking us back into
ancient times ; above all, conversant, as we must be,
in Holy Scriptures with the human character under
outward circumstances, differing widely from our
own, we ought to be able to cast aside from our esti-
mate of men and things around us their merely acci-
dental, and therefore misleading elements, and to
dwell upon that wdiich is central and real. Above
all, as special witnesses for the universal brother-
hood of those for whom the Lord died, we, beyond
other men, should, by the liveliest, active sympathy,
be claiming as a brother every sufferer and outcast of
49
the earth ; and so driving far from us those spurious
pretences of fraternity, with which the cold and selfish
world is at this time so busy in deluding those who
trust to her. The practical character of our lives,
moreover, should help us here : if the Clergy of other
times and lands may sometimes reproach us with being
a body little addicted to deep and abstract studies,
we have this great advantage for men of action, that
ours is a practical training. With such advantages
we ought to have a practical insight into the social
evils of our day, and be the leaders in their redress.
That such social evils exist, no one can doubt.
Many painful indications of their presence, and of
the danger of their continuance, have called attention
to them recently. How can we hope to maintain that
internal peace amongst ourselves, which is so need-
ful for all, — so specially needful for the poor, — but
by setting ourselves heartily to redress the real evils
which press upon our brethren ? It is the existence
of these real evils which gives their power over the
poor to those who, for their own selfish ends pre-
tending sympathy towards them, would in truth lure
them on to their destruction. How otherwise than by
redressing these evils can we hope that the small sand
of our existing institutions shall be, as it has so long
been, set by God to be, the bound of these impetuous
waters, which, in their unbridled madness, would
sweep all things before them ?
In such a work the Clergy should be foremost.
The action of the constant force of selfishness must
50
ahvays tend to make long-establislicd institutions bear
liartlly on the weaker party, and so expose them to
be swept rudely away in some convulsive resistance
to that wrong which has become inveterate in them ;
and it is only the opposition of such a living- power
as Christianity which can prevent the up-growth of
this evil, or safely remove it where it has struck its
roots. Here then is a special work for us, to be at
once the advocates and the correctors of the poor ; to
watch for them and their right ; to witness for them
and their claims, to those who have, as stewards,
what is too soon likely to seem to them their own ;
and yet, at the same time, instead of flattering the
poor by the false pretence that all is right in them,
and all wrong in those above them, to seek to train
them in their special duties of patient contentment and
obedience ; to stimulate and to guide the consciences
of all, by plain, homely, earnest, real preaching
from God's word, which shall reach both rich and
poor, by bringing home to each, in their actual pre-
sent temptations, their sin and their Saviour, their
separation and their brotherhood. A true Chris-
tian sympathy is the golden key which will open
hearts to us : we must use it, in the church, in the
school, in the cottage, — in the last as much as in the
first. If England is to be preserved in the peace and
happiness which more than any other land she has
so long enjoyed, it must be by God's blessing on our
labours, and on the instruments which we have to
use. Much as legislation may do in many ways, it
51
cannot do all, or nearly all, wliicli must be done. LaM's
will not reach men's hearts ; and nothing short of
reaching their hearts will meet our needs. We
must aim at reaching these ; and it is mainly through
the ties and affections of family life that we can hope
to reach them ; and through these we must bring to
bear upon them the higher influences of the spiritual
life. Thus must we win from them a hearing for the
word of God, thus bring them to holy sacraments,
and so leading them on from things earthly to things
heavenly, bring them indeed under the healing hands
of Christ our Lord. For in all our efforts at social
improvement, we must bear in mind this our high-
est object. The witnesses of the resurrection, the
Ministers of God's grace, must no more content them-
selves with promoting the comfort of their people,
than with maintaining the peace and order of society.
This were to forfeit their highest mission. A ministry
may be very busy, and for a time very popular, which
thus falls below its highest aim ; but, in the long run,
it will, in thus lowering its highest character, lose
also its secondary power. And such a ministry does
certainly abandon its highest objects. We are minis-
ters of Christ's word and sacraments ; to convert souls
to God ; to build them up in the divine life ; to raise
before them the Cross of Christ ; to lead them as
sinners for themselves to Him ; to bring them under
the continual guidance of His Spirit — this is our
hio-hest task, this our most blessed work, to which
all besides must be subservient. And how awful a
charge is this which is committed to us. Though
52
we, as the Ministers of Christ's Church in this land,
cannot measure our full responsibilities by any mea-
sure below that of its whole population, yet, in an
especial manner, must we answer for those who are
actually using our ministry, and submitting themselves
in things spiritual to our direction. And, on this
account, must we not tremble, my reverend brethren,
whilst we thank God when we remember that the
average of the congregations assembling every Sunday
in this very diocese, (and which, as little more than half
the adults of every family can assemble at the same
time, represents a much larger number as that of all
our attendants, yet) amount to 106,224 souls; that
at our celebration of the Lord's Supper we have an
average (to be treated in the same way) of 22,942
attendants ; that we have in our day schools 27,640,
and in our Sunday schools 27,054 scholars. Let us
contemplate these numbers, with the recollection
full before us of the value of each one of all
these souls for whom Christ died. Let us remem-
ber that to each one of them it were an infinite loss
to gain the whole world and lose that single soul,
whereby he lives before God. Let us think of
the danger to which each one of them is con-
stantly exposed ; and remember that for every one
of them some shepherd shall render an account
before the judgment-seat. Surely such thoughts
must show us that the* smallest charge is indeed so
large and weighty, that all our cares, and watching,
and intercessions, must be far too little for so infinite
a venture. Who indeed, who weighs the risk, could
53
venture on it, but that He who died for us has
called us, as we trust, to undertake it; and has
promised, if we faithfully seek His aid, to be
with us, and evermore to strengthen us by the in-
dwelling of the Spirit. And if we do simply lean
upon that aid, we may remember, for our comfort,
that success is His gift ; and though ordinarily vouch-
safed sooner or later to the prayers and labours of
the faithful pastor, yet that it is not by its success
that our ministry will be judged. Labour, faithful-
ness, self-denial, prayer, — these are ours ; the increase
is God's. Let us, then, whilst we leave patiently
results to God, only on our part search into ourselves
lest there be any thing in us which hinders His
working.
Now, in looking practically into the degree in
which, as a body, we are enabled to succeed in this
our work, I am led to think that what, above all
other things, we need, is the power of kindling
amongst our flocks a warmer spirit of devotion.
Here, I am convinced, is our great deficiency. We
have many who respect us, and listen to us ; who are
decent, orderly, well-behaved ; but we want more
decided converts from the love of this world ; more
who are really won to the love of God in Christ ; and,
as the result of this, more and heartier worshippers,
instead of merely decent listeners, within our
churches. This gift, of course, like every other,
must come of God : but it is our duty to see whe-
ther any lack in us prevents our receiving it, or
E
54
whether \\c can do any thing more earnestly to
seek it.
Sutler nie, then, to enter briefly on this M'ide but
most important subject^ " entreating the elders as
fathers, and younger men as brethren."
And, first, let me say to you, my brethren of the
laity, and especially to those of you who fill the
honourable and important office of Churchwarden,
that much in this matter may be done by you ; and
that you have, in regard to it, a special charge of
duty in virtue of your office. Let me set this before
you as plainly as I can : as one who knows by past
experience that, in addressing you, he is speaking to
many who are ready to do, honestly and firmly,
whatever is shown to them to be their duty. For I
thankfully acknowledge the readiness with which, in
many parishes, the Churchwardens have acted at
once and cheerfully upon my own directions, and on
the suggestions wdiich have been made by the Rural
Deans ; and I kno"sv that all which is necessary now^,
is to convince you that it is your duty to do what
I would wish to see generally done.
Now, this is your duty, because, in the matter
specially entrusted to you, it concerns the spiri-
tual welfare of the parish, and that spiritual
charge, to a large extent, is committed to you.
The questions which you have received before
this visitation, and which, I need scarcely say, are
not questions of my invention, but are the old
questions which have been always addressed to the
55
Churchwardens before the Bishop's visitation, these
may show you how directly this is your du':y. For
those questions manifestly imply, that the Church
considers you as invested, in your several parishes,
with an important share of their moral and spiritual
oversight : you are treated in them as Church officers :
you are asked in them not only as to the morals
of your brother parishioners, but you are required
to report to the Bishop any negligence of duty, or
unseemliness of life, which may exist even in the
Ministers of God's word who are set over you.
What can show more plainly that you have a special
charge, and with it special duties, for the faithful
performance of which you must render your account
to Christ ?
If, then, there is any spiritual loss to the parish,
which it belongs to your office to remedy, and which
you do not attempt to remedy, the guilt of that loss
will lie at your door. Now, if we would have our
people devout worshippers in our churches, we are
bound to provide carefully that all which encourages
devotion is found within them. Amongst the first
of these requirements, are, room and opportunity for
the poor as well as rich to kneel down and join in
the prayers, as well as to sit and hear the sermon.
But much must be done by you before this can be
generally the case. In church after church which I
have visited, the gradual up-growth of unlawfully
erected pews has thrust the poor man from his best
inheritance — his place in the house of God. This
e2
56
has led to carelessness "when in church, to a gradual
weaning- from it, growing from irregular attendance
to confirmed absence ; this has sent to the meeting-
houses of the separatists those who, but for this,
would still be regular attendants at the church of
their fathers. At every turn this weakens the hands
of the INIinisters of Christ. To take but one exam-
ple : — you, my brethren, who know not the burden
of a charge of souls, can perhaps scarcely understand
to what a degree the benefits of which I have spoken
as flowing from a Confirmation are often lost, and
the heart of the faithful Minister saddened, through
the impossibility of his finding, after the ordinance,
for those who in it have been led to seek to give
themselves to God, any fitting place for regular un-
interrupted worship within the house of prayer.
Now, my brethren, though you may not probably
feel this evil so keenly as it will be felt by the
faithful parish Priest, let me say to you with all
plainness, that you have a deep interest in seeing it
redressed. You have this interest first and chiefly
because, as I have shown you, this is your duty to-
wards the souls of those dependent on you ; but
even beyond this, it is your interest. Nothing so
binds together the different ranks of society as
their meeting as children of the same Lord to wor-
ship Him in the same place. Nothing will so main-
tain you in your proper place amongst those whom
you employ in your several parishes, as keeping them
close to their church. If vou suffer them to be
57
driven from it, you have lost the greatest instrument
for preserving tliem in their right relation to you in
this world. For if, in consequence of this, they
worship no where, they will speedily become alto-
gether irreligious, and as they cease " to fear God,"
they will cease also to "regard man." They will
never serve you so well as when they serve you for
Christ's sake ; they never will bear so cheerfully the
comparative hardships of their own lot, as when they
feel practically that the difference between the
various ranks of society is itself God's appointment,
and is intended for the good of all. And this they
cannot feel amongst the daily temptations to dis-
content and insubordination which wait on poverty,
unless true religion is kept alive within them. Here,
then, your loss is clear, if you suffer them to lose the
habit of worship by exclusion from the church.
But this is not all. Even if they do worship else-
where, you incur no small measure of this loss. If
in that matter in which, above all others, they ought
to follow God's appointment for them, they are
accustomed to choose for themselves, by a capricious
self-will, the principle of self-will must be greatly
strengthened in them ; and in this principle of self-
will is the root of dissatisfaction and rebellion against
those above them.
But for another reason also, this is so : those
below you have the worst portion as to this world.
They are worse clothed, worse lodged, worse fed
than you are. They have to labour harder, and to
58
earn less. Now, if tliey never meet you except in
those tilings as to which they have the worst share,
it is almost certain that they will begin to entertain
bad, hard thonghts of their own lot and of yours.
If they see only the difference between you and
themselves, that difference will be magnified, and
thus they will become dissatisfied and discontented ;
and so first alienated from you, and then embittered
against you. They will receive even your acts of
kindness with a surly suspicion, and this, perhaps,
will tempt you, in turn, to withhold that kindness ;
and so you will soon be living amongst a set of half-
rebellious enemies, instead of being the respected
heads of a wider Christian family.
Nothing can prevent all this evil so much as your
meeting them in the house of God. There they are
even outM^ardly reminded that they and you are
brethren. There the highest and the lowest of the
parish gather all together as equals in the sight of
God. Their differences are out of sight. They feel
that in the greatest matter they have as good a share
as you. The asperities which in the week have
roughened their minds, are smoothed down. They
are ready to receive acts of kindness from those with
whom they have just joined in prayer, or knelt down
at the holy table. If they worship elsewhere, in
self-chosen places, they will never feel to you as they
will, if they are accustomed to kneel down with you,
and their children with your children, to hear the
same words of exhortations, to join in the same
69
confessions, to praise God for the same mercies, and
to receive together a common blessing. The ex-
perience of many of you will, I am sure, confirm my
words, when I say, that just in proportion to the
degree in which the labouring population of your
parish has been drawn away from attending with
you at their church, there has grown up and
strengthened in them that spirit of rebellious dis-
content against yourselves, with which so many of
you are at this time sadly and wearily striving. If
there were no world to come, it would still be your
especial interest to keep your people side by side
with you in holy offices.
Your duties, then, as to this are plain. You are,
first, to allow of no increase of the evil. No pew
can be lawfully erected in a church without the
direct sanction of the Ordinary; and whoever be
he, whether Churchwarden or not, who, on his
own responsibility, erects a new pew, or makes or
permits any alteration in the church, can be made
to remove it at his own proper cost. He cannot
charge these expenses on the rates, because he
had no legal right to incur them ; a Church-
warden has no right (as has sometimes been ima-
gined) to build or appropriate a pew for himself
within his year of office. The first step, then, is to
stay the evil. But this is not enough. Look round
you in your own church, I pray you, on Sunday next :
consider with yourself how the area of that church,
which is built for rich and poor alike, is now distri-
GO
bated. It is not that the orderly distinction of men of
various ranks and manners need be violated Avitliin
our cburclics ; on the contrary, I believe that such
seemly arrangement promotes the comfort of all :
but if upon looking round your church you see
its area, which might hold all the parish, filled up
■with unsightly pens, which, whilst they minister, not
to the convenience, but to the unseemly slumbers or
the vain display, of a few, thrust the poor into
corners where they cannot hear or see or worship
aright, — ask yourselves if such a state of things
■within the house of God can be pleasing to Him,
or draw down His blessing on your parish, either in
things spiritual or temporal ; and determine not to
rest, until you have done your plain duty, which is
to move your parishioners to clear away these
encroachments, and to give back, by decently seating
the whole church, so as to give to all their share,
their best riohts to God's heritao^e. A small rate
will often effect this purpose : w^iere the Avork is
more considerable, you may borrow the needful sum
on your rates, and so secure this great good by a small
annual increase of pajTnent for some years to come ;
and this is a course perfectly fair to those who come
after you, when you are effecting a permanent
good, of which they will fully share the benefit.
These local exertions, which would be assisted by
various societies, and often by local subscriptions,
would in most cases achieve this great end, and do
very much to give us back congregations worshipping
Gl
God. I, according to my office, shall be ready to aid
you in all ways ; and I dare answer in this matter
for my brethren, the Rural Deans and the parochial
Clergy, that they, too, Avill readily aid you with advice,
and assist you in obtaining the needful funds ; and
3^ou, as I have already reminded you, are bound by
law to apply to me, before you allow of any alteration
in the church of which you are the wardens.
Only let me add one word, to meet an error pre-
valent in some parishes. It is sometimes thought
that a Churchwarden's highest honour is, within his
year of office, to have kept down the church rates, by
some trifling sum, below the outlay of his predeces-
sors. But this is a mistaken view. It is indeed to
his honour not to have suffered the smallest fraction
of the money trusted by the parish to his care, to have
been lost or wasted. But he is entrusted with this
money in order to discharge a certain duty, and his
first honour is to discharge that duty properly. He is
bound to see that the house of God is, in all things
within his power, made fit for the parishioners to
meet therein and worship God. This is his first
duty ; and it is no honour to save money by neglect-
ing to do any duty. It is no honour to be nig-
gardly, either with trust-money or our own. To be
just with both is each man's honour. I will only
beg you to put one question to yourselves, the
answer to which will, I think, be all I wish to say.
Would you, on a bed of death, or in the day of
judgment, prefer to have saved a few pounds of parish-
62
rates, at the cost of the place in cliurcli, or, it may
be, of the souls, of your poor brethren round you, —
or, by generous counsels and a good example to have
jirovidcd for them room to hear God's word ; to
feed by faith on Christ; and to offer up their
prayers and praises to the Lord ?
And next, my reverend brethren, let me say to
you, that to carry on this good work, I earnestly
desire your assistance in making spontaneously,
throughout the diocese, the fullest possible pro-
vision of public services for supplying the spiritual
wants of our flocks. Nothing can tend more to
weaken our hands than any thing which suggests to
our people (and a scanty strictly legal measure must
suggest to them such thoughts) that our labours
are the result of professional necessity, not the
true outpouring of hearts which love them for
Christ's sake. Thus I desire to see, in every parish,
great or small, where sufficient provision has been
made to support a minister of the altar, at the very
least, two full services including two sermons, or one
sermon and a public catechizing in the face of the
congregation on the Lord's day. I should rejoice
to hear of the addition, wherever they would be
frequented, of week-day services ; but I must
esteem, as a general rule, two full Sunday services,
the minimum allowance in every parish in which,
as I have said already, there is made sufficient pro-
Yision really to maintain a JNIinister. To this, as to
every general rule, there must be some just excep-
63
tions from peculiar circumstances ; these cases must
be referred to me, and shall be carefully considered.
The law which emjDowers the Bishop to require two
such full services in every parish, seems to me to
bind on him the duty of enforcing their perform-
ance in every case as to which he is not satisfied
that there are sufficient reasons for treating it
as an exception to the general rule. No existing
service must be dropped in any parish without
the sanction of the Bishop. I press this amount of
duty on you, my reverend brethren, not only, or
even chiefly, as an indication that we are moved to
our ministration by the energy of love, but also
from my conviction of its necessity for the spiri-
tual instruction of our people. However small the
parish, only the half of the adult members of any
family can ordinarily be present at one service. The
sermon or the catechism on the Lord's day is, in
many of our parishes, the only direct call from this
earth and its concerns to things spiritual which
reaches the great bulk of our population throughout
the week. It is their only direct instruction in the
ways of God. Until they have made considerable
progress in religion, they can seldom read for them-
selves to any great purpose of edification; and if,
therefore, we do not give them a double oppor-
tunity of hearing, we do, in fact, shut out one half
of the adults in every week from their only certain
opportunity of Christian learning.
This same principle applies to another most im-
64
portaiit matter; the frequency of the celebration of
the Holy Communion. Believing, as we do, that this
great ordinance is not merely a well-contrived in-
vention for exciting our religious sympathy or sen-
sibility, but that it is also a special means of grace,
in which the souls of the faithful are strengthened
and refreshed by the body and blood of Christ, as our
bodies are by the bread and wine, I see not how we
can expect our people to flourish in things spiritual,
with the scanty opportunities of such refreshment al-
lowed them in too many parishes. This state of things
is, in fact, the painful consequence of a time of cold-
ness and unfaithfulness, from which we have, I trust,
through God's great mercy, passed ; and I would
earnestly beseech you, my reverend brethren, by
gradual alterations, so to restore the older and better
custom as to let the monthly Eucharist be, in every
parish, the least frequent celebration of this holy
feast ; and where the number of communicants re-
quired by the Rubric is oftener to be found, to mul-
tiply still further, as you see expedient, these oppor-
tunities of communion. I cannot doubt but that a
new era of spiritual life would be attained in many
a parish, if such an increase in the number of
celebrations were introduced with plain, earnest,
and affectionate addresses and explanations to your
people, as to the great privilege thus secured to
them, and the love of Christ in its provision.
In close connexion with this subject, let me strongly
urge upon you a strict observance of the rule laid
65
down for us by the Church, that we administer holy
Baptism on Sundays and holydays in the face of the
congregation. In parishes where this rule has be-
come obsolete, it will, of course, require judgment,
gentleness, patience, and kindness to restore the
true use without giving injurious offence to those for
whose sake it is observed. But this offence may, I
am convinced, be prevented, by full explanations,
both public and private, of the obligation and bene-
fit of the rule, and by gentleness in its enforcement ;
by commencing, for instance, at least, with holding,
on one Sunday in the month, a public baptism in the
course of the service, and on other Sundays winning-
all who can be won, to remain and take their part,
immediately after the public service, in the prayers
with which these little ones are brought to Christ.
But there are many other means besides this
increase in the number and accuracy of our services,
which we, my reverend brethren, may bring- to bear
directly on this great want of our flocks. A vast
amount of influence, for good or for evil, is con-
tinually acting on them in the character which we
exhibit to them. Without referring to the highest
cause, to that abundant gift of God's Holy Spirit,
which is poured upon a faithful Ministry, there is
even a natural tendency to the reproduction of the
pastor's character amongst his flock. In church, in
our families, in the field, in our recreations, their
eyes are on us ; and if devotion, and kindly purity ;
and self-restraint, and high aims, and humility, and
a mortified spirit, are, under the working of God's
66
o:racc, caiin-ht, though it bo slowly, by one and
another, from the living pattern of their pastor's
conduct, the opposites of all these are most readily
and surely copied out in those, whose natural corrup-
tion makes any excuse for a low standard in the
religious life, far too certainly welcome. This prin-
ciple applies, my reverend brethren, to a multitude of
details, to which I here would only passingly allude;
speaking as to wise men, who will judge what I say.
For this, in my judgment, will restrain our recre-
ations far within the utmost limit of a possible law-
fulness. I see not, I confess, how the frequenting the
sports of the field, or the public amusements of the
world, are in us to be reconciled with its require-
ments. An evident addiction to these must lead
our flocks to believe, that, after all, we are but more
decent men of this world. The separated character of
Christ's ambassador must be perilled, if not lost, in
their frequenter : the ministry of the word must be
proportionably injured in its character : and we shall
have incurred the guilt of putting a stumbling-block
in the way of souls, for whose salvation we were set
by Christ to watch. Whether or no, the effect of
such allowances can be distinctly traced in every
separate parish, it may be most plainly read in the
lowered spiritual tone which overspreads those dis-
tricts, in which an addiction to such amusements per-
vades the body of the Clergy. And surely it is even
natural that so it should be. The stricken patient
would not willingly send, in his extremity, for the
physician of the body, who was best known to him
67
as the keenest sportsman ; because an instinctive
feeling would suggest to him the apprehension, that
that man's heart was not thoroughly in his profession.
How can we doubt, but that in the far more delicate
processes of spiritual sickness, the anxious conscience
or the burdened spirit would shrink away from one
whose tastes led him rather to those amusements of
which I have spoken, than to the house of public
intercession, or the privacy of secret communing
with God ? Even for the lower order of the minis-
try it was the rule, laid down by St. Paul, speaking,
let us remember, under the direct inspiration of God
the Holy Ghost, " Likewise also must the deacons be
grave." How shall the intricacies of the wounded
heart be bared to him who has never known his
own heart's plague? How shall he direct the peni-
tence, or guide the return of another, who has never
wept beneath the cross, or cast there his own bur-
den, or been himself guided by the Spirit into the
paths of a contrite peace ?
Nor, my reverend brethren, can I be content to
leave this subject wholly upon this its lowest ground.
It is not merely on account of the estimate which
will be formed of us by our people, that in con-
formity with the injunctions of the Canons of the
Church I would urge upon you such abstinence ;
but for our own sakes also. No one can over-esti-
mate the aid which may be administered to our
own weakness by the constant observance of a pre-
scribed external law of self-restraint. This is why
the Church in all times of her purity, and why our
68
own Church by direct command, has constantly
enforced upon us the Avearing a peculiar dress ; not
of course because there is any sanctity in one dress
rather than another, but that by this observance Ave
should be subjected to an external rule, \vhich should
always remind us of our separated character. And
of how much g-reater moment is it, my reverend
brethren, that our minds and spirits should be always
subjected to an unseen but present rule, of uhich
that outer garb is but the forecast shadow. AVith
the existence of such an inward rule of self-col-
lectedness and self-restraint, it can hardly be but
that the amusements to which I refer must interfere.
They tend to break down a man's own estimate of
his separated character: their bustle, their action,
the company to which they lead, the trains of
thought which they suggest, all tend to interfere
with that composed, musing, meditative, self-con-
versing temper, Avhich, through God's grace, is drawn
up most easily into the higher exercises of devotion.
And if this be so, the narrowest charge will be, in
its measure, incompatible with the amusements I
would have you renounce. For he whose charge is
small, has only the more time for prayer and medi-
tation ; for seeking to have ripened in him all the
graces of a saintly character ; for the work of inter-
cession, for winning for the Church the great bless-
ings which flow on all around him, from every one
whom God has indeed stamped deeply with the
image of His dear Son, and anointed largely with the
unction of the Holy One : and thus, in the unity of
69
tlie Cburcli, he who is called to less engrossing
labour amongst souls, is enabled by giving up more
time and strength to prayer and praise, to contribute
just as truly his appointed part towards that com-
mon life, wherewith the whole body of the faithful
live before God.
And if this be true of the pastor of the few sheep,
it is a truth even more important still for him upon
whom presses the heavy burden of many souls. For
how can he hoi)e to discharge aright his trust, except
by having its requirements much and often on his
mind ^ How, without much prayer, and an inner spring
of devoted earnestness, can he bear up under his bur-
den ? How surely without these will he turn to self-
cheating expedients to relieve himself of its weight ;
looking off from his failures and difficulties, — shutting
his eyes to the evils of his parish, — and soon putting-
unreal hopes, or dreamy expectations, in the room of
a course of vigorous, hearty, unsparing labour ! How,
indeed, — whether his charge be less or greater, —
unless he sees often before his eyes, in secret medi-
tation, the pattern of his Master's sufferings. His cross
and passion. His agony and bloody sweat. His mockings
and revilings, — how shall any man be nerved to bear,
unmoved, the opposition, and gainsaying, and hard-
ness, and impenitence of those who will not be won ;
the shame of a despised testimony, the reproach
of Christ's cross ? How, unless he retires often from
the sights and sounds of this world, and sets himself
in thought before the great white throne, shall he
F
70
escape the delusions of tlic ple.isurcs, ease, and
honours of this present time ? How, unless his own
soul be quickened, raised, and softened by the full
love of a penitent, shall he testify to others at once
of the terrors of the Lord, and of the love of Christ ?
In a multitude of ways will such a character as
this stamp itself upon a ministry. Such a pastor
will know, by often musing on them, the defici-
encies of himself and of his parish. He will know wlio
do not, as well as who do, come to churcli ; and when
there, join in the prayers and praises of God's house,
and kneel meekly down for the food of the holy
Communion. His list of communicants (which I can-
not too earnestly urge each one of you to keep) will
bring before him, after every celebration, the absence
of one and another of his charge. This will lead to the
pastoral visit of inquiry, of instruction, of warning,
or of consolation ; and these will soon acquaint him
accurately with the state and difficulties of the in-
dividual members of his flock. This acquaintance,
again, will give a point and particularity to his
sermons ; this will enable him simply to bring out in
them, as he has himself learned it, the power of
Christ's cross and of Christ's resurrection, in con-
nexion with his people's wants, sins, and temptations,
as though he were indeed speaking in earnest to
others of what he knows of their living efficacy.
This will make his sermons utterly unlike the moral
essays under which a congregation slumber soundly,
or hungrily disperse, to seek in other pastures what
71
their own slieplierd cannot furnish ; and so the
efficiency of the ministry will, under the blessing of
God, be to a great degree the coming out of the
character of the pastor.
And this, after all, is the great truth we need to
remember. We want for the ministry of our parishes
earnest spiritual men, men of prayer, men of faith,
men of God ; men who can " speak that they do
know, and testify that they have seen ;" men who can
witness to others of the salvation they have found
themselves ; who can speak of Christ as having known
Christ; who can declare the Spirit's power, because He
has wrought upon themselves ; to whom the Church
of the redeemed is not a name or an abstraction,
but the living company of Christ's saints, amongst
whom He lives and walks, who is their soul's desire and
happiness ; men to whom the doctrine of the sacra-
ments is not a ground for wrangling, or a cold hard
formulary of orthodoxy, but a discipline and fount
of life. And for this, above all other needs, a holy,
devout, faithful life is needful in ourselves ; that in
all our treatment of others we may be real ; that we
may be clear of the awful guilt of using the name
of Christ, and the mysteries of his gospel, as mere
matters of professional routine ; or by a still more
subtle delusion of the enemy, as instruments for
obtaining for ourselves power over the minds of
other men; but that we may indeed desire and advance
their salvation. And without the reality of personal
religion in ourselves, how can we hope to do any thing
f2
72
eflectual for them? A bad man cannot be a good
minister of Christ to others. They soon see through
any unreality in us; they feel it in the pithless
sermons, the dull moralities, or the mere sapless
statements of doctrine uithout the life of personal
experience, in ^vllich it vents itself; they feel it in
the substitution of a chilling pity for a lively sym-
pathy in our treatment of them ; they feel the effect
of our losing our perception of the mystery of each
regenerate life which is committed to our tending ;
of our forgetting that in each one is all the mystery
of God's warfare with evil ; of a will to be healed ;
a soul to be saved. They feel, in one word, that we
are becoming the vendors of a charm, instead of being
prophets with a message.
It is by being thoroughly in earnest ourselves, that
we may hope, under God's blessing, to make our minis-
try effectual in our several parishes. This, if any thing
can, will win back our brethren who have separated
from us, because it will enable us to give to them, in
its place and fulness, that truth, the desire of which
led them from us, and gave to those, who perverted
them, their only abiding strength ; this will let us
see, as seems meet to God, the effectual working of
His grace by our weak agency ; this will fit us to
render up at last our great account with joy.
Depend upon it, my reverend brethren, that if
such be the character of our ministry, we may carry
on its labours with rejoicing hope. Already, amidst
abounding difficulties, God has gTaciously given us
not a few encouragements. No reasonable man, I
think, can shut his eyes to the many marks of His
presence with us as a Church, which, within these
few past years, God lias vouchsafed to us. They have
been of many different kinds ; external and internal,
in gifts bestowed and in dangers averted. What a
new spring has Church education taken ? Under what
goodly auspices, and with what a promise of success was
St. Augustine's College opened? How much more than
heretofore — though still, alas ! how insufficiently —
have we acknowledged, and begun to pay our debt to
our poor brethren who have emigrated to our colonies,
to our convict population, and to the heathen round
about them ? How have new Bishoprics been founded
abroad? How — whether or no all was then done
for the best, on which I will not here enter — has
the evil law, which forbid at home their increase,
been broken through ? How many new churches
have been opened every where (of which increase
we in this diocese, thank God, have had our share) ?
nine wholly new churches having been consecrated,
and thirteen having been rebuilt on a larger scale,
or \vorthily restored, within the last four years ^
*■ The new churches have been as follows : — at
1. Cookham Dean.
2. Broadwell.
3. St. Ebbe's : District, Oxford.
4. Bradfield Union.
5. St. Katharine's, Bear Wood ; munificently built and
endowed at the sole expense of the late John Walter, Esq.
6. Stoke Row : District, in the parish of Ipsden.
74
111 liow many lias the company of worshippers been
nuiltii)lied ? how many more are daily filled with the
praises of God ? How have the celebrations of the
Holy Supper, and the apparently devout attendants
on them, been increased manifold in number upon
every side ? How many have, by confirmation, renewed
their own vows, and claimed for themselves the
riffht to full communion ? within this diocese no
fewer than 9249 souls within the two years of the
last confirmation. How have the schemes of our
enemies been brought to nought ? How has the more
threatening storm of internal discord, in a great mea-
sure, been hushed ? No man who contrasts with our
present condition the state of Christ's Church amongst
us a few years back, when its enemies were already
7. Sere Green : District, in the parish of Farnham Royal.
8. Twyford, in the parish of Hurst.
9. Rotherfield Grey's District.
The chief restorations have been : —
1. Wooilcote Chapel ; wholly rebuilt and enlarged.
2. Moulsford ; wholly rebuilt.
3. Cholsey ; wholly restored.
4. Basildon Church ; reseated and restored.
5. St. Thomas's, Oxford ; reseated, enlarged, and restored.
6. Goring ; reseated and restored.
7. Waltham, St. Lawrence ; the same.
8. Iver ; the same.
9. St. Lawrence, Reading ; the same in part.
10. Trinity, Reading.
1 1 . Nuffield ; the same tliroughout.
r2. Littlemore ; a new chancel and tower.
13. Bradfield Cliurch ; almost entirely rebuilt and greatly
enlarged, at the sole expense of the Rev. Thos. Stevens,
vector.
75
raising over its instantly anticipated fall tlieir prema-
ture shout of triumph, can fail, I think, to see that
this is God's work. For this change has passed over
it, not in a time of general peace and security, but
amidst fears of such sifting and trying of all institu-
tions as can hardly be paralleled \ It is not the fruit
of external accident, but of internal revival ; it is
marked by more zeal for God and His glory, more
faith in His promises, more value for His appoint-
ment, both amongst Laity and Clergy, than we or
our fathers had known.
Such blessings are surely to be received with meek
trust and humble thankfulness to God : whether they
are marks that the day is hastening to its close, or
that there is yet room for further service, they arc
surely to be used with diligence.
And is not this the lesson which all things round
us teach ? Who can look into the shaking earth, and
doubt that God has, indeed, a controversy with the
" The following statement, which appeared recently in the
public papers, strikingly illustrates this fact : — " The result of
" this year's census of the Wesleyan connexion gives the follow-
" ing numbers : — In Great Britain, 338,861 ; in Ireland, 20,742 ;
" in Missions, 97,451 ; total, 459,454; decrease during 1847-8,
"48G1. It further appears from the Report of the Conference
"that the profits of the book-room fell below those of previous
" years ; accordingly the Committee diminished the grants to the
" Theological Institution by 200^. ; to the Irish Relief Fund by
" 200Z. In reference to the difficulty in maintaining preachers
" in some of the circuits, one of the preachers said that the
" Church of England had recently built 1000 additional churches,
" while proposals were before the Conference to withdraw minis-
" ters even from old circuits."
7C
nations? We, as a ])coplo, have as yet been most
lightly dealt with: it may be that this mercy is to
be continued to us yet longer; it may be, that
through us it is to be restored to others also. What
a motive for exertion lies in such a hope !
But it may be, that the end is nearer yet. That
amidst the "distress of nations with perplexity," which
daily waxes darker around us, we are even now en-
tered upon that last storm of tribulation which shall
usher in the glad coming of the Son of man. And if
it be so, surely it is no time for sloth or inactivity,
for folded hands or loins ungirded. Surely, then,
above all other times, it does become us, to be, with
every energy of soul and body, about our Master's
business ; to be watching for His coming, and labour-
ing to prepare His way. That ours may be the bless-
ing of the faithful servant ; that we may stand in
our lot in that day, with the spiritual children He
has given us gathered round us, — with the good fight,
through His grace, well fought, — with our course
finished, and for us, all unworthy as we are, yea,
even for the weakest of us, of His abundant grace
and mercy, a crown of life laid up, which may the
Lord the righteous Judge give unto us in that day.
THE END.
Gilbert & Rivington, Printers, St. John's Square, London.
/ /^i/^O^- y^^-^!^.
ALTARS PROHIBITED
CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
BV
WILLIAM GOODE, M.A. F.A.S.
RECTOK OF ST. ANTHOLIN, LONDON.
LONDON:
J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY.
1844.
I
i
LONDON :
0. J. PALMER, PRINTER, SAVOT STKEET, STRAND.
ALTARS raOHIBITED
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
The peace and welfare of the Cimrch of England are
becoming so seriously compromised by the almost unre-
strained proceedings of certain parties among us in
carrying out their avowed purpose of " unprotestantizing"
the Church, that no effort, however humble, can be mis-
placed, in the endeavour to preserve it from the confu-
sion and ultimate ruin to which their practices are tending
rapidly to reduce it.
Of all the acts of these anti-protestant agitators, none
perhaps more demands our attention at the present moment,
than the attempt to substitute altars for communion-
tables in our churches. Be it so, that in a few rare in-
stances the altar has been suffered to remain, and from
the total cessation of the popish controversy within our
Church, may have been wholly harmless, {though, as I
shall hereafter fully prove, in direct violation of the di-
rections of the Church,) still the question of their ad-
missibility at the present time is wholly different. They
are now notoriously set up for the furtherance of Trac-
tarian views of the nature of the sacrament of the Lord's
E 2
Supper, Tho conininiiion-tahlo is thrust out in old
cliurchcs to make way for them. Tiiey arc studiously
introduced, wherever practicable, and even in the most
disingenuous and characteristically Tractarian way, into
new churches. And thus the purity of our Church's doc-
trine on the subject is placed in jeopardy. Common
sense will tell the people that altars are intended for
offering up that ivhich is placed upon them as a sacri-
fice to God, and thus obtaining his favour.
A simple consideration of the history of altars among
US at the period of the Reformation might be sufficient to
show their unsuitableness to the doctrine of our Church.
Upon the settlement of the Reformation in this coun-
try, in the reign of Edward VI., one of the first points
to which the attention of our reformers was directed,
was the removal of the Romish altars, and the substitu-
tion of tnhlcs in their place; a step which of course pe-
culiarly offended the prejudices and excited the indigna-
tion of the Romanists. On the accession of Queen Mary,
one of the first acts of the Romanists was to remove the
tables and re-erect the altars. And when Queen Eliza-
beth came to the throne, one of the first steps taken to-
wards the restoration of the Reformation was, that the
altars were made to give way to tables. Can there be a
more manifest proof than these simple facts, that the one
agrees better with the doctrine of our reformed Church,
the other with tiie doctrine of our Church before it was
reformed?
This is no mere matter of words, or names, or taste.
There is a great and most important difference between the
two things. An altar is that on which a sacrifice is offered
up to God, and a sacrifice implies a sacrificing priest to
offer it, and mediate between God and tb.e people ; and
it is far worse than irrational to say, that a change of our
tables into altars is not made for the purpose of instilling
this doctrine into the minds of the people, and will not
have that effect. A table is obviously unsuitable for
such a purpose, and therefore our Church, when pre-
scribing tables to be used by us, in that very direction,
necessarily, though only by inference, (and an inference
which I care not to press,) condemns altars and the doc-
trine that flows from them. For though an altar might
be called a table, (Mai. i. \'2,) from the circumstance
that men were permitted to partake of the sacrifices
offered, it by no means follows that a table is a suitable
and proper place on which to offer up a material sacrifice
to God; and it is the consciousness of its unsuitableness
that induces the llomanists and Tractarians to change it
for an altar. Nor, on the other hand, is an altar suita-
ble where a sacrifice would be displeasing to God, and
where all that takes place, besides the spiritual sacrifice
of praise and thanksgiving, is a feast upon the symbols of
a sacrifice offered once for all upon the cross, in svhich, to
the faithful recipient, the real but spiritual presence of
him who is thus represented is mercifully vouchsafed.
Tiie question, then, which we are about to discuss is
one of no slight moment. It is intimately connected
with the preservation of the purity of the doctrine of our
Church. The erection of altars in our churches is an
important advance towards Rome ; an advance made in
the very face of the express orders of the Church ^to
the contrary.
I am unwilling here to notice more particularly, and
by name, the cases in which this violation of the Church's
orders has been allowed, lest I should appear to be
speaking with reference to any individuals in our Church,
especially any who, both from their position and cha-
racter, demand the highest respect. I will only say, for
the information of those who may not know exactly how
matters are progressing in this direction, that the cases
are already numerous in which this has taken place,
that the most strenuons etforts are being made by a
large party in our Church (including, of course, the
Tractarians, though not limited to those who profess
themselves to be such) to carry out this infraction of the
Church's ordinances; and that in this course they are
allowed to proceed. Nor should I omit to add, that this
is but one {<pecimc)i of the system they are pursuing for
the " re-appropriation" of doctrines and practices cast
out of our Church at the Reformation. What other
ultimate consequence can be expected by any one to
result from such a state of things than a complete dis-
ruption of the Churchy it is difficult to conceive.
The remarks of Dr. Nicholl, in his preface to his Com-
mentary on the Common Prayer, (p. xiii.,) with reference
to the conduct of the Nonjurors, may well call for our
serious consideration at the present time. " Whatever
little advantages," he observes, " may be compassed by
these practices, they are certainly very dangerous ones ;
as tending to divide that church whose only strength and
safety consists in its union. These projects have been
once already tried, with a very lamentable success. For
the miseries of the civil war were not owing to the Sepa-
ratists and Sectaries, (for these were afterwards brooded
in Cromwell's army,) but to the quarrels and distinctions
made between Church-of-England men themselves.
These unhappy differences kindled the first coals of the
civil war, and blowed up the whole nation into flames. . . .
And if this be not warning sufficient against trying the
like experiments for the future, I know not what is."
(Ed. 1710.)
My object, however, is simply and respectfully to offer
evidence as to the nature of our Churcii's directions on
the subject ; evidence, the production of which may
perhaps tend to strengthen the hands of those who are
really desirous of upholding, as far as their power ex-
tends, the interests of our Reformed Protestant Church.
I shall not, therefore, on the present occasion, advert
to the case of particular churches, nor even take up the
question of doctrine, but confine myself to an historical
delineation of the proofs that our Church requires tables
to be used for the administration of the holy communion,
and prohibits the use of altars.
The first movement in this matter appears to have
been rather the natural consequence of the introduction
of the doctrines of the Reformation, than in obedience to
any direct order given by the authorities of the Church.
For, as far as I am able to discover, the first direction
given on the subject is in the Injunctions issued about
June, 1550, by Bishop Ridley, for his diocese of London,
and is in the following terras.
" Item, whereas in divers places some use the Lord's
board after the form of a table, and some as an altar,
whereby dissention is perceived to arise among the un-
learned ; therefore, wishing a godly unity to be observed
in all our diocese, and for that the form of a table may
more move and turn the simple from the old supersti-
tious opinions of the popish mass, and to the right use
of the Lord's Supper, we exhort the curates, church-
wardens, and questmen here present to erect and set up
the Lord's board after the form of an honest table,
decently covered, in such place of the quire or chancel
as shall be thought most meet by their discretion and
agreement, so that the ministers with the communicants
may have their j)lace separated from the rest of the peo-
ple; and to take down and abolish all other by- altars
or tables." (See Burnet, Hist, of Ref., or Cardwell's
Doc. Ann.)
From the words here used, " we exhort," it appears as
if no order had then been given by authority on the sub-
ject ; and tliat it had rather been left to time and persua-
sion to bring about the alteration. But we find, from
K. Edward's Journal, that early in November of this
year a general order was issued by the Council on this
subject, as we there meet with the following entry : —
"November 12. There tvere letters sent to every bishop
to pluck down the altars." (Burnet, vol. ii. Kec. No. 1.)
The copy of the letter sent to Ridley (which was no
doubt the same as the rest, there being nothing in it
peculiar to his diocese) is extant, where the order runs
thus, — " Whereas it is come to our knowledge, that, being
the altars within the more part of" the churches of the
realm upon good and godly considerations are taken
down, there doth yet remain altars standing in divers
other churches, by occasion whereof much variance and
contention ariseth amongst sundry of our subjects. . . .
We let you wit, that minding to have all occasion of con-
tention taken away .... we have thought good, by the
advice of our council, to require you, and nevertheless
especially to charge and command you, for the avoiding
of all matters of further contention and strife, about the
standing or taking away of the said altars, to give sub-
stantial order throughout all your diocese, that with all
diligence all the altars in every church or chapel, as well
in places exempted as not exempted, within your said
diocese, to be taken down, and, instead of them, a table
to be set up in some convejiient part of the chancel, with-
in every such church or chapel, to serve for the minis-
tration of the blessed communion." (Heyl. Hist of lief,
p. 9G ; Fox, Acts and Mon. ; Cardwell's Doc. Ann. i.
89.) This letter is dated November 24; and with it
were sent certain arguments,* to reconcile the people
to the order, drawn up by Ridley. (Burnet and Collier.)
'i'hat this letter was sent to the bishops generally, and
* Which we eliall give presently. See p. 34.
9
not to Ridley only, appears from the fact that Day,
Bishop of Chichester, appeared hefore the Council, No-
vember 80, to answer for his non-compliance with the
king's letter for taking down the altars, and upon his
persisting in his refusal of obedience to it he was commit-
ted io the Fleet. (See Burnet, and Collier, i. 30G.)
There can be no question, then, what from this time,
during the remainder of the reign of Edward VI., was the
law of the church in this matter.
Accordingly, in the revision of the Prayer Book, in
1552, the word "table" was substituted for "aUur,"
which had been allowed to remain in some places in the
first Prayer Book of 1549, but was now removed, lest it
should mislead any as to the nature of the sacrament.
This removal of the altars, indeed, was one especial
charge brought against the Reformers in the reign of
Mary. Thus in Ridley's " last examination before the
commissioners," Wliite, Bishop of Lincoln, complained,
" Cyril also in another place, proving to the Jews that
Christ was come, useth this reason, ' Altars are erected
in Christ's name in Britain, and in far countries ; ergo,
Clirist is come.' But we may use the contrary of that
reason, ' altars are plucked down in Britain ; ergo,
Christ is not come.' .... Ye see what a good argument
this your doctrine maketh for the Jews, to prove that
Christ is not come," I need hardly give Ridley's reply
to such an argument, (if argument it could be called,)
but at the close of it, he observes, — " As for the taking
down of the altars, it was done upon just considerations,
for that they seemed to come too nigh to the Jews'
usage ; neither was the supper of the Lord at any time
better ministered, [or] more duly received, than in those
latter days when all things were brought to the rites and
usage of the primitive church" (Works, P. S. ed.
pp. 280,281.)
10
And thus does this learned and pious bishop lament
the restoration of the altars in Queen Mary's time. " O
thou now wicked and bloody see, why dost thou set up
again many altars of idolatry, which by the word of God
tcere justly taken away ? Oh ! uhy hast thou over-
thrown the Lord's fable ?" (Lett- of Farewell to his
Friends. Works, p. 409.)
Thus again does Becon bear witness to the fact, (and
for that purpose only I quote him,) that the substitution
of tables for altars was by, not a partial, but a general
injunction. In his " Humble Supplication unto God for
the restoring of his Holy Word," written in the time of
Queen Mary, he says,^ — " Moreover heretofore we were
taught to beat down the idolatrous and heathenish altars,
which antichrist of Rome, intending to set up a new
priesthood and a strange sacrifice for sin, commanded to
be built up . . . and to set in their stead, in some con-
venient place, a seemly table, and after the examples of
Christ, to receive together at it the holy mysteries of
Christy's body and blood, in remembrance that Christ's
body was broken and his blood shed for our sins. But
now . . . have they taken out of the temples those seemly
tables, which we, following the examples of thy dearly
beloved Son and of the primitive church, used at the
ministration of the holy communion," &c. (Works,
ed. 1563, vol. iii. fol. 16.)
But, in truth, no man who is at all acquainted with
the documents of this period can be in doubt what was
the law or practice of our Church on the subject during
the latter part of the reign of Edward VI.
During the reign of Queen Mary the altars were of
course restored.
We have now, then, to observe what course was pur-
sued on the re-settlement of the Reformation, in the time
of Queen Elizabeth.
11
Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne November 17,
1558. In April, 1559, was passed the act for uniformity
of Prayer, Sic, enacting that from St. John Baptist day
following, the second Prayer Book of Edward VI. (with
a few alterations) should be again " in full force and ef-
fect." Now this Prayer Book, as the divines who ad-
dressed Queen Elizabeth shortly after on the subject of
altars, remind her, " supposes a table for the administra-
tion of the Holy Eucharist, and gives directions about
it." (Collier, ii. p. 434.)
And here, let us observe, we see what these divines
would have said noiv^ as to what is required of us by our
present Prayer Book alone, without adverting to other
considerations ; the rubric here referred to remaining
unaltered.
There were of course, however, some in the church at
that time, who were unwilling to take down the altars to
which they had been so long accustomed to look with
reverence, until some specific direction should force
them to do so ; and it seems not improbable that the
Queen herself felt no great desire to enforce their dis-
continuance. One of the earliest acts, therefore, of the
reformers was, to address the Queen for the removal of
the altars, and placing tables in their room;* and accord-
ingly, in the Injunctions issued in the first year of her
reign, we have the following order for that purpose.
" For tables in thecJmrch. — Whereas her majesty under-
standeth, that in many and sundry parts of the realm,
the altars of the churches be removed, and tables placed
for the administration of the Holy Sacrament, according
to the form of the laio therefore provided, [referring
clearly to the act for uniformity]; and in some other
places the altars be not yet removed, upon opinion con-
ceived of some other order therein to be taken by her
majesty's visitors ; in the order whereof, saving for an
* See p. 36, helow.
12
uniformity, tliere seemetli no matter of great nioniont,
so that the sacrament be duly and reverently ministered;
yet for observation of one uniformity through the whole
realm, and for the better imitation of the law in that be-
half, it is ordered, that no altar be taken down but by
oversight of the curate of the church and the church-
wardens, or one of them at the least, wherein no riotous
or disordered manner be used. And that the holy table
in every church be decently made, and set in the place
where the altar stood, and there commonly covered as
thereto belongeth, and as shall be appointed by the visi-
tors, and so to stand, saving when the comnmnion of the
sacrament is to be distributed ; at which time the same
shall be so placed in good sort within the chancel, as
whereby the minister may be more conveniently heard of
the communicants in his prayer and ministration, and
the communicants also more conveniently, and in more
number, communicate with the said minister. And after
the communion done, from time to time, the same holy
table to be placed ^vhere it stood before." (Sparrow,
p. 84.)* The remark implying that the change of altars
into tables was a matter of no great moment, was
probably inserted in deference to the Queen's feelings,
and perhaps by the Queen herself,t who seems
to have been less zealous in some matters of this
kind than was desirable, as it was certainly not in ac-
cordance with the views of the leading divines of that
* In a volume entitled "Synodalia," among Archbishop Parker's papers
at C. C. C. Cambridge, occur some " Interpretations and further Consi-
derations" of the injunctions drawn up bj the archbishops and bishops, in
which it is directed, " That the table be removed out of the choir into the
body of the church, before the chancel door, where either the choir seemeth
to be too little, or at great feasts of receivings ; and at the end of the com-
munion to be set up again, according to the injunctions." (Cardwell, Doc.
Ann. i. 205 )
t As she did in other cases. (Sec Card v.-. Synod, i. 1 KJ.)
period ; but however that may be, here was a clear order
for the removal of the altars and the placing of tables in
their room, and also a recognition of the fact that this
was required by " the law."
And we happen to have express testimony that
this order was carried out " throughout the king-
dom." For in a letter of Thomas Sampson to Peter
Martyr, dated Jan. G, 15G0, the writer, after regretting
the shortcomings, as it appeared to him, of the work of
reformation that was then going on, adds, " T/ie altars
indeed are removed and images also throughout the
KINGDOM." (Zurich Lett. P. S. ed. p. 63.)'"' A most
unexceptionable testimony, because he looked with a
particularly jealous eye to what was done in this matter,
and would have added a complaint on this head also, had
it been otherwise.
Moreover, at the latter end of this year (1559) com-
missioners were appointed by the Queen to make a
royal visitation throughout the kingdom, in the course
of which all the clergy were required to subscribe a de-
claration that the Book of Common Prayer, and the
orders and rules contained in the " Injunctions," were
agreeable to the word of God, and the doctrine and use
of the primitive and apostolic church, to which only one
hundred and eighty-nine refused to put their names.
(Strype, Annals, vol. i. p. 17*2.)
The proceedings of the commissioners with respect to
St. Paul's Cathedral are related by Strype at some
length ; and he tells us that they enjoined the authorities
of St. Paul's to " take care that the cathedral church
should be purged and freed from all and singular their
images, idols, and altars, ayid in the place of those
altars to provide a decent table in the church for the
ordinary celebration of the Lord's Supper." (Annals,
vol. i. p. iQij.)
* Altaria quidem sunt diremta et imagines per totum rcgnum.
14
I'lio appointment of these conunissioneis, and tlu^
declaration they were instructed to obtain from the
clergy, together with the whole character of their pro-
ceedings, show the resolution with which the Act for
uniformity and the Injunctions were carried out and en-
forced : and the case of St. Paul's Cathedral, particu-
larly speciBed by Strype, proves also that the prohibition
of altars extended to cathedral quite as much as to
■parochial churches.
There is also another instance of the removal of altars,
fortunately left on record by Strype, to which I would par-
ticularly call the attention of the reader, and which is given
in the following words, — April the \Gth [1561] ivere all
the altars in Westminster Abbey demolished, and so was
the altar in the chapel of Henry VII." (Strype, Annals,
vol. i. p. 267.) If, therefore, any one of these altars has
been again erected, this has been done stealthily, and in
direct violation of the ordinances of the church. How
far, then, an altar so erected can be justly quoted as
a proof that our church alloivs altars, hardly needs a
remark.
In accordance therefore with the above orders, we find
that in the " Interrogatories'" attached to an edition of the
Queen's Visitation Articles of 1559, given by Strype,
and called by him " Inquiries of some ordinary at his
visitation, instituted soon after the year the articles
aforegoing [the Visitation Articles of Queen Elizabeth
in 1559] were set forth,'' the second interrogatory for
churchwardens is, " Whether all altars, images, holy
water stones, pictures, paintings, .... and all other
superstitious and dangerous monuments ; especially
paintings and images in wall, book, cope, banner, or
elsewhere, of the blessed Trinity or of the Father (of
whom there can be no image made), be defaced and re-
moved out of the church and other places^ and are
15
dentruyed, and the places where such impiety was, so
made uj), as if there liad been no such thing there ; or
no?" (Strype's Annals, vol. i. App. No. xxi.)
On Oct. 10, 156 i, the following order was issued by
the Commissioners, — " It is ordered also, that the steps
which be as yet at this day remaining in any cathedral,
collegiate, or parish church, be not stirred or altered, but
be suffered to continue. And if in any chancel the steps
be transposed, that they be not erected again, but that
the steps be decently paved, where the communion table
shall stand out of the times of receiving the communion."'
(Heylin's Antid. Line, 2nd ed., p. 46.)
In January 1564-5 were published the " Advertise-
ments," in which again we find the following order,
" That the parish provide a decent table, standing on a
frame, for the communion-table." (Sparrow and Card-
well.) It has been said that the Queen did not officially
give her sanction to these Advertisements. The ques-
tion is not material, inasmuch as the order given in her
Injunctions is sufficient, not to say that those Injunctions
maintain that the act for uniformity establishing the
second Prayer Book of Edward VI. requires the change
of altars into tables. But seeing that in the very title
of these Advertisements they are said to be " by virtue
of the Queen's majesty's letters commanding the same,"
(see title, and Strype's Parker, i.307, andiii.65,Oxf.ed.)
and that in the year 1569 they are referred to by Arch-
bishop Parker, in his Visitation Articles, as " set
forth by public authority" (art. iv.), and again
quoted as of authority in the constitutions of 1571,
there can be little doubt that if her sanction was
not formally, it was virtually, given to them. The
matter in fact stands thus. By the Act for uni-
formity, it was enacted that with respect to the orna-
ments of the church, and the ministers thereof, and the
16
ceremonies or rites of the cliurcli, it should he lawful
for the Queen, with the advice of her commissioners for
causes ecclesiastical, or of the metropolUcm, to issue any
further orders. When, therefore, the " Advertisements,
partly for due order in the public administration of
common prayers and using the holy sacraments, and
partly for the apparel of all persons ecclesiastical," were
issued by the metropolitan five years after, expressly
" by virtue of the Queen's majesty's letters commanding
the same," it seems difficult to see what was wanting to
give them authority. And, finally, they are expressly
referred to by Archbishop Whitgift in 1585, in his
Visitation Articles for the Diocese of Chichester, sede
vacante, as "her Majesty's Advertisements;" (Wilk.
iv. 318;) and again in the canons of 1640, as the " Ad-
vertisements of Queen EHzabeth." (can. 7.)
Proceeding in chronological order, we come next to
the articles to be inquired of in the Metropolitical Visi-
tation of Archbishop Parker in 1567, " in all and sin-
gular cathedral and collegiate churches within the pro-
vince of Canterbury," among which occurs the following ;
" Item, whether your divine service be used, and your
sacraments ministered, in manner and form prescribed
by the Queen's Majesty's Injunctions, and none other
way." (Art. 3. Wilk. iv. 253.) This again shows that
the general orders in the " Injunctions" refer to " cathe-
dral and collegiate," as well as parochial churches.
We proceed to the first parochial Visitation Articles
of Archbishop Parker for the Diocese of Canterbury in
1569. Thus runs the 2nd article : " Item, -whether you
have in your parish churches all things necessary ....
specially the Book of Common Prayer .... a comely
and decent table for the holy communion, covered de-
cently, and set in place prescribed by the Queen"s
Majesty's Injunctions .... and whether your altars
17
be taken doivii according to thi: commandment in
THAT BEHALF GIVEN." (Wilk. iv. 257, 8.)
The next authority is from the canons of the synod
of 1571, to which, on account of one of them, sup-
posed to attribute authority to the writings of the
early Fathers,* much deference is paid by some. We
are told that here we see the mind of our Church, that
here we have her solemn, deliberate, and unbiassed
judgment. We therefore beg to recommend to the par-
ticular consideration of such the following injunction.
The churchwardens shall provide a table of joyners
work for the administration of the holy communion.f
In the same year, (1571,) in the Injunctions given by
Grindal, Archbishop of York, in his Metropolitical Vi-
sitation, to the clergy and laity of his province, we have
among those for the laity the following order, — " Item,
that tlie churchwardens in every parish shall, at the
costs and charges of the parish, provide (if the same be
not already provided) all things necessary .... spe-
cially the Book of Common Prayer .... a comely and
decent tahle, standing on a frame, for the holy com-
munion." " Item, that the churchwardens shall see that
in their churches and chapels all altars he utterly taken
* That preachers should exact the religious regard of the people onlj
to such things as were agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Tes-
tament, and which the catholic fathers and ancient bishops had collected
out of that very doctrine.
-f- ^ditui . . , . . curabunt mensam ex asseribus composite jimctam,
quae administrationi sacrosanctse communionis inserviat. (Wilk. iv. 266.)
" In the framing of this book of canons, the Archbishop and the Bishops
of Ely and Winton had the main hand ; but all the bishops of both pro-
vinces in synod, in their own persons, or by proxy, signed it ; but not the
lower house. And the archbishop laboured to get the Queen's allowance
to it, but had it not : she often declining to give her licence to their
orders and constitutions, reckoning that her bishops'' power and jurisdiction
alone, having their authority derived from her, was sufficient.^'' (Strype's
Parker, ii. 60, Oxf, ed. ; as quoted by Cardwell, Synod, i. 111.)
C
.18
down, and clear removed, even unto the f<mndation,
and the place ivhere they stood paved, and the wall
whereunto they joined whlted over, a)id made uniform
with the rest, so as no breach or ricpture appear ; and
that the altar-stones be broken, defaced, and bestoived to
some common use." (Grindall's works, P. S. ed. pp.
133, 4.)*
And that a strict uniformity was required in the forms
and orders observed throughout the whole realm, is evi-
dent from a letter sent by the Council, in 1573, to one of
the bishops, apparently supposed to be negligent in the
matter, in the Queen's name, reminding him that all the
churches of his diocese ought to be kept " in one uniform
and godly order," and requiring him, " either by yourself,
which were most fit, or by your archdeacons, or other able
and wise men, personally to visit, and see, that in no one
church of your diocese there be any diflformity or differ-
ence used for those prescribed orders," i. e. " the orders
set forth in the book of Common Prayer." (Wilk. iv.
279.)
Whether the conduct which elicited this reproof was
caused by negligence or by party bias, I know not, but
it is impossible not to feel that those two causes have
produced the greater part of the evils by which our
Church has been afflicted. If the orders and instructions
of the Church had been from the first mildly, steadily, and
impartially carried out, we should have been spared an
incalculable amount of evil, confusion, and ill-will. But
strictness and negligence often following close upon one
another, party bias one way succeeding party bias of the
opposite description, (and the transactions of Archbishop
* See also the articles sent hy him to the Archdeacon of York, " to be
put in execution with speed and effect," one of which is, " that the parish
provide a decent table, standing in a frame, for the communion-table."
(lb. p. 155.)
19
Laud's time may show us how far party bias has at
times carried its votaries beyond and in opposition to
the doctrine and precepts of the Church,) have done
more to produce discord, ill-will, confusion, and dissent,
than any other cause that could be named. It is but
natural that the laity should be restless and dissatisfied
under such a state of things, and think that they are
trifled with.
Let us now follow Archbishop Grindall to the see of
Canterbury. In the articles drawn up for his metropo-
litical visitation of the province of Canterbury, in 1576,
we meet with the following, — " Whether you have in
your parish churches and chapels all things necessary . . .
specially the book of Common Prayer .... a comely and
decent table, standing 07i a frame, for the holy commu-
nion." " Whether in your churches and chapels all
altars be utterly taken do?vn and clean removed, eve)i
u7ito the foundation, and the place where they stood
paved, and the wall whereunto they joined whited over,
and made uniform with the rest, so as no breach or rup-
ture appear?" (Works, P. S. ed. pp. 157, 8.)
And in the same prelate's " articles to be inquired of
in all cathedral and collegiate churches" in his province
in the same year, (1576,) one is, — " Whether your divine
service be used, and the sacrament ministered in manner
and form prescribed in the Queen's Majesty's Injunc-
tions, and none other ways." (lb. p. 180.)
It is difficult to conceive more stringent and decisive
testimony to the fact, that the erection of altars in our
churches is directly opposed to the laws and ordinances
of our reformed church. In fact, if altars are not pro-
hibited, neither are rood lofts with their images, nor
twenty other similar popish abominations, the removal
of which rests only upon the same foundation as the re-
moval of altars.
c 2
20
And this removal of the " altars" is recognised even
in tlic Canons of Arcld)isliop Land's Synod of 1640,
where it is said, — " At the time of reforming this church
from that gross superstition of popery, it was carefully
provided that all means should he used to root out of the
minds of the people, both the inclination thereunto and
the memory thereof, especially of the idolatry committed
in the mass, for ivhich cause alt. popish altars were de-
molished." (Art. 7. Wilk. iv. 549.)
Once more, in the last code of canons, passed in our
church in 1603, the 82nd runs thus; — " A decent com-
mnnion-tahle in every church. Whereas ive haiw no
doubt, but that in all churches within the realm of Eng-
land, convenient and decent tables are provided and
placed for the celebration of the holy communion, we
appoint, that the same tables shall from time to time be
kept and repaired, &c and so stand saving when
the said holy communion is to be administered ; at which
time the same shall be placed in so good sort within the
church or chancel, as thereby the minister may be more
conveniently heard of the communicants in his prayer
and ministration, and the communicants also more con-
veniently, and in more number, may communicate with
the said minister ;" all which necessarily implies a move-
able table.
And in an Act of parhament, passed in 1605, " altars"
are expressly reckoned among " popish reliques." It is
there enacted, that " it shall be lawful for any two jus-
tices of peace, &c., to search the houses and lodgings
of every popish recusant convict, or of every person
whose wife is, or shall be, a popish recusant convict, for
popish books and reliques of popery : and that if any
altar, pix, beads, pictures, or such-like popish reliques
. . . shall be found . . . shall be presently defaced and
burnt, if it be meet to be burned ; and if it be a crucifix
21
or other relique of any price, the same to be defacecl,""
&c. (3 Jac. I. e. 5. Gibson's Codex, i. 535, 6.)
Thus, then, stands the law of the case. It is useless,
therefore, to inquire whether stone altars have been per-
mitted to remain in some of our churches, because, — not
to say that in all probability they have been stealthily
re-erected, under the auspices of some popishly-inclined
rector or bishop, or some thoughtless persons who have
regarded them as ornamental, — wherever they are found,
they stand m direct violation of the repeated injunc-
tions of the authorities of our church. There is no
doubt that in the times of Laud's archiepiscopate, there
were those who look advantage of the favour known to
be secretly felt in high quarters towards such things to
re-erect altars in their churches. Nor can we be sur-
prised at this, when we find a bishop of our church, at
that period, inserting in his articles of inquiry for his
diocese, in 1638, such questions as the following, —
" Hath it [i. e. your chancel] ascents up unto the altar?"
(Tit. i. art. 9.) " Is your communion-table or altar
OF STONE, wainscot, joiner's work, strong, fair, and
decent?" (Tit. iii. art. 7.) * The explanation of this
we learn from the fact since ascertained, that he was a
secret apostate to Rome while he remained a bishop of
our church. t And on account of the scandal occasioned
by acts of this kind, it was thought adviseable, by the
synod of 1640, when the times seemed to demand at
least a little more 'prudence in such matters, to pass the
following canon, that, to prevent any " imperti)ie7it, in-
convenient^ or illegal inquiries in the articles for eccle-
siastical visitations, this synod hath now caused a sum-
mary or collection of visitatory articles (out of the rubrics
of the service book, and the canons and warrantable rules
* Bp. Montague's Articles of Inquiry for Diocese of Norwich, in i 638.
+ See Panzani's Memoirs.
22
of the church) to be made, and for future direction to be
deposited in tlie records of the Archbishop of Canterbury,"
and "no bishop, or other person whatsoever, having right
to hold, use, or exercise any parochial visitation," was to
use " any other articles, or forms of inquiry upon oath,
than such only as shall be approved and ' in terminis'
allowed unto him (upon due request made) by his me-
tropolitan under his seal of office ;" of course out of the
" summary" so left in the archbishop's hands, the title
of the canon being, " one book of articles of inquiry
to be used at all parochial visitations." (Can. 9. Wilk.
iv. 550.) This canon is so remarkable, that I suppose
it is undeniable that there must have been very strong
grounds in the " impertinent, inconvenient, and illegal"
inquiries of some of the bishops to call for it ; and so I
leave Bishop Montague's articles to the reader, to dis-
pose of as he pleases, in conformity with " the rubrics
of the service book, and the canons and w^arrantable
rules of the Church."
But even then, few indeed went so far in opposition
to the directions of the Church as to erect a stone altar.
All that was attempted in general was to have the com-
munion-table placed altarwise (as it v, as termed), i, e. with
the sides east and west, and the ends north and south,
close to the east end of the church, and there railed i?i.
How far this was agreeable to the rubrics of the service
book, or the directions of the Church, is a question into
which I have no inclination to enter. These are
minor points, and the controversy respecting them has
happily long slept, and far indeed would it be from my
wish to revive it. But at any rate this was all that ge-
nerally was ventured upon. And all that Arch-
bishop Laud himself made inquiry about in his
metropolitical visitation for the diocese of Lincoln, in
1634, was, — " Whether have you in your church a con-
23
venient and decent communion-table, &c,, and whether
is the same table placed in such convenient sort within
the chancel or churchy as that the minister may be best
heard in his ministry and the administration, and that
the greatest number may communicate ?"" (Holy Table,
pp. 8;-!, 4.)
Further ; this substitution of tables for altars, in the
time of Queen Elizabeth, was again (as it had been be-
fore) made the continual subject of reproach against our
church by the Romanists.
Thus, in the anonymous popish pamphlet, entitled
" An Addition," &c., published in 1561, on the burning
of St. Paul's, the author speaks of that calamity as a
judgment upon the Reformers for their desecration of
the church in " destroying and pulling down holy altars,"
&c. ; to which Bishop Pilkington, in his " Confutation,"
replies, — " Now for pulling down altars and minister-
ing the communion on tables, a few words to try, whe-
ther we do this without reason or example. First, our
Saviour Christ ministered it sitting at a table : then it
is not wicked but best to follow his doings ; for he did
all things well . . . and because altars were ever used
for sacrijiees, to signify that sacrifice which was to come,
seeing our Saviour Christ is come already, has fultilled
and finished all sacrifices, we think it best, to take away
all occasions of that popish sacrificing mass, (for main-
taining whereof they have cruelly sacrificed many inno-
cent souls,) to minister on tables, according to these
examples." *
The same charge is reiterated by Dorman, in 1564,f
and is thus replied to by the celebrated Dean Nowell, —
" First, that Christ instituted the sacrament at a table,
* Pilkington's Works, P. S, ed. pp. 539, 545—7.
t Proof of certain Articles, &c. Aiitw. 1564. See Nowell's Reproof of
Dorman 's Proof, cited below ; and Strype, Ann. i. 163.
24
and not at an ultur, is most manifest ; except M. Dor-
raan would have us think, that men had altars instead
of tables in their private houses in those days ; but our
Saviour expressly saying that the hands of him who
should betray him were upon the table, taketh away all
doubting, Luke xxii. 21. And St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 21,
also calleth it mensnm dominham the Lord his table . . .
If St. Basil, and some other old writers, call it an altar,
that is no proper, but a figurative name, for that, as in
the old law, their burnt offerings and sacrifices were
oflTered upon the altar, so are our sacrijices of prayer
and thanksgiving, S^-c, offered up to God at the Lord's
table, as it were at an altar. But such kind of figura-
tive speech can be no just cause to set up altars rather
than tables, unless they think that their crosses also
should be turned into altars, for that like phrase is used
of them, where it is said, Christ offered up himself upon
the altar of the cross. Now the old doctors (Chrys. hom.
18 in 2 Cor. August. Tract. 26, in Joann. et raulti
mult, loc.) do call I't the Lord's table, usually, truly,
without figure, and agreeably to the Scriptures. Con-
cerning the spiritual worship or service of God, or sa-
crifice, if you will, (seeing it is also mentioned in S.
Basil,) due to be done at the Lord's table, which, as
afore is noted, he calleth an altar, it is not lacking in
our churches at the Lord's table ; that is to say, true
repentance of heart," &c. " And were you not altoge-
ther too gross, S. Basil so oft speaking of spiritual wor-
shipping, and spiritual service, might somewhat reform
your carnal and sensual understanding. You see we do
not stick to grant you, not only a spiritual worship and
service, but a sacrifice too, which yet hath no need of
your altars, framed to yourselves, upon this false phan-
tasie, that the body and blood of Christ are there offered
by the priests for the quick and dead, with the abuse of
25
that distinction of the bloody and iwhloody offering of
Christ's body applied to the same ; which is altogether
a false fable and a vain dream most meet for M. Dor-
man. The Scriptures, Heb. x. 10, 12, 14, do thus
teach us, that Christ our Saviour once for all offered up
his body and blood upon the altar of the cross, the one
and only sacrifice of sweet savour, to his Father ; by the
which one oblation of the body of Christ, a sacrifice for
our sins, once for ever offered, and no more to be offered
by any man, we be sanctified and made perfect. Where-
fore the popish priests, which do repeat often the sacri-
fice of Christ's death, as they do teach, thereby, as much
as in them lieth, do take away the efficacy and virtue of
the sacrifice of Christ's death, making it like to the sacri-
fices of the old law ; the imperfection of which sacrifices
St. Paul doth prove by the often repetition of the same.
For the continuance whereof their priests also needed
succession : but Christ is a priest for ever, without suc-
cession, and his sacrifice perpetual, ivithout repetition,
as the apostle, Heb. x. 11, plainly teacheth. Our ser-
vice and -sacrijice now is the often and thankful remem-
brance of that only sacrifice, in the receiving of the holy
sacrament at the Lord'^s table, according to his own in-
stitution ; Hoc facite in memorinm mei ; do this in re-
membrance of me : with spiritual feeding by faith also,
upon that his most precious body and blood, so by him
for us offered. Touching the pulling down of your
ALTARS, / answer, they are justly destroyed, as were
those wicked altars by Asa, Josaphat, Ezekias, Josias,
godly kings of Juda, destroyed.'''' *
So Harding objects, — " How condemn ye the Dona-
tists, seeing with them ye break and throw down the
holy altars of God?" To which Bishop Jewell replies, —
* Nowells Reproof of Dorman's Proof, 1565, 4to. fol. 15 — 17.
26
" Ye .... condemn us for heretics, for that we have
taken down your sliops and gainful booths, which ye call
the holv altars of God. Verily this must needs be
thought either extreme rigour, or great folly, of the re-
moving of a stone to make an heresy. . . . Neither is
there any good sufficient reason to be showed, wherefore
it should more be heresy in us to take down your need-
less and superstitious ivalls, which ye had erected of
yourselves, without commission, than it was lately in
you, to tear in sunder, and to burn our commiaiion'
tables : in the erection and use whereof we had the un-
doubted example, both of Christ himself, and also
of the ancient catholic Fathers. ... As for the altars
which Optatus saith the Donatists brake down, they were
certainly tables of wood, such as we have, and not heaps
of stones such as ye have : as in my former Reply made
unto you, (art. 3, div. 26,) it may better appear. St.
Augustine reporting the same story, (Ep. 50, ad Boni-
fac.) saith ; the Donatists in their fury brake down the
altar boards. His words be these : Lignis ejusdem
altaris effractis. Likewise saith Athanasius of the like
fury of the Arians; Subsellia, thronum, mensam
ligneam et tahulas ecclesicB, et cetera qucB poterant,
/oris elata, combusserunt ; they carried forth and burnt
the seats, the pulpit, the ivooden board, the church
tables, and such other things as they could get. Touch-
ing your stone altars, Beatus Rhenanus saith, In nostris
Basilicis Ararum superaddititia structura novitatem
pr(B se fert ; in our churches the building up of altars
added to the rest declareth a novel ft/. This learned
man telleth you, M. Harding, that your stone altars
are but newly brought into the church of God ; and that
our communion-tables are old and ancient, and have
been used from the beginning. We have such altars,
M. Harding, as Christ, his apostles, St. Augustine,
27
Optatiis, and other catholic and Jioly Fathers had, and
used, whose examples to follow we never thought it to
be such heresy." *
The charge is repeated by Osorlus, who, in his Trea-
tise against Walter Haddon, speaking of the proceedings
that had taken place in the English church under Queen
Elizabeth, complains, that images, &c., and altars had
been thrown down.f To which Haddon or Fox (for the
answer was commenced by Haddon, but finished by
Fox) replies, — "But as to what thou sayest, that images,
pictures, crosses, and altars are cast down, I conceive that
this part of the complaint does not much appertain to
Luther, and the ministers of the Evangelical doctrine,
inasmuch as they never put any hands to the destruction
of images. Neither is it right, that those who are but
private men, should by force and tumults take liberty to
themselves to do anything in the commonwealth or
church. But if the magistrates, accordijig to their lawful
authority, tvith respect to anything which they see to be
agreeable to the word of God, do piously and quietly ex-
ecute their office therein, what has Osorius, a private
man and a stranger here, to do with this, either to quar-
rel at or that he should intermeddle with the matter.
If King Sebastian, sovereign of the Portuguese, think
meet to cherish and follow those parts of the Roman
superstition in altars, in statues, in pictures, and the
adoration of images, he hath the voices of the Scripture
on the one side, of monks on the other, to hearken to
which of the two he pleases ; he may do in his own re-
* Defence of Apol. Pt. iii. ch. i. div. 3. AVorks, 1609, p. 315, See
also his Reply to Harding's answ. in the answ. to Pref., and at art. 3,
div. 26.
t Imagines et signa, cruces, aras, disjecistis. Osor. in Gualt. Haddon
de rclig. libri tres. Diling. 1560. l-2mo. lib. 3, fol. 178.
28
public what he thinks fit, at his own peril and pleasure.
But, on the other side, if JElizabet/i, Queen of the Ktiy-
lishi the Scripture leading her, shall think meet, that
these Jilthinessses of ivipure snpersiiiion, which no
Christian may oidure withotit endangering himself and
his, be driven met of the empire, truly she does nothing
therein, which may not clearly be defended by the per-
spicuous authority of the sacred Scripture, and by the
illustrious examples of the most approved kings." And
then shortly after he proceeds to vindicate the destruction
of the images and altars by testimonies drawn from the
history and writers of the primitive church.*
Finally, in 1582, thus complains Gregory Martin, one
of the divines of the English Roman Catholic college at
Rheims. " The name of altar, (as they know very well,)
both in the Hebrew and Greek, and by the custom of all
* Quod autem imagines et signa, cruces, et aras disjectas dieis, ad
Lutherum et Evangelicae doctrinae minlstros banc querelae partem hand
multum attinere arbitror : quum illi nullas unquam manus ditt'ringendis
imaginibus injecerint. Neque enim aequum est, ut qui privati sunt, per
vim et tumultus, quicquam sibi, in republica aut ecclesia permittant. Cce-
terura si magistratus, pro legitima sua autoritate, quod vident verbo Dei
consentaneum, pie sedateque munus in eo suum administrent, quid hie
habet Osorius, homo privatus, et alienus, vel quod rixetur vel quur [sic]
se inteimisceat. Si rex Sebastianus Lusitanorum 'S.^fiaaros, partes istas
Romanae superstitionis fovendas, ac sectandas sibi, in aris, in statuis, in
signis, et imaginibus adorandis censeat, habet hinc Scripturae, hinc niona-
chorum voces, quibus utrum maluerit auscultare, faciat in sua repub. suo
ipsius periculo, et arbitratu, quod videbitur. Contra vero si Anglorum
princeps Elisabetha, duce Scriptura, has impurse superstitionis fjoditates,
quas sine suo suorumque periculo, nemo perferat Christianus, ab imperio
rectius arcendas existimet, nihil profecto in eo facit, quod non et perspicua
divinae scripturte autoritate, et magnis probatissimorum regum exemplis
liquido tueatur. Nisi forte Ezechiae, Josiaj, Josaphat panmi laudandam
memoriam existimet Osorius, qui aras et simulachra, et lucos, et serpentem
seneum conciderant, aut Gedeonis etiam, qui quum rex non esset, lucum
succidit, aram subvertit. Haddon. et Fox. llesp. Apol. Contra Osor. ed.
1577, lib. 3, fol. 271.
29
peoples, both Jews and Pagans, implying and importing
sacrijice, therefore we, in respect of the sacrifice of Christ's
body and blood, say altars rather than table, as all the an-
cient Fathers (Chrys., &c. . . .) are wont to speak and write
. . . though in respect of eating and drinking the body and
blood it is also called a table ; so that with us it is both
an altar and a table, whether it be of wood or of stone.
But the Protestants, because they make it only a com-
munion of bread and wine, or a supper, and no sacrifice,
therefore they call it table only, and abhor from the
word altar as papistical. For the which purpose, in
their first translation, (Bible, ann. 1562,) when altars
were then in digging down throughout England, they
translated with no less malice than they threw them
down." * And what says Dr. Fulke in his reply ? —
" That the ancient Fathers used the name of altar, as
they did of sacrifice, sacrificer, Levite, and such like,
improperly, yet in respect of the spiritual oblation of
praise and thanksgiving, which was ofi^ered in the cele-
bration of the Lord's supper, we do easily grant : as
also, that they do as commonly use the name of table,
and that it was a table indeed, so standing as men might
stand round about it, and not against a wall, as your
popish altars stand, it is easy to prove, and it hath often-
times been proved : and it seemeth you confess as much,
but that it is with you both an altar and a table, with
us INDEED IT IS, AS IT IS CALLED IN THE ScRIPTURE,
ONLY A TABLE. That we make the sacrament a com-
munion of bread and wine, it is a blasphemous slander,
when we believe as the apostle taught us, that it is the
communion of the body and blood of Christ, and the
* Discovery of the manifold corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the
heretics. Rheims, 1582, IGmo. reprinted by Dr. Fulke in his " De-
fence of the English Trans, of the Bible." See the latter, ed. 1617
c. 17, § 15.
30
Lord's supper That tlic people whom the prophet
Malachio rcproveth, callotli the Lord's altar, his table, is
no sufficient proof, that it might he called by the one
name as well as the other. And although in respect
of the meat offerings and drink offerings, it was also a
table, at which God vouchsafed to be entertained by the
people as their familiar friend. But what is this to the
purpose of any controversy between us? The altar was
called a table in the Old Testament, bid the table is
never called an altar in the New Testament, although
by the ancient Fathers oftentimes."" *
And to these remarks of Dr. Fulke let me add a con-
firmation of them from a learned bishop whom the
Tractarians themselves have endeavoured to press into
their service. " Nor was it,' says Bishop Morton,
" without the direction of the Spirit of wisdom that
the apostle changed the name altar into a table, as also
many Fathers have done.'''' And proceeding to justify
those Protestants who objected to the use even of the
name, altar, he adds, " If, therefore, some Protestants,
calling to mind the temperance of the primitive age,
which (as is confessed) abstained from the names of
jmesthood and temples, (we add, that which we have
proved, and from altars,) have mishked the liberty of
succeeding Fathers for alteration of the phrase, they are
not herein to be judged adversaries, but rather zealous
emulators and favourers of true antiquity. Neither yet
have they been altogether so opposite unto the alleged
Fathers of after times, as the Apologists, to engender an
hatred against them, would make them appear, because
they note in the Fathers a license in the use of terms
only, but no error in doctrine ; saying, that by such
custom of speech Optatus gave posterity an occasion of
• Fulke's Def. of Engl. Transl. of Bible, c. 17,, § 1.5 and 17, cd. 1G17,
pp. 174, 5.
lo
31
superstition : directly implying that the judgment of our
ancestors was sound in this matter, and that the error
concerning the nature of attar and sacrifice, arising
from the common use of such phrases, possessed only
their posterity. For we are taught from St. Chrysostome
and St. Augustine, that the word table went for current
in their times." " The primitive antiquity (as hath been
confessed) did abstain from the name of priest, and so
consequently of altars and sacrifice, terming them ac-
cording to the tenor of the New Testament, elders or
bishops, tables and eucharist. In the aftertimes, the
Church being then established in the truth of doctrine,
the Fathers might presume to take a greater liberty of
speech, knowing that they should be understood of ca-
tholic hearers catholicly. But because ages more dege-
nerate did set, as it were, a bias upon the phrases of
priest, altar, sacrifice, (which had been used of the
Fathers improperly,) to draw them to a proper significa-
tion, flat contrary to their first intention ; therefore did
Protestants wish that those objected ancient Fathers had
rather contained themselves within their more ancient
restraints, than that the liberty of their speeches should
have occasioned in the Romanists that prodigal error in
doctrine which we shall hereafter unfold." *
May we not add a hope that care will be taken by those
who are able to do so, — that as the liberty thus taken by
some of the Fathers, in the use of these terms, produced
a harvest of error, so the liberty that has grown up
among ourselves, not only of speech, but with respect to
the position and arrangements of the communion-table
* Morton's Catholic Appeal for Protestants. 1610. lib. 2, c. 6, § 2,
and c. 7, § 1, pp. 164 — 6. Whether or not the name altar was used by
the earliest Fathers, is a question into which I will not here enter, but the
above clearly shows Bishop Morton's opinion of the matter under discus-
sion in these pages.
32
since the Elizabotlian era, and princij)ally in the time of
Archbishop Laud, contrary to the canon, however
harmless in themselves, may not lead to a similar
result.
I will add one more witness to the state of things in
our Church in the point in question in former times, — the
excellent Bishop Babington. In his notes on Exodus,
first published in 1G04, he says, on chap. 27, " Concern-
ing the altar how it was made for matter, &c. . . . the
text is plain in the eight first verses. For the use to us
we may note two things : first, that it was a figure of
Christ, as the apostle to the Hebrews (Heb. xiii. 10,
&c.) expoundeth it. And secondly, that the altars used
in Popery are not ivarranted by this example. But
that the primitive churches used communion-tables (as
WE NOW do) of boards and wood, not altars {as they
do) of stone. Origen was about two hundred years
after Ciirist, and he saith that Celsus objected it as a
fault to the Christians, Quod nee imagines, nee templa,
nee aras haberent : that they had neither images, nor
churches, nor altars. Arnobius (after him) saith the
same of the heathens : Accusatis nos quod nee templa
habeamus, nee aras, nee imagines : You accuse us for
that we have neither churches, nor altars, nor images.
Gerson saith, that Silvester first caused stone altars to
be made, and willed that no man should consecrate at a
wooden altar, but himself and his successors there. Be-
like, then, the former ages knew not that profound
reason, that altars must be of stone, quia Petra erat
Christus, because the rock was Christ, as Durandus
after devised. Upon this occasion, in some jylaces, stone
altars were used for steadiness and continuance, wooden
tables having been before used ; but I say, in some
places, 7iot in all. For Saint Augustine saith, that in
his time in Africa they were made of wood. For the
33
Donatists, saitli lie, brake in sunder the altar-hoards.
Again, the deacons"' duty was to remove the altar.
Chrysostom calleth it, the holy board. St. Augustine,
Mensa Dotninh the fable of the Lord. Athanasius,
Mensam ligtieam, the table of wood. Yet was this
communion-table called an altar, not that it was so, but
only by allusion metaphorically, as Christ is called an
altar, or our hearts be called altars, &c. Mark with
yourself^ therefore, the iiewness of this point for stone
altars in comparison of our ancient use of commu-
nion-tables, and let Popery and his parts fall, and
truth and sound antiquity be regarded." * And so else-
where, (on chap. 20,) he says, " Also it might be
showed how the communion-tables be called of the old
Fathers both tables and altars indifferently; tables, as
they are indeed, and altars, as they are improperly;
how they were made of boards, and removable, set in
the midst of the people, and not placed against a wall,
with divers other things." f
" And undoubtedly," as Bishop Morton says, " if ma-
terial altars (properly so called) had been in use in
Christianity at that time, the holy Fathers would not have
then concealed this, especially when as the want of
altars was objected against them as a note of atheism." %
Here, then, I might well leave the matter to the
reader's decision, without adding another word. But
the subject is so important, that 1 need make no apology
for subjoining some further testimonies and remarks
bearing upon it. And, first, two documents, — namely,
the " Reasons" of Bishop Ridley, and the " Reasons" of
our leading Protestant divines in 1559, presented to
* Babiiigton's Works, cd. 1G22, p. 307.
t Id. ib. p. 279.
."I: Of the Lord's Supper, td. 1652,1, G, c. 5, $ 15, p. 465. See whulc
section.
n
34
Queen Elizabeth, for the substitution of tables for altars,
— which arc clearly entitled to more than ordinary regard
in forming an opinion of the mind of our Reformers on
this subject.
We have already seen, that one of the first decisive
movements in this matter was made by Bishop Ridley in
the visitation of his diocese in June, 1550; and that he
drew up certain reasons and arguments on the subject
which the King and his Council thought fit to annex to
their circular letter to the bishops for removing altars, sent
round in the following November. This document,
then, is so important in connexion with this subject, that
I shall give it to the reader entire.
" First reason. The form of a table shall more move
the simple from the superstitious opinions of the popish
mass, unto the right use of the Lord's Supper. For the
use of an altar is to make sacrifice upon it : the use of a
table is to serve for men to eat upon. Now, when we come
unto the Lord's board, what do we come for ? to sacri-
fice Christ again, and to crucify him again, or to feed
upon him that was once only crucified and offered up
for us ? If we come to feed upon him, spiritually to eat
his body, and spiritually to drink his blood, (which is the
true use of the Lord's Supper,) then no man can deny
but theform of a table is more meet for the Lord's board
than the form of an altar.
" Second reason. Whereas it is said, ' The Book of
Common Prayer maketh mention of an altar ;* where-
fore it is not lawful to abolish that which the book al-
loweth ;■* to this it is thus answered. The Book of Com-
mon Prayer calleth the thing whereupon the Lord's Sup-
per is ministered indifferently a table, an altar, or
* The Book of Common Praj^er at this time being ihe first book of
Edw. VI., or that of lo49. The second was not published till 1552.
35
the Lord's board ; without prescription of any form
thereof, either of a table or of an altar : so that whether
the Lord's board have the form of an altar, or of a table,
the Book of Common Prayer calleth it both an altar
and a table. For as it calleth it an altar, whereupon the
Lord's Supper is ministered, a table, and the Lord's
board, so it calleth the table, where the holy communion
is distributed with lauds and thanksgiving unto the Lord,
an altar, /or that there is offered the same sacrifice of
praise and thanksgiving. And thus it appeareth, that
here is nothing either said or meant contrary to the
Book of Common Prayer.
" Third reason. The popish opinion of mass was,
that it might not be celebrated but upon an altar, or at
the least upon a super-altar, to supply the fault of the
altar, which must have had its prints and characters ; or
else it was thought that the thing was not lawfully done.
But this superstitious opinion is more holden in the
minds of the simple and ignorant by the form of an altar
than of a table ; wherefore it is more meet, for the abo-
lishment of this superstitious opinion, to have the Lord's
board after the form of a table, than of an altar.
" Fourth reason. The form of an altar was ordained
for the sacrifices of the law, and therefore the altar in
Greek is called dvaiaar-qptov, quasi sacrificii locus. But
now both the law and the sacrifices thereof do cease :
wherefore the form of the altar used in the altar ought
to cease withal.
" Fifth reason. Christ did institute the sacrament of
his body and blood at his last supper at a table, and not
at an altar; as it appeareth manifestly by the three
evangelists. And St. Paul calleth the coming to the
holy communion, the coming unto the Lord's supper.
And also it is not read that any of the apostles or the
primitive church, did ever use any altar in ministration
D 2
36
of the holy communion. Wherefore, seeing the form of
a table is more agreeable to Christ's institution, and with
the usage of the apostles and of the primitive church,
than the form of an altar, therefore the form of a table
is rather to be used, than the form of an altar, in tlie
administration of the holy communion.
" Sixth and last reason. It is said in the preface of
the Book of Common Prayer, that if any dou])t do arise
in the use and practising of the same book, to appease
all such diversity, the matter shall be referred unto the
bishop of the diocese, who, by his discretion, shall take
order for the quieting and appeasing of the same, so that
the same order be not contrary unto anything contained
in that book." *
The other document is, the "Reasons" drawn up by
the leading divines of the Reformation, shortly after Queen
Ehzabeth's coming to the throne, and previously to the
issue of her "Injunctions," "to be offered to the Queen's
Majesty's consideration, why it was not convemetit that
the communion should be ministered at an altar." They
are thus given by Strype " verbatim," as found " in an
authentic manuscript."
" First, The form of a table is most agreeable to
Christ's example, who instituted the sacrament of his
body and blood at a table, and not at an altar.
" Secondly, The form of an altar was convenient for
the Old Testament, to be a figure of Christ's bloody sa-
crifice upon the cross : but in the time of the New Tes-
tament, Christ is not to be sacrificed, but his body and
blood spiritually to be eaten and drunken in the minis-
tration of the holy supper. For representation whereof,
the form of a table is more convenient than an altar.
" Thirdly, The Holy Ghost in the New Testament,
* Ridley's Works, P. S. cd. pp. 322, 3 ; or Fox"s Acts and Monura.
book 9, pp. 47, 8, vol. ii. cd. 1684.
6
(
37
speaking of the Lord's Supper, doth make mention of a
table, 1 Cor. x., mcnsa Domini, i. e. the table of the
Lord ; but in no place uameth it an altar.
" Fourthly, The old writers do use also the name of
a table : for Augustine oftentimes calleth it mensam
Domini, i. e. the Lord's table. And in the canons of the
Nicene Council it is divers times called divina mensa.
And Chrysostom saith, Baptismus unus est, et meyisa
una, \. e. There is one baptism and one table. And
although the same writers do sometimes term it an altar,
yet are they to be expounded to speak almsive et im-
jtroprie. For like as they expound themselves, when
they term the Lord's Supper a sacrifice, that they mean
by this word sacrificium, i. e. a sacrifice, recordationem
sacrijicii, i. e. the remembrance of a sacrifice ; or simili-
tudinem sacrificii, i. e. the likeness of a sacrifice, and
not properly a sacrifice ; so the same reason enforceth
us to think, that when they term it an altar, they mean
a representation or remembrance of the altar of the cross ;
and not of the form of a material altar of stone. And
when they name it a table, they express the form then
commonly in the church used according to Christ's
example.
" Fifthly, Furthermore, an altar hath relation to a
sacrifice : for they be correlativa. So that of necessity,
if we allow an altar, we must grant a sacrifice : like as
if there be a father, there is also a son ; and if there be
a master, there is also a servant. Whereupon divers of
the learned adversaries themselves have spoken of late,
that there is no reason to take away the sacrifice of the
mass, and to leave the altar stundiiig ; seeing the one
was ordained for the other.
" Sixthly, Moreover, if the communion be ministered
at an altar, the godly prayers, &c., spoken by the mi-
nister cannot be heard of the people ; especially in
33
great churches.* And so the people should receive no
fruit of this part of English service. For it was all one
to he in Latin and to he in English, not heard nor un-
derstood of the people.
" And admitting that it ivere a thing which in some
time might be tolerated, yet at this time the continuance
of altars would bring marvellous inconveniences.
" Fii-st, The adversaries will object unto us (as they
have accustomed) inconstancy, in that the order esta-
blished by King Edward of famous memory, with the
assent of so many learned men, is now again reversed
and altered.
" Secondly, Moreover, the most part, or almost all
the preachers of this realm, which do heartily favour this
your Majesty's reformation in religion, have oftentimes
in their several sermons (and that upon the ground of
God's word before rehearsed, and other) spoken and
preached against altars, both in King Edward's days and
sithence ; and therefore cannot with good conscience,
and without confession of a fault committed before,
speak now in defence of them. For as St. Paul saith,
Si qiiCB destruxi ea rursum (sdi/ico, traiisgressorem
meipsum constituo ; i. e. If I build up again those things
which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
" Thirdly, Furthermore, whereas your majesty's prin-
cipal purpose is utterly to abolish all the errors and abuses
• We here see one reason why, when it was afterwards ordered in the
Queen's Injunctions that the communion-table should be " set in the
place where the altar stood," there to stand ordinarily, it was also directed
that " when the communion of the sacrament is to be distributed," it
should be "so placed in good sort within the chancel, ns whereby the
minister may be more conveniently heard of the communicants in his
prayer and ministration," &c. ; and in the rubric subsequently, that " at
the communion time" it should " stand in the body of the church, or in
the chancel, where morning and evening prayer are appointed to be
said."
39
used about the Lord's Supper, especially to root out the
popish mass, and all superstitious opinions concerning
the same, the altar is a means to work the contrary.) as
appeareth manifestly by experience. For in all places
the mass-priests (which declare by evident signs that
they conform themselves to the order received, not for
conscience, but for their bellies"* sake) are most glad of
the hope of retaining the altar, SfC, meaning thereby to
make the communion as like a ?nass as they can, and so
to continue the simple in their former errors.
" Fourthly, And on the other side, the consciences of
many thousands, which from their hearts embrace the
Gospel, and do most earnestly pray to God for your
grace, shall be wounded, by continuance of altars; and
great numbers will abstain from receiving the com-
munion at an altar: which in the end may grow to
occasion of great schism and division among the people.
And the rather, because that in a great number of places
altars are removed, and a table set up already, according
to the rites of the book now published.
" Fifthly, And whereas her Majesty hath hitherto de-
clared herself very loath to break ecclesiastical laws
established by pai'liament, till they were repealed by
like authority, it will be much mused at, if any com-
mandment should come forth now for the re-edification
of altars, seeing there be special words in the Book of
Service allowed by Parliament, and having force of a
law, for the placing and using of a table at the minis-
tration of the communion.* Which special words can-
not be taken away by general terms.
"Sixthly, Moreover, the altars are none of those things
* The reader will observe that these divines make no question that to
erect an altar in the face of the directions given in the rubric as to a
communion-table, is to " break ecclesiastical laws established bj parlia-
ment."
40
which were established by act of parliament in the
socoiul year of Kiiiii^ Edward of famous memory. For
Dr. Ridley, late Bishop of London, procured taking
down of altars in his diocese about the third year
of the said king ; and defendeth his doings by the king's
first book, set forth anno 2nd Edward \ I. And imme-
diately after, the king's majesty and his council gave a
GENERAL COMMAND THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE REALM tO
do the like before the second book was made. And Dr.
Day, Bishop of Chichester, was committed to prison,
because he would not obey the said order. Which thing
they would not have done, if altars had been established
by authority of the said parliament.
" Seventhly, It may please your grace also to call to
remembrance, that the greatest learned meji of the world,
as Bucer, Gi^colampadius, Zuinglius, Bullinger, Calvin,
Martyr, Joannes a Lasco, Hedio, Capito, and many
more, have in their reformed churches in Sabaudia,
Helvetia, Basil, Geneva, Argentine, Wormes, Frankford,
and other places, always taken away the altars ; only
Luther and his churches have retained them. In the
which churches be some other more imperfections ; as
gilding of images, the service of the church half Latin,
half Dutch, and elevation of the sacrament of the altar.
All which things Melancthon, when he is called to
counsel for a reformation to be had in other places, doth
utterly remove. And in Saxony they are tolerated
hitherto only because of Luther's fame ; but are thought
that they will not long continue, being so much misUked
of the best learned.
" Eighthly, It may also please your majesty to join
hereunto the judgment of the learned and godly martyrs
of this realm, who of late have given their lives for the
testimony of the truth ; as of Dr. Cranmer, Archbishop
of Canterbury, who protested in writing, (whereupon he
41
was first apprehended,) that the order appointed hy the
last hook of King Edward was most agreeable to the
Scriptures, and the use of the primitive church. And
also of Dr. Ridley, Bishop of London, who travailed
especially in this matter of altars ; and put certain rea-
sons of his doing in print, which remain to this day :
of Mr. Latimer, Mr. Hooper, Mr. Bradford, and all the
rest, who to the end did stand in defence of that book.
So that by re-edifying of altars, we shall also seem to
join with the adversaries that burnt those good men, in
condemning some part of their doctrine.
" And last of all, it may please your Majesty to ten-
der the consent of your p7'eachers and learned men, as
now do remain alive, and do earnestly, atid of con-
science, and not for livings' sake, desire a godly refor-
mation ; which if they were required to utter their
minds, or thought it necessary to make petition to your
grace, would with one mind and one mouth (as may be
reasonably gathered) be most humble suitors to your
Majesty, that they might not be enforced to return unto
such ordinances and devices of men, not commanded in
God's word : being also once abrogated, and known by
EXPERIENCE TO BE THINGS HURTFUL, and Only Serving
either to nourish the superstitious opinion of the propi-
tiatory mass in the minds of the simple, or else to mi-
nister an occasion of offence and division among the
godly-minded." *
These documents very clearly show what were the
views of our Reformers upon this subject. How, indeed,
could any impartial person have a doubt respecting their
opinions in the matter, when with one voice they main-
tain, that there is no sacrifice in the Eucharist but a spi-
ritual sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, offered as
* Strype's AnnaL^, vol. i. part i. pp. 160, &c. Oxf. ed. pp. 237, &c.
42
much by each worshipper present as by tlio minister
himself.
" We must take heed," says one of the homilies of
15G'2, " lest of the memory it be made a sacrifice."
" Herein," i.e. for the application of Christ's merits,
*' thou needest no other man's help, no other sacrifice or
oblation, [i. e. than Christ's, which had been mentioned
just before,] no sacrificing priest, no mass, no means
established by man's invention." *
" Seeing, then," says Hooker, " that sacrifice is now
no part of the Church ministry, how should the name of
priesthood be thereunto rightly applied ? Surely even
as St. Paul applieth the name of flesh unto that very
substance of fishes which hath a proportionable corre-
spondence to flesh, although it be in nature another thing.
. . . The fathers of the church of Christ with like security
of speech call usually the ministry of the gospel priest-
hood, in regard of that which the Gospel hath propor-
tionable to ancient sacrifices, namelj', the communion of
the blessed body and blood of Christ, although it ham
properly now no sacrifice ... in truth the word presbyter
doth seem more fit, and in propriety of speech more
agreeable than priest, with the drift of the whole Gospel
of Jesus Christ." -f
" The very spring and root of your error," says the
famous Bishop Bilson to the Papists, " is this, that you
seek for a sacrifice in the Lord's Supper, besides the
Lord's death. Mark well the words of Cyprian, The
passion of the Lord is the sacrifice which we offer." . . .
" Christ is offered daily but mystically, not covered with
qualities and quantities of bread and wine ; for those be
neither mysteries nor resemblances to the death of
Christ : but by the bread which is broken, by the
• Horn. cone, the Sacrament, part i.
t Eccl. Pol. V. 78.
43
wine which is drunk ; in substance, creatures ; in sig-
nification, sacraments ; the Lord's death is figured
and proposed to the communicants^ and they for their
parts, NO LESS people than priest, do present Christ
hanging on the cross to God the Father, with a lively
faith, inward devotion, and humble prayer, us a most
sufficient and everlasting sacrifice for the full remissiofi
of their si?is, and assured fruition of his mercies.
Other actual and propitiatory, sacrifice than
this the church of christ never had never
TAUGHT." . . . . " The celebration of the Lord's Supper
may be called an oblation ; first, for that it is a repre-
sentation of Christ's death, and sacraments have the
names of the things which they sig7iify; next, because the
merits and fruits of Christ's passion are by the power of
his Spirit divided and bestowed on the faithful receivers
of these mysteries." " Neither they [i. e. other Protest-
ants] nor I ever denied the Eucharist to be a sacrifice.
The very name inforceth it to be the sacrifice of praise
and thanksgiving, which is the true and lively sa-
crifice OF THE New Testament The Lord's
table, in respect of his graces and mercies, there pro-
posed to us in [is] an heavenly banquet, which we must
eat and not sacrifice : but the duties which he requireth
at our hands when we approach to his table, are sacri-
fices, not sacraments : as, namel}^, to offer him thanks and
praise, faith and obedience, yea, our bodies and souls to
be living, holy, and acceptable sacrifices unto him, which
is our reasonable serving of him." " This [i. e.
that ' the sacrament is a sacrifice'^ we grant to be most
true in that sense which St. Augustine and other an-
cient and catholic Fathers do avouch it: that is, because
sacraments have the names of those things whose sacra-
ments they are. And since this is the sacrament of the
Lord's death and passion, we do not stick to say, that
44
Christ is daily crucified and sacrificed for the sins of the
workl : niarr}-, not really, or corporally, but by way of
a m\stery ; that is, his cross n7id blood-shedding are
proclaimed and cotifirmed in the eyes of all the
FAiTHiTL Inj these signs of his death, and seals of his
truth, by which he first witnessed that his body should
be broken, and his blood shed for the remission of our
sins."*
I will add but one more testimony as to the teaching
of our Church on this point, and that shall be from the
learned Bishop Morton, principally with reference to the
text so often misapplied on this subject.
" If furthermore," he says, " we speak of the altar,
you will have it to be rather on earth below, and to that
end you object that scripture, Heb. xiii. 10. We have
(dvaiacTTTjpioy) that is, a7i altar (saith the apostle)
whereof they have no right to eat, that serve at the
Tabernacle. This some of you greedily catch at, for
proof of a proper sacrifice in the mass, and are pre-
sently repulsed by your Aquinas, expounding the place
to signify either his altar upo)i the cross, or else his
body, as his altar in heaven, mentioned, Apoc. 8, and
called the golden altar" Adding, that so this altar was
expounded in the " Anti-Didagma of the Divines of
Collen," as " the body of Christ himself in heaven, upon
which, and by which, all Christians are to offer up their
spiritual sacrifices of faith," &c., and that Cardinal Bel-
larmine admits, that thus many Catholic divines inter-
preted it ; and that the Jesuit Estius himself inter-
preted it as meaning " the cross of Christ's sufferings."
" If we would understand," he goes on to say, " wherein
the difference of the Jewish religion and Christian pro-
* Bilson, Of Subjection and Rebellion, part iv. pp. 511 — 522, ed. 1 58C.
Seethe whole context, where there is a masterly discussion of the whole
subject.
45
fession especially consisteth, in respect of priesthood,
Augustine (Adv. Jud. c, 9) telleth us, that they have no
'priesthood ; and the priesthood of Christ is eternal in
heaven. And the holy Fathers give us some reasons
for these and the like resolutions. For if any would
know the reason why we must have our confidence in
the celestial priest^ sacrifice, and altar; CEcumenius
(Heb. X.) and Ambrose (in Heb. x.) will show us that
it is because here below there is nothing visible ; neither
temple, ours being in heaven ; nor priest, ours being
Christ ; nor sacrifice, oars being his body ; nor yet
altar, saith the other. Hear your own Canus; (loc.
theol. lib. xii. c. 1'2;) Christ qffereth an utibloody obla-
tion in heaven. Chrysostom will not be behind his dis-
ciple Qicumenius in expressions, who difFerenceth our
Christian religion from the Jewish, for that (in Heb.
horn. 11, in Moral.) our sanctuary, priest, and sacrifice
is in heaven. And if Christians intend any other sacrifice
than that, he admonisheth that they may be such, which
may be accepted of in the heavenly sanctuary ; as,
namely, the sacrifice of justice, praise, and of a contrite
spirit, and the like, all merely spiritual, (as you con-
fess,) and therefore but metaphorically called sacri-
fices:' *
Hence our Reformers, holding that we have no other
sacrifices to offer but such as are spiritual, the sacrifices
of praise and thanksgiving, of holy purposes and actions,
deemed it a duty, as we have seen, carefully to remove
from our churches those altars which imported, and were
only suitable for material sacrifices; and to place in their
stead tables, adapted for the celebration of the Holy
Communion in the way used by our Lord himself and
his apostles.
* Morton, The Lord's Supper, 2nd cd. book 6, c. 3, § 8, pp. 416 — 18.
40
It is quite clear, then, that according to the rubric and
eighty-second canon of our church, expounded, as they
ought to be, by the authorities above mentioned, royal in-
junctions, archiepiscopal visitation inquiries, synodal
canons, and the declarations of our greatest divines, the
only thing which properly answers the description of that
article of church furniture, which is to be used for the ad-
ministration of the Holy Communion, is a table of joiner s
ivork, standing 07i a frame, and unattached to any part
of the church, the floor of the chancel being paved
underneath where it stands, and the wall at the back
of it finished uniformly with the remainder, so as to
present no unsightly appearance on its removal. This
alone answers the description of what is required by our
church ; and it is truly painful to contemplate the art and
chicanery practised by parties ivhose views and jmrposes
are well known to many, though, alas, apparently not to
all, to introduce stone altars, and yet evade the opera-
tion of the law, and frustrate the manifest intentions of
the church, by some little device, such as omitting to put
cement between the altar and the brickwork or other
foundation on which it stands, and between it and the
wall, and then, when legally questioned upon the subject,
calling them communioji tables.
To use the words of the founders of our reformed
ecclesiastical polity, which they addressed to Queen
Elizabeth, when earnestly calling her attention to this
very point, — to erect an altar in the face of the directions
given in the Prayer Book as to a communion table, is to
" break ecclesiastical laws established by parliament."
And this infraction comes at the very moment when, of
all others since the Reformation, except possibly Arch-
bishop Laud's time, it is calculated to do the greatest
amount of injury to the interests of our church, and the
cause of protestant and catholic truth.
47
A few years since hardly an altar (comparatively
speaking) was to be found. Now, alas, especially in
our new churches, they abound.
May we not humbly ask, then, Is it well, that at a
time when peculiar care is required to. uphold the inter-
ests of Protestant truth, and the Protestant character of
our church, in the minds of the people, at that very
moment the sanction of our ecclesiastical authorities
should be given (for this is a matter entirely within the
power of the diocesan, as Bishop Ridley has pointed
out)* to an illegal approximation to Rome in one of her
worst corruptions of the Christian faith ? It is impossi-
ble to view without pain the advantage thus given to
those ecclesiastical agitators among us who have de-
stroyed our peace, and are by these practices under-
mining the very foundations on which our church
stands.
London, May 6 th, 1844.
* See p. 36, above.
LONDON
PRINTED BY C. J. PALMER, Si VOT STREET, STRAND.
'jiuji^j:
Lately Published, 2>^ic^ 55. cloth.
TWO TREATISES on the CHURCH; the First
by T. Jackson, D.D., the Second by R. Sanderson, D.D.,
formerly Bishop of Lincohi. To which is ackled a Letter of
Bishop Cosin, on the Vahdity of the Orders of the Foreign
Reformed Churches. Edited with Introductory Remarks by
William Goode, M.A., &c.
<^^^f ^v ^/ //^ ^^ ^y^/^y^ ^>^
A SECOND LETTER
ON THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE
HIGH CHURCH PARTY IN THE
C6urc6 Of OBnglanD.
BY THE REV. WILLIAM MASKELL,
VICAR OF S. MARY CHURCH.
THE WANT OF DOGMATIC TEACHING IN THE
REFORMED ENGLISH CHURCH.
^ccontJ (tuition.
LONDON :
WILLIAM PICKERING.
1850.
bnR ninq F>oorf TTO^Z'
ot I.')f; '
-'(ol (m jii fihid'H uoqjj i-> ijoiqqfi
aodf/ .jjo'^ol s-tiTw oj Moaoqoiq i ^i-jjijI lern
luoli ^fix59£r won ^booaommoo 9197/ eisjiol o?oiIi
'^9fft •>Rfil 9lcfj3(fo'iq v(9v f)f>rff9sg ii ,o^b arfJnom
-9( idaildui Mffi ^o fI:Jod ^bluow
'..[oU oiiJ JjjU .ojiii;t ia989'iq aril oioTt
Mw,-i ._;k ..„i ^rit lo '^•i9vil9Jb orii ni ,8iJ ^o ynjiin jd
edi in iionuoo yvhq orii 'lo ooiJiramoD fuioibui^ odi lio
o:t 9in bg^iWo ^^InBaggooa ai?ri jOiBri'ioO .iM lo osbo
-nom I. .19.1191 bcroD9a airil ^o rroilBoilduq aril i9^9b
iBdff Ifiril ,7/onyf iriiiriri uo-( luril 19510 ni ^giril noil
,'{lsBrf aril raoil Ion gv/ofl: ^'^b8 ol Inodfi 7/on mjs I
-InioqqBaib. lo <noilBZ9y ^o oalnqmi ,^nii9biano9nn
-oiq n99d 8Bri rioiriw norgfo9b aril is ,i9^nB lo 5ln9ar
•^Bni ^d-giorr hew riluil afi i9T908lBri7/ — lird ^b9onuon
enoiznB "(i9v bnB inBizaoo "io llnasi aril is^oi in si — 9d
oarilnom baa sAoeir ^nBni lol iriguoril
b9ldBn9 8Bri ii : Kigali '(Gleb aril l9i§9i I ob lol/l
gniiB9d 9lori7f aril labianooai ol bnB labianoa ol am
oJ ban ifiod ol 9niil 9ni nsYb^ 8Bri ii : 98BD 9ril ^o
b^nicol bnR in^[looKe lio anoiniqo aril ol noilnallB \nq
'f,' to iioyfoqa ad ol alnioq aril 'io iBiavaa noqu tnanr
a^uBo amooIaTf aril naad gfiri i'l : aagBq ^niwollo^ aril
nioii ,Y^Rb ol \Rb nioi^ ^nilBnilaBiooiq ^Ilrioii ^o
ad ^(fdBlWani lennr iBriw ^niob aril ^Ass-n ol :jI997/
89on9iJp98noo suoiiaa ba& aisq iBoig \o avilonboiq
.-!foii98 asal alllrf oalB aaonanpaanoo ^o ^Ifaa'^ra ol
My dear Friend,
YOU need not to be told with what pain and
reluctance I feel myself, at last, compelled to
approach the second subject upon which, in my for-
mer letter, I proposed to write to you. When
these letters were commenced, now nearly four
months ago, it seemed very probable that they
would, both of them, have been published long be-
fore the present time. But the delay, unexpected
by many of us, in the delivery of the late decision
of the judicial committee of the privy council in the
case of Mr. Gorham, has necessarily obliged me to
defer the publication of this second letter. I men-
tion this, in order that you might know% that what
I am now about to say, flow^s not from the hasty,
unconsidering, impulse of vexation, or disappoint-
ment, or anger, at the decision which has been pro-
nounced, but — whatsoever its truth and weight may
be — is at least the result of constant and very anxious
thought for many weeks and months.
Nor do I regret the delay itself : it has enabled
me to consider and to reconsider the whole bearing
of the case : it has given me time to hear and to
pay attention to the opinions of excellent and learned
men, upon several of the points to be spoken of in
the following pages : it has been the welcome cause
of rightly procrastinating from day to day, from
week to week, the doing what must inevitably be
productive of great pain and serious consequences
to myself; of consequences also little less serious,
it may be, to many ot^licrs. For ipyself, I, would
rc'pdc^twl'iat Has "been atrciidy saicl in my firsi letticri
it' is my duty to be prepared to listen to reproach
and accusation: I must, be prepared to be iudfred
harshlt, and the more Harshly, ty bldest friends :
to be coijidemnpd (it may be) by those, especiallv^
ill whom for years our chief reliance has been
placed, ' and to whom we have looked most.readily.
i,; I ■ J,,,',- Mr i 7 ho/Urriii o'lR 07 f no um m
tor counsel and support. ... ,
Inese, however, are but' light trials , in. compari-
son with the responsibility which any person must
inciir, who, at such a time and crisis as the present,
ventures to speak plainly what he conceives to be |;he,
a'ctiial state of things: a responsibility, almosij in-
finitely in! creased, if the view which l^e takes be one
of doubt and difficulty, unsettling to himself, and
likely to harass and to unsettle others. Thus great
is the responsibility on the one Hand: upon tbe
otb'er, tbere would be no less m determining to be
tH'ere would be no less ;u determining
' ' ' * ■ ' ' ' '>'''■ ' ' ' ■ ' '' t . ' I
sileiit and quiet, and in allowing persons to go oii-
so far as he himself does not interfere with them
in the samp, security and fulness of faith ii^ the
church 'of Kiio-laiii aV of' old, ignorant 6i ,m)iicH'
which he believes to be the truth, unwarned ^E^nd
undisturbed! And li; is to He remembered by every
one of us, who, in our several positions, some more
some less, have been before the world during the
last' ien' years, ijihat wow; to. sit still and to He ^ilenti
now to say nothing and to advise nothing, is m,
itself as distinct evidence as can be of the absence,
p. T ^ f> • , ' n'»Y ^jj -il-ofjon-i -^nol
ot immediate tear or anxiety. , ' .' , .
There might have Heeii,. perhaps/ di]Je ^umcient
reason for any one £^,mong us to have believed himself
justihed in not declaring publicly his own individual
opinions, at such a tnne of doubt and excitement, ;
painely, if our bishops bald assembled^ to cpn^uj^t
upon the position in whicb the Church is now placccL|
and had taken some first steps to show an intention
to meet, as bishops of the Church Catholic are
bound to meet;, the pressing dangers and difficultie^^
in which we are involved. We will not speak pi thej
anxious weeks which passed away between, the
closing of the argument before the judicial com^
raittee, and the delivery of its iudijment. It may
seem ^trange that not a. word was , heard jrom afny
bishop of the English church : because, whilst it
need not have had the unseemly appearance of an
attempt to influence the pending depision of ^ tl:^e
Committee, yet, w^e mjght reasonably a^nd, unobje^
tionably have been told that GUI', bishops wer^^^ in
deliberation upon the whole matter ; that they were
preparing and considering what measures should be
taken, to vindicate the church ; that they sympa-
thized with, those wh,o were anxious ; that they
would have courage themselves and boldness to de-
fend the truth ; that they asked both of the clergy
and laity, for the present, our prayers, our patience,
and our unshaken hope.
And since the decision of the judicial committee,
more than a month has passed away. Short time
indeed for successful action ; quite long enough to.
have given us some ground of confidence and trust;:
long enough— as you know well— ipi; many jmee^^
ings and discussions of influential persons, in a lower
station, both clergy and laymen. Where is, even
now, the evidence of any general movement by our
bisi
frjoo orro oVf ..rroitR?;rpQfi 'k> ?m-i'^i T'»f)fr-fI,o[fj (i
lops ? where, even, ot incir own apprcciatioi) of
-- .Ml// ".'/ ■'■, 'Ji'.li Ii:(l i/ ',-il u L|[;> -fii ,' »ftV' I >'>''' >--.ll> 't"
only wlien driven to it, and forced, by the pressure
of an ajiitation aniono; tlieir clergy and people, which
they are no longer able to control. • , \.
Let ithese few words, then, serve as some token
yofi M/|[](ff; Jiu'it •i(.:liL-i:t(i hifc-iilnol) hi .■/\A, tiu
01 the many reasons, which, as 1 have said, comneT
nie to enter on the consideration ot what seems to
be the extent and nature of the difficulties by wliich
\^e are now surrounded. In short, it appears to be
something ver^ li^ dishonesty and deceit, to^ act
and teach, and suflPer oneself to be supposed to be
unchanged and uninfluenced, just as if nothing of
nrnterial consequence had happened to tlie churcH
or Lnffland,, and as it all things, were exactly as
-■^ij< tirM[|i'dt ,r, fi'ii/i •)M(L,-^^i:ii.(iP(Hi L, : . .' iK-ctMy* ■.n*
they iwere a year aooj. May it not be so, with any
of us : let those who ^re confident and firm, say so,
and tell us why we are still to be unshaken, or in
what we are still to hope : let us not snrink, how-
eyer, trom looking at our peril and our, position
nfrr;'MVi,,'t ff.y: , , , a .) )if crl tii^f f;M|f ].nr; vHrrr^; .<. ■
lairly in the race ; let us not seek to conceal, either
from, ourselves or others, wherein our real diflScul-
ti.es lie ; rather, let us meet them Doldly, and either
prove that they are no difficulties, or get rid pf them
(Tji J ■ T rrroso'irr eidt ol-lrf£2p-i rftfyy .v/pn ,.iii.'j
^ i[iieed notrta be told, that (to use the lightest
0.7 OJni'-.fKlff- :i/rrt ;;■ ••,,,.^'/j;;.- ^ ■ ■ ;J ■ , . ■ », ■
word, as some men say) rt was questionable, whe-
thef ther statements and observations which were m
&r TI ./I'i-L/Ii'.. n:»(r^j|(T/;t>'. '.(i: l.^ 'r>V-li>H(L.!):>'jh'i\n6
my Jb irst Letter, ouglit to have been published by a
clergyman ot the church or Lngland, holding his
benefice. Indeed this has been charged against nie
in the harder terms of accusation. No one could
fepl that there was, some appearance of trutli in ;t
more deeply, and none more quickly, than myself,
If Inhere was blame — blame of treachery, or disloyalty,
or disobedience, or call it by what name we will,—
tor. a time, at least, it , was a duty to endeavour to
bear it patiently. Jrerhaps there was one sentence
in my former letter somewhat overlooked : " these
^re days of doubt and peculiar trial, unlike any
which our f9,thers have known for several g enera-
uons • aiad we mu&t not iay down principles, appli-
cable enough undei; cominon circumstances, by
which men are now to be judged." This, therefore,
is. the .indulgence which I would ask. And, if I
^now.myselll there was no unworthy or woflaiy.mo-
tiVK which prevented resignation oi my benence be-
fore a page of either of these letters was begun. Oil
the contrary, to do so has since been a frequent sug-
gestion of luy.own mind. But I remembered, also, if
it. could be shewn. that the difficulties in which we
seem to be involved, are, after all, slight and unim-
portant difficulties, and that there are remedies and
hope plainly and near at hand, that then haste and
t!^e .jjn^patience of. a sudden impulse would haVe
been grievous errors, by which I had been induced
to withdraw from the office and spiritual cure to
which i had been called. "^ ..^
But, now, with regard to this present Letter,
there is much which many might find impossible to
be reconciled with a retaining the position of a
beneficed minister of the established church. It is
true that the present crisis, the strange occurrences
pi the last few months, and the unforeseen extremity
pf. trial i^tjp,, which , the, Jinglish church has almost
hurriedly been plujagcd, might probehly allow icf
much, both s])roch and action, which would not
admit excuse «>r rccisoii in times of less general ex-
icitpment and encjuiry. Yet I could not rely oa so
uncertain an apology,jfpff! publishing very plain
,}yi(^rds and arguments' concerning the position li in
l^hich we appear to be placed.
,^,,,And, moreover, it is my desire that the following
ji^es should be considered as a statement of several
^ief reason^ for which I have resigned my benefice
lind cure of souls. ,. i. ; .^^.ujrj jj^uij luf'. i^iti.iii'ii-'t'j!'
,, If the publication of these reasotis-^bduld-be coii-
^idcred by some as equivalent to a declaration of
^i^ ^ntentipEi to tal^e, speedily, a further step^ff«-
i^mely, to leave the communion of the church of
i^ngland ; — I am able only to say, that this is a
Ti)atter neither necessary nor proper to be discussed
j^tfiipreseptfrTi-tfiawJ+coiicerned only to put forth /a
statement of doubts and, ditficulties, to be _ consi-
dered, weighed, and answered, by the high-church
party in the English church : and so long as they
remain mere doubts and difficulties, no man has a
right tp'^y to m(B,,that I should act as, if they were
certainties and convictions. Unanswered and un-
explained they might and will, perhaps, become
convictions; but that is a different question. Of
qovMrsie Jtrknpj?^; that when religion is the subject
dealt with, the assertion of doubts is in itself to
create doubts in the minds of many others, where
all h ^4, J)een simple faith and unshaken trustfulness
^be|ipf ^ ^ , ij^ ^^ , ^^^ (encrease ^uspiciqa alsp,, (itnd to- jOib-
.sti^^pjt fi. ^^tif,i;q ft;9, confidence,, , YjCt, , it| may be>, ith^t
it'i8'oiif dufy'*l6W/as churchmen labouring for the
truth of the holy Gospel, to enquire, to hesitate, to
And let it tlol b§' tft'ou'^hf tha't7 sbM'l^'l-^^fe
myself, the existence and recognition of the royal
supremacy is the only difficulty and cause of doubt
which we are bound, if possible, to remove, as to thfe
sufficiency of the claims of the reformed church of
England upon our obedience and faith. In my
former letter, I have endeavoured to shew in wliA^
that supremacy, in its exercise of the power of finally
determining spiritual causes involving doctrine, must
be acknowledged to consist : and to shew, also, the
extent to which the English church has accept^
andi upheld that' power. iBut I have not given the
■reader any ground to suppose that it is the only dif-
ficulty in which, as holding what have been called
high-church opinions, we must own ourselves to b^.
And the same may be said of the permitted denial
amongst us of the catholic doctrine of baptismal rig"-
generation. I do not mean that the existence of
these, together or separately, w ould not be sufficie^
to excite grave and anX.ious doubts, but that they are
iiotour'bnly,'aiid iiot; itideed, our chief difficulties.
To pretend that they are not grievous and weighty
would be absurd, now, especially, that the archbishop's
of York and Canterbury — the two primates of the
church of England — have given their sanction 'tb
both of them: to the exercise of the supremacy in
finally determining causes of doctrine, by their pre-
sence at the deliberations of the judicial committed,
and by their approval of its report to the queen in
■coUncil ; ' laild to the permitted denial of the trutb of
autimin.ot' la^t j^ar,j^i) tU^ otbei:, \i[i,^ yprj?;.i;iifirkpd
and decided and lioucst;Vyay, by tbc preface, tp, 3-. neiyy.
cditiou of bis ))()ok on apostobcal preacbing.
1 bave one ,>v;or(J nwre to, add,, It, will,,, be ^'^\<\
tliat tbeywho np)Vi;4^-^PpndMfiP!4,P?eWtre{^dy,^pH4er,
a^f t (the; p^urql); of ,Ei^land , fpr .so^le,,p^|ler ,coiniU)jfl
nion,-^and that tbe cburcb of ,ll,ome,-rr-(iavc been
only waiting for some better reasons tban mere pr^p
ference of tbjo one and mere disUke of tbe otb^ijfj
It .^S' been , already said pf ; .l[^yself, , awJ tlije, , wp^'d^i
\y]e>rp .listened to with yery bitter paip. , It l^a-s-
been said in a general w^ay by an eminent bishop,
wlip.^pok^ pf such perisons as are witb9Ut,^ope,iPr
who take a line of conduct incon?i§t£t9t,:w,itb.,confi7,
deaceand trust, /?i,^r"iS^^^i^g ^ pretext for quitting"
the English church. The occun-ences of the time
in which we live, a pretext and unfounded cause]
But let this pass. And for myself I do deny,,
entirely, and , wi,tl;i, , the indignation which feviCjifyf
naanmay justly feel, a charge so unti'ue. Had,,^,
not been necessary, far would it have been from
any wish of mine to speak of other books >vhich
I haveiwritten:, but I declare solemnly that X h^ve
i^eypr . spoken , pr, ; jw^itten any word at aJJ, , ii^ppfl,
chief doctrines of the Faith, and that I have never
intended to do any one thing by way of public
ministi'ation or private duty, which did not, at the
t3,^„,^eem to b)^„-prjlJO^ .fljerj^fy,, permitted and ; aj-
lp>ved within tlie limits of the teaching of our church,
but — the one, especial, and exclusive w^ord or thing
wUit;|^;^lon.eslie authorized and declared right to be
11
call) Roman practices, and books, and forms. Nalj^/'
the time is riot long p£tet,w'h^ri iri^tiy, who will b<e th^
first now t^ accuse and to condemn me, blamed the
cold, Anglican, view with which I wrote and argued
in behalf of the chuTch of England. If I seem to
fdi^k)?:^ her iiW;' if is because I feel that what I haf^-
^r'ked ' fbt, dr6!itoit ■ o^, ' prayed for, will not and mdf^
ndt' bei : ' Wthidrs ' iiiay jlidge very ' differently, oth^i^^ "
may still hope, still labour, still— so they speak-^-
be patient, trustfuli Confident. Be it so ; and itinjr^
6r(3D ever be \Vith'thcni : these are ribt days iii which
ariy'riikn should venture to arraign his neighbour ;
and before One Alone,; Who sees ail hearts, must
we hereafter standl^'^-^f" Joubuoo 'io o. (w
Pardon s6'tnuch that has been ii&%^"l^i3^ of myselfP
Let Us proceed, without further preface, to the pai^'^
ticular subject of this Letter : nameh', the w^anf dP
necessary dogmatic teaching in the chufch of En^
land since the reformation. Great part of what 'f*
am about to write, springs out of and is connected*
with the cause of Mr. Gorham agdinst the bishop of"
Exeter. /^'^
' 'Now that the appeal has beeii decided by th^'^OTi-^
firmation of the report of the judicial committee^'^F
see no objection to admitting, that on one account
it seemed not improbable that it would be given ifi'
favour of Mr. Gorham. As the case went on, first
in the court of Arches and afterwards before the
Privy Council, it Was impossible ribt'tofeel, more arid
more, that the reasons and arguments of the evan-
gelical party had been too lightly esteemed. During
the last two years, my attention had been constantly
1^
liiilsi; ab" faivly b6 Confessed, witli similar results.
r ew 01 our own opinions would dispute, — at least 1
would not,— me absolute necessity of rejecting Mr.
(jforham, after such answers as he gave in liis exa-
mination before the bishop ; yet every month, as it
WeYi^' l^y'j ' l^Ug'gested^' ih. my own' Daihii griaver ' arid
graVer doiibts as to the finkr sudcfess of svLC*ti Vprb-
ce^Sing, unavoidable ' as it was' 1 meaii, dbiibts
whether' a bishop is really following the intention
of the reformed church of England, and speaking
iii*^Wi sjiirit, -Wlien he condesitin* as heresy the
denial of the unconditional efficacy of baptism in
the case of all infant recipients.
^' My object is not to discuss the especial doctrines
which Mr. Gorham acknowledges that lie 'folds:
ilf 4s k 'Substitution of the re'il question in dispute
bMW^'en'the two great parties in the church of Eng-
land, to attempt to heal our differences by obtain-
ing some kind of repudiation of his particular mode
of interpreting the formularies of our church. Th6
real question, — and no man who loves tbe truth
will seek to evade it, — is this, namely; Does the
ref&rmed clmrch of England teach exclusively the
unconditional efficacy of infant hdptisfnf P6kibly
it' 7>tb[yW'ic6l:'rect, though I venture to doubt it,
that not ten pfer^on's agree with Mr. Gorham : but
this is a light matter : his particular opinion is not
the question which is now upon the point of rending
out* church asunder, and which, — if nothing else is,
— must be settled either the one way or the other.
After the arguments on both sides were ended
before the judicial Committee, we were all enabled
J?
(.'almly to qonsider what the result of the whgl^ h^fl
b^en. , Fpiir; myself, I felt, with anxiety, and disap-
pointment, that the growing impressions and doubts
of the preceding six or eight months had been
strengthened rather than relieved. And it was im^
possible not to.iSwn, tliat th^re , coijijd bf little hope,
of further satisfaction to be gained in any way, if
the speech of Mr. Badeley, in behalf of the bishop,
had failed to give it,. That speech was one, whicli
ever must remain 9, recprd of all that deep r^si^arah
and eloquence could effect on behalf of the church
of England. Speaking as a lawyer, the present
Lord chief justice of the court of Queen's Bencl^^
declared, th.^t he had never heard any argument,
more learned and mpre ablef|:^ ?^^4r>^t is equally well
known, that the clergy who belieye Mr. Gorhams
doctrine to be unsound, speak, as theologians, in
like manner, of Mr. Badeley 's argument, in un^qi^^,-^
lifted language of gratitude and admiration. [,^^^1
^j^When Mr. Gorham was refused institution, mori^f
than two years ago, I thought that it was almost
impossible for him to raise a reasonable question
as to the exact teaching of the English, church upon
baptismal regeneration; a question, that is, such as
a court, would entertain. But time went on, ai^^y
the real state of things and tone of doctrine which;
prevailed, for fifty or sixty years' after the reign o||
Henry the eighth, during which the first move|S[|
of^l^^, changes in religion or their immediate digffj
ciples still liyed, opened, and became clearer froi^^,
day to day. ,
It would be dishonest to attempt to exaggerate or
put an untrue face upon the real state of the mattejc'^j
14
iLetdiio not bo misunderstood in wlmt JnamiiWMw'
sayiniT- I moan it to appl}' only to the earUer refor-
mation : for it has been said, and in vsome sense truly
I said, tiiat the EnijlisU reformation <lid in fact take
place, --1 raither, 1 suppose, it arrived at itd mature
audi 'Completed form, rH so far ids vi-e-ar^ cetnceiTn«d,
in 1()62, and not in 1552, or 1502. Therefore, in
all that regards baptism, it is to be carefully remem-
bered on the one hand, that the opinions of the
bishops at the Savoy conference /aro ; not merely
equal with but of greater weight than; any opinions
roS the reformers of Edward's days, or queen Eliza-
beths : on the other hand, there is the fact that, the
39 articles were framed in 1552 and l^G2.r')rffio>
It is small disgrace ])erhaps even now, — certainly
ba few }^ars ago it was so,i — not to be well read in
the almost forgotten books of Grindal, Fulke, Whit-
gift, Jewell, and their contemporaries. To be ac-
quainted with Hookers work of the ecclesiastical
polity had become rather a fashion:, but, with that
iisolitarv exception, we must acknowledge that the
t^vines of tbe days of queen Elizabeth were little
if read and little valued, by the party calling itself
Ano-lo-catholic and hiorh-church and the like. Still,
,'<fi*om circumstances, I had examined one part of the
' literature of that age somewhat carefully, namely,
_the famous controversy of Cartwright and his friends
jj ^der the name of Martin Marprelate : and, in
,ttGik^T>v^^T^c^i I think that I may claim to have
<Xknown about as much as people commonly do of the
'^.'theoloo-ical books of the sixteenth and seventeenth
ai ° 'j,ur,i gj3 tt^otinalssohoi'-i .9snos eJiaiiob bar,
.,^penturies. - ,...„..„...,. .,h, .[,;.. ,,,.*.;.,„.-..? .,.-„-j.^ ^.,,
This knowledge must have been loose and inde-
^15
■''finite enough, for I wafe n<5t prepared to learn, asil
have learnt, that perhaps without two exceptions all
the divines, bishops and archbishops, doctors and
professors, of the Elizabethan age — the age, be it
remembered, of the present common prayer book
in its chief particulars,' and of the' book of homilies,
-and of the 39 articles — ^^held and tausfht doctrines
inconsistent (I write a;dvisedly)owitk the, true J doc-
trine of baptism.* ' *i.!ii -i'jirru! orro orfi no n'niif
There are ' two causes to which such a misappre-
hension of fact, so far as regards myself, may per-
haps be traced : and others must decide Avhether
these or some similar reasons will serve to account
for their own previous opinions about the orthodoSiy
of theologians of the Elizabethan age. [fjBixig er ;tl
m i iEivsi V 'W^ have been accustomed both to read
-^aiid' to irefer to their books, under the impression
-of long-established prejudices: under the impres-
i sion that they must have been sound divines, be-
cause they were the chief leaders and earliest
children of the reformation ; and because they had
arguments, plenty and specious enough, against
some of the doctrines and discipline of the chureh
(Ibf Rome, di has rloiuffo-rigid bne oifoif jj3o-of^£iA
0 Secondly ; we have known their writing^^ chie%,
^vj^yi means of catenae: a means very likely indeed
ebii2_ . ' -
* In order to prevent misapprehension, it must be explained
'* thdt I mean their doctrines of sacramental grace, an.il justification,
ftiand not of predestination ; which, as all admit, was largely, nay,
((almost universally held, by the Elizabethan divines^ in a very rigid
and definite sense. Predestination, as taught by S. Augustine, is
not, alone, inconsistent with the acceptance of the truth 6f the un-
conditional regeneration of all ihfants in holy baptisnfr. Sid J
If)
to load to false conclusions, because whilst it pro-
fesses to give fairly the judgement of those ap-
pealed to in the matter under dispute, it often does
not, and in some cases cannot, in reality do any-
thing of the kitid. There are more doctrines than
one — for example, this doctrine of holy baptism —
upon which writers may make very strong and
catholic statements in one book, or in one part of
a book, which are all explained away, or in various
degrees qualified, or even, in truth, contradicted,
by different statements in the same or in other books.
Catenae are useful enough, within their proper and
reasonable limits ; they create difficulties sometimes,
whilst they will very seldom suffice to establish a con-
clusion : employed, however, as they have been^ of
late years, by our own party, they are not merely a
packed jury, but a jury permitted to speak only
half their mind. In short, the value of catenae can
be only justly estimated, where there is also a living
Church, ever prepared to speak with an infallible
voice.
Nor is it to be forgotten that whilst many extracts
from the Elizabethan books were produced, explain-
injT in a sense inconsistent with Catholic truth the
doctrine of baptismal regeneration, on the other
hand there were no passages to be found, distinctly
asserting that the reformed church of England holds
exclusively the sacramental efficacy of baptism in
the case of all infant recipients. It is one thing for
a religious community to allow its ministers to hold
and to teach a particular doctrine ; it is quite ano-
ther that they should be enjoined to teach it, as being
certainly and exclusively true. There are some parts
17
of the books of the Elizabethan writers, which are
examples of the first of these positions, namely, the
permission : but I do not remember any example of
the second : on the contrary, numberless proofs that
it could scarcely have been intended. It may ra-
ther be a question whether, in the days of queen
Elizabeth, a clergyman would not have been liable
to censure, who, not content with being suffered to
teach what he himself believed with regard to the
doctrine of baptismal regeneration, should have gone
on further to declare that the church of England
still pronounced those to be unsound and heretical,
who did not acknowledge the unconditional efficacy
of infant baptism. Or, to put it in other words, if
such an one had further declared that the teaching
of the church of Rome and of the reformed church
of England, upon the sacrament of baptism, was ne-
cessarily to be understood and accepted, by all Eng-
lish clergy, as identical and the same.
I must own, therefore, that the additional argument
produced by Mr. Gorham's advocate in his speech
before the committee, based upon a comparison be-
tween the articles of 1536, and the articles of 1552
and 1562, seemed to me to be forcible and correct.*
* The proof derived from a comparison of the articles has been
very ably put by Mr. Dodsworth, in the appendix to his late
sermon, A hoztse divided against itself. He says : —
" I think it only fair to state, that having had the advantage of
hearing the arguments in the Judicial Committee of the Privy
Council in the late case, my opinion of what was really intended
to be the force of the Article XXII. has undergone considerable
modification. I cannot norv feel certain that the Reformers did
not intend, to leave Baptismal Regeneration an open question. In
the very able argument of the Counsel for the appellant, Mr.
B
18
It supplied a t^auso of one effect of the alteration of
tliedocuments and formularies of the English churchy
whlijch wtas so visibly and frequently to be observed,^
l^irner, it ntos urged with great effect, that upon a comparison (rf
the Articles of 1636 with those of 1552, it might be fairly ifli"'
forrod that the latter were intended to open the question whifeli"
was closed by the fonner. These Articles are as follow: — > il-
idi svwmvjv 1536. '^^ ' •!'
^^*' Baptism is offered unto all
men, as well infants as such as
have the use of reason, that by
baptikiti they shall have reriiis-
siori of sitis, aild the grace and
favour of God, according to the
saying of S. John, ' Nisi quis re-
natus fuerit ex aqua et Spiritu
Sancto, non potest intrare in
regnum coelorura;' that the pro-
mise of grace and everlasting
life, which promise is adjoined
unto this Sacrament of Baptism,
pertaineth not only to such as
have the use of reason, but also
unto infants, innocents, and chil-
dren ; and that they ought there-
fore, and needs must, be bap-
tized. And that by the sacrament
they do also obtain remission of
their sin, the grace and favour of
Gop, and be made thereby the
very sons and children of God;
insomuch that infants and chil-
dren dying in their infancy, shall
undoubtedly be saved thereby,
and else not." — Collier, II. fol.
(The same as now in force.)
" Baptism is not only a sign
of profession, and mark of dif-
ference, whereby' Christian men
are discerned from others that
be not christened, but it is also
a sign of regeneration or new
birth, whereby, as by an instru-
ment, they that receive baptism
rightly are grafted into the
Church ; the promises of for-
giveness of sin, and of our adop-
tion to be the sons of God by
the Holy Ghost, are visibly
signed and sealed; faith is con-
firmed, and grace increased by
virtue of prayer unto God.
The baptism of young children
is in any wise to be retained in
the Church, as most agreeable
with the institution of Christ."
,0 bnf. f>'?fn«ifTO">
mod 8£
^ihhObu
■ II, .•n';J<' niigiiV ori
; -lo't £eo'i3 'jfli £J0(;
Now it 'eertdnlydoes seem unaccotj!ifabTe,''t1^at'if th^ 'Refdiro^^s
of 1552 intended to assert the same doctrine as that enunciated in
123.
r'oA /d b^vo'tqad toi
1^'
iiotda®! language used by men, contemporaries or
n,ttkr3jy!isoi,i respecting the sacrament of holy baptism.
Akd I cannot dispute the principle involved in the
the Arti-ciejgfof 1536,rth«y should have used language (to say the-
least) so much more open to dubious interpretation. I do not say
that this i? absolutely decmve on the point; but it furnishes ,an^
argumeut not easily answered. Having this precise language berv?
fore them, why did they not use it ? Had they no reason for
adopting more ambiguous terms ? One cannot say that it is other
than a prohahle conclusion, that they so worded the Article of
1532 as to iuclude the subscription of those who would have^^j-j,
fuseid to subscribe; the definite language of the previous Article., ^^^f
cannot but think that great weight was justly given to this consi-r^
deration, in the very able judgment which was delivered. This vio\y
of the matter will be confirmed by comparing another article with
the devotional formularies. Thus, to place in the same juxta^p^^f^js
tiou the Articles of 1336 and 1362, on the holy Eucharist. jj'j^"g„j'j3f,
UOfl jOjDOfiS
Jlie Sacrament of the Altar.
" As touching the Sacrament
of ^ne ^itar, we will that aU.^
Bishops and Preachers shall in-
struct and teach our people com-
mitted by us to their spiritual
charge, that they ought and must
constantly believe that under the
form and figure of Bread and
Wine, which we there presently
do see and perceive by outward
senses is very substantially and
really contained and compre-
hended the very selfsame Body
and Blood of our Saviour Je-
sus Christ, which was born of
the Virgin Mary, and sufi'ered
upon the Cross for our redemp-
tion. And that under the same
form and figure of Bread and
Wme, the very selfsame Body
ni oiBiifii >l*^iWI
XXVni. Of the Lord's ^
Clipper. , , ^^^.j
" The Supper of the Lord js
not only a sign of the love that
Christians ought to have among
themselves one to another ; but
rather is a Sacrament of our Re-j
demption by Christ's death:.,
insomuch that to such as rightly, ,
worthily, and with faith, receivOj \
the same, the Bread which we,,
break is a partaking of the Bo^V- ,
of Christ; and Ukewise the
Cup of Blessing is a partakifaff
of the Blood of Christ. f j
" Transubstantiation (or the
change of the substance of Bread
and Wine) in the Supper of i^if^
Lord, cannot be proved by holy
Writ ; but is repugnant to the
plain words of Scripture, over-
t'oUouinoj! sentence of the judgmenti clliliv^r€«l^ by
the [judicial I conimittec : they sajyi; 'If^+^-itu pippears
tlldt opinions, whioh we cannot inj anyriJiapoMstlrit
'partiiular «listino'\iit<h from those entertained by Mj*.
Gorliam, liavc been propounded ami niaiaitiiined,
without censure 'or reproach,' l>}^ many' eminent
-dud) " ilhistrious prelates and tUvinos who have
adorned the church from the time when the [42 and
39j articles were first established. AVe do not affirm
ihat the doctrines and opinions of Jewell, Hooker,
/Ush^l*^ Jeremy Taylor,; Whitgift, Pearson, Carlton,
iPridcaux, and many others, can be received as evi-
dence of the doctrine of the church of England ; but
their conduct, unblamcd and unquestioned as it was,
proves at least the liberty which has been. allowed
in maintaining such doctrine." -jnomugiB ei£[ otii
and Blood of Christ is corpo- tliroweth the nature of a Sacra-
rally, really, and in every sub- ment, and has ^vetl occasion to
stance, e?!;hibited,.4istributed, and many superstitioris.tfri/ini lo
I ^received, pf all them which re- "The Body of Cheist is
ceive the said Sacrament: and given, taken and eaten, in the
therefore the said Sacrament is Supper, only after an heavenly
to be used with all due reverence and spiritual manner. And the
jaad hpupur^ and tbfit jevery. m^n , faeans, whereby th?, i J5gfdy of
ought first to prove and examine Christ is received and eaten
himself, and religiously to try in the Supper is Faith,
and search his own conscience " The Sacramentof the Lord's
before he shall receive the same, Supper was not by Christ's or-
accordiflg, .to, X\ie ^a,y'\iig of, S. dinauce reserved, carried about,
Paul, ' Quisquis ederit panem , lifted up, or worshipped."
hunc'&c." '^'^"-••^'"-'^■"'
Now it will be seen that there is here very much the same differ-
ence as in the Articles on Baptism. The Article of 133G is plain,
dogmatic and unmistakable. The Article of 1362, ambiguous, he-
sitating, indefinite, and to, a great extent negative/' ( i{ // a'lOxilO
/dS^efak'ibf! it'fa9ii(ine would, or regarded under
i3t^ei^ possible aspect,' ^ihe prolrediiopmiona of the
Elizabethan writers pressed^ ui^rooai /my mind. The
fclet, to so great an extent, wds'uneixpected^ but it
Was to be considered, and to be dealt with, whether
it were important or iunimportant. ov nlti • shewed,} i at
lea^'t, that there Were, in that day, many individuals
■of grdater or less learning, of higher or lower station,
who did not believe that they were bound by the
apparently plain language about regeneration! in otiT
ritual, to hold and to teach the unconditional efficady
of the sacrament of holy baptism in the case of all
•infants; 'Nor was it only the opinion of private ilr
dividuals. And I am now about to mention aite-
markable fact, which was not brought forward lip
the late arguments. .oai-fJooL duija gULtmikibiSU ni
The point at issue was, whether it is necessarily
inconsistent with the assertions of certain parts of
>Pji^i^v;formulariegiJjQ joieny the biconditional efficacy
of infant baptism ^ oryiin 'othfer'wopds,^ whether the
doctrine, that some infants do kbt rfecfeive iii baptism
J;be saving grace of regeneration, i3^ejX,^lu^4^cl.,,t(y,j;Jie
0 (terms of our ritual and catechismon[> ffr, rftm ^^err orf o+
io i(^^fehort time ago, it happened that I wa^ obliged,
?dr another purpose, to refer to the Dublin articles
of 1615. In that year, the prayer-book and cate-
chism of the reformed Irish church were identical,
'iti'kll tliat rfelates to the sacramien't of baptism, with
our own. There Were the same sentences, " Seeing
now, that this child is regenerate ;" and "We yield
,^hee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it
>hath pleased Thee to regenerate this infant;" and
others which have been so often quoted. Yet the
\tlrok> bmly of the clergy of the established chut^h
of Ireland; aissembled in (ibnVodation, 'dM' hot hesi-
tate to declate, notAvithstanding, as "follows : " A ti*uc
lively justifyinuf faith, and the sanctifj'inir Spirit of
God, is not extin<^uished, nor vanisheth away in the
regenerate^ either finally or totally." I do'^ifesert
tliaffeuch''^' statement, whether it may or miay'iiot
seem to be ajj^ainst the meaninc: of the words of the
public offices of the Church, is utterly and distinctly
irreconcilable with the catholic truth of the uncon-
ditional efficacy of infant baptism. Nor is it to be
answered that this place in the Irish articles means
nothing more than the famous Lambeth articles.
For although the Lambeth articles were incorpo-
^fated into those atgreed upon at Dublin, aiid '^pie-
"'^ally' Inarked by references in the margin of the
' editions printed at the time, yet, in this instance,
there is a material alteration; the Lambeth form
says, "non evanescit in electis ;" the Dublin arti-
cleschange this into-^* the^regenerti^.— —
To put this argument in another shape : and it
may be best to do so, in the way in which it afifected
and influenced myself. Some months ago, the lan-
vjgus^ge. of our ritual seemed to be an unanswerable
evidence of the intention of the reformed English
''"'cliurch to teach, exclusively, the truth of regenera-
'i,,tion in holy baptism. There, were the plain words
I, -rand terms of the baptismal office; and although
the articles alone would not prove the doctrine, yet
it scarcely appeared requisite that any reference
even should be made to it, with a devotional service
so remarkably clear and decided. But, in opposi-
^^'tibtl'^'^titeit' ft' conclusion, the Irish articles present
23
rpfl , lipsurmoun table obstacle ;-, i ^n^ , the ?trqiig.^s,^-^f
all the reasons, which the high-church party in our
..phurch had produced, began to fade away and
•] ^^pial,! like a dream . Another established. Church,
. ^fli fijiil (Communion ; with onv , s^Jih \ fU^ing< ,^r; tMv^,
unaltered, unmutilated, had obliged its clergy c,t|0
subscribe and to accept articles of faith, " for the
.^voiding of diversities of opinions, and the esta-
^,blishing of consent touching true religion," ^^Qt
I^erely making doubtful the catholic doctrine, -fpf
regeneration in baptism, but positively and undeai-
ably contradicting it. ,j,
In short it became manifest, that something. ][?p-
sides and beyond plain words in the public? ntMdl
and offices was necessary to the confirmation of dis-
puted truths of the Christian Faith. Before such
truths had been denied or dqubt^e^, the case wpuld
have [been very different. ^ 4^;f'/2pntroversy qnce
opened, upon essential articles of , the ereeds,*;and
''tvVi'.^.u'b" 'Ij ^s^ixfcil^ avi-t —
* It is not easy to see, liovv it may be denied that tli6 controversy
! I- upon baptismal regeneration had not been opened, before, and at the
very period of, the convocations of 1552 and 1562.^ n. = r
One or two extracts will suffice to prove the fact : hay, more, ^he
kdvocacy already of the particular form of doctrine insisted oii by
\{rMi\ Gorham. . <;i ;!;
, Tyndal says : " The inward baptisme of the soule, is the baptisme
j that onely auayleth in the sight of God, the new generation, — the
earnest of everlastyng lyfe, and title whereby we chalenge our in-
"' Keritance." This inward baptism having been just before declared
,t- to be, "to loue the law, and to long for the life to come." Efifpos.
. ofbth ch. ofS. Matt. proL p. 187.
So, also, John Frith : " This outward signe [baptism] doth nei-
ther geue us the spirite of God, neither yet grace that is the favour
of God. Baptisme bringeth not grace, but doth testifie unto the
1 1 , congregation that he which is baptised had such gi*ace geuen hym
before ; it is a sacrament, that is, a signe of an holy thyng, euen a
u
focuaally brought bcforo the uoticD lof the Ghurahqu
Ctonuot be loft to bo bottled by an; iDterprotatioitiof. 1
terms used in very aiieiont public services, ibut ;
must be decided either the one way or the otherydr
e\-idently left open, iu some concurrent formulartyi
ofiequal authoi-ity. Thus, whilst (for example) th«^il
Articles of 1530, and the King's book, and th<^ BifTi'
shops' book, were in force, there could be nd '
question made about the doctrine of the Knglish
church, regarding baptism. But a very.' diffei-'ent
state of things was produced by the alterations and
omissions made fia'st in, ifc^S^.iand' continued linjtil^ij
3a articles of 15G2. *^ to. .^n ,..,fT
(Thus we have the same ritual of the; administra-tnl
tioiiGif My; baptism ^— the same^ I;mean,iiaip(M»feai
which' fbeari . upon the doctrine of: regeneration*— gilj
under three several aspects. Namely ; in connexioBv/l
with another formulary distinctly and exclusivelyiifi
teaching the whole Catholic truths as^ 'did . thei ra^h; i
ticle^: of ISSG^TQi-^ui^ith a,' rfermulary whicb left it
token of the ^rac^ and free mercy, yVjhicbpjwa^be^pje.g^Men hy,m.i"
A declaration of haptisjne. p. 91. r.r .- -i r
Sboh after, bishop Hooper: '' tiapt!^^ WctiM ^^^\a^^^0'
external baptism h but aninaliguratiotiiot extdrhal consecratix)iJ (rfv/j
those, that first believed and were cleansed of their sin." Again,
he says, that the interrog-atories and answers of sponsors in public
and solemn baptism, show that baptism is but " the confirmation of
Christ's promises, which be in the person that receivtth the sacra-
ment before, or else these extei-nal-signsavaileth nothing:" tbo^i'
answers being made, " then is the child christened in the name of
God. The which fact doth openly confirm the remission of sin,
received before bv£aith,^y,i4,(?ec/a»,'tt^i^rC%ri^^«%<^ /^W Office.
Ch. 10.- -; - y' : ' i y .,; ,>,;;,,.•■
Far be it from me to say, that doctrine such as this has be^n i^- ,
cepted by the English church : but that, as a fact, the baptismal
contrqversy had been plainly opened, by persons of name agd ^au-
thority, before the convocation of 1502.
opdn 'to ' bte T^fceiTed or "iiotii ks>d(i' thei 1 39 aiUicfe^ ^Of ' '
15()2';''<«*; with a, formulary which deilied aiid i*fe'-i
jetted it, as do the Dubhn articles of 1015. -i >inr>i
'But it is not only on the doctrine of th^ sa'ci^^'f
ment of baptism, that the articles of the reformed '>
Irish church claim our especial attention; and''jf^<^
shall therefore devote to them another page or twOL ^
That which I must now write will bring on me'
probably much reproof from more quarters than one : i
it will be written also with-rieluctance"and soi^rQwi^
byi myself. Still, these are days in which we mtisfc'
endeavour to find out the truth, and the truth alonW< •
These Dublin articles of 1615 have never beeiii'
formally repudiated by the church of Ireland : ahld
in -statements not contrarient, are now^ equally wittpJl
the English 39 (agreed to and approved of about' '^
twenty years later), the "standard of doctrine" in""
that communion. They contain other heretical '-
statements. What are we to think^ therefori^^" bf '>^
her position? — Yetj it will be said, the Churched '^
are United ; and they must stand or fall together.
I am quite aware that there are technical objec-
tions to the fact itself of such an Union between tjift
two Churches ; but whatever the force of them mapj/o
be, our connexion with the established Irish church,
and our recoo-nition of her in all acts of outward
intercourse and communion, is a very fearful ques-
tion.* An avowed and distinct denial of the'Ga^
* There are few priests of the church of England now Hving;,
who did not acknowledge this Union at an hour, the most solemn,
perhaps, of their whole lives : " Do you think in your heart, that
you be truly called, according to the will of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and the order of this United Church of England and Ir^i. in-
land, to the order and ministiy of Priesthood ? Answer. I think it;''''""'^
26
tiiulio doctjriiie of tlio eucliaristMand- of ' baptism
would U) suiUcient to prove an individual to be ia
lieresy : and such a denial has been s^yn^idicnllf/
agreed to ht^ the- diurcli of Ireland. Aud I must
aay, that it is not easy to understand why any
one person should be condemned for reasons which
we are not equally prepared to press to a like con-
elusion, in the case of a reformed Church. Perhaps
some Irish clergyman will be able to defend his
Church from this charge which I have brought de-
liberately against her. Let him however remember,
that he must either prove the formal renunciation
of the articles of 1615: or show that the heretical
doctrine of those articles has been plainly corrected
by some clear statement to the contrary, contained
in the 39 articles, since approved of. And we, on
our side, s/uill have to show, Itoic it was that^ at the
time of their publication, no sign or niark of even
disapprobatiozir was made hy the clmrch of England.
, Mi4s to the authority of the Dublin articles, wo
cannot have better evidence than that of Dr. Ber-
nard, the biographer of archbishop Usher : " Now
whereas" he says " some have doubted whether they
were fully established as the articles of Ireland; I
can testify that I have heard him [Usher] say, that
in the fo renamed year, 1615, he saw them signed
by archbishop Jones, then lord chancellor of Ire-
land, and speaker of the house of bishops in convo-
cation ; signed by the prolocutor of the house of the
clergy in their names ; and also signed by the then
lord deputy Chichester, by order from King James,
in his name. And" he proceeds " whereas some
have rashly affirmed that they were repealed by act
m
of parliament, anno: 1634, or' irecalled by a dec^rdb
of the synod then, needs no further confutation than
the siffht of either.''* \\nH;.w u a/: 6 wv^i : (d'n'jn
I The canon by which^ in^^ iGS^UhW^ Mig-li^h^ at*ti*
cles were approved, proves distinctly that no intcn-
#oiiv existed of annulling the previous articles of
1#1>5.' ' The object aimed jit was to shew, that ac-
cordinVt to the judgment of the church of Ireland,
the two Churches agreed in doctrine: and in or-
"dfe-^iitbithis, our 39 articles v^^ere' admitted to be
tmibifOiAnd any person would be very-! acute, as it
seetns, who could discover any material Gontradid-
tion between the two confessions of faith : the only
difference -^ and a considerable difference — being,
that the Irish articles contained in full, plain; atlfl
express terms, a legitimate exposition — it may b^e,
one of many possible expositions— of the doctritte
of the English articles, ^v ,sHv.\\yyv\<5wq T«s>,v\i \c. ^m'ii
On so anportant a questioii,' iC^i^ Wfefl^th^t^fe
should quote the canon : " 1 . For the manifestation
of our agreement with the church of England in
the confession of the same Christian faith, and the
doctrine of the sacraments ;*fW6 * do receive and ap-
'pf(yve the book of articTes of reiligion, agreed upon
by the archbishops, and bishops, and the whole
clergy in the convocation holden at London in the
year of our Lord, 15b2, for the avoiding of div0}--
sytieS' of opinions, and for the establishing of consMt
touching true religion. And therefore if any here-
after shall affirm, that any of those articles are in
any part superstitious and erroneous, or such as he
rrfo-, A'Miij!/- '^ eboooo'fq oil 'liftA .ofliGrt ad ni
rj& ni^eit Mant's hist, of the'Irish'Ciiufffi,%."il^j^.^^;^>^^'
tTitty'f'i(it Ai'iHi'ii^ ttttU'(io6s(^ieTitie' sUbsfcHbe iliitb/ let
Mtii be ex6bmmiiiii6htLm, aiwi ndt absolved before
hi make a'ptlblic toeantation of hi* errdi'.''' ' *»"^ '^o
'*^"It has been held, sajs bishop Maiit,"tbkt ^tbb
•tenji^lish artieles were (rnly fecewed bb the sense of\
ttndd^ tfi&g'iriight'b&kiXimvnded by, thosid^of-^Ih-
M^iil IA.%d',' as they certaitily are not contf adi ctoi-^y,
Wiis seemd t6 be the just ami obvious state 'of the
ttiatter. But archbishop Usher, a contemporary, is
*thW ble^i^ 'possible witness vve can have, 'Ortl'subh^a
questi6ti]' '^Ifl'>ri'Mter'i't6' a friend, giving, a few
irtonthfe aftertvatcls, an account of the late convoca-
tion, he observes, "The articles of religion, agreed
iipon in our former synod, anno I6l5j we let stand
"^ they did before. But, iov the manifesting of our
=i^rieement with the church of England, we haveff^-
c^ived and approved your articles 'ale&,'a6 yoU'ima^
'See in the first of our canons/'* ^ ^'^f ■' = /b(KJ Unli
^o Could the Chnrch Gatholicybr,;-niightanyOhnrch
Claiming to be a part of the Church 'Catholic, spebk
of being " United" with, or admit to communion,
the reformed Irish church, unless a distinct and
formal renunciation of the several heresies contained
i^'^the'Dublin. articles of 1^15, had previously and
^■itilemhly been made ? f-l'iov/ tiffo 'mo loi ion bn£
f'fji ,;.i r. ., ,. . , . ,,i.,uO'i 08 orr rfoiffw 830ff8JJ00irf^h
j: . ;—^ — =i —
-OG ,rro;lx.;t g; jf.tfnt Td lrr)r,'f<iun .sihrun p'jai'fd- ) bur;
• cit. Hist, of Irish Church, p. 493.
-f- The case also of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America,
^^^^rung from ourselves, and with which we are (I believe) in full
(lommunion, might also be brought forward, if it were requisite.
But her differences chiefly consist in declining to insist on certain
things, generally supposed to be of very great importance in the
^ithohc Church, rather than if! the plain and avowed acceptance
uf error. However, as a fact, we readily have given bur support
29
49, some of my reavlers^ it raay,b,e rigtit to extract one
or two of the statemeiU^ which they contain. ," By
His external ; counsel God hath predestinated some
unto life, ,and reprobated some, untg. death : of ];M?thv
wbicii, th«ir6\ igkv a NcW'feai,ft\ numbei^.j,J^nO\Wi^\ only to
Gob, ;which can neither he encreased nor dimi-
nished." " None can come unto Christ, unless it
be given unto him, and unless the Father draw him.
jArtdi;alli<men/ia^e>wAt so drawn by theJFatherj tliait
they may come unto the Son : neither is there suph
a sufficient measure of grace vouchsafed unto evejcy
manj whereby he is enabled to come unto everlasting
Jlifej^ ! AH God's elect are in their time inseparal^ly
•fliwaitedL'unto Christ, by the effectual and vital b^-
fluence of the Holy Ghost, derived from Him, as
from the Head, unto every true member of His mys-
tical body. And being thus made one witli Christ,
dh^iCire truly 'regenerated^ and made partakers of
Him and all His benefits." In the whole of a very
long article of justification, not one syllable is said
of holy baptism : it begins, " We are accounted
righteous before God, only for the merit of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, applied by faith:
and not for our own works or merits. And this
righteousness which we so receive of God's mercy,
and Christ's merits, embraced by faith, is taken, ac-
■ i^ri- ,vv <,tr)-xiirij lifeni. lo ..tajH .tsb *
and fellowship to a Protestant Church, which does not oblige the
acceptance of all the articles of the Apostles' qreed; which does
not read in her public service, at any tiwe,,the Athanasian creed;
and which does not require her bishops to give in words to her
priests at their ordination the power of remitting and of retaining
sins ; in other words, ithe power pf a))soluti^n.,jyyg^Qj.j ;jQ,.jg 'jy
30k
c'cpted, and allowtxl of Goi>, for our porlectiiandi full
juBtiftcationn'i'i i m And it^ ends ; *^ I^yi j;ustif}ing faith
we uii(lei*stand not only the common belief of the
articles of Christian religion, and n persuasion of
/the truth of God's, word iu general ; but also: a ^ar^-
tioular application of, the gracious promises of the
Gospel, to the comfort of our own souls ; whereby
we lay hold on Christ, with all His benefits, having
an earnest trust and confidence in Goj>, that He
will be merciful unto us for his only Son's sake* r S©i
that a true believer may be certain, by the assurance
of faith, of the forgiveness of his sins, and of his
everlasting salvation by Christ. A true lively jus-
tifying faith, and the sanctifying Spirit of God, is
not/ extinguished, nor vanisheth away in the rege^
nerate, either finally or totally." " The Catholic
Church, (out of wliich there is no salvation,) -con-
sisteth of all those, and those alone, which are elec-
ted^ by God unto salvation, and regenerated by the
power of His Spirit." " God hath given power to
His ministers, not simply to forgive sins, (which
prerogative He hath reserved only to Himself) l^pt
in His name to declare and pronounce unto such as
truly repentand unfeignedly believe His holy Xjos-
pel, the absolution and forgiveness of sing." " Bap-
tism is not only an outward sign of our profession,
— rbut much more a sacrament of our admission into
the Church, sealing unto ns our new birth (and con-
sequently our justification, adoption, and sanctifica-
tion) by the communion which we have with Jesus
Christ." " The Lord's supper is not only a sign of
mutual love — ^but much more a sacratnent of our ^
preservatipn in the ChurQji, sealing unto us. ouj ^s^a'-f . '
31
ritual nourishment and continual growth in Chris|bJu
— In tho outward part of the Holy Communion, th«ii
Body and Blood of Christ is in a most lively manner/'
represented ; [the italics are in the original ;] beingJ:
no otherwise present with the visible elements, thadi
things signified and sealed are present with the signsil
and seals, that is to say, symbolically and r^laO
tively." '^^ 0^/7
' I'now ask for the readers grave consideration of
the position of the established Church of Irelani^//
and of the effect, as regards ourselves, of our long! '
continued fellowship and communion with herii.
Perhaps we are not bound to a necessity of commu-^^*
nion with the Irish church; and the matter which
we' now have to discuss and to determine, is far too
solemn to allow of our passing lightly over any
particular connected with it, because of probable
cou^QQ^QUG^m(y''Ifth€ reformed church of Ireland
he not iiih&resy, according to the judgment of the
reformed church 6f England, let it he shown3 i.'juiji^
ii. ,.]/;; ^'...L.^ -'"cr-- --' ^..|.-t.. ••->.; ,:::i::.:ciiam aiH
trrdL n^iQSfiTfH ot yliTo Jb9v*i:os9'i ffj«5rf sH ^vLlB^optq
We wuLnow pass on tp the consideration of the •
* A week or two ago, a series of resolutions was published
signed by some whose names are amongst the most eminent of the. /^
members of our Church. I quote three of them: i •-'
" 5. That, inasmuch as the faith is one, and rests upon one
principle of authority, the conscious, deliberate, and wilful aban-i ;
donment of the essential meaning of an article of the Creed de-
stroys the Divine foundation upon which alone tUe entire* faith is .
propounded by the Church. - -iLv:. ii: v., ; rioii
" 6. That any portion of the Church which does so abandon' t3ife3
essential meaning of an article of the Creed forfeits not only the
Catholic doctrine in that article, but also the office and authority to
witness and teach as a mejtiiber of the universal Cliufc^. * ^
32
subject to which I particuhirly proposed to direct
your thoufrhts.
In former years, it never happened to cross my
mind, that the foundations of the reformed church
of Kuiiland were less stronjj or real than the hiuh-
o o o
church or Anglican party declared them to be. As a
system or theory, in its position with respect either
to the church of Rome, or to the countless forms
and communities of dissent, the modern church of
England seemed to be sufficiently according to the
words of Holy Scripture and to the traditions of
the ancient Church.
If, at any time, in endeavouring to establish the
truth of some important doctrine, difficulties seemed
to arise from various statements in her formularies,
these were put aside upon the supposition, that the
English church could not mean to deny or dispute
the Catholic faith, being herself unquestionably a
part of the Church Catholic. And, upon some
doctrines, "further confirmation was furnished, not
by the partial support of one, or two, or three of
her earlier writers, — such as Andre wes, or Laud,
or Mountagu — but, by the concurrent testimony
of an overwhelming majority, including Ridley,
and Hooker, and Whitgift ; Bramhall, Bull, Pear-
son, and such as they were.
•' 7. That by such conscious, wilful, and deliberate act such por-
tion of the Church becomes formally separated from the Catholic
body, and can no longer assure to its members the grace of the
sacraments and the remission of sins."
Now I demand of those who subscribed these resolutions suffi-
cient proof how far, and in what way, they do 7iot apply to, and
are not fatal to the claim of, the reformed Irish Church.
But the last twelvemonths has changed this much
and materially. The case of Mr. Gorham, with its
immediate and, if we may say so, its personal points,
aswell as the very many collateral difficulties con-
.^.eqted with and springing out of it, forced one to eji-
quire somewhat more accurately than before, ii^to
the exact facts and history and consequences of the
reformatiqn. It forced one to prove by somewliat
st^neJT and, it may be^ surer tests, the sufficiency
.Oif tbe clpiims advanced by the church of Englan^i
•j, . It scarcely admits of enquiry, whether it be ne-
cessary that the Church Catholic, or that every
religious body professing to be a portion of the
(Church Catholic, should lay down dogmatically, as
truths, Certain statements upon great Christian
doctrines. I pass by (for the sake of argument) the
two doctrines of the mystery of the Ever-Blessed
Trinity,* and of holy baptism. The onie lisi of too
sacred and aweful a character to be spoken of, when
it may be avoided ; the other (we will say) has just
been determined, to some extent|.})y.tbje..Civ^l pftw^J
in its appellate jurisdiction. t - f^'iojfhw lafl'fjso isff
,ri]L(^iitus suppose then that we have these two: doc-
trines clearly, fully, and distinctly taught by the
church of England. What are the other .)do<iti*i*fte§
which she teaches with like distinctness ? han .noa
What isjher especial^ doctrine, for example, upon
* bee my tirst Letter, note p. 51. ..
t This sentence was written many weeks ago, before any rjfjTj
mour even of the nature of the decision of the judiciajl commit^^
was abroad, and upon the supposition that it would be distinctly in
confirmation of the judgment of the court below. I leave it unal^,
tered, to be corrept^dj asjt^.^^a,<flef- ra^y.hims^^ v,, . „.,,
C
34
\he nunibor of the Sacraments,* upon the blcssinfj;s
and spiritual graces which the sacraments convey,
upon the distinctions between one sacrament and
another, upon the necessity or advisableness of some
* Wc are accustomed to speak in rather glowing terms of the
dogmatic character of the common pravcr book, and of the cate-
chism in particular. Few things have struck me more — and for
some time past — than the manner in which the first question and
answer is made in the second part of the catechism. The ques-
tion is; " How many Sacraments hath Christ ordained in His
Church ?" I suppose the plain answer would be, two ; seven ; ten;
or twenty, as the case may be. For, let it be carefully observed
that the question is not concerning sacraments necessary to salva-
tion. And the answer is ; " Two only, as generally necessary to
salvation, that is to say. Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord."
Now I do assert, that such an answer evades — neither more nor
less — evades the question : it is, strictly, no answer at all : it is
an answer for which a witness would be justly rebuked in a court
of law. However, the catechism (as if glad to escape from a
difficulty) accepts the answer, and asks, " What meanest thou by
this word [as used by you] Sacrament?" I say, "as used by
you," because concerning a sacrament in the catholic and true
sense, it is incomplete to say " I mean an outward and visible
sign, etc." The more correct word would, in that case, he sensible
sign. But the word visible may perhaps be right, when referred to
two sacraments, " as generally necessary to salvation."
I am writing, it must be recollected, for those, who make much of
the catechism. Therefore I would suggest two other places of this
same second part. Namely ; the following question and answer :
" Why then are infants baptized, when by reason of their tender
age they cannot perform [repentance and faith] ? Because they
promise them both by their sureties ; which promise, when they
come to age, themselves are bound to perform." What are we to
understand by this ? And another answer : teaching truth, but
not excluding error : " For the continual remembrance of the sacri-
fice of the death of Christ, &c." I allude in this last to the equi-
vocal meaning of the term "remembrance:" excellent and suffi-
cient in its catholic sense, as so applied to the blessed Eucharist :
but most miserably deficient indeed if it is, as certainly (I suppose)
35
of them, or upon their virtue, powers, and efficacy ?
and do they contain, as well as convey, grace ?
Again, take the sacrament of the blessed Eucharist :
what is the doctrine which the church of Eng-
land openly, plainly, and distinctly, teaches about
it ? does she tell us that it is a sacrifice ? does
she tell us that it is not a sacrifice ? if a sacrifice,
what is the Thing sacrificed ? and, is it or is it not
propitiatory for the living, or for the dead, or for
neither ? are the elements after the words of conse-
it may be, understood in any other and a lower sense. And the
ditHculty is increased when we recollect, that this word " remem-
brance" is to be carried on to the second clause of the sentence,
" and of the benefits which we receive thereby." It will explain
my meaning to quote the following passage from a sermon lately
published on the sacrament of the Eucharist.
" Here I would warn you against a hasty and, therefore, an
inadequate understanding of the answer in the Church catechism,
where we are told that the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was
ordained, ' for the continual Remembrance of the Sacrifice of the
Death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive Thereby.'
"In this answer the term ' Remembrance' does not only mean,
no, nor chiefly mean, what I have first spoken of as ' commemora-
tion.' Which last word I have used as referring to ourselves;
that is ; we commemorate : we solemnly recall to our recollec-
tions : we remember. But the ' Remembrance' intended by the
catechism must, in order that that formulary should not fall short
of the full doctrine of the Catholic Church, — for, so to fall short
would in this case be heresy, — must, I say, be understood in its
perfect and complete theological sense. In which sense the term
refers, in a lower way certainly to ourselves, but in a far higher
and more correct way, to the Almighty Father : — putting Him, as
it were, solemnly in rememhrance of the Passion and the Atonement
of the Son, and of the Sacrifice of His Death : bringing before
Him the appointed Memorials, the Bread and Wine made to be
the Body and the Blood." — Sermons preached at S. Mary Church,
2nd edit, p. 39.
30
cratioii bread ami wine, as the}' were before, or are
they tlie ImxIv and the Blood of our Lord? are they
both? if only one, which of these are they? ouglit,
we, or ought we not, to pay outward honour and
reverence to our Blessed Lord, Present upon His
altar, after the consecration? Again; take Confirma-
tion : is this a sacrament, or is it not ? if a sacrament,
what is meant by saying* that it has not the like nature
of a sacrament with baptism and the Lord's supper ?
is it a ceremony in which the candidates confirm
the vows and promises made for them by others,
long before, when they were baptized, or is it an
ordinance in which they receive also after a sacra-
mental and mysterious manner, by the laying on
of hands, the gift of the Holy Ghost, never in like
manner to be aoain given or received ? and is this
last the chief, or not the chief, end and object of
confirmation? Take, again, Extreme Unction: is
this, or is it not, lawful to be received and adminis-
tered in the church of England ? * if it be, what
are its effects? if it be not, why is it not? is ex-
treme unction " a corrupt following of the apos-
tles," or not? if it be, in what sense is it, and
* I am aware that an argument may be raised on the omission
of the ancient office from our revised ritual: and that a clergyman
might be punishable for administering Extreme Unction, under his
subscription to the 36th canon, in which he promises to use the
rites and ceremonies and sacraments> as contained in the Prayer
Book, " and none other." But this prohibition would include
equally all modern offices of consecration of churches : for there is
not one law for bishops and another for priests. And if so, a
prelate (now living) would be right, after all, when he mocked at
any form of consecration, and walked irreverently into the church,
saying, " It is merely a signing of papers."
37
confirmation or orders not equally so ? Again, take
Matrimony : what is the especial teaching of the
church of England about this ? Again, Orders :
is episcopacy essential or not essential to the exis-
tence of a Church? can the blessed Eucharist be
given in a religious body — for example, in the
kirk of Scotland — where there is no pretence of
episcopal ordination, in fact, where there are no
priests ? is there a " character " given, or not
given, in ordination? does a priest at his ordina-
tion receive power to remit and to retain sins ?
and if so, in what sense ? Once more, before we
pass from sacraments, or what the Catholic Church
for 1 000 years called sacraments, take Absolution :
what does the church of England teach about this ?
is it a sacrament or is it not ? is it, or is it not, an
ordinance appointed by our Lord to be for ever
continued and used in His Church, in order that
penitents might through it obtain remission of
mortal sin? is previous auricular confession — full,
detailed, and particular — necessary, or not neces-
sary, to the grace of forgiveness by means of priestly
absolution? do the general public absolutions, pro-
nounced in the daily prayers, convey remission of
mortal sin, or do they not ? are pardons and penance
fond things vainly invented, rather repugnant to
the word of God than otherwise, and grown of the
"corrupt following of the apostles "'? and, if pardons
and penance be not so, in what sense and within
what limits are they agreeable with God's word and
with the tradition of the apostles ? in short, is abso-
lution a power to forgive and to retain sins, inherent
in and to be exercised by all priests, or is it a mere
3S
word loosely and iini)ro})orly retained in some of
the tbrnmlaries of the church of England, signi-
fying nothing ? if the first of these be too high a
way of speaking of it, and the second be too low
and mean, what else is it ?
This much, then, upon the sacraments. I shall
trouble you with one or two more questions only :
for, surely, enough has been already said to startle
some, who have not hitherto thought upon the
matter ; but, contented with the liberty of teaching
or believing what they please, have further taken
for granted that the reformed church of England
definitely taught the same.
For example ; praying for the dead : is this, or
is it not, a pious, lawful, and catholic duty ? Is
there, or is there not, a purgatory ? Is invocation
of saints an unlawful practice, contrary to the
wTitten word of God ? May the sacrament of the
Lord's supper be reserved, carried about, lifted up,
and worshipped, by authority and custom of the
Church, although " not by Christ's ordinance ;" or
may It not ? In what sense is Faith " the mean
whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten
in the Supper?" and do they only, who rightly,
worthily, and with faith receive the Sacrament,
partake of the Body and the Blood of Christ ?
No one will deny that these last also, in various
degrees, are grave questions, involving and connected
with chief truths of Christ's Holy Gospel, and in-
fluencing the daily life and practice of the members
of His Church.
And I must instance in two more particulars only.
39
First, what does the church of England now teach us
respecting the blessed virgin Mary ? Is it wrong
— I do not ask, is it right, but is it wrong — especi-
ally to invocate her, or is it not wrong ? did the
English church at the reformation change at all the
doctrines which she taught before the year 1540,
regarding Mary, and if so, where are we to find the
statement of that change, and to what extent does it
reach? ought the acceptance, to which we are
obliged, of the Catholic test "Mother of God" to
affect our thought and practice ; and, if so, in what
way ?
Second ; the doctrine of Justification : and, on
this, with respect to one particular alone. Namely ;
in what sense is it true " that we are justified by
faith only," and that it is a most wholesome doc-
trine, and very full of comfort? is it true in the
Roman sense ? or in the Lutheran ? or in neither ?
and — not delaying to enquire whether the doctrine
of justification by faith only, which seems to be put
forth in the homily " of salvation," is sound or
sufficient — I further ask, where are we to find " the
homily of justification ? "
I again repeat, that all these doctrines, last speci-
fied, are of very high importance : some of them
not less than the others, beforementioned, connected
with the sacraments : indeed, several of them are
also so connected. And, at any rate, upon the
vital and essential character of one, justification by
faith, protestants are agreed. Nevertheless, it is
quite at the option of every minister of our reformed
Church, to hold and to teach any one of them,
10
according to either of the two or (as the case may
he) twenty modes in which he may choose to fancy
it : in other words, every one of these great and
solemn doctrines, is an " open question ;" a mere
matter of " opinion."
Has the world ever before seen, — does there now
exist anywhere — another example of a religious
sect or community which does not take one side, or
the other, clearly and distinctly, upon at least a
very large proportion of the doctrines which we have
just been speaking of?
If it shall appear to some, that the examples given
are not all to be allowed to be " open questions," let
them take two only ; namely, the doctrines of Justifi-
cation and of the holy Eucharist. When they can
tell us what the teaching of the reformed church of
England is regarding these two, we will proceed
to enquire a little more accurately concerning the
rest.
We need not to be reminded that " open ques-
tions," and doctrines of the gospel left to be matters
" of opinion," are as objectionable to the evangelical
party in the church of England, as to ourselves. I
can quite understand how the late decision of the
judicial committee must ofi'end all who are sincere
and honest amongst them. It was good policy per-
haps (to use the language of the world) which
prompted them, whilst the cause continued, to speak
in a liberal and humble way of being suffered and
allowed to teach what they would : and w^hich in-
duced their advocate before the court of Arches to
say, that *' the arms of the church of England are
wide enough to embrace both parties." But the
41
recognition of such a principle is fatal to their old
condemnation of the doctrine of regeneration in the
sacrament of baptism, as being " a delusion of Sa-
tan;" " a soul-destroying heresy ;" and the like.
It is not, however, within my purpose to consider
the position of the evangelical, but of the high-church
party : of that party by whom the very notion of a
truth of the Christian Faith being an " open ques-
tion" is to be utterly disavowed ; who know nothing
about " matters of opinion" in the place of dog-
matic teaching upon essential doctrines, on which
our daily life and future salvation must depend.
Here, very probably, some one may object against
me my own language, published rather more than a
year ago. I allude to my book on the doctrine of
absolution. Let me quote it. " We declare there-
fore that the church of England now holds, teaches,
and insists upon, all things whether of belief or prac-
tice, which she held, taught, and insisted on, before
the year 1540, unless she has since that time, plain-
ly, openly, and dogmatically asserted the contrary.
This we declare in general. And, in particular, as
regards that most important question, the right in-
terpretation of the various services in our common
prayer book, we further add : that whatsoever we
find handed down from the earlier rituals of the
church of England, and neither limited nor extend-
ed in its meaning by any subsequent canon or ar-
ticle, must be understood to signify (upon the one
hand) fully and entirely all, and (on the other hand)
no more than it signified before the revision of the
ritual." p. 49.
When that passage was written, it was written
42
in out ire assurance that every word might be esta-
blished. I (U) not think so, now. And with what
ever pain I say this, it is not because my belief has
altered from acroptinfi^ the fixed principle that all
essential Christian truth is one, and eternal ; and
that every part of the Church Catholic is bound of
necessity to hold it whole and undefiled. Believing;,
as at that time I did, with the strongest confidence
and trust, that the church of England was a living
and sound portion of the One Holy Catholic Church,
I could not but assert, as being capable of undeniable
proof, her claims to teach authoritatively and un-
deniably every single doctrine of the Catholic Faith.
If I searched into her foundations, it was with no
shadow of fear lest they should be seen not to be
resting on the Rock, but much rather, in the un-
doubting hope that the more she was tested and
examined, the more triumphantly she would declare
herself to be Divine.
If the end of long enquiry and consideration has
resulted in disappointed hope, and what seems to be
evidence of the fallacy of former expectations ; if I
am compelled to own that the utmost we are justified
in declaring seems to be, — not that the church of
England now^ " holds and teaches" &;c., but — that
the church of England now suffers and permits to
be held and taught : and again, as to the right in-
terpretation of the prayer book, not " must be un-
derstood," but, " 7na?/ be understood :" let none sup-
pose that I have lightly yielded up that ground upon
which, alone, a minister of the church of England,
as a minister of the Church Catholic, can stand
securely.
43
I would speak here one or two words more, upon
confirmation. It is remarkable that in the catechism,
to be learned of every child before confirmation,
there is not one word said concerning^ it. Neither
to tell us what it is, nor, what it is not. If we go to
the homilies, — not that their every sentence is of
authority or true — we find but little there. The
index of the late Oxford university edition has one
reference, under this head ; " Confirmation, not a
sacrament." As if the faith of the reformed English
church, about sacraments and sacramental grace,
consists of negations. Turning, however, to the
place, we read nothing which can give us any ex-
alted notion of its great benefit and necessity, but
rather otherwise.
And having spoken above of the acts done in
1662, it is remarkable (to say the least) that the
long preface and promise by the candidates were
then added. Until that time, with the exception of
some ceremonies, the office stood much as it had been
in the ancient books. And a very solemn, holy, ser-
vice it must have been. There was in it nothing
which could have led to the low and miserable
notion, now so prevalent, that candidates go to
" confirm themselves :" to make their promise, by
their own word of mouth ; to take on themselves —
as if unobliged before — the vows made for them, at
baptism. Alas ! we cannot wonder at the scandals
and irreverence so often shewn at confirmations.
Among all the things done by the English bishops
and convocations since the reformation, I know
nothing so unaccountable, as this addition made in
1662 to the office of confirmation. We are told
44
that the Savoy conference * most clearly proves
that the catholic doctrine of holy baptism, was then
intended — whatever might have been the case for
the precedino- Inindred years — to be at last declared
as exclusively the truth according to the teaching
of the church of England. Yet, at this very period,
for the first time in the history of any part of the
Christian Church, and of which no example can be
found in our ancient rituals, a new tone was given
to the office of confirmation : and something very
like an authoritative assent was made to the doctrine,
that the grace of baptism depends or is suspended
upon the personal faith and promise of the recipient,
* It is not to be forgotten that there were some long rubrics, in
the Prayer books of 1549, and the intermediate Books till 1662,
prefixed to the catechism and order of confirmation, in which there
are assertions of the propriety of persons ratifying in after life, the
promises made for them by others at their baptism. There can be
no doubt that all this is right, properly understood : and it scarcely
could be misunderstood, so long as this ratifying and " confirming"
of promises formed no part of the office; or, so long as there was
also to be found in the same rubrics, the following declaration of
the benefit of the holy ordinance itself. This declaration would
have corrected perhaps, in some measure, the effect of the promi-
nence given in 1662 to the renewal and ratification, in a very solemn
way, of the baptismal promises, if it had been suffered to remain.
But it was at that same time removed. " Forasmuch as confirma-
tion is ministered to them that be baptized, that, by imposition of
hands and prayer, they may receive strength and defence against
all temptations to sin, and the assaults of the world and the devil,
it is most meet to be ministered when children come to that age
that partly by the frailty of their own flesh, partly by the assaults
of the world and the devil, they begin to be in danger to fall into
sundry kinds of sin." Why have we not, now, this statement ? why
have we not something, at any rate, of the same kind ? is it too
dogmatic ? or, is it untrue and tending towards a superstitious re-
gard of confirmation?
45
and that confirmation is not a distinct gift of the
Holy Ghost, but the completion of the sacrament of
baptism. We know well that any sign even of
leaning to so unsound a doctrine, is entirely incom-
patible with a right and full acceptance of the truth
of baptismal regeneration. Far be it from me to say
that this addition to the office of confirmation posi-
tively contradicts the spirit of the replies made by
the bishops at the conference : but I do repeat that
it is an unaccountable and strange proceeding, sup-
posing— as for a long time we have supposed — that
they believed the teaching of the church of England
and of the church of Rome to be identical upon the
sacrament of baptism.*
Before I pass altogether from the subject of our
diff\3rences on essential doctrines of the Faith, it
must be observed, that there is an objection likely
enough to be urged by the evangelical party : name-
ly, that, so far as they are themselves concerned,
these difierences do not reach, in any degree, to the
* Not less unaccountable, perhaps — admitting the Catholic spirit
of the convocation and bishops of 1662, — is the restoration of the
very important statement about the Presence of our Blessed Lord
in the Eucharist. This, which first made its appearance in the se-
cond Book of king Edward, was rejected by queen Elizabeth in
1539, and might almost have been thought forgotten after an in-
terval of 100 years. Doubtless there are some verbal alterations
between the present rubric and that of 1552 : but this does not re-
move the difficulty of discovering the reason of its being replaced
at all, upon the principles which we are anxious to attribute to the
convocation of 1662. Would such a course be now recommended
or even consented to by the Anglo-catholic party of the present day ?
If this statement about the Real Presence had never been heard of,
since its brief existence in the Book of 1552, should we allow it to
be received once more, and from such a source ?
46
oxtoiit which has been above spoken of. Ft may be
so : nay, in fairness to themselves 1 must own, it is
so. The number and variety of opinions, in reality,
begin to exist, after the one characteristic barrier
has been passed, which divides the two great sec-
tions of our Church. As a whole, the evangelical
})arty are tolerably unanimous in their judgment
upon most of the questions above asserted to be
matters " of opinion ; " and they would decide rea-
dily upon conclusions distinctly denying the ancient
doctrine of the church of England, held and taught
before the reformation, on each and every one
of those questions. This is not unimportant : rather,
of material weight in such an enquiry as the present.
The fact is not to be lightly regarded, that, the two
great parties by wdiich the church of England is
divided having been distinguished, the further state
of conflict and difference of opinion, — scarcely less
miserable and fatal than the one great and funda-
mental difference, — is to be found chiefly, if not
entirely, amongst ourselves. It begins alas ! with
the attempt to bring back Catholic teaching and
Catholic faith into the reformed church of England,
and into agreement with her articles and prayer
book.
There is another point to which I had intended
to direct your attention ; namely, to the contradic-
tions which appear to exist between the course of
teaching which many of our party commonly adopt
and the 39 articles, together with an enquiry into
the kind of interpretation, and its admissibility, by
which such apparent contradictions are avoided.
It is, of course, in itself a relief openly to state our
47
mode of interpretation, and to leave to our rulers
to decide by legal proceedings, whether it is, or is
not, within the limits of our subscription. But I
shall now pass this by. Some two or three consi-
derations, however, which may be more briefly dis-
cussed, will come within my present purpose.
Scarcely a word need be said of the unbounded
( — really there is no other term — ) of the unbounded
variety of opinion upon essential and important
doctrines of the Faith, which exists among the clergy
and people of the English church. It is a fact,
notorious and undeniable : deplored as an evil by
the majority of us ; yet, regarded by not a few as a
thing which is to be approved of rather than other-
wise, and evidence that the reformation has given
freedom to tender consciences, or to the exercise
of a large and charitable liberality. Such a va-
riety of opinion must be a necessary consequence
of the numerous doctrines which careful considera-
tion will show us have been left "open" by our
Church.
It is very commonly urged that this is owing to
our bishops not having attempted, for the last hun-
dred years, to restrain their clergy, and to enforce
a greater unanimity of opinion and teaching ; in
short, to the want of discipline. Indeed it cannot
be said that the frequent complaints which lately
have been brought against our bishops, by persons
of both classes of opinion, are all unfounded and
untrue. I am not speaking of individuals whom we
know to be exceptions, but of the bishops as a body,
ruling over, guiding, caring for the Church, her
clergy, and her people. It is a very serious, and a
48
mournful subject : one which I am bound to notice,
tliounli it be in fewest possible words. Can we then
boldly defend the conduct of our bishops, during the
last twenty years? Would that we could answer con-
tinual complaints, by telling how they have neglected
the gathering of wealth, and refused to provide un-
duly for near relatives and children ; how they have
despised the luxuries or refinements of society, and
sought, instead, constant and familiar intercourse
with the clergy over whom they have been placed,
sometimes sharing the plain fare and resting in the
humble lodging of their poorer brethren, yet oftener
extending their own liberal hospitality to those who
would gratefully have received it, as a token of
sympathy, and kindness, and mutual regard, as
testifying an approval also of zeal and labour,
which could not, perhaps, be otherwise rewarded ;
how they have been themselves examples to their
dioceses in the practice of a holy and self-denying
life ; how, by their diligent and avowed observance
of religious rules, as to daily prayer, fasting, and
the like, they have led others onwards to obey, by
the shewing forth of their own obedience ; how they
have endeavoured, so far as they could, to carry
out the system and to establish the authority of the
rubrics and orders of the Church ; how they have
given their support to those who have taught (and
taught without running into extremes) catholic doc-
trine, and recommended catholic duties ; how, on
the other hand, they have refused their support to
all who have leaned to the vagueness of puritan doc-
trine, and to the laxity of puritan piety. Would —
I repeat it — that we might thus have spoken ; but
49
it may not be ; yet, I must say, it is not quite just
to charge our bishops, either of the last century or
this, with entire responsibility for the state of con-
fusion now existing; it is not quite just to accuse
them of having caused it, solely by their neglect of
the proper exercise of ecclesiastical discipline.
If it be true — and I repeat that it is true — that
the English reformation has advisedly and delibe-
rately left " open" all those doctrines which have
been ^ecified, and other doctrines besides those, it
is, impossible, from the very nature of the case, but
that as wide a variety of opinion should inevitably
follow. It may, or it may not, be right that a
church should have one faith ; but it is certain that
there is not, and probably cannot be, one faith in
the reformed church of England.
Nor is it to be forgotten that, taken together, the
power of the supreme court of appeal, and the
number of Christian truths which are allowed to
be matters of opinion, increase the force of the
objections which, under any circumstances, must
lie against either the one or the other, separately,
of these two great difficulties. They play into one
another. If the Eng-lish reformation had left us a
clear and distinct form of religious teaching ; if it
had decidedly explained what the doctrine of the
sacraments, or of the eucharist, &c. really is ; if it
had not aimed at including, if possible, persons of
opposite opinions ; if its principle had not been to
leave every man to the exercise of his private judge-
ment upon the inspired word of God and the three
creeds ; then it would not have been so completely
within the jurisdiction of the royal supremacy, to
D
50
(letermine these questions to be no longer " open,"
as they happen from time to time to be brought
forward in appeal.
For I am ready to admit that the ecclesiastical
court first, and afterwards the court of appeal,
whatever its constitution may be, if called upon to
do so, might possibly decide some one or two of
the particular doctrines above mentioned, not to be
" open" doctrines. Even this seems doubtful : but I
am not at all in doubt, — very far from it indoed, —
that if at any time such one or more doctrines be
ruled and defined, it will not be according to the
earlier and catholic teaching of our church, but of
the reformers, foreign and English, of the sixteenth
century.
Now, as far as our party is concerned, this is a
solemn and weighty consideration. You may think,
perhaps, that I am overstating the matter ; and at
the first view, it may seem to be so. But, carefully
read again that list of doctrines ; then, with equal
care reflect upon the general tone of thought and
opinion shewn by writers of the seventeenth and
sixteenth centuries, and upon the value also which
must in justice be given to certain expressions in
our formularies ; and, lastly, if you are not con-
vinced, ask the opinion of an ecclesiastical lawyer
upon the question on which you may be in doubt.
In what has just been said, let me not be under-
stood as admitting the opinions of individuals, how^-
ever many in number or eminent in station, to be
in any sort conclusive, as to the acceptance or re-
jection of doctrine. In the late case of Mr. Gorham,
as it was argued before the court of Arches, you
51
will remember that his advocate relied — to what
extent it would be hard to say — upon the numerous
extracts which he produced from the works of Cran-
mer, Ridley, Latimer, Becon, Jewell, Whitgift, and
others. The court listened patiently, treated them
with the consideration they deserved, and decided
that they could not have any legitimate bearing upon
the particular case then at issue. All such extracts
were declared to be mere " opinions of individuals,"
and " private opinions which must not be taken as
authority." I have already made some remarks
upon this matter, in explaining how far it has in-
fluenced my own view^s on the subject. It is not
necessary now to dispute the correctness of the
principle laid down by the judge of the court of
Arches : but there are few, however, who would
not readily grant, that we must not run into the
other extreme, and despise contemporary interpre-
tation in all cases, and set aside writers (long looked
to and esteemed) as wholly to be disregarded. A
moment's thought will shew us, that it is not the
same thing to quote the authority of divines in fa-
vour of, and to quote it against, the apparent or
primary meaning of disputed parts of the formularies
of our Church. And, so far as my present purpose
is concerned, this is all which I desire to press upon
the reader's consideration.
But the question is, itself, of so much interest
and importance, that I should be sorry not to make
one or two more observations, in as few words as
may be.
In estimatino^ the value of the writino^s of Eliza-
bethan divines, we must remember one circum-
52
stance, which will incline us to listen to them more
favourably than wc otherwise might, when they seem
to speak in opposition to what wc believe to be Catho-
lic truth. I mean in those instances, only, where
the formularies themselves do not, seemingly, speak
also in the same language, or to the same purpose.
Even if w-e chose to admit that there is not one
single writer of the church of England, between the
years 1548 and 1600, who, upon some point or
other, does not appear to have held and advanced
heretical doctrine, — some, this doctrine ; some, that ;
some, one only ; some, many ; — it is not to be w^on-
dered at. It w^as an age of religious excitement
and alteration : all ancient teaching and practices
of the Church were undergoing an examination :
and every man, whatever his qualifications may
have been, brought forward and advocated the re-
ception of his own peculiar fancies. It by no means
follows because certain opinions were then published,
nay, for a time, pressed, that therefore their promo-
ters would have been obstinate in the continued as-
sertion of them. Probably some opinions, heretical
in themselves, were propounded at such a period,
rather to be enquired into and tested, than to be
accepted. Submission also to the authority of the
Church, (within the limits, whatsoever they can be
shewn to be, which the reformers approved of.) was
a duty which perhaps some w ould have acted upon
as well as talked of.
But it is further argued that they w^ere chief in
station who, during the reigns of Edward and Eliza-
beth, held w hat we believe to be heretical opinions :
bishops and archbishops, and professors of theology.
53
and men who would be, in virtue of their office, mem-
bers of convocation. Let it be so. Say, moreover,
that they were unanimous, upon any given doctrine
which the Church seems to have decided in an op-
posite way. It was an unanimity, after all, only of
opinions put forth as private men and individuals.
We cannot tell what modifications of statement
might have been made, what renunciations of erro-
neous teaching, what corrections, what retractations,
when these same men came together in a provincial
synod. This we know, that when the clergy of the
church of England did meet in convocation, various
private fancies were continually brought before her
notice, and as continually rejected, and condemned
by the rejection.
You will see that I am desirous to state this mat-
ter as favourably for our Church, as, in justice, I
feel one can. And I do believe that the firm and
humble piety, the catholic feeling and habit of
thought, the accurate knowledge of very solemn
questions of divinity, the practised acquaintance
with the noble and exact theology of the schools,
which in those days characterized, as a body, the
parochial clergy of England, often enabled the lower
house of convocation to see through the subtleties
by which men, from their studies, tried to mislead
the people. But it did not enable them also to with-
stand, on all occasions, the pressure to which they
were exposed : and it is probable that, — still hope-
ful under Divine Providence for the best, and unable
to foresee the sure consequences which we have learnt
from the experience of three hundred years, — they
were thankful even for so small a gain, as to have
54
succeeded in avoiding, as at that time it seemed,
the distinct rejection of essential truths. In short,
the opinions of individual writers are of importance,
and only tlien, when it can he shewn that the chiu'ch
of England has f;ivourably accepted the teaching
which was offered her ; or, that she has deliberately
removed statements in her earlier documents and
rituals, which, if suffered to remain, would have been
in opposition to such new teaching.
With regard to the acceptance and introduction
of changes in doctrinal statements and formularies,
which were consented to by the English convocation
in the sixteenth century, let me observe, that although
it is always right for men — so far as human foresight
will enable them — to judge of the fitness of proposed
acts by their probable tendencies, yet such a judge-
ment may be shewn to be ill-founded and mistaken,
by the results of after experience. Thus we may be,
nay, we must be, necessarily, better judges of the
true tendencies of the reformation, as an act, than
they could have been who were its contemporaries.
Because the consequences of the religious alterations
in that age have shewn themselves to be, surely
and certainly, in one direction, namely, to error of
all kinds and confusion, it is not true that there-
fore men are to be hastily condemned, in that at
the beginning of them they expected better things,
and at least hoped that no other consequence than
good could follow. The wise and prudent among
the clergy of England, during the reigns of Henry
and Edward, must have regarded the sweeping
changes then made in doctrine, worship, and prac-
55
tice, with hearts fainting in them for fear. To speak
of their having had confidence in the chief promoters
of those changes, would be to accuse them of putting
their trust in evil men, and not in God, and of a
deliberate belief that the Divine Blessing would
surely rest upon bloodshed, and sacrilege, and im-
piety, and hypocrisy, and sin. Nor could a reason-
able confidence exist, in the very nature of things,
at such a period of hasty reforjnation and almost
unchecked liberty and desire of change, except upon
some sufficient evidence that the Spirit of God di-
rected all that was being done, whatever might be
the character of the instruments He used. Can we
say that they received, during their own time, any
such evidence ? can we say that we have found it in
the years which have since gone by ? This, at least,
we know : that a claim to the assistance of the Holy
Ghost, which was put forth solemnly in one of the
most important documents of the reign of Edward
the sixth, was dropt silently as regarded any words,
and distinctly denied as regarded action, within the
space of four short years. And, taught by expe-
rience, together with a moderation to which we are
bound to give due praise, the reformed church of
England has never attempted to renew so high a
claim.
Let us return to the subject from which we have
diofressed. It beinof undenied, that there does exist
amongst us a vast variety of opinion, I would go on
to observe, that in its chief divisions, as regards the
clergy, it may be distinguished into three classes,
represented by the high-church, and by the low-
50
church, and by those (gfreater in luimhcr than we
niiolit like to acknowledge) who care very little or
nothino; about either the one party or the other.
N\ ith these last, — who are anxious only that mat-
ters \m\y be kept quiet, saying, that things did well
enough for their fathers and will continue their own
time, tliat really all this controversy is about words,
and is likelv to do no fjood but rather very much
harm, that it may tend — lamentable thought — even
to a separation of Church and State, and to a diffi-
culty about deaneries and canonries ; about tithes,
and houses, and glebe, and gardens, and things of
that sort ; — with these last, I say, we will not
trouble ourselves.
As to the second of the two classes, namely, the
low- church or evangelical, I have no hesitation
in making a candid avowal. Whatever my opinions
may have been some time ago, it is impossible for
me to conceal from myself that further enquiry has
convinced me, that the real spirit and intention of the
reformed church of England are shewn and carried
out and taught by the low- church part}^ as truly as
by ourselves : * I cannot bring myself to say " rather
than ourselves ;" but that at least they have amply
sufficient argument to oblis'e us to the acknowledofe-
ment, that the very utmost which we can claim for
our opinions is, that they are "open" to us. And I
would have you very seriously to consider whether we
ouo^ht to be satisfied with teachinc^and believingfessen-
tial doctrines of the Faith to be only probably true.
* Is there any doctrine on which the two parties differ, upon
which we should have had the slightest chance of obtaining- a sentence
against an evangelical clergyman, except the doctrine of Baptism ?
57
The steps by which this conclusion has been at
length forced upon me are similar to those of which
I have already spoken to you, with regard to the
doctrine of baptismal regeneration.
Remember, I am in no degree withdrawing from
the full extent of the assertion, repeated more than
once, that the church of England leaves " open" so
many deep and important doctrines. But what I now
say is, that, of the two extremes, the low-church
clergy no less than the high-church or Anglo-catholic
(as it is called) teach according to the spirit of the
English reformation. Or, put it in another way :
there are no greater difficulties in making their
system, taken as a whole, or parts of their system,
consistent with the formularies of the church of
England, than we find, by experience, to be in our
own.
It would be hard probably to specify any doctrine,
except regeneration in holy baptism, which, upon
the face of the formularies themselves, seems to con-
tradict their system. Some would suggest absolution
also : and to my mind it certainl}^ is an equal stum-
bling-block in their way with baptismal regenera-
tion : but then I have to recollect that my own
teaching upon this doctrine is accepted by very few
indeed, as the true interpretation of our forms of
absolution ; and that the usual explanation of them
which has been commonly advanced amongst us,
can scarcely be felt by any low-churchman to be
a difficulty at all. I mean that explanation which
does not insist upon the necessity of previous auri-
cular confession in order to the grace of the sacra-
ment of absolution : and which allows that the power
58
of retaining' and remitting sins is fully and properly
exercised, when the general forms of absolution are
read in the daily offices ; or, as some also put it,
Avlien the sacrament of baptism is administered.
8uch an explanation of the doctrine of absolution
cannot be a ditKculty in the way of an evangelical
clergyman ; and you know well that it is the expla-
nation commonly agreed upon and taught amongst
us. Moreover it admits, in a satisfactory w^ay, the
refusal to accept, and therefore gets rid of, the true
and catholic meaning of the awful commission, given
at ordination, " Whose sins thou dost forgive, etc J"
But, by way of illustration, take one or two ex-
amples. And these will perhaps show how certain
passages which are difficulties, and we feel them to
be such, in our own path, are, in the first and plainest
sense of the w^ords, in favour of the evangelical sys-
tem : and not only so, but we have nothing so plain
to produce against them. In short, these are pas-
sages which we " get out of" or explain away, whilst
tJteij take them in their simple and obvious meaning.
In these one or two examples you will observe that
I refer to the prayer-book, as well as the articles.
Take Justification : we hold and teach that a jus-
tified man is really so : that he is not merely called,
and reputed to be, righteous, but that he actually is
so. The opposite party deny this : and they readily
appeal to the first opening of the morning and
evening prayer, where this verse of the 143rd ps.
is appointed to be read : " Enter not into judgement
with Thy servant, O Loud ; for in Thy sight shall
no man living be justified." And then they may
turn to the 1 1th article ; " We are accounted righte-
59
ous before God." Of course, I am not speaking of
the right sense of this verse of the psalm, but of the
way in which a person holding unsound views of the
doctrine of justification may (as indeed men do) re-
fer to it, as having been selected in a marked way
by those who compiled our formularies, and as de-
claring the mind of the English church.
Again, Absolution. What answer is to be given
to those who assert that previous auricular confes-
sion is not essential to the reception of sacerdotal
absolution, and that private absolution is not the
highest and fittest exercise of the power of " the
keys," when we find it to be thus declared in the
exhortation before the daily prayers ; "We ought
at all times humbly to acknowledge our sins be-
fore God ; yet ought we most cJiiefly so to do,
when we assemble and meet together, &c."? Now,
if there is any truth in the catholic doctrine of
the sacrament of absolution, it is quite certain,
that we ought not " most chiefly " to acknow-
ledge our sins before God, when we assemble for
public prayer. Let it be remembered also, that this
assertion is immediately followed by the performance
of the thing spoken of : namely, a solemn general
acknowledgement of sins : and, moreover, that this
declaration was first made by the church of Eng-
land, at the very time when she asserted sacramental
absolution not to be of necessity, and therefore re-
moved also the necessity of auricular confession.
Then, again, the articles might be referred to, and
in them we find it to be distinctly said that " penance
[poenitentia or absolution] is not to be counted for
a sacrament of the Gospel, but has grown of the
GO
corrii])t following of the apostles." I can only add
upon tliis, that if absolution, after auricular confes-
sion, be not " a sacrament of the Gospel," it is a
most fearful playing with hoi}' things ; and a blas-
phemy, botli to utter and to listen to, to say, " I
absolve thee from all thy sins."
Once more, the blessed Eucharist. An evan-
gelical clergyman teaches his people that this sacra-
ment is a sacrifice only in an improper and secon-
dary sense : a sacrifice, in short, only of prayer and
praise. Or, he might go on to say, a sacrifice or
very solemn dedication of ourselves to Almighty
God. And, that it is a sacrifice in no sense other
than this. Nor has he any hesitation in pointing
out more than one plain passage of the liturgy in
which the Eucharist is so spoken of; and, from the
fact of its being so spoken of, he concludes, and
with great reason, that it is nothing more. For, it
must be remembered that our liturgy as w^ell as
our other services and ofiices are not new forms,
in the sense of being the first things of their kind.
But, on the contrary, they superseded and occupy
the place of other services w^hich were declared to
be superstitious and erroneous in doctrine. There-
fore if the earlier liturgy contained, as it did con-
tain, words and passages distinctly admitting and
asserting- the catholic truth of the Eucharistic sacri-
fice, which words have been carefully excluded from
our present service, it may be most forcibly urged
that with the words there was rejected also the doc-
trine which they contained. Let me remind you
that I am not saying that the mere omission of
words which were in the ancient liturgy does, in
I
61
itself and alone, prove the rejection of the doctrine,
but that it looks that way, to say the least of it, in
common fairness of interpretation. And we do
certainly require a somewhat plain statement else-
where, of a contrary kind, to counterbalance the
effect of the omission. Where are we to find such
a statement of the continued recog^nition by the
church of England of the Catholic doctrine of the
Sacrifice in the Eucharist ?
The passages which have been alluded to are
these ; both occurring in the prayer in which alone,
as our best ritualists agree, the sacrifice — whatso-
ever it may be — is in strictness offered. And in
them we find the Eucharist styled a " sacrifice of
praise and thanksgiving :" and the offering to be
" ourselves, our souls and bodies, as a reasonable,
holy, and lively sacrifice." Very different indeed
was the Offerino- and the Sacrifice of which the an-
cient liturgy spoke. Add, as before, to this, the
declaration on the same subject in the 31st article.
" The sacrifices of masses, in the which it was com-
monly said, that the priest did offer Christ for the
quick and the dead — were blasphemous fables, and
dangerous deceits." Again I remind you, that I am
very far from saying now that the catholic doctrine
is certainly denied and repudiated in this article :
for I have for many years taught (and, as you know,
have lately published in a sermon) that in the bless-
ed Eucharist the Body and the Blood of our Lord
are truly offered as a propitiatory sacrifice for the
living and the dead. But I repeat, that they are,
on the one hand, a difficulty to be " got out of;"
and, upon the other, they serve strongly to confirm
(i2
tlio low and heretical notion that there is no actual,
real, sacrifice at all.
Another mysterious and solemn truth connected
uith the holy Eucharist, is that which is commonly
termed the Real Presence. We need not now dis-
cuss whether this is a right or wTong term ; the doc-
trine which is intended by it is quite sufficiently
understood for our present purpose ; namely, that
independently of the faith and worthiness, or of the
unbelief and unworthiness, of the recipient, our
Blessed Lord is Present upon the altar, after the
^vords of consecration, under the appearance of
bread and wine ; and that His Body and His Blood
are given to every one, worthy or unworthy, who
kneels down and offers to receive Them. Is this,
or is it not, the teaching which is conveyed by such
passages as these ? " The benefit is great, if with
a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive
that holy Sacrament ; for then we spiritually eat
the Flesh of Christ, and drink His Blood." Again,
at the delivery of the Sacrament to each communi-
cant ; " Take and eat this in remembrance that
Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in Thy heart
by faith with thanksgiving." Again, the affirma-
tion, if it may be so called, at the end of the litur-
gy : that " the sacramental bread and wine remain
still in their very natural substances :" not merel}'^
" in their substances," nor "in their natural" sub-
stances, but " in their very natural substances."
An accumulation of strong assertions, which w^e
have been often assured do not necessarily exclude
the catholic doctrine of the Real Presence, but
which, in their plainest and obvious meaning, do
63
support the low view, held and insisted on by so
many of our clergy, that the Real Presence is a doc-
trine not approved by the church of England, and
not to be distinguished from the Romish error, as they
go on to say, of transubstantiation. Again, we are
referred to the catechism : and it is scarcely to be
disputed that the question and answer on this point
there, are against rather than for the catholic doc-
trine. " What is the inward part or thing signi-
fied ? * The Body and Blood of Christ, which are
verily and indeed taken and received by the faith-
ful in the Lord's Supper." Still, to all appearance,
making the reality of the Presence to depend upon
the faith of the recipient. At the risk of weary re-
petition, let me once more say, that of course this
place of the catechism does not assert that the
Body and Blood of Christ are not verily and indeed
taken by all : and if there were in other places of
our formularies any thing even approaching to a
statement of the reality of the Presence of our
Blessed Lord in the consecrated bread and wine,
independently of any qualifications or dispositions
* The learned reader is doubtless acquainted with the theologi-
cal distinction between the sacramentum and the res sacramenti.
But it is not, in any way, according to rny present purpose to enter
into this subject. Scholastic distinctions, excellent as they are,
are of value only in enabling us to show that the words of our for-
mularies are not necessarily to be taken in the " evangelical " sense :
that is, that our formularies are drawn up with such subtlety and
acuteness, as to admit either the high-church or the low-church in-
terpretation : sometimes leaning apparently to the one, sometimes
to the other : but, as I have said above, on several main points their
tendency generally and as a whole seems, at first sight, to favour
the last.
64
in tlio soul of tlic receiver, wc might be able to
show at once and distinctly that these passages in
the liturgy and catechism cannot justly mean what
they arc usually brought forward to prove. In order
to find this, we are obliged to turn to the articles :
remembering, however, beforehand, that it is for us
to show, in a way which shall commend itself to the
apprehension of common, simple, and unlearned
minds, the distinction which exists between the doc-
trines of the Real Presence andof Transubstantiation.
For "Transubstantiation," according to the 28th ar-
ticle, " is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture."
As to our present search, the same article declares,
that " the Bread which we break is a partaking of
the Body of Christ, and the Cup of Blessing is a
partaking of the Blood of Christ to such as rightly,
worthily, and with faith, receive the same." And,
as if almost it were to shut out all further controversy
upon the matter — not, of course, that it does so shut
it out — a few lines below it is said that " the mean
whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten
in the Supper is Faith."* Surely if the article
* I have heard both clergy and laity of the church of England, —
and that, within the last twelve months, — declare that they accept
and believe all Christian truth, as it is explained in the decrees and
canons of the council of Trent. With regard to such a statement
by any of our laity, it is curious, to say the least of it : and, proba-
bly, was never made by any one who had read and understood the
Tridentine canons. But as to clergymen, ignorance cannot be sup-
posed : and for them, bound as they are by subscription to our for-
mularies, thus to speak, has always seemed to me amongst the
greatest of all achievements of human intellect. Subtle as we know
the mind of man to be, and wide its range, I cannot but confess that
G5
chiefly meant " received and eaten beneficially/,'' it
mioht have said so : the addition of that one w^ord
o
would not have proved and established the accep-
tance of the truth for which we contend, but at any
rate it would have removed almost all the force of
the argument against us : and we are bound not to
forget that the word " beneficially," or some word
equivalent, is not in the article.
So much then, for the present, on the point of the
general apparent agreement of the formularies of
the church of England, in their first and obvious
meaning, with the teaching; of those who differ from
us, rather than with our own.
Connected with this, there is another consideration
which, for sometime, has pressed heavily and painfully
upon me. As a fact, the evangelical party, plainly,
openly, and fully, declare their opinions upon the
doctrines which they contend the church of England
holds : they tell their people continually, what they
ought, as a matter of duty towards God and towards
the more I think of it, the more I am amazed at so wonderful an
example of its power and capability.
There are not, perhaps, many minds so large : I cannot tell.
But there have not been many Homers, Platos, or Isaac Newtons.
The sentence in the text above has reminded me of this remark-
able fact, which seems worth a passing observation in a note. Let
us take one question, concerning which, to the common run of
minds, the articles of the reformed church of England, and the ca-
nons of Trent, do seem to differ. The one asserts that, " The Body
of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an
heavenly and spiritual manner." The other has this language ;
" Sess. xiij. can. viij. If any one saith, that Christ, given in the Eu-
charist, is eaten spiritually only, and not also sacramentally and
really, let him be anathema."
E
66
themselves, both to believe and practise. Can it be
pretended that we, as a party, anxious to teach the
truth, are equally open, plain, and unreserved ? If
we are not so, is prudence, or economy, or the de-
sire to lead people gently and without rashly dis-
turbing them, or any other like reason, a sufficient
ground for our withholding large portions of catholic
truth ? Can any one chief doctrine or duty be re-
served by us, without blame or suspicion of dis-
honesty ? And it is not to be alleged, that only the
less important duties and doctrines are so reserved :
as if it would be an easy thing to distinguish and
draw a line of division between them. Besides, that
which we are disputing about cannot be trivial and
unimportant ; if it were so, we rather ought, in
Christian charity, to acknowledge our agreement in
essentials and consent to give up the rest.
But we do reserve vital and essential truths ;
we often hesitate and fear to teach our people many
duties, not all necessary perhaps in every case or to
every person, but eminently practical, and sure to
encrease the growth of the inner, spiritual, life ; we
differ, in short, as widely from the evangelical party
in the manner and openness, as in the matter and
details, of our doctrine. Take, for example, the
doctrine of invocation of saints ; or, of prayers for
the dead; or, of justification by faith only ; or, of
the merit of good works ; or, of the necessity of re-
gular and obedient fasting ; or, of the reverence due
to the blessed virgin Mary ; or, of the propitiatory
sacrifice of the blessed Eucharist ; or, of the almost
necessity of auricular confession and absolution, in
order to the remission of mortal sin ; — and more
67
might be mentioned than these. Now, let me ask
you ; do we speak of these doctrines from our pul-
pits in the same manner, or to the same allowed ex-
tent, as we speak of them to one another, or think
of them in our closets ? Far from it : rather, when
we do speak of them at all, in the way of public,
ministerial, teaching, we use certain symbols and a
shibboleth of phrases, well enough understood by
the initiated few, but dark and meaningless to the
many. All this seems to me to be, day by day and
hour by hour, more and more hard to be reconciled
with the real spirit, mind, and purpose of the Eng-
lish reformation, and of the modern English church,
shown by the experience of 300 years. It does seem
to be, daily, more and more opposed to that single-
mindedness of purpose, that simplicity and truth-
fulness and openness of speech and action, which
the gospel of our Blessed Lord requires. We are,
indeed, to be " wise as serpents ;" but has our wis-
dom of the last few years, been justly within the ex-
ceptions of that law ? Let me not be understood as
if supposing that any motive, except prudence and
caution, has caused this reserve : but there are limits
beyond which Christian caution degenerates into de-
ceit, and an enemy might think that we could forget
that there are more texts than one of Holy Scrip-
ture which speak of persecution to be undergone,
for His sake, and for the Faith.
And if reserve in teaching carried to such an
extent be, as I conceive it to be, unjustifiable, it is
equally wrong, and to be condemned, in the practice
of those who listen to, and endeavour to obey, such
teaching. What can we think — when honestly we
68
hr'uYj; our minds to its consideration — what can wc
think, 1 say, of the moral evils which must attend
upon and t'oHow conduct and a rule of relii^ious life,
lull of shifts and compromises and evasions ? a rule
of life, based upon the acceptance of half one doctrine,
all the next, and none of the third ; upon the belief
entirely of another, but not daring to sa}' so ; upon
the constant practice, if possible, of this or that par-
ticular duty, but secretly, and fearful of bein^ "found
out ; " doing- it as if under the pretence of not doing
it ; if questioned, explaining it aw^ay, or answering
with some dubious answer ; creeping out of difficul-
ties ; anything, in a word, but sincere, straightfor-
ward, and true. It would really seem as if, instead
of being Catholics, — ^as we say w^e are — in a Chris-
tian land, we were living in the city of heathen
Rome, and forced to worship in the catacombs arid
dark places of the earth.
People often say, it is wrong to use such terms as
" the spirit of the reformed English church ;" or,
" its intention," " purpose," and the like. And is
it really so ? was the reformation nothing ? did it
eflFect nothing, change nothing, remove nothing ? is
the condemnation by the church of Rome of several
doctrines, — doctrines, accepted by the church of Eng-
land for the first time in the sixteenth century, — a
mere matter of words ; or, is there not rather some
essential difference, after all, in the " spirit" of the
teachincr of the two communions ? * and if there be a
* In the year 1714, a Form of admitting' converts from the church
of Rome was prepared for convocation, in which the " penitent" was
X'equired to renounce " the errors of the present Roman church,"
09
difference and distinction, does it, or does it not, tend,
with us, to the acceptance of the evangelical more
than of the high-church party? No doubt the re-
formed church of England claims to be a portion of
the Holy Catholic Church : and it has been common
for many of our own opinions, to add also the asser-
tion, that she rejects and condemns, as being out of
the Church Catholic, the reformed churches abroad,
Lutheran, Genevan, and others, together with the
kirk of Scotland or the dissenters at home. Upon
our principles — nay, on any consistent church prin-
ciple at all — such a corollary must follow. But there
is a strangeness in it : it commends itself, perhaps,
to our intellect, but not to the eye and ear ; nor, it
may be, to the heart and conscience. Is there so
great a difference between the reformed churches
abroad, or the presbyterians, or the better kinds of
dissent, — the Wesleyans, for example, — and our
own, as between the modern English church and
Rome ? Which does our Church most resemble, in
doctrine, ceremonies, and practice ? I say, prac-
tice, especially : for it is in practice, and in the
doing of common, daily, duties, that as time goes on
the tendencies of articles of faith, or of doctrine, are
declared. What then is commonly thought and
said — and the voice of the multitude is sometimes
riorht — when men are seen to imitate Roman forms
and ceremonies, or to advocate the observance of
forgotten rules of holy living, and self-denial ? *
and, if in holy orders, to reject all the 1 2 articles of the creed of
pope Pius IV. and to acknowledge the royal supremacy " as by law
established." Wilkins. concil. iv. 661.
* Illustrations are often useful : I srive the following remarks which
70
Aiiain ; it is usual for iiuuibcrs to unite with dis-
soiitiiig teachers for various religious purposes :
English clergymen will join with them in prayer, or
on the platform : English laity will frequently go to
listen to their preaching : — to church perhaps in the
mornino- ; to " meetino; " in the evening : and how
frecjuent is the remark of the lower classes ; "I have
no objection to come to church : " — now, whatever
of wrongness there may be about such conduct as
this, do we ever find any thing* in any degree like it
Avith reoard to the church of Rome ? Do the com-
mon people ever go, in the same manner, to Roman
Catholic chapels ? What should we say of them,
if they did ? And w ould they see the same simili-
tude of interior arrangement, or listen to sermons
which might equally well be preached in half the
parish churches of the land ?
•IP -TT Tt* ^ ^ *
It is now more than three months since the last
pages of this Letter were written. The rumours
a bishop — himself very far indeed from being what is called evan-
gelical in his opinions — made to a clergyman, who had been com-
plained of for adopting Roman practices : the particular objections
in this case were bowing at the gloria, and standing before the
altar. " I cannot understand," the bishop said, " how any man can
place himself, his affections, and sympathies, so totally in opposi-
tion to the authority which he has sworn to obey, and to the church
in which he ministers. When I look at the spirit and tone of the
church of England, I am at a loss to reconcile such a course of ac-
tion with my sense of what is right and true and straightforward."
Then going on to speak of a late secession to the church of Rome,
he continued ; " I hope it will be a lesson to those who use Roman
Catholic books of devotion : and I can only say, the sooner they
follow such an example the better : they are disloyal and dishonest
members of the church of England."
71
which, in January, became prevalent as to what the
decision of the judicial committee, in the case of
Mr. Gorham, would probably be, prevented my
going on with some further remarks, bearing on the
subject which we have been discussing. Nor can I
now bring myself to enter upon them.
On the other hand, although additions have been
made, I do not recall one sentence which had, at
that time, been written : if you think such a fact, as
a declaration that the truth of baptismal regenera-
tion is an open question in the church of England,
encreases the weight of the difficulties already spoken
of, I should be unwilling to dispute it.
Yet ; can it be possible that the formularies of
the reformed church of England do not teach the
doctrine of baptismal regeneration to be undeniably
a certain truth of the Christian Faith ? — again we
ask, do they not even teach that doctrine ? — what
a reformation !
And what have we to fall back upon ? where are
we ? can we rest upon " opinions" which demand of
us to believe either a great deal too much, or a
great deal too little? upon opinions, which — call
them by what name we will — will lead us most
surely, by a longer or a shorter road as men may
choose to tread it, either to Rome or infidelity.
Are not our minds very strangely confused ? are
we not labouring under doubts, which are doubts
only because we refuse to be resolved ? why do we
hesitate, and dispute and differ amongst ourselves,
but because we wish, and are determined (if it be
possible), not to "see things as they really are; be-
cause we are determined to reconcile things irrecon-
I'l
cilable, and to justil'y that which, upon our own
principles, is not to be justified?
Do not think that 1 would arjjue that one such
event, as this decision on the doctrine of holy bap-
tism, is suihcient to unchurch the church of Eng-
land ; it may, or it may not be ; but we need not
enter upon the enquiry, until we can show that it is
the sole difficulty with which, upon high-church
principles, we have to deal, and not one among
many. As a single circumstance, its extreme im-
portance arises from the fact, that regeneration in
holy baptism having been supposed to be more
clearly taught in our reformed Church, than any
Catholic truth whatsoever, (always excepting the
doctrine of the Blessed Trinity,) we now discover
that even this is, after all, equally with other essential
points of the Christian Faith, a matter of " opinion."
If the judgement of the court of Arches had been
affirmed, distinctly and unequivocally, we might
perhaps have hoped to have gone on to establish the
complete doctrine of sacramental grace. But there
can be no doubt, that with the permitted denial of
the unconditional efficacy of baptism in the case of
infants, the vital truth of sacramental grace is de-
clared also to be an " open question."
Besides, it is not necessarj^ to pretend to know
the dealings of Almighty God with men and nations
so accurately as to attempt to lay ones finger, in a
positive manner, upon special acts, and distinguish
the one or two or three, which should in themselves
avail to cut off any portion of the One Holy Catholic
Church. And, as regards the church of England
in particular, it may be, that the so-called reform a-
73
tion contained — perhaps unknown to the original
promoters of it— -poisonous seeds of evil, bringing in
certain though slow decay : and that either new
principles were then secretly established, which in
their development would most surely lead to the
destruction and confusion of essential truths, or old
principles were, in ignorance, given up, which the
gradual course of time would prove to be necessary,
because they lie at the very foundation of Christia-
nity itself. Or, once more, it may be with portions
of the Church Catholic as with the Vine, her mys-
terious type. " I am the Vine, ye are the branches,"
were the words of our Blessed Lord, speaking of
His Body, the Church, of which He is Himself the
Head. And we may well conceive how a branch,
full of sap and vigour, may be severed from the
stem, and yet for a period — longer or shorter — still
continue to put forth leaves, and perhaps the blos-
soms of fruit also ; nevertheless, cut off all the
while, and severed ; requiring time to die, but
death itself inevitable at last.
Let me, in this place, sum up briefly what has
been said, in the two Letters which I have written
to you.
1 . That the Crown, at the time of the Reformation,
and since that time, in virtue of the supremacy, has
claimed, and exercised, the right of finally deciding
ecclesiastical causes, involving doctrine ; — that
this right has been sanctioned, established, and
maintained by several statutes of the realm; and
both recognized and insisted on by canons and arti-
cles of the English Church, as accordant with the
true spirit of the Gospel ; — and that we, the clergy.
liavo promisod obodiencc to the due and legal exor-
cise of this same ri«xht.
2. That the decision in the particular cause of
Mr. Gorham against the bishop of Exeter explains,
to some extent, the dogmatic teaching of the church
of England upon the sacrament of holy baptism.
3. That the judgment of the Judicial Committee
in that cause is probably a correct and true judg-
ment ; and, if it be so, that the reformed church of
England did not, and at the present time does not,
exclusively require her clergy to teach, and her
people to believe, the unconditional efficacy of bap-
tism in the case of all infants.
4. That the two questions of the royal supremacy,
and of baptismal regeneration, are not the only dif-
ficulties in which we are involved.
5. That the reformed church of England, de-
liberately and advisedly, has left many essential
doctrines of the Christian Faith to be received as
" matters of opinion."
6. That the Evangelical clergy, as a party, no
less than the Anglican or high-church party, repre-
sent and carry out the spirit and the system of the
English reformation, as declared by contemporary
authorities, and sanctioned by the existing formu-
laries.
7. That our church for two hundred and thirty
years has been in full communion with the esta-
blished church of Ireland, in w^hich church heresy
has been synodically and formally received and
taught, and " the essential meaning of an article of
the Creed abandoned."
Upon these grounds it is, that I cannot, I dare
75
not, offer to give any support or aid to those, who
seem to be desirous of struggling for the church of
England, as if the doctrine of baptismal regeneration
were the sole question in dispute, or the only doc-
trine for which we must contend.*
There will be a ready answer, I suppose ; namely,
that we must wait ; that we must be patient ; that
we must see what the bishops are about to do. Wait
for the bishops of the church of England ! — and yet,
of one there are no words in which, if we are true-
hearted, and sincere, and earnest for the Truth, we
can express all that we ought to feel of gratitude, and
sympathy, and regard. He, alone, of all our bishops,
has endeavoured to vindicate the Catholic claims
which others have feebly spoken of; he, alone, has
dared to keep the promise which he made at his con-
* " We shall be very much mistaken, if we presume that we
may hold a single great doctrine of the Gospel, and be at liberty
to accept or not, as we think it agreeable, other doctrines which
rest upon precisely the same foundation, and which are supported
by the like kind of evidence. For example, it is almost idle to in-
sist upon the truth of regeneration in holy baptism, — unless we
are prepared to believe and to teach other truths of the one same
chain of doctrine, no less important, whether in regard of faith or
practice. As a matter of mere argument and speculation, rather
than of reality, we may perhaps accept this one and not that : may
(so to speak) pick and choose : far otherwise, however, if we re-
member what we are doing; if we can but bring ourselves to the
conviction that we are not disputing and enquiring about dialecti-
cal subtleties, but about the deep things of God ; about His deal-
ings with sinful and fallen man ; about eternity ; about the appli-
cation of the mystei'y of the Incarnation of the Son of God, God
himself, to the soul and body of each member of the church ; about
questions which, dispute as long as we will, are, in some one sense
and meaning, true, independent utterly of us, and only in that sense
are true."
7(>
SOI ration, " to drive away all erroneous and strange
doetrine contrary to God's Word :" he, alone, has
had sufficient trust in the power and reality of the
Christian Faith, to lahour in its defence, unsup-
ported, amidst calumny and opposition and reproach.
And no man living knows, as I in some small mea-
sure know, the labours and untiring patience, — the
anxious, wearing, toil, — which have been devoted to
the cause of the church of England, by him, who
looked for nothing, hoped for nothing, but the one,
single, glorious end of saving the Church, of which
he is the noblest ornament, from the stain and sin of
heresy. Oh ! may God ever be with him ; now,
w^hen, in his declining years, disappointments in the
past, and fears for time to come, are darkening round
us all ; now, when the weight and anger of the storm
seems gathering, before it bursts ; now, when the
hopes of the church of England are to be found, not
in hearts, faint and desponding as my own, but in
such as his, firm, unshaken still, and confident, and
bold. Again and again I pray, may all the gifts
and blessings of our Almighty Lord and Saviour be
upon him, evermore.
Yet, you will ask me, Do you think then that our
case is hopeless? I cannot tell. Fairly, openh',
and from my heart I have endeavoured to speak to
you upon a matter, not of temporal interests, but
concerning the salvation of our souls. I have
avoided argument as much as possible, for it is, at
present, a question of facts. If these have been
misstated, it has been only from the want of know-
ing better, and let them be set right. If there is
77
any remedy, solemnly and carefully let us ask,
Where is it to be found ?
It will not be found in evasions, and in temporizing,
and in compromise : it will not be found, — so that we
may think fearlessly of the Great Day in which we
must give account, — in attempts to make the church
of England last for our own time, careless of the de-
posit and the heritage which we are bound to deliver
onwards to our children, and our children's children.
A very few weeks will shew what course is likely to
be ours to follow : I have resigned my cure of souls,
because I have no doctrines and no Faith to teach,
as certainly the Faith and doctrines of the English
Church ; but, for a time at least, I leave not her
communion. Brief time, it may be : One Alone can
tell. But, if there really be truth and life in our
Church, if she indeed be that which she claims to
be, — a part of the Church Catholic — she will not
shrink from speaking plainly in such a day as is the
present, on all essential doctrines of the Faith, and
we shall know in what we are to trust.
It must be said, however reluctantly, that in such
a crisis as now exists, it is no true remedy to " call
together the corn-provincial bishops ; and to invite
them to declare what is the faith of the Church on
the articles impugned in the judgment " of the ju-
dicial committee in Mr. Gorham's cause : nor, ^' to
obtain from the said Episcopate, acting only in its
spiritual character, a re- affirmation of the doctrine
of Holy Baptism, impugned by the said sentence."
Far from it. Such a declaration or re-affirming
would not be law ; neither would it be the voice of
78
the church of Eiii^land. Besides, that which is re-
quired, even upon the subject of baptism, is not an
opinion or judgment of the bishops upon Mr. Gor-
ham's particular heresy ; but a new, full, and in-
telligible CANON OR ARTICLE OF FAITH, PUT FORTH
SYNODICALLY BY THE ClIURCH OF EnGLAND, plainlt/
declaring, as exclusively true, the entire Catkulic
doctrine of the sacrament of holy Baptism. I say,
without fear of contradiction by any man who holds
that doctrine, that nothing less than this can
BE SUFFICIENT.
Are we, w ho so hold and believe, prepared to de-
mand that a synod of the reformed church of Eng-
land shall re-accept and re -affirm the doctrine of
baptism, w hich was laid down and taught by the ar-
ticles agreed upon in the convocation of 1536, with
the exception of the few words relating to the future
state of infants dying unbaptised ? If it be true that
such an article is again necessary, in order to save
our Church from being formally and virtually com-
mitted to the avowed permission of erroneous teach-
ing, let us — in His Name Who is the Truth, the
Way, and the Life — determine now to ask for no-
thing less, for nothing short of it, for nothing which
shall in fact be different, whilst it seems to be the
same.
Let us recollect, also, that if now, roused by the
alarm and anxieties of the present time, we are in-
duced to use our energies and zeal in pursuing reme-
dies, which, how ever specious looking, will prove to
be shadows and deceptions, we are throwing away an
opportunity, available only if seized boldly and at
once.
79
This then and not less than this, let me repeat it,
is absolutely required, in order that the church of
England shall truly be said to have One Faith upon
the " One Baptism for the remission of sins."* If,
in the dispensations of the Most High, the time at
last has come, when the discords amongst us must be
settled, either the one way or the other, let us not,
playing with our peril, loosely talk about hopes, and
prospects ; and of life and zeal ; and of Catholic
minds and Catholic wishes ; but let us take, — if there
is hope indeed, — instantly, firmly, honestly, each
man, our side. We may regret that our own lot is
cast in troubled days : but it would be as wise to
deny that the sun shines in heaven, as refuse to ad-
mit the fact — grieve over it how we will — that there
are two great parties in the church of England : and
that the contest now begun must end — sooner or later
— in the victory of the one over the other. It is a
fearful particular in the many difficulties against
which ive are opposed, that " toleration," and " li-
berality," and " communions wide enough to embrace
both," and " open questions," and " matters of opi-
nion," are terms and cries which may not be uttered
by us, in the same breath with our defence of vital
doctrines of the One Catholic Faith. We must ever
remember, that any portion of the Church, which,
acting advisedly and deliberately, fails to teach ex-
* Even though for a season, we venture to pass by a determina-
tion upon other doctrines, no less fundamental, which have been
declared to be "matters of opinion " in our Church. Is not the ques-
tion of the royal supremacy beginning already to be put aside ? if
so, it is significant.
180
(feUi^iiVcly <v3g|entJalN(CJiristiaii trutlis^, ijLxsfwwV.v errx>r :
|»niul, I su})pi)6o, few among- us would be prepared to
say, that such deliberate pernii^siou. iii not fatal.
5)hiiQne thing we certainly have no I'ight to expect:
namely, an audible or visible interposition 0f Al-
niiohty God. It may, of course, be disputed whe-
ther this or that event be, or be not, a sign and
token by which we are to be guided. But we must
not wait to see His handwriting on the w^all, or to
hear His voice amongst us, as once ^f old time, say-
ing, " Let Us depart." Such ai-e not the usual
dealings of God with man.
And I W'Ould end as I began : with a repeated
expression of the sorrow and the pain with which I
have been writing to you. The Church of England !
— let me say one word more — if, for years past, we
have had one object, one hope, one source of com-
fort and encouragement, in labours and anxiety and
reproach, these have sprung from a most sure and
firm belief, in the reality of her claim to be within
the pale of the One Catholic Church. Where is
the assurance of such faith now ? It is a bitter,
bitter thought : alas ! how very different from the
thoughts of the years that are gone by : and some
— old and lono-loved friends — will call it wilful
and perverse, to speak as I have spoken.
No one would desire, from mere wilfulness, to
make the worst of any thing : yet, whilst we ac-
knowledge this, looking at our present position and
remembering the aweful nature of the subject which
we have been considering, there can be very few in-
deed, who would set a false face upon the truth, and
81
try to make the best of it, and prophesy smooth
words, because the people love to have it so, and
cry, Peace, where there is no peace.
May the Divine Blessing rest upon and guide
us all.
Ever, your affectionate friend,
W. M.
Vicarage, S. Mart) Church.
April 8th.
IS
i)di sbiJin dd biiB ,boO io iiiovbI bnu somg sdi ,enia liadi,
-iii i'.B Hoijinosinl .boO lo fiviftfiil) hna enoe yier ed) '^d
\/If)'.i(fit(.f.tm ffi:if> ^''A't*PiEfi^'03^^ naiblirio bnij gJnxili
.(\us\ 'j'\ > \n\B) ^Y<^9i9dJ bsvBa sd
9<3UBoyd bt>iwJ«iidy &d febi)9a iaiJLU ainsia'i iudT tSS«il
-91 ad ?btioi7 jsrrm nig doifNo,cl« fmil'^iio ni niod ad ^^^^^
-BS *jil.) /d Jwd I vliifinib'io I -xiof) -id touufia ibidw ; b'^JJirn
iXTEAfiT FfkOM THE ARTICLES OF 1536, RKEERftED
^iJiOffrJ YToU siu ft/i;v.)j ,,.",/ ^[{{f-Trqnaio jrioiiiin.':.
-Hnsislo buu ^msduu v-yiQ r,mo^[^ F,rtB.>.\f[ ({j-jsioioxo doidv/
1 he oacramenf of Baptism. . ^ ,
"^ .nojji^iDqo DUB
/li SECONDLY as touching the holy sadramdiit ttf Bap-
w3 tisni, we will that all bishops and preachers shall in-
struct and teach Oui* people committed by us unto their
spiritual charge, that they ought and must of necessity be-
lieve certainly all those things, which hath been always by
the whole consent iO^ the i iChttrcli approved, received, and
used in the sacrament of baptism ; that is to say, that the
•sacrament of baptism was instituted and ordained in the
J^Bw Testamenlj by ourSayiourJesu Christ, as a thing ne-
'cessary for the attaining of everlasting life, according to
the saying of Christ, iShi. quis renatus fuerit ex aqua et
Spiritu SaiietOf tionl potest, intrane <m'jteg7mm sanctorum;
that is to say, No man can enter into the kingdom of hea-
-Yen, excepiJie.be born again of water and the Holy Ghost.
Item, That it is offered unto all men, as well infants as
such as have the use of reason, that by baptism they shall
have remission of sins, and the grace and favour of God,
according to the saying of Christ, Qui crediderit et hapti-
zat us fuerit ySahus erit ; that is to say. Whosoever believ^th
aiid is baptfzed, shall be saved. . \
Item, That the promise of grace ana everlasting iTfe
"("which promise is adjoined unto this sacrament of baptism)
pertaineth not only unto such as have the use of reason,
but also to infants, innocents, and children ; and that they
Plight therefore and must needs be baptized : and that by
-iaiL;ui Uj yiil ^lii III jjuiibii .. . -'. ' i -^-■- --'-■'■ '-j^'i-!^ ii-iilr
83
the sacrament of baptism they do also obtain remission of
.their sins, the grace and favour of God, and be made there-
by the very sons and children of God. Insomuch as in-
fants and children dying in jbhear infancy shall undoubtedly
be saved thereby, (^and else not).
Item, That infants must needs be christened because
they be born in original sin, which sin must needs be re-
mitted ; which cannot be done [ordinarily] but by the sa-
crament of baptism, whereby they receive the Holy Ghost,
which exerciseth his grace and efficacy in them, and cleans-
eth and purifieth them from sin by His most secret virtue
and operation.
Item,Tha,t children of men. once baptized^ caii, nor ought
ever to be baptized agair^t.it^u! i .r -^w jfTs»ii f^j
!! Item, Tha,t they ought to refute and take all the ana-
•baptists' and the Pelagians' opinions contrary to the pre-
mises, and every other man's opinion agreeable unto the
t^aid anabaptists' or the Pelagians' opinions in this behalf,
for detestable heresies, and utterly to be condemned.
Item,T\mt men or children having the use of reason, and
willing and desiring to- be baptized, -^kWy by: theivirtde
of that holy sacrament, obtain the grace and remission of
all their sins, if they shall come thereunto perfectly and
truly repentant and contrite of all their sins before com-
mitted, and also perfectly and constantly confessing and
believing all the articles of our faith, according, as it was
mentioned in the first article/ft' baistto es ii i^riT ,$«'»^i
li£ti2 \3iii iiiciiqBd \(i ii^iii ^noaBoi 1o 98U 9rf.t OYijrf a/s rlDua
,boO lo iuoYs\ has 90B1^ sdi bfijs ,8nia "io nohBintst sverf
-hc^o6 ^3 V$'\aV>*sV»a'<3 mO ^tnhMJb.^lii^inxBS sdi oi ;^n'fc''033^
IF any man could have proved that the Irish Church is not
now answerable for, and bound by, the Dublin Articles
of 1615, except in so far as they are not distinctly contra-
dicted by the 39 articles of 1562, since received and ap-
proved, he would have been the late Dr. Elrington. No-
thing can be more convincing than the statements which
that writer has been forced to admit, in his life of archbi-
84
shop Usher : provino- that not only were the Irish articles
ofKilo/zo^ disowned and rejected as heretical by the con vo-
cation of ltJo4, but the teniper and opinions of the Irish
CImrcli at that time to be niich, that the chief persons who
advocated the reception of our 39 articles, did not dare to
permit even a discnssion upon the earlier Irish articles, lest
they mii^lit fail utterly in their attempt.
Bramhall then bishop of Derry was the most earnest and
clever among- those who endeavoured to induce the Irish con-
vocation to approve the English 39 articles. Bishop Vesey,
in his lite of Bramhall, gives us some information about
this : concerning which I would premise that the " blow to be
feared" was a repeated conjirmution of the articles of 1615.
The bishop of Deny, we are told, replied to an objection
against receiving tlie English articles, and which also urged
"that it was more material to conjirm and strengthen the arti-
cles of 1615," by arguing that such a course would bring a
sort of discredit upon the former synod, as if it required rali-
Jication : " by this prudent dresshig of the objection he avoid-
ed the blow he most feared, and therefore again earnestly
pressed the receiving of the Enghsh articles, which were at
last admitted." Khingtoii's life of Usher, p. 174. Some
further facts which Dr. Elrington mentions, show how
great the difficulty was, and that threats even were resorted
to, in order to prevent the Irish convocation from delibe-
rately reaffirming the articles of 1615, and obliging them
to be received, under pain of excommunication, p. 170;j.tJ
-ij; oiui AijiA; r)(ji!ii luo ayily/ ^:)llliJ oaj j/j 3-jnjyyy-'vj'ii.\\ iiG
ihiisdo sAi isAi svo'tq Jaum aw ijjrlt brir rfiiol juq s'lav/ 2&loi;J
sd bijjoda aisrii isAi 'b^biVjij^Pcjilll- dJ in bfiBl§a3 lo
HAD intended to nave taken the present opportunity of
making such replies as I could, to any objections and
arguments which had been published, during the last six
weeKS^ in. answer t^ my First Letter ^dntHe Royal Supre-
macy. But the fact Which I now have to remind the
reader of, is this ; namely, that there has been no ansicer
at all.
85
c^Manyfenlarks have been made upon the tone and tm^'
per of that Letter : upon the hne of argument being " offeti^'
sive," or "disloyal;" and its general treatment ^^ooM/>-i
" hard," " technical," " literal," and the hke. ^(oifrilD
But there has been nothing, which can be called an an-
swer, offered against the argument and facts produced. y"\
Some have said that I have ascribed to " the church X)©
Englandi,! on ithe strength of certain acts of parliament, the
most Eraistian doctrines possible." English Review. This
is untrue ; I referred, especially and chiefly, to the words
of the church of England, as we find them in her canons,
articles, and ordinal. And no man would have wished so to
misrepresent my statement, except one who knew that the
strength of the difficulty which is involvoJ in the question
of the royal supremacy, does not lie in acts of parliament
.and in claims made by the civil power, but in the repeated
acknowledgment and recognition of it which has been agreed
to and insisted on by the Church herself. i! ;•; > 'b t. m r
An old and dear friend has printed a Letteritrti the sub»-
ject : * of which I would say, that no one felt more deeply
than myself, both the great ability and truthfulness with
which it was written, and its spirit of unshaken loyalty and
devotion to the reformed English church. But, as it was
not intended to be an answer to the facts stated in my First
Letter, so it seemed to me to fail in meeting the real diffi-
culty of the case. Its point was, that even granting an am-
biguity to exist in our formularies, yet it might have been
an inadvertence at the time when our prayer book and ar-
ticles were put forth, and that we must prove that the church
of England at the reformation intendtd that there should be
such an ambiguity. But this is a line of argument which
must admit that which has been so energetically denied to
bear upon the question at issue, namely, the opinions of the
reformers and divines of the sixteenth century. And it is
to be remembered, that if such are to be referred to, as evi-
vsv'v.vr.i t>u HH'wf >\>\\ -vimll t.uii' .vImmum; — ■ >iiill u\ .To jybiiy'l'
* A Letter, &c. by the Rev. M. W. Mayow. .Us Jjj
baptisrA, s6 they must eduatly be appeaiea lo upon tne doc-
tnnes, for exam))le, of the eucnanst and sacraniLMital grace.
In sliort It is uiakinjr use of an aroument, wisely, and lony;
1- . J L xi "V'?'ii w ■■• i' ■"!? ■'•'-*'* ^"-^ ^^ J^"^^''^ '/I'Ji;oI.9
repudiated by the hioh-church party. r ir
1 cannot refraui from citmgone passage from this Letter.
Mr. Mayow says; " Let me be well understood. If such
ambiguity of language "be intentional on the part of the
church ; if she can be proved to have desired in drawing up
her articles and sei'vices to admit two interpretations on
baptismal regeneration : if it be lier view and plan to include
two such opposite parties within her as those represented
by Mr. Gorham and the bishop of Exeter, by such am-
biguous, and therefore comprehensive language, I most fully
adbiit she stands convicted of unpalliated heresy both in
form and matter." p. 9. Instead of baptismal regeneration-
in the above sentence, put the Euc?iarist. or, Just ijication.
''"There is one other pamphlet on wjiich J. n^ust say a word
oi'two. TNIore than it deserves for its own saTce, but because
of the importance which some, who have not been able to
i^^nij* anything better,' Jijive pretended to give to.^it.^ *1 mjeaq
a'publi cation on '''The present crisis in the church of JEng-r
land, by W. I. Irons, B.D. vicar of Brompton."
* 'iVIn trb'tis endeat^dtifs'tb'shbvv that the Royal Supre-
macy was equally exercised before as well as since the re-
formation : and he tells us of various interferences on the
part of the Cf own t'etween' the conquest and the sixteenth
c^ritury. Of these it must suffice to say, that not one of
them bears in the slightest degree upon the true difficulty
of our position hbvv. Not one of them is a true example
of any claim made by the Civil Power finally to determine
spiritual causes involving doctrine, together with evidence,
or anything in the remotest way like evidence, of consent
given 'to such a claim by the ancient church of England.
Instances of persecution, and injustice, and violence, some
of Mr. Irons's cases are ; but they are instances of nothing
more : in shorty thejr serve to confirm the novelty =bf thie
nr^t powers vested bjr ovii^Churph jn :t^^,^C|^TO ,,^9^
It tiie learned writer had even taken time to give us rpfer-r
ences to his own authorities, it might possibly have been
sufficient also to have enabled him to see a little more
clearly what is the real question in dispute.
Mr, Irons mentions, however, the Constitutions of Cla-
i;endoij. I would not pass by these altogether, because of
the reference which, soine other writers have also lately
made to them. , , ,
^ The 8th of these constitutions is that which is supposed
to bear upon the present power to determine finally eccle-
siastical causes, claimed by the Crown. As printed by
Mr. Irons it reads thus: "That all appeals in spiritual
causes [the italics are Mr. Irons' s] should be carried from
ihe archdeacon to the bishop, from the bishop to the pri-
ihate, from him to the king, and should be carried no fur-
ther without the king's consent," This seems to have
been taken from Hume's history, (vol. i, p. 351) and, with
deference to Mr. Irons's further researches, there is nothing
in the original constitution which answers to the transla-
tion " appeals in spiritual causes." The words " in spiri-
tual causes," are interpolated, and Mr., Irons's italics had
better not have been ventured up9% ^^f^yd I ,Y/ yd Mai
For, on the contrary, there is an epistle of Gilbert Foliot,
at that time bishop of London, and of the king's party
against the archbishop of Canterbury, vvhjch explain^ .ta
us in what sense we are to understand the word " appeals,"
as meant and intended by the king. The bishop is writing^
to the pope, Alexander the third. "In appellationibus,^i^,|;,
antiqua regni sui constitutione id sibi vindicat honoris et
qneris, ut ob civilem causam nullus clericorum regni sui
ejusdem regni fines exeat, nisi an ipsius authoritate et man-
dato jus suum obtinere queat, experiendo cognoscat. Quod
si nee sic obtinuerit, ad excellentiani vestram, ipso in nullo
reclamante, cum volet quilibet appellabit. In quo si juri
vel honori vestro praejudicatur in allquo, id se totius eccle-
siae regni sui consilio correcturum in proxiniQ. j,urante Do^
3(13 iS" iii3V0£i aas inIULiOO o- aviya ^^.ixo ,3iO<ic; Tfi ,, uiuui
1?^
88
•
niino, pollicetur." Epist. S. T/ioma Cantuar. xxxviij. p. 60.
So that the caus<^ wJiich.are spoken of in the constitutions
of Clarendon, according to the intention of Henry tlie se-
cond himself, are civil causes, and not ecclesiastical ; a dis-
tinction which, as m6st pfco^le will agrcie, carries with it a
difference.
Wliether Mr. Ifons will acknowledge thi§, is,, ,to m»
mind, somewhat doubtful. Because he is prepared to hol|
and (I suppose) believe, that " the spirit of the [English J
Reformation was altogether hostile to the royal supremacy ;
and even when yielding to it;, it was able at length i to imo^
dify it." p. 19. I cannot consent to discuss a very serious
question, agitating men's minds to an extent unknown and
unfelt for generations, when it is presented to us in so
strange a disgalsy.' -'^^ f^i^^^v U,iimiii iwo Ji, .oi^uo;
hsiisoQi 97J5rf oi Loqorf bjsd I .gfnoa }o aiuo \tii
\o hoR iQTgQi •noAi "io noiagaiqzo srfi msifi mo'i\
ym ab'iBwoi s^nifas'i ^Ibnril bms biBgai Ijsfroeisq
ixB aiAiin ^9719091 oi b9iBqo'iq ion. &bw I Jjj3 .119?
hj5d ffoirfw noiiuIos9i ^aiwoUol edi ,8bijswi9iljs *ruoil
/^ignoiifariBq 9inBa 9flj lo ^fiij99m js i& b9iqobfi ii99rf
\m ;t8oni sAi "io sao ^\ii83Y edi bsiufiiaaoo bed oifv
I9dra9ni9i I i£di fljs lo b9bfl9;t;tB '^lauoigm
-89V 9d.l oi bgifioinumraoa gnivjsd IfgisBM .iM "
-noM flo "^li^iaiat aid ii-giaot oi noiinsini aid \'ii *'
jsdm b9n§i3i9bfiu 9d.t \o daiw sdi si ii ^ixoa vab **
bijjoda 9d jjsdi J9i^9i q99b ii9di 889*iqz9 oi aia&iid *'
ijsdt gnhgbianoo bnjs j nobBnim*i9J9b aidi oi 9moo**
oi n9^a>BM ,iM b9noiaj39oo afid doidir aoiiaeisp edi ^*
-i£9 ^beiiies: '(lifinft n99d iton a&d qeis aidi sAsi*^
oa gaiob ig^gb ot t;taB9l is <fliid i89jjp9i oi ^{Iia9n "
".jn9a9iq 9di 'lo') ''
89
.00 .q .yivxxx .•<'BM^KlkO ssmoiVI .?> .i^sqJi ".luiaoilloq ^onim
8noiijjii;tanoD .9*^ *H3^^j'>*vi^^(^)'i-pi^'f '% tffiUBO oili isdi o8
-92 srfi Y'i"9li i'J iiounomi om 'i^ g.aiBiooofe ^nobnaiisIO *io
-aib B • Ijjoiiajsresloos ioK has ^saauso livb 31b jibamirf bnoo
s ii dim aahiBo TO THE READERw as ^rioiiiw noiioni*
.srnvsvj^ib
IT will be seen that I haV6 spoken iiftHe'MiiV
■ , h n ! rn
ing Letter, of my having already tendere(| my
resignation of my benefice. An utterly unexpected
circumstance has occurred, which has delayed my
resignation;^ ""■'-■'■'-''-'■ "■''^'"_''-' '^"'""■' ' .'"^"^
Yesterday ,^"t'he'^ ^flij f ^ expfameti- To^' ifly parish-
ioners, at our annual vestry, the obligation, which
seemed to lie upon me, of immediately resigning
my cure of souls. I had hoped to have received
from them the expression of their regret and of
personal regard and kindly feelings towards my-
self. But I was not prepared to receive, within an
hour afterwards, the following resolution which had
been adopted at a meeting of the same parishioners,
who had constituted the vestry, one of the most nu-
merously attended of all that I remember.
" Mr. Maskell having communicated to the Ves-
" try his intention to resign his ministry on Mon-
" day next, it is the wish of the undersigned inha-
" bitants to express their deep regret that he should
"come to this determination ; and considering that
" the question which has occasioned Mr. Maskell to
" take this step has not been finally settled, ear-
" nestly to request him, at least, to defer doing so
" for the present."
G
90
This is not tho place for me to state more than
that, in deference to such an expression both of
opinion and of desire, on the part of those to whom I
am especially bomid, by every tie of duty, next after
God and His Chm-ch, it does seem right that I
should delay my resignation for a few days, at least ;
in order that my parishioners might be better able
to judge, after a consideration of this Letter itself,
of the weight and sufficiency of the reasons by which
I am influenced. I would not have them think,
that I had failed to give the best consideration in
my power to their opinion and wishes upon the
right course which, under existing circumstances,
ought to be taken by their vicar : much more, w hen
they have spoken in a way so solemn and so very
seriously entitled to the gravest thought and de-
liberation.
It ought, perhaps, to be added, that besides the
above, two other resolutions of the same meeting
w^ere also sent to me, bearing on and supporting, in
a manner the most kind to myself, the opinion and
wish already stated.
W. M.
First Simday after Easter.
PRINTED BY C. WHITTINGHAM, CHISWICK.
IN HE,!. J,4X.MmT.I^I^L,
' " DUTY OF HER MEMBERS:
fisrfi QVRff loft bluow I .bsoifojjfini rnu i
if fioqu sedaiv/ hrrB fiofniqo lisii* oi *iov;i^.
• --rnooTb '-^'^ - tp^-- ^--^v 98^uoo
- oa hap. rrrrrnJop op^^^^,j,^„ ,j^'i,^9>foq3
DISTRICT CHAPEL OF THE HOLY TRINITY, ROEHAMPTON,
^ ^o grtoi.lijf'^o-i 'isfjjo oiii ,07(.:d:^
FOURTH SUNDAY IN LENT, MARCH 10, 1850,
' -. '-if.:; «o ^iTJTC^id ^f^m ot Inos odi; '^ r-v^
BY THE ,b&j£ia ^bjeailji
REV. G. E. BIBER, LL.D.
PERPETUAL CURATE OF ROEHAMPTO.N.
LONDON:
FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON,
ST. Paul's church yard, and waterlog place.
1850.
" The Bishop. Will you be ready, with all faithful diligence, to
banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary
to God's Word . . . ?
'* Answer. I will, the Lord being my helper.
" The Bishop. Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and Work
of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the
Imposition of our hands. . . . And be thou a faithful Dispenser of
the Word of God, and of His holy Sacraments ; In the Name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
Form and Manner of Ordering of Priests.
SERMON,
THE CHURCH IN HER DAY OF TRIAL, AND THE DUTY
OF HER MEMBERS.
Rev. iii. 2, 3.
" Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are
ready to die : for I have not found thy works perfect before
God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard,
and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch,
I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what
hour I will come upon thee."
These words, my Christian Brethren, were addressed
of old to a Christian Church, — the Church in Sardis,- —
once the capital of the wealthy kingdom of Lydia,
where Croesus sat enthroned in all the pride of his
perishable riches and of his transient greatness, —
afterwards the seat of one of the principal Churches
of Asia, illustrious by her Bishops, illustrious above
all by the paternal oversight of the last surviving
Apostle, — and now, and for ages past, a miserable
cluster of huts, scarcely recognizable by the traveller,
destitute alike of worldly glory and of heavenly light, —
A 2
4 The Church in her Dai/ of Trial,
a beacon to other Churches, lest, after the example of
Sardis, they offend through unfaithfulness, lest they
be overtaken, as Sardis was, by the judgments of a
righteous and a jealous God.
Wliy, then, should these words be rehearsed in
your ears this day? Have they, perchance, any
special significance to us, to our Church, at this time ?
Is it possible that our Church may be in the critical
state which brought upon the Church in Sardis the
Apostolic admonition to " &e watchful, and strengthen
the things luhich remained, that were ready to die,'' —
to " remember how she had received and heard, to hold
fast and to repent?'' You will at once conjecture,
that it is not in the way of such general exhortation as
it is my ordinary duty to address to you, that I have
called your attention to the example of the Church in
Sardis ; but with a pointed reference to the peculiar
position in which our Church is placed, in consequence
of a judicial sentence pronounced in the course of the
past week, in a matter involving one of the most vital
doctrines of her faith. Let me then entreat you,
my Christian Brethren, to give to the words which it
will be my duty to speak to you this day, your fullest,
your most solemn attention. Let me recall, both to
my own mind and to yours, the fact that we are not
met together here as men, as human individuals,
entertaining, and free to entertain, their several
and various opinions ; but that we are met together
as members of Christ's Holy Catholic Church, pro-
fessing, as such, to hold His most holy truth ; — and
and the Duty of her Members. 5
acknowledging that as that truth is in itself One and
absolute, an everlasting rock, rising high above the
roaring waves and the fluctuating tides of human
opinion, — and as we are taught that truth, not indeed
without the aid of the outward Word of revelation,
and of other external appliances, yet substantially and
livingly by the inward teaching of God the Holy
Ghost, Who is One and invariable, not the author
of confusion and diversity of opinion, but the centre
and fountain of unity, it becomes us to approach the
contemplation of Divine truth at all times, and more
especially at the time set apart for instruction and
meditation in the public congi^egation, with profound
reverence, and under a deep sense of the responsibility
which attaches to its reception on the one hand, and,
on the other, to its rejection.
Let me first of all set before you, as briefly as may
be, those precise circumstances of our Church's posi-
tion at this moment, which render it incumbent upon
me to addi^ess you with more than usual solemnity, and
I need hardly add, under a tenfold weight of respon-
sibility,— such a weight as T should feel myself wholly
unable to sustain, but that I rest in humble faith
and hope upon the gracious assistance of the Holy
Ghost, knowing that our " sufiiciency is of God."
The blow, my Christian Brethren, which has long
been impending over our Church, which those more
discerning of the signs of the times have long antici-
pated, for which I have repeatedly called upon you to
prepare your minds, has at last been struck. The
6 The Church in hor Day of Trial,
secular power has at last put the finishing stroke to that
long series of encroachments upon the spiritual cha-
racter and the inalienable rights of the Church, which
has called foi-th such frecjuent and loud notes of alarm
from the watchmen of our Zion. The question is now
no longer merely whether it be seemly and right that
a Legislature composed not only of members, but in a
large proportion of open and avowed enemies, of the
Church, should be permitted to usurp the functions of
a Church legislature, and to regulate the internal
administration of the Church's system. The question
is now no longer merely whether it be seemly and
right that a political Ministry, which in its official
capacity has no Church character, and offers no gua-
rantee to the Church for the soundness or even the
friendliness of its plans and measures, should be per-
mitted to usurp that Supremacy of government over
the Church, which, by the constitution of our Church,
is conceded to the Sovereign of these realms upon the
ground of a personal fellowship in the faith, and in
reliance upon engagements of the most solemn nature
bound by the Coronation Oath upon the personal
conscience of the Sovereign. The question is now no
longer merely whether it be seemly and right that in
the exercise of that usurped Supremacy the political
Ministiy should be permitted to thrust into the chief
offices of the Church its own favourites and partisans,
having regard in its selection to the promise which the
antecedents of its nominees may hold out, that they
will not be more urgent in putting forward, nor more
firm in maintaining, the distinctive principles of the
and the Duty of her Members. 7
Church, than may well consist with the indifFerentism
of the age, and its spirit of expediency. The question
is now no longer merely whether in the training of her
little ones the Church shall be subjected to the inter-
ference and superior control of a secular authority,
which rests its hope of the social amelioration of
mankind upon a general system of intellectual and
moral culture, and regards distinctive reUgious tenets
with dislike and with suspicion, as elements of discord.
Weighty as all these questions are, heavily as the
burden of them has long pressed upon the consciences
of those who are mindful of the Divine origin, the
Divine authority, the Divine commission, and the
Divine purpose of the Church, — yet are they one and
all light as a feather in comparison with the question
which has now at length been brought to a point, —
the question, namely, whether a lay tribunal, deriving
its authority from the temporal power, recognizing
human law as its supreme code, and legal technicalities
as the rule of its decisions, — a tribunal destitute by its
constitution of all spiritual character, and having no
promise of the special guidance of God the Holy
Ghost in its deliberations, — in one word, a State tri-
bunal, and not a Church tribunal, shall be recognized
by the Church as having " authority in controversies
of faith;" power to determine by its decree to what
extent a Minister, a publicly-authorized teacher of the
Church, may be permitted to make void by evasions
the doctrine which he is under a solemn obligation to
teach ; and to what extent his brother Ministers, yea,
and his very Bishop and Chief Pastor, shall be bound
8 The Church in her Day of Trial,
to tolerate, nay, to endorse, his deviations from the
true doctrine of the Church, as lawful and perfectly
admissible variations of individual opinion.
In the exercise of the j)o\vcr and authority so claimed
by a State tribunal void of all spiritual character, —
whose component members may be sound and well-
affected members of the Church, or may be adherents
of hostile sects, and gainsayers of her doctrine, — a
sentence has been pronounced, which declares that the
efficacy of the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, — in the
case of infants incapable of offering any wilful obstruc-
tion to the operation of Divine grace in their souls, —
as the instrument, ordained thereto by Christ Himself,
of their spiritual regeneration, — is an open question ; —
in other words, that the Sacrament of Baptism is not,
what our Articles' declare it to be, "a sure witness"
and " effectual sign" of " Regeneration or new Birth ;"
but is an outward form and ceremony, of problematic
efficacy, w^hich may or may not be accompanied — even
in those in whom no personal obstruction of unworthy
reception can possibly exist^ — by the inward gift and
operation of that spiritual grace, for the conveyance of
which that Holy Sacrament was expressly ordained by
Christ Himself.
And here it is proper that you should take notice,
my Christian Brethren, that to leave the doctrine of
baptismal regeneration an open question, is virtually
to deny that doctrine. Forw^hat is that doctrine? It
affirms that, in the case of infants, the inward and
' Art. XXV. XXVIl.
and the Duty of her Members. 9
effectual grace of spiritual regeneration does invariably
accompany, and is always and infallibly conveyed by,
the external rite of baptism, by virtue of Christ's
promise and institution. The doctrine affirms that,
under certain conditions, within certain limitations,
a certain invisible, spiritual operation is sure to be
performed by God, whenever those commissioned by
Him shall perform a certain outward act prescribed by
God Himself for this very purpose. The doctrine
affirms this to be sure and certain — as our baptismal
office expresses it, " Doubt ye not, but earnestly be-
lieve:" to say that it is an open question, whether it
be sure and certain or not, is in fact to affirm that it is
uncertain ; — in other words, it is to deny that it is sure
and certain. To pronounce the doctrine of baptismal
regeneration an open question, is, therefore, virtually
to deny the doctrine of baptismal regeneration.
And further it is proper that you should take
notice, that the point to which this virtual denial
applies, is concerning a matter which of all things
ought to be esteemed most sure and certain among
men, — ^viz. the faithfulness of God, the faithfiilness of
Christ, to perform His own promise, to give per-
petual validity to His own word, to make His own
ordinance effectual for that end for which it was insti-
tuted by Himself. Our Lord Jesus Christ declared,
that no man can enter into the Kingdom of God, ex-
cept he be " regenerated, or born again, born of water
and of the Spirit ^" Our Lord Jesus Christ gave a
* John iii. 3. 5.
10 The Church in her Day of Trinl,
commission to His Apostles, which its very terms prove
to be in force " unto the end of the world \" to baptize
all nations, and to baptize them " in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ^ ;"
and He accompanied this command with this promise,
" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
world ^" Can it, then, be an open question, can it be
considered as problematic, whether — no impediment in
the individual obstructing the intention and operation of
God — Christ be, indeed, by the Holy Ghost, present
with the Minister baptizing ; whether, consequently, the
Baptism, performed by virtue of Christ's commission,
be a regeneration of the Spirit, as well as of water ;
whether the invocation of the Ever-blessed Trinity be
an appeal certain to meet with a gracious answer from
above ; — or whether Christ may be supposed to be,
though present at some times, at other times absent
fi-om the performance of His own appointed ordinance ;
and consequently, whether Baptism may be supposed,
though effectual at some times, to be at other times
ineffectual, a mere dipping in, or sprinkling with, water,
and not a regeneration or new birth of water and of the
Spirit ; and the invocation of the awful name of the
Holy Trinity, though at some times a successful call
upon God to bless His own appointed ordinance by His
presence and operation, yet at other times an empty
phrase, dying away barren in the air upon which it is
wafted along?
This, then, my Christian Brethren, is our temble
' Matt, xxviii. 20. ' Ibid. v. 19. ' Ibid. v. 20.
and the Duty of her Members. 1 1
position, that we are called upon, by an authority
which is, indeed, an authority much to be respected,
and humbly to be obeyed by us, in matters touching our
being and estate in this present world ; but which, in
matters of faith, in matters concerning the Word and
Sacraments is, and by an express reservation of our
Church is declared to be, no authority at all, — that by
such an authority, usurping that which does not
belong to it, we are called upon to allow, that He
Who is "faithful and true," is not to be certainly
relied upon — that He Who is "the truth, the way,
and the life," has declared Baptism to be the Sacra-
ment of regeneration, while in reality He meant it to
remain in numberless cases a dead and empty form, —
has pointed out a way of coming unto Himself, which
He intended nevertheless to bar against many even
of those little children whom He so especially and so
lovingly invited to " come unto Him ^" when brought
to Him by that way, — has held out a promise of the
gift of a new life, declared by Himself indispensable to
men's salvation, which promise He nevertheless had
no intention to fulfil in countless instances in which it
should be claimed in the very manner appointed bv
Himself In other words, we are called upon to make
our choice between doubting Christ Himself, and
declaring those to be in error who doubt Him ; between
betraying our allegiance to Christ Himself, and
refusing to recognize an usurped authority over the
Church of Christ.
« Mark X. 14 — 16.
\2 Tlie Church in hrr Day of Trial,
This, I say, is our position, — not mine only, nor that
of my brethren in the Ministry only, but your position,
the position of every man who, having been called to
the fellowship of Christ's gi'ace, and to the member-
ship of His Church, must, in the present posture of
affairs, make his option between a faithful confession
and a faithless dereliction, amounting to a virtual
denial, of a truth essential to the integrity of "the
faith once delivered to the Saints." This is our
position, the position of our Church as a body, and of
us her members as individuals.
Is there, then, not a cause, Brethren, for the Apo-
stolic admonition, " Be watchful, and strengthen the
things which remain, that are ready to die .?" — " Be
watchful," — do not take the matter easy, — do not
suffer yourselves to be beguiled by that insidious sug-
gestion of Satan, that it is more consonant to the
wall of Christ to live on in a state of peaceful neu-
trality, of calm indifference to the conflict between
truth and error, than to identify ourselves with the
maintenance of truth against error, and to take a part
in what is, with an implied censure, termed a fierce
controversy upon abstruse theological questions. " Be
watchful,'' Brethren, lest by holding cheap a truth so
intimately connected with the very fountain and be-
ginning of your life in Christ, you make your own
salvation cheap, and your souls, the souls to redeem
which Christ died, valueless in the sight of a God
Who "is not mocked." "Be watchful,'' I say, ''and
strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to
die."
and the Duty of her Members. 13
Mark these expressions. They are very remarkable,
singularly applicable to our case. " The things which
remain."" What have we still remaining? We have
remaining the sublime language of faith in our Bap-
tismal Office — the fervent prayer that the child may be
" baptized with water and the Holy Ghost," — that it
may please God to " wash him and sanctify him with
the Holy Ghost," — that he may " receive remission of
his sins by spiritual regeneration," — that it may please
God to " give unto him His Holy Spirit, that he may
be born again," — that "the new man maybe raised
up in him," — that " all things belonging to the Spirit
may hve and grow in him," — that the water may be
"sanctified to the mystical washing away of sin, and
the child to be baptized therein may receive the fulness
of God's grace;" — the encouraging exhortation,
"Doubt ye not, but earnestly believe ;" — the autho-
ritative declaration, " Seeing that this child is rege-
nerate ;" — the hearty thanksgiving, for that " it hath
pleased God to regenerate this infant with His Holy
Spirit." — All this remains to us at present, with much
more of a like character, in other parts of the Prayer
Book, coming in aid of the blessed confidence of faith
which runs through the Baptismal Office ; but all this,
remember, which is so full of edification and godly
comfort to the devout and believing soul, is " ready to
die,'' ready to become a dead letter, yea, a "letter
which killeth," if the view be admitted, that the doc-
trine on which this language of faith is founded, is an
open doctrine ; — if it be open to any Minister of our
Church, with the sanction of public authority, to
14 77/^ Church in her Dai/ of Trial,
artirin, that to pray as our Prayer Book prays, to ex-
hort as it exhorts, to declare as it declares, and to
give thanks as it gives thanks, is not an act of lively
faith, hut an act of deadly superstition, the fruit of a
" soul-destroying" error.
And, my Christian Brethren, not only the language
of faith remains to us in our Prayer Book, but, by the
grace of God, in many, in very many hearts, there
remains the faith whereof that language is the expres-
sion,— but that faith also, I would have you remember,
is " ready to die," if you attempt to lodge by the side
of it in your souls the base compromise that it is as
open to a man to disbelieve as to believe the miracle
of spiritual regeneration wrought according to God's
appointment by the Holy Ghost in the Sacrament of
Holy Baptism.
Again, my Christian Brethren, among the things
that " remain,'' but are " ready to die" in our Church,
— alas ! they are many, far too many to be here enu-
merated,— ^there is this to be specially home in mind
on the present occasion — the existence in our Church
of an authority to which it truly does belong to pro-
nounce in controversies of faith. That authority is
the Synod of the Church, — her Convocation, as it is
technically termed, — gathered together, not merely by
Royal writ, in accordance with the constitution of
our National Church, but under the directing in-
fluence of God the Holy Ghost, in conformity with
Apostolic precedent and the custom of the Church
Catholic in all ages. Though gathered together from
time to time, our Synod, which, as representing the
and the Duty of her Members. 15
Church^ at large, alone has " authority in controversies
of faith ^" has for one hundred and thirty years and
upwards been in a state more akin to death than to
life ; yet has it been preserved to us by a merciful
Providence, — for no other end, we can scarcely fail to
believe, than that it should step in upon such an
emergency as the present, and vindicate at once the
integrity of the Church's faith, and the independence of
the revealed truth of God from all merely human and
secular jurisdiction. But if, upon such an emergency
as this, — which points to the revival of the synodal
action of the Church as to the only remedy and defence
against the intrusion of the secular power into the
province of the spiritualty, that is, the ministration
of the Word and Sacraments, — we should be found
supine, unwilUng to exert ourselves with a view to
obtain such revival, then, in that case, there is too
much reason to fear that the synodal authority of the
Church, which has so long been " ready to die," will
actually and finally die out, leaving the Church herself
at no distant day to become extinct, to sink down to
the miserable condition of a Church whose candle-
stick has been removed. With regard to all these
things then, my Christian Brethren, — with regard to
the glowing language of faith in our Prayer Book, —
with regard to the faith, correspondent to that lan-
guage, in our hearts, — with regard to countless other
treasures, which the mercy of God has still spared
to us in the very midst of our spiritual poverty, and
' Canon 139. "* Art. XX.
16 The Church in her Daij of Trial ,
especially with regard to our Church Synod, — I charge
you, in the language of the Apostle: "Be watchful,
and strengthen the things which remain, that are readif
to die.''
Let us then, I say, strengthen the effect of our
liturgical language by protesting solemnly against the
attempt to make that language void by the pitiful
expedient of declaring its meaning to be an open
question ; — let us strengthen the faith in the spiritual
efficacy of Holy Baptism in our hearts by living
neai'er and closer to the realities of the inward
spiritual life, and thus learning, by blessed experience,
that the spiritual life is a thing of heaven, not depen-
dent on the conflicting and fluctuating opinions of
men, — let us strengthen our Church in her synodal
action, by refusing to acquiesce in the decision of a
tribunal which is incompetent to pronounce upon
questions of faith, and by incessantly appealing to those
in authority for the revival, and intervention in this
case, of that Synodal Assembly of the Church which
alone has or can have ' ' authority in controversies of
faith."
There is another point of the ApostoHc admonition
to the Church in Sardis, which we shall do well to note,
as particularly applicable to our present case : " Re-
member how thou hast received, and heard, and holdfast,
and repent.'" The truth of which our Church is at
this moment in danger of being robbed by the indirect
denial of it, which lurks insidiously under the proposal
to make it an open question, is not an invention of our
and the Duty of her Members. 17
own time ; it is not a conclusion of yesterday, the
result of a progressive investigation of the sense of
Holy Scripture ; — it is a truth which we have " received
and heard," which has been handed down to us from
the remotest antiquity, which comes to us endorsed by
the Catholic consent of ages. From the inspired lan-
guage of the Apostle St. Paul, who describes Baptism
as the " laver of regeneration ^" down to the lan-
guage of our Church in the latest corporate expression
of her doctrine, in her public formularies, — not merely
in her public Offices, but in her doctrinal formularies,
her Articles and her Catechism, — there is an uninter-
rupted chain of testimony to the great Catholic truth,
that regeneration, the begetting in us of a new nature,
after the likeness, and of the substance, of Christ, is
as certainly the inward spiritual grace of the Sacrament
of Baptism — wherever there is not, in the person re-
ceiving Baptism, an individual hindrance to the opera-
tion of Divine grace — as the Communion of the Body
and Blood of Christ is the inward and spiritual grace
of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
To adduce the individual proofs which might be
quoted in attestation of the constancy of this doctrine
in the Church, would be an endless task, for which
this is neither the place nor the time. For our present
purpose it is abundantly sufficient that we should be
enabled in the first place clearly to trace, as we have
done, the connexion between the use of water and the
grace of regeneration in Holy Baptism, in the language
' Titus iii. 5.
18 The Church in her Da;/ of Trial
ot" our blessed Lord Himself, and in the Apostolic
writings ; and that we should find the same connexion
distinctly set forth, as it is, in our Articles and Cate-
chism, as well as in the language of our Baptismal
Office. To the latter ample reference has already been
made. As regards our Articles, nothing can be plainer
than that our Church, after declaring both the Sacra-
ments to be " not only badges or tokens of Christian
men's profession, but rather certain sure witnesses, and
effectual signs of grace," — "by the which God doth
work invisibly in ws'," our Church goes on to define
more particularly the Sacrament of Baptism as the
"sign of our regeneration or new birth ^;" whence it
inevitably follows, according to the teaching of our
Church, that Baptism is the " sure witness " or
" effectual sign " of the grace of " regeneration or a
new birth ;" and that by Baptism " God doth work
invisibly in us" that " regeneration or new birth ;" — a
view which not only results from the fair and obvious
construction of the two Articles, the XXVth and
XXVIIth, taken together, but receives further con-
firmation from the singular circumstance that in the
IXth Article the Latin word which signifies " regene-
rated " {renatus), is rendered in the English Articles
by the term "baptized;" plainly showing, in spite of
all that has been said to the contrary, that the framers
of the Articles considered a baptized person to be, bv
the very fact of his Baptism, regenerated, and a regene-
rated person to have been brought into that blessed
state by being baptized.
' Art. XXV. ' Art. XXVII.
and the Duty of her Members. 19
The same doctrine is affirmed with the utmost clear-
ness and simplicity in the Catechism, which defines
Holy Baptism as consisting of two parts, the " outward
and visible sign," i. e. " water wherein the person is
baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Ghost ; and the inward and spiritual
grace," i. e. "a death unto sin, and a new birth unto
righteousness," with the explanatory addition, " for
being by nature born in sin, and the children of wrath,
we are hereby," i. e. by Baptism, " made the children
of grace."
These doctrinal statements, coupled with the lan-
guage of the Baptismal Office itself, on which we have
already dwelt, and further with the language of the
Office for Confirmation, in which the persons to be
confirmed are described as those whom God has
' ' vouchsafed to regenerate by water and the Holy
Ghost," can leave no doubt as to the intention of our
Church to affirm in the most distinct terms that ancient
Catholic and Scriptural truth, that Baptism is the
Sacrament, the "laver" of regeneration; — that the
effect of baptism (if not actually frustrated by personal
unfitness for the reception of it) is the spiritual regene-
ration of the person baptized ; and that he who would
obtain the grace of spiritual regeneration, must seek the
same in and through the Sacrament of Baptism. And
if it be clearly the intention of our Church to inculcate
that doctrine, then, as we have already seen, no lati-
tude of denial or evasion can be admitted, because,
to admit that latitude, to treat the doctrine as an open
question, is virtually to deny the doctrine.
B 2
20 The Church in her Dai/ of Trial,
If then, my Christian Brethren, this is what we have
" received and heard,'' — if this is what the Apostles
" received and heard " from our Blessed Lord, — what
the primitive Church " received and heard " from the
Apostles, — what our own Relbrmed Branch of the
Church Catholic ' ' received and heard ' ' from the
Catholic Church of former ages, ascending even to
primitive antiquity, — and what we ourselves have
" received and heard " by the constant teaching of our
own Church in her formularies, — it is clear that we are
bound by the Apostolic admonition in our text ; that
solemn obligation rests upon us to " Remember how
we have received and heard, and to hold fast, and
repent.''
" To holdfast, and to repent." To repent of the
lukewarmness wdth which we ourselves pprhaps have
formerly regarded this as well as other truths of the
Gospel, — to repent as a Church of the protracted
silence of her authoritative voice, and of the too great
uncertainty of the sound which for a long time past
has proceeded from the living trumpet of her doctrine.
To " repent" of past sins of omission, and to evince
the sincerity, the earnestness, of that repentance by
" holding fast that which we have received and heard,"
" the things which" we are on the very point of letting
slip, w^hich " remain" indeed, but are " ready to die."
And this brings us to the great practical question,
forced upon us by the position in which our Church is
now placed. How, as a Church, can we " hold fast"
the truth which is so seriously menaced ? what can we,
and, the Duty of her Members. 21
as individuals, do to counteract the fatal effect which
the decision pronounced by a State tribunal must have,
not only upon the doctrine, but upon the very being of
the Church, if acquiesced in by her ?
The difficulty of this question is immeasurably in-
creased, the painfulness of our position unspeakably
aggravated, by the fact, that not a few of those who
ought to be the guides and examples of the Church in
this great work of repentance and restoration to life
and efficiency, are actually to be found countenancing
the denial of that truth of which, by virtue of their
office, they are the constituted guardians. The most
distressing feature of the decision which has been pro-
nounced upon the Church's doctrine by a State
tribunal incompetent to adjudicate upon the question
which it undertook to determine, is the deplorable fact,
that the two highest Prelates of the Church acqui-
esced, not only in the assumed jurisdiction of the State
tribunal in a matter of faith and doctrine, but in the
non-natural and latitudinarian construction put by that
tribunal upon the Church's formularies of faith and
worship. The time, then, has arrived, when we are
forced to ask ourselves, whether our deference for the
venerable office of the Episcopate ought to be carried
to the extent of sacrificing God's truth ; whether
we are to consider ourselves bound to shape our faith
in accordance with the personal opinions of this or that
Prelate, when those opinions run counter to Holy Scrip-
ture, to the consent of the CathoUc Church in all ages,
and to the authoritative teaching of our Reformed
Branch of the CathoHc Church. It is a sore trial, my
22 The Church in her Day of Trial,
Christian Brethren, — a sore trial especially to those who
desire to be ever mindful of the Divine origin of the
Church, and of all her ordinances, offices, and ministra-
tions,— to feel ourselves constrained to protest against
the countenance given to unsound, to latitudinarian, to
heretical opinions in high places, even in the high places
of the Church herself. Yet even this trial, sore as it is,
is not to be to us a matter of mai'vel, or a ground of hesi-
tation. It is the common trial of all the critical periods
of the Church, of the periods in which great events are
preparing, of those periods especially, which precede
some mighty change in the aspect of God's dispensa-
tions. There is a singular analogy, in this respect,
between the liistory of the Jewish Church and that of
the Christian Church, which it will not be either unin-
teresting or unedifying for us to take account of at the
present juncture.
At the fu'st establishment of the Jewish Church,
her constitution was purely theocratic ; the Lord God
was her King ; she knew of no other. This was suc-
ceeded by the establishment of an earthly Royalty over
God's people, which, being of the same faith with the
Church, was permitted to exercise a Supremacy over
her. Under this form of Government the Church
continued for several centuries, and experienced many
vicissitudes of fortune, owing mainly to the deteriora-
tion of the character of the Church herself, involved
with the Monarchy in sin and unfaithfulness. The
result was, that the Jewish Church and nation was
^'isited with one sore judgment after another ; in the
and the Duty of her Members. 23
Church the voice of prophecy became gradually extinct,
and in the State the legitimate Monarchy was sup-
planted by an alien rule, which had no sympathy with
the Church, and no fellowship with her faith. While
under this alien domination, it was that the awful
spectacle was presented of the great body of the Priest-
hood, with the High Priests at their head, opposing
themselves against the truth of God, and betraying the
Lord of glory into the hands of a heathen Governor.
On comparing with this outline the fortunes of the
Christian Church, we shall tind that there is a marvel-
lous resemblance between the two. During the first
three centuries of her existence, the Christian Church
was a pure theocracy. No supremacy over her was
then known, but that of Christ and of His Vicegerent
upon earth, God the Holy Ghost. Presently the time
arrived, when the Church saw fit to place herself in
subordination to the civil magistrate, when she be-
came a State Church, when the Princes of the earth,
being of the same faith with her, obtained a share in
the administration of her affairs. From this time for-
ward, the Church became involved in much sin and
error, through her connexion with the State, the civil
power exercising over her a pernicious and corrupting
influence. Hence the progressive adulteration of the
faith during the middle ages, and the introduction into
the Church of numberless abuses, which not only
undermined her spiritual influence upon the minds of
men, but greatly impaired her inward spiritual strength.
Many and various were the chastisements which for
these corruptions of His truth and ordinance God in-
24 The Church in her Day of Trial,
Hicted from time to time upon the Church, and upon
the nations of Christendom. At an early period the
Church was rent asunder by a gi-eat schism, as the
king'dom of Israel had been after the death of its third
King, — some Churches perished altogether from the
face of the earth, while others fell into captivity to
infidel powers, and others again preserved their out-
ward existence in a state of spiritual death. Pursuing
the course of events further, as regards the history of
our own Branch of the Church Catholic, godly
Princes arose from time to time, who, like Hezekiah,
like Josiah of old, set themselves earnestly to reform
the Church, and to restore the purity of her worship,
— while other Princes gave countenance to idolatry,
and by their example encouraged wickedness of every
kind. At last a decisive step was taken for giving to
the idolatry of Rome, — which is to the religion of the
Reformed Catholic Church, what in Israel the worship
of Baal was to the worship of Jehovah, — a legal
standing in the land, and a share in its legislation and
government ; and this was soon followed by the fall
— -not nominally, but virtually, — of the Regal power.
The INIonarchy was brought into captivity under the
Democracy, which recognizes no Divine ordinance
either in Church or State ; and the many-headed
despot, himself without creed or faith, has lost no time
in setting his heel upon the Church of God. As in
Israel of old the Roman power interfered with the
office of the High Priesthood, claiming a supreme right
of appointment to it ; so the Democracy, represented
by the political Ministry, has claimed and enforced an
and the Duty of her Members. 25
absolute right of appointment to the Episcopal office,
denying the Church's right to institute any inquiry
whatever into the fitness of its nominees; — and it is a
remarkable feature in the aspect of the whole case,
that he who now occupies the most exalted station
in our Church — of whom personally I should be soiTy
to say aught unkind or disrespectful — was raised to
the Chief Office at the moment when this right of the
Church was actually in dispute between the Church
and the State, and entered upon his high and respon-
sible functions, under at least an implied under-
standing that he would waive the Church's right, and
so lend a helping hand in rivetting her chains. The
same hand is now again put forth to assist in the
attempt to override a Bishop of the Church, — through
the unlawful intrusion into the province of faith, of
the secular power, the power, let it be remembered,
as it now virtually is, of a creedless Democracy, — in
the exercise of his unquestionable duty to refuse insti-
tution to a Presbyter whom he has, in the exercise of
his spiritual authority, found and pronounced unsound
in the faith, — in the attempt to force upon the Church
at large a latitudinarian interpretation of her doctrine,
which amounts to a denial of one of the most vital
verities of the faith.
In order, however, fully to appreciate the nature
of the position in which the Church is placed, we
must revert for a moment to the consideration of
the truth, upon the maintenance of which on the one
side, and its denial on the other, the point at issue
between the Church and the State has been raised.
26 The Church In her Dai/ of Trial,
Ever since the glorious Gospel has imparted unto
mankind a knowledge of God's purpose for their
salvation in Christ Jesus ; and, as a necessary part of
that knowledge, a knowledge of the deep mystery of
His own Triune existence, it has been Satan's constant
endeavour, while permitting the outward framework
of the Chm'ch, and the outward letter of the Gospel
to stand, to nullify at the same time the benefit of
Christ's Word and Ordinance to mankind, by darken-
ing and subverting men's faith in the spiritual rea-
lities, of which the one is the record, and the other the
channel. Now it is very remarkable to observe the
singular correspondence between the course which
Satan pursued for this purpose in the early ages of
the Church, and the course he is now pursuing in
these her latter, — and, to all appearance, her last —
days ; his present mode of attack being an attempt to
subvert the belief of men in the subjective truth of
those same verities and mysteries of our faith, the
objective truth of which he endeavoured, though in
vain, to overthrow in the first ages ; only with this
difference, — that he has inverted the order of his
attack. The first sharp blow which Satan aimed at
the Church's faith, was directed against the Divinity
of our Blessed Lord, — the second great blow, against
the Godhead and Personality of the Holy Ghost,
To destroy men's faith in either of these great veri-
ties, was to overthrow the Gospel of Christ ; it might
continue in name and in sound, but its inner spiritual
life and reality was gone, if he had succeeded. By
the mercy of God, — by His protection stretched out
over His Church, Satan was then defeated ; and in
and the Duty of her Members. 27
the Catholic Creeds those two great verities were
enunciated with a distinctness of assertion which pre-
cluded all hope of their objective truth being success-
fully called in question.
Many have since been the devices of Satan to rob
men of the treasure of God's Light and Life, in the
face of these great verities, attested by Catholic consent
to the Church, and by the Church, of every successive
age. He now knows that the end is at hand, that
his time is short ; and accordingly he assails the Church
with increased fierceness and subtilty. He again as-
sails— only inverting the order of the attack — those
two cardinal verities ; but he assails them now, not in
the public confession of the Church, but in the indi-
vidual consciousness of her members. He has no ob-
jection, since he cannot hinder it, that the Church as
a body should confess the Godhead and Personality of
the Holy Ghost, provided he can make the individual
member of the Church an unbeliever in the personal
presence and indwelling of the Holy Ghost ; he has
no objection, since he cannot hinder it, that the Church
as a body should confess the incarnation of the Son of
God and the Godhead of Christ, provided he can
make the individual member of the Church an unbe-
liever in his own regeneration, in his own personal
fellowship of the Divine Nature. And observe, again,
the subtle course which Satan takes to beget this
personal, subjective unbelief touching the Holy Ghost
indwelling, touching Christ begotten, in us. As the
assaults upon the objective faith in the Godhead and
Personality of the Holy Ghost and the Divinity of
Christ were made under pretence of reverence for the
28 The Church in her Day of Trial,
person of the Deity, so are the present assaults made
under cover of hke reverence for the gi'ace of God in
the heart of man. Satan persuades men that it is
contrary to that deep and reverent estimation which
they ought to have for Divine gi'ace, to view that
gi-ace as tied to certain outward ordinances ; he
teaches men to despise the ordinances appointed
by God for the conveyance of the gift of the Holy
Ghost, for the conveyance of the gift of Regene-
ration ; that being the surest method to rob them
of those gifts, and to make the saving gi'ace of God
of none effect to their souls. Long and too suc-
cessfully has he discredited the belief in the reality
of the gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost, both
personal and ministerial, as conveyed by the Apostolic
ordinance of the imposition of hands with prayer.
He cared not if men believed in the Godhead and
Personality of the Holy Ghost, and in His influence
upon the Church and her members, in the abstract ;
his purpose was answered, if he could make the belief
in the bestowal of the gift of the Holy Ghost upon
each individual member and Minister of the Church,
at a particular time, by a special operation of God,
connected \\ith His own ordinance, an open question.
And what Satan has already accomplished to an extent
which it is fearful to contemplate, in regard to the
ordinance and the gift of the Holy Ghost, he is now
stri\ang to accomplish in regard to the Sacrament and
the gift of Regeneration. He cares not if men have a
beUef in the union of the Divine with the human nature in
Christ, and in a regeneration of man into the likeness
and fellowship of Christ, in the abstract ; his purpose
and the Duty of her Members. 29
is answered, if he can make the beHef in the bestowal
of the gift of Regeneration in the act of Baptism, by
a special operation of God, connected with His own
ordinance, an open question. He is willing that
Christ and the Holy Ghost should be confessed in
the Church, provided he can throw indistinctness, un-
certainty, and doubt upon the Holy Ghost indwelling,
upon Christ begotten, in the individual soul. Such is
Satan's device ; this the real object of the present
controversy and conflict touching the doctrine of
Baptismal Regeneration.
What we are asked therefore by Satan to do at
this moment, is no less than this, — to surrender our
subjective, our personal faith in the reality of Christ's
work in the soul of man, — to surrender it at the
bidding of a creedless Democracy, which has possessed
itself of the civil power of the State, and is determined
to use that power in the service of Satan for the
oppression, and, if it were possible, the destruction of
the Church of God.
Is it likely, my Christian Brethren, that at such a
time Christ makes no call upon us ? And if it is
certain that He does call upon us to stand by Him,
to fight under His banner, to contend for His truth, —
what is to be the mode and manner of our warfare ?
There are those, Brethren, who are urging upon
the Church evil counsels in this her hour of trial
and perplexity. There are those who invite her
members to desert from her standard altogether, to
enlist themselves under the banner of Rome, or under
the banner of Geneva. God forbid that I should give
30 The Church in hrr Dtnj of Trial,
you such counsel, or set you such an example. But
there are others, who, without going the length of
such extreme treachery, are nevertheless urging dan-
gerous counsels. Some clamom* for a separation of the
Church from the State ; others call for a secession
within the Church herself. Again I say, God forbid
that I should counsel you, or that I myself should
lend a helping hand, to either of those pernicious
courses. If there is to be a separation between Church
and State, it must be the act of the State, repudiating
connexion with a faithful Church, who will not surren-
der God's tnith to the wdll of the Democracy. If
there is to be a breach of communion within the
Church, it must be by a faithless Church casting out
her faithful witnesses ; patient endurance of such per-
secution must be their only strength, the Word
of God, firmly and fearlessly declared and maintained,
their only weapon of defence. To raise the standard
of sedition in the State, or of schism in the Church,
is not one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit of God, —
it is the fruit of the unchastened, the turbulent
spirit of man. Let us beware. Brethren, lest we
yield to the temptation of following our own spirit,
while fancying ourselves led by the Spirit of God. If
we be truly led by the Spirit, our position is exceed-
ingly simple, our course of action perfectly clear.
The enemies of God's tnith, — both its declared
enemies and its, no doubt, in many instances, uncon-
scious adversaries, — have on their side the arm of
flesh, the power of the world ; — we have on our side
the power of the Spirit. As they trust to their
strength, so let us trust to ours.
and the Duty of her Members. 31
Let us bear witness to the truth ; let us, — without
bitterness, without clamour, — but without fear, without
compromise, without any abatement, — declare, that to
pronounce the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration an
open question, is to deny the doctrine of Baptismal
Regeneration ; that to deny the doctrine of Baptismal
Regeneration, is heresy ; because it is the subversion
of the nature of a Sacrament, by putting asunder
its two essential parts, which Christ has joined
together, — the outward and visible sign, and the
inward and spiritual grace ; it is the denial of the
work of Christ in Christ's own appointed way in the
soul of man. Let us, upon every jfitting occasion,
— and occasions will not be wanting to any of us, —
declare this plainly and fearlessly, undismayed by the
array of great names and of high offices, whose weight
is invoked in the hearing of the undiscerning mul-
titude, for the purpose of overpowering the truth, —
undismayed by any exercise of worldly power which
the enemies of the truth may bring to bear against us.
They may, if it so please God, crush those who bear
witness to the truth ; — they never can crush the truth
itself. Against God's Church, and against His truth,
we have Christ's promise that the gates of Hell shall
not prevail.
With the help of God, my Christian Brethren, I
have now done my part, as far as the present exigency
requires it, to guard you against the adoption of rash
and false measures, and to show you what your alle-
giance to Christ requires of you in this emergency.
Whether this counsel, urged by others in their places,
shall prevail in the Church at large, — whether, under
32 The Church in her Daij of Trial, S(c.
the inriueneo of that counsel, the Church shall be
recalled to watchfulness, to repentance, to fidelity in
maintaining God's truth against Satan's device,— or
whether the canker of unfaithfulness has eaten too
deep into the vitals of our Church to admit of her
recoveiy, whether this once enlightened and glorious
Church of England be doomed to extinction, as was the
Church of Israel of old, as was the Church in Sardis,
— rests with Him Who " worketh all things after the
counsel of His own will." To Him, in humble and
fervent prayer, let us commit the cause of our Church,
— to Him, in humble and fervent prayer, let us commit
the keeping of our own souls, that in the general
unfaithfulness we may not be found unfaithful, — that
we may be enabled ourselves to remember, and, as
much as in us lies, to put the Church in mind of, the
Apostolic warning : '^ Be ivatchful, and strengthen the
things which remain, that are ready to die : for I have
not found thy works perfect before God. Remember
therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold
fast, and repent. If therefore thou shall not watch, I
will come on thee as a thief, and thou shall not know
what hour I ivill come upon thee."
Now unto Him that is able to keep us from falling,
and to present us faultless before the presence of His
glory Avith exceeding joy, to the only wise God our
Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power,
both now and ever. Amen.
THE END.
Uir.BERT & RiviNGTON, Printers, St. John's Square, London.
THE APPELLATE JURISDICTION OF THE CROWN
IN MATTERS SPIRITUAL.
f
A LETTER
TO THE RIGHT REVEREND
ASHUKST-TURNER,
LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER.
HENRY EDWARD MANNING, M.A.,
ARCHDEACON OF CHICHESTER.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET,
AND W. II. MASON, CHICHESTER.
1850.
PRINTED BV •Vr. CLOATES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
A LETTER,
Sfc. Sfc.
My Lord Bishop,
The kindness which, for so many years,
I have received at your hands assures me that I
shall obtain your Lordship's permission to lay before
you the convictions to which I have been irresistibly
impelled by the late appeal and by the judgment of the
Crown in the case of Gorham versus the Lord Bishop
of Exeter.
That I may do so with clearness and accuracy, it
will be necessary to state in the fewest words I can,
first, the principles on which we believe the Church
of England, as a portion of the Universal Church, to
be founded ; and next, the facts which have been
established in the course of the late proceedings. I
will then endeavour to show, that essential principles
of the Church have been thereby contravened.
I conceive, then, that the duty of submission to
the Spiritual Jurisdiction of the English Church is
founded upon the following principles : —
b2
( 4 )
1 . It is an article of our Baptismal Faith, that the
Church of Christ is a Divine Kingdom ; in this world,
but not of it ; governed by its Divine Head through
the Pastors whom He has lineally commissioned to
feed His flock ; that to His Church He entrusted
the custody of the Faith and Holy Sacraments ; or,
as we say, of doctrine and discipline — with full spiritual
power to administer and to rule in all things pertaining
to the salvation of souls, by His authority and in His
Name. For the perpetuity of the Church, and for
the preservation of the Truth, He has pledged His
own perpetual presence and the guidance of the Holy
Spirit.
From all which revealed promises an^ principles
of His divine kingdom, it follows that the Church, in
all things relating to the custody of doctrine and dis-
cipline, possesses a sole, supreme, and final power,
under the guidance of its Divine Head, and respon-
sible to Him only.
2. And, further, we believe that tiie Church in
England, as a member or province of this divine king-
dom, possesses, " in solidum" by inherence and partici-
pation in the whole Church, the inheritance of the
Divine Tradition of Faith, with a share in this full
and supreme custody of doctrine, and power of disci-
pline, partaking for support and perpetuity, in its
measure and sphere, the same guidance as the whole
Church at large, of which, by our Baptism, we have
been made members.
( 5 )
3. The Cliurcli iii England, then, being thus an
integral whole, possesses within itself the fountain of
doctrine and discipline, and has no need to go beyond
itself for succession, orders, mission, jurisdiction, and
the office to declare to its own members, in matters of
Faith, the intention of the Catholic Church. On
this ground alone the present relation of the Church
in England to the Church of the East and of the
West can be justified. We trust that the spiritual
organization of the Church, which, through Saxon,
Norman, and English periods of our history, has
united this great christian people, surviving through
all perils and mutilations, contains still within itself
the whole doctrine and discipline, the Faith 'and
Power descending from its Divine Head.
So far from exalting the insular position of the
Church in England into a normal state, we lament
the unhappy suspension of communion which divides
the visible Church of Christ. But we trust that
as, in the period of the great Western schism, the
Churches of Spain, France, Germany, and many
others were compelled to fall back within their own
limits, and to rest upon the full and integral power which
by succession they possessed for their own internal
government; so the Church in England has con-
tinued to be a perfect member of this Divine King-
dom, endowed with all that is of necessity to the valid
ministry of the Faith and Sacraments of Christ.
On these grounds our chief writers and canonists
( 6 )
have rested the defence of the English Church, and
it is of vital necessity that the principles of this defence
should not be violated.
4. By this we see at once what is the office and
relation of the Civil Power towards the Church at
large, and in England in particular, namely, to pro-
tect, uphold, confirm, and further this, its sole,
supreme, and final office, in all matters of doctrine and
discipline. The joint but independent action of the
spiritual and civil powers from our earliest history
may be traced through the succession of our Councils
and Parliaments — the King expressing and exercising
the sum of the Civil power, the Archbishop of the Spi-
ritual ;* of which joint action the celebrated preamble
of the 24th of Henry VIII., 12, is a recital and
proof.
5. The Royal Supremacy is, therefore, strictly and
simply a civil or temporal power over all persons and
causes in temporal things, and over Ecclesiastical per-
sons and causes in the temporal and civil accidents
attaching to them. It is in itself, in no sense, spiritual or
ecclesiastical — understanding the word ecclesiastical
to mean anything beyond a civil power accidentally
applied to ecclesiastical persons or causes.
To make this as clear as I can, I would further
add, that I know of no supremacy in ecclesi-
astical matters inherent in the civil power or prince,
but either (1.) such power as all princes. Christian or
* Stillingfleet, Ecclesiastical Cases, vol. ii., p. 91.
( 7 )
heathen, alike possess ; or, (2) such as has been
received by delegation from the Church itself.
As to the first or original prerogative, Constantine,
before his conversion, had as full a supremacy as after it;
Julian, after his apostacy, had no less.* The supre-
macy was simply a supreme dominion of power and
coercion by the civil sword.
As to the derived or delegated supremacy, it
amounts to no more than a supreme power over all
the forms and processes in which the coercive juris-
diction of the Church in christian states has been
clothed. It is neither legislative, nor judicial by way
of discretion or determination"!" in any matter relating
to the faith or discipline of the Church.
It may be well here to set down, once for all, the
points respecting the Royal Supremacy, on which, as
far as I am aware, no question need be raised.
It is not doubted —
1. That Princes have power to make laws touching
morals and religion.
2. That they may deal with the temporal posses-
sions of the Church so far as property is a creature
of civil society.
3. That they may give or withhold the coercive power
of the Civil Sword in matters of Ecclesiastical order.
* " Qui Augusto iniperium dedlt ipse et Neroui qui
Constantino Christiano ipse Apostatse Juliano." — S. Aug. de
Civit. Dei, lib. v., c. 21.
■]■ Beveridge, Synodicon, Prolegomena, torn, i., p. 11. "Leges
Civiles non praecedere debent sed sequi Ecclesiasticas."
( ^ )
4. That they may, under the provisions of Eccle-
siastical laws, keep Ecclesiastical Judges within the
limits of their proper rule and jurisdictions, and
protect the civil state from excesses and abuse of
power.
The Royal Supremacy, therefore, in its widest
constitutional sense, is Legislative, Executive, and
Judicial.
1. The Legislative Supremacy of the Crown is
not a personal prerogative, but a joint power in all
things temporal with the great Council of the nation,
and in matters spiritual with the Church, to which
belongs, by the Divine order, the sole power of
initiating and determining all matters spiritual before
they assume the form of Statute Law. On this we
have now no question.
2. The Executive Supremacy extends over the
whole coercive application of law, both ecclesiastical
and temporal. The Church has no coercive power by
way of force over persons or property, except from the
State. Neither is there any question on this point.
3. The Judicial Supremacy, or the power of decid-
ing in what cases and in what measure the coercion of
law shall be applied, is vested wholly in the Crown,
yet so that it cannot exercise its judicial functions ex-
cept through the channels appointed by the law — in
Temporal things by Temporal Courts, in Spiritual by
Spiritual Courts. So far all is clear and undisputed.
Now this Judicial power in Ecclesiastical causes
( 9 )
has been also claimed for the Crown in two other
ways ; namely, in the first instance by immediate
jurisdiction, and by appeal in the last resort.
In this then we come to the only point disputed
in the present subject. And we will here take up
the well-knoAvn Cawdrey case.
The object of Lord Coke's argument was to show,
" That our ancient law doth give to the King a
power, by virtue of his Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, to
appoint Commissioners by an extraordinary way of
Jurisdiction, to proceed, m piHmd instantid, against
persons by Ecclesiastical censures."* Bishop Stil-
lingfieet, in an elaborate examination, has demon-
strated that, of the proofs offered by Lord Coke,
" there is not one instance that is sufficient, or that
comes up to the point." But that we may clear the
way for the other branch of the question, namely t^e
appeal in the last resort, I will offer a summary of
those proofs.
The precedents put forward by Lord Coke are as
follows : —
I. Kenulphus, King of Mercia, granted an exemp-
tion from the Temporal Jurisdiction or Service of
the Bishop.f
* Cawdrey's case. Stilling-fleet's Ecclesiastical Cases, vol. ii.
p. 85 ; Gibson's Codex, vol. i., p. 44, Note K.
t " Ego Ccenuulf Rex Merciorum has terras liberabo ab
oiniii servitute magna, vel modica regum, principum, episco-
porum, &c." — Codex Diplomat. Anglo-Saxonum, torn, i.,
ccviii., London, 1839.
( 1<' )
2. Edward the Confessor claimed power to rule
and govern the Kingdom and Holy Church as Vicar
of the Highest King.*
3. William the Conqueror made appropriation of
Churches.
4. Henry I. gave a Charter with privileges as to
Ecclesiastical property to the Abbey of Reading.
5. Henry III. made prohibition where the Ecclesi-
astical Courts had no cognizance, as in bastardy,
marriage, &c.
6. Edward I. condemned a subject in pra:^munirc
for bringing in a Bull, prejudicial to his crown and
dignity.
Parliament set aside a Papal provision upon a
benefice : it also restrained benefit of Clergy, and the
granting of benefices by the Pope.
7. Edward 11. by statute regulated the proceedings
between the Civil and Ecclesiastical Courts.
8. Edward III. upheld an excommunication of the
Archbishop against the Pope ; because the excom-
* This is simply irrelevant : it is an assertion only of the
Imperial sovereignty of the Anglo-Saxon Empire. — Sir F. Pal-
grave's History of the English Commonwealth, vol. i., pp.
562-569. The 15th of the Ecclesiastical laws of St. Edward
Confessor is as follows : " Quid sit regis officium," &c. " Rex
autem, qui vicarius summi Regis est, ad hoc est constitutus, ut
regnum terrenum^ et populum Domini, et super omnia sanctam
veneretur Ecclesiam ejus et regat, et ab injuriosis deferidat, et
maleficos ab ea evellat et destruat et peuitus disjjerdat." Also
in the 2nd : " et sic erunt duo gladii et gladius gladium juvabit,"
i. e. « the Civil Sword."— Wilkins, Concil., torn, i., pp. 311, 212.
( 11 )
inuuicatioii of the former carried civil consequences,
and was more " evident in law."*
He regulated the exercise of patronage.
He gave exemptions from jurisdiction of the
Ordinary, but in virtue of a commission from the
Pope.f
He claimed extra parochial tithes.
He, in Parliament, made Statutes of Provisors for
the civil protection of the realm.
9. Richard II., in Parliament, renewed the Statute
of Provisors.
10. Henry IV., by Statute, declared that the
Pope's Collector had no jurisdiction against the
Archbishops and Bishops of the realm.
Pie also, by Statute, added coercive power to the
jurisdiction of the Bishops in matters of heresy.
Parliament declared that the Pope cannot alter
the laws of England ; that his excommunication has
no force ; no excommunication being known in Eng-
* Excommunication is here regarded only inforo exteriori — as
a public civil disability, followed by arrest, imprisonment, banish-
ment from society, and the like ; and not in its internal and
spiritual element, which was never subject to temporal law. The
refusal of sacraments, especially that of Penance, was strictly
reserved to the Church.
" The laws of Austria forbid the infliction of any exteryial
penance without the permission of the Provincial Government." — ■
Tlechberger, Enchiridion Juris Eccl. Austr., § 128, p. 117.
t Stillingfleet's Ecclesiastical Cases, vol. ii., p. 120, under
a Bull of Innocent III.
( 1-' )
land l)ut by process of Court held by the Bishops and
Archbishops.
11. Henry V. in Parliament renewed the Statute
of Provisors ; further penal Statutes against heresy ;
and gave to the Ordinaries power to inquire into
hospitals of the King's foundation.
12. Henry VI. in Parliament declared that the
Pope's excommunication did not " disable any man
within England ;" that the King only may found a
Spiritual incorporation, i. e., in laic.
12. Edward IV. in Parliament denied to the Pope
power to grant sanctuary in these realms.
The King's Bench said that a Spiritual person
suing to Rome for a matter Spiritual, in which he
might have remedy before his Ordinary, incurs
praemunire.
A Legate was stopped at Calais till he had taken
an oath to " attempt nothing against the King or his
Crown."
13. Richard III. The Judges resolved that ex-
communication in the Court of Rome should not
bind any man "a^ the common lata.''
14. Henry VII. in Parliament gave new coercive
power to Ordinaries to punish immoralities in Clerks
" by ward and prison,"
I am not aware that I have omitted a single prece-
dent of this celebrated case. If I have passed over
any instances, it is because they are no more than
( 13 )
examples of the same kind. It will be found, I
believe, that the whole legal and moral force of the
precedents has been amply given. And to what do
they amount?
To a supreme civil power —
1. Over all the coercive jurisdiction of the
Church, so far as it is coercive, temporal, or
penal.
2. Over all beneficiary matters, such as appro-
priations, patronage, and the like,
3. Over all the civil effects of Ecclesiastical
censures.
Surely no more abundant proof can be desired than
is afforded by this copious and multifarious argument,
that the Royal Supremacy by its ancient jurisdiction
never either possessed or claimed such further powers as
were annexed to it for the first time by the 24th Henry
VIII., c. 12 ; 25th Henry VIII., c. 19 ; 26th Henry
VIII., c. 1.* The learned author has ransacked
Histories, Chronicles, Rolls, Statutes of Parliament,
* Archbishop Bramhall, one of the foremost vindicators of " the
ancient jurisdiction " of the Crown, proves the same point. He
sums up as follows the subject matters of the Legislative Supre-
macy : — " Benefices, tithes, advowsons, lands given in mortmain,
prohibitions, consultations, praemunires, quare impedits, privilege
of clergy, extortions of ecclesiastical courts or officers, and
regulating their due fees, wages of priests, mortmains, sanc-
tuaries, appropriations, and in sum over all things which did
belong to the external subsistence, regiment, and regulating of
the Church." — Just Vindication of the Church of England,
Works, folio, p. 73.
( '4 )
liecords of Courts at Westminster — no corner of his
legal erudition was left unsearched for anything which
in name, sound, or appearance might make for the
Royal Supremacy — and yet not one instance, or
anything approaching to an instance, of any inherent
Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, such as that first given hy
26 Henry VIII., c. 1, and afterwards by 1 Eliz., c. 1.
17, 18, has he been able to bring. And as there is
no precedent of the power for which he was then con-
tending, so neither is there any trace of the Appellate
Jurisdiction now in dispute, over all causes howsoever
purely spiritual, such as soundness in doctrine, or
fitness for mission to cure of souls.
The power for which Lord Coke contended, after
hardly a century of existence, has been long ago for-
mally abolished by 16 Car. I. c. 11. So far we have
already returned to the limits of the ancient juris-
diction. Setting apart for the present the administra-
tive office claimed for the Crown, to which our present
subject has no reference, and confining ourselves to the
judicial character of the Crown in Ecclesiastical mat-
ters, there now remains between the Royal Supremacy
as known to the Common Law of England before
Henry VIII., and the Royal Supremacy as known
to the Statute Law since that date, the difference of
this Appellate Jurisdiction annexed by the two Sta-
tutes the 24th and 25th of Henry VIIL, revived by
the 1st of Elizabeth.
And between this Appellate Jurisdiction annexed
( 1'5 )
to the Crown by modern statutes and the ancient
jurisdiction, there is, I conceive, this one, but vital,
difference — that the ancient had cognizance only of the
form and procedure of the Ecclesiastical Judge ; the
modern assumes also to re-open and to decide upon the
internal state and merits of the principal cause.
We have seen then, that the claim in behalf
of the Crown to proceed in the first instance by
Ecclesiastical censures cannot be justified by any
precedent in our law or history ; and the whole of
this immediate jurisdiction has been formally abo-
lished by Act of Parliament, from which it derived
also its first existence.
We will now proceed to the other branch of juris-
diction annexed by Statute, namely, the power of
receiving appeals from Ecclesiastical Judges.
There is no question that in England, as in all
christian kingdoms, the Crown possessed a power to
keep all Ecclesiastical Judges within the limits of
their own rules and jurisdictions. The principle
of the " Appellatio tanquam ab abusu " is universal in
the Canon Law.
But in this process the Civil Judge has cognizance
only of the form and 2?ivcedure of the Ecclesiastical
causes, and never of the merits or internal state of the
matter itself. In proof of this I would refer to the
works of any Canonist in existence. On a question
so broad and self-evident, it matters not from what
country or age we select. Let us take one passage as
( ir. )
a sample of the universal Canon Law of Christendom
in this particular: — "The only aim and end of this
recourse to the Royal protection is to repel violence,
and to bring back the Ecclesiastical Judge to the
path of justice and his legitimate limits." "The
King's Judge may by no means take cognizance of
the principal cause, but only of the form and order of
the proceeding, whether there has been force, vio-
lence, or oppression : that is, he inquires only whether
the Ecclesiastical Judge, as a question of fact, has
proceeded by the right order of law. If he shall find
that the order of law has been observed, he shall
remit the appellant to his proper judge. But if he
shall perceive, as a question of fact, that such order was
not observed, he gives relief to the party oppressed,
and reduces the Ecclesiastical Judge to the path of
justice and the course of law ; deciding nothing as to
the principal cause, which is left untouched, to be
judged, according to the order of law, by the Eccle-
siastical Judge." " He will by no means inquire or
decide whether a clerk deserved to be visited by cen-
sure, or whether there was a cause sufficient for the in-
fliction of so grave a punishment, which points belong
to the principal cause ; but he will examine only whe-
ther the censure was passed by a Judge having juris-
diction in the Ecclesiastical Court, or by a Judge
foreign to it; or without preparatory information,
canonical citation, monition, &c. ; which things, as we
say in law, are questions of fact." -" From this it is
( 17 )
clear that the King's Judge by no means usurps any
Ecclesiastical jurisdiction."*
Now I will forbear to multiply quotations : I will
only add that such is a true and exact statement of
the law of appeals as it has existed throughout the
states of Christendom from the earliest ages of the
Canon Law until this day.f It exists at this very
moment in Austria, France, Spain, &c. and all
European kingdoms in which the Church is known.:}:
* Van Espen, Tractatus de Recursu ad Principem, cap. iii.
7., torn. iv. 310.
f " Eximia profecto auctoritate potiti sunt Imperatores Ro-
mani in rebus et judiciis ecclesiasticis, sed nullum, ut existimo,
proferri potest exemplum judicii canonic! ab uno Episcopo red-
diti, de quo statini recta via querela delata fuerit ad Principem.
De judicio canonico loquor, in quo de fide^ de ritibus, de que
disciplina cleri et de qucEStione canonica ageretur, non autem de
CiBteris litibus adversus clericos nectis. De judiciis synodorum
tantum appellation! non obnox!!s damnat! conquerebantur ali-
quando apud principes. III! judices ecclesiasticos dabant : nun-
quam autem de re canonica cognitionem suscipiebant, sed de or-
dine judiciorum." — De Marca de Concord. Sacerd. et Imp.,
lib. iv., c. 4, 8.
\ " If the question merely turns on Ecclesiastical rights,
recourse to tlie Sovereign is then only allowable in so far as the
Ecclesiastical Judge, proceeding to violenc© and overstepping
the bounds of right, is understood to have injured the appellant ;
in which case it is the province of the Civil Judge, who is in no
wise to touch upon the internal state (as they are accustomed to
call it) or merits of the cause, but merely to compel the Eccle-
siastical Judge to observe that order of proceeding which is
prescribed by the laws." — Rochberger, Encliirid. Juris Eccl.
Au.striaci, Recursus ad Principem. See Report from the Select
C
( i» )
111 England, before the reign of Henry VIIL, this
protective power of the State was exercised by pro-
hibitions issued from the Temporal to the Spiritual
Courts ; and the subject-matter of these prohibitions
was the class of mixed questions, partly temporal and
partly spiritual. The point to be decided was not
the merit of any given cause, but whether it were of
a spiritual or temporal kind, and therefore to which
jurisdiction it belonged, i. e. which was the " forum
competens " to entertain it.* The Spiritual Courts
would as soon have ventured to claim jurisdiction in
a case of Icesa Majestas, as the Temporal of a case of
doctrine, or mission to Cure of Souls.
I believe, therefore, it may be shown that the
appellate jurisdiction, in this point, is not only at
variance with the office of the Church, but is also
new even in its principle and form.
Nothing, then, is here denied to the Royal Su-
premacy which was lawfully contained in its " ancient
jurisdiction." What is denied is —
1. That Princes have, or can have, any inherent
Committee of the House of Commons on the Regulation of
Roman Catholic Subjects in Foreign Countries, June 25, 1816,
Appendix I. " Sacerdos qui auxilio brachii secularis capit
possessionem beneficii incurrit excomraunicationem." — Ferraris,
Bibliotheca Canon. Recursus.
* Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iii. 112. AylifFe's Parergon,
vol. ii., 434, &c.
( 10 )
spiritual authority, or become fountains of spiritual
jurisdiction, so far as it is spiritual.
2. That they may exercise a directive or legis-
lative power in matters purely spiritual.
3. That they may re-hear and review with a
power of discretion and determination the judicial
sentences of the Church in matters purely spiritual.
Now it is declared by Lord Coke that the 1st
Statute of Queen Elizabeth " was not introductory of
a new law, but declaratory of the old." * And in the
Injunctions of Queen Elizabeth in the first year of
her reign, it is expressly declared that " the Queen
neither doth nor will challenge any authority but
such as was of ancient time due to the Imperial
Crown of this Realm." f The question then for our
present purpose is narrowed to a single point, namely,
whether the Imperial Crown of this Realm possessed
among its inherent prerogatives the ancient juris-
diction of receiving Appeals in matters of doctrine.
It is for those who affirm that the ancient jurisdiction
of the Crown extended to matters of doctrine to
produce their evidence. Let them bring the proof,
and I will frankly and openly acknowledge myself to
be in error. Until, however, the proof shall be
produced, I must believe that the rehearing in appeal
of a question of doctrinal interpretation was, and is,
beyond the "ancient jurisdiction" of the Royal
* Lord Coke's Reports, Cawdrey's case.
t Injunctions given by the Queen's Majesty, &c.3 a.d. 1559.
c 2
( 20 )
Su})rcinacy. Of this assertion the Divine office of
the Church, the universal canon law of Christendom,
the practice of all Christian kingdoms in all ages, the
manifest practice of these realms in particular, arc
sufficient evidence.
Let me then sum up briefly what I conceive to be
the Royal Supremacy known to the Common law of
England : —
1 . It is a supreme civil power, independent and
exclusive of all foreign or external Superior beyond
these Realms.
2. It is a supreme civil power over all persons
and all causes within these Realms.
In the former sense it excludes all earthly Su-
perior, of whom the Crown may be supposed to be
held. In the latter it subjects all persons, without
exemption from ti'ibunals or from laics, to the
Imperial law of the land.
This Imperial law is a mixed law, partly spiritual
and partly civil *, and the Royal Supremacy is conser-
vative and executive of that one law in both its kinds.
But in the subject matter of this law there is a
primitive and essential difference. The subject matter
of civil law, as well as the form and manner of its
administration, is subject to the civil power, to be
moulded, varied, and applied at its legislative and
judicial discretion.
The subject matter of the spiritual law, as well as
its essential form and manner of administration, is not
( 21 )
subject to that discretion, being in itself independent
and divine.
The Ecclesiastical Law is not a function of the
Civil Power, but a body organized and Sovereign
within its own sphere. It has its officers and its
order, its judges and tribunals, its rulers and legis-
lature. The Ecclesiastical law is a living system,
namely, the Church. Against this the Royal
Supremacy has no prerogative : over this it has no
superiority of discretion. The Church is final and
sole in its Divine office; and exists in the civil state
as a moral person or element to be incorporated in
amity, not to be moulded or directed at will. Every
particular Church speaks to the local Sovereignty with
the voice and authority of the universal Church;
and no supremacy may be given to the Crown over
a particular Church inconsistent with the Divine
Sovereignty of the Church Universal.
The Apostolic commission did not depend for its
exercise upon the licence of Princes — it descends
direct from Him who is over all supreme. The
Apostolic commission both to teach and to rule was
exercised in spite of all civil powers until they
yielded to the Faith. It is still supreme, and must be
to the world's end. The Church, in its power to
teach by doctrine and to rule by discipline, has no
superior on earth. The whole world cannot judge
its doctrine, or reverse its discipline. No local
Sovereign can do what the united Sovereignties of the
( 22 )
world cannot. The Church in every land is the
Church throughout the world sojourning as in a place,
and there teaching and ruling hy the whole weight of
the Divine Office committed to the Church Universal.
When the Church has become incorporated
with the civil State, and its Judges clothed with
civil power of coercion, it is most just that in the
exercise and application of that derived civil and co-
ercive power, they should conform so far, as the
laws of Christ allow, to the direction of the original
donor. They become in part Judges of the Crown,
and so far may be guided by the Crown or Supreme
power of Law. But it is never to be forgotten, that
in this civil clothing there exists a primitive and
Divine authority over which no Royal Supremacy can
be admitted. The Royal Supremacy terminates
where the Divine Office begins. And in all Ecclesi-
astical jurisdiction it is the external or coercive form
or process which is cognizable by the Crown in appeal:
the internal state or merits of " the principal cause"
being subject to the Divine office of the Church alone.
When it is said then that the Crown administers its
Ecclesiastical laws by Ecclesiastical Judges, it is not
meant that the Crown can create them Judges, or fill
them with power of jurisdiction from its own fountain,
or that it may select and vary them according to
its will.
The Judges of the Church are an order created by
the Founder of the Church, and their jurisdiction
( 23 )
cannot be transferred or intermingled. The Church
has distributed its judicial function among its Bishops,
each in his own Diocese : the Primate over his Pro-
vince, and so on. No Civil Supremacy may inter-
change this distribution, and substitute one judge for
another, one Bishop in the consistory of another, or
one Primate in another's Province, or a number of
Suffragans for the Metropolitan, and the like. The
Courts of Westminster are not so fixed and immutable
in their jurisdiction as are the Spiritual judges of the
Church, neither do their functions rest on such pre-
scriptions of antiquity, nor flow from such a fountain.
Within the limits therefore of a local sovereignty
there is no spiritual authority higher than the Primate
or Metropolitan. The only superior known to the
local Church is the authority of the Church universal.
If it be the will of the local Civil power to restrain
appeals, it thereby makes, so far as it can, the Church
within its dominion final. Such is, I conceive, the
principle upon which the Church of England for
three hundred years has rested. It did not accept
the supremacy of the Crown instead and in place
of the supremacy of the Universal Church ; but
resumed the full, free, and final exercise of its own
Spiritual office, legislative and judicial, within its
own proper sphere. Over this, in its Spiritual cha-
racter, it could accept no Civil Supremacy without
making itself at once guilty of a formal schism from
the Universal Church of Christ.
( -^4 )
Such being-, as I conceive, the principles of revelation
and of reason, as well as of history and of Christian
law on which the Church of God rests throughout the
world, and in particular in these realms, it appears to
me that violations of the gravest kind have been com-
mitted in the late appeal and sentence given therein. I
say in the late appeal and sentence, because, vital as
is the doctrine impugned by it, the violation of prin-
ciple in the whole procedure is of even deeper and
more vital importance. Indeed if the decision had
been given in favour of the true doctrine, greater
ultimate danger would probably have been prepared
for the Avhole faith. The great body of the Church
would have been lulled into security; nay, they
might have committed the Church openly and
consciously to this exercise of the Supremacy of the
Crown, The adverse decision has roused even the
secure and the indifferent, and laid bare the evil they
were not willing to see, before their eyes. For no
judgment, howsoever right in matter, could heal
a wrong in the principle of this appellate Juris-
diction, as it extends its cognizance to matters purely
spiritual.
Suffer me now to state the facts of the case. And
in so doing I shall not enter into a recital of the
Tudor statutes, or of the progressive changes by
M'hich the Crown now hears appeals in Council
instead of in Chancery.
The principle is unchanged, and the form of its
( 25 )
exercise matters little. I am the less willing to
weary your Lordship's patience by a string of Acts of
Parliament, because the actual and practical point in
the case may be reached by a course free from all
controversy as to the meaning, force, or extent of
statutes.
It may be simply put as follows :
Every Bishop within his own diocese possesses
jurisdiction over all spiritual and ecclesiastical causes
within the communion of the Church. All questions
of soundness of doctrine in his clergy, and of fitness
for cure of souls, are committed to his care and
judgment. This office of the Bishop is exercised
either in his Consistory Court or in person.
Every Archbishop, besides the above power which
as Bishop he possesses in his own diocese, has also an
appellate jurisdiction in his provincial court coexten-
sive with the jurisdiction of every Suffragan Bishop
and superior to it. Whatsoever a Bishop may hear
and judge, an Archbishop on appeal may rehear and
judge again, to confirm, vary, or reverse.
By the Statute Law now existing, the Crown in
Council may receive appeals from the Archbishops'
Court in all and every matter cognizable by it.
The appellate jurisdiction of the Crown in Council
is therefore coextensive with the jurisdiction of the
Court of the Archbishop and superior to it. What-
soever the Archbishop may hear and judge on appeal,
the Crown may rehear and judge again, to confirm,
vary, or reverse.
( 2G )
Now it is manifest that the Bishop and Archbishop
are invested by the law of Christ and by their Order
with a jurisdiction in matters the most internal and
purely spiritual. The Faith itself, subject only to
the Universal Church, is entrusted to their custody.
There is no spiritual question over which they have
not jurisdiction. There is therefore no spiritual
question of which the Crown on appeal does not claim
a coextensive and superior cognizance.
I have no doubt that this view is strictly the law
of the land at this moment. On this the whole of the
late proceeding rests. But this state of the law
seems to me to be inconsistent with the Divine
office of the Universal Church.
That I may bring out this point more clearly, I
would ask your Lordship's attention for a moment to
the other branch of our jurisprudence, — I mean the
Civil Law Courts.
The refusal of the Bishop of Exeter to institute
Mr. Gorham to the vicarage of Brampford Speke, on
the ground of unsoundness of doctrine, gave rise to
two questions of law ; one relating to the spiritual
element, namely, the soundness of Mr. Gorham's
doctrine — the other relating to the temporal element,
namely, the benefice of Brampford Speke.
To try the Spiritual question, the case was taken
to the Spiritual Court.
To try the Temporal element, the case went, by
action of quare impedit, to the Civil Court at West-
minster.
(27)
In the Civil Court, so soon as the answer of the
Bishop is returned that institution has been refused
to the plaintiff on the score of unsoundness of doc-
trine, the Civil Court, because civil, and therefore
having no jurisdiction or legal knowledge of doctrine
of faith, proceeds to inform itself by inquiry of the
Archbishop or other spiritual persons. By confining
itself to the temporal element of the case, and by
refraining to enter upon the question of doctrine, it
openly disclaims all jurisdiction or competency, that
is, all spiritual or ecclesiastical character.
On the other hand, the spiritual element, having
been heard and decided by the Spiritual Court, is
carried by appeal to the Crown in Council, where it
is entertained, and opened with a claim of cognizance
and jurisdiction coextensive with and superior to the
Spiritual Court below in the precise and isolated
spiritual element of the question — namely, the law-
fulness or soundness of the appellant's doctrine.
This proves, beyond controversy, what character
is thereby openly claimed for the Crown, namely,
that of Supreme Ecclesiastical Judge in matters the
most intimately and purely spiritual and divine.
Now, to take off the harshness of this manifest
violation of the divine office of the Church of Christ,
the Judges in the late appeal case disclaimed to
judge or to pronounce as to the truth or falsehood, or
the theological soundness of the doctrine before them.
They professed only to judge what is the doctrine of
( 28 )
the Church of England, and whether or no the
doctrine of the a])pellant was repugnant to the same.
By this many have been led to say or to think
that the Judicial Committee disclaimed their com-
petency to entertain questions of doctrine. My
Lord, these learned persons knew too well the law of
the land and the force of their own terms of art to
make any such profession. They disclaimed the
competence of that tribunal to define doctrine by
theological tests and instruments, in such manner as
the Church would define in Synod. No less would
both the Bishop in his Consistory, and the Archbishop
in the Court of Arches, disclaim such a competency.
The Judges of the Privy Council may have also
gracefully disclaimed their personal competency to
judge of points needing the knowledge of another
science, for which reason they sought the advice of
spiritual persons among her Majesty's Councillors.
But they never disclaimed the legal co7npetence of
that high Appeal Court to hear, judge, and decide
both the external and internal merits of all and every
question which can arise and be judged in all the
Courts of the Church, as to what is or is not the
doctrine of the Church of England. This they more
than claimed — they exercised ; and I grant that the
modern statute law gives to them that power. But
I must deny that any law less than the Divine could
convey to them the right.
Again, that I may reduce this painful and perilous
1
( 29 )
question to its narrowest limits, I will gladly make
the finest distinctions and the largest concessions
which the laws of the universal Church will allow.
It may be said : —
First, That the State, being in alliance with the
Church, must needs, for its own protection, have the
power of verifying the doctrines which it has agreed
to legalise. And,
Secondly, That all that the Judges have pro-
nounced is, that Mr. Gorham's doctrine is not
repugnant to the doctrine of the Church of England
as knoion to the laic.
Now, as to the former point, the claim of the
State to a power to verify for its own use the doc-
trines which it has consented to recognise by law —
no one denies the justice of such a claim. It is
manifest that a religious communion, orthodox at the
beginning, might become heterodox in lapse of time ;
as in Prussia, or as the religious bodies, the endow-
ments of which were lately confirmed to them in
their present heterodoxy by Act of Parliament.
From the moment that the Church becomes incorpo-
rated with the State, and receives from the State the
clothing and rights of civil form and power, the State
acquires a right to see that the Church shall continue
to proceed according to the laws and rules mutually
agreed to.
This is a security known and exercised, as we have
already seen, in all Christian kingdoms, by the ])ro-
( '30 )
cess known in the canon law as the appellatio tan-
qiiam ah abiisu, by which right of receiving appeals
the Civil State has the power of reviewing the acts
and proceedings of all Ecclesiastical Judges, and
of keeping them within the bounds of their own
rules and jurisdictions. But there is no parallel
between this appeal in case of abuse, and the appeal
to the Crown in Council.
The former is an appeal from the Ecclesiastical
Judge to the Civil, as civil.
The latter is an appeal from the Ecclesiastical
Judge to the Civil as Superior Ecclesiastical Judge.
In the former appeal the Civil Judge is absolutely
forbidden to open the " merits " or " internal state " of
the case.
In the latter, this is precisely the point which is
reheard and disposed of.
The former is for protecting the State against the
Church.
The latter is for the internal government of the
Church itself
I forbear to point out other distinctions. The
three already given will be more than enough to all
whom I could hope, by any argument, to satisfy.
I will make bold to say that there never has
existed, and does not exist, in any society recognised
or claiming to be a portion of the visible Church,
such an appellate jurisdiction as that lately exercised
by the Crown over the Church of England — I mean
( 31 )
a jurisdiction to rehear and to determine, as an ordi-
nary judicature, for the Church itself, whether a
given doctrine be conformable or repugnant to the
doctrine of the Church. And I will further venture
to assert, that there cannot be brought from any
period of our history, Saxon, Norman, or English,
any precedent or shadow of precedent to show that
the power to judge in appeal on a question such as
this was ever possessed by our princes as a part of
their " ancient jurisdiction."
A power to review, in any given case, the facts
and the law, as well as the correctness of the judge in
his procedure and his application of law to fact, may
be safely admitted, as we have already seen, under
the securities known to the Canon Law of the Uni-
versal Church : but a prerogative to rehear the merits
of spiritual causes, and a power to judge and to de-
clare that the Faith and Formularies of the Church
admit of this or of that interpretation, of this or of
that latitude, is nothing less than a power which
subjects the whole faith of the Church to the judg-
ment of the Prince. Some writers have been found
hardy enough to lay down as a maxim of jurispru-
dence, '■'• Ejus est religio cujus est regio'"' — that the
religion of a land is the religion of the Prince.
Disclaim this antichristian saying as we may, our
statutes would be thus made to embody it. In truth
I conceive that an ultimate power of verifying the
doctrines recognised by law is a security which every
( 32 )
state must possess for its own protection in the last
resort — not as a common process, nor to be carried
on by an ordinary judicature, but in extreme cases
and under the heaviest checks. For to what docs
such a question lead, but to a dissolution, it may be,
of the whole civil and ecclesiastical state ? To debate
it is to discuss whether or no we have already
entered upon a state of revolution. It is a revision
of the fundamental articles of our social order — a
process to be set on foot only at the instance of
grave necessity, and at the demand of great public
officers, and not for the indulgence and at the motion
of perverse and contentious individuals. But such
a revision, I repeat, is by the State acting for itself,
not by the Civil Power as Ecclesiastical Judge pro-
fessedly acting for the Church, as in the case now
before us.
Into this, however, I need no further go : it is
enough to say that the appellate jurisdiction given
by statute to the Crown is no mere power of veri-
fying terms and doctrines, but an ordinary judicature
coextensive with and superior to all spiritual courts,
with unlimited and final power to reopen, rehear,
and judge in the last resort, all questions of the
spiritual law, as for instance what teaching is or
is not repugnant to the doctrine of the Church of
England, and whether a pastor be or be not fit to
receive mission to a cure of souls. The Crown de-
cides in these questions as the Supreme Ecclesiastical
( 33 )
Judge, and the sentence of the Crown at this moment
carries legally and constitutionally the full assent and
obligation of our whole Ecclesiastical Law.
The Crown therefore at this time possesses the
power of declaring to be admissible in the Church
of England a doctrine which the Church itself shall
have declared to be inadmissible, and of pronouncing
to be fit for cure of souls a person whom the Church
has declared to be unfit for cure of souls.
Nay more : it has power not only so to declare,
but so to enforce •, and to compel a Bishop, who by
the law of God is commanded " to lay hands sud-
denly on no man," to give mission to cure of souls,
with authority to preach the Word of God, to a per-
son whom that same Bishop and the Church shall
have already rejected as unfit for the care of Christ's
flock.
My Lord, this is no supposed case ; it stands
before us. The Appellant in the late Cause had been
tried and rejected by his Bishop as unsound in faith,
and unfit for cure of souls. On appeal, the Court
of the Archbishop, the highest Spiritual Court in the
Church, confirmed with ample judgment the decision
of the Bishop.
The Crown on further appeal has been advised to
declare that the doctrine of the Appellant is not so
repugnant to the doctrine of the Church of England
as to justify the refusal to institute: and the institu-
tion was ordered accordingly.
D
( 34 )
I shall rejoice if I can find that by this one act the
Divine office of the Church has not been violated in
two points, most vital to its character and trust.
Nothing that I have heard as yet shakes my painful
but stedfast belief, that this sentence violates the
Divine ofiice of the Church, both in its custody of
doctrine and in its power of spiritual jurisdiction.
It violates its custody of doctrine by assuming a
superior judicial power to declare what that doc-
trine is.
The Church alone possesses the deposit of the
Word of God, or Christian faith, contained in the
Holy Scripture, with its true interpretation, as a
trust committed to it by its Divine Head. The
Church, as a moral person, holds and transmits this
trust. It has no power to make or to vary an article
of Faith, but only to interpret and declare. The
known intention of our Lord and of His inspired ser-
vants is the rule of interpretation : all the records and
documents, the formularies and definitions of the faith
are subject to that known intention, and ruled by it.
The Church in Synod, as at Nice, did no more than
declare the original intention of the teaching of
inspired Apostles. It is an error to imagine that the
Church in Synod and the Church in its Courts acts, in
declaring matters of faith, by different principles. The
whole oflBce of the Church, in respect to doctrine,
may be called judicial. It does but declare the
Divine Truth and law already determined by the
( 35 )
sole Author of all Faith. And what the Universal
Church holds by its Divine Tradition, it declares
when need arises in Council, or by its judges sitting
in the courts of the Episcopate. I do not see, there-
fore, how any other judge can intervene to re-hear a
sentence of the Church given in its courts, Mathout a
violation of its Divine office in custody of doctrine.
But it has been said that this decision leaves the
doctrine of the Church wholly untouched : that it
does not alter a letter of its formularies, and that,
therefore, the doctrine of the Church is inviolate as
ever.
This has been said by so many of the highest
name and note, as well as by so many who must be
"esteemed very highly in love for their work's sake,"
that I am loath to deny it. But truth leaves no
freedom.
The doctrine of the Church then is surely not an
assemblage of formularies, but the true meaning of
them. Doctrine is not a written, but a living truth.
" Prior sermo quam liber : prior sensus quam stylus."
If books were doctrine, no sect could be in heresy so
long as it retained the Bible. If creeds were doc-
trine, the Socinians, who recite the Apostles' Creed,
must be acquitted. But books and forms without
their true interpretation are nothing. Doctrine is
defined " univoca docendi methodus." It is the
perpetual living voice of the individual pastors uniting
as one. The Church is the collective teacher, and
D 2
( 36 )
doctrine is its oral exposition of the Faith. Will any
one say that this is not touched by legalizing the
denial of an article of the Creed? The doctrine of
the Church of England is not only its written formu-
laries, but the oral teaching of its twenty-eight
Bishops, its fifteen thousand clergy, its many more
thousand school teachers, and its two or three millions
of heads of families. Doctrine is the living, ever
spreading, and perpetual sense which is taught at our
altars and from house to house all the year round.
If this be so, it seems to me to be a dream to say
that the doctrine of the Church is untouched. For
what is the effect of the latitude given by the late
sentence of the Crown ? It is equally lawful for the
clergy of the Church to say, and to claim equally the
authority of the Church for saying, that in the Sacra-
ment of Holy Baptism all infants do, or all infants
do not, receive spiritual regeneration.
My Lord, all this is too deeply humbling for me
to do more than recite such a fact, which is bring-
ing down shame where I have ever striven to pay only
honour.
Let me put the case and pass on. The pastor of
Brampford Speke teaches his flock that on all their
children the free grace of God is bestowed through
Holy Baptism for the merits of His Son ; his successor
denies it. The next in succession affirms it again ;
and the flock dispute in divisions, each under the
authority of the Church, until they make peace in
( 37 )
disbelieving both members of the contradiction. I
say nothing of pastors side by side in neighbouring
parishes, or teaching opposite doctrines from the same
altar. To those who believe truth to be Divine, that
the authority of God is in every article of faith, and
that our contradictions are His dishonour, it inspires
alarm to hear from such authorities that the late sen-
tence has not touched the doctrine of the Church.
Would the legalizing of Arianism after the Nicene-
Council, leaving the Nicene Creed to stand in words,
have touched the doctrine of the Church ? Would
legalizing Sabellianism touch doctrine so long as the
words of our formularies are unchanged? If the
answer be yes, I ask why ? The formularies are
still unaltered: the faithful may teach the Nicene
doctrine.
Lastly, I would ask, How shall we stand the test of
our own standards ? By the definition of the Church
of England " the visible Church is a congregation of
faithful men in which the pure word of God is
preached." I know, my Lord, that " the reading of
Holy Scripture is preaching," but also that only the
right "sense of Scripture is Scripture."*
But whether or no the doctrine of the Church be
touched, this at least cannot be denied — that its disci-
pline has been directly violated.
The same habit of thought which identifies doc-
trine with formularies, leads many to look upon the
* "Waterland's Works, vol. iv., p. 316.
( 38 )
Church as an external and lifeless system, instead of a
living and continuous body. The Church is the succes-
sion of the faithful with their Pastors : and the choos-
ing, ordaining, and sending of fit Pastors is the very life
of the Church. The two highest and most vital con-
ditions of its spiritual life, under God, are the mission
of its Pastors, and the purity of its doctrine. What
then has this sentence done ? It has over-ruled the
judgment of the Bishop as to the fitness of a Pastor,
■\vhoni he had refused to send to preach the Word of
God : it has over-ruled the judgment of the Metro-
politan confirming that decision. It has issued a
command that the flock of Christ shall be put in
charge with a man to whom, for unsoundness in the
faith, the Bishop had refused to entrust the cure of
souls.
My Lord, I should weaken the force of this
if I were to use more words. What has been
done under one appeal, may be done under a thou-
sand. The whole jurisdiction of the Episcopate over
the oral teaching of the Church, after orders once
given, and the whole power of giving mission,
the most sacred and vital in the discipline of the
Church, are thus prostrate at the foot of the Civil
Power.
The effect of this is to deprive Bishops of the
power to determine judicially the fitness of priests
for cure of souls — as the Archbishop has been
already denied the power to try judicially the fitness
( 39 )
of a Bishop elect. The case is parallel, but upon
another level; the only difference being, that the
points lacking to exhibit the full violation done to
the Divine office of the Church in the case of the
See of Hereford, have been supplied in this. In that
case the party had never been convicted by a court of
the Church ; in this he stands formally convicted of
unsoundness : then the officers of the Church let pass
the case ; now they have discharged their duty and
have been overruled. And the legality of that sen-
tence has been justified by all the highest Courts and
by the most learned Judges of the Realm.
The immediate effect of this sentence is to bind
the Court of every Bishop to give impunity to the
heterodoxy which has been defined and legalized by
the judgment ; and to compel every Bishop to give
mission to cure of souls to any priest chosen by a patron,
it may be, for holding that heterodoxy. What security
then has your Lordship against such a peril ? Such
a presentee may appear to demand institution at your
hands to-morrow. What is to prevent the raising of
other questions on every doctrine in our Office Book
from the Ordinal to the Office for Holy Communion ;
and what shall hinder the legalizing of a heterodox
interpretation upon each in succession ? I desire to
refrain from examples which your Lordship's mind
will suggest. Under pretence of verifying the doc-
trines of the original compact, the Church of Eng-
land may receive a new scheme of doctrine upon
each Article of Faith, point by point, until it shall
( 40 )
be possessed of two contradictory theologies, both
equally legal, both equally without Divine authority.
I trust that these remarks will suffice to show that
this Appellate jurisdiction is not a mere defensive
power of the State, for verifying the terms of its con-
cordat with the Church, but a new Tribunal, an
ordinary Judicature, and inconsistent with the Divine
office of the Church of God.
But it has been further said, that the late sentence
pronounces only that the doctrine of the Appellant
is not repugnant to the doctrine of the Church of
England as known to the law^ and that therefore the
doctrine of the Church is still untouched.
Upon this I must once more observe, that this
distinction of doctrine known to the law and doctrine
known to the Church is a mere fiction. The law of the
land recognises no such separation. The Catholic
Faith is recognised in our law not as a Christian doc-
trine, but as the Faith of Christendom. The Eccle-
siastical law, though made up of two elements, acts
with a perfect unity of operation. In pronouncing a
doctrine to be known to the law, it pronounces it
equally and at the same time to be known to the
Church. The Courts of the Church judge of the
lawfulness of a doctrine, by judging of its soundness ;
the Crown in appeal pronounces it to be sound, in
pronouncing it to be lawful. Take the present
case. The doctrine of Mr. Gorham has been pro-
nounced to be either sound or not sound ; or his
institution has been ordered on the ground of his sound-
( 41 )
ness, or notwithstanding his unsoundness. By sound
or unsound I mean, in the eye of our Ecclesiastical
law, which knows no such distinction as doctrines
which are legal, but may be unsound.
No part of the late proceedings revealed more
glaringly the false and perilous position of the Church
of England, in its relation to this Appellate jurisdic-
tion, than the disclaimer put forward by the Judges
that they did not pretend to judge of the soundness,
or of the truth, or of the antiquity of doctrine, but
only whether or no it were the doctrine of the Church
of England. Is then the Church of England so
isolated from the Universal, that the faith of the
Church universal has no influence into its theology ? Is
it not manifest that by this rule of procedure the
Civil State assumes the ultimate power so to interpret
the formularies of the Church of England, as even
to place it in contradiction to the known intention of
the universal Church, thereby bringing it under the
direct condemnation of heresy and schism ?
Unless we are to escape from this by declaring
that we have one doctrine in Theology and another in
Law.
The late sentence, then, has told us what is the
doctrine of Baptism as known to the law. My Lord,
we are now forced to ask — is this the doctrine of Bap-
tism as it is also known to the Church of England ?
The Act of Uniformity, as it incorporates the
doctrine and discipline of the Church of England,
( 42 )
has now been searched and expounded by the State.
We have received its exposition from the highest
place. Is that exposition accepted by the Church ?
I ask this not with impatience, but with urgent anxiety.
Three hundred years of Statute Law are not to be
slipped off in a day, and the Church of England
both needs and may demand time to prepare herself
to give an answer. But, though for a while delayed,
that answer must be given, if trials which I hardly
dare to speak of are to be averted.
The law has declared, that they who deny the
doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration enjoy its protec-
tion. It remains that the Church shall declare whe-
ther they have also its authority. My Lord, I have
trespassed long enough upon your patience. If I
were to write all that this subject thrusts upon me, I
should exceed the bounds of a letter. I will, there-
fore, bring what I have written to a close. It seems
to me that in the Appellate Jurisdiction, lately exer-
cised, three grave evils have been inflicted upon the
Church of England : —
1. First, its Divine office, as the Guardian of the
doctrine and discipline of Christ, has been violated.
It transfers the ultimate decision of all Spiritual ques-
tions, even of faith, from the internal and Spiritual
tribunal of the Church, to an external and secular
Judge. The Royal Supremacy, so exhibited, clashes
not only with the freedom of the Church of England,
but with the Divine office of the Universal Church as
( 43 )
it is exercised by the English Church, in the name
of Christ, in behalf of this people.
2. Secondly, legal protection has been given to a
denial of an article of the Universal Creed.
I have abstained from treating of the doctrine
specially in question, because it matters little to my
view what the particular subject-matter of the appeal
may be. Nevertheless I cannot close this letter
without saying that I hardly know of any doctrine
more vital to the spiritual life, more fundamental to
the visible Church, more intimately related to the
revealed character of God, and to the moral proba-
tion of man, than the Regeneration of Baptism, inas-
much as it touches the office of the Divine Spirit on
the one side, and the remission of original sin on the
other. No doctrine is more manifestly universal in
its reception in all ages of the Church, both before the
division of the East and West, when its united voice
gave unerring witness to the faith ; and, since that
division, in all members of the visible Church unto
this day. If there be, therefore, such a thing as
material heresy, it is the doctrine which has now
received the sanction of the law.
3. But, thirdly, a deeper and more dangerous evil
than this has been inflicted upon the authority of all
faith. The doctrines of the Church are not an as-
semblage of opinions constructed by the human in-
tellect, but a Divine revelation, harmonious and defi-
nite, descending from God and received simply by
( 44 )
faith. We believe upon the authority of God reveal-
ing-, and His authority runs throughout the whole
circle of the faith. The Church propounds to us
that revelation upon the authority of God ; and all
truth is alike binding upon us by the Divine will.
In one sense there is no greater or less among re-
vealed truths ; for all are true, as all come from God.
All truths are not indeed on the same level, or in the
same nearness to the Divine Nature; but all are
true and binding in virtue of the equal authority
which runs through all. To reject one is to offend
against the whole authority of faith. To throw open
a question of faith, to admit contradictory expositions
of one and the same truth, to lift a human opinion to
the level of a Divine doctrine, or rather to thrust
down a Divine doctrine to the level of a human
opinion, what is it but to reduce the whole autho-
rity of faith to the same level ?
I do not see how the Church of England can per-
mit two contrary doctrines on Baptism to be pro-
pounded to her people without abdicating the Divine
authority to teach as sent from God ; and a body which
teaches under the authority of human interpretation
descends to the level of a human society. It cannot
require faith in its teaching as necessary to salvation,
nor lay a Divine authority upon the conscience. How
can I any longer say " the Church of England teaches
that all infants duly baptized are regenerate," if it per-
mits the same to be denied ? If I have authority to
( 45 )
affirm, another has equal authority to deny the same
doctrine. Henceforth, we speak in our own name ; not
by authority at all, but by opinion ; and if one article
of the faith is thus without authority, what article is
more than an opinion ? for opinion, and not faith, will
be the principle and basis of all our teaching. I will
not press the consequences of this fatal admission.
One word more I will now ask leave to add. My
Lord, at my Ordination, and at my entering upon
the charges I hold, I solemnly took the oath of
Supremacy and subscribed the three articles of the 36th
Canon. They bind me to the Ecclesiastical Discipline
as this Church and Realm have received the same.
Am I then bound to accept as lawful and rightful the
Royal Supremacy exhibited in this Appellate Jurisdic-
tion ? I trust not, partly because I have at all times in
perfect integrity of heart formally denied to the Crown
the power lately exercised. So short a time ago as
1848, I stated in the most public and responsible
manner my belief as follows: — "No Supremacy is
claimed for the Crown over the Spiritualty, but a
Civil Supremacy — a Supremacy of Temporal power
in Temporal things, and in the Temporal accident of
Spiritual things." * The Law of Christ forbids us to
accept of more.
But above all, I trust that the Supremacy intended in
our oath and subscription goes no further than this limit,
* Charge at the Ordinary Visitation of the Archdeaconry of
Chichester, p. 27, in .July, 1848.
( 4G )
because any other Supremacy seems to me in violation
of the Divine office of the Church. To the ancient
jurisdiction of the Crown, as it was wielded by our
Princes — to the Christian Supremacy of Edward the
Confessor — the Church of England will, I trust, be ever
ready to render a glad obedience. But that Supremacy
did not claim to be the fountain of spiritual jurisdic-
tion : it assuDied no functions of direction in the
interior discipline of the Church : it never assumed
to pronounce on the fitness of a Pastor for mission to
cure of souls : it never sat upon a tribunal to apply
a judgment of discretion in declaring what is the
doctrine of the Church.
In the year 1846, when the Bill to repeal certain
penal statutes directed against those who gainsayed the
Supremacy of the Crown was under discussion in the
Legislature, the greatest authorities of the Law in the
House of Lords were heard to declare that the Poyal
Supremacy needs no protection by penal statute, inas-
much as it was no creature of statutes, but a prerogative
known to the Common Law of these realms, and pro-
tected by that majestic authority. We were told that the
Supremacy of the Crown existed before the Tudor
statutes. In that sense, my Lord, I have no difficulty
in binding myself by any oath of fidelity. The Royal
Supremacy at Common Law is in perfect harmony
with the Divine office of the Church, by which it was
consecrated to the Kingdom of our Divine Lord. In
that sense, and not in the sense of this Appellate
( 47 )
Jurisdiction, I ain prepared with gladness to obey
and to uphold it with a true and loyal heart. It is the
novel jurisdiction in matters of faith — a jurisdiction
unknown at Common Law, unheard of before the
statutes of Henry YIII. — it is against this that we
protest in the name of God and of His Church. We
appeal from it to the Common Law itself, which, in
the words of a Saxon Council, will vindicate our just
demand : " Libera sit Ecclesia, fruaturque suis judiciis."
And I trust that as by the Statute of the sixteenth
of King Charles the First, Parliament has already once
retraced its steps and restored the ancient jurisdiction
of the Crown to its just limits, by abolishing the Court
of High Commission, so it will now relieve the Princes
of these realms of a burden too weighty for any royal
head, by repealing so much of the Acts of Henry
YIII. as invests the Sovereign with this perilous and
unnatural judicature.
The histories and chronicles to which, in creating
these novel functions, appeal was made, though they
bear no witness to these royal privileges in the
Church of God, record other illustrious graces of the
English Crown. But they were not granted by Acts
of Parliament or by laws of man. That such may
ever descend in fulness on her who now rules our
loyal allegiance, is the daily intercession of the
Church. May He who only can inspire the will to
pay Him honour, so overrule the course of this world
that the Christian splendour of the English Crown
( 48 )
may ever be untarnished ; and that this claim of dan-
gerous days — dangerous to the Church, but more
dangerous far to the reahn which shall uphold it —
may be laid aside as a restitution at the Altar in
homage to Him who alone is " Head over all
things to the Church, which is his body, the fulness
of Him that filleth all in all."
For my own sake, I take this public way of
rendering my grateful thanks for the affectionate
and paternal kindness which, during so many
years, both in an oflScial and personal relation, I
have received at your Lordship's hands ; and with a
daily prayer that you may be guided in all things to
rule the Church committed to you according to the
will of God, I subscribe myself,
My Lord Bishop,
Your Lordship's attached and faithful
Servant in Christ,
Henry Edward Manning.
Lavington, July 2, 1850.
rniNTED BT W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.
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