Ill
SB SS MflE
A LETTER
TO HIS GRACE
THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,
ON SOME CIRCUMSTANCES
CONNECTED
WITH TIIK PRESENT CRISIfc
IN THE
ENGLISH CHURCH.
i UK
REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
?S PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, CANO v OF CHRIST CHUBCH, AND
I, ATE KFLI.OW COLLEGE.
SI:<;OM> EDITION.
OXFORD,
JOHN HENRY PARKER ;
J. G. F. AND .1. RIVINGTON, LONDON. ,
1842.
A LETTER
TO HIS GRACE
THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,
ON SOME CIRCUMSTANCES
CONNECTED ,
WITH THE PRESENT CRISIS
IN THE
ENGLISH CHURCH.
BY THE
REV. E. B. PUSEY, D.D.
., PROFESSOR , K,B,WUo OH CHRIST CHURCH,
LATE FELLOW OF ORIEL COLI.EOB.
SECOND EDITION.
OXFORD,
JOHN HENRY PARKER ;
J. G. F. AND J. RIVINGTON, LONDON,
1842.
BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION. 1
Present Importance of Episcopal Charges. 3
I. Tendency to Romanism not produced by the
Tracts for the Times ; its real causes. 8
II. Recent Charges of some of our Bishops. Their
effects. Review of them, as far as relates to
the " Tracts." 39
III. Bishopric of Jerusalem ; wherein an object of
sympathy ; wherein of apprehension. Ill
IV. Conclusion. Recent aggravation of our con-
fusions. Need of peace, sympathy, guidance ;
anxiety of present crisis. 136
Additional Notes. 163
709282
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACE,
IN times of less difficulty, it would be presump-
tion in one in my inferior office to acfop^sis', your "
Grace thus publicly, without any hiriCfrejm yourself^ ^
when the storm is upon the vessel; fh'e*y* to : who fri- :
its guidance is committed, listen patiently to any
voice, however humble, telling of some peril, which,
from theiiv position, may not be equally obvious to
themselves. The greatness t)f the emergency ex-
cuses the boldness which it calls forth. " Sugges-
tions, made even by the vulgar crowd, have been
often profitable to the most perfect gladiators," is
Tertullian's excuse for addressing those who were
then occupying the fore-front of the battle, and
soon to be enrolled in the " noble army of mar-
tyrs." Yet even thus, I can assure your Grace
that it is with deep reluctance, that I have again
come forward at all ; much more, thus publicly to
address your Grace and through you our other
fathers, the Bishops of our Church. The natural
repugnance which any one must feel at taking
upon himself a task to which he has no apparent
call, must be aggravated by the difficulties with
which every thing is now encompassed. It is a far
happier office to listen than to speak. It is painful
to do what (notwithstanding all one may say) may
seem like offering advice, when one had much
rather simply obey, and where I do wish merely
B
to furnish materials whereon you may exercise
your own judgment ; nor should I have done it,
but for circumstances which I need not trouble your
Grace by explaining. I quitted unwillingly occu-
pations more congenial and more peaceful. Yet,
though I have no title to address your Grace, your
love of unity and peace, your anxiety for our Church,
ever which, by the grace of God, you preside, will
dispose you to listen kindly to any thing, which
may have for its object her peace and well-being ;
your condescending kindness, on different occasions,
to myself makes it, I trust, less presumptuous in
me to become the organ of offering it.
The ground then, upon which I am anxious to
address your Grace is, (I may say at once,) my
anxiety lest evil befal our Church, through an in-
adequate appreciation, on the part of those in
authority, of the construction likely to be put upon
what they do, and its effects. And in. any thing
which I may offer, I would wish to be con-
sidered rather as conveying information to your
Grace as to those from whom your Grace's position
necessarily separates you, than as venturing to
offer suggestions as to the course which you may
think it wise to pursue.
In the same way would I wish any observations
to be understood which, in the course of this
appeal, I may venture to make as to any thing,
which I might wish had been otherwise, in any
Charges of your Grace's brethren. I do not for a
moment wish to criticise what they have said, in
itself: I wish only to remark upon some probable
effects of things so said, which they probably do not
anticipate. And this, in every relation and office
of life, we wish to know. Things which it may be
right to say, may tell upon persons of different
temperaments and tones of mind very differently.
A kind master wishes to elicit from his servant the
effect of his words, when he has occasion to find
fault ; else he may mistake silence for obstinacy
or unconcern ; a loving parent watches the counte-
nance of the child he is blaming, catches gladly at
its half-uttered explanations, softens his rebuke and
soothes, so soon as he is sure that the effect is
attained ; all in secular authority, who have in
any degree to guide by influence, wish to know
how they are understood. Your Grace and your
Grace's brethren are, according to your ancient
title, our " Fathers in God ;" and you would as-
suredly be not less anxious to know the feelings of
those under your authority severally, and collectively
under that of the body of which your Lordships are
the chief; nay, rather the more, in that what is at
stake is of so much more moment, the censure so
much more solemn, every thing said or done affects
indirectly the whole body of Christ ; all relates not
to time but to eternity.
Then, also, the circumstances of the times have
given to the Charges of our Bishops a character so
different from that which they had heretofore, that
I may anticipate that the Bishops themselves would
accept the more gladly any information as to the
B2
of them, which any tnight be enabled to offer.
In quiet, ooe may say stagnant, times, such as until of
late ours have been, a Bishop's Charge was listened
to, one may say perhaps mostly delivered, with
little interest ; it was heard, perhaps read, in his
particular Diocese ; yet, unless for some incidental
expression, but little noticed out of it, and then
perhaps criticised rather than heeded. The Bishops
themselves did not seem to expect much weight to
be attached to their words ; when they did rebuke,
they expected to have persons of a refractory temper
to deal with, and their words were sharp accordingly.
Now, both within and without, things are widely dif-
ferent. The change of feeling with regard to the office
of every one's own Bishop, wrought by more reverent
habits, and increased appreciation of the feelings of
Antiquity, gives their words a weight, of which
they themselves are not aware : the relation in
which they stand makes, as one of us feelingly said,
" the slightest word of censure from one's own
Bishop a heavy thing ;" the very willingness to obey,
the reverence and affection which we feel and would
gladly testify, aggravate the weight of every thing
which they pronounce against us, even as an af-
fectionate child is more wounded by a look from its
parent, than another by sharp rebuke or even blows.
On the other hand, the intensity of the interest of
the questions now at issue gives to every expression
falling from your Lordships, weight and circulation
among persons, who ordinarily would have thought
too little either of your words or your office, at all
events would have been out of the reach of theo-
logical discussion, for which they are little prepared,
and which they now often enter upon injuriously.
It may be among the manifold workings of God's
Providence for our Church, that He has thus ordered
that the interest of all should, in one way or other,
be absorbed into these mighty questions. They have
penetrated into our villages ; they are the household
talk of those who aforetime, alas ! never spoke or
thought perhaps of the things of God : all expect
something, are on the look-out for something ; that
so the Truth of God may every where find its own ;
the good seed be carried, and root it in the clefts of
the rocks, which it had never found, had not they
who knew it not, dropped it unconsciously ; all are
somehow stirred and becoming alive to what is going
on in the Church, that in every rank and sex and
age they who may be won, may in this general
preparation for His Coming take their allotted
parts, await Him, live to Him.
And thus it happens, that every word of your
Lordships, in the high office assigned to you, is
watched and has a degree of weight given to it, pro-
portioned to men's interest in the whole subject; they
who at other times would slightly regard your words,
now watch every syllable ; they who would little
regard them, if addressed to themselves, seize them
eagerly as a weapon against others ; they give
them, I have reason to know, oftentimes a force
which in themselves they were not intended to
have ; they who would take no other interest in
them, use them now like moves in a mighty game,
whereby they hope to obtain an advantageous
position against those whom they oppose ; every
word of censure or of warning is not taken as an
insulated admonition in a particular case, but is
made to bear upon the whole question ; it is a
critical struggle for life or death ; and so, not a sound
can be uttered, which penetrates not the whole
frame ; every thing is strung up, and so every
touch, sound, breath, motion, vibrates through the
whole-
This, I think, some of your Grace's brethren
have not, and, in the nature of things could not
beforehand realize ; I have reason to know that
one was recently surprised at the weight attached
to his own words ; this must be the case, in some
measure, with all in authority ; and the more, by
how much more that authority is of a delicate and
spiritual nature ; our words, as indeed the very word
of God Himself, Whose word rebuke also is,
have weight according to the temper of mind of
those they reach : but especially in a crisis like the
present, in which the interest, month by month,
becomes more extensive, pervading, intense, they
who have passed most of their years in tranquil
times, .may well not be able to appreciate before-
hand, what can indeed be adequately calculated
by none. We are indeed altogether so little able
to realize what we are ; that there may be no
chance word or slight action of ours but may have
its influence ; that a half-unconscious look or un-
weighed expression may leave a lasting impression
on another's soul. And now every thing is new
and on a new scale, and former measures will not
apply to these times.
If then I express a wish that some of the lan-
guage concerning part of our teaching had been in
any respect different, it is because I am convinced
that could the Bishops have foreseen its effects,
they would themselves have modified it ; nor yet
do I write, as wishing that they should change
what they have done, but rather in the hope that
they who may hereafter speak, will speak, as in
fuller possession of the manifold bearings of what
they have to deliver. Recent circumstances present
also a more immediate apology for thus venturing
to allude to these Charges; for since others'* have
founded upon them an appeal to your Grace to
" take such measures as may seem most advisable,
for the Episcopal Bench to declare their united
disapprobation of the opinions of the writers of the
Tracts," it is natural for me to desire to shew that
those Charges furnish no ground for any such
measures, and to express my regret that the
Charges of Bishops, who wished to warn, not to
condemn, should yet have given such encourage-
ment to those who would fain exclude us from our
Church herself.
I. But before I enter upon the main subject to which
I wish to entreat your Grace's attention, there is yet
il Address of certain Lay Inhabitants of Cheltenham. The
example, I understand, has been followed in other places.
8
another point upon which it seems a duty to speak
distinctly, however reluctant I may be, lest harm inci-
dentally result, or I seem undutiful. Yet unless we
know the true nature of our evils, we cannot apply
their remedies ; and so it seems to me very important
that your Lordships should have a distinct view upon
it, while yet I know that it is one upon which it is
most difficult for those of elder years fully to under-
stand the present state of things. That subject is the
temptation to young or susceptible minds to forsake
our own Communion for that of Rome. Your
Grace will not think that in writing on this subject,
I have forgotten what I have myself recently 11 said,
as to the evils in the Roman Communion which
should deter any from joining it, or the tokens of
God's Providence which should bind us to our own
Church, or the affection with which we should love
her. But here I wish to speak on one subject
only ; the real, actual, temptations, to which in
the present state of things a certain class of minds
is exposed: and in that I say, " the present
state of things," I mean that they are not in-
herent in our Church, but incidental only to her pre-
sent condition ; in that I speak of " temptations," I
imply that it would be sinful to yield to them.
Yet all would wish to know the temptations to
which their children were exposed, and so your
Lordships, as to your " children in the faith." In
this case it is the more necessary to speak, on
account of the difficulty of appreciating temptations
'' Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 159 sqq. and Appendix.
9
to which any have not been exposed, or to
whose workings they have not been called upon to
minister. Even those of my own age, who have
been brought more into contact with Romanism as
a living system than your Lordships, have not had
the difficulties, which will beset many younger men;
we have been brought on our way past middle life,
and may the rather look to close it as we have
begun ; we have grown up thus long in our Church,
and have, in such points as from circumstances are
less distinct in her, gradually filled up her teaching
to ourselves, by the teaching of the Church
Catholic, of which she is the representative to us,
and to which she directs her members ; our insight
into her teaching and Catholic truth grew together ;
we became more fully acquainted with both at once,
and so they the rather harmonized in our minds.
Our immediate Mother was our guide to "the Mother
of us all." Romanism, in our earlier days, was
scarcely heard of among us, and so we learnt
Catholicity, partly as it had been handed down to
us, partly from the study of Primitive Antiquity, not
in contact with a system in which one must mourn
that tares are mingled with the good seed. Ro-
manism was, in our early associations, an antagonist
principle ; what is Catholic and true in it, we learnt,
whence it is derived, from the primitive sources;
of itself we thought, only for that which is peculiar
to it, as distinct from Catholic Antiquity, the error
mingled with the truth. It was apparently at a
low ebb, and partook of the general listlessness
10
which crept over the Church during the last
century; it seemed to present but the skeleton of
the right practices which it retained, and helped by
its neglect of their spirit to cast reproach upon them ;
the writer of a work then popular 15 could even speak
of it as extinct among us. It is not so now. The
Roman Church also has, in some countries certainly,
partaken of the same refreshing dew as ourselves ;
the same Hand, which has touched us, and bid our
sleeping Church, " Awake, arise," has reached her
also ; our Lord seems to be awakening the several
portions of His Church, and even those bodies
which have not yet the organization of a Church,
at once ; it may be, that we may all together
learn humility, and none boast herself, amid her
imperfections, or think unhumbly of them, when
she sees the like grace given to others, whose im-
perfections, as not being her own, she has no
difficulty in descrying. However, whatever mo-
mentary difficulties it may give rise to,, we must
acknowledge thankfully that in England the Roman
Communion has, amidst its sad errors from which
it will not part, a degree of life and holiness which
in our earlier days it had not. And this perhaps
not least through an infusion of members of our
/.-,'; */', '(n|o~w) who,, in better times, would have remained,
blessed and a blessing within her. She has now for
many years exhibited her peculiar system in a modified
form, the most calculated' to win those who know
not the treasures stored up for them in their own
b Father Clement.
11
Church. She stands too often in advantageous
contrast, not with our Church as she would be, did
we realize her gifts and avail ourselves of the
privileges lodged in her, but with her condition,
such as, through our sins and negligences, she has
mostly become ; and out of which she is beginning
to be restored. The temptation comes not to those
formed in the holy round of her daily devotions,
and humbled by her tones of penitence, but to those,
who through our carelessness have been unformed,
untrained, uninstructed ; or at least, are un-
acquainted with her true principles, the grounds of
her jelaimjkJthe virtue imparted through her. And
to these the Roman Communion, as at present seen
in this country, does come in a fascinating and im-
posing form c . She comes to us with our common ^
saints, which modern habits have led many wrongly
to regard as hers exclusively ; with holy truths and
practices, which in our recent carelessness are too often
disregarded or neglected, or even spoken against
amongst ourselves ; with unity on truths, whereon
we are distracted, (although, alas ! upon doctrines
and practices also which are not true nor holy ;) with
discipline, which we should find useful for ourselves,
and which has been neglected among us ; with fuller
devotions '', works of practical wisdom or of purified
c The following is not an ideal picture of what is calculated to
influence; it is a statement of what I know to have influenced
persons, and to be felt. I do not then suggest temptations, but
state what exist. Temptations are to be remedied, not by denying
their existence, but by a more vivid consciousness of duty.
d " There is so much of excellence and beauty in the services of
12
and kindled love c ; a ritual, which (though with-
drawn mostly from the laity,) still in itself at some
holy seasons sets before the eyes more prominently
than our own, our Saviour in His Life and Death
for His Church, or which utters more distinctly
some truths, which the sins of the Church caused
to be more veiled among ourselves : or she points to a
Communion of Saints, in which we profess our
belief, but of which little is heard among us, now
that even the prayer for the Church Militant for the
most part, practically forms no part of our weekly
service ; she has, in her Monastic institutions, a
refuge from the weariness and vanities of the world
and a means of higher perfection to individuals,
which many sigh after, and which might be revived
in a primitive form, but which as yet we have
not ; in her small Communion in this country,
she is not pressed on all sides by the spiritual
wants of her children as we are, which hinder
perhaps from noble enterprise in God's service,
some who might otherwise have essayed it, still she
does erect among us edifices to His glory, with which,
notwithstanding the ample means at the command of
the Breviary, that were it skilfully set before the Protestant by
Roman controversialists as the book of devotions received in
their communion, it would undoubtedly raise a prejudice in their
favour, if he were ignorant of the circumstances of the case, and
but ordinarily candid and unprejudiced. To meet this danger is
one principal object of the following pages." Tract 75. init.
The use of French Roman Catholic books, in which the un-
Catholic portion is very subordinate, has been one very frequent
way of enlisting the sympathies of members of our Church, espe-
cially females.
13
our people, we have but a little, here and there, in this
day to compare. Above all, she comes to us with
her prayers ; and some of her members by remem-
bering us at the Altar, and night and day in the
Holy Week, have drawn men's hearts unto them
and won our sympathy and gratitude, in any law-
ful way wherein we may manifest it.
In all this, it is cause of thankfulness to see
that there is nothing which ought to shake the
stedfastness of a well-balanced and humble mind.
Our duty is " heartily to thank our Heavenly
Father for the state of salvation into which He
brought us," when by Baptism He made us at
once members of His Son and our Church, became
Himself our Father, and gave us our Church for
our Mother. Our plain duty is, " wherein we
have been called, there to abide with Him ;" it is
not for us to imagine, (as is people's continued
temptation in every line and part of life,) that we
should have easier duties and greater privileges,
under circumstances in which God has not placed
us ; it is, to be thankful and live up to our own,
and pray that through our neglect or misuse they
turn not to our condemnation. Were it even true
that the Roman Communion did possess greater
advantages than our own, this would be no prac-
tical question to us individually. It may be that
one end which Almighty God has in exhibiting the
Roman Church in this form among us, is to dis-
pose us as a Church to more kindly feelings towards
her, and to have a less overweening opinion of our-
14
selves than we have mostly been wont to cherish.
But individually it cannot change our duties. Our
duties are positive and unconditional ; they lie
towards our Mother, the English Church, because
God has assigned us our lot in her, and are irre-
spective of any thing without her. The duties
and blessings of " the first commandment with
promise" are in obedience to our Parent as such.
Our duties are to her, because through her we
were reborn, within her have we been trained, cate-
chized, instructed, guarded, guided, called, recalled;
in her words and in her Courts we have worshipped
from childhood until now; in her we have had all our
" means of grace," in her we have whatever be our
" hopes of glory ;" at her breasts our Heavenly
Father " nourished and brought us up n ," as " chil-
dren," and to forsake her would be to " rebel
against" Him; through her He fed us, when young,
with milk, in her He feeds us now with Angels'
food, the Bread of Heaven ; in her He has
given us what out of her we could not have
had ; I need but allude to One precious Gift,
whose value none can estimate, bestowed on us alone
in the whole Western Church, and which I cannot
understand how any Communicant who loves his
Lord, could of his own act forego. One would
not speak of persons in those Churches which re-
fuse the Cup to their members ; sore as the loss is,
God can make up to His own, any losses which
they sustain where He has placed them ; but for
a Isai. i.
15
one who has had that privilege bestowed upon him,
voluntarily to forsake the Communion wherein
God has given it him, it does seem such a wilful
rejection of the gift of his Saviour's Blood, as, in
any who knew what that Gift is, one should dread
to think of. And even besides this sad forfeiture,
for any one, who, placed within a Church, has
experienced God's guidance and the operation of
His Holy Spirit on his heart, to forsake the
Church, wherein God dealt so graciously with
him, and shewed His merciful care for his soul
it does seem so ungrateful a disavowal of God's
past mercies to him, such a cutting-off of all
his past existence as a member of Christ's Church,
as to make it very painful to think of those, who
having been placed within our Church are being
tempted to forsake, or have forsaken her who has
the Apostolic Succession in this land.
But beyond these positive obligations, even in those
things which in the Roman Communion are at first
sight so attractive, what is Catholic and un-Catholic
are so strangely blended together, that to any well-
instructed mind, they create the longing to " re-
appropriate 10 ' what is Catholic, not to join a Com-
munion, (itself, in this country, schismatic, and acting
in a very unhumble and schismatic spirit,) where
it is to be found only with what is un-Catholic.
Throughout all she has of excellent, there is spread
(to mention no more) that one corrupting leaven,
the joining of the creature with the Creator, setting
b Tract 75, p. 1.
16
forth another object of affection, " giving His glory
to another, teaching both saint and sinner to rely
upon the Blessed Virgin as on Him a . This one ad-
dition, in itself, mars her books of devotion, her daily
services, her Monastic institutions (which are in
part instituted to promote it). One might add one
error in practice, withdrawal of privileges from her
people ; so that her Eucharists are to the majority
mostly but to see the Heaven they partake not of,
her daily devotions are no where given to the
people, her most solemn service, that of the Holy
Communion, seldom, but a modern service virtually
substituted for it 1 '. They speak of our service as
3 To the sinner, as the refuge to whom he may most safely
have recourse, as having the peculiar charge of " her goats," (all
sinners who trust in her) as our Blessed Lord of the sheep, (Glories
of Mary, p. 153, 4.) ; to the Saint, as obtaining for him that last
crowning gift, perseverance to the end. The grace of perseverance
is, in the received system, accounted to be specially obtained by
S. Mary ; so that books, which have little else of the distinctive
Romanist system, still teach to seek this at her hands. Thus this
system proposes S. Mary as the immediate source of hope, from
first to last, of conversion to the hardened sinner, who has no
other grace but love for her, (Glories of Mary, p. 40, 54 7, 90.
quoted Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 213. Man's only affair, p. 150
see Irish Eccl. Journal, No. 177.) and for the saint who needs no
other grace but to persevere to the end. The evidence on both
heads might be multiplied indefinitely. How different the teach-
ing from that of the Catholic Church, as in S. Augustine de Dono
Perseverantiae.
'' The most frequent way of " hearing Mass," as it is called,
is to substitute other prayers to be used by the laity, while those
in Latin are being recited, unheard, by the Priest. These are
provided in different authorized books of devotion, so that many
distinct Liturgies (so to say) are being recited at the same time ;
17
diminished, (and in parts it is,) yet at least it is
more than is given to their people. What we have
(and it is very much) we have purely, and for all, for
Christ's little ones, His lambs ; what we have not,
is being daily restored to us, if we in patience wait
for it ; and for the mean time, the humble-minded
will feel that all which is withheld from us, is kept
back in mercy to us, that what we have is best
suited to us b . Such an Angel-life does daily Com-
munion imply, that we may well think that it is too
high a gift for the degenerate Church of these last
days, as even the Roman Communion tacitly
acknowledges, in that except for the Priesthood, she
has herself disused it c ; would one could think that
the modern mostly very inferior, and the ancient service virtually
lost.
b To develope this is the object of Tract 86, " On the super-
intending Providence of God in the alteration of the English
Liturgy." To some humble minds, who have ever enjoyed our
beautiful and Catholic Liturgy, it will be painful even to hear it
spoken of, as though we had lost any thing; yet we must " bear
patiently each other's burdens;" and this Tract has been very
chastening and sobering to many, who were inclined to mourn
that foreign Reformers had been allowed an influence over it, and
caused some things to be parted with, which we see to be in
themselves a loss.
c Prayers eve.n of the Missal are altered in the modern trans-
lations, to adapt them to a state of things in which the holy
Mysteries are " witnessed" not " partaken of." In some places
grave change of doctrine is thus introduced ; as " May the mys-
teries we have witnessed purify us ; and grant that this Sacra-
ment [unreceived] may not increase our guilt, but be a means of
obtaining pardon, &c. Let not the participation of Thy Body
which I, though unworthy, presume (spiritually) to receive, turn
to my condemnation." (Catholic Hours, p. 96, 113.)
C
18
in different countries, it were a blessing even
to them ! As we grow in holiness, our present
privileges will deepen to us, and we shall be fitter
to receive whatever besides the Primitive Church
had. Our blessings are, day by day, being en-
larged ; and He Who in mercy is teaching us to
value and revive what we have, will, when it is
good for us, restore what is yet " lacking c ."
We may well be thankful that God has as-
signed us our lot in a " goodly heritage/' wherein
we are free from the temptation to substitute
other objects of love or veneration for The Object
Who is to fill the mind for eternity ; wherein
we are taught to "come boldly to the throne of
grace, " not seek another mediator, through whom
to approach our Lord. We have or may obtain to
ourselves when we will, every thing which is Catho-
lic in the whole Church ; our Liturgy has deep
devotion, and is free from every thing un-Catholic.
We may well shrink from parting with " the in-
heritance of our fathers," for its own sake, even if it
could be done without sin. The path of duty is clear
to humble and dutiful minds, who have ever been
trained in the old ways ; there are marks enough, we
doubt not, for all, in the end, who in patience and
self-discipline wish to know God's will that they may
c Bp. Andrews, Devotions, The second Day, " for the British,
the supply of what is wanting in it, the strengthening of what
remains in it." First Day, " Thou who walkest amid the
golden candlesticks, remove not our candlestick out of its place.
Supply what are wanting, strengthen what remains, which Thou
art ready to cast away, which are ready to die."
19
do it. I am speaking only of temptation ; what
upon certain frames of mind would act as a trial,
though to be overcome ; but it is necessary to
appreciate that there are temptations and trials; that
the wish in individuals to be joined to the Roman
Church,, does not necessarily arise in undutifulness
to our own, although one may generally trace
some -one wrong temper, at least, in those who
have forsaken our Church for it.
And while there are these real attractions
towards the Roman Church, (however more than
counterbalanced in well-disciplined and humble
hearts,) we must admit that there are also real
difficulties in the position of our Church, which
must be felt more keenly, as people realize more
the doctrine of the Unity of the Church ; what
our Lord intended that it should be, what it for a
long time was. Not of course that these difficulties
should overwhelm us ; but they are hard trials
to many, and must be accounted such, and borne
patiently as trials. And in these again we our-
selves have been exempt from the degree of trial to
which a younger generation is exposed, through the
very gradualness with which our conceptions of the
Unity of the Church came upon us. There was in
our younger days no visible Church, to which to
attach ourselves, except our own. The Roman
communion had in this country but her few scattered
sheep, who had adhered to her since the times of
Q. Elizabeth ; she was herself asleep, and scarcely
c 2
20
maintained herself, much less was such as to attract
others. We were not tempted then to look for
any thing but that invisible Unity, which we trust
all the now-severed Communions have in their One
Head, in Whom they all live, from Whom, though
torn among themselves, we trust they are not rent.
We dwelt alone, our island-situation a type of our
Church, and were content, because there seemed no
opening for any thing beyond. We were scarcely
aware that we were rejected by the Western Church,
not formally acknowledged by the Eastern, because we
were locally separated from both. Girt round in our
home, and living among ourselves, we felt not that
we were regarded as aliens by those we saw not.
We felt that we had, as we have, the Unity of the
Faith, confessing to our God the one Creed in our
pious Bishop Ken's words, "the Faith of the Universal
Church, before East and West were divided ;" that
we have the Unity of common descent from the
Church which was one ; we are one in one common
parent, even if actual communion is suspended ;
one in the Communion of saints with the Church
in Paradise, far larger and holier than that below ;
we have " one hope of our calling, one Lord, one
Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us
all ;" through His Sacraments we " have been all
made to drink into One Spirit," and so we the
more acquiesced that we were one body, though
some members of that body said to us, " We
have no need of thee." But it is otherwise
21
now ; the Roman Communion is now every where
among us, and we must feel that, if they could,
they would cut us off; it is brought home to
us that, from whatever causes, partly the sin
of that first great schism of East and West,
over which we had no control, partly through acts
(whether they could be avoided or no) of our own
Church, we are, as to actual Communion, separated
from the rest of the Christian family ; we feel
ourselves in a maimed condition ; our relation to
other branches of the Church is different from any
heretofore. There is no precedent in holier ages,
either in favour of the larger branches of the Western
Church, or of ourselves ; none for such occasion of a
single Church reforming itself, without consent of the
whole d , none for the larger Branch needing some
such reformation and refusing it; rejecting one branch,
and imposing un-Catholic conditions on its re-union.
According as people contemplate the one side or
d The line, however, pursued by the African Church, under
the guidance both of S. Cyprian and S. Augustine, goes as far
to establish such a precedent, as can be furnished by primitive
times, when no general reformation was needed. The case of
S. Cyprian and the African Synods in maintaining the invalidity
of Schismatical Baptism against the Bishop of Rome, is the
stronger, because their view was not confirmed by the Church
subsequently; the Bishop of Rome rejected their Communion, as
he has ours ; yet S. Augustine, while abandoning the practice of
S. Cyprian, maintains against the Donatists, that he was not
guilty of schism. In the case of Pelagius, the African Synods
maintained their ground against Zosimus, Bishop of Rome, who
acquitted him and severely censured them, and they obtained a con-
firmation of their sentence from the Emperor, to which Zosimus
yielded.
22
the other, they will feel most vividly the fact or its
excuse, and blame Rome for obstinacy, or ourselves
for precipitancy ; and since we have perhaps unduly
held ourselves free from all blame, so the re-action
is,, that some are inclined to look on that alone
which in us was blameworthy. Yet, besides the
plea of necessity, the very unhappiness of the
Church is our excuse. We did no act opposed to
the Universal Church. There is now no orbis
terrarum, over against which we stand ; none which
has rejected or condemned us. Since the Greek
Church, and her ninety million, is severed from
what claims to be the Catholic Church, and yet has
life, so may we ; and by the mercy of our God, we
feel that we have it. It is a fact, that entire visible
unity is not vouchsafed to the Church of these last
days, and so, until God be pleased to amend it, we
may rest contented in our lot. Yet the very fact
that we have to be contented, shews that we have
trials ; our people go abroad, and find no home
there ; they see Churches, some flourishing, though
some decayed, which, at best, own us but doubt-
ingly ; there is Christian life, from which we are
excluded ; the Church, the common home of all,
is, out of the space occupied by our sister or
daughter Churches, no home for us ; they return
to us, and feel that we are solitary. Then comes
Rome among us, and, rejecting the Greek Church
of whose extent, as not being brought into in-
tercourse with it, people are not aware, and so
acquiesce in the excision of nearly half the
23
Christian Name as a light thing, declares herself
the Church 6 , and offers to relieve our difficulties,
and give vent to our sympathies, by placing us in
e This is the ground on which Mr. Sibthorp justifies his recent
secession. He writes, as if unconscious of the existence of the
Greek Church, as though the question were only between Pro-
testants (with whom he has already learnt to identify the Church
he has forsaken) and the Roman Church. In studying the types
of the Old Testament he found the unity of the Church prominent,
in a degree in which it is not in this day fulfilled, unless the
Roman Communion be " the Church," and therefore he joined it.
He unhappily overlooked that prophecy even more distinctly fore-
tells " holiness" as a characteristic of the Church, in a degree in
which it is still less fulfilled in the Church any where now. The
same degeneracy of the Church forfeited both. Each is probably
a condition of the other. Diminished holiness caused the misun-
derstandings and strife and ambition, which ended in the schism
of the East and West ; our schisms probably aid to perpetuate the
unholiness which produced them. Life and desire of union are
being reawakened together ; increasing life will be accompanied
doubtless with increasing love. But until the Church of Rome
fulfils the ideal of holiness, set forth in prophecy, it cannot claim
our obedience, on the ground that the ideal of unity, also set forth
in prophecy, is not fulfilled unless she exclusively be the Church.
If the sins of the Church have forfeited the one, they may also the
other. It is a sad, but admitted, fact, that the Church of these
days does fall short of the descriptions of prophecy, (see Mr. New-
man on Romanism and Popular Protestantism, Lect. 8. Indefecti-
bility of the Church Catholic, p. 231 sqq. who quotes also Leslie,
Works, iii. p. 25 28.) The argument on which Mr. Sibthorp
justifies his secession to Romanism, is the same in principle, as
that on which the Donatists and many modern sects justify their
schisms. They urged the non-fulfilment of the note of Holiness,
as Mr. S. that of Unity. If holiness, the very end of the dis-
pensation of the Gospel, may be imperfect, and the word of
Scripture not be broken, much more may Unity. If the claims
of the Donatists are not valid, neither are those of Rome.
24
communion with herself, the largest portion of the
Christian world. And, since the desire of union is
a right one, it is, when thus presented, a tempta-
tion, real, though to be resisted. We have, ever
since we were thus severed, been feeling again after
union ; and this longing after it, although we could
not attain it, may be a proof the more that we are
a living, though torn, member of the one body. What
is cut off has no feeling. It is, while the wounded
limb still hangs on to the body from which it is
disjointed, that it has pain. Sects have none.
They boast themselves in their separation. Mon-
tanists or Donatists rejected the Church as carnal,
and set themselves up as the one pure Church in
its stead. We have ever missed more or less what
we have lost, and have been yearning after the
visible unity and intercommunion which we have
not. Our very errors have been in part owing to
it : we mixed ourselves up at the first with foreign
reformations, and impaired our formularies, with a
view to it ; since then, our negociations with the
Gallican Church, with Prussia formerly, with the
Eastern Church, bear witness to our longings ; at
the beginning of this century, when wars kept us
apart from other nations, and Church principles
were less understood, this desire of union shewed
itself in the very rejection of all true principles
of union. Having no visible unity, people sub-
stituted an invisible ; and not only so, which
might have been right, but they sought to make a
visible unity for themselves, by disparaging that of
25
the Church, by sympathizing and associating with
those who had forsaken her, and becoming like
them. The same longing which some years past
brought very many to the verge of Dissent, and
often carried them into it, is now setting in towards
Churches, and is a sore temptation to many to
forsake their Church for Rome.
But, besides this, which is not our own fault but
our unhappiness, over which we have no control,
but for whose mitigation or removal we must in
patience wait, it must be owned, my Lord, that
we have other difficulties which are our fault,
or rather that one difficulty, from which all others
flow. Had we that holiness, which should mark
us out visibly as a true living branch of " the Holy
Church," all other difficulties would vanish. Now,
we have, we trust, the rudiments of every thing, but
nothing developed, so that it should at once be
" manifest" to all, " that God is in us of a truth."
" Whence come wars and fightings among you ?"
may the Apostle well ask us. These manifold
divisions among ourselves, contending upon points
which they on one side at least state to be funda-
mental, though we hope they believe better than
they often speak ; this bandying about of the name
of heresy, and that, applied to holy truth, even the
gift of our Lord to us in Baptism ; this " casting
out the names" of brethren " as evil ;" this impos-
sibility of understanding each other or making
ourselves understood ; alas ! it is more like the con-
26
fusion of Babel, when God hindered them from
building the city, than that " city, which is at
unity in itself," in which it was promised that
there should be " one speech and one language."
Our laity thus far have no living guide ; " the lips of
the priest" do not, thus far, " teach knowledge," for
them ; for persons, whom they alike respect, teach
them differently, and one of the two great classes
of teachers tells them often that the other is in
fatal error. Those whom God endues with patience
abide calmly, and in the Catholic teaching of the
Prayer Book, wrought into their minds by habitual
devotion, find that stay and guidance which
the living Church should give ; yet can one be
surprised that our poor frail nature is fretted often,
instead of being humbled, by what is so unseemly ;
that persons have difficulty in recognising a Church
so disturbed, as the representative of her who is
" the pillar and ground of the truth ;" that they
should seek to escape this strife, by going over
where they will find one who undertakes to guide
them, allows them to surrender a judgment which
they know not how to exercise, and to have peace ?
And in the comparison, which those thus
tempted institute, our Church has this disad-
vantage, that our own evils are close at hand,
open, plain to day. Those of the Roman Com-
munion, in many cases, are veiled ; ours every where
come to the surface ; the too sadly attested infidelity
in southern Europe and France, might well more than
27
counterbalance our dissensions or the imperfect
belief of many; the superstition, or undue reverence,
substituting the love of the creature for the Creator,
too often found in foreign sermons in France,
Portugal, or at Rome, might well outweigh any
defects in our own ; the violence whereby on the
very Lord's Day, the passions of the people are in
Ireland worked up by the Ministers of peace f , and
the obnoxious denounced from the Altar, might
make the sad language against brethren or Churches,
heard from time to time in our pulpits 8 , seem a
lesser evil ; but their evils are less felt, because
unseen, at a distance, unrealized, ours gall us, because
they are our own.
Then, as to life. Our Church has indeed great
difficulties, because it has an unruly, commercial,
luxurious, unrefined, people to deal with. Antioch
was, probably, of old in the most unfavourable
f The political meetings, at which so much inflammatory lan-
guage is used by the Priests, are held mostly on the Sunday
Evening.
e This has been a means of alienating people's minds to a
degree in which they who use it, would themselves regret. If
people are continually called Romanists, some will at length
believe it of themselves. In a recent case, one, who would have
been well contented to abide in the teaching of the Church, being
told that she was a Romanist, and might as well join them openly,
did so. To others, the question becomes very distressing, " How
can I hold these high doctrines in my Church, who, they tell me,
condemns them?" But, besides this, such language indisposes
persons towards those who use it, frets them, and makes them
sympathize even unduly with those against whom it is used.
28
position of all Churches, and we in many points
too much resemble her. We must not visit upon
our Church our national faults ; but self-love
blinds us to our own, makes us acute in seeing
those of others. And so our Church bears the
blame, if during the week, our churches stand
empty, while foreign churches in the Roman
Communion are full ; and we her ministers are in
part guilty, that fasts and festivals have been so
entirely, and still are, neglected, that the daily
service is but just struggling into use, that our
Communions are so rare, our communicants so
few, almsgiving so cold, luxury so rife, the very
standard of our lower population as to one most
debasing sin so miserably low, our sense of re-
sponsibility so little acute, the Presence of God so
little habitually realized. Alas ! my Lord, one need
not go on with the sad catalogue ; while we thank-
fully acknowledge that our Church has been an inesti-
mable blessing to ourselves and to our people, and is
capable of being far more so, did we carry out her
provisions, and that the fault lies with us not with
her, and that it will become otherwise when we in
earnest wish it, we must confess that she does not
in such degree possess the note of holiness, as at
once and without all doubt to allay people's mis-
givings about her Apostolic character.
I have ventured to make this statement of some
prominent difficulties, because, unless your Grace's
brethren become more aware that there are real
29
difficulties, they cannot meet them ; one would
rather fear that what they do, will be in a wrong
direction. It is easy and not unnatural to ascribe
the tendency to Romanism, which has of late burst
upon us, to the influence of Tracts, which by those
opposed to them have been accused of that leaning;
but it would be a shallow and untrue account of the
matter. We would not shrink from any blame which
any of us may deserve ; but when there is a general
stirring, as there now is, through the whole of
Christendom, it would be a superficial view of it
to trace the workings in any part of the Church to
any particular set of men or writings ; we a did not
set the tide in motion, by which we have been
ourselves carried onward ; we have felt that there
is a higher Hand than ours, which has raised the
waters and ruleth them ; we are but one slight
item in the vast sum, one link in the chain of
causes and effects whereby He is working for His
Church what He willeth.
It is important to appreciate this, my Lord, because
if this movement were the work of our hands or the
effect of any writings of any man, it might seem
a The use of this word having been misunderstood in my
" Letter to the Bishop of Oxford," as though it recognised the
existence of a party, it may be said, that here, as there, it is
used simply as a compendious term for those who are attacked
in common, for maintaining the principles of the Church. It is
indeed not the least remarkable circumstance in the present
restoration of our Church, how little of the character of a party
attaches to those who have concurred in it.
30
capable of being stayed by the same means which
produced it. It might suffice to warn against the
tendency of writings which had called it forth.
But now since even he who has been God's chief
instrument has always insisted how little is his
share ; since every thing, good or evil, has con-
tributed to it ; poetry, arts, architecture, morals,
Christian or Heathen, novels, music, painting,
have either prepared for it, or, being subse-
quently absorbed into it, have swelled its pro-
gress ; our renewed intercourse with foreign
Churches and still more the evils aimed at our
own, the suppression of our Bishoprics, the assaults
of dissent, the coldness of adherents, the anger of
enemies, the lukewarmness or hostility of the
state, strength or weakness, loss or gain, the
traditionary system, existing in our Church,
though too often a dead letter, or the religious
earnestness and life, though most opposed to
that system, and, in its defects, to the truth itself
every thing deep, every thing real, every thing
holy, deeds of charity, kindliness, severity, every
temperament and habit of mind even the most
unlikely, the most remote, or the most adverse,
liberalism or sceptical tendencies, have alike min-
istered to it, it is plain that He Alone can have
set it in motion Who Alone has all things at His
command, and maketh every thing work together
to accomplish His will. The tendency to Romanism,
itself but one phenomenon in the manifold workings
31
of this eventful day, is, as a whole, but a fruit of the
deep yearning of the stirred Church to be again
what her Saviour left her, One. Our severed
members are being drawn to ourselves, as a Church,
and knit into one in us ; as a Church, we are being
drawn to other Churches, that, in God's good time,
the whole body may be knit together under its
One Head. Any deep view of the Church as one
whole, must create a longing to realize what, as in
vision, it beholds. Our severed state is a maimed
and imperfect condition, checking, we must fear,
the full flow of That Holy Spirit through our dis-
jointed portions, Which, when perfectly present,
makes what He pervades wholly one, even as He
is the Unity of the Father and the Son. To feel
what the Church should be, is to long that it
be so. And if we come not with subdued hearts,
settled to wait God's time for His gift, and anxious
to take no step but just where He leads, there must
be risk that persons will seek unity in unallowed
ways of their own, and, as formerly with Dissent,
so now in that communion which embraces the
largest portion of Christendom, and which, in re-
lationship as well as place, is nearest to us. This
longing must be directed ; it cannot, ought not to,
be quenched ; yet while it is active, (not to speak
of other agents,) it were idle to think that any
censure or silencing of men or books can stay what
is the result of implanted sympathies, at the very
centre of Christian life and love.
32
It may also be a relief to your Grace to know
it has come as a great relief to my own mind, since
of late I have known it that this confusion in
which we now are, was not unforeseen. I mean
not that it may not have been aggravated by any
want of wisdom in myself or others ; still it was
anticipated as the necessary consequence of the
restoration of the doctrines, which we have been
employed to restore, before any of us were thought
of as likely to be the instruments, or we ourselves
had begun to look forward to the work, which has
since been laid upon us. It will doubtless be
refreshing to your Grace to see the words of
one f , whom in his inferior office, and as a Divine, you
must have valued, how with the oracular prescience
given to aged piety, when, as about to pass from
this world, it receives, from time to time, a Divine
insight into the things of that into which it is
entering, he delineated in outline strangely faith-
ful, the very form and order of things which
were to be after his departure, but of which there
were yet no signs. We may well be reconciled to
troubles, which were thus marked out to us before-
hand, as what we must necessarily pass through.
And while we are thus content to bear them,
and to be stigmatized as the causers of them
and the {f troublers of Israel 8 ," they who are set
f Rev. T. Sikes, of Guilsborough, author of " Parochial Com-
munion."
* 1 Kings xviii. 17.
33
over us may perhaps be the rather encouraged
to bear their share cheerfully, and not be grieved
at us, as if we alone by our errors caused, what,
independently of us, it was foreseen would be. He,
to whom the conversation was addressed, tells me,
" I well remember the very countenance, gesture,
attitude, and tone of good Mr. Sikes, and give you,
as near as may be, what he said."
" I seem to think, I can tell you something, which you
who are young may probably live to see, but which I, who
shall soon be called away off the stage, shall not. Wherever
I go all about the country, I see amongst the Clergy a
number of very amiable and estimable men, many of them
much in earnest, and wishing to do good. But I have
observed one universal want in their teaching : the uniform
suppression of one great truth. There is no account given
any where, so far as I see, of the one Holy Catholic Church.
I think that the causes of this suppression have been mainly
two. The Church has been kept out of sight, partly in
consequence of the civil establishment of the branch of it
which is in this country, and partly out of false charity to
Dissent. Now this great truth is an article of the Creed ;
and if so, to teach the rest of the Creed to its exclusion
must be to destroy " the analogy or proportion of the
faith," Tyv avaXoy/av ?% 7n<TTsoj. This cannot be done,
without the most serious consequences. The doctrine is
of the last importance ; and the principles it involves, of
immense power; and some day, not far distant, it will
judicially have its reprisals. And whereas the other
articles of the Creed seem now to have thrown it into the
shade, it will seem, when it is brought forward, to swallow
up the rest. We now hear not a breath about the Church ;
by and bye, those who live to see it, will hear of nothing
else; and, just in proportion perhaps to its present sup-
D
34
pression, will be its future developement. Our confusion now-
a-days is chiefly owing to the want of it ; and there will be yet
more confusion attending its revival. The effects of it I
even dread to contemplate, especially if it come suddenly.
And woe betide those, whoever they are, who shall, in the
course of Providence, have to bring it forward. It ought
especially of all others to be matter of catechetical teaching
and training. The doctrine of the Church Catholic and
the privileges of Church-membership cannot be explained
from pulpits ; and those who will have to explain it will
hardly know where they are, or which way they are to
turn themselves. They will be endlessly misunderstood
and misinterpreted. There will be one great outcry of
Popery, from one end of the country to the other. It will
be thrust upon minds unprepared, and on an uncatechized
Church. Some will take it up and admire as a beautiful
picture ; others will be frightened and run away and
reject it; and all will want a guidance which one hardly
knows where they shall find. How the doctrine may be
first thrown forward we know not ; but the powers of the
world may any day turn their backs upon us, and this
will probably lead to those effects I have described."
I would not weaken these solemn words by any
thing of my own ; but, my Lord, if it was foreseen
that they who had our office laid upon them, would
be " endlessly misunderstood and misinterpreted,"
that " there would be one great cry of Popery from
one end of the country to the other/' that they
would have an office of trouble and " woe," that
some would " be frightened and reject it," your
Grace's brethren may perhaps the rather think
that some of the things laid to our charge are
founded on misunderstanding : if it was foreseen
35
that it would be " taken up and admired as a
beautiful picture," it will seem less strange, if some
having done so, have fallen.
Yet, as a fact, I may mention., that both such as
have actually gone over to Rome, and such as have
been endangered yet retained, and those for whom
one has immediate fears, have not been, for the
most part, persons formed by any of us or by our
writings. Those who have gone over, have been
mostly persons^ not at all instructed in the cha-
racter of our Church, who sought in Rome what
they might have found in our own Church, had they
allowed themselves time to be instructed in her
teaching ; or they have been hurried by a violent re-
action through finding the common-place statements
as to Romanism so untrue ; or disgusted by the vague
charges and harsh or revolting language too often
used h ; or (from whatever cause) mostly out of Ultra-
Protestantism, not at all from among us 1 . Every one
h Roman Catholics boast that the meetings of the Reformation
Society are always followed by some secessions to them, and I am
myself acquainted with instances of the irritating and unsettling
effect of the vehemence and want of meekness too often displayed
there. Mr. Sibthorp says, " I know not a Protestant centre*
versial writer, (the authors of the Oxford Tracts alone excepted,)
whose works did not leave me more a [Roman] Catholic than
before." Some Answer, p. 36.
1 Thus, to take the recent cases, of which this has been sur-
mised, Mr. Sibthorp ascribes his late change to his study of the
types of the Old Testament, upon which he entered when recently
emerging from Ultra-Protestantism, (see Mr. Dodsworth*s Letter
D 2
36
who has been at all consulted, knows cases in which
persons who were going over from Ultra-Pro-
testantism, have been thankful to be stayed, and
found their rest in the true doctrines of our Church.
I might say, that in any case which was not already
gone too far, and in some which had gone ex-
tremely far, the true exhibition of the character
of our Church, and their consequent duties to her
and privileges in her, have been, by God's blessing,
the effectual means of their recovery. Whoever
have given themselves time to become acquainted
with her, have rested in her. Those about whom we
have had or have most reason to be anxious, have
not been persons formed by our teaching, but are
such as have struck out views for themselves, or
have engrafted any thing we have taught, upon
habits and thoughts which they had previously
formed, or have been stayed for the time from
Romanism by our teaching, or been acted upon by
other influences and sympathies, or know no more
of it than they who oppose it mostly do, gathering
what they do know from common report, and
carrying it out in an unreal and impatient spirit.
I may say at once, that we have as yet no fears
for those, who have been trained by the writ-
ings and teaching of those, whom, one indi-
rectly, the other directly, God has chiefly em-
to Mr. S. p. 6 8.) An Oxford Tradesman ascribes his to his
private study of Hammond, Thorndike, &c. the boy at Shrewsbury
School was in habits of intercourse with Roman Catholics.
37
ployed to form men's minds within our Church,
so long as that Church, by no overt acts of herself
or her rulers, becomes other than she is.
And surely now, my Lord, when the very atmo-
sphere is full of controverted doctrine, when the
very periodical or daily press teems with discussions
on the Church, Unity, Apostolical Succession, and,
alas ! on our holy Mysteries themselves, discussing
all the details of doctrine or discipline wherein
we are at issue with Rome; when people are taught
by those most opposed to Catholic teaching to
decide upon these points for themselves, and it is
taken for granted that any one who has access to
Holy Scripture is competent to decide upon them
it is too much to visit upon us any defections which
there may be. Persons need not have recourse to the
writings of any of us, to become familiar with these
topics : I trust, that if they did, they would treat
them with a more reverent spirit, and so more
safely to themselves than is now too often done.
It is not by us, that the young men in this place
have now for some months had the subject of
Romanism brought before them, or been taught to
identify it with some whom they respect or love.
The very clamour against " Popery/* within or
without the Church, is every where tempting per-
sons' curiosity, and enlisting their sympathies; they
who know nothing about the " Tracts" have their
thoughts turned to Rome, and are interested in her,
and study the works of Roman controversialists ;
38
if they become bewildered, who should bear the
blame, they who inculcate the use of " Private
judgment" or they who would restrain it a ? they who
enjoin obedience to the Church which has the suc-
cession from the Apostles, or they who set the
individual's judgment as to Holy Scripture, above
the authority of the Church ?
It is not, as I said, my Lord, to excuse ourselves
that I wish to impress upon the mind of your
Grace and your Grace's brethren, a deeper view of
the tendencies to Romanism than some of them
seem to have taken ; we have little to look for,
except to finish our course, in sorrow or in joy,
or in joy amid sorrow, as our Master wills ; whether
we have "honour or dishonour," will soon be no
matter to us, save that we know that dishonour
was the portion of our Master and His Apostles,
and is the safer for those who would be His dis-
oiples. It is not for ourselves at all that I write ; it
is for oqr Church, lest she hereafter lose some of the
* See a very valuable article in the British Critic, No. 59,
** On the use of Private Judgment," in which the writer shews
that " Private Judgment*' leads people to Rome just as much as
away from it. The object of this Article is to shew, that the legi-
timate province of Private Judgment is to discover who is its
authorized teacher, and that the English Church being such an
one, ' Dissenters ought to abandon their communion, members
of the English Church ought not to abandon theirs." With this
ought to be combined a previous Article by the same writer.
Brit. Crit. No. 53, " On the Catholicity of the English
Church."
39
flower of her sons ; it is for them lest they be lost
to the office which God had assigned them, and be
betrayed into what would be undutifulness and sin.
Unless our Bishops know the extent and character
of our dangers, they cannot know how to guard
against them ; the very remedies they adopt may
aggravate the disease, which they know not of.
They may be applying stimulants, when they would,
if they knew it, use lenitives.
II. And this I regret to say has been the result of
the late Charges of some of our Bishops. It may
seem, at first sight, undutiful, that the censures of
Bishops should harass and cause impatience, and
rather tend to unsettle persons in their Church,
than convince and correct. It should be otherwise.
But, my Lord, much confusion has arisen from
people's forgetting that it is to our own Diocesan,
not to other Bishops, that we owe obedience. All we
should respect for their office sake, but it is to our
own that we are to listen. It is, of course, a sad
state of things in any Church, that they who
should be overseers should need remonstrance from
those in inferior office ; but, not to go back to
more ancient precedents, one of the most important
controversies in our Church was carried on by a
Presbyter against a Bishop, and succeeding Bishops
could not but approve of the strong vindications of
the principles of the Church by Law against
Hoadley.
And this (painful as it is to allude to it) has
40
been the most distressing part of some of the late
Charges. It is humiliating to our whole Church
that persons who, in better days, would have been
formed in the full possession of Catholic truth,
should by our degeneracy have been thrown upon
a system, in itself opposed to it, though neutralized
in a degree by the influence of our Church. Yet
it cannot be denied, that to those, unacquainted
with the way in which that system is held in our
Church, some of the Charges did, at first sight,
seem to involve a denial of Catholic Truth. There
is certainly in them a very inadequate statement of
that Truth, and much which, to those not habituated
to the mode of thought in the school in question,
would seem a contradiction of it. But on this I shall
have to trouble your Grace hereafter, in speaking
of the Charges themselves. My object in advert-
ing to it now, is to remove the impression of
inconsistency, if they who have most vindicated
the lawful authority of Bishops, should in any case
be laid under the miserable necessity of speaking
against what they deliver, or protesting against
their teaching or their acts. I trust this may not
be ; but our duty to our Bishop is limited by his
duty to the Church ; he speaks to us as her re-
presentative; throuyhher he received his authority,
although from her Lord ; his commission is to
enforce her teaching, not to gainsay it ; he received
the succession from the Apostles, that he might
hand down the deposit of teaching committed to
41
the Church* ; if then unhappily (as did Bp. Hoad-
ley) he contravene his commission and her Articles
of faith, it becomes a duty in any one, (while ready
patiently to take any consequences,) to speak in
behalf of the common faith. Our own commission,
as Priests, is in terms as unconditional towards our
flocks ; " the Priest's lips shall keep knowledge,
and they shall seek for the law at his mouth ;"
but if we go against the teaching of our Church,
an appeal lies against us ; in regard to a Bishop,
the responsibility is the greater, by how much the
confusion arising is the more sad ; but his duties
are the same as our's, our duty of protest the same
as those of our flocks. I trust that, guided as our
Church now is, no such unhappy necessity will
arise ; I would only explain how minds the most
dutiful may be led to entertain these feelings,
and be disquieted by the very shadow of so great
an evil.
I may add that this duty of protest is not in-
definite, nor another form of exercising " private
judgment," but opposed to it ; its subject is not
what any may think Catholic truth, but the articles
of the Creed. It was thus stated some years past ;
and this statement I may the rather cite, as shewing
incidentally that it is not (as some, judging from
their own principles, might be ready to suspect) an
afterthought, provided to justify opposition to
authority, if turned against us, having been put
forth contemporaneously with the inculcation of
" 2 Tim. ii. 2.
42
submission, and when it seemed altogether an
abstract principle, least likely to be called, in this
way, into action.
" As b they" [the world] " are eager to secure their
liberty in religious opinions as the right of every in-
dividual, so do we make it every individual's prerogative
to maintain and defend the Creed. They cannot allow
more to the individual in the way of variety of opinion,
than we do in that of confessorship. The humblest and
meanest among Christians may defend the faith against
the whole Church, if the need arise. He has as much
stake in it and as much right to it, as Bishop or Arch-
bishop, and has nothing to limit him but his intellectual
capacity of doing so. The greater his attainments the
more serviceably of course and the more suitably will he
enter into the dispute ; but all that learning has to do for
him is to ascertain the fact, what is the meaning of the
Creed in particular points, since matter of opinion it is
not, any more than the history of the rise and spread of
Christianity itself."
Thus, my Lord, while persons have been painfully
alive to the character which might be insensibly
given to our Church, yet, where deference might
lawfully be shewn, from each to his own Bishop,
censures, which I cannot but deem mistaken,
have been borne very patiently. One of the
Bishops who has thought it necessary thus
to speak, has, I have understood, been much
affected by the meek manner in which his reproofs
were received by those whom they most wounded.
But the body of the Church and those in whose
behalf I am most deeply interested, have been
b Mr. Newman on Romanism, &c. Lect. x. init. 1837.
43
rather lookers-on than the direct objects of censure,
and not having been subdued by personal pain,
have been the more harassed by what has taken
place. And that which harasses them is this.
They have been formed or formed themselves in
what we feel assured is Catholic teaching, in its
main outlines instilled into us in our Liturgy and
Catechism, taught in our Homilies, at the least
consistent with our Articles, even where these are
the least definite. This belief has become part of
themselves ; they cannot part with it, assured that
God has given it to them through His Church,
that it is part of the treasure committed to her
keeping. Us (however unworthy such as myself,
and however imperfectly any of us may have set
forth that system) they look upon as its repre-
sentatives in our Church. If then they who are
in authority seem, from want of sufficient explana-
tion, to censure our teaching broadly, it comes to
them like a rejection of themselves from our
Church. They find their belief disavowed, them-
selves disowned ; whither are they to turn ? It is
not come to this yet ; they who have spoken have
been but a few ; but it has been a distressing
presage of what was to follow. " If all or the
majority of our Bishops so speak," is their feeling,
" will it not be a virtual disavowal of Catholic
doctrine by the heads of our Church ? And will it
then be safe to abide in the Church, whose heads
shall have so disavowed it?" This may be an
undue anxiety about the morrow, and a mistrust of
44
God's Providence over our Ancient Church, which
for so many centuries He has protected. I am not
saying whether they ought so to feel ; I am only
stating what their feelings are. And to this they
will ever be edged on by those, who are watching
to take advantage of our perplexities. We are
at a critical moment in our Church ; every move is
of an importance we know not of; and there is one
at hand intently watching us, intent mostly on
the destruction of our Church, and passing no
movement by. I would request, in illustration,
your Grace's attention to the importance given to
the recent Charge of the Bishop of Durham in an
article whose sole object is to add to the perplexities
of those, who take an unfavourable view of the
original structure of our Articles'". The immediate
argument of the text relates to a distinct subject,
the imponens of the Articles ; I only allege it to
shew how your Lordships' expressions are watched ;
and the note appended will shew one use to which
the writer wishes to turn it.
" Are we wrong in supposing that a Bishop, making
a Charge to his Clergy, speaks formally as a Bishop ? If
not, we- would ask, when or how does he so speak, or when
does he address the c us' of the text, meaning, we suppose,
k Dublin Review, No. 21. p. 248, 9. It is a further illustra-
tion of the use made of these Charges, that the very title prefixed
shews the existence of a spurious edition, " Salutary cautions
against the errors contained in the Oxford Tracts [Tracts for the
Times]. A Charge to his Clergy delivered at St. Nicholas'
Church, Newcastle-upori-Tyne, on Monday, Aug. 9, 1841. By
the Right Rev. The Lord Bishop of Durham."
45
the Clergy subject to him ? If he does, then let us turn to
the Bishop of Durham's Charge. ( And now/ it says,
* . . . I must call your attention to the obligation which
rests upon me, your bishop, on this our day of solemn meet-
ing, and to the manner in which you also are bound to
act towards me, who, however unworthily, am called upon
thus personally, and from the chair of office, to address
you.' (p. 3.) The Bishop, then, is about to speak episco-
pally, ex cathedra, as his own words imply. In page 6,
his Lordship thus speaks : * Strongly, then, must I repeat
my regret, that with nothing like an appearance of stringent
necessity, or the prospect of adequate advantage, the writers
of those Tracts should have come forward to disturb the
peace of the Church.' A Bishop formally speaking as
such from the chair of office thus addresses his Clergy:
* A laboured attempt has been made to explain away the
real meaning of our Articles, and infuse into them a more
kindly spirit of accommodation to the opinion and practices
of the Church of Rome. Under these circumstances,
however painful may be the task of animadverting upon
opinions espoused by persons otherwise so respectable, I
consider it incumbent upon me to pronounce my deliberate
judgment? (p. 7.)
The note appended is,
" Mr. Ward has contemplated the course which an in-
dividual clergyman might be compelled to pursue, should
his Bishop condemn the doctrine of the Tracts : ' It is, I
suppose, considered by some that his Lordship (the Bishop
of Oxford) decided ex cathedra, that such a mode of in-
terpreting the Thirty -nine Articles was inadmissible;
the result of which course would be, that those who held
preferment in the diocese of Oxford, in virtue of sub-
scription to them in such sense would, to say the least, be
in a most painful position, unless they threw up such pre-
ferment." (Appendix, p. 1 3.)
46
1 may add, that there are too many even in our own
Church, who, little acquainted with our writings,
and knowing us only from ex-parte statements and
vague reports, are only anxious to see us removed, at
any cost, from the Church. They have no thought
of schism as a sin; they think of us but as a disease in
the Church ; and they only wish to see the Church
set free from us, even though the act whereby it
should be freed, were our sin. Or, having identified
their own views with the truth, they are impatient
of any thing which counteracts the exclusive domi-
nancy of their views, and would be glad of any
thing which would rid them of an antagonist prin-
ciple ; they would be glad to reign, if need were,
without us, " vacua in aula," even though the Courts
from which they would exclude us are the Courts
of the Lord's House, the Temple to be left empty
is the Temple of .our (jk)d.
Your Gracffrwill not tnink that, in expressing a
wish that caution and tender care should be used,
I mean to suggest any thing so unseemly as that
our Bishops should not speak what to them seems
necessary for the well-being of their Dioceses. If
any think that we have wrought no good service,
that all we have done has been in a wrong direction,
such must condemn us. If any think we have
" come forward to disturb the peace of the Church
with nothing like an appearance of stringent ne-
cessity, or the prospect of adequate advantage*,'*
g Charge of the Bishop of Durham, p. 10.
47
or that the whole question is one about " antiquated
ceremonies," he must think that we have acted
very sinfully; and if he really come to this con-
clusion upon adequate knowledge of our writings,
he must say so. My object in addressing your
Grace is not to ask any thing of their hands who
think of us as these must do, but of those who think
that we have toiled faithfully and not altogether in
vain, that when they censure what in us they deem
wrong, they would not withhold the expression of
their sympathy in what they esteem well done.
Let them reprove, but in kindness.
I mean not to throw blame on what has been
done, though I think it mistaken. I hope even
that good may be brought out of it. One must
even be glad that they who seemed most alien*
ated from Episcopal authority, are now being won
to it for the time, by its being apparently exercised
in the direction in which they wish ; hereafter
perhaps the sounder and earnest among them
may learn to respect it on higher grounds. It is
very natural that, brief as our Bishops' Charges
generally are, they should address themselves to
the point which they deem of pressing importance.
The Bishops seem to have had in view certain
dangers from insulated statements; amid their many
duties, some of them manifestly have not had leisure
to examine as a whole the teaching upon which they
had to speak. They seem mostly to have formed their
warnings on detached passages, or, at the very
48
utmost, insulated Tracts, without having time to
enquire, whether one part may not have been
corrected by another : they did not think it neces-
sary to enter into the whole subject ; they thought
it their duty to give some specific warnings, lest
they should seem to countenance what they do
not, and so to leave the subject. On the other
hand, the minds of hearers are more alive to
censure than to praise ; unhappily it interests
mankind more ; the detail, which it requires, fixes
it more in the mind ; and so it will happen, even if
any services are acknowledged, the censure will be
treasured up, the praise forgotten. The multitude
is indiscriminating ; too many are prejudiced, and
interpret what is said according to their own bias.
They know little or nothing of the system of which
they speak, whether the censure, which they
greedily repeat or inculcate, bear upon some doc-
trine or an individual's mode of stating it, or
something only incidentally connected with it ;
whether it relates to some Catholic truth, or moral
habit of mind, or mode of judging of other
Churches, or of the character of individuals in our
own ; so that it relates to something in " the
Tracts," forthwith, unless care be taken to express
the contrary, they conclude that the whole tenor
and substance of our teaching is condemned. And
thus, even at the best, it will appear as if we were
chiefly blamed, as if persons were being warned
against our doctrine, and our view of our Church
49
and her doctrines were pronounced to be at
variance with her principles, when perhaps all
which was intended was a caution against some
insulated principle, as popularly misunderstood, or
which we may have failed sufficiently to explain.
Thus, I know that the mildest Charge which was
delivered in the past year, and which does in a very
kind way recognise services which we have rendered,
yet, because the Bishop does go on to point out at
greater length some, though fewer and subordinate,
points which he considers erroneous, has appeared
to be a condemnation.
The Bishop of Ripon says of us,
" In adverting to the opinions of those among the Clergy,
who in their writings have advocated the restoration of ancient
forms, it may surely be said, that so far as they earnestly call
upon us to act up to the principles of our Church to provide
as much as in us lies, that she become in practice what she
professes to be in theory encouraging us to aim more
fervently and resolutely at that high mark of holiness, self-
denial, self-discipline, and almsgiving, which she holds
forth to our view, and to live up to the elevated standard
she sets before us, arousing us at the same time to a
stricter sense of our accountableness to God, they deserve
our honour and our thanks; still further I believe that
they have done good service to the Church, in bringing
forward more prominently some comparatively neglected
truths with regard to the proper standing of the Church
herself and her Ministers ; as well as in leading some who
were, perhaps unconsciously, inclined to view the Holy
Sacraments as mere badges of the Christian profession, and
the Holy Eucharist as little more than a commemorative
rite, to entertain a juster sense of their real import."
E
50
This does indeed acknowledge the character of
our efforts ; this has been the object of our lives
now these many years, to rouse our Church and
ourselves to realize what she is in God's appoint-
ment, her Apostolic character, her high gifts, to
stir up the gift which is in her, to act worthily of
all God's past and present mercies. This is the
ideal which we have proposed to ourselves, not to
alter any thing in her h , but to recall the minds of
her children to what she plainly has and teaches,
and as occasion may offer, to develope according to
primitive antiquity those doctrines and practices
in her, which she has, yet, for some reason, not so
explicitly as the rest. If I may address to your
Grace, as a declaration of the principles and object
of our lives, words which I have lately used 1 , we
have felt that
" We have our office plainly marked out to us, (as has been
often said,) to labour to act up to the principles of our
Church, and to lead others to do the same ; so shall we be
formed, and aid (under the Divine grace) to form others in the
mould of" godliness, righteousness, and soberness of life,"
provided in her; we have but to seek to form ourselves
and others in His holy faith and the keeping of His com-
mandments, and commit our Church and ourselves to Him,
to deal with us, as in His Infinite Mercy He may vouch-
safe."
What we felt at the outset to be most wanting
to our Church in her practical character, was what
h Letter to the Bishop of Oxford, p. 15 22.
5 Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 180.
51
the Bishop of Ripon has acknowledged in us. We
did not wish to oppose any thing existing; we
acknowledged, as far as it was true, the value and
power of the popular system in its warnings against
the world, its urgent calls to conversion, its pointing
to our Blessed Lord as the Author and Finisher of
our faith. But we felt it to be in part defective,
in part erroneous ; it laid the foundation, but too
often neglected to build thereupon ; it spoke of
the Cross, but not of bearing it ; it shrunk from
inculcating "Judgment to come," k < according to
our works," the value of good works, of regular
devotion, of self-discipline, of alms-deeds, and
mercifulness ; it but little appreciated the doctrine of
the Sacraments, and therewith the mysteriousness
of our life in Christ, our responsibilities, or the
nature of repentance. Of the Church, as the mystical
body of Christ, it had no thought at all. We set
ourselves not to oppose, but to supply what was
lacking, wishing not to irritate but to win ; hoping
that the exhibition of the truth would gain those
who were susceptible of it, and that as it was re-
ceived, what was erroneous would detach itself and
sink of itself, even in the very process that what
was true allied itself to the kindred truth, infused
into it.
Truly and kindly has the Bishop of Ripon de-
scribed our efforts to be, as far as in us lay, to call
upon the sons of our Church " to act up to her
principles," to realize the " high mark of holiness,
E 2
52
self-denial, self-discipline, almsgiving," exhibited
in her Liturgy, to <{ arouse us to a stricter sense of
our accountableness," to " bring forward more
prominently some neglected truths as to the proper
standing of the Church and her Ministers/' to
11 lead some to a juster sense of the real import
of the Holy Sacraments." These were indeed worthy
objects put into our hands, and all within the bounds
of our Church to realize our blessings, God's gifts,
our own responsibilities, the high mark we are ta
aim at the mode of girding ourselves to it, the
account we are to give of all to Him.
But the Bishop of Ripon even goes further in
detail ; he not only incidentally says, " fasting and
self-denial, when used as instruments of self-disci-
pline to keep the body under, as a help to prayer
we know to be truly scriptural and Godly and
edifying," whereas another Bishop k says of us,
" The necessity of fasting is inculcated, and its
merit enhanced too eagerly;" but even on the in-
terpretation of Article 22, he sanctions the very
distinction which I have endeavoured to draw out at
some length, while other Bishops speak of our pro-
positions having been authoritatively condemned 1 ,
or say that for any to speak of the topics of that
Article as only condemned according to the Romish
k Bp. of Durham, p. 24.
1 By the four tutors, " propositions, of which it has been well
and authoritatively said." ib. p. 16.
53
doctrine"' on these points," and otherwise admis-
sible, "would, in a Clergyman, be departing
from the sense of the Articles to which he sub-
scribes."
The Bishop of Ripon, on the other hand, lays
down the Roman doctrine, states it to be condemned,
and implies that any doctrine different from this is
not condemned.
" We must", as I conclude, in subscription to the
Twenty-second Article, condemn the doctrine, that the
sins committed after Baptism, even of those whose
eternal punishment is remitted for the sake of Christ's
merits, must be expiated, either by acts of penance in this
life, or in a state of suffering and torment beyond the
grave ; this being, as far as I can collect, what is meant
by the Romish doctrine of Purgatory; but I can scarcely
suppose that any one ever imagined himself precluded by
this subscription, from holding any opinion respecting an
intermediate state, in which, possibly, the spirits of just
men may repose from their labours without suffering , or
indeed from entertaining any sentiment not included within
the above definition of the Roman Purgatory. And so in
like manner with the rest of the heads of the Article.
Having ascertained what was the doctrine respecting the
Invocation of Saints, to which the Church of Rome was
held to be committed at the time the Article was penned,
I should feel myself bound to subscribe in that sense* which
I believe to be the legitimate and true one."
The Bishop's concluding caution,
" It surely can never do good service to the cause of that
pure religion which has been committed to our keeping, to
m Bp. of Chester, p. 78, 9. n P. 27.
54
speak in such a way either of this or any kindred practice,
as shall encourage its adoption","
is the very ground which induced Mr. Newman to
speak so indistinctly at first ; no one could warn
more seriously of the risk attending the resumption
of any such practice ; and his example has been
followed by those who have since spoken, Mr.
Ward p and myself q .
Indeed, while the Bishop thinks it right to warn
against the views of the Reformation and the
Reformers, which have been lately more put forward r ,
and regards the framers of Edward the Sixth's
Articles as the imponents of ours 8 , he sanctions the
Catholic interpretation as much as ourselves. He
objects only to the principle of arbitrarily affixing a
sense which any one may deem Catholic ; he doubts
not, " knowing the respect in which our Reformers
held Catholic Antiquity, that they correctly embodied
that sense in them." On one doctrine only, does
he remark on any of our doctrinal statements, my
own on Sin after Baptism ; on one principle of
practice only, that of " reserve as to the doctrine of
the ever-blessed Atonement," on both which sub-
jects I wish hereafter to say a few words to your
Grace.
P. 27.
Letter to the Bishop of Oxford, p. 19.
Few More Words in support of No. 90, quoted ib. p. 123.
Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 120, sqq.
p. 20.
55
If, then, amid all this, the Bishop of Ripon is
counted among those who reject our views altoge-
ther, and condemn ourselves, what will be the
case, if Bishops speak less cautiously and less
tenderly? In these sad days of division and rebuke,
every thing is seized upon as a weapon to demolish
that which people dread ; they look at things not as
they are, but as themselves would have them ; they
value persons, things, institutions, according as they
tell in support of party- views ; a person or his work
becomes at once, as it may be, learned or pious or
judicious or venerable, as soon as he serves an end ;
they who never paid any respect to a Bishop, or
who have spoken contemptuously of his office to
his face, hail and extol his authority and magnify
his sayings so soon as they are directed against
what they dislike. All this is melancholy, very
melancholy, and humbling, to ourselves and our
Church in which these things are ; but since it is
so, I would the rather hope that they whose words
will be so employed, will consider the more the
weight of sayings, which are so to be employed,
that they press not the heavier against those already
bowed down.
Will your Grace permit me to illustrate my
meaning by reference to an older Charge, which
went more into detail into our doctrines than any
other at that period ? In 1836 the Bishop of Exeter
laid down, with his usual perspicuity, the doctrine of
the Sacraments and of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, and
56
the latter in terms which struck myself as so happily
chosen, that we added it to our Catena on the
subject, instead of closing it with departed Divines.
In 1839 he again stated the teaching of the Church
on the Apostolical succession, and on the doctrine
of the Sacraments in the same manner as we our-
selves would do ; on the Holy Eucharist, he main-
tained the right use of a term not contained in our
formularies, the " real Presence," which t am not
aware that any of us had used ; again setting us an
example, not simply sanctioning what we had taught.
On Tradition again, the Bishop affirms its value,
especially wherein it comes to us with chief au-
thority, the Creeds, and subsequently objects to
individual expressions only of ours, which he thinks to
magnify it too much, while he rejects the charge of
Popery brought against us, and very severely that
of heresy. When he is subsequently led to point
out some things which he laments, they are still
points of detail ; of a mode of speaking of worship of
images and invocation of saints less marked than
Bishop Hall's; dislike of makingTransubstantiation a
subject of controversy; my own defence of thepractice
of prayer for departed Saints ; the service sketched
in commemoration of Bishop Ken ; speaking against
the necessity of Confession as a " practical griev-
ance," without saying any thing against the Roman
statement of the absolute necessity of Absolution by
the Priest ; my own views of sin after Baptism ;
reserve on the doctrine of the Atonement. Without
57
entering into these manifold subjects, the very
enumeration shews that most of them are negative
only; the degree of blame attaches mostly to what
we did not, and not to what we did say or do ; one
point only is connected with our positive practical
teaching, my own on sin after Baptism ; for
although, when blamed as we were, we must main-
tain Prayers for departed Saints to be a Catholic
practice, we never publicly inculcated it. I mean
not that the Bishop might not object to other of
our language, were he acquainted with it, but he
did censure no more. He even concluded his
animadversions upon these points with the kind
parting words.
" Neither * shall I forbear to avow my own opinion,
that the Church is on the whole deeply indebted to them.
" In opposition to the low and sectarian notions, which
had too long marked much of the popular theology of the
times, they have successfully asserted and vindicated some
of the most important doctrines and principles of the
Catholic Church doctrines and principles, which, as
Ministers of that Church of England, we are under the
most express and solemn engagements to maintain."
Yet the Bishop of Exeter also has been alleged
in the catalogue of those who have condemned us,
and we have been represented as contumacious in
continuing to teach, after having been thus rebuked ;
and that by those, who unhappily seem to deny
what the Bishop designates as " some of the most
* p. 84.
58
important doctrines and principles of the Catholic
Church," and which he holds that as Ministers of
our branch of the Church we are most solemnly
bound to teach.
But if this be so as to those who have spoken
thus kindly of us, what must be the impression
made by such as simply censure us without ad-
verting to any good service we have rendered?
Thus, the impression left on my mind by a Charge
delivered in the foregoing summer by an Archbishop
of the United Church was, that he held that we
ought to leave the Church, meaning probably,
abandon our office as Ministers in her. The
Bishop of Durham expressly says that we have
done no good, that there was no need and no
excuse for our efforts, nothing in the existing state
of doctrine to call them forth, that the result of
our efforts has been very unfortunate, tending to
reestablish error rather than truth. The Bishop
of Chester seems (shocking as it is to write) to
regard us as instruments of Satan to hinder the
true principles of the Gospel* ; his brother, the
Bishop of Winchester, speaks more mildly of us,
condemns nothing authoritatively, yet sees nothing
but evil from us, and no evil except from us b ; an
* See an extract in Note A at the end.
b " Are we, then, as a Church, in risk of incurring any such
danger ?" [being robbed of her internal and spiritual beauty and
strength,] " Is our glory in any jeopardy ? Is there heard, as it
were, something of a confused sound of voices at a distance,
59
Episcopal Sermon, delivered indeed in much excite-
ment , and which has been reprinted here from a
Colonial Diocese, as an additional weapon against
us, speaks of us as on " the very verge of an
apostasy from Christ d ," meaning indeed thereby an
approximation to Rome.
And yet, my Lord, even of these last, (sor-
rowful as it is to be mistaken by such men,) I
would without hesitation affirm that they mostly
condemn not ourselves or our principles, but what
they conceive to be such. I may say this the
more confidently, as having, now these many
years, read diligently what has been written
against us, and seen how impossible it is to convey
to minds, trained in one school of theology, the
real character of views at variance with their own.
It has been my own lot, as well as that of others,
continually to see and hear ascribed to ourselves
views and statements, the very reverse of any
which might make some Eli, sitting in the gate, to tremble for
the ark of God ? If there be in the horizon so much as the earliest
rising of a little cloud, you have a right to expect from one in
the position which the duty of my office bids me discharge this
day, the explicit declaration of my fears." Charge, p. 29. and
then he proceeds to speak of what he supposes to be our teaching,
and of our's only.
c " I am full of fear ; every thing is at stake." " I am an
alarmist. I believe our Church was never in the danger she
now is, except perhaps immediately before the Great Rebellion."
i. e. (as it is explained) from Abp. Laud. Ordination Sermon
by Daniel Bishop of Calcutta, p. 63, 64, 65.
d p. 61.
60
which we hold. It is even shocking to have to
deny or to affirm, respectively, the grievous errors
or the elementary Christian truths which it is
supposed that we should hold or reject. As a
rule, we should be found to reject what we are by
this class of minds thought to hold, to hold more
nearly what we are thought to reject.
This has arisen out of the circumstances attending
the revival of religious earnestness towards the
close of the last century. The instruments of that
revival looked, in the first instance, for the type of
their doctrine, neither to the Reformers of the six-
teenth, nor the great Divines of the seventeenth
century, but to the Non-conformists. In contrast
with a period in which the consciousness of the
great truths of the Gospel had become obscure and
dim, they seized, as your Grace knows familiarly,
one or two fundamental truths, or rather they con-
densed the whole Gospel into the two fundamental
truths of nature and of grace, that by nature we
are corrupt, by grace we are saved. Our corruption
by nature, our justification by faith were not a
summary only, but, in this meagre form, the whole
substance of their teaching. Faith also was made
the act of the mind, believing and appropriating to
itself the merits of our Blessed Lord ; the rest of
the Christian system or God's gifts, the Church, the
Sacraments, good works, holiness, self-discipline,
repentance, were looked upon but as introductory
or subsidiary, or to follow as a matter of course
61
upon these, but if thought of any value in them-
selves, pernicious ; to attach value to any of them,
was (as we have often been condemned to hear, and
shocking as it is to repeat) to substitute (as it might
be) the Church or the Sacraments, or repentance
or good works for CHRIST. And from this we are
but partially recovering. One must respect the
sensitiveness of those, who with a " godly jealousy,"
fear lest any thing be substituted for our Ever-
blessed Redeemer. Still one must say that the
error is with them. The narrowness of what one
must call the " Non-conformist" system (for on the
doctrine of Holy Baptism it is plainly at variance
with that of the reformers in our Church as well as
its formularies) cannot span the largeness of
Catholic truth ; it cannot expand itself so as to
comprise it, and what it cannot take into its own
measures, it rejects as superfluous. Measured then
by this rule, our teaching must needs be found
faulty.
I may the rather venture to say this, my Lord,
without arrogancy, because it is difficult to see how
one at least of these Charges can otherwise be
reconciled with the formularies of our Church, or
even the Creeds of the Church Catholic : it is no
disrespect to speak of the unclearness or narrowness
of a system, even when adopted by a Bishop ; it
were shocking to think of any thing approaching
even to unconscious heresy. If then "justification
by faith only" is used to exclude any thing else as
62
the meritorious cause of our salvation, than the
merits of our only Lord and Saviour g , it is, of
course, only a brief statement of the whole sub-
stance of the Gospel. In this sense it is right to
be jealous for the doctrine, and in this the Bishop
of Chester must be understood 11 when he condemns as
" departing from the sense of the Articles" any who
" speak of justification by faith, as if Baptism and
newness of heart concurred towards our justifica-
tion 1 ;" for to deny in any other sense that Baptism
concurred to our justification would be to contra-
vene Holy Scripture, as well as the Creeds and the
K " Then will His Cross and Passion again be known, beloved,
acknowledged, relied on, gloried in, as the only meritorious
ground of justification, and His Spirit sought for and honored, as
the only gracious source *of holiness and comfort " Bishop D.
Wilson's Charge, p. 69. The Italics are the Bishop's. There
must be some miserable confusion when a Bishop could suppose
that such elementary truths were not held by any teachers of the
Church.
h 1 know not whether it is in the same sense that the Bishop
of Winchester expresses his u fears of a system" " which speaks of
the Sacraments, not as seals or pledges, but as instruments of
salvation in a justificatory or causal sense ;" for I do not un-
derstand what it means. Our passages, to which the Bishop
refers, speak of the Sacraments only as " instruments ;" an in-
strument is, in scholastic language, " the immediate cause/' (as
distinct from the " ultimate cause" or Author,) as our Article also
speaks of their being ** effectual signs of grace," i.e. effecting what
they signify; and of Holy Baptism as " an instrument whereby
they who receive it rightly are graffed into Christ's Church." But
what <f an instrument in a justificatory or causal sense" is, I
know not.
1 Charge, p. 79.
63
formularies of our own Church . For in that Holy
Scripture, and the Creed after it, speaks of " Bap-
tism for the remission of sins/' Baptism must
concur to justification, or our being made free
from sin ; and, (on the narrower ground of our own
formularies,) in what other way could -each be
taught to say that he was " therein made a child
of God, member of Christ, inheritor of Heaven ?'*
unless, indeed, a person can have all these glorious
gifts and testimonies of God's mercy, and yet be
unjustified and lying in his sins, and under God's
wrath, an unjustified " child of God, member of
Christ, heir of heaven !"
It is probably in this same sense that the same
Bishop condemns those who " speak of Forgiveness
or works of mercy, as availing -to obtain remission of
sins from God ;" i. e. (he must mean) meritoriously
or in themselves, (which no one affirmed,) else he
would contradict Holy Scripture, which says,
" Forgive k , and ye shall be forgiven ;" and " When 1
ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against
any, that your Father also, which is in Heaven, may
forgive you your trespasses;" and "He ra shall
have judgment without mercy that hath shewed no
mercy, and mercy rejoiceth against judgment."
5 See more at length Mr. Perceval's well-weighed " Letter to
the Bishop of Chester, with remarks on his late Charge, more
especially as relates to the doctrine of Justification."
k Luke vi. 37.
1 Mark xi. 25.
'" James ii. 13.
64
Again, when the Bishop of Winchester expresses
his " fears", " " if instead of the satisfaction of
Christ singly and alone as the ground of our ac-
ceptance, a certain inherent meetness of sanctifi-
cation be so connected with the qualification ab
extra, as to confound the operation within with the
work of Christ without;" if he means " the
meritorious ground of acceptance/' no one of course
holds any thing else ; yet he cannot mean to deny
altogether that any other ground shall, in any
way, be taken into account in the final " accept-
ance" at the last Day, since our Lord declares that
works of mercy will .
In like way, one may say of these Charges through-
out, that the writers are jealous for truth, or against
error, which all earnest minds must be jealous about ;
only they seem to have these truths fixed in their
minds in the (one may say so without disrespect,
as speaking of the system, not of the respected
individuals) somewhat bald and naked way which
characterizes the Genevan school, and measuring
doctrines as they stand in other systems by the
character which they would occupy in their own,
they must condemn them. And thus they might
too readily be understood to be condemning, not
our teaching only, or that of the great Divines
of the seventeenth century, but that of our Church
and the Church Catholic, and to be at variance
n p. 3G. Matt. xxv.
65
with Holy Scripture. Their chief maxims, that
nothing must interfere with the office of Christ, or
derogate from the sufficiency of Holy Scripture, all
would hold with them, but in the application of
these principles, they seem not only to condemn
other truth, but even to contradict themselves.
Thus the Bishop of Chester descends even to
controvert the thoughtful work of an eminent lay-
man, who has recently developed the doctrine of
the mystical character of the Church ; and in his
anxiety that the Church should not be " made to
usurp the place of Christ to perform His acts," so
pa res down the doctrine, as to seem to leave the Church
a mere outward body composed of such as (using an
illustration from a regiment ) " vow allegiance,
and pass through a prescribed form, such for
example as Christian Baptism," a body as merely
outward as a regiment might be, as not in fact one
body, except as an accidental aggregate of indi-
viduals can be said to be one. And yet such
cannot be his meaning, since though the language
of the Article which he quotes is ambiguous, that
of our Services falls in with and implies the view
which he seems to controvert, that the Church is a
mystical body into which they who are saved are
gathered one by one, and in it knit to Christ, its
and their Head. This is plainly the meaning of
our Liturgy when it speaks of " God's elect" being
" p. 84 sqq.
F
66
" knit together in one communion and fellowship
in the mystical body of His Son Jesus Christ," or
of our being assured by the due reception of the
Holy Eucharist, " that we are very members
incorporate in the mystical body of His Son ;" of
children " being received into Christ's holy
Church/' by " being baptized with water and
the Holy Ghost," " received into the ark of Christ's
Church," being " regenerate, and grafted into the
body of Christ's Church," " regenerated by God's
Holy Spirit, received as His own child by adoption,
and incorporated into His Holy Church." The
body into which we are engrafted by the spiritual
gift of our new birth must itself be spiritual.
Such an outward view of the Church would be
inconsistent with the Creed itself, " I believe The
holy Catholic Church ;" for which the Lutherans,
on their view, substituted the words " a Christian
Church."
Yet it is apparent throughout that the Bishop
only means to contend against what all would
equally reject any view of the Church which
should substitute it for Christ, one which would
" so p represent it, as to be virtually the author of
salvation, instead of the channel through which
salvation flows ;" although (remarkably enough)
the passage from Mr. Gladstone's work which he
cites in illustration, does distinctly speak of the
p. 30.
67
Church, not (it is almost too shocking even to
deny) as the Author but as the channeH It is
apparent even from the Bishop's own language,
for he too speaks, with Holy Scripture, of the
Church, as one spiritual body under Christ its
Head." The r Holy Catholic Church, of which
Christ is the Head, and with which He has en-
gaged to be by His Spirit unto the end of the
world."
I do not mean that there is not a real difference
of view between their statements and our own ;
but it proceeds from defect and omission in theirs,
not from direct opposition ; ours supply what they
omitted, and so, as long as they are satisfied with
their own, ours must seem to them redundant.
Raised up at a time when the Christian Sacraments
were acknowledged but not felt, they took up
a system independent of them ; they urged con-
version, they proposed justification, not by virtue
of a Covenant which had been neglected, an en-
<i " It is in the Church that we have our religious life, derived
to us not as individuals, but by virtue of incorporation into her
body." " God has not chosen to establish His relations with each
of us on a distinct and individual footing, but has constituted us in
a body, to derive from its source of life a portion of its general
life." quoted ib. p. 80. The same contrast is observable in all
the Bishop's subsequent remarks ; as in the saddening words,
p. 81," Shall we write, instead, Come unto the Church, and the
Church shall give you rest?" " Shall we substitute the Church
Catholic for the individual Saviour?"
r ib. p. 33.
F2
68
grafting into Christ whose efficacy had been stifled,
but de novo, as if every thing past were effaced ;
as if a man had had no privileges, responsi-
bilities, duties, because he had neglected them.
Overlooking the Ordinances whereby God engrafts
us into Christ's body, they addressed men as indi-
viduals, now for the first time, through their indi-
vidual faith, to be united to Him ; and they the
more depreciated His Ordinances, because others
urged them to a wrong end, to supersede the
necessity of any actual change, any decided living
above the world, or contrast with its ways. They
called men who were in the Church, as the Apostles
called them into it ; and so must needs overlook
the Church herself and the Sacraments whereby
men had been brought in ; they took one half only
of the truth, viz. that the individual must by his
personal faith cleave unto his Lord, and over-
looked that no human faith nor longings can make
a man a member of his Incarnate Saviour, that
they only can be united with Him, whom He receives
into His mystical Body, and that this His act is the
Sacrament of Baptism. They insisted rightly,
against the prevailing coldness, on the necessity of
individual personal faith, they substituted wrongly
the act of man for the Sacrament of Christ ; they
insisted rightly on the individual relations of the
believer to Christ, but failed to perceive that these
relations were no less individual, because they
belong to us as members of the one Body, whereof
69
He is the Head. And thus, so long as they teach
positively, all can accord with them ; when they go
beyond it, they seem to oppose Catholic truth as
well as our teaching. They have realized the one
truth of the individual union with Christ ; when
they hear of the Catholic doctrine of the Church
and of the Sacraments, they know not how to re-
concile them with their own partial views, they fear
something being " interposed" between the soul
and its Redeemer, and so seemingly reject the
truth, when they really reject but a partial view of
it, which would be destructive of other truth.
It is important, even at the risk of being weari-
some to your Grace, to trace this source of apparent
opposition in other points, if so it may appear not
only that we are not so condemned, but that the
points upon which the teachers of our Church are
at strife are not, if we rightly understood each
other, so numerous as might at first sight seem.
Thus, on Tradition, these writers are very jealous-
for the sufficiency of the Scripture, and too much
of course could not be said on that subject, unless
in so doing men should seem to praise the word of
God. All hold Scripture to be the " sole source of
saving Faith ;" the only question is about its in-
terpreter, whether it be the individual or the
Church. There is no contrast in the mind of any
maintainer of Tradition, between Tradition and
Holy Scripture, and yet this seems the only contrast
in the mind of pious men who impugn it. I say
70
"of pious men," for too many in these days are
anxious to maintain not the independence of Holy
Scripture, but their own. And thus it will be that
these writers will seem alternately to affirm or con-
demn, what they condemn us for affirming. Thus
the Bishop of Calcutta says, as do we, that it is the
office of the Church " to uphold 9 the word of truth,
to be the keeper and guardian of Holy Writ to
explain it by comments, creeds, liturgies, articles,
and catechisms, and hand it down to successive
generations. By these means truth resides in the
Church as its fixed seat and proper dwelling."
When he adds, " all as a servant, as a handmaid,
not as an authority over or co-ordinate with Holy
Scripture," he speaks only as we do, who regard the
Church as subservient to Holy Scripture ; having
" authority" not " over" it, but " over" us. When,
further, he adds, the office of the Ministry is to
" interpret merely, not change or add to, much less
explain away or contradict. The standard of all
religious teaching is the Bible and the Bible only ;"
this is, again, what we should say, if by " standard"
he means the ultimate authority to which the Church
is to appeal. When, again, he says, " We * go along
with the most ardent admirer of Antiquity in ex-
pressing our reverence for this mass of information,"
[Fathers, Councils, &c.] But why ? It is EVIDENCE ;
it is historical testimony to the fact of certain
Sermon, p. 24.
t p. 28. The Capitals are the Bishops.
71
doctrines, and a certain interpretation of the capital
leading passages of Scripture, of a certain number
of sacraments, rites, and usages, having been held
in all ages, in all parts of the Church and by all
persons ;" this is what we have said, " Scripture u is
the document of faith, tradition the witness of it ;
the true Creed is the Catholic interpretation of
Scripture, or Scripturally proved tradition." What-
ever difference there is, relates not to the sufficiency
of Holy Scripture in any way, nor to its being the
sole source of saving faith, nor to its superiority to
man, nor to its authority over the Church ; it
relates not at all to Holy Scripture but to us ; not
to the sufficiency of Holy Scripture but to ours;
not to submitting Holy Scripture to the Church
Catholic, but ourselves ; not whether tradition is
equally inspired with Holy Scripture, but whether
we are equally enlightened and have as much of the
Spirit of God, and as much insight into Holy Scrip-
ture itself, as the collective wisdom of the Church :
not whether the Church has authority over Holy
Scripture, but over us ; not whether it may " change
or add to, explain away or contradict" Holy Scrip-
ture, but whether we may " change, explain away,
or contradict" the decisions of the Catholic Church.
The whole question of tradition relates not to
Holy Scripture, but to the individual ; and what
many who impugn it are half-consciously con-
u Tract 78, p. 2.
72
tending for, is not the sufficiency of Holy Scripture,
but the sufficiency of self. This is a question which
will probably be more and more developed ; there
are who contend that the later ages are in religious
wisdom richer than the earlier ; the stream purer
as it flows downwards ; the division of these last
times more enlightened (and more loving doubtless,
and more enlightened because more loving !) than
the unity of the first ; and so criticism too, doubt-
less a better guide to " the mind of Christ" than
holiness, the decay of the Church more guided by
her Lord and blessed with His fuller Presence, than
her first love. But, apart from this, the struggle
which is being carried on every where, and which
is the characteristic contest of the " last times," is
that between the individual will and authority ; it
pervades politics and religion ; without the Church
it is the question of submitting the reason to mys-
teries, " the prostration," as your Grace once spoke,
" of the understanding" before revelation ; within,
it is of the submission of the individual judgment
to that of the Church. This is a question of
religious temper of mind, of first importance ; and
there are symptoms even within the Church that this
struggle is being secretly carried on, under the fair
colours of zeal for the " sufficiency of Holy Scrip-
ture ;" it is to be feared that when the right-minded
understand each other better, the mask will be
drawn aside by those who are not so, and the un-
truth avowed more nakedly ; it is one of the signs
73
of the last Apostacy; but it is happily not at issue
between these Bishops and ourselves.
In other points again, the Bishop of Chester
shews what the error is which he means to con-
demn, and so, though he rejects statements, which
are borne out by Catholic consent, there is no
reason to infer that he rejects the truth they con-
tain, but only the error, which though they do
not, he supposes them to maintain. Thus it was
part of the vague way of thinking in a past period,
to suppose that any change in the sacred elements
involved Transubstantiation, whereas that word
designates only that particular change, " whereby
the substance of the sacred elements ceases to be."
When then he condemns x as " departing from the
sense of the Articles," those who " speak of the con-
secrated elements as not remaining simply what
they were before, and what to sight they seem,"
and refers, as his authority, to the Article con-
demning Transubstantiation, we may plainly limit
his condemnation to this, and not suppose him to
contravene Antiquity, which continually affirms a
change, as indeed it is implied by the prayer for
the descent of the Holy Ghost in all ancient
liturgies except the Roman, and by the very act
of consecration.
Or, to speak on one subject which has been
perhaps more widely misunderstood than any other,
" p. 79.
74
(though not a doctrine,) " reserve" or reverence
"in communicating religious knowledge," the prin-
ciple of the tracts on that subject, (of which an im-
partial person has said that " they contain as much
deep and true philosophy as any in the whole series,")
may be expressed in few words : " great reverence
is to be used lest you propose religious truth to
minds unfit to receive it." Whatever rule as to
holy truth is meant by our Blessed Lord's words,
" Give not that which is holy to dogs, nor cast
your pearls before swine," that and no other is
meant by these Tracts. This is contrary not
(God forbid) to the preaching of the Atonement,
but to a sadly irreverent way of preaching it, as
the means of conversion, which has been too com-
mon. Judgment to come, not the Atonement, is
the doctrine preached by the Apostles as the means
of conversion ; and then, when men " were pricked
in their heart," " remission of sins." Even the
school in question abstractedly acknowledged the
principle, in that their Sermons were wont to con-
sist of two parts ; the first, inculcating our lost
condition through nature, the second, salvation
through the Blood of Christ. Even according to
them, the Atonement was not to be preached, until
people were supposed to be convinced of their
" lost and ruined condition ;" which involves the
very principle in question.
Any condemnation then of the principle, as
" keeping back the blessed doctrine of Atone-
75
ment" except when minds are for the time unfit
to receive it, when it might harden rather than
soften them, censures not the principle, but one
which the author of those Tracts equally con-
demns. How entirely those Tracts have been
misunderstood, has become apparent in reference
to one particular Charge, the author having shewn,
by aid of parallel columns*, that all which the
Bishop wished him to have said, he had said, and
not said, what he wished unsaid. I may use words
of his own to myself; " The propositions con-
demned by the Bishop I not only never expressed
or thought of, but disapprove of in the strongest
manner as extremely wrong."
Another of these Charges furnishes in a different
way a remarkable illustration of the same mis-
understanding. The Bishop of Winchester seems
to imagine that the principle involves a keeping
back of religious truth altogether, not a reverent
and holy imparting of it. Hence many of the
cases which he quotes from Holy Scripture to
disprove the principle, are in fact instances of
it ; how our Lord in private gave a fuller in-
sight into Divine mysteries to those prepared to
receive them, as to the eleven after the resur-
rection, or to the sincere and enquiring Nicode-
n A Few Remarks on the Charge of the Lord Bishop of
Gloucester and Bristol, on the subject of reserve in commu-
nicating religious knowledge as taught in the Tracts for the
Times, No. 80 and No. 87, by the writer of those Tracts.
76
mus; or Himself prepared them before He even
declared the truths of nature, as when He ee con-
vinced of sin" the woman of Samaria, before He
declared to her the spiritual being of God; or how, in
public, He veiled the truth before those who were
about to " rend" Him, as in that mysterious intima-
tion, " Destroy this temple b ." It might illustrate
these misconceptions further, that the same Bishop
supposes the way of teaching recommended in
this Tract to be parallel with the dry moral
preaching too common in the last century.
In a word, all the Bishops who have blamed these
Tracts have blamed but one statement, in a sense
not held by the Author, not borne out (one must
say) by the tenor of the Tract and of our teaching,
and subsequently explained by him 11 . I may say,
b " At the first Passover He assumed a right over His Father's
House by cleansing the Temple a declaration [rather, a veiled
intimation] of the Divine prerogative of the strongest kind. His
discourse with Nicodemus is based upon the doctrine of regenera-
tion the deepest theological truth. His conversation with the
woman of Samaria revealed that ' God is a Spirit' the most
abstract metaphysical truth. We remember how some months
before His Crucifixion, He intimates the Sacrifice Itself and its
object, * Destroy this temple/ ' The Son of Man must be
lifted up/ * The bread that I give is My Flesh, which I give
for the life of the world/ And it was His last care, immediately
before the Ascension, to enter with the eleven into the full ex-
planation of,'' &c. Charge of the Dp. of Winchester, p. 31.
c Ib. p. 31.
A In Tract 87. The Charge of the Bishop of Exeter was de-
livered before the publication of the second Tract. The Bishop
of Gloucester is stated " upon the best authority" to have
77
without disrespect, that I cannot but regard it as
an instance, in which the Bishops have been un-
consciously acted upon by current statements and
vague accusations, rather than themselves acted
on their own dispassionate and mature judgment.
Certainly, there is in all a remarkable repetition of
the same general statement, " keeping back of the
doctrine of the Atonement," and no indication of
any acquaintance with the principles of the Tracts
themselves.
Yet the treatment of these Tracts which has been
thus unhappily countenanced, beingcondemned and
spoken of lightly, without being considered, is but
one form of that very habit of mind, against which
they were directed. The opposition to them
originated mostly in the very need of the medicine
which it rejected. Had the Tracts been entitled,
" On reverence in communicating religious know-
ledge," it would have been a severe condemnation of
the error which they now treat more tenderly, but
one which could have been less easily eluded. As
it is, people have gone off upon a name, and shrunk
from the substance. The real aim of those Tracts
is to correct irreverence in handling religious truth.
And of this there is but too much need. Our age
is irreverent ; irreverence pervades almost all the
discussion of sacred subjects ; in speaking and
writing alike, people forget of Whom they are
referred only to Tract 80, not being acquainted with Tract 87.
(Church Intelligencer, No. 31.)
78
speaking, Whose words they are using, Whose
Mysteries they are handling, about Whose very
Nature they are bandying words ; they forget
themselves and God, and so have been turned
against that, which condemned themselves. Pro-
faneness is the very characteristic of the world*;
but alas ! one need not go to the world for absence
of reverence ; the very handling of the most sacred
subjects of human thought in our daily press side
by side with the things of this world is irreverent ;
one cannot read a page of them without being
pained by irreverence ; one need only think of any
one subject, as those which our Church still calls
" holy Mysteries," what language is used either as
to the Romanist doctrine or Catholic truth, when
and how, by whom and before whom they are dis-
cussed ! One can hardly understand how they who
hold them to be mysteries can so speak, or they
who so speak can retain the sense of their being
mysteries. Or to consider again the hard dry
way in which the Blessed doctrine of the Atone-
ment has been illustrated or vindicated, until one
knows not which was most rationalistic, the defence
or (grievous as it is to say) the attack ! Or to take
lighter cases, how frequent it is, even in the most
sacred places, much more in so-called religious
meetings, to hear religious truths so spoken of,
e There is a fearfully condensed picture (though from the
nature of the subject in allusion chiefly) in a thoughtful article in
the British Critic, No. 61, p. 237.
79
that any one must be certain that the speaker is
not for the time thinking whereon he is speaking.
For myself, when I first learnt the substance of those
Tracts,, I felt that they conveyed a lesson we all
needed, that their teaching, well-weighed, would
deepen all our reverence, and teach us, almost all,
how much it needed to be deepened. They seemed
to come most seasonably also, (one might say, pro-
videntially,) at the revival of religious truths, as a
warning against bringing them forward, as people
are wont, without due reverence to the sacredness
of that wherewith they are entrusted, or regard to
their own temper of rnind, or that of those to whom
they declared them. I have since met with many,
who entered upon the study of them with minds
prejudiced against them by the popular misrepre-
sentations, but I have not met with one, who,
(whether he acquiesced or no in all the details,) did
not express himself deeply indebted to them. It
will not, I trust, seem disrespectful if I express
my conviction that our Bishops, had they fully
considered both these Tracts, would, instead of
singling out one topic for condemnation, have
recommended their general teaching, as a cor-
rective of so much under which we are now
suffering d .
d A valuable analysis of them, and independent testimony to
their value, is given by the Rev. H. A. Woodgate, " A Brief
Analysis of the Tracts on Reserve in Communicating Religious
Knowledge in the Series called Tracts for the Times : with
Remarks on the same."
80
Even as to that Tract, which, perhaps from some
few expressions in it, or its original designed in-
definiteness on some points, has been most animad-
verted on, it may be the rather hoped that not the
actual interpretation of the Articles in Tract 90, but
their supposed tendencies have been censured, since
my own vindication of them has, with one exception,
escaped censure ; and in that one, in addition to
the extensive misunderstandings which I have
pointed out, language of the Homilies 6 has been
censured as much as my own. I must, however,
candidly avow my belief, that had there not been a
strong, traditional but unauthorized, interpretation
in the one direction, which Tract 90 struck at the
roots, there would not have been that alarm, which
at first certainly prevented an unbiassed view 5
e In that the Homilies speak of " the Sacrament of Matri-
mony ;" the expression has of late been vindicated in the
abstract, but not used; the Bishop of Chester condemns it.
p. 79.
f This Mr. Newman avows it to be his desire to oppose, " I
should not be honest if I did not add, that I consider our own
Church, on the other hand, to have in it a traditionary system,
as well as the Roman, beyond and beside the letter of its for-
mularies, and to be ruled by a spirit far inferior to its own nature.
And this traditionary system not only inculcates what I cannot
receive, but would exclude any difference of belief from itself.
To this exclusive modern system, I desire to oppose myself."
Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 17, 18.
g The Bishop of Llandaff, however, kindly observes in reference
to this same Tract, " He" [Mr. Newman] " has been, I think,
unjustly accused of leaning towards Popery for his language
has been strong and unequivocal in condemning the usurpation,
81
being taken of it. In one instance, we must
gratefully acknowledge, that the Catholic sense of
the Articles is explicitly acknowledged, and the
judgment only of our Reformers, as being many
and revering Catholic Antiquity, is preferred to
the judgment of any individual, as to what the
Catholic sense is h . One general misconception I
may yet remove, as though Mr. Newman had set
himself systematically to prove that " a person adopt-
ing the 5 doctrines of the Council of Trent, with the
single exception of the Pope's supremacy, might
sincerely and conscientiously sign the Articles of
the Church of England." Of this there is no
appearance in the Tract itself, nor of any syste-
matic design in it : the allusions to the Council of
Trent are incidental only k , correcting ultra-inter-
pretations of some of its decrees. It may suffice
to notice, that as to the most important and difficult
and the corrupt unscriptural tenets of that Church ;" on Roman
Catholic Errors, p. 87. He points out also that the Tract so far
from favouring the actual system in the Church of Rome, implies
that it is worse than at the Council of Trent, ib.
to " Knowing the respect in which our Reformers held Catholic
Antiquity, I should believe that they were more likely to have
correctly embodied that sense in it [the wording] than I, as an
individual, should be, to discover that sense for myself." Bp. of
Ripon's Charge, p. 25.
1 Bp. of Gloucester's Charge, p. 35.
k This also is stated by Mr. Newman, ' That while I was
writing it [Tract 90] I was not unwilling to shew that the
Decrees of Trent were but partially, if at all, committed to
certain popular errors, I fully grant; but even this I did with
reference to others." Postscript to Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 1.
G
82
Decree, that on Transubstantiation, no attempt is
made, either to reconcile it with Antiquity or with
our Articles. As little ground is there for the
conjecture', that " the real object of the writer was
to prove that the differences in doctrine which
separate the Church of England and Rome will
upon examination vanish." Any such question the
writer has stated' to be, in his opinion, unsuited to
1 " The reai object, at which the writer seems to be labouring
is, &C." ib. p. 36.
j " In like manner I have set my face altogether against sug-
gestions which zealous and warm-hearted persons sometimes
have made of reviving the project of Archbishop Wake, for con-
sidering the differences between ourselves and the foreign
Churches with a view to their adjustment. Our business is
with ourselves to make ourselves more holy, more self-denying,
more primitive, more worthy our high calling. Let the Church
of Rome do the same, and it will come nearer to us, and will
cease to be what we one and all mean, when we speak of Rome.
To be anxious for a composition of differences, is to begin at the
end. Did God visit us with large measures of His grace, and
the Roman Catholics also, they would be drawn to us, and would
acknowledge our Church as the Catholic Church in this country,
and would give up whatever offended and grieved us in their
doctrine and worship, and would unite themselves to us. This
would be a true union; but political reconciliations are but out-
ward, and hollow, and fallacious. And till they renounce
political efforts, and manifest in their public measures the light
of holiness and truth, perpetual warfare is our only prospect.
It was the prophetic announcement concerning the Elijah of the
first Advent, that he should ' turn the hearts of the fathers to the
children, and the heart of the children to their fathers/ This is
the only change which promises good and is worth an effort."
Letter to the Bp. of Oxford, p. 43, 44. " Those who are im-
mediately about me, know that in the interval between the
83
the present state of the two Communions ; both
Churches must be other than we are, before the
question of union can be healthfully entertained by
either.
I have thus, at the risk of wearying your Grace,
gone through the main topics of these Charges,
in order to shew that even in them it is mostly not
our doctrine which is condemned, but, as I said,
something which we should equally condemn our-
selves ; that, when we take more pains to under-
stand one another, unity within our Church is not
so hopeless, as amid our distractions it now seems.
But although one may see this one's self and so look
hopefully onward to a rest for our Church, even if
we should have entered first, as we hope, into our
own, this will not be the ordinary impression.
These Bishops mean to condemn what they think
us to be. And what have we to set against all
this, why this should not be accounted as the
earnest of the voice of those set over us in the
Church ? While some Bishops, who belong to an
opposite school of theology, do condemn what they
think is our teaching, others, who were formed in
the same general outline of doctrine as ourselves,
are thought to condemn us, another condemns us
printing and publication of the Tract, I was engaged in writing
some Letters about Romanism in which I spoke of the im-
possibility of any approach of the English toward the Roman
Church, arising out of the present state of the latter, as strongly
as I did a year ago, or as I do now in my Letter." Postscript to
Letter to Dr. Jelf, p. 1.
G2
84
in the mass, without apparently knowing any of
the details of what we have taught, but thinks
that instead of the Church, the Sacraments, re-?
pentance, " righteousness, temperance, judgment
to come" according unto our works, the whole is a
question of the revival of ceremonies, or " the
follies of by-gone superstitions 1 "," how may not
younger or less-disciplined or more ardent minds
be well disquieted at the prospect ? For ourselves,
we had enough in the acquittal, some years past,
of our own Bishop. But for the Church at large,
what is there to counterbalance all this ? Except
some kind expressions, some years past, of one
Bishop 1 , and, in the last year, of another" 1 , nothing
has been said, except what has been lost sight of,
as though uttered in extenuation only of censure.
And this is the more aggravated, through the
relative position of the two great sections of our
Church. Two schemes of doctrine, the Genevan
and the Catholic, are, probably for the last time,
struggling within our Church ; the contest, which
has been carried on ever since the Reformation,
between the Church and those who parted from
her, has now been permitted to be transferred to
the Church herself; on the issue hangs the destiny
k Bp of Durham, p. 12.
1 Bishop of Lincoln.
m Bp. of Llandaff, on Roman Catholic Errors, p. 87 and note,
whose personal kindness the writer especially has gratefully to
acknowledge.
85
of our Church ; if human frailty or impatience
precipitates not that issue, all will be well, and
it will have a peaceful close ; yet a decisive
issue it must have ; the one must in time absorb
the other; or, to speak more plainly, the Ca-
tholic, as the full truth of God, must, unless it
be violently cast out, in time, leaven and absorb
into itself whatever is partial and defective ; as it
has already very extensively. I do not wish to
call the attention of your Grace or any other of
your Grace's brethren to any defects on the other
side. But if every thing is said on the side of
supposed excess, nothing of defect ; if they are
blamed who interpret our Eucharistic Service in
its fullest sense by the Liturgies from which it is
derived, they are not blamed, who explain away
it or our Baptismal Service by the Zuinglian
school, or even omit Baptismal prayers, whose
plain meaning condemns their system ; if they are
censured who fill up inadequate statements in our
Articles by the teaching of the Church Catholic,
they \incensured who pare down the meaning of
our Liturgy; they censured who bring up the
meaning of our Articles when indefinite to our
Liturgy, they uncensured, who bring down the
definite meaning of our Liturgy to the lowest
interpretation which can be affixed to the Articles ;
must it not be thought that the sympathies of our
Bishops, are with those who are treated thus
leniently, against those whom they censure ? This
86
has been already felt. In one Diocese, which was
becoming more tranquil, and there seemed hopes
of a better mutual understanding, thanks were
publicly given in one chief place, that the Bishop
had from that pulpit denounced our teaching as
"another Gospel";" in another great city, the
people were instructed to look upon the teaching
of a portion of the Ministers of their Church, as
the teaching of Satan. Would that this were an
insulated case !
If this goes on, my Lord, where is it to end ?
If our own Bishops and others encouraged by
them say to us sore as it is to repeat, they are
their own words " Get thee hence, Satan,"
while those of the Roman Communion pray for
us, and invite us, is it not sorely adding to the
temptations, I say not of ourselves, but of younger
men ? The young are guided by their sympathies
more than by their convictions ; our position is
n The Bishop of Gloucester plainly meant to enforce the prin-
ciple that individual character is no excuse for bringing in error
of any kind ; <k But if an Angel from heaven preach ' any other
Gospel than that which we have received' from the Apostles and
Evangelists, I trust that he will preach in vain." (p. 38.) He could
not have meant what the words would go to, since he had just
said ; ' I am well acquainted with some persons, members of my
own Diocese, whom report numbers among the supporters of the
system which those writers recommend and uphold. And I bear
my willing testimony to the exemplary purity of their lives, their
doctrine j and their opinions" p. 37. The Bishop of Calcutta,
however, does seem to use those same sad words in their full
meaning, p. 43.
87
altogether an unnatural one ; it was never meant,
nor did he who first originated the idea of our
Tracts, contemplate, that we should stand thus; we
never wished to be leaders ; he who has been
forced into that unenviable eminence loved retire-
ment and obscurity ; we wished, as I said, to
rouse, at a critical moment, the sense of our
Church to the value of a part of her deposit which
she was neglecting; our first Tracts were the
short abrupt addresses of persons who, when the
enemy was upon them, seize the first weapon
which comes to hand and discharge it ; our more
elaborate ones grew under our hands and became
such almost without our own will ; we formed no
system; we did nothing to gather people round
ourselves ; we besought others (though in vain) to
preach in this place on the same doctrines, that
those doctrines might not be identified with us ;
we wished to guide people away from ourselves,
and pointed them on, and have been essaying
to lead them, to the Ancient Church, in connection
with our own ; our publications of the Fathers,
which had the sanction of your Grace and other
your Brethren, had this as its main object, to
present the fulness of the Ancient system, in faith
and life, apart from modern statements and modern
controversies ; we forewent much which any of us
might have desired to do, in order that the Church
might be listened to, not ourselves ; in whatever
degree we have been made a party, it has been the
88
act of others not our own ; we are held together
not by party-ties but by our common Faith, and
our common object of restoring our Church ; we
were formed in different ways ", have retained the
character impressed upon each, (which party
obliterates,) and, while we hold the same Catholic
truths, have, in some cases viewed men and actions
differently ; we have acted independently, one in
this way, the other in that, as to each was given ;
we have vindicated prominently different portions
of the Truth ; we have adopted no characteristic
practices ; have revived nothing in common but the
acknowledged practices of our Church ; when
people are compelled to leave declamation, and
name our peculiar tenets, they can find which
they can distinguish from those of our chief
Divines ; we have no title except one given
in reproach by our opponents, and which is not
unfrequently applied to your Lordships' body as
well as to ourselves, whenever your acts bring out
the character of the Church more than they
approve of, who so designated us. We wish to be
merged in our Church, to be nothing but what is
of all the highest, Ministers and servants of our
n I may instance the remarkable history which one, not connected
with the Tracts, has given of the way in which his views were lately
formed, against his own will ; Letter to a Protestant-Catholic, by
the Rev. W. Palmer, Fellow of St. Mary Magdalen, where he
explains the anathemas which, in the first instance, from an
apparent vehemenee, gave pain, among others, to myself also.
89
God in her, " repairers of the breach, restorers of
paths to dwell in ." But if we are thus singled
out from the rest of our Lord's flock, as diseased
and tainted sheep, who must be kept separate from
the rest, lest we corrupt them ; if a mark is thus
set upon us and we are disowned, things cannot
abide thus. For us, who are elder, it might be
easy to retire from the weary strife, if it should
be ever necessary, into lay-communiorj, or seek some
other branch of our Church, which would receive
us ; but for the young, whose feelings are not
bound up with their Church by the habits and
mercies of many years, and to whom labouring in her
service is not become a second nature, an element
in our existence, their sympathies will have vent,
and, if they find themselves regarded as outcasts
from their Church to a Church they must belong,
and they will seek Rome.. And yet, my Lord, this
would be very miserable ; they for whom I speak
are not (as I have reason to think has been repre-
sented to one of your Lordships) unsubdued wilful
young men, who at the first check which they
receive from authority, are ready to fly off; it is not
they who threaten secession, it is we who venture
earnestly to state to your Lordships a secession
with which they and we would be alike threatened.
Among those, in whose minds serious misgivings
have been raised, are not merely what would be
Is. Iviii. 12.
90
ordinarily called, " young men ;" there are, one
may say, some of the flower of the English
Church ; persons whose sense of dutifulness binds
them to her, who would, to use the language of one
of them, " feel it to be of course their duty to
abide in her as long as they could." What we
fear is not generally a momentary ebullition,
but rather lest the thought of seceding from our
Church should gradually become familiar to people's
minds, and a series of shocks loosen their hold until
at last they drop off, almost of themselves, from
some cause which in itself seems wholly inadequate,
because their grasp had gradually been relaxed
before. What we fear is lest a deep despondency
about ourselves and our Church come over people's
minds, and they abandon her, as thinking her case
hopeless ; or lest individuals who are removed from
the sobering influence of this ancient home of the
Church, should become fretted and impatient at
these unsympathising condemnations, and the con-
tinued harassing of the unseemly strife now carried
on under the shelter of your Lordships' names, and
losing patience should lose also the guidance
vouchsafed to the patient.
What we crave, then, my Lord, is sympathy.
While we cannot abandon what we believe to be
true, we have ever been ready to acknowledge that
prejudice may have been created against the truth
by our imperfect modes of stating it. We must
sorrowfully feel there is much shame in making
9i
this confession in behalf of others less imperfect
than myself, yet all must feel painfully that had
they more of the Blessed Spirit of Truth, their
teaching would more approve itself to be truth,
since it would appear that it is " not they who speak
but the Spirit of their Father which speaketh in"
them. In part also a prejudice may have been
created against the truths we taught, by our
teaching them unsystematically ; it has been said
of us, that we were ourselves learning while we
taught. This which must in some degree be true of
all, may have been specially so of some of us ;
it hardly could be otherwise in recovering any
body of doctrines which had been cast into the
shade ; people are led on step by step, until they
in some measure see the whole. Your Grace will
excuse my explaining what I mean by reference to
myself, of whom one must know most. In writing
my Tracts on Holy Baptism, which I undertook
not of my own mind but to rescue a pupil from
falling into dissent, wishing to comment upon
all the texts of Holy Scripture relating to it, I was
forced upon one, which impresses the character of
grievous sin after Baptism. In writing upon it, I
kept as much as possible to the language of the
Ancient Church, saying little of my own, as fearful
to trust myself . What I wrote, I hope that with
The same seems to have been the object of a very solemn
sermon on the same subject recently published ; " Evangelical
Repentance" with an Appendix by the Rev. C. Wordsworth, in
92
deepening years I hold more deeply ; and day by
day shews me how needful the doctrine is for these
times, that without it there can be no thorough
restoration of our Church, nor high standard of
holiness ; but my statement was imperfect, as
making no mention of the healing and comforting
power of Absolution or the pardoning grace in
the Holy Eucharist. I have since endeavoured
to remove objections to my statement in my Letter
to the Bishop of Oxford, and to supply what
was wanting in University and other Sermons ;
the Tract itself has continued out of print for six
years, because I have not had leisure to fill up
what was wanting, and would not reprint it in a
form in which I felt it to be imperfect. I have
not to complain that what I wrote above six years
ago still remains matter of animadversion ; one is
responsible for all one ever did. What I endeavoured
to impress was truth, although not exhibited suffi-
ciently in connection with other truth ; I have
reason even to think that in some cases the very
nakedness with which it was first proposed, gave it
the more entrance ; the sterner voice awakened
those, whom softer tones would not have reached :
however, it was imperfect ; I took advice in what I
did ; I have since done what I could to prevent a
very solemn and Catholic truth, which lies at the
which he considers all the texts, which speak of " repentance,"
and refers to modern writers also. Its tone makes it one of the
cheering signs of these times.
93
very foundation of repentance in most of us, from
being injured by my imperfections; and it is matter
of sorrow that some incorrect representation of my
original statements, rather than acquaintance with
those which I have since put forth, or with my practical
teaching, was, in one of the Charges at least, the
occasion of the animadversions. Thus, a Catholic
truth seems to be objected to, not my imper-
fections in stating it.
It may naturally seem too much to ask of Bishops,
pressed down as they are by their over-weighty Dio-
ceses, to examine what one has spoken of as " nearly p
one hundred Tracts, which have given occasion for
almost an equal number of volumes in reply." But,
my Lord, Bishops, in animadverting upon them, are
looked upon as passing a sort of judicial sentence ;
their Charges are not merely pastoral advice to
their own Clergy, to avoid such or such a mode of
teaching ; they are printed and circulated through
the whole Church, and are regarded as their solemn
opinion on them ; they are quoted every where not
on the particular points merely on which they touch,
but as to the whole body of the teaching of the
" Tracts." It is then nothing but simple justice to ask,
nothing but what any judge in the passing matters
of this world would do, that they should put them-
selves in possession of the whole subject. It surely
is beforehand not improbable that they would find,
p Bp. of Durham, p. 15.
94
that what abstractedly seemed too strongly spoken,
or to have a dangerous tendency, is qualified by
our other teaching. The " Tracts for the Times"
do not claim to be a body of divinity, complete in
themselves ; they are detached writings on distinct
though connected subjects or doctrines, such as
" the times" seemed most urgently to require ; they
do not pretend to exhaust the subjects which they
treat on, much less to present them in all their
bearings, or (which seems by some in this day
to be required) to contain in one the whole body of
Divinity, so that whatever is not in any place ex-
pressly stated, should therefore be accounted not to
be held. Surely, then, within the body of the
" Tracts" themselves, not insulated passages of
single tracts, but the whole substance must be
considered together, by any one who has so solemn
an office to perform, as to pronounce what sounds
like a judicial sentence. But further, though " the
Tracts" were in the first instance mostly anonymous,
(the writers, then, as younger men and mostly in
no ostensible office in the Church, not wishing to
put themselves forward as her advisers,) the chief
writers and their other works are now generally
known. There is then no ground for judging of
them, apart from what the same writers have else-
where said, and are known to have said. Thus,
before these authors are accused of too great ten-
derness for Romanist errors, it would surely have
been well to have examined one thoughtful work,
95
written expressly on the subject of Romanism ,
and certainly one of the ablest vindications of our
own position relatively to it. Or, on a specific
doctrine it has been thought that our teaching
on sin after Baptism would be " gloomy and
cheerless p ," that it would " tend to rob q the Gospel
of the Blessed Jesus of much of that assurance of
the riches of the goodness and mercy of God in
Christ, which is its peculiar message its glad
tidings of great joy ' Come unto Me, all that
labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest;'" that it would tend to lessen our sense of
some sins, because less deadly than others r . Now
before such condemnation is repeated, it is surely
not too much to pray, that Bishops would examine
our practical teaching. To speak of writers of
the Tracts only, there are now three volumes of
Sermons professedly by ourselves, expressly in-
tended to exhibit our teaching practically ', besides
the six volumes printed by Mr. Newman. If our
teaching in these is not of the character supposed,
and Mr. Newman has sermons expressly bearing
upon the subject,- or again, if the doctrine of the
Atonement be not withdrawn from sight, or again,
Mr. Newman's Lectures on Romanism and Popular Pro-
testantism.
P Bp. of Ripon, p. 20.
1 Bp. of Exeter, p. 82.
r ib. p. 83.
* See Preface to Plain Sermons, vol. 1.
96
since one has written a work on The Passion 1 , which
I will not trust myself to characterize, but which
has already brought a holy peace to aching hearts,
and will become one of the standard devotional
books of our Church, it will surely occur to them,
at least to set down what they object to, to some
imperfection of expression, rather than to unsound-
ness of doctrine, (which must most forcibly appear
in practical teaching ;) perhaps it might lead
them to think that the statements had not the
meaning which they who censure them, had attached
to them.
Another impression might perhaps result from
this examination ; and our Bishops themselves
would be glad to find how small a proportion what
they found themselves obliged to object to, bore to
the whole mass of teaching. I do not say that
these Bishops would acquiesce in, or have considered,
all other points of teaching in our Tracts ; I only
mean, that the points actually animadverted upon
except by those altogether of a distinct school of
theology, which itself, until of late years, found little
favour in our Church 'are both few, and do not
touch on any Catholic truth, or any of the essentials
of our teaching. They relate mostly to modes of
statement, character of language, estimation of
another Church, not to the main doctrines them-
selves. I certainly found with surprise as well as
1 The Gospel Narrative of our Lord's Passion harmonized,
with reflections, by the Rev. Is. Williams.
97
satisfaction, amid the warnings of these Charges,
how little altogether was condemned, and nothing
essential ; I think that they who are so eager to
represent us as condemned, would, if they made the
same analysis, think that they had little to boast
of. Thus, besides the principle of the exposition of
the Articles in Tract 90, the Bishop of Ripon
blames my way of speaking of Sin after Baptism
(which I have confessed imperfect), Reserve on the
doctrine of Atonement, tenderness in speaking of
Roman practices, too great strength of language
as to tradition. The Bishop of Exeter spoke of
the same four points, my own (I must say) com-
pelled statements as to ( Prayers for those departed
in the faith and fear of Christ,' which never formed
part of our teaching ; the sketch of a service in
commemoration of Bp. Ken, which certainly was
never used by any in common. The Bishop of
Gloucester speaks but on Tract 90, on reserve and
tradition, although the affliction, in which all must
sympathize, may have prevented his acquainting him-
self with other points as well as our real meaning as
to those on which he speaks. Even the Bishop of
Winchester, although, estimating us by his school,
he must also include the doctrine of Justification,
speaks besides only of " reserve," the mode of
speaking of tradition, language as to the Church
of Rome, our own, our Reformers, our formularies,
or that he thinks we hold the Sacraments to be
" the only sources of Divine grace, to the exclusion
H
98
of any other" none of these controverting or
touching any doctrine we hold I must add indeed
one point, intelligible perhaps on his system,
utterly unintelligible to me on the system which he
opposes, viz. that our teaching "defaces the brightest
glory of the Church, by forgetting the continued pre-
sence of her Lord ;" whereas in effect the very
characteristic of the Catholic system is to bear in
mind the Presence of our Lord every where, in the
Church, in worship, in Sacraments, in rites, in fast,
in festival ; it loves the Church, as His body ;
public worship the rather, because He is then more
present ; fasts, as fasting* with Him ; festivals and
rites, because they speak of Him ; Sacraments, as
uniting with Him. It is the contrary naked
system which does indeed " deface the glory of
the Church," and makes her but an " element of
this world," " forgetting the continued Presence of
her Lord," in her and with her.
And since this is so, and one may claim without
hesitation (though setting up no one as a standard
except the Church), that our teaching is more in
accordance with the acknowledged Divines of the
17th century, I would not exclude in this respect
even those of the 16th, than that which opposes
it, one may on this ground the rather hope that
what is thought defective in us, will not be so
spoken against, as to seem to condemn our teaching
in its substantial parts. They who brand us with
names of heresy have, through unacquaintance
99
doubtless, throughout avoided this question,
whether the chief Divines of the 17th century are
most with us or with them; of the 16th, they are
diligent in pointing out against us the varying and
unsatisfactory language on the one Sacrament, but
take no heed to the clear and definite language of
the same writers on the other ; they claim single
expressions in the Homilies, the body of Catholic
teaching contained therein they neglect. Them-
selves holding with the Non-Conformists, and
having learnt of them rather than of our Liturgy
or the writers of our Church, agreeing with the
writers neither of the 16th century nor, still less, of
the 17th, they would gain a tacit admission for
their own system by the condemnation of our's,
and, themselves of yesterday in the Church, would
condemn us for novel teaching.
And yet, my Lord, whatever our imperfections
may be, it will be acknowledged that good service
has been done. " Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us,
but unto Thy Name be the praise," will be the con-
fession of those who have been the chief agents in
this work. They have gladly acknowledged that
they sowed the seed on soil which God had pre-
pared, had " made soft with the drops of rain, and
blessed the increase of it ;" they gladly recognise
other men's labours, even when they deem their
views imperfect, or in grave points erroneous ; but
still good service has been done ; and since others
seem to forget it, and even those who in some
H2
100
degree acknowledge it, seem often not to be aware
of any thing beyond matter of outward discipline
and order, I may speak of it to your Grace ; and
that the more, since, as it is already appreciated, I
have myself the least portion in it.
A great change then has come over our people ;
it is recognised on all hands that the Church is
stronger ; in a great political revolution some years
past, her influences seemed to be paralyzed ; since
that time she has, under circumstances outwardly
adverse, been steadily recovering it, and they who
oppose her, acknowledged that, at the late crisis, it
was her influence which decided it. And in what
did that influence exist ? Not in canvassing or
partizanship, but in the silent power which her
increased energy gave her over the minds of men,
binding them to her. It were not seemly to speak
disparagingly of times gone by ; we have too much
of them still cleaving to us, and, too probably,
faults of our own besides ; we had in those days
also, men who will ever be remembered with
veneration and love ; still the tone of doctrine and
the standard of life was on the whole low ; we dare
not blame them ; they may have acted np to their
standard, better than we to ours ; we would rather
confess " our sins arid the sins of our forefathers,"
and thank God for having hitherto spared us.
" Thy father's dishonour is no glory unto thee s ."
Yet in this spirit it may be confessed, that a
KccUis. iii. 10,
101
secular temper came gradually over the Church during
the last century, which was but little abated at the
earliest part of this, and of which we have too many
traces still ; in earlier days one never heard of s'elf-
denial or any of the harder duti'es, even when collec-
tions were made for objects of 'charity ;* " ScicrMces"'
was a name unknown ; every thing was on an easy
footing 1 ; decency and propriety were the stand-
ards and substitutes for holiness ; daily advance-
ment seemed scarcely contemplated as possible ;
to live under rule was unthought of ; fasting was
apparently expiring, and hanging upon the lives of
those elder members of families, who yet kept one
or two of the most solemn yearly fasts ; daily
service was being fast given up, even in our towns,
for want of worshippers ; even in the resorts of
those who had leisure, the very service in Lent
was often broken in upon, because two or three
could not be brought together ; in the country
Good-Friday itself was in whole districts neglected;
Catechizing disused ; what discipline we might
1 " One only Way to life;
One Faith, delivered once for all ;
One holy Band, endow'd with Heaven's high call ;
One earnest, endless strife ;
This is the Church th* Eternal fram'd of old.
Smooth open ways, good store;
A creed for every clime and age,
By Mammon's touch new moulded o'er and o'er ;
No cross, no war to wage ;
This is the Church our earth-dimm'd eyes behold."
Lyra Apostolica, No. xcviii.
102
exercise, and training of the young neglected ; our
people grew wild, and most of what was earnest
in the lower ranks fell into dissent. In whole
districts, to belong to a new zealous sect was the
very, -badge* of .spiritual life, to belong to the
Church was to be accounted lifeless. Com-
munions were withdrawn from sight, and our
" daily bread" offered perhaps twice or thrice in
the year ; more are thought to have commemo-
rated His Precious Death, in sects who knew of no
further blessedness in the Holy Eucharist, than in
the Church which taught that thereby " He dwell-
eth in us and we in Him ;" doctrine and practice
declined together; the true doctrine was forgotten;
the service became cold, and few came ; religious
fervour seemed to be out of the Church rather
than within it ; what would now seem almost
laxity was then accounted to constitute men
" saints ;" religion was never spoken of, nor com-
mon topics spoken of religiously ; our final account
seemed to be forgotten among the one sort, in the
other, a " judgment according to our works" was
denied ; measures of duty, teaching, ends, motives,
hopes, seemed alike earthly, or, on the other hand,
men were called upon to rely upon a Redeemer's
Blood, without being taught how to " follow the
blessed steps of His most holy life ;" on one side
was a foundation with nothing built thereon, on
the other, a lowly building, well perhaps that it
so, since it had no foundation. Even they
103
who professed to be most unworldly, seemed to
have their eyes fixed on some mere outward
manifestations or haunts of worldliness, to be
lopping some " uppermost branches/' not laying
the axe to the root ; expediency was the standard
of popular morality ; religious education, Church-
building and works of charity were at a stand, so
that if any one gave on a larger scale, he became a
sort of witness against the world ; efforts for the
conversion of the heathen were carried on more
extensively by sects than by the Church ; in-
devotion was shewn by complaints of the length of
the service ; unspirituality by the continued pro-
posals to alter it. In the state, our empire was our
idol ; while fifty millions were year by year ex-
pended on war, not one five-hundredth could be
obtained for one year for a religious purpose ; the
preferment, as it was called, of the Church was
matter of open state-negociation and bribery, so
that a Minister of the Crown who disposed of it
conscientiously, became, on this ground only, an
object of admiration ; we were ashamed to own in
the presence of our heathen subjects that we were
Christians, paid military respect to their idols, and
denied our knowledge of our own God; the
thought of sending out a Bishop to India produced
a panic; he entered it almost as a thief; he who
was to bear the banner of the Cross was " obliged
to get him by stealth into the city" over which he
was to preside, " as people being ashamed steal
104
away when they tiee in battle ;" at home, a
celebrated statesman could venture to make it a
ground of objection to a measure, that it would
promote " too .much religion," and was listened
to ; our very Clergy seemed often more afraid of
"over-much" religion than of over-little; their
own claims, when they felt them, they seemed
mostly to rest on their education, their birth, their
manners, their kindliness, any thing but the
Apostolic Commission they bore from God ; of
their two great sections, the one seemed to maintain
the skeleton of a traditional system, holding truth
often as a negation of other truth, (as, baptismal
regeneration to plead against the necessity of
change in life ;) the other, despairing that " these
dry bones" could " live," betook themselves to a
system foreign to our Church, formed themselves
in the writings of the Non-conformists, and so
were often themselves driven into dissent, finding
their teaching akin to it, not to the formularies of
the Church. They sympathized more with those
without the Church than with those within, and
were themselves, as they have sometimes owned,
on the very verge of dissent. Of the Sacraments,
to use the language of an elder, familiar with this
school, " the one was denied, the other regarded as
a means of religious excitement." One must even
fear that the dislike and disuse of the Athanasian
Creed argued a deeper disease than the unwilling-
ness to take up its anathemas, since one heard at
105
the same time of the simplicity of the Christian
religion, its reasonableness, in other words, its
want of Mystery.
One may recite all this, which is only a specimen
of much more that remains untold, though one
must recite it with aching heart and shame of face,
as they who have been " snatched out of the burn-
ing ;" still, since we have been so snatched, it may
be recited without fearing that it is the sentence of
our condemnation. Even yet it is " the day of
small things ;" but since our trust is not in our-
selves, but in Him Who hath " given us repentance
unto life," we may take courage. Beginnings are
being made every where. Nothing is as it should
be ; but every thing, we may trust, is set in a
course whereby it may hereafter become such.
Devotion, charity, self-denial, the three great
classes of duties as our Lord enjoins them, are
increasing ; our Churches are better attended ; our
Communions more frequent, our Communicants
increased and more devout ; daily service is creep-
ing even into eur villages : whereas the service
seemed long, some are now looking back with
yearning for the fuller services of the Ancient
Church ; the hours, whereby she kept her Lord
ever in her eye, are being restored ; the weekly
commemoration of His Passion is finding its way
among the sons and daughters of even our rich and
great ; and, with fasting, simple habits, and more self-
denying ways, and charity, are being restored ; Lent
106
and the season of The Passion are more realized ;
the mysteriousness of our Christian life, as having
" by Baptism put on Christ/' is more felt; our
future account more apprehended and brought to
bear upon daily life ; the bearing of the Cross
more taught, and in some degree practised ; re-
pentance and humiliation deepened ; obedience
and submission more recognised and rendered ;
designs to God's glory and man's good commenced
on a more self-denying scale ; the education of the
poor and the building of Churches carried on with
more individual exertion and sacrifice, even while
the efforts and means of Societies are enlarged ;
nobler plans, like that of some years past for the
Metropolitan Churches, the Extension of Education,
our Colonial Bishoprics, devised and in part exe-
cuted, and some of them giving birth to kindred
efforts ; the privileges bestowed on us in our Church
more carried into life u ; those without, wherever
u The Bishop of Winchester mentions some of these changes,
as a blessing attendant upon the " going forth of the word of
God in all its freedom and integrity, building up the individual
members of the flock in the principles of our most holy faith, and
shielding them with the doctrine and discipline of the Church."
Among other points he mentions, " Dissent stayed; the Liturgy
more highly appreciated ; respect for the ordinances increasingly
cultivated ; the Sacraments duly estimated ; Baptism honoured
in the presence of the Church, and the pleading for the mercies
of the covenant promised by our Lord Jesus Christ in His
Gospel; more frequent biddings to the Holy Communion;;
fewer refusals ; a less chilling negligence, and a return to a
better mind on the part of them that are bidden, and an approach
107
she is planted, in this country, in the United States,
and even in Scotland, recognising her more and
more as a Church, and coming over to her, not for
her respectability in the sight of man, but as the
building, the ordinance, the body, of Christ ; even
foreign Churches, long unknown or estranged from,
or even now persecuting us, yet still at least
to something of godly discipline in the Christian family and
Christian community ; catechetical teaching rendered interesting,
and appreciated by parents and children ; the rite of confirmation
rescued from the disgrace of unmeaning profession or formal
ignorance ; the recognition of a purer standard of holiness ; of
the details of Christian duty ; of the obligations of the Divine
law ; of the doctrine of love to God and man in all its enlarged
bearings ; a way of holiness opened, of holy worship and of holy
conversation. "(p. 40, 1.) Acknowledging gladly the services of the
section of the Church which opposes us, and without, in an unseemly
way, contending that these blessings have been ministered by their
Author through our hands, one might yet ask who is most likely
to have been instrumental in them, they who are reproached for
over-valuing Ordinances, the Sacraments, the Church and her
discipline, or they who so reproach them? one might ask, in
matter of fact, which section of our Church has, on the whole,
gone most into the " details of Christian duty" or " the obliga-
tions of the Divine law," they who are blamed as " legalists" or
they who blame them ? by which the services of the Church have
been most restored? One might ask in the Bishop's own lan-
guage, which of the two sections would be likely most to " shield
persons with the doctrine and discipline of the Church?" It is
distasteful to say this, but it seems required in justice to our
principles not to ourselves, since the Bp. of Durham thinks that
all had always been going on well, (Charge, p. 10, 11.) the Bp.
of Calcutta that this re-awakening was independent of our prin-
ciples, (Sermon, p. 61.) both agree that we have been but
thwarting it.
108
beginning to suspect that we are a Church, and to
have a respect for us and sympathy with us ; and
within ourselves, there is, one should trust, on the
whole, not self-complacency at our progress, which
might mar all, but rather an increasing humiliation;
with our renewed life, we seem to have become (as
must be, in whatever degree it is a life from God)
more conscious of the remaining death, the body
of death wherewith we are surrounded ; we seem
to be looking more longingly back to that high
standard, which the Ancient Church had, and to
be mourning that we are not like her. Our very
distractions are a proof of zeal, though we have
not as yet the love, which would enable us to
understand each other, and prejudice sometimes
seems to deprive us of the very wish to do so, yet
it is in many a zeal for God's honour, which will in
the end be directed aright, even though for the
time it is " ignorantly" opposing the truth, whose
features have not been enough disclosed for them
to recognise ; there is a longing after unity, and
prayer for it, to which one must hope it will at
length be given.
I said, my Lord, that " we were but one small
link in the vast chain of means and effects whereby
God is working for His Church what He willeth."
I shall not therefore be suspected of claiming for
ourselves an undue share in this great work. The
change, although more marked of late, was not of
yesterday or of the last few years. Spring has not
109
at once followed upon winter ; much of the ehillness
of that past season gradually relaxed. Some of the
evils, which I have mentioned as characteristic of
it, were lessened long since. The section of the
Church, which thinks itself most opposed to us,
did much in its day to restore religious earnestness
and devotion ; much was done in a more tranquil
way, by some in your Lordships' x station, or
by those in our own who handed down to our
times the principles now put forward more pro-
minently ; we " entered into other men's labours,"
as others, we trust, will reap where we have
sown ; during these years also in which we
have been employed, we have been ail along but
working together with others in their different
spheres, as writers or Parochial Ministers, holding
the same general principles, but formed independ-
ently of us, by the Same Lord, Who gave us our
work. Still it is acknowledged that many have
been stirred up by the writings, which have come
forth from this place ; the new life which has
from Above been infused into our Church, has
of late taken a form in accordance with the
principles of our Church, as they have been set forth
here; persons who as yet stop short of doctrines
which in the name of our Church we have taught,
still own themselves indebted to us for shewing
them the nature of that Church, and teaching
* e. g. Bp. Poi teus.
no
them Apostolic order; and since it is said " by
their fruits ye shall know them," one may cheer-
fully appeal to the improved tone in the youth
committed to the care of our Mother here, in proof
of the value of principles, which have brought forth
the fruits of good living, obedience, reverence,
devotion.
It is felt by those who do not repeive some of our
statements of doctrine that we have yet on the
whole been working in the line of our Church ; let
this be acknowledged openly, and we shall not be
anxious about the effects of any remarks or censures
upon us in detail ; we will receive them gratefully ;
since although founded, we must think, on mis-
apprehension of our teaching, our being misappre-
hended may teach us humility and caution ; they
may warn us against deviations, into which if (as
we trust) we have not fallen, we may yet guard
against more diligently ; they may remind us the
more that the path of true doctrine also is narrow,
so may we seek more lowlily and warily to walk in
it. Only, not for our sakes but for the very object
which your Lordships have in view, to win those
whom you would caution, may I be permitted to
add, that any acknowledgment would seem more
gracious and be more effective, if bestowed as
thanks for services rendered, rather than as it
has mostly been, to take off the edge of some
censure ?
Ill
III. Thus far, my Lord, I have felt myself more
at liberty to write fully, because personal explana-
tions are the more allowed, as conveying in-
formation which those who make them can alone
convey. It may seem, perhaps, less permitted to
me, to trouble your Grace upon subjects of the
Church which have no immediate relation to our-
selves ; yet here too, I would wish to be considered
as giving your Grace information, as to the effects
which a certain course of action might have on a
large body of individuals with our Church.
The subject to which I wish to advert is our
relation to foreign bodies ; and it is right, not to
conceal from your Grace that circumstances con-
nected with the plan of sending a Bishop of the
English Succession to Jerusalem, have awakened
very deep and serious misgivings in the minds of
those who can best judge of the state of feeling
among us, and, I must add, latterly in my own.
Our stability, my Lord, at present seems to depend
in great measure, upon our remaining where we
are. Many persons, whose minds had become dis-
quieted about our Church, have, even when not set
wholly at rest, yet come at least to the result, that
unless our Church be committed to any thing
wrong, it is their duty to remain within her, and
see what God will do for her. They would even
think it undutiful to imagine beforehand any case,
which would compel them to abandon her, as a
child would shrink from contemplating that its
parent would commit a sin, which should compel it
118
to leave her roof. I have good hopes, that if BO
organic change be made in our Church, no autho-
ritative explanation on the wrong side placed upon
our Articles, and she be committed to no heresy or
fresh schism, though we may have to mourn, as we
have mourned, over some sorrowful secessions, yet
the main body of our Church will be more stayed
within her, as year by year, God's hand more
visibly prospers her, and she yields more signs of a
living Church. To this end, however, it is of the
first importance that men's minds should be at
rest ; calmness is essential to our seeing the truth,
since the Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of peace also,
and a disturbed mind cannot reflect Him ; but
people's minds will not be calm, if things around
them seem in a course of change, they know not
whither. So long as we simply develope our own
Church, and bring out her character more fully, as
is the tendency of the Colonial Bishoprics, this is
well ; it is a sign the more of life. But any step
which has a tendency to bring her into relations
with foreign un-Catholic bodies, will be unsettling.
Any advance to Protestantism will produce a
counter-movement towards Romanism.
Your Grace will permit me the rather to explain
myself with regard to the new Bishopric at Jerusa-
lem, because I myself at first viewed the plan with
interest, having received an erroneous impression
with regard to it, and so I may perhaps explain not
only the feelings of those who sympathize in it,
how far they do sympathize, but what their
113
fears are, who dread it ; and this it may
be the more desirable for your Grace to know,
since it will appear, I imagine, for the most part,
that those sympathies and those fears relate to
different objects ; that the fears have sunk far more
deeply and extended more widely than your Grace
has been led to imagine ; and that others' sympa-
thies are not engaged in that part of the scheme,
from which alone any of us fear.
I was then at first led to imagine that there
was already a Church of Jewish Converts and of
English at Jerusalem, and that the Bishop was to
be sent over primarily for their sake. This seemed
to me a legitimate object ; for since people who
spoke different languages, though living together,
were allowed by the ancient rule, each to enjoy the
blessing of a Bishop, there seemed no reason why
Jewish Converts should be obliged to use a ritual in
a language they did not understand, or be placed
under a Bishop, of another nation and speech ;
there seemed no reason why the Hebrew Psalms
should not be once more sung in a Church at Jeru-
salem, and those who used the Hebrew ritual, be
gathered under a Bishop of their own nation. It
was also a thing allowed in early times, that one
Bishop should enter into a district nominally in
the diocese of another, in order to convert Heathen,
whom the other failed to win. Viewed then as
a Missionary Bishop, whose office was confined
to the Jews, there seemed to me no principle
114
opposed to such an appointment. Again, if Prus-
sians, owing no obedience to the Patriarch of
Jerusalem, placed themselves under our Bishop,
neither did this (whatever my judgment may have
been) seem to me a dangerous measure. I hoped
that they would be absorbed into our Church, to
which they had united themselves, and gradually
imbibe her spirit and be Catholicized. I trusted to
the Catholicity of our Church to win those who
were brought within the sphere of her influence,
the more powerful and the higher principle ever
assimilating to itself the weaker and lower. But
now that various competent authorities combine
to state, that the Congregation at Jerusalem con-
sists of but very few, (more than one traveller has
stated its amount at about four,) the case is widely
different. The whole is an experiment, and that in
so serious a thing as a Christian Church. The
mingled Church to be formed under our Bishop, of
Lutherans and Jewish converts, has been truly
though painfully, designated, " an Experimental
Church." And what an experiment ! to bring
together persons, one knows not whom, sound or
unsound, pious or worldly, bound together by no
associations, accustomed to no obedience, who on
the very Lord's Day have practically but one ser-
vice y, and scarcely any through the year besides,
7 The service in the afternoon is identically the same as the
morning, and is attended by different members of the same con-
gregation. Even religious persons, or preachers, where there are
115
never kneel in the public worship of God, sitting
when they sing their hymns, standing when they
receive the Holy Eucharist, under Pastors, consent-
ing to receive Episcopal Ordination, but not, as them-
selves contend, valuing it if this may even be with-
out profanation, and make ourselves responsible
for them, and exhibit these as specimens of the
English Church to the Greek Communion, which
has just heard again of us, and is beginning to value
us. To think, for the time, only of its effect on the
Orthodox Greek communion, (apart from the graver
and deeper question of the responsibility we should
ourselves incur,) what suspicion must needs be
cast upon us, that we thus, in their very presence,
sanction bodies whom they have anathematized,
not incorporating them into ourselves nor infusing
into them our principles, but joined in a sort of
outward alliance with them, each pursuing its
distinct course, worshipping in its own way, except
that their Ministers would receive Episcopal Or-
dination, and engraft the Thirty-nine Articles on
the Confession of Augsburg, without our Catholic
Liturgy, whereby to interpret them, and accepting
either in so far as (quatenus) they individually found
them to correspond with their views of Holy
more than one in a place, do not think of going to the second
service. The writer, many years ago, on attending it, was told
by an eminent preacher that it was not meant for him; i. e. the
instruction then given was of a simpler sort, for the poor ; and
there seemed to be no thought that any one could come a second
time to Church, but for the instruction.
i 2
116
Scripture. What an outward and unspiritual view
of a Church and of Episcopacy would it seem
to imply us to hold, who could think that such
a juxta-position of discordant elements under the
one cannot say government but the presidency of
our Bishop, could constitute a Church !
It would be making ourselves responsible, in the
eyes of Christendom, not to speak now of the Eye
of God, for bodies different from our own, over
whom we should have no influence, of whose faith
we have no guarantee, of whose life we have no
previous knowledge, except that we know that
faith in Germany has been miserably shaken, that
the self-discipline which our Church enjoins is
there unknown and unthought of.
Again, still to think only of its effects ex-
ternally to ourselves, we should have no safe-
guard that the Bishop so sent, or Congregations
so formed, shall not proselytize or consent to
receive proselytes from the Orthodox Commu-
nion. It is not many years, I think, since a
report of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews
published at the other University spoke of the
ill-success in its proposed object, but seemed to
think the opportunity of preaching the Gospel
to the Greeks no small compensation. The con-
version of Jew, Turk, and Orthodox Greek,
seemed to them a like object. I know not whether
the Church Missionary Society, which your Grace
has now sanctioned, have yet withdrawn its Mis-
117
sionaries from the same Church, which it openly
acknowledged were opposed by the spiritual autho-
rities, but boasted that they were gladly heard by
the people. Similar language has been unhappily
and is heard elsewhere. But any attempts at
" conversion," or connivance in persons forsaking
the orthodox communion wherein they were bap-
tized, besides encouraging sin, must immeasurably
delay the prospect of union with that communion.
We ourselves know the bitterness of losing our own
children, which a rival communion is stealing from
us. Are we to think the sorrows of another Mother,
when bereaved, less than our own ? We should
definitely fix our own principles. Our Bishop
cannot at once promote union and schism ; we
cannot at once conciliate the parent, and rob her of
her children ; be a friend and an enemy. We
must either rigidly prescribe to ourselves our own
bounds and remain with them, or give up the
opening prospect of ultimate union. We cannot
treat the Orthodox Greek Church, at once as
orthodox and heterodox ; orthodox in that we
think union justifiable, heterodox, since heresy
alone can justify secession.. This re-opened inter-
course with the East is, as your Grace will feel, a
crisis in the history of our Church. It is a wave
which may carry us onward, or, if we miss it, it
may bruise us sorely and fall on us, instead of land-
ing us on the shore. The union or disunion of the
Church for centuries may depend on the wisdom
118
with which this providential opening is employed.
If the ways which He makes for us are neglected,
we may long essay in vain to attain in our own,
what in His would have heen easy, since He would
" make them plain before our face." In proportion
to the greatness of the blessing held out to us,
must be our anxiety lest we miss it. It stirs the
heart and makes one, like Jacob, almost disbelieve
for fear, that such an event as the reunion of our
Church with a sound branch of the Church
Catholic should be open to us ; alas ! considering
what we actually are, it makes us fear lest it
cannot indeed be meant for us, and as though it
were not in any temper which we can in this day
claim, amid mutual self-complacency, but in weep-
ing and sackcloth and ashes that the breaches of
our brotherly union are to be healed. " Joseph
made himself known to his brethren and he wept
aloud and he fell upon his brother Benjamin's
neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck.
Moreover he kissed all his brethren and wept upon
them." But, whether this union may now be
hoped, or whether what we witness be but the first
pale streaks of such a morning of joy, enough for
our eyes to behold, only be the delay not brought
about by any errors of our own. Yet in proportion
to the value of the gift, may we be sure that Satan
will interpose hindrances to our attaining it, that it
will be beset with snares.
But this is looking far ; and my excuse for
119
troubling your Grace are our dangers in our own
home. Our repose at home, humanly speaking,
depends, as I ventured to say, on our remaining as
we are. Persons are very sensitive about the
character of our Church. They have felt keenly
the parallel which Romanists are so fond of
making between us and the Donatists. It does
not indeed hold, inasmuch as that was a sect
which, confined within its petty communion, called
itself alone the Church, and condemned the Church
Universal. We have no Church Universal against
us ; the Greek Church which has anathematized
the Lutherans and Calvinists, has spared us ; we
have hitherto had the Latin Church against us,
although we have not rejected its Communion, but
been cast off by it ; if we voluntarily add the
Eastern, we shall have the whole. Nor must one
conceal that there is much of this Donatist temper
about individuals, and that the self-satisfied spirit
of our people has crept into our Church, and they
seem to say to all other Churches, " Stand back,
for I am holier than thou." And, amid our in-
testine divisions, disagreed among ourselves what
the doctrines of our Church are, even as to the very
Sacrament whereby persons are made members of
it, they would make converts to they know not, at
least are not agreed, what ! Such proceedings must
be very fatal to our humility; they were to that of
Rome, when it had far more pretensions than we
now have, and had a far more righteous cause,
120
and was the bulwark of the Orthodox Faith. Tt
tended to her fall ; and we dare not think that,
with our miserable disunion and want of discipline,
we may, with her, neglect the Apostolic advice,
and " be high-minded" and yet be safe, when she
fell. But, immediately, in our own day, any
exhibition of ourselves as a proselytizing Church
would unsettle many of our own children to a
fearful extent. Grasping at the shadow which
does not belong to us, we should lose what we
already have ; we should receive the requital,
11 as thou hast done, so be it done unto thee," we
should receive the reward of the spoiler, and be
ourselves spoiled x .
Another source of danger, strongly felt by per-
sons well acquainted with the East, and whose
judgment your Grace would value, is any thought
of involving ourselves with Monophysites or any
heretical sect. And this is no imaginary danger ;
if Bishop Heber was deceived, much more might
one, who himself was not educated in our Faith,
nor trained in our Theology. They are described
to us by those who know them, as a subtle people,
too well versed in their own unhappy heresy, even
as a madman acquires a miserable ingenuity in sup-
porting the one hypothesis upon which his disease
turns. The Christian Church has been more than
once almost deceived by an ambiguous confession,
* Is. xxxiii. 1.
121
and that, when they were exercised by the heresy
which was covered by it ; how much more readily
we, who have been so long spared it ! Yet your
Grace will readily feel how shocking it would be to
be thus brought close within the touch of heresy ;
you will feel how painfully it would distress men's
minds, what a mark it would be against our Church,
if she were any way committed to it.
And although one would not confuse the
Lutheran body with these heretics, still much
danger would result from any step which would
tend to identify us with them, or which implied that
we adopted their formula? as our own. I have
readily owned that we owe a duty to them ; I trust
that it is reserved for us, hereafter, safely to
supply what is lacking to them, and join them on
with ourselves in visible unity with the Church
Universal ; but to effect this, we must draw them
back to ourselves and the Ancient Church, not lean
over to them. It has been gladdening to see a par-
tial restoration of Christianity from its prostration at
the close of the last, and the beginning of the present
century ; it has been saddening that it has been
but partial ; there is more of imperfect life than,
fifteen years past, any one would have dared to
hope, less of complete soundness. It is probably
always so, in Churches and individuals ; the scars
of our wounds abide, even when we are in a degree
restored ; some effects of men's sins remain, even
after their repentance has long continued. Perfect
122
soundness does not follow quickly upon deep
disease. Neologism (as your Grace well knows)
had preyed deeply into the very vitals of the
German Theology of the last century. A talented
writer, who has been one great instrument in its
restoration, could say, " If a from reading any b of the
more recent periodicals one passes suddenly to those
of the beginning of this century, one feels one's self
at once in a wholly different atmosphere. Prom
a battle-field one enters within the still Church-yard.
The sun of ' enlightened times' having once
emerged above the horizon, its rays travel in
peaceful repose over field and village, and the
Theologians had only to survey the bloodless
victories. Here and there an old supernaturalist
starts up but the conqueror, in full security, can
afford to be generous ; old Time with his scythe is
ready, as the ally of * enlightenment,' to lay in the
dust the aged orthodox heads of the Church.
Had things remained thus, could Theology have
existed on for fifty years, without dying of very
weariness" 1 ?" From this deathsleep, which this
a Tholuck, Litterarischer Anzeiger, 1836, No. 15.
b i. e. Rationalist or other.
c i. e. the then Theologians, the Rationalists.
d Shortly after Gabler is instanced with praise, as an exception
to his day, because he was in earnest about something, even
in maintaining the truths of natural religion. " The ear-
nestness with which he comes forward [against the Pan-
theistic Philosophy of Schelling] deserves respect; one sees
that he has it really at heart, not to allow ' the principles of
123
writer describes with such true though indignant
irony, Protestant Germany was awakened by
another battle-cry, its sufferings in the war of
1813 15. The scourge of Europe brought some
humbler and chastened thoughts. Yet even in 1825,
a theologian, in recounting the Professors who could
any how be considered orthodox, i. e. those who
in any contended for the doctrines of the Gospel or
its very truth, counted, in all Protestant Germany,
1 7 ; the miracles of our Lord were still, here and
there, explained away by the teachers of youth; some
of those in the Old Testament were even ridiculed,
both were disbelieved by many who were afterwards
to be Preachers. They are denied, to this day, by
some of the Professors in Prussia itself. Since
that time, the hand of God has indeed been with
them ; it has been " the Lord's doing, and it is
marvellous in our eyes ;" but from a state of things
when Rationalism ruled with a scarcely-disputed
sway, to one in which the full Faith of Nicaea shall
be received in its integrity this were such a
mighty change, such fullness of life from such
completeness of death, that your Grace may well
think it subject of enquiry, not whether the three
Creeds still stand in the books of their Confession,
but whether they are still confessed from the
heart, undisputed and unqualified, as saving truth,
in the same sense in which they were and are
natural religion' to be cut away from under him. In this dead
time Gabler is altogether a sort of theological character.**
124
in all branches of the Church Catholic. Important
as Episcopacy is in the maintenance of what is
good, there are, in the present state of the German
Protestants, things of far more importance than
Episcopacy ; Episcopacy might, under God, have
saved them from this downfall, but it may not be
the first in order, in rearing them up ; in order to
benefit them at all or not to injure them, it may
require a certain character corresponding to it.
We have ourselves seen, in the experience of the
Scotch Church, how little available the establish-
ment of Episcopacy was, in the absence of certain
conditions on the part of those who were to
receive it; in its present rise and solid progress,
we see its inherent power, amid outward pressure
or desertion, where those conditions are found.
And yet, to produce this state, it pleased God, as
it seemed, almost to undo our work, that He
might bring it about in His ; He employed what
was good in the Scotch Church, as the means of
purifying and restoring her ; He rent from her all
human aid, left her to be trodden under foot of
men, to be persecuted by the state, almost forgot-
ten by ourselves ; but a silent witness to truths
which were fading among us ; and now by a
century of severe oppression and privation He has
moulded our premature work to be the fit instru-
ment of His Providence. Yet Scotland never was
what Protestant Germany has been, or is. Unbelief
had then never yet organized itself within a body
125
bearing the Name of Christ. God gave us, in this
instance, a solemn warning how we imparted His gift.
To bestow it at present on the German bodies,
may be, indefinitely to retard its healthful or ex-
tensive influence. It is not yet longed for. The
gift of Episcopacy would be no real gift to them
unless they long for it ; it is not the piety of
one Monarch which can make the people fit to
receive it ; nor dare we entrust so sacred a deposit
to any one ; sincerum est nisi vas ; with sound-
ness of faith Episcopacy would be a blessing,
without it, it may be a curse ; it is perhaps not
without some ruling of Providence, that they who
once professed their value for Episcopacy, as their
faith declined, became indifferent to it, when they
might have had it ; they may have been withheld
from that, which they were not fitted to receive.
I myself had reason deeply to value and to love,
now many years past, several of those who were
employed in the restoration of religion in Prussia ;
I watched, for some time, with deep interest,
though mingled sorrow, the struggles to a better
state ; every thing of a deeper sort, there as here,
tending to restoration, but there, unhappily, not
of a perfect soundness of faith, but of Christianity
itself. With much to respect, much to love, there
seemed always some flaw. They have but lately
recovered Christianity ; rather Christianity and
Infidelity in its extremest form of Pantheism, are
still struggling for the mastery in the minds of their
126
very teachers, what they have recovered they
have recovered in an imperfect form ; in the
minds of some of the younger men, (corresponding
to what has taken place among ourselves,) a
longing for a Church has been awakened ; and so
we may hope that this comes from the Same
Hand ; let this be cherished ; pray we for its
growth ; it may be but waiting for some years,-
as God is guiding things with His mighty Arm
and we may be fitter to impart, they to receive ;
we may exhibit more of a model, than, amid our
present confusion and disagreement as to the first
principles of our Church and our practical contra-
dictions or neglect of them, we now do ; they be
more in a temper to copy what in us is sound and
Catholic, when they see it more fulfilled in life.
If, as has been said, " Episcopacy is the principle of
stability, maintaining each body in the condition in
which it is," the premature gift may be an injury ; it
may be but a perpetuation of error. There is, at pre-
sent, even in the sounder part of theLuthero-Caivinist
body, not a vestige, among its writers, of the first
condition of a sound restoration, humility ; there
is rather an arrogant exaltation of their own body,
as the Mother of all in the West separate from
Rome ; an assumed superiority to our Church, not
an acknowledgment of their own defects ; the few
who look for Episcopacy seem to desire it, in order
to organize their imperfections, not to correct
them ; the most religious of their theological organs
127
declare against the Catholic view of it ; they dis-
tinctly tell us that it is looked upon not as any
thing spiritual, but as an outward mechanism ; they
tell us that the people desire it not ; they refute the
notion (and with good ground) that any changes
recently proposed among themselves are any symp-
toms of such longing ; there has been the wish to
extend Presbyterian ordination, where now there is
none; no desire of Episcopal*. It is for your Grace
and your Grace's brethren to consider, how, in such,
a state of mind, you could, without risk of pro-
fanation, entrust a gift of the Holy Ghost, which is
undesired, set at nought, repudiated, by those
who are to receive it.
But, for ourselves, your Grace will permit me to
say, that until not their mere willingness to
receive Episcopacy, but their soundness is ascer-
tained, it would be very injurious to ourselves, to
become the source of a heterodox succession. To
become responsible for heterodoxy in others is too
much akin to being such ourselves. Our Bishops
in the last century required that the Church of the
United States should use the Nicene Creed in its
devotions, before they would consent to consecrate
Bishops for it; this secured, as far as might be,
that that Church should believe the Faith which
she weekly confessed to Almighty God ; mere
subscription, as is now spoken of, among those
accustomed as the Lutherans have unhappily been,
8 See Note B at the end.
128
to express, by subscription, only a partial assent,
would not. There is no security that in subscribing
the Creeds they would adopt them in the sense of
the Church Catholic, not as they were qualified in
their own minds. Your Grace will excuse my
adding, that any recognition of any Lutheran
formula, as that of the Confession of Augsburg,
which, while in some points more definite than
our own Articles would alone be, still expresses
other things unsoundly and implies much more,
would have a very distracting effect on the minds
of many members of our Church, and indeed is
such a measure as one sees not how any portion
of our Church, even her highest Order, if they
were unhappily agreed, could be justified in taking
in the name of the whole Church.
I had ventured to write thus much to your
Grace, before the official account of the English
Bishopric at Jerusalem was published, and I retain
it the rather, as containing a general statement
of the views of others and myself, without any
reference to the specific statement of your Grace.
It is with satisfaction that I find the principles of
non-interference with the Orthodox Greek Church
are distinctly recognised, all proselytising strictly
forbidden a , the desire of ultimate union expressed,
a " The Bishop is specially charged not to entrench upon the
spiritual rights and liberties of those Churches, but to confine
himself to the care of those over whom they cannot rightfully
claim any jurisdiction." Statement, p. 6. The Church of Rome
129
" healing of schisms" set forth as an object, a
" longing for a renewal of the ancient affection,"
and this with " ancient and Apostolic Churches"
and consequently not with the heretical bodies.
Your Grace also contemplates the exhibition of
" the spectacle" of a [one] Church, freed from the
errors [of the heretical bodies] and imperfections
[of ' the ancient Churches of the East'] and hold-
ing a pure faith in the unity of the Spirit and in
the bond of peace;" your Grace speaks of subjects
of H. M. The king of Prussia, " joining themselves
to the Church so formed at Jerusalem/' of " pre-
senting' 1 to the observation" of the ancient Churches
of the East " the pattern of a Church essentially
scriptural in doctrine, and apostolical in practice."
The object then which your Grace seems to have
at heart is the exhibition of the one English Branch
of the Church Catholic; and to this I conclude that
your Grace hopes that the Prussian congregations
will, if indulged in the use of their own services for
a while, gradually assimilate themselves, and become
one with it. I own I cannot myself be sanguine about
the effects of the exhibition of our English Church,
is blamed in the same place for " sowing disorder and dissension
amongst an ill-informed people," which would of course equally
apply to the Missionaries of any Society which should set the
people against its spiritual rulers, much more, seduce it from
them.
b Ib. p. 3.
c Ib. p. 2.
* Ib. p. 6.
K
130
until she realizes in practice what your Grace in
theory describes and longs that she may be. Amid
her notorious neglect of fasting, the infrequency of
her Communions, and the neglect of her daily
service, I fear she will little impress upon the
" ancient Churches of the East" her adherence to
the " Apostolic practice," when, in the Holy City,
they " held fast to the Apostles' fellowship, and to
breaking of bread, and to prayer, continuing
daily with one accord in the temple :" I fear, until
she become other than for some time she has been,
she can be no spectacle of a Church " holding the
faith in the unity of the Spirit and in the bond
of peace;" at least, although one trusts that there
is vivid life, unity and peace seem the last charac-
teristics one should have selected for our Church
at home.
Still less, I own, can I see, even if your Grace
were advised, or it were lawful 6 , to free the Bishop
from those obligations by which he is at present
bound, how the picture of an united Church could
be presented by an English and Lutheran con-
gregation, of which the one holds ' * One Holy Catholic
Church, throughout all the world," knit together
by its Bishops, as "joints and bands," under its
One Head, CHRIST, and joined on by unbroken
See the very clear pamphlet, " The Bishopric of the United
Church of England and Ireland at Jerusalem considered in a
Letter to a Friend," by J. R. Hope, B.C.L. Scholar of Merton,
Chancellor of the Diocese of Salisbury.
131
succession to the Apostles ; the other, an indefinite
number of Churches Changing together by an agree-
ment 8 in a scheme of doctrine framed by themselves,
and modified by the civil power h : of which the
one holds Confirmation to be the act of the Bishop,
the other deems such unnecessary but accepts it
for its younger members 1 : the one holds Ordination
to be derived from the Apostles; the other, that
Presbyters, uncommissioned, may confer it, and
that those on whom it has been so conferred, may
consecrate the Holy Eucharist : the one recites
the Creed of Nicasa, the other has laid it aside k :
in the one, ancient prayer, the inspired Psalms,
and hearing God's Word, are the chief part of their
weekly service ; in the other, uninspired hymns and
preaching, with prayer extempore ; the one kneel in
prayer, the other not even at the Holy Eucharist :
with the one, the Lord's Day is a Holy Day, with the
other a holyday : the one receives " the Faith" as
f Confession of Augsburg, Art. 1. *' The Churches among us
teach.'*
* " For the true Unity of the Church, it is sufficient to agree
as to the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the
Sacraments." Ib. Art. 7.
h As in the union of the Lutheran and Reformed bodies.
1 " The rite of Confirmation will be administered by the Bishop
to the Catechumens of the German Congregations, according to
the form used in the English Church." Statement of proceedings,
p. 9.
k It does not always recite even the Apostles' Creed. Se*
Note B.
K2
132
11 once for all delivered to the saints;" the other, as
susceptible of subsequent correction and develope-
ment : the one rests her authority and the very
titles of her existence on being an Ancient Church,
the other boasts itself modern: the one, not founded
by man* but descended of that founded on the Day
of Pentecost ; the other dating itself truly from
Luther, and claiming to be the parent of all, not
in outward communion with the great Eastern and
Western Branches, and so of our own Church by
whom it was originally converted : the one re-
cognises 1 and has been recognised- 1 by the Ancient
Church of the East, the other rejects her and is
anathematized by her k . Still less is there any hope,
that by receiving Ministers ordained by our Bishop,
they express any wish to be received into our
Church, or become one with her. On the contrary,
the divergence must be still greater, since they
in whom these discordant elements are found, are
each anxious to develope its own peculiar character.
Your Grace expresses the hope that this Bishopric
" may lead the way to an essential unity of discipline
as well as doctrine between our own Church and
the less perfectly constituted of the Protestant
1 " Letter commendatory from the most Rev. The Lord Abp.
of Canterbury," published in the '* Statement of proceedings, &c*"
p. 17.
j See instances in Mr. Palmer on the Church, p. I.e. 9. sect. 1.
k Synod of Bethlehem, A. D. 1672. see at length, Aids to
Reflection, &c. by Rev. W. Palmer, Magd. Coll.
133
Ch urches of Europe/' i. e. that they will be one Church,
through the absorption of the Lutherans into our
Church, and the reception, on their part, of all
those things for lack of which they are at present
tl imperfect." Their view is wholly different ; they
look to this same event, only as an aggrandizement
of their own body, as " securing to the Evangelical
Church of the German nation," not as " less per-
fectly constituted" but " as } the Mother of all Evan-
gelical Confessions, rights commensurate to its
greatness, beside the Latin and Greek Churches ;"
they look to it as an occasion for developing the
German Evangelical Church, according to " the
Confession "', and with the use of the liturgy, of that
Church ;" and not only so, but they look upon the
diversities of Christian worship, as immutable, in-
alienable; such diversities, among Protestant bodies,
belong to the very principle of unity, and are
looked upon as upheld by our Blessed Lord Him-
self. " The diversities," it is said n , " of Christian
worship, according to tongues and races, and
according to the peculiarities and historical de-
velopement of each nation that is to say in the
Evangelical Church, are upheld by a higher unity,
the Lord of the Church Himself."
With these respective principles and aims, I see
* " Prussian State-paper to all the Royal governments," re-
printed and translated by Mr. Hope, p. 77.
m " Prussian State-paper to all Royal Consistories," ib. p. 76.
" Ib. p. 74.
134
not any hope that the Lutheran emigrants will
ever become true members of our Church, or that
this outward union of bodies of them under a
Bishop of our succession can do other than add
one fresh element to our present confusions at
home, give another subject of disquiet to those ill
at ease, when what we so much need is rest and
peace ; retard the settlement of those questions
among ourselves, on which our mutual misunder-
standings are shaking our Church so dangerously ;
delay indefinitely the very objects we long for,
the conversion of the Jews, and re-union with the
Orthodox Church of the East.
A happy pause, I trust, has now been given to
our Church ; the first step, which would in itself,
I believe (although not without anxieties) com-
mand the sympathies of all, the consecration of a
Bishop to represent our ancient British Church in
the city of the Holy Sepulchre, has been taken ;
and although the Church might naturally have
looked that so solemn an act should have
been done in the name of the whole Church,
that if we did send a Bishop to that blessed
Place, he might have gone with the longings
and prayers of all, not have been sent with the
concurrence of five or six of our Bishops only,
still, thus far, nothing has been absolutely done,
which need in itself cause anxiety. Difficulties
seem to have been providentially interposed to arrest
135
things just at this point", where they may be done
without any compromise of our Church, and safely,
if but wisely, executed. We may look with comfort
and hope to an act, which again gives us an in-
terest and a portion in the Holy Sepulchre, and
unites around it representatives of the three
branches of the Church Catholic. For ourselves,
(in whom probably there exists a livelier interest in
n Mr. Hope's valuable pamphlet shews very solidly, that Bp.
Alexander is a Bishop of the United Church of England and
Ireland, bound by her Canons, Articles, Rubrics; under canoni-
cal obedience to her Metropolitan ; that he is prohibited by his
oath at Consecration, from ordaining any Clergy except as
Clergy of our Church, using her Liturgy, her Catechism, " minis-
tering the doctrine and Sacraments and discipline of Christ as
she has received them," receiving those only to the Holy Com-
munion who are " confirmed or ready and desirous to be con-
firmed." Those, then, admitted into Communion with Bp.
Alexander, "must" (to use his words) " come, not as a body,
but as individuals ; not asserting an independent collective
existence, but desiring to be adopted and incorporated into the
Church. Their previous baptism he must ascertain to be suffi-
cient ; their present doctrines to be, not of this or that form, but
in themselves the doctrines of the Church. He must then upon
their desire confirm them, as by Canon 60 he is bound to do; and
having, by these several acts of the Church wherein he is Bishop,
separated and taken them out from their former fellowship, he
may admit them to the blessed Eucharist; and in that privilege
retain them as long as by doctrines, morals, and liturgical con-
formity, they remain stedfast in their profession." p. 28, 9.
The consecration then of Bp. Alexander is not even a step
toward that which the Prussian Government holds out, " a
developement" under our Bishop, "of the German Evangelical
Church, according to its confession, and with the use of its
Liturgy. It is purely an act for our own Church, and does not
in any way connect her with, or commit her to, Lutheranism.
136
God's ancient people than in any other branch,) there
is an immediate office, in gathering them into the
One fold, and in ministering to that other people ,
who, amid the other manifold workings of His
Providence, were directed by Him to call upon us to
convert them ; and while, as I trust, we obtain a
blessing through our labours, we shall be gathered, to-
gether with the representatives of the other branches,
ready, in His good time, there, where He was
crucified for us, to sorrow together that we have
rent His seamless coat, and pray Him to fulfil His
own prayer for us, that we may be one, as He with
the Father is One. These, my Lord, are objects, which
will win the hearts of our whole Church ; in these
longings we shall be all one; these will have, we trust,
no perils ; and the memory of such a beginning, sepa-
rate from things perilous to our Church, will, when
God shall be pleased to ripen it, consecrate in the heart
of all, the recollection of your Grace's Episcopate,
IV. To sum up, my Lord ; what we long for, not for
our own sakes but for that of the Church whom we
wish to serve, is, at the least, peace ; if it may be,
sympathy, and direction. We wish the Church to
The Druzes ; originally a branch of the Mohammedans,
whose characteristic it is to look forward to the coming of one of
the Caliphs whom they believe tohave been God Incarnate; a feeling
which, when He is "declared to them Whom they ignorantly" look
for, might become an earnest longing for Him Who is to come.
Their application for some one to teach them the Christian
a was not to Prussia but to us.
137
act, not ourselves ; we wish a direction to be given
to this mighty movement within our Church,
which, swelling as it is, month by month, and day
by day, cannot be checked, cannot be overlooked,
but may be guided, not, in the default of others, to
be ourselves the persons who are to guide it. We
wish to see the Church take it up into itself, not to
let it roll on, unrecognised, unguided, and with the
risk occasionally of bursting its banks, because
pent up too narrowly, and opposed by those who
have no office to oppose it, so vehemently. We
wish to have the direction of things taken out of
our own hands into theirs to whom, in the order of
God's Providence, it belongs to direct and guide
His Church. Had this been done some years past,
much of our present disorders might probably have
been avoided ; we understand that it is said
by some, that the writers of the " Tracts" did good
service up to a certain time, but that since they
have gone too far. Would we had been recognised
then ! would that it had been avowed that our
teaching was, in its main outlines, the teaching of
the Church, so could we never, (as we have against
our own will,) been made to have the appearance of a
party, or been made to stand out thus prominently
from our Church in whose name we taught, or
received a sectarian name, in itself a blot upon
the Church, in that the name of that writer was
given who was led first to vindicate at length the
doctrine of our Church and the Creed, then most
138
disputed Baptismal Regeneration. But they who
should have guided, for whatever cause, stood
aloof; they looked on, mostly, and let others
speak, when they themselves should havebeenlistened
to and overruled ; they allowed us to be entitled
" heretics" for vindicating an article of the Creed,
and left it undetermined whether we or they who
opposed our teaching, spake the mind of the
Church : the Church did not speak, and things,
in the chaos of conflicting opinions, rolled onwafds ;
the very conflict required new ground to be taken
up ; what might have been best reserved, until
persons were riper for it, was forced upon us then :
it was not the equable advance of the Church,
as one mighty army, returning from its captivity
under the elements of this world to take possession
of its almost forgotten inheritance, it was rather the
desultory warfare of individuals, each seizing and
maintaining a post, as he saw occasion, inviting
who would to follow him, moving some in one
direction, some in another, some faster some
slower, so that the whole motion, though on the
whole with one tendency, and overruled invisibly,
we trust, by the One " Captain of the Lord's
hosts, " has been irregular, disjointed, distracted.
Yet even now, it is not too late, if the same
course towards those who have been prominent in
this restoration, be not persevered in. My Lord,
with respect I may say, it is too late for any mere
check. It is not by any warning as to any of our
139
supposed tendencies, or by cautions as to any parti-
cular statement, or by silencing any one or more of
us, that things can be stayed. When the whole
ocean is stirred from its depths, to what end to stay,
if we could, a single wave ? One, and the chief
among us, has, at a critical moment for our
Church, been silenced as to that controversy which
most endangers it, and in which his writings
rendered the most signal service ; it was not meant
doubtless, but on a sensitive mind it was the
natural effect. Have the events of the last ten
months given reason to think that we have gained
thereby? have things been more as your Lordships
wish, because the master-mind was withdrawn? or
do the Charges of the last summer seem to have
promoted peace ? does all which has been going on
of late, in which occasion has been taken of an
University Election to vent what was pent up, and
strife was but let out, not generated by it, dese-
crating and distracting holy seasons and the very
Festival of " peace to men of peace" with strife and
debate, does this give hope that we are in the way
to cherish mutual love, and gain peace ?
This very system, which has now been begun, of
procuring lay-addresses from persons who mostly
know nothing of the teaching against which they
petition, wherein did it originate? The excitement
of last spring was gradually subsiding; a great sacri-
fice had been made to the peace of the Church ; he
who had originated and they who had cooperated
140
Tracts" had willingly seen them brought
to a disgraced close ; and we hoped that the Church
might accept the offering, and calmly weigh what
had been brought forward. Instead of this, the
excitement has been ten-fold. The Bishops' Charges
have been made the occasion of attacks, too often,
alas ! from the pulpit, and that in language little
fitted for the sanctuary of God, where our Lord is
" in the midst" of us. Persons who hate the prin-
ciples of the Church for their strictness, or for sub-
jecting the individual will, who, with the condemna-
tion of what they hate, mix up ribaldry and profane-
ness, have still been glad to carry on their unholy
warfare under the banner of our Bishops. Those
severed from the Church and wishing her destruc-
tion, still plead the authority of our Bishops.
Thoughtful sermons on sacred things have been
noted down and blasphemously commented upon
and ridiculed. It is inconceivable what a flood of
profaneness has been, in the last few months, poured
out upon our unhappy land under the plea of speak-
ing against what such persons have ventured to
call " heresy." And all this, through (one must
say) blasphemous writing in the worst part of the
periodical press, has reached every corner of our land;
they who cannot read, hear ; they who understand
not what they read, still partake of the general
agitation ; the repose of our once peaceful villages
is broken in upon ; the most stable part of our
population unsettled ; the less thoughtful seem to
141
look forwards to some evil which is to come upon
them unawares ; " we are all," it seems, (to use
their own language,) " to become Papists ;" and so
they are prepared to desert our Church when
occasion offers; others are taught to mistrust the
Ministers who have been labouring faithfully among
them for years : if former negligences are any
where repaired, the negligent have the popular cry
ready for their plea ; the serious and earnest-
minded stand aghast, looking in sorrowful per-
plexity, what all this can mean. Until of late,
men of more thoughtful minds were the more
stirred to enter into holy Orders, because our
gracious Master Himself seemed to be " hiring la-
bourers into His Vineyard," and " giving each his
work ;" now, some such even shrink back, doubt-
ing, and in dismay what our Bishops may do.
What wonder, if some are faint-hearted whether
our Lord be in the vessel, which is not only so
tempest-tost, but whose very shipmen and pilots
are so disunited, how or whither to guide her,
" neither sun nor stars appearing ?"
If this course then avail not, it is time to try
some other. I ventured to say, my Lord, that it
is too late to try any mere check. It has been
a remarkable phenomenon in this crisis of our
Church, that the laity, whom, checks of this sort
would not reach, and for whom they would not
be intended, have on the whole embraced these
views more uncompromisingly than the Clergy.
142
One might apply (mostly to the letter) the
words of Tertullian y , " Men cry out that the
state is beset, that the Christians are in their fields,
in their forts, in their islands. They mourn, as for
a loss, that every sex, age, condition, and now
even rank, is going over to this" (so was Chris-
tianity itself called) " sect." Would that, as to
too many, his other words did not hold, " And yet
they do not by this very means advance their
minds to the idea of some good therein hidden :
they allow not themselves to conjecture more
rightly, they choose not to examine more closely*
Here alone is the curiosity of man dull ; they love
to be ignorant, where others rejoice to know."
Yet the very circumstances in the Church which
give encouragement, cause anxiety proportionate.
From the very first, these views spread with a
rapidity which startled us *. We then dreaded lest
what spread so rapidly should not root deeply.
Even at the first, the light seemed to spread like
watchfires from mountain-top to top, each who
received it conveying it on to another, so that they
who struck the first faint spark, knew not how or
to whom it was borne onward. The sacred torch
passed from hand to hand ; their own neither
carried nor could withhold it. And now the light
has been reflected from hill-top to valley, has pene-
y Apoi. c. l.
r " There seems to be something judicial in the rapid spread of
these opinions." Bp. D. Wilson, Sermon, p. 63.
143
trated into recesses ; abroad, at home, within,
without, in palace or cottage ; has passed from
continent to continent ; we see it spread daily,
until the whole heaven be kindled ; every where
opposed, yet finding the more entrance. The in-
direct influences, as is always the case in all great
movements, has been far greater than the direct.
It re-appears, here or there, one knows not how.
One may say reverently, firmly believing Whose
work it is, " It bloweth where It listeth, and thou
hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence
It cometh, or whither It goeth."
But since this is so, there is the more anxiety as
to individual cases, lest persons use wrongly what
they have so frequently acquired for themselves
without any previous discipline or moral training.
We need additional guidance every where, not to
risk the withdrawal of any which we have. Our
Laity look to be guided by the Clergy, our Clergy
by their Bishops, the young by the elder ; but if,
instead of guidance, our Clergy are but silenced by
general admonitions, or warned away from this or
that point, or receive but admonitions which sound
like condemnation, but which they know not to be
founded on any thorough understanding of the
views which are condemned, things can but become
worse. Our greatest fear is lest, whereas each
class might by due method be retained in its own
sphere, each being insulated and deprived of its due
direction, the whole should become vet more dis-
144
organized. There are wants extensively felt which
may be satisfied if but ordinances be restored,
already provided by the Church, but that un-
happily they are fallen into desuetude. There
is greater longing for devotion ; let our daily prayers,
instead of being left to be almost the badge of
a section of our Church % be countenanced ; let
the keeping of fasts and festivals, the weekly com-
memoration of the Passion of our Lord, and the
hallowing of Lent, and the cheerful joy of the Pen-
tecostal season, the greater frequency of Com-
munions, the restoration of the Offertory, and its
use in the collection of alms for religious ends, be
encouraged. There is a greater longing for dis-
cipline, for acting under rule, for the comforts of
absolution under a burthened conscience ; let the
" Ministers of God's Word" be encouraged to train
themselves to receive those " griefs" when others
wish to " open" them, and give them "the benefit
of absolution ;" and since the godly discipline which
our Church yearly laments, cannot yet be restored,
at least let it be extended where it can and is
desired ; let not persons have the temptation (I
know such cases) of seeking relief for their con-
sciences in the Roman Communion, because they
look for discouragement if they apply to Ministers
* Persons have been dissuaded from reviving them on this
ground. A party- newspaper lately warned against the Wed-
nesday and Friday Service. (Brit. Grit. No. 61, p. 229.) The
restoration has even involved severe privation and suffering.
145
in our own. There are longings for a life more
removed from the world and spent in acts of devo-
tion and charity, there is every where much un-
directed energy which would fain be taught how to
do good, but which now wastes itself too often or even
does harm, because left to itself; let this be or-
ganized ; in a word, let our Church instead of
leaving every one to " do what is right in his own
eyes/' and herself occupying an easy medium,
rather reproving or forbidding those who are too
eager than kindling those who are remiss seek to
provide for the manifold wants of her children ; be
in life what she is in theory and in her Prayer-book;
care for lower tempers, yet not neglect the higher ;
find vents for the various longings which God has
infused ; guide, not simply repress ; train, what,
though unformed and undisciplined, is still reality
and life ; and we shall be a holier, happier, more
united Church ; less at strife without, because
severally more at peace within ; less disputatious,
because more reverent ; understand one another
better, because loving more ; less suspicious of
others, as more suspecting ourselves ; less engaged
in things which concern us not, because more oc-
cupied in what concerns us, our duties, reverence,
love, and fear of Almighty God.
Then, my Lord, shall any of us take the station
which we had rather have, building up, according
to our several offices and talents, our Lord's house-
hold, not forced out of our peculiar posts to guide
L
146
men's minds, because they come to any of us, not
finding guidance elsewhere. Let the Catholic
teaching of our Church, and her holy practices be
put forward, and we shall no longer stand out
conspicuous, because we teach or recommend
them. Let the unquestionable teaching of our
Church, as to her Orders, the Sacraments, the
value of good deeds, and Judgment to corne
according to our works, repentance towards God
as well as Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, fasting,
self-discipline, alms, prayer, reverence, I might
say, the contemplation of the Ever-Blessed Trinity,
as the End of our life and death, aims, longings,
faith, hope, and love, be inculcated, and a temper
of mind will, I trust, be formed, wherein we shall
have a holy calm, and may, in peace and godly fear,
consider what remains, and, through the Blessed
Spirit of peace, understand it and each other.
In the mean time, your Grace will earnestly
desire to promote peace. We much need it ; while
this tumult lasts, people cannot consider any thing
calmly ; excitement is not the state in which to
come to any settled result; these vague suspicions,
ready to believe all evil, are no element of that
charity which " thinketh none." These idle fears,
as if persons, because they recognise what is
valuable in another Church, must therefore be
ready to abandon that wherein God has placed
them, are but so many tares sown by the Enemy
to hinder the growth of the good seed. It is but
147
another instance, how people, acting on different
principles, must needs at first, (unless they be
mutually patient,) misunderstand one another.
To those who honour their Church on no other
ground than its conformity to their own ideal of
excellence, or her superiority to all other branches
of the Church, every confession of imperfection
would tend to shake their confidence ; they under-
stand not the position of those who, feeling that
they owe their allegiance to their Church, because
she has the Apostolical succession in this land,
and God has placed them in her, and in her made
them members of His Son, reverence her, as such,
and dare not think of forsaking her, so long as
they see no proof that she is forsaken of their and
her Saviour, " the Saviour of the Body." These
may safely take the tone of humility, so that they
feel that in confessing the sins of their fathers,
they are confessing their own also. A mother is
not loved the less, because she has suffered at the
hands of strangers 3 . In like way, with regard to
a The following thoughtful passage of one of a different school,
ha,s been shewn me while writing the above ; the writer makes a
stronger confession than has perhaps been made lately, yet was
not therefore accused of disaffection. " The Church of England,
in its present state, is not fitted for a General Church. Its
secularity must be purged away. We shall hasten that day
when Christians shall be of one heart and one mind, if we in-
culcate the spirit of charity on our respective circles. I have
aimed much at this point, and shall push it farther. The rest
must be left to Providence. He only can, by unknown means,
heal the schisms of the Church, and unite it together as one
L2
148
our reformation itself. They who can justifytheir
adherence to their Church, only by her iner-
rancy, and who would be ready to forsake her, if
they thought she had done some things amiss,
setting up forthwith some sect of their own (as
persons continually have done, carrying out their
principles 15 ) these must needs think any one dis-
affected to our Church, who admits any blame to
have attached to her. Their own affections are
not to her, for herself, but as exhibiting their ideal
of a Church ; if they thought otherwise, they
would leave her. And so, supposing others ready
to act upon their principles, they cannot under-
stand persons confessing with holy Daniel " for
our sins and for the iniquities of our fathers,
Jerusalem and Thy people are become a reproach
to all that are about us/' and yet that they
" yearned over her stones and it pitied them to
see her in the dust," or with our own Herbert,
The second Temple could not reach the first ;
And the late Reformation never durst
Compare with ancient times and purer years,
But, in the Jews and us, deserveth tears.
and yet live thankfully under it, and in the dim
estate of these last times look the more for the
Coming of the Lord to His Temple.
external body; and that this will be done, as some think, by per-
secution, appears highly probable. I see no other means adequate
to the end." Cecil's Remains, p. 353.
b As, the Plymouth brethren and others recently.
149
I may say this the rather, my Lord, because,
(while every one must acknowledge that there was
miserable sin connected with our Reformation,) I
myself hope better of the Reformers than some
have lately expressed themselves, and readily re-
ceive their declaration that they meant to teach
what the Church taught, even while they fell into
the language of the Zuinglian school . But it is
plainly unjust to accuse those who hold otherwise,
of disaffection to our Church, since our Church
was not the creature of the Reformation, was " not
of man nor by man," but is the same city of God,
set up for man's salvation, which was originally
planted on these shores by Apostles or Apostolic
men. Our attachment is to her, not because of
any changes which she has undergone, though
thankful for His Providence and guidance of her,
but amidst them, as the precious gift of God, the
Ark, which however tossed up and down, He has
still guided; "a City which hath foundations,
whose Builder and Maker" He is ; and we are per-
suaded that, as heretofore, so now, " the rain, and
floods, and winds," however permitted to " beat
upon" our " house," and even, for the time, to
seem to shake it, will but shew the more that her
foundations rest upon " the Rock, that is, Christ."
Our attachment is to her, such as God by His
Providence has formed her or allowed her to
become, and to Him we hopefully entrust her and
c Especially, Cranmer's Answer to Gardiner.
150
ourselves in her, not forestalling what He may design
with her, nor limiting His wisdom, that she should
ever remain as the Reformation left her, nor yet
imagining how He may, if so He will, further
restore or enlarge her ; much less, ourselves seek-
ing in any way to change her outward form ;
rather praying with good Bp. Andrews that " what
is lacking in her may be supplied," and trustful
that He Who has guarded her so long, will still
keep her from all heresy and schismatic acts, nor
allow her confession of the true Faith to be ob-
scuretL
If, as we trust, this be granted, there will, I may
venture to assure your Lordship, as far as the
observation of individuals can extend, be no ex-
tensive defection from our Church. It is very
remarkable, already, how persons have by con-
science or supernatural Providence, been stayed
when, humanly speaking, there seemed nothing to
withhold them ; it is marvellous, in how many
ways God has retained persons within our Com-
munion, when they seemed all but lost to her, and
has thereby the more shewn that He is present
amid what is now going on within her. And, year
by year, as the principles of our Church are more
restored and acted upon, the life-giving juice
will circulate more through this our " choice
Vine" and will retain the grapes, which now seem
too ready to drop off, or be " plucked d " by every
d Ps. ixxx.
151
passer-by; our " broken hedge" will again be re-
stored ; our vineyard no more " trodden down"
nor " laid waste e ." It has been the sickly state of
our vine, which has parted with its grapes so
readily. As holiness is restored, so will the healthy
action, which will not cast them off, but ripen
them for Him, Who looketh for its fruits. Mean-
while we may have to mourn over the loss of
individuals to Romanism, and the more, if un-
happily these miserable divisions and hard speeches
of one Minister against another be allowed to con-
tinue ; but let us learn to take them sorrowfully
and in patience, as God's chastisements, not in
wrath against one another ; displeased with our-
selves and our actual state and our manifold de-
fects, which bring upon us these tokens of God's
displeasure, not wasting ourselves in unchastened
disputings, with whom the fault most lies. They
are a sore trial to families ; they are probably felt
most sorely, and most efforts made to prevent
them, by those upon whom the unthinking world
casts the blame ; but it is too probably part of the
trial, " the fire and water" through which our
afflicted Church is to " pass," before it be
" brought out into a wealthy place." Suffering
is the very condition of all restoration. The
period of restoration, in body or mind or spirit,
in individuals or states or Churches, is always the
Ts. v.
152
most critical. The struggle is the sharpest, and
the peril and suffering the greatest, when the evil
Power is about to yield to the Divine command,
and quit the body it has possessed. The evil
" spirit cried and rent him sore and came out of
him ; and he was as one dead ; insomuch that
many said, he is dead. But Jesus took him by
the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose f ." If
we then are sore rent, so that to some it seems as
if our Church must be rent asunder, we may be
cheered by our very sufferings, and hope the more
that Satan " hath" the greater " wrath" with us,
" because he knoweth that he hath but a short
time ;" we may the more hope that He is about to
" take" us " by the hand, lift" us " up, and" we shall
"arise." Our Church hasbeen in part un-Catholicized
by those who helped in a degree to unsecularize her.
As then her former partial restoration was not
obtained without the loss of very many of her
members and even her Ministers to Dissent, so
now it is too likely that some will be lost to
Romanism. People can now look back and even
calmly contemplate not those losses only, but even
Wesley anism, as an agency permitted by God in
the restoration of our Church. And yet it has rent
a million of members from our Church in this
country ; it is carrying division, wherever the
English name is spread, and is degenerating into
1 Mark ix. 26, 27.
153
developed heresy; even now, though at length
giving back very many, it still carries off others,
just as, passing from carelessness to more earnest
lives, they were in the way to become valuable
members of the Church. We can now see that,
(amid whatever defects,) religious earnestness has
grown, and are thankful for the life vouchsafed to
us, though the rent made has been the deepest and
sorest since that consequent upon the Reformation.
Let those then, who do see that our Church has
been, on the whole, gaining, not be disquieted or
start back, at these occasional sad losses ; rather
have we great reason to bless Almighty God, that
as yet they have been so few. These mutual
suspicions and heart-burnings among ourselves are
doing far more harm to our Church, than any
losses, however sore. Rather, the losses, which
we all feel in common, let us mourn in common
before our God ; act upon the spirit of the ancient
rule, which, before the holy season now approach-
ing, provided for the laying aside all disputes ;
humble ourselves in common ; and these very
losses will, by the increase of our humility, turn to
our gain : sorely as they wound us, they will be
but His health -giving Hand in merciful severity,
" purging us, that we may bring forth more fruit."
We need but peace and love, and we shall soon
understand each other better than some now think
possible ; and with renewed union, we should
obtain new strength for the mighty purposes,
154
which the good Providence of our God seems to
destine for our Church. " Were we at one," it
has been felt, " we might do any thing." We do
not need fresh limitations of articles, one way or
the other ; we, whom our common Mother has
borne hitherto, may well bear with one another;
our Church wants no changes from without ; her
one need is a holy peace within ; mutual toleration,
forbearance, " charity," such as she has, at this sea-
son, been setting forth to us, " not self-seeking, not
easily-provoked, thinking no evil, rejoicing not in
iniquity," (as so many now seem,) " but rejoicing
in the truth, bearing all things, believing all things,
hoping all things, enduring all things." Prayers
for unity and peace, with mutual self-restraint and
forbearance, will avail more to the healing of our
disorders and to the composing of disturbed
minds, than any of those measures, which persons,
ill-informed as to the truth of things, are now so
eager to promote.
Much, very much, depends upon your Lordships.
I cannot think that our Church, which has so often
been marvellously preserved, will now be aban-
doned. The Hand of God is so manifestly with
her, that I have no misgivings as to the ultimate
issue ; but though it were too shocking to imagine
that her Candlestick should be removed and she
cast away, and though her gracious Lord is giving
earnests to the contrary, still there may be much
present distress and suffering which might be hin-
155
dered ; or we may fall short of the fulness of that
blessing which His mercy is holding out to us.
The very Presence of that Hand ought to make us
the more reverently anxious, how we act in every
detail, as it bears more or less upon His work,
(since He does allow men to deface and even mar
it) ; we ought to act with the more awe and trembling
fear and cautious dread, as being the more vividly
in His Presence and " working together with
HIM." In such spirit would we wish, in patience
and mistrust of ourselves, to school ourselves to
work ; and if (with the respect due to your Grace's
brethren as our spiritual Fathers) I may so speak,
in proportion to the very greatness of your Office,
is the depth of anxiety with which you will doubt-
less put your hands to a work so holy and of such
awful magnitude. The eyes of the whole Church
are upon what is going on in ours ; East and West
are being reunited in sympathy to see what God is
doing with us ; they who had thought us abandoned
to heresy, are beginning to recognise in us the signs
of a Church, or have even anticipated that we
should become more Catholic than themselves f ;
each day brings its own change with it, leaves
some fresh impression, moulds some fresh mind,
carries some new convictions, or deepens what was
impressed before, brings home somewhere some
fresh truth. This late or present storm, so far
f This was recently said, (and in a good sense,) in a French
sermon.
156
from uprooting any thing, has but made what it
assailed, strike its roots deeper, and shewn thereby
the more by Whom that was " planted," which could
not be " rooted up." " We live," it has been said,
" in years the life of centuries." I said, " we have
the eyes of the whole Church upon us ;" we have
tokens that we have far more ; in the vehemence
of the passions roused, the shocking blasphemies
with which holy truths are by ungodly men rent
and trampled under foot, nay, in our own sad dis-
cords and misunderstandings, we may see that there
is one " evil eye" upon us for evil ; our Church
seems to be the very battle-field of evil spirits :
in the manifold restorations of our Church, the
renewed life infused simultaneously into every
branch of her at once, the Catholicity of extent
opened for her in all lands, (such as even the Greek
Church never had,) contemporaneously with the
Catholicity of spirit re-awakened in her ; the con-
tinued restoration of the children lost in her cap-
tivity and widowhood, and (contrary to the acknow-
ledged history of mere sects, which gradually shrink
up and decay) her fruitfulness reserved for her
age g ; the increase of her energy and devotedness
in proportion to the magnitude of the evils with
which in this nation she is surrounded, and with
which she has to grapple, we may see joyfully
and thankfully, that there is One compassionate
8 Ps. xcii. 14. " They shall bring forth more fruit in old age."
157
Eye upon our Church for good. In her, that now
seems to have its fulfilment 11 , " the waters in-
creased, and bore up the ark, and it was lift up
above the earth. And the waters prevailed and
were increased greatly upon the earth ; and the ark
went upon the face of the waters." The swelling
of the waters against her seem, we trust, but to
raise her the more above the earth and lift her
nearer to heaven and her Lord.
At this anxious crisis of our Church, wherein we
" are a spectacle to the world and to Angels and to
men," have your Lordships been called to your
holy station, in the " government of the Church of
Christ," where your every word and action is fraught
with consequences incalculable ; I dare not appre-
hend that you will not act with the due reverence
and caution, when you know how deeply intertwined
with the whole frame of our present Church these
chords are, upon which you have from time to time
touched, and which some, who know not what
they are doing, would urge you to pull so vehe-
mently ; how many in silence, yet how profoundly,
sympathise ; how fearfully any mistaken movement
might jar through the whole system ; what tokens
there are that, whoever may have been here or there
employed, the whole is the work not of man but of
God. I have no fears, but that, as was prayed for
you 1 , you will "use the authority given to you,
h Gen. vii. 17.
1 Office for the Consecration of Bishops.
158
not to destruction, but to salvation ; not to hurt
but to help ; giving, as faithful and wise servants, to
the family of God their portion in due season, that
you may be at last received into everlasting joy."
And for this cause I have ventured thus to speak.
On your Lordships, singly in your measure, but
much more, were you to act collectively, may
depend the well-being of our Church, or the degree
of her well-being, during her whole existence.
It is with intense anxiety, in this momentous
day, that any one must act who is placed where
his actions must have influence ; with such anxiety
must one watch every act of others, or take each
step one's self; with such must I now commit
these words, to be heard of men, wishing to weigh
all, yet fearful lest with some they leave the im-
pression the very opposite of what I would how
much greater must be your anxiety, on whose high
and holy office, in God's Providence, such a weight
and load of responsibility now, suddenly, beyond all
past times, devolves !
Yet " even hereunto were we called," and " the
greater the sufferings, the greater also the con-
solation." One may look back, with almost faint-
ness of heart, to those more quiet times when the
peaceful establishment of the Church in this
country, her Cathedrals and Parish Churches, the
palaces of her Bishops, the happy homes of her
Clergy, to many eyes made her wilderness look
like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the
159
Lord. But those who had their lot in this fair
ground and goodly heritage, may well have had
misgivings when in the course of the daily services
they have read of the labours, the weariness, and
painfulness, and daily care of all the Churches,
which pressed upon St. Paul ; and yet more still
when they have dwelt on the account of the Suffer-
ings of which even these are but a faint image, by
which the great Shepherd and Bishop of our souls
was consecrated to His Everlasting Priesthood.
And now that those times are passed away, and it
seems likely to be His will that the remainder of
our lives should be passed, if not in suffering, yet
in manifold and oppressive anxiety, each day
bringing its own burden, though with it its own
consolation, I trust that " the burden and heat of
the day" will be gladlier to us, if so be we may
hope that we are working faithfully in our Lord's
Vineyard, than ever was the freshness and cool
of the morning, when we too were yet unworn.
We would not willingly aggravate the heavier
portion, which our " fathers in God" will have to
bear ; nor will they, I trust, (if one may so speak
of those " set over us in the Lord,") be surprised
at these trials " as though some strange thing had
happened to" us, nor think hardly of ourselves as
though we had caused them ; but rather receive
them as a part of that most precious bequest of our
Lord to His Church, " the fellowship of His suf-
ferings," and find their consolation, in that their
160
Office, ever Apostolic in its origin and descent and
character and commission, is now again beginning
to receive from the Chief Bishop the especial im-
press of His Cross, the likeness of Apostolic
" weariness and painfulness." The solemn words
of one of the best and greatest minds k our Church
has nurtured, and who lived in the beginning of
one of her most troubled periods, will, I trust,
minister consolation, as well as find an echo, in the
hearts of those, who, with your Grace, have been
called of God, to " feed the flock of God, which He
purchased with His own Blood."
" It seemeth, the Consecration of legal High
Priests, so long as they accurately observed the
rites and manner prescribed by Moses, did one way
or other cost them so dear, that no man which duly
weighed the charge laid upon them would be very
ambitious of the office. Hence saith our Apostle,
' No man taketh this honour unto himself but he
that is called of God as Aaron was 1 :' so likewise
Christ took not to Himself this honour to be made
an High Priest, but He that said unto Him ' Thou
art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee,' put
this charge or honour upon Him ; against His will
questionless, as man, albeit He most obediently
submitted Himself to His Father's will, because He
had taken the form of a servant upon Him. His
Consecration, we may safely avouch, cost Him
k Jackson, on the Creed, b. 9. sect. 1, fin.
1 Heb. v. 4.
161
dearer than the Consecration of all legal Priests
that had been before Him, or of all the Christian
Bishops or Prelates which have lived since did or
doth them, whether severally or jointly. Never
did any man utter those words so truly and sin-
cerely, c Episcopari nolo,' as He did, or pray so
earnestly, that the charge of His Consecration
might be mitigated whilst He was in His Agony.
But how dear soever His Consecration cost Him,
the costs and charges of it, though altogether
unknown to us, were recompensed by the purchase
which He gained by it : for, as it followeth, ' being
thus Consecrated, He became the Author of ever-
lasting salvation to all that obey Him ;' and their
salvation was and is as pleasant to Him as His
sufferings whereby He was Consecrated were for
the present distasteful."
May 1, however unworthy, be permitted to pray
that these things which for the present are distasteful
and " grievous," being hallowed by His precious
Sufferings, may turn to your endless " profit" and
Your Grace's humble and faithful
servant and son,
E. B. PUSEY.
Christ Churchy
Quinquagcsima, 1842.
O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings
without charity are nothing worth ; send thy Holy
M
162
Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent
gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all
virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted
dead before Thee: Grant this for Thine only Son
Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. m
111 Collect for Quinquagesima Sunday.
NOTES.
Note A, page 58.
Extract from the Bishop of Chester's Charge, attributing
the teaching of the " Tracts" to the agency of Satan.
(p. 1922.)
"And here it is impossible not to remark upon the
subtle wiles of that Adversary, against whom the Church
of Christ is set up, and whose power it is destined to
overthrow. His activity is in exact proportion to the
activity which is used against him. His vigilance never
fails to seize the opportunities which the weakness of man
too frequently supplies. No sooner is good seed sown in
the field, than tares are found springing up amidst the
wheat. Such has been the case throughout the whole
history of the Church : and it has been signally and un-
expectedly exemplified in the present day, by the favour
shewn to notions which might seem inconsistent with the
advancement of reason, by the revival of errors, which
might have been supposed to be buried for ever."
" To enter upon this subject generally or fully, would be
quite incompatible with the limits of a Charge, and to treat
it cursorily would not be respectful to my brethren. I
shall confine myself to a brief review of two points, in
which the interests committed to us are especially con-
cerned."
164
" The principle by which, in all ages and countries, the
power of Satan has been most successfully assailed, and
the human heart most strongly actuated, is that of
simple reliance on Christ Jesus : simple acceptance of the
truth, that He is l made unto us of God, wisdom, and
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.' Ac-
cordingly, this doctrine, that, lying tinder God's wrath and
condemnation, we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ :
this plain and simple truth has uniformly been assailed by
every instrument which the enemy could bring to bear
against it. From the time when certain men went down
from Jerusalem and troubled the Church at Antioch ; from
the time when Paul had to grieve over the disciples in
Galatia, that they were ' removed from the grace of Christ
into another gospel, which was not another gospel ;' for it
was no gospel at all; from the earliest days until now,
this has been the point of attack, because on this all
depends. We are still experiencing the same and from
the same cause."
" Through the merciful providence of God, the true
principles of the Gospel were prevailing through the length
and breadth of the land, and effects were following which
they alone are capable of producing. Meanwhile the
enemy is on the watch ; knows well where his danger lies ;
and contrives to cast reproach upon the doctrine which is
the hinge of Christian truth and Christian practice; to
confound things which ought to be kept distinct ; things
inherent in man with things extraneous to man ; individual
duties with vicarious merits ; and so to reduce religion to
that doubt and uncertainty which never has led, and never
will lead, to a consistent course of action."
" It is notorious that this attempt, frequently made, and
too often successful, has been renewed in the present day.
The Author of our salvation, l not willing that any should
perish, but that all should come to repentance and the
knowledge of the truth,' has commanded that the Gospel
165
should be preached to every creature. Those have now
risen up who affirm that the doctrine of the Gospel, the
propitiation made for sin, is a doctrine too dangerous to
be openly disclosed, too mysterious to be generally ex-
hibited ; and would thus deprive the sinner at once of his
motive to repent, and his comfort in repenting. It has
been another part of the same system to involve the article
of our justification in obscurity; what has been done for
us, and what is to be wrought in us, are confused together;
and, practically, man is induced to look to himself, and
not to his Redeemer, for acceptance with God."
Yet the Bishop, who could write so painfully, and who,
in other passages of his Charge, seemed to deny doctrines
of our Church and of the Church Catholic, did himself, in the
last year, I am informed, deliver an address to those whom
he was about to confirm, the whole tone of which was
altogether Catholic. It came as a great relief to some of
his Clergy, who had been much distressed by his Charge ;
and furnishes another remarkable instance of what every
one conversant with those of an opposite school continually
sees how much of the apparent condemnation of each
other arises in misapprehension of what is actually held by
either.
Note B, page 127.
Extract from a German Periodical, illustrative of the
view taken by the sounder part of the German writers
of the introduction of Episcopacy from England.
The following extract is taken from a full article in the
" Theologische Studien und Kritiken," a periodical re-
presenting the views of a large section of the German
theologians, of varying shades of doctrine, (as will appear
166
from the very names of the editors *,) but, on the whole,
those of the middle party of such as are engaged in the
work of restoration, with no strong feeling for Luther-
auism. The article appeared in October last ; it con-
tains no allusion to any domestic plans for the intro-
duction of Episcopacy, but is written with reference to
the influence of the opinions now prevailing amongst us,
as they bear upon themselves. This object is thus stated
by the writer in the opening of the article :
" What is now going on in the English Church is
of such sort, as not only to have roused from their repose
(so far as they enjoyed it) her own members, and com-
pelled them to decide and take their side for or against,
but to claim the attention of those without her, and make
them wish thoroughly to understand it. And this is not
mere curiosity, as though they who follow those events
with eager expectation, were like spectators in a play or a
race; in more than one respect, are we concerned our-
selves. First, amid whatever manifest differences, there
still are not wanting points of contact and analogies
between the state of things in both countries. Then also,
in England, they have the German-Protestant Church
in view, pass judgments upon her, form wishes relatively
to us, and would fain point us out our way, and bestow on
us what is to promote our well-being. Since then our
concerns too are discussed, we may as well assist at the
conference."
The writer then explains how the title Anglo-Catho-
licity designates the movement going on here ; and his
observations may be serviceable, when people are ques-
tioning whether our principles and those of the foreign
bodies are the same.
" They wish to claim for- the English Church the
a Drs. Umbreit, Ullman, in union with Drs. Gieseler, LUcke,
Nitzsch.
167
character of Catholicity. The Apostles' Creed contains
the article, sanctarn Ecclesiam Catholicam; in the Lu-
theran translation [?] it stands 'a holy Christian Church;'
the English translation has kept more faithfully to the
original, and in the Common Prayer-book it is, c the Holy
Catholic Church.' This minutia, that this little word
4 Catholic' has remained in the Creed, has its weight.
Since the Apostles' Creed is recited in each public service
in the English Church b , and repeated by the people after
the Minister, not only is the word l Catholic' retained
in a good sense, but there is also maintained a vivid
feeling and consciousness of a pervading Unity of this
Christian Church, to which they belong. Herewith is an
element provided, which, under favourable circumstances,
might become a fruitful germ of views, relatively new and
amazing, of comprehensive compass, and, in their practical
tendency, of no ordinary weight. If, in addition, we take
into account, that the English Church, however great
store she sets by her quality of a Catholic Church, is yet
also essentially a reformed Church, and stands opposed to
the Roman-Catholic Church, we come nearer to the
specific meaning of Anglo-Catholicity."
The conclusion, above referred to, has immediate re-
ference to a hint in Mr. Biber's " Standard of Catholicity,"
of the duty incumbent upon these bodies to seek to recover
what they had abandoned. However one may lament
that the writer considers Episcopacy as something merely
outward, yet there is much truth both in what he says
of their own condition, and his gentle irony at our insular
self-complacency.
" So are our ecclesiastical relations viewed by those of
the High Church [the English Church], so are they ac-
counted for ; and so do they think that the evil [Rational-
ism] is to be cured. They hold it the duty and calling of
b It would seem then, not always in the Lutheran.
168
their orthodox Church, to undertake the care of the sister
branches of the Universal Church, especially when these
are in danger of sinking continually deeper in darkness and
error. Their notion, in one word, is, that if we would in-
troduce the Episcopal form of Government, and that in
such wise, as to have Bishops consecrated by English
Bishops, the spiritual authority would be based on its true
and safe foundation, and thus would all unbelief and un-
Churchism be most effectually suppressed. It is implied,
of course, that where now no ordination at all is used,
ordination of all Clergy by the Bishops is to be intro-
duced."
" Now then certainly there is an appearance, as though
there were not wanting a disposition on our side, to meet
half-way the reform-schemes of the High-Church islanders.
On the one hand, the institution of Evangelical Bishops
does exist in some German states, and, theoretically also,
there are some friends of this form of Church- Government,
as when Stahl in his recent work on Ecclesiastical Law
gives to the Episcopal Government the preference over
that by Consistories and Presbyteries. On the other
hand, where Ordination is not employed at all, much, on
many sides, is said about introducing it."
" But looking more closely, in neither case does the
real state of things answer the views and schemes of the
High Church. First as to the Episcopate, the Evangelic
Bishops in Germany are a creation of the state, by virtue
of the principle that the King is Bishop of the Church of
his country b . The High Church on the contrary, protests
formally and solemnly, ( The King can make no Bishop.'
The consecration by the Church, and that through the
hand of a Bishop who can rightly claim the Apostolic
i> They hold the office also only during pleasure. The king who
makes them, can unmake them. " Bishop" among them is a mere
title of office.
169
succession, this, and this alone, makes a Bishop. The
same objection, on the Anglican view, would equally hold
good against the theoretical commendation of the Episcopal
Government, above spoken of, since all therein maintained
was, on grounds of expediency, a relative superiority of the
Episcopal over the Presbyterian form of government ;
whereas, on the Anglican view of Episcopacy as a Divine
institution, it is an absolute Essential. Still a step has
been made towards an approximation ; and, in the High
Church circles, people flatter themselves with the hope
that, sooner or later, we shall betake ourselves to the
Church of England, and beg of one of the British Succes-
sors and Possessors of the Apostolic office, the Church's
blessing for German Protestantism; a blessing, which
would serve at the same time as the benediction on the
spiritual marriage between the English and German
Church. In this way a very promising beginning would
be made towards raising the English Church into a sort
of Rome, a Mother-Church, with the Primacy over Pro-
testant Christendom. Nay, when the Roman Catholic
Churches should renounce their errors, and be converted
from Romanism to the true and genuine Catholicism,
which the English Church, singly and alone, has pre-
served ; when, lastly, the Greek Catholicism of the slavish
East, now again renewing its youth, becomes well-disposed
to Anglo -Catholicism, then will the whole Christian world
be reconciled with the Church of England, and acknow-
ledge her Primacy ; and then, what Irenaeus in his time
said of Rome, will, in a more excellent, ideal, sense be
fulfilled in the English Church. ' Ad hanc Ecclesiam
propter potiorem principalitatem necesse est omnem con-
venire Ecclesiam, hoc est, eos, qui sunt undique ft deles,
c [ Also, as government only, not as a spiritual office, or the channel
of spiritual gifts.]
N
170
in qua semper ab his, qui sunt undique, conservata est ea,
quae est ab Apostolis, traditio.' "
" The union with the [Roman] Catholic Church is not
at present very immediate. The Court has gained the
victory ; the received opinions in the Catholic world are
more Roman than they lately were : and ' an union with
Rome, as it is,' say these writers, ' is impossible.' But if
we look around us in times past, recollect the Ecclesi-
astical principles of the Reformation-synods of the 15th
century, the Gallican liberties, Justus Febronius and many
other maintainers of like views at present, an union of the
Catholic Church in this form with the Anglican, does not
seem a mere chimera. Did not the Gallican Clergy of the
17th century, stand nearer to an English Bishop than
to the Jesuits ? witness the thanks of the Gallican Synod
of St. Germain's, sent in writing to the English Bishop
Bull, for the service which he had rendered the Catholic
Church by his defence of the Ante-Nicene fathers against
the Jesuit Petavius."
" Until the golden age of the union of our Church with
that of England arrives, we remain without Bishops who
can claim Apostolical succession; consequently also
without real Ordination ; for this depends upon a real
Episcopacy. In this respect also, the advances on our
side are mere appearances. Whoso recommends the in-
troduction of Ordination, where it now exists not, means
only to restore a laudable custom, which he expects to
work well, not to satisfy an absolute duty, of Divine right.
So then we and the Anglo-Catholics are still far enough
apart."
" This they may lament. But if they lament for us,
I fear they will not have much thanks for it. Who of us
could be so minded, as to think that the cure for our
religious and Ecclesiastical condition is to be found in the
Episcopal Succession and the threefold spiritual con-
171
secration ? No one of any understanding could look to a
remedy, coming in every sense d so 6 from without, 7 as
a solution of our perplexities. If our theological and phi-
losophical, religious and ecclesiastical, confusions cannot
be cured from within, homoiopathically, i. e. by remedies
corresponding with the disease, then there is no help
for us."
d i. e. from a foreign Church and as a thing simply external.
THE END.
3AXTER, PRINTER,
RETURN TO the circulation desk of any
University of California Library
or to the
NORTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
Bldg. 400, Richmond Field Station
University of California
Richmond, CA 94804-4698
ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS
2-month loans may be renewed by calling
(415)642-6233
1-year loans may be recharged by bringing books
to NRLF
Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days
prior to due date
DUE AS STAMPED BELOW
APR 231988
YC 44867
LIBRARY USE
RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.
THIS BOOK IS DUE BEFORE CLOSING TIME
ON LAST DATE STAMPj^ BELOW
yj7S
/>
1 I V* Efl
vi./
iVlM J ] t , /. ; . ~
*CiC_!,* f f"^ r ^.
" J LD
*Mn3'65-/OpAj
^
TjL l^
S cc ^
- 1 ?1 U.
<1 O
tf ^ u-
^ c3 o
\1 ! ^
u-
LD 62A-50m-2,'64
(E3494slO)9412A
General Library
University of California
Berkeley
1
Al- K AUTII.
i. KUMARKS n the prospective arid past Benefits of CATHEDRAL
INSTITUTIONS, in the Promotion of Sound Religious Know!:
Second Edition, \ '
II. SCRIPTURAL *T.-AV of HOLY BAPTi
the. consent of the Ancient Church and contr;,
.larged. 1st V
les may still be had of the ndditional Notes to the
67 09 on Holy Baptism.
III. THOUGHTS on the BENEFITS of FASTING. T
(Tracts for the Times, Nos. 18 and 66'.)
IV. A SERMON, preached at the Consecration of Grov
V CHURCHES in LONDO>
V!. !. : REMON
Kpistu from his Holiness the Pope," on t.hp danger of ;>
Religion. Reprinted i.i :>;,. L* i'v>r the Tii-^es, Vol.
Vf[. PATIENCE and CONFIDENCE the STRENGTH of the
CHURCH. A Sermon preached on the Fifth of November, before the
University of Oxford, at St. Mary's, and published at the wish of many
of its Members. Third Edition, with three Append i
VIII. The CHURCH the CONVERTER of the HEATHEN. Two,
Sermons preached in conformity with the Queen's Letter in behalf of
tin-: Society for the ^ropagation of the Gospel, at St. Mary's Church,
: s, Sept. !), 1838 ; with copious notes.
LV
A St v r:
Cl a'ch, Bristn.
outlyi ' Di- rict in that Parish; with a Preface ou i. ; . :
r.ur Ex. itions to our Needs.
X. THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL, A PREPARATION
FOR OUR LORD'S COMING. A Sermon preached at the Parochial
Church of St. Andrew's, Clifton, in Conformity with tht
Letter, in. behalf of the Society for the P,> of the Gospel. ;
'IONS of S. AUG'
-..ition revised. Also th \ Latin Original,
of MSS an- d from hi:.
XII. A LETT CR to the Right Rev. [ . RICHARIi
LORD BISHOP OF OXFORD, on the Tendency to Romanism
imputed to D< ie English Church
With an Appendix, conti V.tcts for the Times,
and other Works ; shewing that, lo
to favour Popery. ' 'h a Prefnce f>n rhe Dortri:
..RcJition.
XIII cconsidered and
rheir interpretu.. >n vindicated in H LETTER to the Re;'. H. W. JELF,
1">.D. Canon of <.'hn<.:. ("'varcb. \Vith r:i Appei. .'x from Abp. Ussher
nn the Difference between Ancietif ler . Addi-eeses to Saint^
Second Edition.
XIV. The DAY OF JUDGMENT. A Sermon preached
Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, in S. Peter's Church, ttri^hton
^e'-ond Edition.
XV. CATALOGUS CODD MSS. ARAB.
NICOLL. edidit. &c. V. P..