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PASTORAL LETTER
THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE
PROVINCE OF YORK.
BY
WILLIAM LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK,
PRIJIATE OP ENGLAND AND METROPOLITAN.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1864.
lOVDOS : rnlKTED BY -WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORP PTRKI T,
AND CnAniNG CUOSS.
TO THE CLERGY AND. LAITY OF THE
PROVINCE OF YORK.
Brethren,
The result of the proceedings before the
Privy Council, in the two cases of the Bishop of
Salisbury v. Williams and Fendall v. Wilson, has
caused great perplexity and dismay throughout the
Church. The numerous addresses and letters which
have reached me, inviting an expression of opinion
upon the great questions supposed to be involved,
seem to compel me to some public and general reply,
in order to remove misapprehensions, and to reassure,
it may be, the minds of some, who have admitted, in
their first alarm, the notion that the Church of Eng-
land is falling away from the true faith.
My position, as a member of the Privy Council,
necessarily limits me in discussing what is inaccu-
rately called the Jiidgment. I do not indeed admit
the doctrine which has been advanced, that the Clergy
in general are forbidden by the Oath of Supremacy
to discuss the reasons of the Committee of Privy
Council for the advice it has tendered to the Crown.
Those who take this view are perhaps unaware that
the Judgment (so-called) which has excited so much
discussion, is an entirely different document from the
Report to the Crown, upon which the real Judgment
is founded ; that the so-called Judgment is a state-
b2
( 4 )
ment for the guidance of the suitors and the pubhc
of the grounds upon which the advice to the Crown
will be based, which statement never reaches the
Crown at all ; and that the Eeport to the Crown
happily omits the grounds of the advice, and confines
itself to advising briefly what the Judgment should
be.* By this course the great inconvenience is
prevented that reasons which must of necessity be
closely and freely criticised in arguing new cases as
they arise, would appear as part of the Judgment of
the Queen, and that the mind of the Advocate would
thus be divided between his respect for the Sovereign
and his duty to his client. The Clergy are happily
* The Report and Judgment in one of the Cases is annexed : —
'* ' Now the Lords of the Committee having, in ohedience to your
Majesty's said Order in Council, taken the said Petition into consideration,
and read the proceedings transmitted from the Court below, and 'on three
former days heard the said Appellant and his Proctor and Counsel, and
a Proctor for the Respondent, and having maturely deliberated, have this
day agreed humbly to report to your Majesty their opinion in favour of the
Appeal and Complaint of the said Reverend Rowland Williams that the
Decree or Sentence appealed from ought to be reversed ; that the Articles
given in in the said Cause in the Court below by the Proctor of the
said Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Salisbury, and which wei-c by
the said Judge admitted as reformed, ought to be rejected ; and that the
said Reverend Rowland Williams, clerk, the Appellant, ought to be
dismissed from the Decree or Citation against him issued under seal of the
Court below pursuant to the Letters of Request, in virtue of which the said
Cause was promoted, and from all further observance of justice in the
said Cause ; and, further, that the said Right Reverend the Lord Bishop
of Salisbury, the Respondent, ought to be condemned in the costs incurred
by the said Appellant in the said Cause of Appeal, but that no order ought
to be made in regard to the costs incurred on either side in the said Cause
in the Court below.'
" Her Majesty, having taken the said Report into consideration, was
pleased, by and with the advice of her Privy Council, to approve thereof,
and of what is therein recommended, and to order, as it is hereby ordered,
that the same be duly and punctually observed, complied with, and carried
into execution. Whereof all persons whom it may concern are to take
notice, and govern themselves accordingly."
( 5 )
not placed under that intolerable restraint, that a
number of theological statements, drawn up in fact
by a Committee with a majority of eminent laymen,
and partly repudiated by two out of the three pro-
fessed theologians that compose the minority, are re-
moved from the sphere of theological discussion and
placed under the protection of the Oath of Supremacy.
If a Committee of the Privy Council of the Queen
imj)arts to the suitors and to the public the grounds
of the advice it means to tender, the public and the
suitors will form an opinion as to whether Her
Majesty is likely to be rightly or wrongly advised.
And whilst the Oath of Supremacy binds us to regard
the Judgment of the Crown as final and decisive
between the parties, it does not impose on the Clergy
the distasteful duty of imputing to the Crown pro-
positions or reasoning which their own studies
enable them to recognise as defective, which may
happen to be corrected in some future case, which
emanate not from the Crown but from responsible
servants of Her Majesty, and which are not even
submitted to the Crown after being delivered to the
public.
But the liberty which I thus claim for the Clergy
and for all others, I can only exercise with those
restrictions which attach to a member of the Court.
I cannot reopen the whole case and compare the
Judgment with the pleadings and with the facts in
evidence. I shall pass no opinion on the Judgment
of the Arches Court, which has now been reviewed by
the Privy Council. But in the discharge of my spi-
ritual office I am bound to speak upon those theolo-
( i; )
gical topics as to which the niinds of Christian people
are from any cause disquieted, and to point out what
is the effect of the " Judgment " upon the position
of the Church.
It is importanj: to observe that a much wider scope
is attributed to the " Judgment " than it claims for
itself. The course of proceeding in the Court of
Arches recognises a twofold right of appeal. Either
party may appeal, either on the admission of the
articles of charge or on the judgment being pro-
nounced. An appeal at the former of these two
stages would have raised the question. What passages
in the " Essays " impugned are heretical ? An appeal
at the latter stage is confined to the much narrower
question, Do certain quoted passages deserve, as here-
tical, the penalty decreed by the Court below ? Now
the appeal to the Privy Council was in this narrower
form ; it was an appeal against the judgment of the
Court of Arches, and not against its order for the
reformation of the articles of charge. It was an
appeal against the penalty, and not an appeal upon
the whole merits of the cases. If the Judge of the
Court of Arches was wrong in admitting or rejecting
any passages as heretical, either party could have
appealed, and so the opinion of the Privy Council
would have been obtained as to the wdiole case, as to
what passages in the whole Essay were, and what were
not, at variance with our articles and formularies. If
the promoter thought that after the large changes
directed by the Judge to be made in the articles of
charge the quotations still admitted would give a
wrong idea of the unsound teaching of the defendant,
( 7 )
he might have had his remedy with the Court above,
and might have there resisted the omissions and
alterations ordered by the Judge of the Arches. But
in each case the promoter waived that right of appeal ;
and neither case came to the Court above until the
later stage — the appeal against the punishment,
I purposely refrain from expressing any opinion as
to the judgment of the Court below, because this is
beyond the limit I have imposed on myself. I only
say that, whatever may be thought of that judgment
upon the admission of the articles, the promoters
rested content with it, and thus narrowed the ground
which the Committee of Council were permitted to
travel over. And it follows that the Committee of
Council has pronounced no opinion whatever upon
the " Essays " of the two defendants, but only upon
some detached fragments of them.
Nor can it be regarded as an injury to the faith of
the Church that the Committee of Council has imposed
on itself the strictest bounds in dealing with these
fragments. " The accuser is, for the purpose of the
charge, confined to the passages which are included
and set out in the Articles as the matter of the accu-
sation ; but it is competent to the accused party to
explain from the rest of his work the sense or mean-
ing of any passage or word that is challenged by the
accuser." We may infer from these words that the
Court will not have regard to any other portion of
the work in which the passages occur ; but that if the
accused resorts to other parts of his work to explain
away the accusation, the accuser may follow him into
the same ground to refute the explanation. But if
( 8 )
after the parties have been heard, without having
travelled beyond the passage, a doubt shall exist in
the mind of the Court whether the passage in ques-
tion be heretical, or be devoid of all sense and
meaning, the Court is not to cast even a glance into
the rest of the work in order to clothe it Avith mean-
ing ; but is bomid, if it be not clearly heretical in
itself, rather to consider it as unmeaning altogether.
This strict rule may narrow the functions of the Court
unduly, and may be at variance with the practice
of other Courts in the analogous case of a libel ; but
there is no peril to the faith of the Church where a
passage escapes censm-e because the Court caimot see
its meaning, and declines to seek assistance elsewhere.
These remarks seem necessary, because, in spite of
the explicit disclaimer in the " Judgment," many per-
sist in treating it as an examination and acquittal of
the whole work called " Essays and Reviews."
There are only two points in the " Judgment " to
which these remarks do not apply, and about which
after all these limitations the mind of the Chm'ch is
reasonably disquieted. I mean the inspiration and
authority of Holy Scriptm^e, and the eternity of the
punishment of the wicked.
Upon the former of these points, the authority of
Scripture, I must not shrink from saying that a doc-
trine as to Holy Scriptm-e has found some counten-
ance from the " Judgment," which no article or
formulary of any Chm-ch whatever has before
adopted, namely : That the Bible is called the Word
of God, not because it is, but because it contains the
Word of God.
( 9 )
One of the Appellants maintains that the title
" Word of God " cannot properly be applied to the
whole Bible by Protestants, because it is not so
applied in the Bible itself, and Protestants own no
other authority than the Bible. He thinks that the
doctrine of the Church on this subject is to be sought
for in the Sixth Article, which he terms the " pivot
article," and this doctrine he thus expresses : " The
Word of God is contained in Scripture, whence it
does not follow that it is co-extensive with it."
The other Appellant maintains, in two passages
that are certainly not free from obscurity, that the
Bible is the production of devout human beings,
which other devout human beings are entitled to
criticise freely; that seeing the Prayer Book speaks
of the Church as inspired, we ought not to shrink
from attributing inspiration to " true hearts " in all
ages merely because they are fallible, but we ought
rather to reduce our theory of the inspiration of
prophets and apostles to the same level, and confess
that those " Israelites of old " might be fallible also,
and that the inspiration which guided the writers of
the Bible is the same in kind as that which Luther
and Milton and other good men have at different
times enjoyed.
Obscure as the words of this writer are, I assume
that they have a meaning, and this is the only mean-
ing which I am able to attach to them.
One Appellant then maintains that the Bible is not
the Word of God, and the other that it is the word
of devout men. These two doctrines are oj^posed
not merely to one or more statements of our Church,
B 3
( 10 )
but to those statements which are the very foundation
of its teaching.
The doctrine of the Church on this subject is set
forth in the 6th and 20th Articles principally, but
several other Articles contain expressions bearing on
the subject, as the 19th, 21st, 22nd, 24th, and 26th.
Not one of these Articles is directed against those
who deny the authority of Scripture, but the doctrine
is gathered from the expressions used about the Bible
in guarding against errors of a different kind.
The 6th Article is directed against those who hold
that traditions are necessary besides Scripture. The
word " containeth " does not imjoly that any part of
Scripture is less inspired, less canonical than another ;
the assertion is that all things necessary to salvation
are found in Holy Scripture. They are contained,
but not as the less in the greater, not as one part in
a whole, but as all the parts together are contained
in the whole which they constitute. The latter part
of the Article enumerating the Books of Scripture
introduces the well-known distinction between canoni-
cal and apocryphal books. It has been argued that
there are two senses of the word canonical, but this
is not admissible. I do not believe that that sense
of canonical, as " admitted into a list or index of
works to be used in public worship," was in the mind
of those who drew up the Articles at all. It origi-
nated, I think, with Semler in Germany, but it is
now quite exploded, even among those who more or
less follow Semler 's opinions. There is every reason
to think, and no reason on the other side, that in the
Article the word canonical has its proper historical
( n )
meaning. Originally the canon was the rule of faith
in the Church ; then as Holy Scri^Dture came every-
where to be accepted as the rule of faith, the Bible
was called " the canon of Holy Scriptures " by
Ohrysostom, " the canonical Scriptures " by Origen,
" canonized books " by Chrysostom, always with the
sense that, as divine writings, they were the norm
and rule of the faith. The word canonical means in the
6th Article " belonging to the rule of faith." Books
could not be canonical, could not guide and regulate
and determine the faith, unless they were divine.
The Bible is termed the Word of God in the 19th,
20th, 22nd, and 24th Articles. None of these
Articles was drawn up with reference to those
who deny divine authority to the Bible ; but this
error, though not present to the mind of the framers
of the Articles, receives indirectly a sufficient refuta-
tion from the passages that can be cited.
In Article 22 Scripture and the Word of God are
treated as interchangeable terms.
In Article 20 a very important statement occurs :
" And yet it is not lawful for the Church to ordain
anything that is contrary to God's Word \vritten,
neither may it so expound one place of Scripture that
it be repugnant to another." Here Holy Scripture
is made the judge of controversies, or rather, as it
has been said, the yoice of the judge ; and a limit is
put to the right of interpreting a passage "accord-
ing to the mind of the Church " claimed by some
Romish writers, by the rule that one place of Scrip-
ture is not to be interpreted against another. Nothing
can more clearly show the sense which the Church
( 12 )
puts upon the phrase " Word of God." If no text
is to be interpreted against another, this must be
because all the Bible is regarded as divine and
canonical.
Besides these passages, there is the question put to
every one to be ordained Deacon : " Do you un-
feignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the
Old and New Testament ? " with the answer, " I do
believe them." *
How stands the case, then, with the Appellants ?
One of them has afiQrmed that the Bible cannot pro-
perly be called by us the Word of God, though it is
so called in the 20th and other Articles ; and has
maintained that the Word of God is something con-
tained in Scripture but not co-extensive mth it, which
is contrary to the 6th and 20th Articles, and to the
profession of unfeigned belief in all the Canonical
Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, made by
every one who is ordained Deacon.
* Were it necessary to show that other Protestant communities have spoken
of the Bible as the Word of God, the task would be easy. In the Preface to
the Augsburg Confession (p. 6) the teaching of the Eeformers is described as
drawn " ex Scripturis Sanctis et puro verbo Dei,'' the two expressions
being synonymous. In the 'Apology for the Confession' (p, 48) the
adversaries of the Lutherans are described as condemning doctrines in
defiance of the Scripture of the Holy Spirit (" contra manifestam Scripturam
Spiritus Sancti"). In the Smalcaldic Articles (p. 308) it is written, " We
liave another nde, namely, that the Word of God may establish Articles
of Faith, and no one besides, not even an angel." And these Articles
(pp. 331-333) describe a class of enthusiasts who profess that " they have
the Spirit before the Word and without the Word, and therefore judge,
and turn, and twist the Scripture, or the vocal Word " [elsewhere " the
external Word "] " at their pleasure." In the ' Formula Concordiai ' Luther
is described as laying down clearly this difference between Divine and
human writings, " Solas videlicet Sacras literas pro imica regula et noima
omnium dogmatum cognoscendas." All th(!fee passages will be foimd iu
Franckc's ' Libri Symbolici Eccl. Luther.'
( 13 )
The other Appellant contends that the Bible is the
production of devout human beings, which other
devout human beings may freely criticise ; that the
inspiration which guided it is the same in kind as
that which Luther and Milton and other good men
have at different times enjoyed. This is in contra-
diction of the 6th Article, which attributes canonical
authority to the books of Holy Writ; to the 20th
Article, which forbids the Church to ordain anything
contrary to God's word written, or to expound one
place of Scripture so that it be repugnant to another.
The infallibility of Scripture is here plainly taught :
the Appellant advisedly contends for the fallibility.
I had no doubt that both Appellants were clearly
shown, even under the narrow rule laid down by
the Committee of Council, to have broken the law of
the Church, and to have advisedly taught what was
contrary to the doctrines of the Church in her
articles and formularies. Being unable to concur
in the advice to be given to the Crown, the two
Primates recorded their dissent from this portion of
the judgment.
It is almost superfluous to observe that this is no
question of terms but of doctrine, and that it is not a
question of one doctrine but of the doctrine on which
all the other doctrines of the Church of England rest.
It is a question of the binding authority of Holy
Scripture. In pronoiuicing the Bible to be the
Word of God, in taking from all Deacons a pledge
of belief as to all the books of the Bible, in call-
ing the books of the Old and New Testaments
canonical, in declaring that Holy Scripture con-
( 14 )
tains all things necessary to salvation, in prohibiting
inconsistent or contrary interpretations of Scripture,
the Church of England expresses with sufficient
clearness that God has spoken to His people the word
of His will so that all can understand it and use it
for their guidance, that the Bible is this word, and
that its teaching, which cannot contradict itself, is
the law, or norm, or canon, by which the Church is
bound. The Church has laid down no theory of
inspiration ; she has always had in her bosom
teachers of at least two different theories. But she
does lay down that the declarations of Scripture are
intelligible, are self-consistent, are of supreme au-
thority. If the Bible is not the Word of God, but
contains the Word of God as the greater contains
the less, every one of these predicates falls to the
ground. There is no touchstone which shall test for
us whether a given passage is part of the Word of
God or of the word of man therewith entangled ; and
so we can no longer depend on understanding the
will of God from the Bible. Passages may admit of
a contrary interpretation if some are and some are
not of divine origin ; and therefore the Bible would
cease to be self-consistent. And that book can no
longer be of supreme authority in controversies of
faith ; we should either be without an authority, from
our inability to discern and disentangle the divine
and human portions, or the supreme authority would
be that power which claimed to teach us what was
divine and what was human.
Thus far as to the statements of one Appellant.
Those of the other tend as directlv towards the same
( IS )
result. If those " Israelites of old," whom we term
prophets and apostles, are fallible writers, and their
works to be classed only with devout human compo-
sitions, we have no right to expect from them a clear,
or an uniformly consistent, or an authoritative de-
cision.
What then are we to teach ? Where is " the very
lively Word of God, the special food of man's soul,
that all Christian persons are bound to embrace,
believe, and follow, if they look to be saved ? " *
The Church of England answers that the Bible is
that Word. The new doctrine seems to leave us
without an answer.
And whilst I have exactly adhered to the rule laid
down by the legal members of the Committee that
the passages inculpated were to be interpreted by
themselves, and that the Court could not seek for
itself any illustration of them even from the writer's
own words in the same Essay, I must point out the
serious consequences of deciding theological doc-
trines upon such a basis, both as regards the suitors,
and as regards the Church.
As regards the suitors, these proceedings are
highly penal, and penalties almost always involve
questions of degree. When a writer denies that the
whole Bible is the Word of God, the statement is in
terms contradictory to those of our Church. But as
to the punishment, it makes the greatest difference
— the difference between a venial want of caution
in the use of words, and a highly culpable error —
whether the writer means to exclude on critical
* Injunctious of King Edward VI.
*
( H) )
gToiinds a few verses wliicli ought not to be con-
sidered parts of the Bible, or wishes to shut out all
miracle, and all prediction, and much of the sacred
history. Now in one of the cases before us a writer
has asserted that no one can call the Bible the Word
of God, and has then proceeded to show with suffi-
cient openness many special places of Scripture to
which his principle applies. The passage is one
continuous whole, and cannot be divided with justice
to the author's meaning. If an author states a
general principle and thinks fit to add the particulars
to which it applies, he has a right to ask that both the
one and the other shall be looked on as essential to
his argument. The Committee of Council by its rule
is precluded from looking at any thing which the
Court below has struck out ; the Court below has
struck out all examples taken from Holy Scripture ;
so that the universal proposition is stated, but the
examples which show the amount of its application
are all excluded.
It is obvious to answer that the Appellant has
been acquitted, and so needs not complain. But there
are two parties to a suit. The Promoter has thought
it right to obtain the opinion of the Courts upon this
passage. The Court of Arches decides that half of
it must be struck out, and that the remaining half is
highly penal. The Privy Council determines that
the remaining half is not penal at all ; but guards
itself against any decision, except as to that half.
Neither tribunal will have anything to do with the
whole passage. The Promoter is unable to read it
except as a whole, — perhaps could not foresee that it
( 17 )
would be read otherwise. The Promoter gets no
substantial answer, but pays the costs.
As regards the Church, which has all along
watched these cases with great anxiety, the results
of the operation of this rule are equally unsatis-
factory. The Promoter had at least the choice of
two appeals ; the Church could only wait. The
Church expected an interpretation of the law upon
this passage from the proper Courts. The result of
the whole proceeding is that it receives an opinion
upon half the passage : upon the abstract assertion
and not upon the concrete illustrations of it. Nay,
what is more surprising, the author's own examples
being lost in the Court below, fresh ones are sup-
plied him, and the sense of the passage is thus com-
pletely transformed. The Council tries the question
whether it is heretical to " affirm that any part of
the canonical books of the Old or New Testament,
upon any subject whatever, however unconnected ivith
religious faith or moral duty, was not written under
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit ? " Are we then
to infer from the acquittal that the author's own
examples, " the nature of angels, the reality of
demoniacal possession, the personality of Satan, and
the miixiculous particulars of many events,'' are deter-
mined by the Committee to be " matters unconnected
with religious faith or moral duty ?" By no means.
The Court below has deprived the Committee of the
benefit of the author's own examples ; and they have
applied his principles to particulars of their own, to
" matters unconnected with religious faith and moral
duty." For no other reader, beyond the doors of the
( 18 )
Council Chamber, can this half passage be said to
have any existence. No other reader will stop in
the middle of the page lest he should see how the
author developes his own meaning. No other reader
would discard the author's own examples and put in
others of his own. What must be the result ? The
Council speaks of one thing, and the author perhaps
of another; but the words of the Coimcil will be
applied to the passage as it stands, which alone has
any existence as a ground for the charge.
Unlearned persons know but two ways of dealing
with an incomplete statement ; it may either be left
unexplained as incomplete, or the author's own words
may be called in to complete it.
The charge against one Appellant on the subject
of Eternal Punishment did not seem to me to be
sustained. On the one hand the Church in adopting
the word everlasting to express the word that may
also be rendered eternal, has cut off, for all purposes
of law, some metaphysical speculations to which the
original word has been subjected. Everlasting must
mean lasting for ever, never coming to an end. The
Church of England believes in a life that lasts for
ever for the good, and in an everlasting punishment
of the wicked.
But on the other hand, the Appellant explained to
the Court that the " all " of whom he predicated
salvation at the last, did not include all men with-
out exception ; that he divided men into three classes
— the utterly reprobate, the good, and a middle class
of undeveloped or " germinal souls ;" and that it was
this middle class, whose characters at the hour of
( 19 )
death did not mark them either as good or bad, of
whom he hoped that they might hereafter be developed
into something higher, and might be made fit for
the bosom of the Father. Although this was not a
formal retractation of anything he had advanced,
yet as the words employed would bear that construc-
tion, with a little allowance for incautious writing,
it did not seem to be right to inflict a heavy penalty
for maintaining that all would be saved, in the face
of a declaration that he meant " all the good and all
the undeveloped," to the exclusion of the reprobate.
The charge fell to the ground if the writer's own
explanation was to be taken.
. It must be remembered that our duty was to deal
with advised teaching contrary to the articles and
formularies.
As the Appellant did not directly impugn the for-
mularies where they speak of this subject ; as he
expressed no more than a hope or wish ; above all,
as he insisted that his words had been overstrained
beyond their meaning, I felt justified in agreeing in
the opinion that he had not been guilty of advised
teaching that had incurred the penalty awarded by
the Court below.
The " Judgment " omits the consideration that had
most weight with me, namely, the author's own ex-
planation of his words, and, therefore, I could not
adopt all its expressions. Let me, however, point out
to some who have considered them as equivalent to an
admission that " the Church of England has left the
eternity of punishment an open question," that this
is by no means the construction that can be i'airl}'
( 20 )
put upon them : " We do not find in the formularies to
which this article refers any such distinct declaration
of our Church upon the subject, as to condemn as i^enal
the expression of a hope by a clergyman that even the
ultimate pardon of the wicked who are condemned in
the Day of Judgment may be consistent with the
will of Almighty God." Our Church should not be
too ready to make a hope or wish the ground of a
criminal proceeding ; but it does not follow that the
hope or wish is in conformity to the teaching of the
Church because it is left to reason and argument
and is not punished.
The doctrine of a terminable punishment for the
wicked finds no countenance whatever from Holy
Scripture. Those who have maintained it can do no
more than suggest plausible explanations of texts that
make against them ; even they must admit that there
is not one passage of Scripture that clearly authorises
the hope of miiversal salvation. On the other hand
the declarations that the punishment of the wicked
is eternal are many, and those most clear and em-
phatic. Eternal death put into antithesis with eternal
life ; eternal chains ; the wrath of God abiding on a
man so that he shall never see life ; the worm that
never dieth ; can all these be explained away ? Even
if they could, not one of them promises salvation for
the simier once condemned. If they were not con-
clusive for everlastingness, they would not be in favour
of the salvation of the wicked at the last. On the other
hand, the doctrine that the wicked are punished for
ever would be gathered not from these express texts
alone, but from the whole tenor of Scripture, which
( 21 )
speaks of this life as our probation and of the next as
our reward, which represents the judgment as final ;
which is utterly silent as to any economy of probation
after death. I beseech my brethren of the clergy to
beware of exceeding or departing from the statements
of Scripture upon this awful subject. We are in the
hands of a just God, who has revealed in Holy Writ
His w^ay of dealing with His creatures so far as we
need to know it for a guide to our faith and a motive
to practical duties. Let us rest in that revelation.
The certain consequence of attempting to make
another doctrine, not in Scripture, of death and
judgment, heaven and hell, will be to disturb the
faith of our people in the plain declarations of the
Bible, and to give them instead some fine-spun meta-
physical view of evil, which their practical sense
will soon detect as unwarranted by the voice of
inspiration. I do not impute to this Appellant the
intention to leave his people without definite belief
in the future state. But if we destroy where we
cannot rebuild, this will be the consequence. If the
Bible statements be removed, who will pretend to
interpret for us the secret things that lie behind the
grave ? The new speculation that some one gives
us instead, may satisfy its author, may be honestly
deemed by him an act of service to the Most High.
But the strength of sin no cords of man's invention
can bind ; the wicked will break through such
theories, as the strong man brake the green withes,
" as a thread of. tow is broken when it toucheth the
fire," and sinners, bound now neither by Scripture
nor by the weak cords of man's spinning, will
( 22 )
draw their own conclusion, " We shall not snrely
die."
I have now touched upon the two great questions
which have troubled men's minds : the authority of
the Bible, and the punishment of the impenitent
sinner. It would be vain to deny that this trouble
of the Church has a real foundation. And yet, my
brethren, there is no reason for immoderate fear.
The Church of England depends for her teaching not
upon prosecutions and decisions of Courts, but upon
the solemn undertaking, freely made by her minis-
ters, that they will teach the people according to her
articles and formularies. In her articles the para-
mount authority of Holy Writ is to my mind suffi-
ciently established. The Clergy will not subscribe
the articles and teach out of the Prayer Book, with-
out feeling and declaring to the people that the Bible
is for us the law of the Church and the voice of God.
From our northern province not one single case of
doctrine has gone up to the Court of Appeal since
that Court received its present constitution. It may
be, that many now fear that the advice given to
the Queen might not in some future case be in har-
mony with the conclusions of the great mass of the
Clergy. Still it is not to be thought that our teachers
have up to this time been kept straight by the fear
of a tribunal, which in fact we have never used. If
one of us should be tempted to err from the faith,
more powerful than such a fear will be the common
sense of his people, who with the- Bible in their
hands, and the Prayer Book that acknowledges the
Bible, will refuse to be led off' from its plain state-
( 23 )
ments ; more powerful will be the voice of his own
conscience that tells him what he has freely under-
taken to teach, and how far he may depart from it
without ceasing to be a teacher in a Church that is
founded on the Bible. The Church of England
knows little of courts and prosecutions ; and her
stability and soundness in the faith rest upon a
different and a far surer guarantee.
May our present perplexity make the ministers
more zealous in teaching the pure Word of God, and
the people more ready to hear and obey the same
Word. Already great zeal for this precious heritage
of the Church has been called forth. And though
clouds and darkness are round us, they do not wholly
obscure the wider horizon ; and we know 'that He
who has brought the pure Gospel to us in safety
through past ages of trouble, is able to preserve it
to us for the time to come.
(Signed) W. EBOR :
Primate op England and Metropolitan.
April, 1864.
LONnOX:
ritlNTED BI V. ILUAM CLOWES ANT) SONS, STAJIFORD STREET,
AKD CHARIKG CROSS.
*>
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