;• ' ]m }] | :j "i ' r.V ' " : 'V"' '.i >• ,1^;-!-. 
 
 OP 
 
 The Church of England 
 
 JOHN DOWDEN, D.Di> 
 
PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BX 5131 .D68 1897 c.l 
 Dowden, John, 1840-1910 
 Outlines of the history'of 
 the theological literature 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/outlinesofhistorOOdowd_0 
 
Zbc Btefoop patoocft Xecturcs, 1806-7 
 
 OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE CLOSE OF 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 JOHN DOWDEN, D.D. 
 
 BISHOP OF EDINBURGH. 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. ; 
 43, queen victoria street, e.c. 
 Brighton : 129, north street. 
 New York: E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 
 
 1897. 
 
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, 
 London & Blngay. 
 
To 
 
 THE DEAN, 
 THE PROFESSORS, 
 AND 
 
 THE STUDENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 Uhe General theological (Scminavn, 
 
 NEW YORK, 
 BEFORE WHOM THESE LECTURES 
 WERE ORIGINALLY DELIVERED, 
 THEY ARE NOW INSCRIBED 
 IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF MUCH KINDNESS. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The design of the following Lectures is to 
 present a sketch of the theological literature of 
 the Church of England from the Reformation 
 to the beginning of the present century. Some 
 general knowledge of the civil and ecclesiastical 
 history of England during the period is assumed ; 
 and the lectures are mainly concerned with 
 tracing the growth and changes in religious 
 opinion, indicating the character of the principal 
 works of the more eminent theologians, and in 
 some degree estimating their value. 
 
 It has been thought advisable not to extend 
 this sketch beyond the close of the eighteenth 
 century. The writer feels that we are as yet too 
 near the controversies which originated out of 
 the Oxford Movement to be able to judge them 
 dispassionately. 
 
 Homiletical literature, unless distinctly con- 
 tributing to theological science, and works of 
 practical divinity, together with devotional writ- 
 ings, are not considered ; hence many eminent 
 names, among which may be mentioned Donne, 
 
vi 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 South, Ken, Atterbury, and Thomas Wilson, 
 are passed over in silence. But even within the 
 limits prescribed to ourselves, there are omis- 
 sions which would be culpable in any extended 
 history. 
 
 One could have wished to enlarge the scope 
 of these lectures so as to embrace the theologians 
 of the Irish and Scottish Churches. The bear- 
 ings of ethical and metaphysical speculation 
 upon theology, as exhibited in the writings of 
 Archbishop King, Bishop Berkeley, and Bishop 
 Peter Brown, deserve careful study. And it is 
 with particular regret that I omit any notice 
 of the great John Forbes, of Corse ; Bishop 
 William Forbes, first Bishop of Edinburgh, and 
 author of the Considcrationes Modcstcv ; and 
 Archbishop Leighton. The consideration of 
 Ussher's writings to be found in the following 
 pages makes no infringement of the rule laid 
 down ; for, not to speak of the important part 
 he played in English ecclesiastical affairs, 
 England has the honour of being able to claim 
 him as Bishop of Carlisle. 
 
 It has only to be added that several passages 
 which, for the sake of brevity, were omitted in 
 the delivery of the Lectures, are here inserted in 
 their proper places. 
 
THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 In the summer of the year 1880, George A. Jarvis, of 
 Brooklyn, N.Y., moved by his sense of the great good 
 which might thereby accrue to the cause of Christ, and 
 to the Church of which he was an ever-grateful member, 
 gave to the General Theological Seminary of the Pro- 
 testant Episcopal Church certain securities, exceeding in 
 value eleven thousand dollars, for the foundation and 
 maintenance of a Lectureship in said seminary. 
 
 Out of love to a former pastor and enduring friend, the 
 Riyht Rev. Benjamin Henry Paddock, D.D., Bishop of 
 Massachusetts, he named the foundation " The Bishop 
 Paddock Lectureship." 
 
 The deed of trust declares that — 
 
 " The subjects of the lectures shall be such as appertain to the 
 defence of the religion of Jesus Christ, as revealed in the Holy 
 Bible, and illustrated in the Book of Common Prayer, against the 
 varying errors of the day, whether materialistic, rationalistic, or 
 professedly religious, and also to its defence and confirmation in 
 respect of such central truths as the Trinity, the Atonement, 
 Justification, and the Inspiration of the Word of God; and of such 
 central facts as the Church's Divine Order and Sacraments, her 
 historical Reformation, and her rights and powers as a pure 
 and national Church. And other subjects may be chosen if 
 unanimously approved by the Board of Appointment as being 
 both timely and also within the true intent of this Lectureship." 
 
 Under the appointment of the Board created by the 
 Trust, the Right Reverend John Dowden, D.D., Bishop 
 of Edinburgh, delivered the Lectures for the year 1896-7, 
 contained in this volume. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 The design and scope of these Lectures — The contro- 
 versy with Rome in the sixteenth century — Theological 
 learning of the first reformers — The three most eminent 
 of the anti-Roman controversialists of the sixteenth 
 century : Cranmer, Jewel, Bilson ; their principal 
 writings — Hooker's attitude towards Rome — Contro- 
 versies on the versions of the Scriptures. 
 
 During the three centuries and a half that 
 separate us from the Anglican Reformation of 
 the sixteenth century the scholars and divines 
 of the Church of England have bequeathed to 
 us what has come to be a large and varied 
 literature. This literature ranges over divers 
 fields of thought, theological and ecclesiastical. 
 It is rich in works marked by scholarship, by 
 wide learning, by acuteness of intellectual per- 
 ception, by close and sustained argument, by 
 breadth of speculative power, by practical saga- 
 city, by the spirit of fervent devotion. Indeed, 
 if due allowances be made, it may be fairly 
 questioned whether the learning and piety of 
 
2 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 any Christian Church has, during a like period, 
 produced a larger number of monumental works 
 of human genius in its search for, and in its 
 defence of, sacred truth. 
 
 It is only fair to remember that for a long 
 period of her history the English Church was 
 in numbers a very small community. And the 
 proportion of men in any community endowed 
 with exceptional aptitude for research, or with 
 exceptional powers of reasoning, or of exposi- 
 tion, is, in truth, a matter of averages. 
 
 Again, it must not be forgotten that the con- 
 ditions of life in the Church of England have 
 in some important respects been less favourable 
 to the cultivation of sacred learning than those 
 existent elsewhere. The Universities and the 
 Cathedral establishments made but a limited 
 and partial exception to the truth that oppor- 
 tunities for learned leisure have been few in 
 England. The retirement and freedom from 
 secular distractions afforded to individual scholars 
 by some of the monastic orders on the Continent 
 were no longer to be enjoyed in the reformed 
 Church. Xor did she possess any of those 
 religious communities where fellowship in labour 
 and continuity of corporate life made possible 
 such vast undertakings in the fields of historical 
 and patristic research, as we find in the labours 
 of the Bollandists and of the Benedictines of St. 
 Maur. In the reformed Church of England, 
 with rare exceptions, each man stood alone : 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 3 
 
 his learning died with him, and there was no 
 one, trained at his side, to take up and carry 
 on his special labours. 
 
 In certain departments of sacred learning one 
 must frankly acknowledge the limitations, nay, 
 the great void spaces in Anglican literature. 
 Yet any Church in the world might be proud 
 to claim among her sons such scholars and 
 thinkers as Jewel, Hooker, Andrewes, Ussher, 
 Hammond, Cudworth, Taylor, Pearson, Barrow, 
 Bull, Waterland, Beveridge, and Butler — not 
 to enumerate here other great, though lesser, 
 names. 
 
 In the present course of lectures little more 
 can be attempted than to trace the outlines and 
 main highways in a wide-spread region of the 
 world of letters, to indicate the road which the 
 student may best follow, and to call attention 
 to the objects along his route that seem more 
 especially deserving of attention. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the evils attendant upon 
 religious controversy — and they arc many— it 
 is impossible not to recognize the fact that it 
 has been under the pressure of controversy that 
 most of the great achievements of theological 
 literature have had their origin. It was so in the 
 age of the early Christian Apologists. It was 
 so in the age of the great Councils. Even in 
 mediaeval times — the so-called " ages of faith " — 
 not only was theology, in its philosophic aspects, 
 
4 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 the actual battle-ground of contending schools, 
 but the chief examples of the systematizing of 
 dogma were built up in the controversial form, 
 and grew out of the controversial method. Thus 
 the Sum ma of Aquinas exhibits each Article 
 with its thesis followed by a Sed contra (detail- 
 ing objections few or many), followed in turn 
 by the author's Respondeo, in which each objec- 
 tion is successively answered. It was through 
 controversy thought was given clearness of 
 definition, and precision was effected. And, 
 similarly, in the modern epoch it has been the 
 keen stimulant of controversy that has impelled 
 the greatest theologians to their labours of re- 
 search, of critical examination, of reasoned 
 argument. 
 
 The shelves of great libraries give a resting- 
 place to a vast quantity of printed matter in 
 the form of popular expositions of doctrine, 
 devotional treatises, treatises on practical re- 
 ligion, sermons and homiletical discourses, which 
 have issued from the press from the Reformation 
 to our own day. These, it need scarcely be 
 said, are of varied character and very much 
 varied merit. We possess, for example, sermons 
 such as those of Andrewes, of Sanderson, of 
 Thomas Jackson, of Bull, and of Barrow, which 
 are of real theological importance, and marked 
 by learning, exact thought, and speculative 
 power. Occasionally, too, men of genius have 
 made discourses from the pulpit a vehicle for 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 5 
 
 the expression of thought, so clothed with grace 
 and beauty of style, so illuminated with the play 
 of imagination, so fired and coloured by the 
 glow of emotion, that their utterances have been 
 given a permanent place in the general literature 
 of our country. Bossuet and Massillon have 
 scarcely a more honoured position in the litera- 
 ure of France than Donne and Taylor in the 
 literature of England. To be ignorant of these 
 is scarcely less discreditable than to be ignorant 
 of Bacon and Addison. But for our present 
 purpose it is only so far as it has made a con- 
 tribution to theological science that literature of 
 this kind can claim our attention : pulpit oratory, 
 as such, will not occupy us. 
 
 Those branches of sacred learning which 
 are concerned with pure biblical criticism and 
 exegesis, and with the independent investigation 
 of the history and antiquities of the Church, 
 must doubtless be assigned a place — a very 
 important place — in any adequate estimate of 
 the labours of Anglican Churchmen. But 
 though they are well deserving of a full treat- 
 ment, in the present course of lectures it is 
 impossible to do more than bestow upon them 
 a hurried glance. We shall here be mainly 
 engaged in considering what more properly 
 belongs to dogmatic theology and the defence 
 of the Anglican position. 
 
 The main lines along which our leading 
 theologians moved and laboured were three in 
 
6 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 number ; and into each of them they were 
 directed and compelled by the exigencies of the 
 hostile attacks against the doctrine and consti- 
 tution of the Church. First, in order of time, 
 and chief, if we consider the long-continued 
 persistence of the assault, was the controversy 
 forced upon the Church of England by Rome. 
 Next, in succession and historical importance, 
 came the large body of literature that was issued 
 in defence of the Church's constitution against 
 the attacks of the Puritan party. Lastly, the 
 Church was called upon to defend the primary 
 and essential fundamentals of the faith against 
 assaults from the side of unbelief. These last- 
 named assaults were put forward in definite 
 shape in the seventeenth century. In the 
 eighteenth century they became more general 
 and more daring. In our own time unbelief 
 has pushed its attack further, and assailed not 
 only Revelation, but even the belief in a Personal 
 God. Each line of attack and defence has its 
 own separate history, and its own varying 
 fortunes. 
 
 The controversy with Rome began in its 
 literary form from the moment that the Church 
 of England was called upon to justify her 
 position as now separated from the organization 
 of the most powerful religious community of 
 Christendom. It touched the centre of English 
 politics ; it occupied almost the whole field of 
 religious thought in England during the reigns 
 
Paddock lectures 
 
 7 
 
 of Edward and Mary, and the greater part of 
 that of Elizabeth. It continued to be active 
 and animated in the years of James I. and 
 Charles I., when every theologian of distinction 
 was more or less engaged in the struggle. It 
 again occupied all thoughts when in the days 
 of James II. Englishmen were roused by the 
 aggressive Romeward movement of the King 
 and his adherents. There was a change in the 
 eighteenth century. When the Revolution of 
 1688 had freed England from the dangers that 
 loomed large and threatening in the past, the 
 country gradually settled down to an easy, 
 contented, and yet most dangerous, because 
 unintelligent, Protestantism. Men ceased to 
 thoroughly understand the questions at issue ; 
 and Rome was contemptuously regarded as 
 intellectually bankrupt. The eighteenth century 
 and the earlier years of the present century 
 added nothing of significance to anti-Roman 
 polemics. But by the middle of the present 
 century England was awakened out of her 
 dream ; and since then the old controversy, 
 under somewhat altered conditions, has again 
 come to the front, and is, beyond question, 
 destined to occupy much thought for many 
 years to come. 
 
 In the sixteenth century the English Reformers 
 had been led by different routes first to question, 
 and then to repudiate the claims of the Papacy 
 
8 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 to ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the realm of 
 England. This movement of thought, which 
 was largely coloured by political considerations, 
 was soon followed by a growing conviction that 
 much of the doctrinal teaching of Rome was no 
 part of the faith once delivered to the saints. 
 Many of the most cherished of the authoritative 
 dogmas of the Church of Rome were deliberately 
 rejected ; and English theologians were called 
 upon to justify their action in the face of the 
 Christian world. 
 
 Among the ecclesiastical leaders of the time 
 were some well qualified for their task. They 
 had received in full measure the best training 
 that the Universities of the day could supply. 
 Several of them had early attained eminence 
 by their abilities and learning. They had been 
 sedulously trained in the system and methods 
 of the Schoolmen, which, however defective in 
 other respects, supplied an admirable discipline 
 for quickening the perception of intellectual 
 distinctions and for exercising the powers of 
 dialectical discussion. They had been made 
 thoroughly familiar with the nice intricacies of 
 scholastic theology, and with the methods of 
 argument on which they were supported. Some 
 of them had, in addition, felt the animating 
 breath of the " New Learning " ; but they were 
 men who from their youth had been versed in 
 the " Old." It is a mistake begotten of ignor- 
 ance to suppose that in their theological pro- 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 9 
 
 nouncements they dealt merely, or even chiefly, 
 with popular misconceptions and popular super- 
 stitions. They had full in view the authoritative 
 teaching of the recognized doctors of the then 
 prevailing mediaeval theology. Latimer, whom 
 we are wont to remember chiefly for the vigorous 
 and homely English of his popular sermons, 
 had been a Fellow of Clare Hall, noted more 
 especially for his intimate acquaintance with the 
 system of Duns Scotus, the " Doctor subtilis " 
 of the Schools. His Latin discourses ad clerum 
 were thronged by scholars, even as his English 
 sermons were afterwards thronged by the 
 general public. Ridley, who in 1524 had to 
 make choice between a Fellowship at University 
 College, Oxford, and a Fellowship at Pembroke 
 Hall, Cambridge, was so eager in the pursuit 
 of learning that he, soon after, crossed the 
 Channel, and devoted some two or three years 
 to study in Paris at the renowned school of the 
 Sorbonne. Before the breach with Rome his 
 position as a man of learning in the University 
 of Cambridge was well established. Cranmer 
 was from the outset of his career a student of 
 a very thorough kind, " seldom reading without 
 pen in hand," and leaving us note-books which 
 to this day testify to his extensive research and 
 careful observation. He was a student of 
 Hebrew as well as of Greek. When Wolsey 
 desired to plant in his new and splendid 
 foundation at Oxford "the ripest and solidest 
 
to 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 sort of scholars," Cranmer, a Cambridge man, 
 who had been a Fellow of Jesus College in that 
 University as early as. 1510, was pressed to 
 accept at " Cardinal College " a lucrative and 
 honourable place. At a later time " his library 
 was the storehouse of ecclesiastical writers of 
 all ages " ; as, indeed, is testified by the large 
 number of volumes that can still be traced. 1 
 These men and others among the leaders of the 
 Reformation movement were, beyond question, 
 men of no ordinary attainments, and exception- 
 ally well versed in the learning of their day. 2 
 
 Setting aside the question as to the juris- 
 diction of the Bishop of Rome, which had 
 already received in England a practical solution, 
 no inquiries so largely occupied the minds of 
 English theologians as those which bore upon 
 the doctrine of the Eucharist. This question 
 was made from time to time the subject of 
 public conferences and disputations. It was 
 not merely a matter of scholastic interest ; it 
 
 1 See Mr. Burbidge's careful attempt to construct a 
 catalogue of the remaining volumes, in his work on the 
 Liturgies and Offices of the Church. 
 
 2 Compare on this subject the words of the late Arch- 
 bishop (Benson) of Canterbury in his Fishers of Men 
 (p. 125), where, after expressing his high estimate of the 
 learning of the Reformers, he adds, with a touch of very 
 legitimate scorn,— "yet dabbling books, with less taint 
 of learning about them than have ever issued from writers 
 of the English Church, daily assume that the least in the 
 pre-Reformation days were greater than they." 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 touched the religious life of the nation. And 
 to the defence of the Church of England's 
 change of teaching on this subject the most 
 important of Cranmer's writings are devoted. 
 
 The gradual modifications in the Archbishop's 
 views of the Eucharist are a matter of history. 
 We shall concern ourselves here only with those 
 published works which set forth his matured 
 judgment, and which, as a matter of fact, repre- 
 sent substantially the prevailing doctrine of 
 Anglican theologians down to our own day. 
 
 In 1550 Cranmer printed a quarto volume, 
 entitled " A defence of the true Catholic doctrine 
 of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our 
 Saviour Christ ; with a confutation of sundry 
 errors concerning the same ; grounded and 
 established upon God's Holy Word, and ap- 
 proved by the consent of the most ancient 
 doctors of the Church." 1 The very title-page 
 of the book, it will be observed, gave expression 
 to the great principle of the English Reform- 
 ation, that it is to Holy Scripture we must look 
 for the ground of doctrine, while the testimony 
 of the early Church is given a valued place 
 in confirmation of the inferences drawn from 
 Scripture. Worthy, too, of observation is the 
 
 1 This will be found embodied (in detached paragraphs) 
 in Cranmer's Answer to Gardiner, and in a continuous 
 form in the Latin translation (1557) generally attributed 
 to Sir John Cheke. Both are given in Cranmer's Works 
 (P. S. edit.). 
 
12 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 distinct challenge of the title that the doctrine 
 maintained is the CatJiolic doctrine. From the 
 outset the reformed Church declined to concede 
 that term to mediaeval superstitions. 1 
 
 The principle of the supreme authority of 
 Holy Scripture had already been maintained 
 in a treatise, commonly, though, perhaps, in- 
 correctly, attributed to Cranmer, and entitled 
 A Confutation of " Unwritten Verities" i.e. a 
 confutation of Smith's work, " De veritatibus non 
 scriptis." 2 But, whether the work be Cranmer's 
 or not, the principle is clearly set forth in the 
 fifth of the Articles of Religion of 1553 (which 
 corresponds, with some slight modifications, 
 with the sixth of our XXXIX. Articles), not 
 improbably written by Cranmer's pen. It is 
 scarcely possible to overrate the importance of 
 the great principle of the ultimate authority and 
 sufficiency of Holy Scripture. In the past it 
 lifted from men's minds a heavy burden of folly 
 and superstition. It was, and is, an emanci- 
 pating energy. So long as this principle is not 
 lost sight of, so long as men turn reverently and 
 studiously to examine the teaching of the New 
 
 1 " So eager was the demand for the work that in the 
 same year (1550) three impressions of it appeared." — 
 Todd's Life of Archbishop Cranmer, ii. 237. 
 
 2 The question as to the authorship will be found dis- 
 cussed in Cranmer's Remains (P. S. edit.). The translation 
 by " E. P.," through which the work is best known, did not 
 appear till Queen Mary's time. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 «5 
 
 Testament, there is little fear of any wide 
 doctrinal aberrations in this direction or in that. 
 The scholarly study of the Scriptures is the 
 source of a potent vis medico, that cannot fail 
 to disintegrate and scatter those morbid growths 
 in belief which have a tendency to recur from 
 time to time, and which are not unknown among 
 ourselves. 
 
 Cranmer's "Defence of the true Catholic doc- 
 trine of the Sacrament" immediately called forth 
 replies from the Roman party, and notably one 
 from Stephen Gardiner. 1 As the work of a man 
 of learning and ability, who had occupied a high 
 station, as Bishop of Winchester, this treatise 
 more especially called for an answer ; and in 
 1 55 1 appeared Cranmer's elaborate rejoinder — ■ 
 " An answer unto a crafty and sophistical cavil- 
 lation devised by Stephen Gardiner, Doctor of 
 Law, late Bishop of Winchester." 2 This was the 
 most considerable work that had yet come from 
 the pen of any of the English Reformers. It 
 is written in a clear and forcible English style, 
 singularly free from the Latinisms that some- 
 times disfigured the prose of the period. Cran- 
 mer's method is first to print a section of his 
 
 1 An explication and assertion of the true Catholic faith 
 touching the blessed Sacrament of the Altar, with the con- 
 futation of a book written against the same. This work 
 was printed in France. Gardiner was a prisoner at the 
 time of its appearance. 
 
 2 Another edition appeared in 1552. 
 
14 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 earlier work, the Defence, then to give in full in 
 Gardiner's own language his comments on that 
 section, and, lastly, his own reply to those 
 comments ; and so throughout, section after 
 section. This method, though manifestly fair to 
 his opponent, may be felt somewhat wearisome 
 by modern readers. Yet on those who have the 
 patience to read the whole the impression made 
 is deep and lasting. The ability with which 
 Gardiner had conducted his case cannot be 
 questioned. His reputation, it is true, was 
 greater as a canonist than as a theologian ; but 
 in this work he had the advantage of assist- 
 ance from others, and his own skill is manifest 
 throughout. Indeed, in some of the side issues 
 and details of the controversy, Gardiner seems to 
 me to have the best of the argument. But Cran- 
 mer is triumphant in disposing of the attempt to 
 identify the teaching of the English Reformers 
 with the views that were then spoken of as those 
 of the "Sacramentaries," and have since, whether 
 rightly or wrongly, been commonly referred to 
 as " Zwinglian." What seems to me of most 
 importance to observe is that what has been, 
 with few exceptions, the Eucharistic doctrine of 
 the great body of the best Anglican divines is 
 found clearly formulated and fully expounded 
 in the writings of Archbishop Cranmer. There 
 has been, indeed, but little added to the treat- 
 ment of the controversy with Rome upon the 
 Eucharist since the discussion conducted by 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 15 
 
 Gardiner and Cranmer. The sense of the same 
 passages of Scripture, the sense of the same 
 quotations from the Fathers, are still in dispute. 
 The argument took into account all the nice dis- 
 tinctions with which technical theologians delight 
 to adorn their pages. It was a contest between 
 experts. The phraseology, of which much has 
 been made of late, as to a body being " present 
 not locally," as to a body being " present in a 
 spiritual manner," and such like, were all well 
 known to, and discussed by, the disputants of 
 the sixteenth century. Similarly, with regard 
 to the " sacrifice of the mass," Cranmer expressly 
 notices the contention of the Romanists that they 
 never claim to make a new sacrifice or any other 
 than Christ made. Gardiner declared that it 
 was "a mere blasphemy" to presuppose that the 
 sacrifice of Christ "once consummate in per- 
 fection " should be reiterated. These points are 
 noticed here to disabuse the minds of any who 
 may have been led to fancy that the English Re- 
 formers were dealing only with the crude, popular, 
 and unauthorized notions of the vulgar of their 
 day. On the contrary, they were thoroughly 
 familiar with, and thoroughly versed in, the 
 minute and subtle distinctions of the accom- 
 plished theologians of the time. 
 
 It has been sometimes alleged that Ridley- 
 differed from Cranmer's views — I mean his later 
 views — on the Eucharist. After a careful examin- 
 ation of the writings of both, I am unable to 
 
i6 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 discover any appreciable difference. And it 
 maj' be advantageous to exhibit here, from an 
 historical view-point, a summary of the doctrine 
 of these two theologians — the master spirits of 
 the Reformation theology. For our purpose the 
 following seven propositions may suffice — ■ 
 
 r. The substance of the bread and wine 
 remain after consecration. 
 
 2. The consecrated bread and wine are called 
 the Body and Blood of Christ because they are 
 the appointed signs, or sacraments, of that Body 
 and Blood. 
 
 3. They are not "bare signs" ; they are "effect- 
 ual signs" (efficacia signa); for, through the 
 almighty power of God, on their due reception 
 the worthy receiver is verily and indeed made 
 partaker of the Body and Blood of Christ. 
 
 4. The Body and Blood of Christ is to be 
 sought not in the bread and wine, but in the 
 worthy receiver of them. Christ is no more in 
 the bread and wine than the Holy Spirit is in 
 the water of baptism. 1 
 
 5. When it is said that the Body and Blood 
 of Christ are in the worthy receiver, what is 
 meant is that " the force, the grace, the virtue 
 and benefit of Christ's Body that was crucified 
 for us, and His Blood that was shed for us, be 
 really and effectually present " in him. 
 
 1 The often cited words of Hooker (E. P. V. lxvii. 6, 
 Keble's edit.) will be found substantially anticipated in 
 Cranmer's Answer (P. S. p. 52). 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 l 7 
 
 6. The wicked do not eat and drink the Body 
 and Blood of Christ in any other sense than 
 that they eat and drink the signs, or sacraments, 
 which are called by their names. 
 
 7. The sacrament of the Eucharist is called a 
 sacrifice, primarily because it is a representation, 
 commemoration, memorial of the sacrifice of 
 Calvary; and, also, in a secondary sense, as 
 being an offering of our praise and thanks- 
 giving, including the offering unto God of our- 
 selves and all that we have. 
 
 Having thus briefly exhibited the doctrine of 
 Cranmer and Ridley, I would call attention to 
 the emphasis' with which Cranmer asserts that 
 the worthy receiver "truly" and "indeed" eats 
 and drinks Christ's Body and Blood. 1 
 
 Ridley, with no less emphasis, employs the 
 phrase vere et realiter of the presence of Christ's 
 Body and Blood to the worthy receiver. 2 
 
 Similarly Bishop Hooper, one of the most 
 extreme and determined of the opponents of 
 the Roman dogma, declared — " We do verily 
 and indeed receive His Body and Blood." 3 I do 
 not trouble you to inquire in what sense these 
 terms were used ; I would only point out that 
 language to be found in that part of the Church 
 Catechism which was added in 1604 was used 
 by the first Reformers ; and that therefore it 
 
 1 See Answer, p. 87 (P. S.). 
 
 * Works, p. 274 (P. S.). 
 
 3 Later Writings, p. 49 (P. S.). 
 
 C 
 
i8 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 is impossible to infer from the use of such 
 language that the Catechism teaches any doc- 
 trine incompatible with the views held by 
 Cranmer, Ridley, and Hooper. Here we may 
 perceive one of the subsidiary gains to be 
 derived from the study of the early writers of 
 the Reformed Church : we are by it saved from 
 putting a construction, not necessarily intended, 
 upon the language of our Church's formularies. 
 
 The literary history of the controversy be- 
 tween Cranmer and Gardiner does not end with 
 the Answer of the former. Gardiner rejoined 
 in 1552, under the assumed name of Marcus 
 Antonius Constantius, in a Latin treatise which 
 bore the truculent title Confutatio cavillationum 
 quibus Sacrosanctum EucJiaristice Sacramcntnm 
 ab impiis Caphartiaitis ivipeti solet. In 1 5 54, 
 when a second edition appeared, the altered 
 circumstances of the realm led Gardiner to 
 discard the pseudonym, and add " Authore 
 Stephano, Winton Episcopo, Anglian Cancel- 
 lario." It is said that Cranmer had made pre- 
 parations for a further reply when he was at 
 once and for ever effectively silenced by a cruel 
 death. 
 
 Beside his controversial treatises we owe to 
 Cranmer's pen certainly one, and not improbably 
 three, of the discourses which appeared in the 
 First Book of Homilies (1547). In the homily 
 which is universally acknowledged to be his, 
 that entitled " Of the Salvation of Man by only 
 
PADDOCK LECTURKS 
 
 19 
 
 Christ our Saviour," we have an able attempt to 
 expound the doctrine of justification by faith, 
 and to save it from the imputation of antinomian 
 consequences. 1 The other homilies commonly 
 assigned to the authorship of the Archbishop 
 are those entitled " Of a true, lively, and 
 Christian faith," and " Of good works annexed 
 unto faith." They are certainly written in much 
 the same style as his undoubted discourse, and 
 carry on the same line of thought. 2 
 
 1 This homily must be identified with the homily re- 
 ferred to in the Articles of Religion (Article xi.) as "the 
 homily of Justification"; and thus carries not only the 
 general commendation expressed in Article xxxw, but a 
 special commendation of its own. 
 
 2 Though it does not come within the strict scope of these 
 Lectures, it may be permitted to ask for recognition of 
 the services rendered to religion by Cranmer's promotion 
 of the study of the Scriptures (see his Preface to the 
 English Bible of 1540), and, still more, by his wisdom 
 and literary skill in rendering and adapting the Latin 
 service-books to the use of the Reformed Church. Ex- 
 cept as regards the Litany, we may be unable to assign 
 his exact personal share in the work, but his superintend- 
 ing eye was over all. Here and there (as, for example, 
 in the cases of the Collect for the Sunday after Ascension 
 Day and the Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Advent) 
 an important point has been missed or perverted ; but, 
 taken as a whole, the English Prayer-book is indeed a 
 priceless heritage. The late Dean Burgon scarcely ex- 
 aggerated the truth when he wrote that " in countless 
 instances they [the Reformers] have transfused the curt- 
 est, baldest, and darkest of the Latin collects into truly 
 harmonious and transparent English." See my article 
 
20 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 The persecution in which Cranmer, Latimer, 
 and Ridley suffered death, drove many of their 
 followers from their native land. Among the 
 exiles was John Jewel (1522 — 1 57 1 ), sometime 
 Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 
 
 From his youth Jewel had been an indefatig- 
 able student." It is recorded of him that in his 
 Oxford days his practice was to rise at four of the 
 clock, and to continue his studies with but little 
 intermission till ten at night. His culture was 
 wide in its extent. The Greek and Latin classics, 
 philosophy, and mathematics had each occupied 
 his attention. But at an early period of his life 
 he began a study of St. Augustine, which was in 
 after years followed by an acquaintance with the 
 whole range of patristic literature. 
 
 On his escape from England Jewel is found at 
 Frankfort, where he took the side of Dr. Cox 
 and the other defenders of the use of the English 
 Prayer-book. From Frankfort he proceeded to 
 Strassburg, and, later on to Zurich, being in both 
 places the guest of Peter Martyr. In these days 
 of banishment it was his practice every afternoon 
 to read aloud to his host the works of the ancient 
 Fathers. During the time of exile he was thus 
 quietly laying up the stores of learning which he 
 afterwards employed with such effect. 
 
 At the close of 1558 Queen Mary died, and 
 Jewel at once returned to his native land, a 
 
 on " Literary Aspects of Prayer-book Revision " in the 
 Contemporary Review, vol. xviii. pp. 267 — 283. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 strong man well equipped. It was not long 
 before he made his presence felt. On November 
 26, 1559, he preached his famous "Challenge 
 Sermon " at Paul's Cross. 1 The contention of 
 this remarkable discourse was that the Church 
 of England, in the points on which she differed 
 from the Church of Rome, had Christian 
 antiquity on her side. It avoided theological 
 speculations. Its method was historical. In 
 its amplified form the " Challenge " laid down 
 twenty-seven propositions, relating mostly to 
 the Eucharist and Roman usages in the cele- 
 bration of the mass ; and then the preacher 
 declared — " If any learned man of all our adver- 
 saries, or if all the learned men that be alive, be 
 able to bring one sufficient sentence out of any 
 old catholic Doctor, or Father, or out of any 
 old General Council, or out of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures of God," whereby any one of these twenty- 
 seven propositions " may be clearly and plainly 
 proved," then " I am content to yield unto him 
 and subscribe." 2 It is unnecessary here to re- 
 count the propositions laid down as incapable 
 of support from the testimonies of the ancient 
 
 1 After Jewel's consecration as Bishop of Salisbury, 
 this sermon, with the " Challenge " amplified, was repeated 
 before the Court (March 17, 1560), and a fortnight later 
 once again before a general auditory at Paul's Cross. 
 
 2 The twenty-seven propositions may be found in 
 Jewel's Works (P. S.), vol. i. pp. 20, 21 (see also p. 103) ; 
 in Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vi. 293 ; Cardwell's 
 Documentary Annals, i. 254. 
 
22 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Church. It will suffice, if as specimens the two 
 following are given — " That the accidents, or 
 forms, or shews of bread and wine be the sacra- 
 ments of Christ's Body and Blood, and not rather 
 the very bread and wine itself;" and again, "that 
 the sacrament is a sign or token of the Body of 
 Christ that lieth hidden underneath it." 
 
 The gauntlet flung down by Jewel was taken 
 up first by Henry Cole (who had been Dean of 
 St. Paul's in Queen Mary's time), and afterwards 
 by Thomas Harding, a man of considerable 
 learning and much ability, who had formerly 
 been a Fellow of New College, and Professor of 
 Hebrew, in the University of Oxford, and was 
 now at Louvain, where he had the assistance 
 of many capable Roman Catholic theologians. 
 Jewel replied to both antagonists ; and the 
 exhaustive examination of Harding's Answer 
 (1564) occupies a considerable part of two large 
 volumes of the Parker Society's edition of Jewel's 
 Works} 
 
 The title-page of the " Challenge Sermon " 
 bears upon it two mottoes which set forth the 
 central thought — the appeal to antiquity. First 
 stands the sentence from Tertullian, " Praejudi- 
 
 1 In the reign of Edward VI. Harding had been vio- 
 lent on the side of the Reformers. More particularly he 
 assailed "the paper walls and painted fires of purgatory," 
 and " wished his voice had been equal to the great bell of 
 Osney that he might ring in the dull ears of the deaf 
 Papists." See Overall's " Dedication," prefixed to the 
 folio editions (1609 and 161 1) of Jewel's Works. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 23 
 
 catum est ad versus omnes hasreses : id est verum 
 quodcunque primum ; id est adulterum quod- 
 cunque posterius ; " and then follows the familiar 
 clause of the Nicene canon, e6r\ ap^ma Kpareiro. 
 And, whatever may now be thought of the success 
 of Jewel's challenge as regards every particular 
 of his series of propositions, the general principle 
 of the appeal to antiquity, and (to be consistent 
 with Tertullian's dictum) to the earliest antiquity, 
 has been commonly adopted and urged by the 
 greatest Anglican divines. In the days of Jewel 
 the so-called " theory of development " had not 
 been devised, and Rome was then as eager 
 as England to claim the testimony of an- 
 tiquity on her behalf. But neither in this nor 
 in his subsequent discussions does Jewel ever 
 swerve from the position that the Holy Scrip- 
 tures are the ultimate standard of doctrine. The 
 Fathers may help in guiding us to the sense of 
 Scripture, but it is in that light we must regard 
 them. Noti sunt domini sed duces nostri. 
 
 The " Challenge Sermon " was followed in 
 1562 by the work of Jewel with which his 
 name and fame are most commonly associated, 
 and which has taken the place of a classic in 
 the literature of English theology — the Apologia 
 Ecclesice Atiglicance. This small treatise, which 
 the author describes as " a little book in the 
 Latin tongue, . . . containing the whole 
 substance of the catholic faith, now professed 
 and freely preached in England," immediately 
 
24 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 attracted general attention. It was translated 
 into English, 1 Italian, Spanish, French, German, 
 Greek, and Welsh, and in its original Latin 
 form it was republished on the Continent. It 
 was the first clear and full statement of the 
 faith of the reformed Church of England ; and 
 the English Church did not hesitate to submit it 
 to the judgment of the world. But no testimony 
 to the importance attached at the time to this work 
 can be so impressive as this, that the Council of 
 Trent is said to have appointed two learned pre- 
 lates to furnish a reply to it — a reply, it may 
 be added, which never saw the light. 
 
 The first part of the Apology claims that the 
 Church of England "has returned to the Apostles 
 and the old catholic Fathers," in opposition to 
 the Roman contention that she had lapsed into 
 heresy. The second part sets forth the essential 
 faith of the Church of England, following the 
 lines of the Nicene Creed on the subjects of the 
 Trinity and the Incarnation. He goes on to 
 assert the independence of the national Church, 
 denying that the Bishop of Rome hath any 
 more jurisdiction over the Church at large than 
 
 1 By Lady Anne Bacon, wife of the Lord Keeper, and 
 mother of Lord Chancellor Bacon. This learned lady 
 sent a copy of her translation to Jewel, accompanied with 
 a letter in Greek. According to Strype {Life and Acts of 
 Matthew Paffcer, i. 357) an English version had appeared 
 as early as 1562. The translation of Lady Bacon ap- 
 peared in 1564, with a commendatory letter from the pen 
 of Archbishop Parker. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 25 
 
 the Patriarch of Antioch, or the Patriarch of 
 Alexandria. We receive all the canonical 
 Scriptures. They are " the very sure and infal- 
 lible rule whereby may be tried whether the 
 Church doth stagger or err, and whereunto all 
 ecclesiastical doctrines ought to be called to 
 account." It is unnecessary to follow in detail 
 Jewel's further statement of the Anglican posi- 
 tion, and his telling replies to Roman objections. 
 It must suffice here to cite his answer to those 
 who were then urging — even as certain persons 
 have ever since been wont to urge — the evils of 
 religious strife. " To have peace with man we 
 will not be at war with God. ' Sweet indeed 
 is the name of peace,' saith Hilary, 'but peace,' 
 saith he, ' is one thing, bondage is another.' " 
 And entirely appropriate to some schemes for 
 reunion with Rome, which have been ventilated 
 in our own day, are the words of Jewel, where 
 he declares that the Bishop of Rome will make 
 no other league with us than such as, of old time, 
 Nahash, king of the Ammonites, would make 
 with the men of Jabesh. "On this condition 
 will I make a covenant with you, that I may 
 thrust out all your right eyes." 
 
 As it had been in the case of the " Challenge 
 Sermon," so now in the case of the " Apology," 
 among several inferior antagonists the able and 
 zealous Harding stands out pre-eminent in his 
 Confutation (1565). Jewel found in Harding a 
 foeman worthy of his steel ; and in the elaborate 
 
26 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Defence of the Apology we find Jewel at his 
 best. It is a work which displays great powers 
 of argument and an extraordinary wealth of 
 patristic learning. 1 The struggle between the 
 two combatants was carried on with a keenness 
 and persistence to which there is no parallel in 
 recent times. Point after point is fought with a 
 vigour and determination that may well excite 
 wonder. Harding's violent and ferocious invec- 
 tive, touched as it would seem with something 
 of personal animosity, is not in his case a sign 
 of weakness ; but it contrasts unfavourably with 
 the prevailing self-possession and dignity of 
 Jewel, who is but seldom betrayed into return- 
 ing railing for railing, contenting himself with 
 exhibiting, with sarcastic humour, in the forefront 
 of his book, long lists of the choicest specimens 
 of his antagonist's scurrility, which he entitles 
 " Principal Flowers of M. Harding's Modest 
 Speech." 2 
 
 It may be frankly admitted that in this pro- 
 longed debate, Jewel, as well as his opponent, 
 misses at times the sense of the authors whom 
 
 1 The rather perplexing bibliography of the various 
 stages of the controversy is discussed in the Preface to 
 Dr. Jelf's edition of Jewel, and in the Parker Society's 
 edition, iv., p. xxvii. 
 
 2 Such as " thieves," <; liars," " apostates," " limbs of 
 Antichrist," " Satan's brood," " Bark until your bellies 
 break, ye hell-hounds of Zuinglius, and Luther's litter," 
 
 Rail until your tongues burn in your heads in hell 
 fire," etc., etc. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 27 
 
 he cites, and at times alleges authorities that will 
 not sustain the weight of argument he constructs 
 upon them. Both combatants, again, were 
 exposed to the danger of quoting as genuine, 
 writings which, in the light of more information 
 and a keener criticism, have since been questioned, 
 discredited, or set aside as spurious. Other 
 errors incident to the scholarship of the period 
 can hardly be reckoned as discreditable. Thus, 
 when Jewel rightly refuses to acknowledge the 
 Apostolical Constitutions to be the work of St. 
 Clement of Rome (as Harding had alleged), he 
 puts forward among his reasons for so doing, 
 one that must now be abandoned. " The reader, 
 be he never so simple," writes Jewel, " cannot 
 believe that a Bishop of Rome wrote his books 
 in Greek and not in Latin." 1 Jewel, again, fights 
 hard for the truth of the mediaeval story of 
 " Pope Joan." But whatever may now be 
 thought of this curious legend (and the last 
 word has not yet been said), it was certainly no 
 Protestant invention, but had obtained general 
 credence for many years before the Reformation ; 
 indeed, it would seem that it had never been 
 seriously questioned till the time of Luther. 
 With much less excuse, for the forgery had been 
 amply exposed, Harding accepts as genuine the 
 " Donation of Constantine," and makes much 
 of it in his argument. 
 
 It was all but inevitable at the time, but it 
 1 Works (P. S.), i. pp. 108 and in. 
 
28 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 is, nevertheless, a sad feature of these early 
 debates, that both parties sought to widen rather 
 than diminish the breach between them. Every 
 difference is amplified and insisted on. Even 
 on questions where a little mutual explanation 
 would have shown that there was no irreconcil- 
 able contrariety, the desire seems to have been 
 to emphasize every smallest divergence of ex- 
 pression. A better spirit in this respect showed 
 itself, as we shall see, in many of the contro- 
 versialists of the next century ; indeed, before 
 the close of the sixteenth century it is apparent 
 in Hooker. 
 
 But whatever may be the deficiencies or 
 occasional errors of Jewel in detail, his Defence 
 of the Apology is indeed a great work, and, 
 taken as a whole, is a masterly and triumphant 
 vindication of the Anglican position. 1 
 
 Jewel was certainly the most learned theo- 
 logian who had yet appeared in the reformed 
 Church of England ; and from his copious stores 
 later controversialists have freely drawn. It 
 would be wearisome to quote the numerous 
 testimonies to his commanding powers. It may 
 suffice if we recite two — first, the words of a great 
 contemporary, and then those of a capable and 
 judicious critic of recent times. "Jewel," wrote 
 
 1 As late as 1610, Archbishop Bancroft directed that 
 every parish should procure a copy of Jewel's collected 
 Works — the folio printed by Norton (1609). See Card- 
 well's Documentary Annals, ii. 127. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 2 9 
 
 Hooker, " was the worthiest divine that Christen- 
 dom hath bred for some hundreds of years." 1 
 Not England only, but Christendom ; it is a bold 
 utterance, but he would be presumptuous who 
 would lightly declare it to be extravagant. 
 From our own century we draw the second 
 testimony. " Jewel," wrote a competent judge, 2 
 " was a man of matchless learning, which he 
 nevertheless wields, ponderous as it is, like a 
 plaything ; of a most polished wit ; a style, 
 whether Latin or English, the most pure and 
 expressive, such as argues a precision in the 
 character of his ideas, and a lucid order in the 
 arrangement of them, quite his own." Certainly, 
 the writings of no private doctor of the Church 
 of England have so nearly attained the authori- 
 tative position of symbolical books. 3 
 
 Jewel died in 1 57 1 , before he had attained the 
 age of fifty. Shortly before his death, the 
 battle between England and Rome, which had 
 previously extended along the whole line of 
 controversy, became suddenly concentrated to 
 a single point, around which the struggle lasted 
 for some years, and which continued to be a 
 
 1 E. P. II. vi. 4. 
 
 2 J. J. Blunt (afterwards Lady Margaret Professor of 
 Divinity at Cambridge) in his Sketch of the Reformation 
 in England, p. 305. 
 
 3 The esteem in which Jewel was held by a long 
 succession of our great divines, of all schools, is exhibited 
 in the Quarterly Review, vol. lxix. 476-7. 
 
3o 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 frequent topic of discussion till well on into the 
 next century. In the year 1570, Pope Pius 
 V. published the Bull, Regnans in excelsis, in 
 which he excommunicated Queen Elizabeth, and 
 pronounced her deprived of any pretended 
 right to the kingdom of England, and every 
 other dominion, dignity, and privilege whatso- 
 ever. By the same Bull, her subjects were 
 absolved from their allegiance, and commanded, 
 under penalty of anathema, not to presume to 
 yield obedience to any of her laws or commands. 
 The civil consequences of this act of the Pope 
 do not here concern us ; but there was brought 
 immediately into prominence a question for the 
 theologians — " Does the Pope possess the right 
 to depose civil rulers ? " 
 
 One of the last, if not the very last, of Jewel's 
 writings, was a careful examination of the text 
 of the papal pronouncement. After his manner, 
 he examines it clause by clause, and considers 
 not only the reasons alleged for the condemn- 
 ation of the Queen, but, what is much more 
 important, the value of the claim to authority 
 for pronouncing it. 
 
 The reign of Elizabeth was marked by a 
 series of political intrigues, designed and pro- 
 moted by the Romanists. It was, indeed, only 
 natural that Romanists should look with grief 
 upon the alienation of England ; and it was not 
 to be wondered at that they . made desperate 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 31 
 
 efforts for the recovery of the country to papal 
 subjection. In 1568 William Allen, afterwards 
 Cardinal, a man of learning and untiring energy, 
 founded at Douai a college designed for the 
 education of Englishmen for the priesthood. 
 The students were pledged to return, if required, 
 to England for the conversion of the heretics. 
 The college at Douai (subsequently removed to 
 Rheims) became a centre of literary activity, 
 vehemently hostile to the Anglican Church. 
 Controversial books were there printed and 
 secretly transmitted to England. By and by 
 Jesuits, and " seminary priests," as they were 
 called, who had been trained at Douai or 
 Rheims, made their way across the Channel, 
 and, at the risk of their lives and liberties, aided 
 in dispersing the literature of the Roman party. 
 Replies to this literature occupied the attention 
 of several of the English divines. The stringent 
 laws against " popish recusants, v and against the 
 seminarists and Jesuits, needed to be supple- 
 mented by a reasoned defence of the English 
 Church. The deliberate design to assassinate 
 the Queen, promoted, as it appears, by Parsons 
 and Allen (afterwards rewarded for his zeal on 
 behalf of his faith with a cardinal's hat) only 
 established more firmly the detestation of Rome 
 in the hearts of the English people. But these 
 things set men thinking on the justice of the 
 Pope's claim to the right of deposing princes. 
 Further, any disposition there may have been to 
 
32 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 show some measure of indulgence to Roman 
 Catholics was enormously embarrassed by the 
 currency of the belief that the Pope would 
 absolve from the obligations of the most solemn 
 oath of allegiance. The questions thus raised 
 were investigated with much care and great 
 ability by a theologian to whom the Church of 
 England is indebted, as we shall afterwards see, 
 for more than one important contribution to 
 sacred learning. This was Thomas Bilson, then 
 W arden of Winchester, and afterwards Bishop, 
 successively, of Worcester and of Winchester, 
 who in i 585 published the volume entitled The 
 Trite Difference between Christian Subjection and 
 un- Christian Rebellion. 1 This work discusses at 
 length the religious basis of the mutual relations 
 of civil rulers and their subjects, and deals 
 more particularly (Part III.) with the reasons 
 alleged by Allen (in his Defence of English 
 Catholics) in support of the Pope's right and 
 power to deprive princes. The Pope's claim to 
 this power has never, it is true, been repudiated 
 or formally withdrawn ; but the comparative 
 insignificance of the Papacy of recent times, as 
 a factor in the politics of nations, gives the 
 controversy in our eyes a somewhat remote and 
 old-world air. Yet, we must remember, the 
 controversy was in the highest sense vital and 
 practical in the England of Elizabeth. 
 
 1 Oxford, 4to. A second edition appeared in 1586, 
 London, 8vo, to which the references are here made. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 33 
 
 The papal claim to the right of deposing 
 princes is based upon the alleged supremacy of 
 the Bishop of Rome over all Christians ; and it 
 may be observed, by the way, that it is only 
 Christian princes who theoretically possess the 
 privilege of being capable of deposition by the 
 Pope. This alleged power of the Pope is thus 
 based ultimately on our Lord's promises to St. 
 Peter. One is only too familiar in theological 
 writings with amusing processes of (so-called) 
 reasoning which figure as legitimate logical 
 deductions ; yet none of them perhaps are more 
 deserving of ridicule than the argument from 
 Scripture for the Pope's power to deprive 
 princes. 
 
 Bilson's treatise has, however, another claim 
 on the attention of students of the history of 
 religious opinion in England. It is much 
 occupied with an inquiry into the difficult 
 practical problem as to when resistance to a 
 legitimate ruler is morally lawful. Bilson's 
 general conclusion, insisted on with much 
 elaboration, is that subjects are morally bound to 
 obey their hereditary princes, or, if conscience for- 
 bids this in any particular case, to suffer patiently 
 for conscience' sake. In fact we have already in 
 Bilson, in a fairly well-developed form, the 
 doctrines of " the divine right of kings " and of 
 " passive obedience," which came to figure so 
 largely in later controversies. But exceptions 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 and qualifications of these doctrines were allowed 
 by Bilson, which, whether rightly or wrongly 
 understood, were afterwards made much of by 
 the Puritan party in the days of the great 
 rebellion. 1 
 
 It was not till the next century that we find 
 the patriarchal theory of the origin of govern- 
 ment, with its doctrine of the absolute and divine 
 authority of hereditary princes, grown to its full 
 
 1 An extract from Bilson's work was printed off in 164.1, 
 and may be found in Lord Somers' Collection of Scarce 
 and Valuable Tracts. It contains the following passage : 
 " Neither will I rashly pronounce all that resist to be 
 rebels : cases may fall out even in Christian kingdoms 
 where the people may plead their rights against the 
 prince and not be charged with rebellion. ... If a prince 
 should go about to subject his kingdom to a foreign realm, 
 or change the form of the commonwealth from impery to 
 tyranny, or neglect the laws established by common 
 consent of prince and people to execute his own pleasure ; 
 in these and other cases which might be named, if the 
 nobles and commons join together to defend their ancient 
 and accustomed liberty, regiment and laws, they may not 
 well be counted rebels." Perhaps not very consistently 
 Bilson adds that even in such cases an hereditary prince, 
 though he maybe " reformed,' - must not be "deposed. 1 ' 
 Anthony Wood considers that "There is not any book that 
 the Presbyterians have made more dangerous use of against 
 their prince than that which his predecessor [Elizabeth] 
 commanded to be written to justify her against the King of 
 Spain." [Athen. Oxon.) In the eighteenth century Jeremy 
 Collier, representing the sentiments of the nonjurors, con- 
 siders that even this moderate statement " gives a danger- 
 ous latitude to subjects." (Eccl. Hist., vii. 387.) 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 35 
 
 development, and receiving the general assent of 
 Anglican divines. 1 
 
 The Fourth Part of Bilson's work is devoted 
 to showing that the English Reformation was 
 " warranted by the word of God and the ancient 
 faith of Christ's Church." He traverses much 
 the same ground as Jewel, but presents his 
 authorities and arguments in a briefer and more 
 popular form. The pages dealing with the 
 Roman doctrines of "the real presence" and 
 "the sacrifice " in the mass are specially worthy of 
 study. Bilson sees, more correctly than Jewel, 
 that the language of the ancient canon of the 
 mass, so far from supporting the modern Roman 
 doctrine of the sacrifice, is in reality suggestive 
 that that doctrine was unknown when the canon 
 was composed. And he observes in a pregnant 
 sentence that in the Eucharist Christ is crucified 
 in the selfsame sort that He is sacrificed, " that 
 is, both in mystery [z. c. symbol], neither in sub- 
 stance." The student of the Eucharistic contro- 
 versy knows that a crucial and test question for 
 
 1 See Canon II. in the volume known as Bishop 
 Overall's Convocation Book, and more particularly 
 Canon I. of the Canons of 1640. It is to be lamented that 
 so many of our divines associated themselves with a 
 political theory which at best is merely conjectural, and 
 which alienated from the Church a large number of able 
 and right-thinking men. To most English Churchmen 
 of our own time the doctrines on this subject of Aquinas 
 and Suarez will probably seem much more reasonable than 
 those of our Jacobean and Caroline theologians. 
 
36 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 determining the position of any writer on this 
 subject is this — " Are the true Body and Blood 
 of Christ received by the mouth ? " Bilson's 
 position may be seen from this reply — " The 
 signs, which are called after consecration by the 
 names of Christ's Body and Blood, do enter our 
 mouths and pass our throats : the true Flesh 
 and Blood of Christ do not." (p. 762.) 
 
 This work of Bilson is cast in the form of a 
 dialogue between Philander (a Romanist) and 
 Theophilus (an English Churchman). It is not 
 infrequent to find in controversies presented by 
 way of dialogue very weak arguments put into 
 the mouth of the opponent, and men of straw set 
 up to be easily knocked down. But in the present 
 case P Inlander s authorities and arguments are 
 drawn for the most part from the best Romish 
 controversialists of the day, and generally in 
 their very words. 
 
 It remains to be added that Bilson's style is 
 clear, animated, and vigorous, and that, except- 
 ing Jewel, none of the sixteenth-century writers 
 on the Roman controversy is more deserving 
 than Bilson of careful study. 
 
 The great work of Hooker (to be noticed 
 more fully in the next Lecture) was primarily 
 designed to meet attacks upon the Church of 
 England from another quarter. But it was 
 impossible for him to deal with the assaults of 
 the Puritan party without occasionally touching 
 upon questions in the dispute with Rome. In 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 37 
 
 respect to several points of doctrine it was 
 attempted by the Puritans to discredit the 
 Anglican position by identifying the teaching 
 of the English Church with that of Rome. 
 Hooker therefore was compelled to reply to 
 these charges. And here, as elsewhere, we look 
 with ever-growing wonder and admiration at 
 the calm, broad, self-possessed sanity of his 
 judgment at a time when the prevailing ani- 
 mosity against Rome was keenly accentuated 
 and extravagance of statement was only too 
 common. 
 
 In our day it may be easy, in Hooker's day it 
 was not easy, to make such an equitable and 
 dignified statement as we find in the Ecclesias- 
 tical Polity (V. xxviii. i) : — "To say that in 
 nothing they may be followed which are of the 
 Church of Rome were violent and extreme. 
 Some things they do in that they are men, in 
 that they are wise and Christian men some 
 things, some things in that they are men misled 
 and blinded with error. As far as they follow 
 reason and truth, we fear not to tread the self- 
 same steps wherein they have gone, and to be 
 their followers. Where Rome keepeth that 
 which is ancienter and better, others whom we 
 more affect leaving it for newer and changing it 
 for worse ; we had rather follow the perfections 
 of them whom we like not, than in defects 
 resemble them whom we love." 
 
 To the question, " Is the Roman communion 
 
38 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 part of the visible Church of Christ ? " Hooker 
 answers in the affirmative, because Rome retains 
 " those things which supernaturally appertain to 
 the very essence of Christianity." " Touching 
 those main parts of Christian truth wherein they 
 constantly persist, we gladly acknowledge them 
 to be of the family of Christ ; and our hearty 
 prayer unto Almighty God is, that being con- 
 joined so far forth with them, they may at length 
 (if it be His will) so yield to frame and reform 
 themselves that no distraction remain in anything, 
 but that we ' all ma)' with one heart and one 
 mouth glorify God the Father of our Lord and 
 Saviour' whose Church we are." {E. P. III. i. 
 n). In the meanwhile "sundry her gross and 
 grievous abominations " forbid our approach to 
 Rome. 
 
 Hooker's view of the sacraments is too well 
 known to require any lengthened exposition 
 here. It may suffice to recall to mind a few 
 characteristic sentences. " The substance of the 
 Body of Christ hath no presence, neither can 
 have, but only local." Christ's Body " being a 
 part of that human nature which is presently 
 joined unto Deity, wheresoever Deity is, it 
 followeth that His bodily substance hath every- 
 where a presence of true conjunction with 
 Deity." It has thus "a presence of force and 
 efficicy through all generations." But, "if on 
 all sides it is confessed that the grace of baptism 
 is poured into the soul of man, — that by water 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 39 
 
 we receive it, though it be neither seated, in the 
 water, nor the water changed into it, — what 
 should induce men to think that the grace of 
 the Eucharist must needs be in the Eucharist 
 before it can be in us that receive it ? " " As 
 Christ is called our life because through Him we 
 obtain life, so the parts of this sacrament are His 
 Body and Blood for that they are so to us, who 
 receiving them receive that by them which they 
 are termed." "The real presence of Christ's most 
 blessed Body and Blood is not to be sought for 
 in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of 
 the Sacrament." 1 
 
 As bearing on the sacrificial aspects of the 
 Eucharist, it may be noted that Hooker declares 
 that " sacrifice is now no part of the Church 
 ministry." In reply to the question, " How 
 should the name of priesthood be thereunto 
 rightly applied ? " he tells us that the name is 
 applied only by way of analogy, " in regard of 
 that which the Gospel hath proportionable to 
 ancient sacrifices, namely the Communion of 
 the blessed Body and Blood of Christ, although 
 it have properly now no sacrifice. ... In truth 
 the word Presbyter doth seem more fit, and in 
 propriety of speech more agreeable than Priest 
 with the drift of the whole Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ. . . . The Holy Ghost, throughout the 
 body of the New Testament, making so much 
 mention of them, doth not anywhere call them 
 1 See E. P. V. lv. and lxvii. 
 
40 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Priests." But as to the name Hooker is indif- 
 ferent. " Let them use what dialect they will ; 
 whether we call it a Priesthood, a Presbytership, 
 or a Ministry, it skilleth not." 1 
 
 Lastly, we may observe that Hooker discusses 
 at length the Roman doctrine of sacramental 
 absolution, and concludes, in direct opposition 
 to it, that the absolution pronounced by the 
 priest is as regards sin solely declaratory. It 
 does not take away sin, but only pronounces 
 that God has taken it away. As regards eccle- 
 siastical censures, however, it " looseth the chains 
 wherewith we were tied." 2 
 
 However little we may agree with the views 
 here expressed in a history of theological 
 opinion, the great reputation attached to 
 Hooker's name may be thought sufficient to 
 justify these references to his judgments on 
 these points. 
 
 In the later part of the reign of Elizabeth 
 a minor controversy of much interest occupied 
 much attention among scholars. It is with 
 regret that it is found necessary to deal with 
 it here in mere outline. The indisposition of 
 
 1 See E. P. V. Ixxviii. Waterland {Works, V. p. 140, 
 edit. 1843) conjectures that the meaning of Hooker is that 
 the Gospel has now no sacrifice, understood in the sense 
 of the Council of Trent. "But," he adds, "I commend 
 not the use of such new language, be the meaning never 
 so right ; the Fathers never used it." 
 
 2 See E. P. VI. vi. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 41 
 
 Romanists to give the people the Holy Scrip- 
 tures in the mother tongue was practically- 
 overcome by the necessities of circumstance. 
 The Bible in English was already wide-spread 
 throughout the country. To counteract the evil 
 it was supposed to do, it was resolved by the 
 Seminarist leaders to put out a version of their 
 own, made, however, not from the originals but 
 from " the authentical Latin " of the Vulgate. 
 This version was accompanied, as the title sets 
 forth, by "annotations and other necessary helps 
 for the better understanding of the text." The 
 New Testament, printed at Rheims, appeared 
 in 1582. Both the version itself and the notes 
 (many of them of a highly controversial cha- 
 racter) are subjects of frequent comment and 
 discussion in the writings of Anglican divines 
 of the period. In the same year in which the 
 Rhemish Testament saw the light, Gregory 
 Martin, formerly a Fellow of St. John's College, 
 Oxford, a man of considerable attainments in 
 Greek and Hebrew, who had joined the Roman 
 Church and was now a lecturer in the Seminary 
 abroad, published an attack on the accuracy 
 of the earlier English authorized translations. 
 This, besides serving other purposes, was meant 
 to further the interests of the new Romish 
 version. 
 
 The Anglican theologians were not slow in 
 replying. In the following year (1583) Dr. 
 William Fulke (f r 589), Master of Pembroke 
 
42 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Hall, Cambridge, issued his Defence of the 
 Translations of the Holy Scriptures into the 
 English tongue. Martin had contended that 
 the English heretics had falsely translated the 
 Scriptures " of purpose." He accused them of 
 deliberate bad faith, and in support of the 
 charge alleged a large number of instances. 
 Fulke answered in detail ; and some years later 
 (1589) he carried the war into the enemy's 
 camp by attacking the Rhemish version both 
 in its text and its controversial notes. Setting 
 aside the imputation of mala fides, there can 
 be no question that Martin pointed out several 
 errors, many of which were afterwards cor- 
 rected in the "Authorised Version" of 161 1. 1 
 Much use was in the next century made of 
 Martin's book by Thomas Ward, who in the 
 reign of James II. produced his Errata of the 
 Protestant Bible, a work which has been fre- 
 quently reprinted. 2 Historical students of the 
 English versions of the Scriptures will find 
 much that is valuable and entertaining in 
 these controversies ; but they now possess for 
 us only a literary interest. It may be left to 
 all candid students to judge whether the desire 
 
 1 Thomas Cartwright, the " T. C." of Hooker's Ecclesi- 
 astical Polity, also wrote at this time in reply to Martin ; 
 but his work was not published till 1618. 
 
 2 Ward is also known to the curious by his scurrilous 
 verses on the English Reformation, written in the style of 
 Hudibras. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 43 
 
 of the Anglican communion in our own clay 
 is not to offer to the English reader in his 
 mother tongue the full and true meaning of 
 the original text of the Scriptures, as presented 
 by the best lights of modern scholarship. 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 The Anglican and Puritan positions — The Apparel con- 
 troversy — Attack on the constitution of the Church — 
 The two Admonitions to Parliament — Whitgift and 
 Cartwright — The Mar-prelate Tracts — Bilson's Per- 
 petual Government of the Church — Hooker — Calvinism 
 in the Church of England — Whitaker and Baron — The 
 decay of Calvinism — Broughton and Bilson on the 
 Descent into Hell — Davenant. 
 
 THE Church of England, so far as regards its 
 constitution, organization, and external frame- 
 work, came out of the great struggle of the reigns 
 of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. substantially 
 unchanged, save only in one particular, — the 
 repudiation of the jurisdiction of the Bishop of 
 Rome. The historical continuity of the Church 
 was untouched and inviolate. Its form of 
 government, its maintenance of the historical 
 episcopate, its conciliar assemblies were main- 
 tained. It presented indeed a unique figure 
 among the reformed churches of Europe. 
 
 W hen England began to adjust herself after 
 the struggle there immediately were manifested 
 44 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 45 
 
 among English churchmen two well-marked 
 and divergent tendencies ; and as time went on 
 the distinction and divergence became more 
 noticeable. These tendencies we may, for con- 
 venience, designate the Anglican and the Puritan 
 tendencies. The first of these showed itself in 
 a general disposition conservative of existing 
 order, doctrine, and usage, except where they 
 manifestly appeared to be abuses of the apostolic 
 teaching and primitive practice. The second 
 showed itself in a desire for an entire recon- 
 struction from the very foundation of the 
 Church's faith, order, and discipline. The typical 
 Puritan took up the Bible as if, like the image 
 that fell down from Jupiter, it had suddenly 
 dropped from the sky; and as if he were called 
 upon, then and there, to construct from it a new 
 religion and a new scheme of life. He set 
 himself, as if he were the firstborn on the earth 
 and none had lived before him, to discover in its 
 pages a body of doctrine, a system of Church 
 government, a rule of divine worship, a rule of 
 conduct. The typical Anglican believed that 
 Christ had founded a living Church, guided by 
 His Spirit, and that that Church, however much 
 enfeebled by error and corruption, had lived 
 through the ages. The garden enclosed, which 
 was committed to his care, had indeed been 
 overgrown by noxious weeds that choked the 
 good seeds of God's planting. But the necessary 
 weeding he sought to accomplish with care and 
 
4 6 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 discrimination. 1 The Puritan uprooted his 
 whole inheritance, passed the ploughshare 
 through it, and sought to begin afresh. It 
 seemed a plan at once simple and thorough. A 
 hundred difficulties on the other hand beset the 
 Anglican reformers ; and it may be acknowledged 
 that the work was accomplished with results not 
 wholly satisfactory. Who will venture to say 
 that some wholesome plants that in after-time 
 might have borne good fruit were not over- 
 hastily dragged up ; and who will venture to 
 say that at the time no obscure evil weeds 
 escaped notice, which have since gone to seed 
 and spread ? But, estimated as a whole, the 
 results of the conservative, as opposed to the 
 revolutionary methods of ecclesiastical reform 
 have justified themselves. The growth of the 
 Anglican Communion ; its inherent and strong 
 vitality, and its remarkable power of adaptation 
 to a varied habitat and varied surroundings ; its 
 constant touch with what is practical ; its large 
 measure of intellectual freedom ; its moderation 
 and broad sanity of judgment ; its manifold 
 appeals to all sorts and conditions of men, gentle 
 and simple, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, 
 cultured and homely; these are facts which 
 
 1 "I make no doubt," wrote Bramhall {Works, i. 113, 
 A. C. L.), " that the Church of England before the Reform- 
 ation and the Church of England after the Reformation 
 are as much the same Church, as a garden before it is 
 weeded and after it is weeded is the same garden." 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 47 
 
 cannot be set aside, and which now justify the 
 actual solution of the problem so perplexing 
 even to wise men in the middle of the sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 In order of time it was on a matter in itself of 
 comparative unimportance — the Church's regu- 
 lations as to clerical apparel — that there first 
 appeared the essential difference between the 
 two parties. But trivial as was the occasion 
 of the controversy, it involved a grave question 
 of principle. Did a national Church possess the 
 right to determine rites, ceremonies, costume, 
 and the externals of divine worship — things 
 acknowledged to be in themselves indifferent ? 
 The wisdom of enforcing the use of the corner- 
 cap, the surplice, or the sign of the cross in 
 baptism does not here concern us. But the 
 individual member cf the Church who rejects 
 these because they are not enjoined in Holy 
 Scripture has wholly failed to grasp the nature 
 of the Church of Christ as a divinely appointed 
 society. 
 
 It need hardly be said that many of the abler 
 men among the anti-vesturists did not attempt 
 to justify their action on grounds so futile. 
 They based their refusal to comply with the 
 ordinances promulgated by authority on the 
 moral obligation that attaches to what is ex- 
 pedient. They were so strongly convinced of 
 the evil that would grow out of the retention 
 of apparel associated in the popular mind with 
 
48 
 
 TADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Romish superstition that they declined to obey. 
 These private persons, some of them good and 
 able men, set their judgment against that of 
 those in authority. They were examples of a 
 spirit that is impatient of the restraint of authority 
 and would fain be a law unto itself. Illustrations 
 of a similar temper in a quarter commonly 
 placed at the very opposite pole to Puritanism 
 have not been unknown among the English 
 clergy in our own day. 1 
 
 The controversy as to clerical apparel was 
 followed by a daring attack upon the episcopal 
 constitution of the Church. Many of the Marian 
 exiles had been fascinated by the simplicity and 
 supposed scripturalness of the Genevan model 
 of Church government. That the bishops, though 
 often against their inclinations, were the instru- 
 ments for enforcing the laws as to ritual con- 
 formity, helped to accentuate the growing dislike 
 to the hierarchy. In 1572 there issued from the 
 press the first important manifesto of the Puritan 
 party. It was the outcome of private confer- 
 ences among the leaders, held in London, where 
 nonconformity was rife ; and its drift is ex- 
 pressed in its full title, which runs as follows : — ■ 
 
 1 The sagacious Archbishop Parker, writing to the 
 Lord Treasurer, probably represents the view of the 
 wiser of the Anglicans : " Does your Lordship think that 
 I care either for cap, tippet, surplice, or wafer-bread, or 
 any such ? But for the laws so established I esteem 
 them." Strype's Parker, iii. 332. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 49 
 
 An admonition to the Parliament. A view of 
 popish abuses yet remaining in the EnglisJi Church, 
 for the which godly ministers have refused to sub- 
 scribe. The immediate cause of its publication 
 was the Act, passed in the Parliament of the 
 preceding year, enforcing subscription to the 
 Articles of Religion. The writers declared that 
 hitherto they had borne with that in the Book 
 of Common Prayer which they could not amend, 
 and had used it " so far forth as they might " ; 
 but now they were called upon to declare that 
 it was " not against the word of God in any 
 point." This they could not do, for they be- 
 lieved that " some and many of the contents 
 therein be such as are against the word of God." 
 It was a book, they said, "culled and picked 
 out of the popish dunghill, the portuise and 
 mass-book full of all abominations." The " pon- 
 tifical," or ordinal, they treat in a similar style. 
 " As safely may we, by the warrant of God's 
 word, subscribe to allow the dominion of the 
 Pope universally to rule over the word of God, 
 as of an archbishop over a whole province, or of 
 a lord bishop over a diocese which containcth 
 many shires and parishes." The government of 
 the English hierarchy is briefly described as 
 " anti-christian and devilish, and contrary to 
 the Scriptures." They make comparatively light 
 of the question of apparel (though they maintain 
 that " there is neither order, nor comeliness, nor 
 obedience in using it "), and declare that the 
 
59 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 "great matters" are concerning "the regiment 
 and government of the Church according to the 
 word." This was shortly after followed up by 
 "A Second Admonition" m which the bishops are 
 described as " no other than a remnant of Anti- 
 christ's brood." 1 The first Admonition rapidly 
 passed through four editions. John Whitgift 
 (1530 — 1604), then Dean of Lincoln, who had 
 held various high offices in the colleges and in 
 the University of Cambridge, 2 was called on to 
 reply to it ; and there soon (1572) appeared An 
 answer to a certain libel, intitled an Admonition 
 to the Parliament. 
 
 Thomas Cartwright (? 1535 — 1603) was by far 
 the ablest exponent of the Puritan principles. 
 He had been a Fellow of St. John's, and Lady 
 Margaret Professor, at Cambridge. He was a 
 man of learning as well as of zeal ; and his ad- 
 mirable English style was well fitted to add to 
 the favour with which his writings were received. 
 He issued a Reply (1573) to Whitgift, who re- 
 joined in a Defence of the Answer (1574). The 
 controversy brought out distinctly the absolute 
 irreconcilableness of Puritanism with Anglican 
 principles. 
 
 The overshadowing greatness of Hooker, deal- 
 
 1 The Second Admonition is generally regarded as 
 Cartwright's work. 
 
 2 Master of Pembroke, Master of Trinity, Lady Mar- 
 garet Professor, Regius Professor of Divinity, Vice- 
 Chancellor. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 51 
 
 ing with the same subject, has in later times 
 obscured the considerable merits of Whitgift. 
 He deals with his opponent in the old and 
 elaborate method of taking up paragraph by 
 paragraph. In the discussion of the detailed 
 objections to the Book of Common Prayer he 
 is often happy, and is particularly effective when 
 he refutes Cartwright out of the writings of 
 Calvin, Zwingle, Beza, Bucer, and Peter Martyr. 
 But what seems now of most interest to observe 
 is that in the principles which guide his com- 
 ment Whitgift is quite at one with Hooker. He 
 asserts " the authority of the Church in things 
 indifferent," and, like Hooker, he is content, 
 as regards Episcopacy, to deny that Scripture 
 " doth set down any certain form and kind of 
 government of the Church to be perpetual for 
 all times and places without alteration." 1 " In 
 matter of order, ceremonies, and government it 
 is sufficient if they be not repugnant to Scrip- 
 ture." 2 Indeed, we know that Hooker availed 
 himself of the judgment of Whitgift before the 
 publication of his great work. 3 And he acknow- 
 ledges that the errors with which he dealt had 
 " received their first wound " from the hand of 
 Whitgift. 4 But between these two vindications 
 of Anglicanism there is the difference that separ- 
 
 1 Works (P. S.), i. 191. 
 
 2 Ibid. 239. 
 
 3 See Keble's Preface to Hooker's Works. 
 
 4 E. P., dedication of Book V. 
 
52 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 ates a work of industry and good sense, written 
 for a special occasion, from an outcome of genius 
 and philosophic insight, wide in its reach and 
 general in its application. As Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, Whitgift came afterwards to play 
 an important part in the Church's history ; but 
 as a contributor to the theological literature of 
 England he cannot be assigned a high place. 
 
 The Martin Mar-prelate tracts are curiosities 
 in an obscure by-path of literature ; but their 
 low and scurrilous buffoonery makes no claim 
 upon one here. The ablest of the Puritan 
 leaders avowed, no doubt with perfect truth, 
 their " mislike and sorrow " at such vile produc- 
 tions. But, nevertheless, there can be no ques- 
 tion that among the unthinking crowd, which in 
 every age heartily enjoys abusive assaults upon 
 the constituted authorities, these ribald libels 
 fostered prejudices and inflamed passions that 
 were not easily allayed. Serious writers could 
 not deal effectively with such productions ; 1 but 
 a wit superior in caustic raillery to any of the 
 Mar-prelate scribblers appeared in the person of 
 Thomas Nash, who replied in like kind. At 
 length the scandal of the embittered strife grew 
 to such a height that it was found advisable to 
 close the controversy by an order of the autho- 
 
 1 The attempt was made by T. C. (Thomas Cooper, 
 Bishop of Winchester) in his Admonition to the People of 
 England (1589), which may be found in Mr. Arber's 
 Reprints. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 53 
 
 rities for the seizure and suppression of the 
 pamphlets on both sides. 1 
 
 Thomas Bilson has already come under our 
 notice in connection with the Roman con- 
 troversy. 2 The controversy with Puritanism 
 drew from him a contribution to our theological 
 literature of the highest value, the work entitled 
 The perpetual government of Christ's Church 
 (1593). 3 In this treatise the claims to scriptural 
 and patristic authority for the institution of 
 " ruling," as distinguished from " teaching," 
 elders (a central and essential element of the 
 ".Genevan platform ") are completely pulverized. 
 The whole figment of the Presbyterian theory 
 of Church government is mercilessly exposed, 
 and the apostolic origin of episcopacy in the 
 sense of a permanent pre-eminence of a single 
 ruler over a body of presbyters is established on 
 historical grounds. This work is well fitted to 
 raise in the mind of the careful student not only 
 a conviction of the apostolic origin of episcopacy 
 as a historical fact, but also a strong presump- 
 
 1 Much valuable bibliographical information will be 
 found in Mr. Arber's Introductory sketch to the Martin 
 Mar-prelate Controi'ersy. See also the earlier work of 
 Mr. Maskell, History of the Martin Mar-prelate Con- 
 troversy, 1843. 
 
 "- See pp. 32—36. 
 
 3 It appeared again in 16 10, and a Latin translation 
 was published in 161 1. The latter contained some 
 additions, which have been reproduced by Rev. Robert 
 Eden in his edition of 1842, Oxford. 
 
54 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 tion against the lawfulness of the competing 
 system. The analogies drawn from " the 
 fatherly superiority" of the patriarchal system, 
 and the gradations of the ministry in the 
 Mosaic law are dwelt upon ; but, of course, the 
 main stress of Bilson's argument proceeds on 
 the grounds of the New Testament history and 
 the unanimous testimony of the ancient Church. 
 Mr. Keble 1 certainly does Bilson's treatise no 
 more than justice, when he describes it as " full 
 of good learning and sound argument, regularly 
 arranged and clearly expressed." It is indeed 
 on the subject discussed a recognized authority, 
 not less valuable to-day than when it was 
 penned. 2 
 
 The commanding eminence of Hooker (1554 
 — 1600), and his place as an acknowledged 
 classic of the first rank in English theology, 
 have made an acquaintance with his works 
 sufficiently wide-spread to spare us the task of 
 attempting here a detailed account of his writ- 
 ings. He is known beyond the circle of students 
 of theology. His English style has given him 
 a high place in general literature. The stately 
 dignity of its movement, the depth and richness 
 of its musical diapason, its variety and flexibility, 
 its rhythmical grace, and its occasional flights 
 of lofty eloquence have secured him a place of 
 
 1 Hooker's Works: Preface, p. lxix. 
 
 2 Eden's excellent edition has one grave defect — it 
 lacks an index. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 55 
 
 permanent honour among the greatest masters 
 of the English tongue. 1 And style, let us 
 remember, is the outcome of the man. It is no 
 artificial bedizenment of thought. It is thought 
 making for itself a body fitted to its needs. It 
 is a vital and intimate union of the immaterial 
 and the material. And apart from the apt 
 conveyance of thought and emotion, it is 
 precious because it reveals to us the thinker 
 himself. Who can rise from the study of 
 Hooker without a sense of a greatness that lies 
 beyond and above such qualities as acuteness of 
 perception, or intellectual force, or imaginative 
 fertility, or learning, or argumentative power? 
 All these are there ; but there is something 
 more. We are conscious of a moral majesty 
 that humbles us. We feel the quickened beat 
 of the writer's heart as he treats of the rev elation 
 of the wisdom and goodness of the Eternal 
 Giver of life and law. We are sensible of. the 
 wide, capacious, all-encircling atmosphere of awe 
 and wonder in which the great thinker lives 
 and moves ; and our admiration passes into 
 reverence. 
 
 The strange levity which mars by its incon- 
 gruity some of the most solemn utterances of 
 his great contemporary, Lancelot Andrewes, is 
 unknown to the writings of Hooker. That he 
 
 1 See a discriminating judgment on Hooker's style 
 in Dean Church's introduction to Book I. of the Laws of 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, edited for the Clarendon Press. 
 
56 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 was not without a sense of humour is plain 
 enough. To be without it is a serious defect 
 in any man. He knows, too, and employs, as 
 occasion demands, the weapon of a lofty irony ; 
 but its use is comparatively rare, and never 
 untimely. Nothing jars us in his sarcasm. 
 Rarely, if ever, does Hooker offend against 
 the spirit of his own golden sentence — " There 
 will come a time when three words uttered with 
 charity and meekness shall receive a far more 
 blessed reward than three thousand volumes 
 written with disdainful sharpness of wit." This 
 is the more remarkable in an age when in con- 
 troversy not merely the courtesies, but even the 
 common decencies of life were too often forgotten. 
 
 The Ecclesiastical Polity has been described as 
 " a monument of real learning in profane as well 
 as theological antiquity." 1 And, we may add, 
 it is learning which, in an age when there were 
 many temptations to display, is without the 
 slightest taint of pedantry. But abounding, as 
 it is, in learning, it is not its learning that gives 
 the Ecclesiastical Polity its pre-eminent dis- 
 tinction. It is to his masterly grasp of funda- 
 mental principles that Hooker owes his abiding 
 influence. From the controversy forced upon 
 him by Walter Travers, his able colleague and 
 rival in the pulpit of the Temple Church, Hooker 
 retired to investigate, and to sound to their 
 lowest depths the great principles involved. 
 
 1 Hallam's Literature of Europe, ii. 42 (sixth edition). 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 57 
 
 The dispute in which he was engaged led him 
 straight to the inquiry into the true basis of 
 law, natural and supernatural, human and divine, 
 its just extent and limitations, its relevancy in 
 various cases, its sanctions. It is probable that 
 the duties required by his office in London were 
 felt to interfere with the quiet demanded for 
 patient research. At any rate, he exchanged 
 the Mastership of the Temple for the obscure 
 country benefice of Boscombe, near Salisbury ; 
 and there after some four years he completed 
 the first four of the eight Books which he had 
 planned to form his great work. It would seem 
 that not less than some six years altogether were 
 devoted to the preparation of this first instal- 
 ment (1593 or 1594) of the Laws of Ecclesiastical 
 Polity. After some four more years the Fifth Book 
 appeared (1597). By the time of his death, at 
 the comparatively early age of forty-seven, the 
 three remaining Books were probably completed. 1 
 In Hooker we have a man of speculative and 
 philosophic genius dealing with problems of 
 thought that possess perennial interest for the 
 human mind. The elaborately detailed defence 
 of the constitution and liturgical forms of the 
 English Church is based upon broad foundations 
 
 1 The literary questions as to the integrity of the three 
 last Books are discussed in Keble's Preface. It is all but 
 certain that the Sixth Book was seriously tampered with 
 by ecclesiastical opponents into whose hands the manu- 
 script had fallen. 
 
53 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 laid with singular care and thoroughness. Not- 
 ably the First Book, but also to a large extent 
 the Second and the Third, are concerned with 
 the fundamental principles that lie at the bases of 
 all polities, whether civil or ecclesiastical. To 
 those who have freshly emerged from the con- 
 troversies of preceding writers the discussion of 
 these elemental truths may seem remote from 
 the business in hand. The controversialist who 
 is eager to score points, and loves the rapid give 
 and take of hand-to-hand encounter, will be 
 very impatient of the deliberate movement by 
 which Hooker secures his strategic position. 
 But Hooker rightly divined that the establish- 
 ment of first principles was essential to his 
 purpose ; and he laboured at his task with a 
 largeness of knowledge and comprehensiveness 
 of judgment that fill one with astonishment 
 and admiration. 
 
 In the subsequent treatment of details we find, 
 with rare exceptions, the same breadth of mind, 
 conjoined with a candour and sense of equity, 
 which makes Hooker a model to all contro- 
 versialists. He would have been more than 
 human if he were not now and then betrayed 
 into what seems to us the faults of the partisan 
 in attempting to defend real deficiencies and 
 errors in then existing ordinances of the Church. 1 
 
 1 See S. T. Coleridge, Notes on English Divines, i. 2 1 ; 
 and Bishop Barry's remarks in Masters in English 
 Theology, p. 19. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 59 
 
 A singular and marked characteristic of 
 Hooker is his ready openness to truth from 
 whatever quarter it might present itself. All 
 through his w ritings we recognize the underlying 
 conviction that God reveals Himself in many 
 ways, and that it is only after weighing the 
 whole mass of varied testimony we may take 
 upon us to pronounce judgment. The natural 
 intelligence and reason of man has its say, and 
 conscience, and Holy Scripture, and human 
 authority, whether expressing itself in the dicta 
 of Greek philosophers, or of Fathers of the 
 Church, or of mediaeval Schoolmen. He is 
 ready to hear these many voices, to test, to 
 judge every contribution of evidence. And he 
 would give to every element its due weight and 
 value. Human authority he respects, but he is 
 not servile in his submission to its utterances. 
 What a man says is of more interest to him 
 than who says it. He never allows his judg- 
 ment to be bullied by great names. After all 
 has been said, he declares, " wise men are men, 
 and the truth is truth." He is in the good sense 
 of the phrase " a rational theologian." Human 
 reason duly informed is the court of ultimate 
 appeal. It is no infallible judge. It is often- 
 times a judge perplexed and doubtful. But, 
 after all, it is the best we can resort to. 
 
 It is from this steady resolve to assume no- 
 thing, to listen patiently to evidence of every 
 kind and from every quarter, to test it, to weigh 
 
6o 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 it and estimate its value, and, only after all this 
 has been done, to sum it up and pronounce his 
 decision, that the epithet "judicious," in its old 
 English meaning of "judicial," is so aptly 
 applied to Richard Hooker. 
 
 The Puritan thesis that Holy Scripture is the 
 sole guide for man in the religious sphere was 
 from the first an impracticable position ; and it 
 has long been tacitly abandoned. The ritual of 
 Protestant nonconformists will not stand the 
 test ; at no time could it stand it ; and practices 
 formerly denounced as " unscriptural " are now 
 being adopted with rapidity in every direction 
 around us. 
 
 On another important question that occupied 
 Hooker's attention, the question of Church 
 government, there has also been a vast change 
 of opinion and sentiment. As to the lay or 
 ruling eldership of the Genevan " platform," 
 there is to-day probably no competent scholar 
 anywhere who will venture to assert that it is of 
 apostolic origin, or jure divino, in the sense of 
 being of direct divine institution. In truth 
 nothing in history is more certain than that the 
 " ruling eldership " is a mere figment devised for 
 the first time in the sixteenth century. As 
 Hooker himself truly observed, " a very strange 
 thing sure it were that such a discipline as ye 
 speak of should be taught by Christ and His 
 apostles in the word of God, and no Church 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 6\ 
 
 ever have found it out, nor received it till this 
 present time." While on the other hand recent 
 investigations into early Church history, con- 
 ducted in a severely scientific spirit, have all 
 gone directly to establish the truth of what we 
 now know to be the strictly accurate historical 
 statement of our Ordinal, " that from the 
 Apostles' time there have been these orders of 
 ministers in Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, 
 and Deacons." 
 
 For the purpose he had in hand Hooker was 
 content at first to maintain that in the matter of 
 Church polity, as in the matter of ceremonial 
 and ritual, the living Church possessed the right 
 of determining its form. He was arguing 
 against the jure divino claim of Presbyterianism ; 
 and it sufficiently served his end to maintain 
 that even if the Presbyterian " platform " were 
 of apostolic origin, it was not on that account 
 necessarily immutable, or best suited to the 
 Church in all places and at all times. And this 
 position of Hooker's is the more remarkable 
 when we find him declaring — " If we did seek 
 to maintain that which most advantageth our 
 own cause, the very best way for us, and the 
 strongest against them [Presbyterians], were to 
 hold even as they do, that in Scripture there 
 must needs be found some particular form of 
 Church polity, which God hath instituted, and 
 which for that very cause belongeth to all 
 Churches and to all times." " But," he adds, 
 
62 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 " with such partial eye to respect ourselves, and 
 by cunning to make those things seem the 
 truest which are the fittest to serve our purpose, 
 is a thing which we neither like nor mean to 
 follow." (E. P. III. x. 8.) But, as has been 
 pointed out, 1 Hooker's further investigations 
 led him to speak more plainly, though in no 
 way departing from his view of the theoretical 
 mutability of the form of the Church's govern- 
 ment. " Let us not fear to be herein bold and 
 peremptory, that if anything in the Church's 
 government, surely the first institution of 
 bishops was from heaven, was even of God, the 
 Holy Ghost was the author of it." (E. P. VII. 
 v. 10.) 
 
 Readers of Hooker are often taken with sur- 
 prise and delight at the pregnant utterances, or 
 the penetrating and illuminative declarations 
 that are met with unexpectedly from time to 
 time in the course of the main argument. Thus 
 some will recall the wonderful passage on the 
 relation of the divine prescience to the freedom 
 of the human will. In the First Book we again 
 and again meet anticipations of the ethics of 
 Butler. No earlier English writer has so vividly 
 exhibited sin as a violation of nature, or dwelt 
 more effectively on the relation of conscience to 
 human conduct. Theologians have constantly 
 viewed with admiration those chapters of the 
 Fifth Book which treat with singular dignity, 
 1 See Bishop Barry in Masters of English Theology, p. 50. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 63 
 
 and with such lucidity of thought as was possible 
 on such a subject, the great central mystery 
 of Christianity, the union of the divine and 
 human natures in the Person of Christ. Again, 
 Hooker's teaching of the value and acceptable- 
 ness of prayer considered as " a presentation of 
 mere desires " will come as a help to some in 
 our own day perplexed by the relation of prayer 
 to the physical laws of nature. (E. P. V. xlviii.) 
 And nowhere can be discovered a more beautiful 
 and touching expression of the profoundest 
 humility, united with sure confidence in God, 
 than is to be found in the Sermon, Of the 
 certainty and perpetuity of faith in the elect. It 
 is seldom that argumentative treatises, where 
 effect must be judged by its whole presentment 
 of truth, abound so richly in brilliant gems of 
 thought easily detachable. 
 
 Our brief and very imperfect estimate of 
 Hooker may be fitly brought to a close in the 
 eloquent words of a critic who was not himself 
 a member of the Anglican communion. " If," 
 says the late Principal Tulloch, " the Church of 
 England had never produced any other writer 
 of the same stamp, it might yet have boasted in 
 Hooker one of the noblest and most rational 
 intellects which ever enriched Christian litera- 
 ture, or adorned a great cause. In combination 
 of speculative, literary, imaginative, and spiritual 
 qualities the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity stands 
 as a polemical treatise unrivalled. . . . Nowhere 
 
6 4 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 in the literature of philosophy has ethical and 
 political speculation essayed a profounder and 
 more comprehensive task, or sought to take a 
 broader sweep ; and never has the harmony of 
 the moral universe, and the interdependence and 
 unity of man's spiritual and civil life, in their 
 multiplied relations, been more finely conceived 
 or more impressively expounded." 1 
 
 The influence of Calvin and the Swiss school 
 was powerful in England not only in affecting 
 speculation on the constitution of the Church 
 but also, and even more noticeably in all but 
 completely dominating theological belief on the 
 character of God's election, and predestination, 
 and the other allied subjects. By the middle of 
 the seventeenth century the body of doctrines 
 commonly known as " Calvinism " came to be 
 associated almost exclusively with Presbyterian 
 and other sectaries. But in the earlier period, 
 more particularly towards the close of Eliza- 
 beth's reign, Calvinism was all but universal 
 among the clergy of the Church of England. 
 "It may be confidently affirmed," writes one of 
 the most accurate of historical inquirers, " that 
 during an interval of nearly thirty years the 
 more extreme opinions of the school of Calvin, 
 not excluding his theory of irrespective repro- 
 bation, were predominant in almost every town 
 
 1 See the whole passage in Rational Theology in 
 England in the Seventeenth Century (2nd edit.), i. 52, sq. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 65 
 
 and parish." 1 Able men at the seats of learning 
 gave their support to the high Calvinian views. 
 Most notable among these was William Whitaker 
 (1547 — 1595), who for a time held the office of 
 Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. His 
 reputation as a writer in the controversy with 
 Rome had spread far beyond the bounds of 
 England. Cardinal Bellarmine spoke of him as 
 " the most learned heretic he had ever read," 
 and thought fit to place his portrait in his 
 library. Stapleton, Sanders, Campian, and the 
 Seminarists knew him as a most formidable 
 opponent. 2 The esteem in which his high 
 character was held added to the influence he 
 had acquired by his learning. Bishop Hall, of 
 Norwich, writes with affectionate warmth of his 
 memory — " What clearness of judgment, what 
 sweetness of style, what gravity of person was 
 in that man ! Who ever saw him without 
 reverence, or heard him without wonder ? " 3 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that under the 
 influence of this eminent man Calvinism was 
 
 1 Archdeacon Hardwick, in his History of the Articles 
 (2nd edit.), p. 167. 
 
 2 His work, Ad rationes decern Edmundi Campiani 
 . . . Respo?isio ( 1 58 1 ), quickly ran through three editions, 
 and appeared in an English version in 1606. Another 
 important work of his is, Dispntatio de Sacra Scriptura 
 (directed chiefly against Bellarmine), 1588. See Parker 
 Society's edition of Whitaker's Disputation. 
 
 3 One of the most charming of Hall's poems is his 
 " Elegy on Dr. Whitaker." See Works, xii. 323. 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 rife in Cambridge. But it met a check at the 
 hand of another member of the Cambridge 
 faculty of theology, Peter Baron (Baro), the 
 Margaret Professor. And it is interesting to 
 observe that if France, through Calvin, had so 
 largely affected English theology, it was France, 
 in the person of Baron, which was here among 
 the first to bring about the discredit of the 
 Calvinistic system. And " exactly as a genera- 
 tion of students, moulded by his teaching, had 
 been gradually replacing the admirers of Calvin 
 and Bullinger, the Institutio, the Decades, and a 
 host of similar text-books were exchanged for 
 volumes of the Fathers and occasionally of the 
 Schoolmen." 1 The academic disputes and the 
 troubles which followed do not come within our 
 scope. But it may be noticed that it was, with- 
 out doubt, largely due to the commanding 
 influence of Whitaker that the Lambeth Articles 
 were framed, and accepted by Archbishop Whit- 
 gift and several of his episcopal brethren. Indeed 
 some of the most vigorous opponents of the 
 nonconformists in ritual were among the warmest 
 supporters of the extremes of Calvinistic doctrine." 
 
 These discredited Articles, we may observe 
 in passing, now serve the useful purpose of 
 showing us that our XXXIX. Articles, which 
 have been often, because of their Augustinian 
 colouring, spoken of as teaching Calvinistic 
 doctrine, were regarded as altogether unsatis- 
 1 Hard wick, p. 169. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 6 7 
 
 factory and insufficient by those who had really 
 adopted Calvin's opinions. 
 
 The new school of thought, represented by 
 Overall and Andrewes at Cambridge, gradually 
 extended its influence. And it is one of the 
 curious phenomena in the history of doctrine 
 that without any authoritative pronouncement 
 on the subject, or the production of any really 
 great controversial treatise, there was in course 
 of time a general shifting of opinion, till Calvin- 
 ism ceased to be a considerable power within 
 the bounds of the Church of England, and so 
 continued till, in a very much modified form, it 
 was partially and temporarily resuscitated by 
 the " Evangelical movement " in more recent 
 times. In the later years of Elizabeth the battle- 
 mented stronghold of Calvinism towered aloft 
 and dominated the Church. It was supported 
 by those in highest station. It seemed to stand 
 secure. The fire of no heavy theological artillery 
 was directed against it. It was assaulted by no 
 great leader of thought, and its position seemed 
 to call for no active defence. Yet gradually, 
 one knows not how, its strength was sapped ; 
 and in time it came to be like a great frowning- 
 fortress silently abandoned. Its compacted 
 stones were loosened, as it were, by wind and 
 weather, and before fifty years it had become, 
 as a power in the theological thought of the 
 Church of England, no better than a crumbling 
 ruin. 
 
68 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 In the reign of James, at the very time when 
 the King's deputation of English divines to- the 
 Synod of Dort (1618) might have seemed to 
 give countenance to the Calvinists, there were 
 plain indications of the approaching change. 
 The English deputies firmly asserted " the uni- 
 versality of Christ's redemption," differing here 
 (as also in the " ministerial parity " theory) from 
 the majority of the Synod. The succeeding 
 " Quinquarticular controversy " in England was 
 no more than a series of sharp skirmishes in no 
 way decisive, and leaving behind it little or 
 nothing of permanent value as the literary result. 
 
 Though we may be tempted now to smile at 
 the restriction, there seems to have been much 
 sagacity in the King's policy as manifested in 
 his "Directions concerning preachers" (1622), 
 in which it was enjoined " that no preacher . . . 
 under the degree of a bishop, or dean at the 
 least, do henceforth presume to preach in any 
 popular auditory the deep points of predestina- 
 tion, election, reprobation, or the universality, 
 efficacy, resistibility or irresistibility of God's 
 grace." A relic of a later stage of the contention 
 we still possess in " His Majesty's Declaration " 
 (1628) prefixed to the XXXIX. Articles. When 
 young men are protected from publicly com- 
 mitting themselves to some particular side in 
 controversy they have time to think and ex- 
 amine ; and this paternal tyranny of James and 
 his son was in actual fact not unwholesome. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 6 9 
 
 But though we must here be content to pass 
 over the unimportant literature bearing on " the 
 Five Points," it is worthy of record that at the 
 close of the sixteenth century one particular 
 Calvinistic thesis, which had figured largely not 
 only in learned treatises, but in the current 
 popular teaching, was successfully assailed and 
 destroyed. This was the notion that our Lord 
 had in His passion in the Garden and on Calvary 
 suffered " the death of the soul," including all 
 the agonies of rejection and malediction felt by 
 damned souls in hell, and that this was the 
 sense to be attached to the article of the Creed, 
 " He descended into Hell." Hugh Broughton, 
 who had been a Fellow of Christ's College, 
 Cambridge, and enjoyed a great reputation as a 
 learned Hebraist and Rabbinical scholar, was 
 among the earliest to perceive the baseless 
 character of Calvin's assertion. In 1597 Bishop 
 Bilson, whose name has already come before us 
 in other connections, 1 dealt with the question 
 in two sermons preached at Paul's Cross. These 
 caused much discussion, and were publicly re- 
 plied to by another preacher before a similar 
 auditory at the same place. Whereupon Bilson 
 set himself to a thorough investigation of the 
 matters in dispute. While engaged on his 
 labours, Broughton's Explication of the Article 
 concerning the descent into Hades ( 1 599) appeared ; 
 and it was not till five years later (1604) that 
 '- See pp. 32-7 ; 53-4. 
 
7o 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Bilson published his great folio, The survey of 
 Christ's sufferings for man's redeniption ; and of 
 His descent to Hades or Hell for our deliverance. 
 The exegesis both of Scripture and patristic 
 authorities seem to me in many cases incorrect, 
 and still more frequently highly questionable. 
 But nevertheless his main thesis in opposition 
 to Calvin is sufficiently established, and the 
 work remains a vast magazine of erudition on 
 the mysterious questions connected with the 
 state of the soul after its departure from this 
 life. 
 
 The Calvinistic tradition on the predestinarian 
 controversy is represented in the seventeenth 
 century by the solid learning of John Davenant 
 (1576 — 1641), Lady Margaret Professor, Presi- 
 dent of Queen's College, Cambridge, and after- 
 wards Bishop of Salisbury. His Expositio 
 Epistolcc D. Pauli ad Colossenscs (1627) went 
 through several editions ; and his Disputatio de 
 fustitia habituali et actuali ( 163 1 ) is claimed by 
 Bishop Bull, in support of his own teaching on 
 the relation of good works to justification, as 
 lucidly setting forth the sound and orthodox 
 doctrine of the Church of England. 1 
 
 1 Harmonia Apostolica, Dissert. Posterior, xviii. 10. 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 The seventeenth century, the " Golden Age " of Anglican 
 Theology — Rainoldes, President of Corpus — Field, 
 Dean of Gloucester — Bishop Andrewes — Marcantonio 
 De Dominis and Crakanthorp — Dean Jackson — 
 Ussher, the "giant among giants." 
 
 No period of like extent in our Church's history 
 is more rich in writers of high distinction than 
 the years covered by the monarchy of the 
 house of Stuart. The extraordinary outburst of 
 intellectual power, which so brilliantly illumin- 
 ates the general literature of England during 
 the closing years of Elizabeth's reign and the 
 early years of that of James I., extended to the 
 field of theology. And in that department of 
 thought there was no substantial diminution in 
 the force and volume of the intellectual move- 
 ment till towards the end of the century. 
 
 During this period there are to be reckoned 
 not only writers of the first rank, each one a 
 classic in English theology, like Field, Andrewes, 
 Ussher, Sanderson, Taylor, Pearson, Barrow, and 
 Bull, but a crowd of lesser men, who yet stand 
 7i 
 
72 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 out distinctly above the level of mediocrity. 
 To one introduced for the first time into this 
 goodly company, the throng is embarrassing. 
 He is perplexed and bewildered by the number 
 of striking figures that surround him. 
 
 At the beginning of the period no divine of 
 the Church had a higher repute for learning 
 than Dr. John Rainoldes (1549 — 1607), 1 Presi- 
 dent of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 2 Fuller, 
 the Church historian, calls attention to the fact 
 that Jewel, Hooker, and Rainoldes were all 
 Devonshire men, and were all three educated 
 at Corpus. " No one county in England," he 
 observes in his quaint manner, " bare three such 
 men, contemporary at large, in what college 
 soever they were bred ; no college in England 
 bred such three men, in what county soever 
 they were born." Yet the name of Rainoldes 
 will probably recall to the memories even of 
 those possessing some general acquaintance 
 with our Church's history, nothing more than 
 the fact that he was the chief spokesman of the 
 Puritans at the Hampton Court conference, and 
 perhaps the curious story of how he and his 
 bjother in early life, engaging in dispute on the 
 claims of Popery and of Protestantism, each con- 
 
 1 The name is variously spelled Rainoldes, Rainolds, 
 Raynolds, and Reynolds. I have followed his own 
 orthography. 
 
 2 He had been Dean of Lincoln, and declined a 
 bishopric, preferring the opportunities for study afforded 
 at the University. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 73 
 
 verted the other. John, the advocate of Rome, 
 became a staunch Protestant ; while William, 
 the Protestant champion, appears as one of the 
 most active and able controversialists at the 
 Romish college at Rheims. 1 But John Rainoldes 
 deserves to be better known. 
 
 Rainoldes, who had the distinction of being 
 Hooker's tutor, was in his own day regarded 
 with profound respect for his colossal erudition. 
 His powers of memory, which rendered his vast 
 learning promptly serviceable, are spoken of as 
 a marvel ; and to him have been applied, with 
 better reason than to some others on whom 
 similar eulogistic language has been bestowed, 
 the phrases "a living library" and "the third 
 university of England." His fame extended 
 " beyond seas." Joseph Scaliger, himself per- 
 haps the most learned man of his generation, 
 laments the death of Rainoldes as a grievous 
 loss not only to England, but to all Christian 
 Churches. In our own time Hallam counts him 
 as probably not at all inferior to Jewel. 
 
 The sympathies of Rainoldes were with the 
 moderate Puritans. On vestiary questions, with 
 his usual good sense, he entirely conformed 
 himself to the Church's rule. The surplice and 
 square-cap, which caused so much heart-burning 
 to others, were no stumbling-block to him. On 
 
 1 William Rainoldes had been a Fellow of New 
 College, Oxford ; and after his secession became a 
 Professor of Divinity at Rheims. 
 
74 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 his death-bed he earnestly desired absolution 
 according to the form of the Church of England, 
 and gratefully kissed the hand of the priest 
 from whom he received it. 
 
 The personal influence of Rainoldes is said 
 to have powerfully affected King James in 
 promoting the design for the revision of the 
 translation of the Holy Scriptures, which re- 
 sulted in our Authorised Version ; and he 
 himself was one of " the Oxford company " to 
 whom the Prophets of the Old Testament were 
 assigned. 
 
 Rainoldes died in i6o/_ ; and it was not till 
 1 6 1 1 that his greatest work saw the light. This 
 is entitled Censura Librorum ApocrypJiorum 
 Veteris Testamenti} This treatise consists of 
 Latin prelections delivered at Oxford, com- 
 mencing in Michaelmas term, 1585, and running 
 on for some seven years. The prelections had 
 originally been two hundred and fifty in number, 
 and are published (with the loss of about half- 
 a-dozen) from very full notes taken by some of 
 his hearers. They are mainly directed against 
 Cardinal Bellarmine's attempt to vindicate the 
 canonicity of the Apocryphal books of the Old 
 Testament ; but questions arising incidentally 
 are frequently followed out with much thorough- 
 ness and fulness of detail. 
 
 In the Roman communion up to the time 
 of the Council of Trent, the question as to the 
 1 Oppenheim, 2 torn. 4to. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 75 
 
 books that formed the Canon of Scripture was 
 not closed. Not only did the critical acumen of 
 Erasmus express itself with a modest hesitancy 
 as to the reception of the Apocryphal books, 
 but magnates of the Church, such as Cardinal 
 Caietan, boldly rejected the books that had 
 been added to the Hebrew Canon. At Trent 
 this difficult question was discussed by some 
 thirty divines at four meetings ; and at the 
 end, by a majority, it was resolved to fix the 
 Canon by including the Apocryphal books, 
 and to make the acceptance of the new list an 
 article of faith under pain of anathema. This 
 decision was ratified by fifty-three prelates, 
 among whom, says Bishop Westcott, there was 
 " not one scholar distinguished for historical 
 learning, not one who was fitted by special 
 study for the examination of a subject in which 
 the truth could only be determined by the voice 
 of antiquity." 1 
 
 To English churchmen the question presented 
 itself in two aspects. First — do we deserve the 
 anathema of Rome ? And secondly — if Holy 
 Scripture contains all things necessary to salva- 
 tion, what is Holy Scripture? 
 
 Rainoldes' work is of permanent value. It 
 is indeed a great storehouse of curious learn- 
 ing — biblical, historical, chronological, rabbinical, 
 patristic, scholastic. Each one of the Apocryphal 
 books is given a separate examination, and its 
 1 The Bible in the Church, p. 257. 
 
76 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 claims, external and internal, are carefully 
 weighed. The occasional digressions arising in 
 the course of the discussion are also abounding 
 in interest, though some of them, it must be 
 acknowledged, are to be reckoned rather among 
 the curiosities than the vital questions of learned 
 inquiry. The outrageous mendacity of the 
 literary policy of Romish controversialists, in 
 its forgeries, and in its garbling of patristic and 
 conciliar texts, is now happily a thing of the 
 past ; but it needed exposure in the time of 
 Rainoldes. 1 Again, the modern reader may be 
 impatient of such an exhaustive discussion as 
 we find 2 on the question whether the angel in 
 Tobit spoke truth when he said that smoke of 
 the fish's liver would expel an evil spirit from 
 man or woman, so that the person would be 
 vexed no more. But the question possessed a 
 real interest for those who still hesitated to deny 
 the potency of precious stones or herbs used for 
 charms. Again, out of the question whether 
 demons are incorporeal arises the inquiry whether 
 the fire of hell is a material fire ; and so the 
 reader is led on to discussions on the state of 
 the departed, the meaning of the word Shcol, 
 the limbus patrum, the appearance of Samuel at 
 Endor, and similar topics. 
 
 Rainoldes published other works on the 
 Roman controversy, one of which, Sex theses de 
 S. Scriptura et Ecclesia, went through several 
 1 See Prcelect. xliv. 2 Prcelect. xlviii — lxi. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 77 
 
 editions, and was translated into English. As 
 bearing on a question which is discussed again 
 in our own time, a little treatise of his may be 
 mentioned, entitled Defe?ice of the judgment of 
 the Reformed Churches that a man may lawfully 
 not only put away his wife for her adultery, but 
 also marry another ( 1 609). 
 
 When the history of sacred learning in 
 England comes to be adequately written no 
 inconsiderable place must be devoted to the 
 writings of John Rainoldes. 
 
 A contemporary of a different type of church- 
 manship and of a repute for learning scarcely 
 inferior to Rainoldes is Richard Field (1561 — 
 1616), Dean of Gloucester. In his own day he 
 was held in the highest estimation ; and in 
 modern times we find S. T. Coleridge (writing 
 in 1 8 19 to his son, Derwent), declaring "this 
 one volume, thoroughly understood and appro- 
 priated, will place you in the highest ranks of 
 doctrinal Church of England divines (of such 
 as now are), and in no mean rank as a true 
 doctrinal Church historian." Those acquainted 
 with the work referred to will be scarcely 
 inclined to consider the language of Coleridge 
 as over-strained. The title Of the Church is 
 not fitted to convey any adequate notion of the 
 character of its contents. It ranges over the 
 whole field of controversy with Rome, starting 
 from the consideration of the Notes of the 
 
78 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Church, as laid down by Bellarmine. None of 
 our divines, so far as I know, is better read 
 than Field both in the mediaeval Schoolmen 
 and in the. later Romish authors; and none is 
 more thoroughly versed in the subtleties of 
 their theological distinctions. He is not one 
 who has dipped into the theological literature 
 of the Middle Ages ; he is familiar with its 
 highways and by-ways. 
 
 We can detect in Field an irenical tendency. 
 He is singularly free from the abusive language 
 and violent invective against Rome which was 
 general at the time among Anglican contro- 
 versialists, and which is freely indulged in even 
 by such a writer as Bishop Andrewes. What- 
 ever may have been thought of this moderation 
 in his own day, in ours it will be felt that the 
 force of his treatise is by no means diminished 
 by his calm statement and defence of the Angli- 
 can position. He never exaggerates differences; 
 he rejoices to cite statements from authorities 
 in the Roman Church that seem to speak the 
 same, or almost the same language as our own. 
 He shows conclusively that, before the Council 
 of Trent by its definitions hardened and con- 
 tracted the bounds Of doctrinal liberty, there had 
 been not a few eminent thinkers who spoke on 
 many points in the sense of the English Re- 
 formers. The Appendix to Book III. attempts 
 to establish the paradox "that the Latin or West 
 Church, in which the Pope tyrannized, was and 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 79 
 
 continued a true, orthodox, and Protestant 
 Church, and that the devisers and maintainers 
 of Romish errors and superstitious abuses were 
 only a faction in the same when Luther, not 
 without the applause of all good men, published 
 his propositions against the profane abuse of 
 papal indulgences." But whether Field makes 
 good this strange position or not, it was a very 
 serviceable task to show that the philosophic 
 theologians of the Middle Ages did not speak 
 with one voice, and that " many of the best 
 learned " leaned strongly to opinions after- 
 wards proclaimed by the English Reformers. 
 His object, however, is not, like that of some in 
 later times, to show the identity or nearness 
 of Anglican and Tridentine doctrine, but, on 
 the contrary, to show the wide departure 
 of Tridentine doctrine from the authority of 
 many of the greatest doctors of the Roman 
 Church at an earlier date. This was a new and 
 interesting departure in the line of controversy, 
 and it did something towards recalling Anglican 
 theologians to an acquaintance with a period 
 of theological speculation in the history of the 
 Church which had come to be neglected, and 
 was yet well deserving of study. 
 
 In thoroughness Field reminds one of Pearson; 
 and like Pearson he demands the closest atten- 
 tion. As to style, all that can be said is that he 
 is plain, direct, homely, and, it must be con- 
 fessed, somewhat heavy. He possesses little 
 
So 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 imaginative power, and we are never dazzled 
 by the glittering sallies of fancy that delight us 
 even in the controversial treatises of Andrewes. 
 
 In a treatise Of the Church at that date, one 
 might have expected much space to be devoted 
 to the Puritan controversy; but Field dismisses 
 it in two or three effective chapters. With 
 much ability he exposes the baseless preten- 
 sions to scriptural and patristic authority for the 
 lay ruling-elder. But, while asserting apostolic 
 authority for the superiority of bishops, he main- 
 tains, with some of the great Schoolmen, that the 
 superiority is not one of order but of jurisdiction. 
 The power of ordination, according to Field, 
 exists in the presbyter ; but in all ordinary cases 
 the exercise of that power is by apostolic warrant 
 restricted to the bishop. He repudiates "making 
 the distinction of bishops from presbyters a mere 
 human invention, or a thing not necessary, as 
 Aerius did " (Bk. V. c. 27). But in cases of 
 extreme necessity, " as when all bishops are 
 extinguished by death, or, fallen into heresy, 
 obstinately refuse to ordain men to preach the 
 gospel of Christ sincerely," he thinks presbyters 
 may lawfully exercise the power of ordination. 
 In this view Field, so far from being singular, 
 only represented the opinion of the leading 
 divines of his time. 1 
 
 1 See Hooker [E. P. VII. adv. 11): " Where the Church 
 must needs have some ordained, and neither hath 
 nor can have possibly a bishop to ordain ; in case of 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 8] 
 
 Though directed mainly against Romish 
 errors, Field's treatise is not a mere polemic. 
 It is in a high degree constructive. He felt, 
 probably, what we know to be a fact, that the 
 reasoned presentation of positive truth is prac- 
 tically a most effective barrier to the progress 
 of error. If the Romish controversy and the 
 Puritan controversy ceased to exist, Field's 
 work would still remain one of the most valua- 
 ble contributions to the study of theology which 
 our literature possesses. Wide learning and 
 (what is rarer) sound judgment have left their 
 mark upon every page. Taking him all in all 
 I regard Field as (with the solitary exception 
 of Ussher,) the greatest theologian of the reign 
 of James I. ; and this I say, not forgetting the 
 eminence of the writer of whom we have next 
 to speak, and whose influence on the religious 
 thought and sentiment of England has un- 
 doubtedly been much more marked, — I mean 
 Lancelot Andrewes (1555 — 1626). 
 
 Before the death of Elizabeth, Andrewes' 
 merits, both as a scholar and as a priest, had 
 
 such necessity the ordinary institution of God hath 
 given oftentimes, and may give place." Similarly, 
 though less distinctly, Andrewes in his second Epistle to 
 Uu Moulin : " Caucus sit qui non videat stantes sine ea 
 [nostra politia] ecclesias. . . . Non est hoc damnare rem, 
 melius ill i aliquid anteponere. Non est hoc damnare 
 vestram ecclesiam. ad formam aliam, qua; toti antiquitati 
 magis placuit, i.e. ad nostram, revocare." {Opusc. 
 Post hit ma, p. 191.) 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 received recognition. He was made Master of 
 his college (Pembroke, Cambridge) in 1589. 
 He was a favourite preacher at the court of 
 Elizabeth, and before the death of the Queen 
 he was promoted to the Deanery of West- 
 minster. But it was not till 1609 that his first 
 publication saw the light. This was a treatise 
 of controversial divinity against Rome. 
 
 James I., though sometimes overruled by his 
 Ministers of State, was personally disinclined 
 to a forcible repression of his Roman Catholic 
 subjects. It is really remarkable that, even 
 after the villainous attempt of the Gunpowder 
 Plot, he was still disposed to favour toleration. 
 But when we pass from the field of physical 
 force to that of reason, the King was quite ready 
 to join issue with the controversialists of Rome. 
 After the horror roused by the discovery of the 
 Powder Plot, Parliament (3 & 4 Jac. I. c. iv.) 
 took fresh measures for the imposing of an 
 oath of allegiance which abjured as impious 
 and heretical what was styled " the damnable 
 doctrine and position, that princes which be 
 excommunicated or deprived by the Pope may 
 be deposed, or murdered by their subjects, or 
 any other whatsoever." Cardinal Bellarmine, 
 the most distinguished Roman controversialist 
 of that age (or indeed, perhaps, of any age), 
 warned English Roman Catholics that to take 
 the oath was to be a traitor to the faith. The 
 King, himself a man of no mean attainments 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 83 
 
 and much addicted to theological discussions, 
 replied in an Apology for the Oath of Allegiance. 
 To this Bellarmine issued an answer under the 
 assumed name of Matthaeus Tortus. The King 
 re-issued his Apology with a new Preface, 
 and also directed Andrewes (now Bishop of 
 Chichester) to prepare a reply. This reply 
 (Andrewes' first published work) was issued in 
 1609 under the title Tortura Torti. This was 
 followed in the next year by another contro- 
 versial treatise from Andrewes' pen, entitled 
 Responsio ad Apologiam Cardinalis Bella r- 
 tnini, etc} 
 
 It is due partly to the employment of the 
 Latin tongue, partly to the large space given 
 to merely argumenta ad kominem, and still more 
 to the fact that the main object of the discus- 
 sion is at first sight so remote in our day from 
 men's "business and bosoms," that these two 
 treatises of controversial divinity have attracted 
 comparatively little notice. But the student will 
 find that questions of the deepest significance 
 are involved in the discussion of the papal 
 claim to deprive excommunicated princes — 
 questions which are still alive and exigent, 
 — questions which occupy the foremost con- 
 troversialists of our own time. What is the 
 
 1 The latter treatise was directed against a reply which 
 Bellarmine had issued, this time under his own name, 
 against the King's Preface to the second edition of his 
 Apology. 
 
8 4 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 basis of the papal claim to supremacy? How 
 does it differ from a primacy of the West ? 
 What is " the privilege of Peter " ? Did it 
 involve temporal jurisdiction ? Was it solely 
 personal, or did it extend to his successors ? 
 Who are Peter's successors? Are they those 
 who de facto have occupied Peter's chair? Do 
 the several changes in the mode of the election 
 of Bishops of Rome (first, by the clergy and 
 people; next, by the intervention of Imperial 
 authority ; lastly, by cardinals in conclave) make 
 no difference ? Even as to the series of succes- 
 sion doubts arise. Who in fact was St. Peter's 
 immediate successor ? Was not Pope Liberius 
 a heretic ? and Pope Anastasius ? and Pope 
 Honorius ? and in the days of the schisms which 
 of the two Popes — which of the three — can we 
 with the absolute confidence of faith assert to 
 be the true successor to St. Peter's " privilege"? 
 These questions and such as these are treated 
 by Andrewes with a fulness and breadth of 
 knowledge, a keenness in perception of intel- 
 lectual distinctions, a power of argument, that 
 are not often surpassed, or even equalled, in the 
 literature of controversy. Nor is there any lack 
 of the wit, lively raillery, sarcasm, and (more 
 rarely) passionate invective, which readers of 
 Andrewes Sermons might naturally look for. 
 Andrewes had personally little inclination for 
 this kind of work ; but having taken it in hand 
 he lent his whole powers to the task. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 85 
 
 Those who know Andrewes only by name 
 would do well to acquaint themselves with 
 the fervour of his zeal and the brilliance of 
 his attack upon Popery, as exhibited in his 
 controversial treatises. The more sober inter- 
 preters of Scripture have learned indeed in 
 later times to hesitate in an application of the 
 prophetic language of Scripture to the Papacy ; 
 but to understand Andrewes we must know 
 that he defends the opinion that the Pope is 
 the Antichrist of St. John, and Rome the harlot 
 that sits upon the seven hills — the Rome not of 
 heathen days, but the Rome of the Papacy, 
 drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs 
 of Jesus Christ, and with blasphemy written on 
 her forehead. And in a fine vein of irony he 
 declares that " Vicar of Christ," as applied to 
 the Pope, is a title too narrow in its application ; 
 let it be at once Vice-God, 1 for it is through him 
 kings reign ; it is he that puts down the mighty 
 from their seat. To Peter was said, Feed My 
 sheep ; that means, says Andrewes, Scatter and 
 disperse them, trample underfoot their pastures, 
 defile the streams of water whence they drink. 
 Receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, for 
 with them ye can admit or exclude from the 
 
 1 The term Vicedeus had been applied to Pope Paul V. 
 by Thomas Maria Caraffa in the dedication of his Theses. 
 Andrewes {Torti Tortura, p. 443) notices how from the 
 words of the Dedication " PaVLo V. VlCc Deo" the 
 number of the beast may be computed. 
 
86 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 kingdoms of earth. Whatsoever ye shall bind 
 on earth shall be bound in heaven, every league 
 of iniquity shall be more strictly compacted 
 together at your command. Whatsoever ye 
 shall loose — every tie of natural obligation, of 
 duty, of sworn fidelity — shall be loosed by your 
 dispensations. Yes, the command came from 
 heaven to Peter, and ye fulfil it — " Rise, Peter, 
 kill ! " Again, elsewhere, indulging in that 
 witty play upon words with which his Sermons 
 have made us familiar, he declares that there 
 are doubtless many sacred things at Rome, but 
 none more sacred than the auri sacra fames. 
 This is the manner in which the author of the 
 incomparable Devotions expresses his feelings 
 towards the Papacy. 
 
 The admirable monograph of Dean Church 1 
 spares one from the duty of estimating Andrewes' 
 place in the history of Anglican theology. For 
 breadth of view that comes of accurate know- 
 ledge, and for the sympathy with its subject 
 which is essential to true criticism, Dean Church's 
 Lecture deserves a place of the highest rank 
 among just estimates of by-gone times and by- 
 gone men. The reaction against Puritanism ) 
 which was manifesting itself in the latter years 
 of Elizabeth, and which found forcible expres- 
 sion in Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, is further 
 emphasized in the writings of Andrewes. But 
 his doctrinal position has been often misunder- 
 1 In Masters in English Theology, p. 61, seq. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 87 
 
 stood ; and some in our own day who vaunt his 
 name and claim him as an authority for their 
 peculiar theological views, manifest either a very 
 imperfect acquaintance with his writings, or a 
 wilful ignoring of his teaching when it makes 
 against them. 
 
 There are many passages in the writings of 
 Andrewes, some of them of a highly rhetorical 
 kind, which taken by themselves may easily 
 mislead. The danger of his day was to under- 
 rate the value of the sacraments. The truly 
 reverent mind of Andrewes dreaded that evil, 
 and so he dwells upon their mystical efficacy, 
 their importance, their dignity, their divine 
 appointment. Passages from Andrewes that 
 are supposed to make for the doctrine of the 
 objective Presence of Christ's glorified Body 
 and Blood " in " and " under " the forms of 
 bread and wine, for adoration, for a sacrifice (in 
 the R omish sense) in the celebration of the 
 Eucharist, have been in our own day collected 
 and often exhibited. It is less common to see 
 any notice of passages of another kind, some of 
 them of such a character as (I think) to rule and 
 interpret the sense of Andrewes elsewhere, unless 
 indeed we will make him inconsistent with 
 himself. 
 
 The glowing and enthusiastic ardour of the 
 Sermons and Devotions, when taken in conjunction 
 with the definite beliefs and denials exhibited 
 elsewhere, and chiefly in the controversial trea- 
 
88 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 tises, serves a useful end. It demonstrates that 
 the highest flights of ardent devotion are com- 
 patible with convictions which recent innovators 
 among us would hold in pitying contempt, as 
 "low" and " un-catholic." Language, however 
 exalted, will hardly satisfy those to whom I 
 refer when Andrewes denies the true and real 
 presence and oral manducation of the Body of 
 Christ under and in the sacramental species, 1 
 or when he declares, " If a host could be turned 
 into Him (Christ) glorified as He is, it would 
 not serve ; Christ offered is it, — thither must we 
 look, to the serpent lift up, thither we must 
 repair, even ad cadaver (to the dead Body of 
 Christ) ; we must hoc faccre, do that is then 
 done. So and ?io otherwise is this ' epulare ' 
 to be conceived. And so, I think, none will say 
 they do or can turn Him." 
 
 What is it we partake of in the Eucharist ? 
 Andrewes' answer is, " Christ's Body that now 
 is ; true ; but not Christ's Body as now it is, but 
 as tJien it was when it was offered, rent, slain 
 and sacrificed for us. . . . By the incompre- 
 hensible power of His eternal Spirit not He 
 alone, but He as at the very act of His offering, 
 is made present to us, and we incorporate into 
 His death and invested in the benefits of it.'' 2 
 
 1 See Minor Works, p. 16, 
 
 2 Sermons, II. p. 301. The teaching of this passage 
 will be found in many of our great divines, and has in 
 our own day been ably exhibited by Dr. T. S. L. Vogan 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 8 9 
 
 On the Eucharistic sacrifice Andrewes' teach- 
 ing is quite unambiguous. " There is but one only- 
 sacrifice, ' veri nominis,' properly so called, that 
 is Christ's death." The Jews prefigured it, we 
 commemorate it. Theirs was a fore-shozving,ours 
 a showing-forth of the Lord's death till He come 
 again. 1 Again, as Andrewes declares, Anglicans 
 {rwstri homines) believe that the Eucharist was 
 instituted by the Lord not only for our spiritual 
 nourishment, but also for the commemoration of 
 Him, yea of His sacrifice, or, if one may so speak 
 {siita loqui liceai), for a commemorative sacrifice. 2 
 Andrewes feels that even the phrase " commem- 
 orative sacrifice " demands an explanation. Again 
 in the same place he identifies the phrase " com- 
 memorative sacrifice " with " commemoration of 
 the sacrifice." The scorn that has been sometimes 
 lavished upon Cranmer and Ridley for similar 
 language should in all fairness be extended to 
 Bishop Andrewes. 
 
 On some other questions that now occupy at- 
 tention, the teaching of Andrewes falls far short 
 of the modern (so-called) " catholic " view. The 
 
 (the Bampton Lecturer on the Doctrine of the Trinity), 
 in The True Doctrine of the Eucharist (1871), and by- 
 Canon Trevor in The Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrifice 
 to Participation of the Holy Eucharist, issued in its 
 enlarged form (1876) at the request of the venerable 
 Bishop (Williams) of Connecticut, now Presiding- Bishop 
 of the American Church. 
 
 1 See Sermons, II. p. 300. 
 
 2 Ad Card. Bcllarin. Apol. Responsio, p. 250. 
 
90 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 participation of the sacrament by the people can 
 never be separated, he tells us, from the com- 
 memorative sacrifice, both instituted by the Lord 
 at the same time and conjointly. They may not be 
 disjoined the one from the other, either on accotmt 
 of the negligence of the people or the avarice of the 
 priests. To participate by impetration, that in- 
 deed is a novel kind of participating, even more 
 novel than the private mass itself. 1 Or as we 
 have the same teaching in the Sermons — " No 
 celebrenms without epulemur in it. If Christ be a 
 propitiatory sacrifice, a peace-offering, I see not 
 how we can avoid but the flesh of our peace- 
 offering must be eaten in this feast by us, or 
 else zve evacuate the offering utterly." 2 The 
 virtue of non-communicating attendance at a 
 celebration was evidently quite unknown to 
 Bishop Andrewes. 
 
 Among the posthumous works of Andrewes 
 is an answer to Cardinal Duperron's Reply to 
 King James. Here too there is a line taken by 
 Andrewes which must be felt as wholly alien to 
 the teaching which is now striving to find a 
 footing among ourselves. The King had con- 
 demned the elevation of the host adorandi causa. 
 Andrewes defended the refusal of " gestes et 
 adorations externes." 3 He was perfectly familiar 
 with the Roman contention that it was Christ in 
 
 1 Ad Card. Bell arm. Apol. Rcsponsio, p. 250. 
 
 2 Sermons, II. p. 299. 
 
 3 Minor Works, p. 15. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 91 
 
 the sacrament who was adored, and not the 
 sacramental species. 
 
 Andrewes in another place contends that even 
 assuming, for argument's sake, transubstantiation 
 followed upon a valid consecration, the un- 
 certainty that attaches to any particular host 
 being validly consecrated is sufficient to justify 
 the refusal of adoration. "If it is uncertain 
 whether it is consecrated, it is uncertain whether 
 it should be adored ; or, rather, it is manifestly 
 certain that it should not be adored." 1 This may 
 help us to understand what he says elsewhere. 2 
 " The King has laid down that Christ truly present 
 in tlie Eucharist is to be truly adored ; for Christ 
 Himself wherever He is, the res sacramenti, in 
 and with the Sacrament, out of and without the 
 Sacrament, is to be adored." 
 
 Andrewes goes even, perhaps, beyond the 
 language of our formularies in declaring that 
 " the carrying about of the sacrament is contrary 
 to the precept of Christ, nor does Scripture 
 anywhere support it. It is contrary to the 
 institution, for as the sacrifice was instituted 
 that it should be consumed, so the sacrament 
 that it should be received and eaten, not that 
 it should be reserved and carried about." And 
 then follow very remarkable words. " Beyond 
 the design (finem) of the sacrament, beyond 
 the force of the command no use of it exists. 
 
 1 Resp. ad Apol. Bell arm., p. 10. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 266. 
 
92 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Let that be done which Christ willed to be done 
 when He said, ' Do this ' ; let nothing remain 
 which the priest may exhibit out of the pyx, 
 and the people adore." 
 
 When we turn from the polemical treatises 
 to the Sermons we find Bishop Andrewes at his 
 best. As a controversialist he was capable and 
 skilful ; but the same may be said of several of 
 his contemporaries. Controversy gave imperfect 
 scope to the distinctive character of his powers, 
 that welded contexture of intellect, imagination, 
 and emotion, to which we give the name of 
 genius. His fancy was quick, bright, and play- 
 ful, and its flashes illumine many of his pertinent 
 and incisive comments ; but it is generally 
 restrained by his reverence for Holy Scripture. 
 When dealing with any passage of God's word, 
 he dwells upon the utterance, he looks upon it 
 long and lovingly, he turns it over, he views it 
 upon this side and upon that ; he believes in 
 its manifold richness and its pregnant depths of 
 meaning. No English preacher has surpassed 
 him in that power of unfolding and drawing 
 out the sense of Scripture which comes only of 
 lengthened study and reverent, brooding medi- 
 tation. His obligations to preach at Court on 
 Good Friday, and the great festivals of Christ- 
 mas, Easter, and Whitsunday, if they limited in 
 certain directions the freedom of his choice of 
 subjects, had yet the advantage of fixing his 
 gaze upon the great primary truths of Revelation, 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 93 
 
 Theology, in the highest sense of the word, the 
 knowledge of God as revealed to us in His Son 
 and in the gift of His Divine Spirit, " the Lord, 
 and Giver of Life," this is his central theme. 
 And to him year after year it was inexhaustible 
 in its depth and in its richness. 
 
 The recent discovery and publication (by the 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge) 
 of an original manuscript of Andrewes' Greek 
 Devotions^ has peculiar interest in making clear 
 for the first time that Andrewes' strong and 
 even violent anti-Roman feeling did not preju- 
 dice him against the Church's ancient practice 
 of prayers for the faithful departed. 
 
 It will be convenient to call attention here 
 to the admirable defence of the validity of 
 Anglican Orders which appeared in 1613, from 
 the pen of Francis Mason (1566 — 1621), after- 
 wards Archdeacon of Norfolk, under the title, A 
 Vindication of the Church of England, and of the 
 Lawful Ministry tJiereof. A Latin translation 
 (enlarged) followed in 1625. Rome had already 
 commenced the attack upon Anglican Orders ; 
 and the " Nag's Head fable " had gained cur- 
 rency. Mason's Vindication is thorough and 
 effective ; and the merit of the work is testified 
 to by the success of its republication, edited by 
 John Lindsay, in 1728, and again fifty years 
 later. It is an excellent specimen of sound 
 1 Admirably edited by Canon Medd (1892). 
 
94 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 workmanship ; and it is largely due to Mason 
 that in recent assaults upon Anglican Orders the 
 myths that prevailed at an earlier period have 
 been silently abandoned. 
 
 The arrival in England, in 1616, of an arch- 
 bishop of the Roman communion who renounced 
 his obedience to the Roman see, and accepted 
 office in the Church of England, made, naturally 
 enough, a considerable stir. The story of Marc- 
 antonio de Dominis (1566 — 1624), Archbishop 
 of Spalato, is full of interest, and one of the 
 most curious in the ecclesiastical annals of the 
 period. His publication, after his settling in 
 England, of an elaborate attack upon the Papacy, 
 his assisting in the consecration of English 
 bishops, his appointment to the Deanery of 
 Windsor, his restless ambition, his withdrawal 
 after a few years to the Continent, his submission 
 to Rome, his attack (at least the attack published 
 in his name) upon the Church which he had 
 just left, and his very miserable end are inci- 
 dents that possess features both grotesque and 
 pathetic. 1 His great work, De Republica Ecclesi- 
 
 1 How his conduct was regarded by the High Church 
 writers of England may be illustrated by the language of 
 Montagu (in the "Epistle dedicatory" of his Invocation 
 of Saints) — " A man, if any other of his coat and calling, 
 apt enough to be circumcised and deny Christ Jesus if 
 the Grand Signior would but make him Chief Muftie, so 
 much would ambition and covetousness, his bosom in- 
 firmities, sway with him." A more favourable view will 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 95 
 
 • astica (1617-20), published in London, extend- 
 ing over more than two thousand folio pages, 
 has been described as " a kind of quarry whence 
 almost everything that can be urged against 
 Ultramontanism may be extracted." 1 But a 
 different colour was given to the interest felt in 
 De Dominis by our divines when after his 
 leaving England he published, or there was 
 published under his name, a violent attack upon 
 her Church, in a work entitled Expositio consilii 
 sni reditus ex Anglia?- This work, full of railing 
 accusations, was the occasion of the Defensio 
 Ecclesice Anglicance, by Richard Crakanthorp 
 (1569 — 1624), published, after the author's death, 
 in 1625. It was an easy task to convict De 
 Dominis, as it were, out of his own mouth from 
 the pages of his earlier work ; and Crakanthorp 
 is unsparing in driving home his attack. The 
 Defensio abounds in wit, sarcasm, and invective, 
 and is not lacking in solid learning. It has 
 received high praise from various authorities ; 
 and this much I can say — its arrangement is 
 
 be found in Barwick's Life and Death of Bishop Morton 
 (1660), pp. 85 — 87. 
 
 1 Dr. John Mason Neale, who adds, "No English 
 divine is acquainted with all that can be said for his own 
 Church who has not studied this book." — Notes, Ecclesio- 
 logical and Picturesque, on Dalmatia, etc., p. 144. 
 
 2 Neale {tit supra), p. 147, more than suggests that this 
 work is not from the pen of De Dominis, and that he was 
 poisoned before he could disown it. His body was 
 burned as that of a relapsed heretic. 
 
g6 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 clear, its style lively and entertaining, and (con- • 
 sidering the subjects dealt with) it is brief. 1 
 
 The succession of great divines which, as we 
 have seen, had been supplied by Corpus College, 
 Oxford, was not yet to cease. The womb of 
 that breeding mother of theologians had yet 
 another strong son to give to the service of the 
 Church of England in the person of Thomas 
 Jackson (1579 — 1640), who was successively 
 Scholar, Fellow (1606), and President (1630) of 
 that distinguished house. At Corpus his life 
 was almost exclusively spent, save for some 
 seven years while he occupied the important 
 post of Vicar of St. Nicholas (lately erected into 
 the Cathedral Church) at Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
 In 161 3 Jackson began to publish what eventu- 
 ally proved to be an extensive series of treatises 
 on theological questions. The connection be- 
 tween these various works is really little more 
 than nominal, though the author wished them 
 to be regarded as " Comments on the Creed." 
 
 1 Anthony Wood {Athena Oxon., ii. 362, ed. Bliss) 
 says, "This book was held for the most exact book of 
 controversy since the Reformation." T. Barlow, Bishop 
 of Lincoln (1675 — 1691), in his Directions to a Young 
 Divine for his Study of Divinity and choice of Books (in 
 his Genuine Remains, p. 86), writes — " No book I have 
 yet seen has so rational and short an account of almost 
 all popish controversies." The edition in the Library of 
 Anglo-Catholic Theology is edited by C[hristopher] 
 W[ordsworth], afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, a lineal 
 descendant of Crakanthorp. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 97 
 
 These writings as afterwards collected and pre- 
 sented to the world are in truth a large mis- 
 cellany of divinity, abounding in good learning, 
 ingenious argument, and curious speculation. 
 They are marred by a fault common enough 
 in the preceding generation — an inveterate ten- 
 dency to discursiveness. The author is quite 
 unable to restrain himself when his path is 
 crossed by some incidental question of interest ; 
 and he immediately starts in full cry after this 
 new object of the chase. This occurs again and 
 again, and the effect is highly distracting. The 
 outlines of any plan or system are with difficulty 
 discerned, and the embarrassment is increased 
 by the original editor of the collected Works, 
 inserting here and there sermons by the author 
 which he thinks are in some degree allied to 
 the subject in hand. Indeed, as now presented 
 to us, Jackson's twelve Books on the Creed 
 remind one of a set of rambling buildings, con- 
 structed by some amateur architect, one piece 
 added here, and, after an interval, another added 
 there ; a new wing built on one side and a new 
 outhouse appended to the other ; and all devoid 
 of any clear and well-defined plan. To find 
 one's way in such a structure is not easy ; and 
 one often comes on unexpected things in un- 
 likely places. Anti-Roman polemics, scattered 
 here and there, occupy a large space ; and dis- 
 cussions on the Calvinian doctrine of Predesti- 
 nation with the allied topics are dealt with in 
 
 H 
 
9 3 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 an able manner. We have beside inquiries 
 into the relations of the Church and the State, 
 the interpretation of prophecy, the authenticity 
 of the Old Testament history, the sources of 
 atheism, the nature of evil, justification by faith, 
 the significance of the Levitical ritual, the heathen 
 oracles, the eternity of punishment, the Christian 
 sacraments, dreams as prognostics of truth, and 
 a vast variety of other questions, some important, 
 and others curious and entertaining. 
 
 It will be readily admitted that there is much 
 that is valuable and instructive to be found in 
 Jackson's discussions ; but it is difficult to under- 
 stand how one, ordinarily so sane and sober in 
 his bestowment of praise and blame, could use 
 the language applied to our author by Robert 
 Southey when he wrote, " In my judgment the 
 most valuable of all our English divines ... an 
 author with whom, more almost than any other, 
 one might be contented in a prison." It may 
 be that the unregulated discursiveness that I 
 lament was one of the main attractions for such 
 a miscellaneous, or rather omnivorous reader as 
 Southey. Variety certainly there is in rich 
 abundance. 
 
 In his own day Jackson won the admiration 
 of learned and pious men. Good George Herbert 
 declared with warmth, " I speak it in the presence 
 of God, I have not read so hearty, vigorous a 
 champion against Rome, so convincing and 
 demonstrative, as is Dr. Jackson ; and I bless 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 99 
 
 God for the confirmation he hath given me in 
 the Christian religion against the Atheist, Jew, 
 and Socinian." And it was the reputation of 
 Jackson that at length drew from his " cell " 
 Joseph Mead, the recluse of Christ's College, 
 Cambridge, to undertake a journey to the sister 
 University town. 1 
 
 During the reign of James I. and Charles I.— 
 indeed one may extend the observation to the 
 whole of the seventeenth century— among the 
 crowd of distinguished ecclesiastical literati, not 
 one for learning reaches the lofty eminence of 
 James Ussher (i 580 — 1656). He was indeed "a 
 giant among giants." 2 For erudition, full and 
 exact, in almost every department of ecclesi- 
 astical learning — erudition which he handles 
 with the ease of complete mastery — Ussher 
 
 1 In the last century Jones of Nayland, in his Life of 
 Bishop Home, is warm in his commendation of Jackson, 
 and considers that " he deserves to be numbered with the 
 English Fathers of the Church." It may be worth point- 
 ing out that Jackson's view of " the real presence " in 
 the Eucharist is that of "a spiritual influence or virtual 
 presence " (Book xi. chap. 3, Works, vol. x. p. 27). He 
 teaches that there is not "any other kind of local presence 
 or compresence with these elements than is in baptism. 
 The orthodoxical ancients use the same language for 
 expressing His [i.e. Christ's] presence in baptism and in 
 the Eucharist ; they stick not to say that Christ is present 
 or latent, in the water, as well as in the elements of bread 
 and wine." Works, vol. ix. p. 595. 
 
 2 A. W. Haddan, in his Life of H. Thorndike. 
 
IOO 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 stands pre-eminent. The two fascinating volumes 
 of his correspondence 1 show us something of 
 his varied interests in the field of research, and 
 also something of the general admiration in 
 which he was held in the world of letters. 
 Indeed the learning of Europe in the seven- 
 teenth century would not be very inadequately 
 represented by the names of those with whom 
 Ussher carried on a scholarly intercourse. There 
 we find Hebraists, Talmudical scholars, and 
 Orientalists, like the younger Buxtorf, Louis de 
 Dieu, L'Empereur, and Capel ; inquirers into 
 the early history and antiquity of the Christian 
 Church, classical critics and patristic scholars 
 such as Valois (Valesius), 2 Gerard and Isaac 
 Voss, Saumaise (Salmasius), Gataker, Sir Henry 
 Saville, and the French Protestants, Daille and 
 Blondel ; antiquarians and bibliophiles, such as 
 Camden, Bodley, Dugdale, Cotton, Spelman, 
 and Selden ; and theologians, such as Andrewes, 
 Mead, John Forbes of Corse, Hammond, Joseph 
 Hall, Bramhall, Cudworth, and Thorndike. 
 
 The seventeen volumes of Elrington's edition 
 of Ussher's Works exhibit him as a student in 
 many regions of inquiry. But briefly his writ- 
 ings may, for the most part, be grouped in five 
 divisions : — 
 
 1. Anti-Roman polemics. 
 
 2. Early Christian antiquities. 
 
 1 Works, Elrington's edit. 
 
 2 The editor of the text of Eusebius. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 IOI 
 
 3. The ecclesiastical and civil antiquities of 
 Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 4. Chronology. 
 
 5. Sermons and other practical and popular 
 treatises. 
 
 The natural bent of Ussher's mind was from 
 the first towards historical inquiry. The exi- 
 gences of the time and of his country forced 
 upon his attention the controversy with Rome. 
 He determined to investigate the problems in- 
 volved from the historical side. Was the faith 
 of the Papacy the faith of the early Church ? 
 To answer this question he resolved at the age 
 of twenty to read right through the whole works 
 of the Christian Fathers. This was a great and 
 arduous undertaking ; but, despite distractions 
 of many kinds, he persevered in his task, and 
 accomplished it after eighteen years of labour. 
 At an early age Ussher perceived that the 
 slippery scholastic speculations which occupied 
 so large a place in theological controversy were 
 not the safest standing-ground. He would rest 
 on the surer basis of facts, so soon as he could 
 securely ascertain them for himself. What was 
 absent from the faith of the early Church, he 
 concluded, could be none of its essentials. He 
 accepted the maxim of Tertullian, Verum quod- 
 cunque primum ; adulter 11111 quodcunque posterius. 
 And it was on this side he approached the 
 subject of our differences from the modern 
 Romanism of his day. 
 
102 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Ussher's Answer to a challenge made by a 
 Jesuit in Ireland (1625) aims at delivering truly 
 " the judgment of antiquity in the points ques- 
 tioned," and exhibiting " the novelty of the now 
 Romish doctrine." The student of this and 
 other of his works is soon impressed with the 
 sense that we have here indeed a master, one 
 who ranges with the confidence of sure pos- 
 session over the whole field of patristic and 
 earlier mediaeval literature. His critical acumen, 
 naturally keen, and cultivated by exercise, shows 
 itself in his distinguishing genuine from spurious 
 or doubtful authorities ; and in this respect none 
 of the earlier English theologians were qualified 
 to compare with him. Again, it is not un- 
 common to find among those who immerse 
 themselves in the study of patristic authorities 
 an unsteadiness or feebleness of the individual 
 judgment. But Ussher never totters under the 
 weight of his erudition. 
 
 In his treatise Of the Religion anciently pro- 
 fessed by the Irish and British (1631), Ussher 
 dealt with a subject that was peculiarly his own. 
 While still a young man, he began, conjointly 
 with his patristic studies, to collect every docu- 
 ment that could help to illustrate the early 
 religious history of the British Isles ; and the 
 result of his indefatigable labours took shape in 
 three principal works. There is, first, the treatise 
 named above, written in English, with the view, 
 as he tells us, " to induce my poor countrymen 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 to consider a little better of the old and true 
 way from whence they have hitherto been mis- 
 led " ( Works, iv. 237). Secondly, we have that 
 invaluable storehouse of historical learning, the 
 Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates (1634), 
 a work which has not been superseded, and 
 which must be constantly in the hands of every 
 student of the Celtic Churches of Great Britain 
 and Ireland. Thirdly, we have the less important 
 Vetemm Epistolarum Hibcrnicarum Sylloge 
 (1632), being an interesting collection of some 
 fifty documents, chiefly letters, relating to the 
 early Irish Church. 1 
 
 The most remarkable of Ussher's labours in 
 the field of early Christian antiquity is his con- 
 tribution to the recovery of the genuine text of 
 the Ignatian Epistles. In our own day the late 
 Bishop Lightfoot, who for learning and critical 
 sagacity reminds us of Ussher himself, has 
 established to the satisfaction of almost all com- 
 petent scholars the genuineness of what is known 
 as the middle or shorter Greek recension ; and 
 certainly on this subject no one is entitled to 
 speak with a greater weight of authority. And 
 it is interesting to find how Lightfoot's judgment, 
 generally of a temper cold and severe, catches fire 
 when he comes to speak of Ussher. " By Ussher's 
 labours," writes Lightfoot, " the question between 
 the long and middle recension was, or ought to 
 
 1 A new edition of this work, with illustrative notes, 
 would be welcomed by scholars. 
 
104 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 have been, set at rest for ever. Altogether [his 
 work] showed not only marvellous erudition, but 
 also the highest critical genius." 1 After this 
 testimony it would be a sensibly felt descent to 
 cite the eulogies pronounced by men of lesser 
 name ; but that Ussher established his main con- 
 tention to the satisfaction of such critics as 
 Grotius and Voss, Pearson and Bull, Bentley and 
 Waterland, is no small triumph. 
 
 Before passing from this subject I may be 
 allowed to point out how the extraordinarily wide 
 reach of Ussher's reading served him in this 
 particular branch of research. The inquirer into 
 the earliest relics of Christian literature might well 
 be excused if he did not look to the ecclesias- 
 tical documents of England in the Middle Ages as 
 a quarter from which it was likely that any light 
 would be thrown upon his researches. Yet it was 
 Ussher's acquaintance with the writings of Gros- 
 tete, Bishop of Lincoln in the middle of the 
 thirteenth century, and of such obscure authors 
 as Wycliffe's opponents, Wodeford and Tissing- 
 ton, that set him on the track which led to the 
 recovery of the lost epistles of Ignatius. The man 
 of genius who is full of his subject sees mysterious 
 hints and suggestions where to the ordinary reader 
 all is void, featureless, and jejune. Clues to the 
 object of his search are furnished by intimations 
 as unapparent or unmeaning to others, as the 
 tokens and marks in the forest hunting-grounds 
 1 St. Ignatius, vol. i., p. 233. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 I05 
 
 by which the trained senses of the savage tracks 
 his prey. The thrill of pleasure as step by step 
 he is led to success is not disguised by Ussher, 
 and the natural, though restrained, expression of 
 his feelings illumines and brightens with a glow 
 of personal interest the close-knit argument of the 
 great Dissertation. 1 
 
 Ussher had been brought up under the influence 
 of Calvinistic teachers of an extreme type. Arch- 
 bishop Loftus, the first Provost of Trinity College, 
 Dublin, was one the complexion of whose church- 
 manship may be gathered from the fact that 
 Cartwright was his chaplain. The second Provost 
 was Walter Travers, Hooker's opponent at the 
 Temple Church. It is not very surprising that 
 young Ussher imbibed the notions of his teachers ; 
 but it is more surprising that in later times he 
 was able to free himself from the convictions of 
 his earlier years. 2 In the same year (1631) in 
 which appeared his work on the Religion of tlic 
 A ncicnt Irish and Britisli Churches, there appeared 
 also his history of the Gottskalk controversy of 
 the ninth century, a solid and valuable piece of 
 work, though plainly written with a Calvinistic 
 bias. 3 
 
 1 Disscrtaiio non de Ignatii solum et Polycarpi Scrip/is, 
 sed etiam de A post olicis Constitutionibus et Canonibus 
 dementi Romano tributis (1644). 
 
 2 Bishop Sanderson underwent a similar change of 
 opinion. His earlier treatises are distinctly marked by 
 Calvinism. 
 
 3 Gotteschalci et predcstinatiaruc coiitroversicc abeo motce 
 
io6 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 The ability and ' vast erudition displayed in 
 Ussher's chronological researches are acknow- 
 ledged equally among continental and English 
 scholars. But any estimate of their value as 
 furnishing ultimate statements must be left to 
 specialists in that difficult department of inquiry. 
 In his Annates Vetcris Testamenti we have one 
 of the earliest attempts to reduce to system the 
 chronology of the Old Testament history as 
 represented by the Hebrew text ; and it may 
 be observed that it is substantially the dates as 
 supplied by Ussher that are now to be seen in 
 the margins of nearly all editions of the English 
 Bible. 1 
 
 Ussher was nominated by Parliament to be 
 a member of the Westminster Assembly of 
 Divines ; but he refused to attend it, and declared 
 further that that gathering was both illegal and 
 in its tendency schismatical. In revenge his 
 library was confiscated by Parliament ; and 
 though, through the generosity of John Selden 
 and others, it was bought back, or in some 
 other way saved, for the Primate, it was found 
 that many of his valued manuscripts had been 
 removed. When we consider the anxieties of 
 Ussher's position, the turbulent times in which 
 
 historia. In this volume Ussher gave to the world for 
 the first time the original text of Gottskalk's two con- 
 fessions. 
 
 1 These chronological notes first appeared in Bishop 
 Lloyd's edition of the Bible, 1701. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 107 
 
 he lived, and the many hardships of his later 
 years, one marvels the more at his unremitting 
 literary labours continued up to the very last. 1 
 Perhaps it may have been with Ussher, as in 
 instances known to some of us, that the remote, 
 out-of-the-world inquiries of learned research 
 made for him a kind of asylum against the shocks 
 of fate — a haven of refuge where he could forget 
 the tempests and wild waves that raged without. 
 
 A short tract of Ussher's written as early as 
 1 641 (but not published till the year after his 
 death) is better known to the general public 
 interested in ecclesiastical affairs than any of his 
 more learned treatises. It is entitled The Reduc- 
 tion of Episcopacy unto the form of Synodical 
 Government received in the Ancient Church? 
 Its original purpose was to suggest a modifica- 
 tion of the then form of episcopal government 
 which he hoped might have averted the approach- 
 ing ecclesiastical revolution. Its interest to us 
 now lies chiefly in its exhibition of practical 
 sagacity combined with sound learning in antici- 
 pating very largely the actual course adopted 
 by every branch of the Anglican communion 
 
 1 He was at work on the Chronologia Sacra till the 
 evening twilight failed him on the day before his death. 
 From his study he passed to another room in the house 
 to offer spiritual consolation to a dying person. Before 
 two o'clock the next day (March 21, 1656) he himself had 
 ceased to breathe. His last audible words were, " O Lord, 
 forgive me, especially my sins of omission." 
 
 2 Works, xii. pp. 527—536, 
 
io8 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 throughout the world, that has, through dis- 
 establishment or otherwise, been freed from the 
 control of the State. And it is plain also that 
 the Church of England is, so far as may be, 
 moving in the same direction. Ussher, as might 
 have been expected from one so thoroughly 
 versed in the literature of primitive Christianity, 
 maintained that the episcopal form of Church 
 government was established by the apostles, 
 and indeed, he added, " confirmed by Christ 
 Himself." 1 But he was evidently convinced of 
 the evils growing from the autocratic power of 
 bishops, and desired a return to the more fraternal 
 relations of bishops and presbyters, as manifested 
 in the early Church. 
 
 1 Ussher held that "the angels of the seven churches" 
 to whom Christ is represented in the Apocalypse as 
 sending epistles were bishops ; and it may be questioned 
 whether Bishop Lightfoot has shown any satisfactory 
 reason for questioning that ancient belief. See IVorAs, 
 vii. 43, seq. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 Montagu — Laud as a theologian — Chillingworth — Joseph 
 Hall — Jeremy Taylor — Cosin — Bramhall — Hammond 
 — Brian Walton and his colleagues — John Lightfoot — 
 Beveridge — Thorndike — Stillingfleet. 
 
 Nothing could have been more unfortunate for 
 the interests of the Church of England in the 
 seventeenth century than the association of 
 many of its leading divines with those theories 
 of political government which took shape in the 
 crude assertion of " the divine right of kings " 
 and of the doctrine of " passive obedience." All 
 this was in truth a retrograde movement from 
 the political doctrines of the greater mediaeval 
 Schoolmen and from the moderate teaching of 
 Hooker. It seemed in the popular view to 
 connect the Church with a policy that was 
 arbitrary and tyrannical. In its extreme form 
 it alienated thousands of sober-minded and 
 sensible men. It threw many who would other- 
 wise have been loyal churchmen into the arms 
 of the Puritan party. It rendered men suspicious 
 
 and hostile towards the teaching of those who 
 109 
 
I IO 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 claimed divine authority for action that was 
 harsh and oppressive, if not unconstitutional. 
 
 By many ecclesiastics the divine right of tithes 
 was urged together with the divine right of the 
 hereditary monarchy. When Selden 1 with in- 
 comparable learning, proceeding cautiously on 
 purely historical evidence, denied that tithes were 
 exacted in the early Christian Church, Richard 
 Montagu '1578 — 1641), afterwards Bishop of Nor- 
 wich, entered the lists on behalf of the clergy.- I 
 will not lead you into this outworn controversy : 
 it must suffice to say that this work first called 
 attention to the abilities of a very able con- 
 troversialist whose name afterwards came to 
 figure largely in the politics of the time. 
 
 The action of Parliament with respect to 
 Montagu's two later treatises — Of Invocation of 
 Saints (1624) and Appello Ccesarem (1625) — is 
 part of the civil history of England. But the 
 contents of the volumes themselves are little 
 known. Nor has Montagu received the con- 
 sideration which these and, more especially, his 
 other learned labours deserve. He had assisted 
 Sir H. Saville in the production of his great 
 (Eton) edition of St. Chrysostom (1610 — 161 3), 
 one of the glories of the learning of the period, 
 and had himself edited the Greek text of the 
 Two Invectives of St. Gregory Xazianzcn against 
 
 1 The History of Tithes, 161 8. 
 
 2 Diatribe on the first part of Seldetts History of 
 Tithes, 1 62 1. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Julian (1610). His Analecta Ecclesiasticarum 
 Exercitationinn (1622), written with an eye to 
 the great work of Baronius, proved him to be 
 well versed in the early history of the Church. 1 
 But from these writings one could not have 
 inferred his powers as a keen, animated, and 
 witty controversialist, addressing himself to the 
 popular ear. 
 
 Some Roman priests, who had been attempting 
 to proselytize among the " weaker sex " in his 
 parish (Stamford Rivers in Essex), put out a 
 pamphlet, entitled A new Gag for an old Gospel, 
 in which they attributed to the Church of 
 England a large number of doctrinal pro- 
 positions which, though they were in truth the 
 opinions of many individuals, had never been 
 authorized by the Church. Among these pro- 
 . positions were several Calvinistic and Sabba- 
 tarian pronouncements. Montagu replied 2 by 
 showing that such opinions were not the 
 doctrines of the Church's authentic formularies. 
 In the judgment of the ablest historian who has 
 dealt with this period, Montagu's reply was in 
 its matter " a temperate exposition of the 
 reasons which were leading an increasing body 
 of scholars to reject the doctrines of Rome and 
 
 1 At a later period, though an active and faithful bishop, 
 he found time to publish other historical works showing 
 much research and considerable critical power. 
 
 2 & S a SS f or H ie new Gospel ? No, a new gagg for 
 an old goose, 1624. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 of Geneva alike." 1 Montagu puts the matter 
 well in his Appcllo Ciesarem, published the 
 following year (1625). He declares that he had 
 replied " with a firm purpose to leave all private 
 opinions . . . unto their own authors or abettors, 
 either to stand or fall of themselves ; and not 
 to suffer the Church of England to be charged 
 with the maintenance of any doctrine which 
 was none of her own, publicly and universally 
 resolved on." Alluding to the law in force at 
 the time for the maintenance of foundling 
 children, he says that the Puritans had supposed, 
 " as it would seem, that in this case we were all 
 liable to the Statute, that is, bound to keep and 
 foster their conceits as our own doctrines, because 
 they have cast them upon us and upon our 
 Church, like bastards upon the parish where 
 they were born." {Epistle Dedicatory?) 
 
 The action here attributed to the Puritans 
 was much like attempts on the part of some 
 persons in our own day to father upon the 
 Church of England certain doctrinal enfants 
 trouves whose complexion and features, with the 
 rags in which they are wrapped, strongly 
 suggest an Italian parentage. Our appeal, as 
 was Montagu's, is to the authoritative formu- 
 laries of the Church — the Articles of Religion 
 and the Book of Common Prayer. Montagu, 
 in his Appello Cczsarem, examines the Articles 
 and the Prayer-book, and very effectively makes 
 
 1 S. R. Gardiner, The Duke of Buckingham, etc., i. 206. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 113 
 
 good his position that they do not teach, but 
 rather contravene the doctrine of God's " irre- 
 spective decree" and its Calvinistic corollaries; 1 
 and, while speaking with respect of the Synod 
 of Dort, he makes clear that its determinations 
 did not touch the members of the Church of 
 England. 
 
 When Montagu replies to the charge of 
 Romanizing he has a more difficult task, for 
 though generally making a good defence, he 
 had himself occasionally used indiscreet language, 
 capable of being readily misunderstood. 2 And, 
 as is well known, his book the Appello Ccesarem 
 was eventually called in by order of the King. 
 But how far Montagu is removed from sympathy 
 with Popery (as distinguished from certain 
 doctrinal positions generally though incorrectly 
 associated in men's minds with the Roman 
 Church) may be gathered from all his principal 
 works. For the purpose in hand it is merely a 
 scholastic question whether the Pope is the 
 Antichrist, or only an Antichrist, as Montagu 
 asserts. 3 Montagu may, I think, be taken 
 
 1 He anticipates in some measure Archbishop Laurence's 
 Bainpton Lectures. 
 
 2 For example, his employment of the word "trans- 
 elementation " applied to the change in the Eucharist. 
 {Appello Ccesarem, p. 292.) 
 
 3 " I will not deny that the Pope is an Antichrist. I do 
 not deny it : I do believe it." Appello Ccrsarem (p. 144). 
 He refers to St. John's statement, "now are many Anti- 
 christs." 
 
 1 
 
ii4 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 among theologians of distinction as touching 
 the high-water mark of the movement which in 
 the earlier half of the seventeenth century sought 
 to minimize the doctrinal differences between 
 the Anglican and the Roman Communions. 
 The influences at Court at the time ran in that 
 direction ; and an ambitious man would be 
 under considerable temptations to adopt that 
 line. But it is not here suggested that Montagu's 
 convictions were not genuine. 
 
 During the later years of the reign of James I. 
 and the early years of that of Charles, the Church 
 of Rome and its claims were kept much in the 
 thoughts of Englishmen. James, despite his 
 early controversial treatises, was strongly sus- 
 pected of Romeward leanings. The proposed 
 " Spanish match " for the prince, and his sub- 
 sequent marriage to Henrietta Maria, were taken 
 as signs. And the known activity of Romish 
 proselytizers among the nobility, followed by 
 several fashionable conversions, increased the 
 anxieties of English churchmen. The Jesuit 
 Percy (better known by his assumed name of 
 Fisher), himself a convert to Rome, and with all a 
 convert's zeal, had influenced, among others, the 
 Countess of Buckingham, mother of George 
 Villiers, the King's favourite. It was arranged 
 that a disputation, in the presence of this lady, 
 or, as it was called, a " conference," should be 
 held (May 1622), between Fisher and some 
 Anglican theologians. Francis White, afterwards 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 115 
 
 Bishop of Ely, has left an account of the earlier 
 stages of the conference ; but, certain important 
 questions having been left unhandled, a third 
 day of debate was appointed, on which occa- 
 sion the Anglican champion was William Laud 
 (1573 — 1645), at that time Bishop of St. Davids. 
 The King, who still heartily enjoyed a contro- 
 versial encounter, and several courtiers of rank 
 were present. The result, with some enlarge- 
 ments, were afterwards given to the world by 
 Laud. 
 
 Laud's subsequent position as an ecclesiastical 
 statesman and the leading mind in ordering and 
 regulating, whether for good or ill, the policy 
 and administration of the Church of England in 
 troublous times, has tended to obscure his place 
 as a theologian and a man of learning. He had 
 been a diligent student of the Roman contro- 
 versy, as is borne witness to by his copious Latin 
 marginalia to Bellarmine's Dispittationcs} Laud 
 was armed and ready for the battle. He tells 
 us that he had not " the full time of four-and- 
 twenty hours to bethink himself," for the com- 
 mand of the King had been sudden ; but the 
 labours of the patient student and thinker of 
 earlier days now served him in good stead. 
 
 The Conference with Fisher is marked through- 
 out by a reasonableness and masculine good 
 
 1 The volumes are now in Archbishop Marsh's Library 
 in Dublin. The notes were transcribed for the A. C. L. 
 edition of Laud's works. 
 
u6 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 sense which might not be expected by those 
 who know Laud only through the partisan pages 
 of certain popular historians. 1 Laud was learned, 
 but he was no mere " bookman," to use a word 
 of his own ; and in this controversy he does not 
 suffer from being a man of the world, accustomed 
 to observe, to consider, and to judge the facts of 
 life and history. But, it seems to me, the chief 
 interest that now attaches to the Conference, is 
 the light that it throws on the general attitude 
 of mind, and particular beliefs, of the most promi- 
 nent high-churchman of his day. No one was 
 ever a more staunch and loyal son of the Church 
 of England. No one ever saw more clearly the 
 hopeless impossibility of approaches towards 
 Rome, while Rome remains what she is. 
 
 Laud, as is well known, was zealous in pro- 
 moting, by example as well as by injunction, 
 all that might advance the beauty and solemn 
 dignity of the public worship of God. By this 
 many in his own day were misled. But it 
 might have sufficed to show that there is no 
 necessary connection between Romanizing and 
 a sense of the value of ritual and ceremonious 
 observance to find Chillingworth, in his Religion 
 
 1 At length students of the history of England have in 
 Mr. S. R. Gardiner's great work a truly scholarly and (as 
 far perhaps as is possible in writing the story of such 
 troublous times) impartial account of the reigns of James 
 and Charles. Mr. Gardiner makes clear that Laud, with 
 all his rigour as to obedience to Church rule, was in true 
 sympathy with large doctrinal latitude. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 117 
 
 of Protestants, defending the desire "to adorn 
 and beautify the places where God's honour 
 dwells, and to make them as heaven-like as they 
 can with earthly ornaments." And Laud's 
 writings leave no doubt as to his anti-Roman 
 convictions. To take a crucial example — in the 
 Eucharist Laud sees no other sacrifice than (1) 
 the " memory " (i. e. memorial) of the sacrifice of 
 Calvary ; (2) the sacrifice of praise and thanks- 
 giving ; and (3) the sacrifice of ourselves, our 
 souls and bodies. 
 
 And again — " This sacrament is commemora- 
 tive of the Lord's passion (which was a true 
 sacrifice), and so it is called a sacrifice." 
 
 And, once again, in our time, when some 
 would denounce the establishment of an episco- 
 pate holding the doctrine of our reformed 
 Church in places where bishops of the Roman 
 obedience can show an undoubted historical 
 succession, it may be well to call to mind the 
 declaration of this leading high-churchman of 
 the seventeenth century. " Most evident it is," 
 writes Laud, " that the succession which the 
 Fathers meant is not tied to a place or a per- 
 son, but it is tied to the verity of doctrine ; for 
 so Tertullian expressly : ' Beside the order of 
 bishops running down (in succession) from the 
 beginning, there is required consangninitas doc- 
 trines, that the doctrine be allied in blood to that 
 of Christ and His- apostles.' So that if the doctrine 
 be no kin to Christ, all the succession becomcth 
 
1 1 8 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 strangers, what nearness soever they pretend. . . . 
 If that only be a legitimate succession which 
 holds the unity of the faith entire, then the suc- 
 cession of pastors in the Roman Church is 
 illegitimate." {Against Fisher, § 39.) 
 
 Fisher, the active and clever Roman proselyt- 
 izer, had been busy not only among people of 
 fashion, from whom converts were made, like 
 Lady Buckingham, Lady Falkland, and Lord 
 Purbeck, but also among young men at the 
 University. In fact the picture of those days is 
 not unlike that which was presented some fifty 
 years ago in the frequent conversions to Rome 
 among similar classes in England. Among the 
 converts at the University was a young Fellow 
 of Trinity College, Oxford, a godson of Laud, 
 and one who afterwards became famous as the 
 author of The Religion of Protestants — William 
 Chillingworth (1602 — 1644). 
 
 Chillingworth, after his conversion, was induced 
 by Fisher to repair to the Romish College at 
 Douai, where his faith might be strengthened 
 and consolidated. But the result did not 
 answer the expectations formed. A further 
 acquaintance with Romanism opened his 
 eyes. 
 
 It requires more moral courage to retrace 
 one's steps and come back, discredited for haste 
 and inconstancy, than to make the first change. 
 But Chillingworth, like some others in later 
 times, could not but follow where he was led by 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 119 
 
 what he believed to be truth. He returned to 
 England and the English Church. 
 
 The title of Chillingworth's famous book, The 
 Religion of Protestants, a Safe Way to Salvation 
 (1638), was suggested by that of a little book by 
 a Jesuit (who wrote under the name of Edward 
 Knott), Charity mistaken, with a want ivherof 
 Catholicks are unjustly charged for affirming, as 
 they do with grief, that Protestancy unrepented 
 destroys salvation (1630). 1 Knott supported his 
 book by a subsequent publication entitled Mercy 
 and Truth, or Charity maintained by Catholics 
 (1634). It is more particularly against this 
 second work that Chillingworth's treatise is 
 directed. After the manner more common in 
 a previous age than in Chillingworth's day, he 
 reprinted his opponent's book chapter by chapter, 
 to each chapter adding his own reply. 
 
 Chillingworth's main contention is that all the 
 truths essential to salvation are taught in Holy 
 Scripture (so far he only stated the authoritative 
 doctrine of the Church of England) ; and, further, 
 that those truths are so clearly taught therein 
 as to be readily discovered by every intelligent 
 and honest inquirer. If they are not clearly 
 taught, they are not essential. Further, " all 
 necessary points of mere belief" are contained 
 in the Apostles' Creed, which creed, we may 
 notice in passing, Chillingworth assumes to have 
 
 1 Knott's book was replied to in 1633 by Dr. Christo- 
 pher Potter, Provost of Queen's College, Oxford. 
 
120 
 
 faddock Lectures 
 
 been composed by the Apostles. Here are 
 certainly questionable propositions, propositions 
 that need very full explanation, propositions 
 that say both too much and too little. 
 
 When inquiry is made, " What is Holy Scrip- 
 ture ? How are we to know that these books 
 are Holy Scripture, having God's authority ? " 
 Chillingworth replies, and here rightly, that we 
 conclude what is Holy Scripture on grounds of 
 natural reason, reason judging by historical 
 evidence, that evidence being found in the judg- 
 ment of the ancient universal Church. When 
 the Romanist cries in triumph, " This is to make 
 the Church the judge," he answers, " I have told 
 you already that of this controversy we make 
 the Church the judge ; but not the present 
 Church, and less the present Roman Church, 
 but the consent and testimony of the ancient and 
 primitive Church." And, he adds, in words very 
 characteristic of the man, " though it be but an 
 highly probable inducement and no demon- 
 strative enforcement, yet methinks you should 
 not deny but it may be a sufficient ground of 
 faith." 1 In a similar rational spirit, speaking of 
 " the questioned books " of the New Testament, 
 he writes, " I may believe even those questioned 
 books to have been written by the apostles and 
 to be canonical ; but I cannot in reason believe 
 this of them so undoubtedly as of those books 
 which were never questioned." " Yet," he adds, 
 1 Works (ed. 1838), i. 385. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 121 
 
 in words that remind one of passages in New- 
 man's Grammar of Assent, "all this I say not as 
 if I doubted that the Spirit of God, being- im- 
 plored by devout and humble prayer and sincere 
 obedience, may and will by degrees advance His 
 servants higher, and give them a certainty of 
 adherence beyond their certainty of evidence. But 
 what God gives as a reward to believers is one 
 thing, and what He requires in all men as their 
 duty is another." 
 
 One other characteristic passage may be cited. 
 " For my part, I am certain that God hath given 
 us our reason to discern between truth and false- 
 hood ; and he that makes not this use of it, but 
 believes things he knows not why, I say it is by 
 chance that he believes the truth and not by 
 choice ; and that I cannot but fear that God 
 will not accept of this sacrifice of fools" x 
 
 The import of Chillingworth's thought is 
 pertinent to controversies that are deeper and 
 more fundamental than that with Rome. From 
 the passages cited one can understand how he 
 was so warmly admired by such a simple and 
 devoted lover of truth for truth's sake, and such 
 a typical English thinker, as John Locke. The 
 whole work is, in effect, a homily on the pro- 
 foundly important theme, the responsibility of 
 the intellect in matters of religion. 
 
 It seems to me that the chief value of Chil- 
 lingworth for our day is to be found in the 
 1 Vol. i. p. 237. 
 
I 22 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 moral impetus given by the study of his writings, 
 in the influence of his transparent love of truth 
 and his ardour in its search, which with honest 
 hearts is infectious. Nor can one fail to admire 
 his resolve to bring himself into a strict relation 
 with facts. If evidence be insufficient, he never 
 will allow his desires to add one grain to the 
 scale. Again, with him, as with Butler, it is a 
 maxim that "probability is the very guide of 
 life." Faith may be weak and imperfect, and 
 yet sufficient to please God. Others " pretend 
 that heavenly things cannot be seen to any 
 purpose but by the midday light ; but God will 
 be satisfied if we receive any degree of light 
 which makes us leave the works of darkness 
 and walk as children of the light : they exact a 
 certainty of faith above that of sense or science ; 
 God desires only that we believe the conclusion 
 as much as the premises deserve ; that the 
 strength of our faith be equal or proportionable 
 to the credibility of the motives to it." 1 
 
 The value of the Religion of Protestants as a 
 permanent contribution to the Romish contro- 
 versy seems to me to have been generally over- 
 rated. But the success and popularity of the 
 book can be readily accounted for. It possessed 
 the charm of being apparently " a short and easy 
 method " of dealing with matters of dispute that 
 had been commonly exhibited in huge folios, 
 bristling with quotations from the Greek and 
 1 Vol. i. p. ii 5. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 123 
 
 Latin Fathers, which few could read and still 
 fewer could appraise at their true value. Its 
 masculine power and logical coherence were im- 
 pressive. It was written in admirable English, 
 always simple and clear, generally forcible, and 
 occasionally rising to real eloquence. And its 
 moral earnestness and wide charity must always 
 attract many. 1 
 
 Of the divines of the seventeenth century 
 no one, with the exception perhaps of Jeremy 
 Taylor, has been so successful in gaining the ear 
 of what is called " the religious public " as Joseph 
 Hall (1574 — 1656), Bishop of Norwich; and 
 his deserved success is easily accounted for. 
 His practical and devotional works, such as the 
 Contemplations on the Old and New Testaments, 
 and the Meditations and Vows, will be read so 
 long as sincerity, acumen, and sound sense 
 expressing themselves in luminous English, have 
 attractions for good men. Hall's works are im- 
 pregnated with the most effective antiseptic 
 against the decays of time — the salt of an admir- 
 able style. His merits as a writer of powerful 
 verse are generally acknowledged ; and, as the 
 history of English literature amply demonstrates, 
 it is indeed rare when one who knows how to 
 
 1 A highly appreciative and, on the whole, just estimate 
 of Chillingworth will be found in Tulloch's Rational 
 Theology in England (second edition), vol. i. pp. 261 — 
 343. See also Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen's Horcc Sabbaticce 
 (first series), pp. 187 — 208. 
 
124 
 
 I'ADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 handle verse is deficient in his mastery of prose. 
 Hall's prose style is simple, forcible, and charm- 
 ingly clear. He is less ornate than Taylor, but 
 he is more concise, more pertinent, more lucid. 
 The exuberant fancy of Taylor is lacking, but 
 Hall is not deficient in a considerable power of 
 imaginative illustration, and his sane judgment 
 rarely offends our sense of fitness. 
 
 Hall's less known works, including his contro- 
 versial treatises against Rome, such as The Old 
 Religion (a model of systematic arrangement), 
 the Honour of the Married Clergy ; and his 
 numerous courageous tractates in defence of 
 Episcopacy and the Liturgy, and those against 
 Presbyterianism and the extravagances of Pro- 
 testant dissent, are full of good learning and 
 spirited writing. Among the parties in the 
 Church he generally followed the course which 
 gave the name to one of his books, the Via 
 Media} Hence, as in the case of other men of 
 independence, his reputation has had to endure 
 studied attempts at depreciation from party-men 
 of opposite schools. 2 Hall's Latin style does 
 
 1 Via media : the way of peace in the five busy Articles 
 of A r mini us. 
 
 2 Hall's little tract, entitled An Explication of Christ's 
 presence in the sacrament of His Body and Blood, is worth 
 reading. His wholesome dislike of obscurantism — of 
 deliberate obfuscation of the intellect on the plea of 
 devoutness — expresses itself in the pointed words, "Away 
 with those nice scruplers, who, for some further ends, 
 have endeavoured to keep us in undue suspense with a 
 non licet inqitirere de modo." 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 125 
 
 not aim at following the Ciceronian model, but 
 it is terse, elegant, and, above all, serviceable. 
 Speaking generally, Hall did not add to the 
 theological learning of England, but served the 
 useful office of one of the middle-men of litera- 
 ture, arranging and popularizing the results of 
 others' labours. 1 
 
 So long as the English tongue is spoken the 
 name of Jeremy Taylor (1613- — 1667) must carry 
 with it a great reputation. It may be safely said 
 that none of our divines was so richly endowed 
 with the rare combination of intellectual force, 
 imaginative fertility, and emotional fervour. 
 
 But here we are not concerned in estimating 
 his genius save in relation to our special subject. 
 And it must be acknowledged, in the first place, 
 that in many instances Taylor's display of won- 
 derful powers is but very imperfectly accom- 
 panied by the sound judicial faculty, which 
 is, after all, a primary essential in theological 
 inquiry. Taylor is a rhetorician, and an advo- 
 cate of a high order of excellence, incomparable 
 in the presentation of his case ; but he accepts 
 from himself his own brief, too often after very 
 immature consideration. None, perhaps, of our 
 accredited divines commits himself so frequently 
 to unsustained, insecure, or highly questionable 
 statements. His reading, as Coleridge observes, 
 was " oceanic ; but he read rather to bring out 
 
 1 A notice of Hall's casuistical writings will be found 
 later on. 
 
126 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 the growth of his own fertile and teeming mind 
 than to inform himself respecting the products 
 of those of other men." 1 Hence the careful 
 student soon learns to be on the alert in 
 examining the authors cited, if he cares to 
 ascertain whether their full sense — their real 
 sense — has been caught and expressed by this 
 great devourer of books. Again, the copiousness 
 of his style leads him to excess, and at times we 
 can hardly acquit him of verbosity, while argu- 
 ments good, bad, and indifferent are piled one 
 upon another. 
 
 In such a mind as Taylor's exact consistency 
 is scarcely to be looked for ; and as matter of 
 fact we find more than one instance in his works 
 where he seems to contradict himself, and to be 
 unaware of the contradiction. 
 
 When we remember that Taylor died in his 
 fifty-fifth year the productiveness of his pen is 
 indeed marvellous. He has given the world 
 not only many works, but many which will 
 live. 
 
 Taylor's wide-spread reputation is, no doubt, 
 largely due to his practical and devotional 
 writings. His Holy Living, his Holy Dying, 
 and (though in a less degree) his Golden Grove 
 have suffered little in general estimation through 
 the lapse of time. The consideration of these 
 and of his Worthy Communicant and his Col- 
 lection of Offices must not occupy us here. Nor 
 1 Notes Oft English Divines, i. p. 209. 
 
FADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 127 
 
 can we delay to speak of his Life of Christ, or 
 his wonderful Sermons, though in both of these 
 works much will be found of interest to students 
 of theology. His magnum opus on which he 
 himself expected that his reputation would 
 chiefly rest — the Ductor Dubitantium — will be 
 briefly noticed in another connection. 
 
 The Liberty of Prophesying (1647) i s m many 
 respects Taylor's most remarkable work. 1 It 
 was the immediate outcome of the oppressions 
 (beginning about 1 641) which the Church suffered 
 at the hands of the dominant Puritan party. 
 The subsequent attempt to enforce the Solemn 
 League and Covenant in effect deprived and 
 silenced the great body of the best of the English 
 clergy. In 1645 the use of the Book of Common 
 Prayer was, by an Ordinance of Parliament, 
 forbidden whether in public or in any private 
 place or family under heavy penalties, and the 
 Presbyterian Directory was substituted in its 
 room. This tyrannous persecution called forth 
 from Taylor, first, his Episcopacy Asserted (1642), 
 and afterwards, with its bold and aggressive title, 
 An Apology for authorized and set forms of 
 Liturgy against the pretence of the Spirit for ex- 
 tempore prayer, etc. (1646). Indeed Taylor was 
 one of the most fearless of men. His contempt 
 and scorn for the ignorance and hypocrisy of 
 too many of the preachers of the Presbyterian 
 
 1 In Bishop Heber's judgment, this is " the most curious, 
 and perhaps the ablest of all his compositions." 
 
128 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 party he never cared to hide j 1 and his successive 
 imprisonments made the reply of his opponents. 
 
 But Taylor was led by the intolerance of the 
 Puritans, and possibly by the recollection of 
 instances of intolerance when his own party had 
 been in power, to examine the whole question 
 of the rights, civil and ecclesiastical, of restraining 
 the expression of religious opinion. The result 
 was the Liberty of Prophesying. 
 
 A main contention of this remarkable work 
 is that the interference of the State should be 
 exercised only when doctrines injurious to its 
 own well-being were publicly taught. " Re- 
 ligion," he tell us, " is to meliorate the condition 
 of the people ; and therefore those doctrines that 
 inconvenience the public are no parts of true 
 religion." " Whatsoever is against the founda- 
 tion of faith, or contrary to good life and the 
 laws of obedience, or destructive to human 
 society and just interests of bodies politic, is out 
 of the limits of my question, and does not 
 pretend to compliance or toleration : so that I 
 allow no indifferency, nor any countenance to 
 those religions whose principles destroy govern- 
 ment, nor to those religions (if there be any 
 such) that teach ill life." Thus Taylor would 
 not have the State interfere with those who 
 taught the sinfulness of infant baptism, or those 
 who taught the doctrine of transubstantiation ; 
 
 1 Sec even the preface, "to the pious and devout reader," 
 of the Golden Grove. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 129 
 
 but it is different if any taught doctrines sub- 
 versive of civil government, such as that the 
 Pope may absolve subjects from their allegiance 
 to their natural prince, that heretical princes 
 may be slain by their subjects, that the Pope 
 may dispense with all oaths, and that faith is not 
 to be kept with heretics. " These opinions," he 
 declares, " are a direct overthrow to all human 
 society and mutual commerce, a destruction of 
 government and of the laws." Yet even here 
 (so great is Taylor's desire for tolerance) he 
 would not have interference if men "held their 
 peace " and entertained these as only speculative 
 opinions. Similarly Anabaptists' notions as to 
 the unlawfulness of a magistrate ministering an 
 oath, or the State using defensive arms, and 
 such like, are not to be treated in the same way 
 as their opinions on baptism. These notions 
 are " as much to be rooted out as anything that 
 is the greatest pest and nuisance to the public 
 interest." Taylor's principle is thoroughly intel- 
 ligible ; and differences will now-a-days arise 
 only in the extent of its application. 
 
 It is when Taylor passes from the consider- 
 ation of State policy to the terms of ecclesiastical 
 communion that there will be most disposition 
 to demur to his conclusions. He shows indeed 
 that a large variety of teaching on certain sub- 
 jects is allowed in all religious bodies. He 
 would extend this liberty very widely, asking 
 only for agreement in fundamentals ; and these 
 
 K 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 fundamentals he, like Chillingworth, reduces to 
 the doctrines taught in the Apostles' Creed. It 
 is obvious that the question thus raised is too 
 large to be discussed here ; but Taylor's treat- 
 ment of it is well worthy of the closest attention 
 in our own day. 
 
 How are we to attain such certitude as to the 
 absolute truth of doctrines lying beyond funda- 
 mentals, that we may make bold to impose - 
 them on others, as essentials ? Arguments from 
 Scripture, Taylor urges, are difficult and un- 
 certain in questions " not simply necessary." 
 Tradition is insufficient to end controversies ; 
 similarly ecclesiastical councils are insufficient. 
 The Pope is not infallible. The ancient Fathers 
 are an insecure guide. Reason, using all suit- 
 able aids, is the best judge. Reason, indeed, 
 may err. Yet we must remember, " it is not 
 required of us not to be in error, but that we 
 endeavour to avoid it." The discussion on " the 
 nature and measures of heresy" is throughout 
 extremely able, and proceeds upon the principles 
 that reason erring may be inculpable, and that 
 " heresy is not an error of the understanding, 
 but an error of the will" Taylor's charity is a 
 charity that has its basis in natural justice, and 
 in its ardour bursts through all the restraints 
 of mere legal and ecclesiastical technicalities. 
 
 Taylor's farthest stretch of (so-called) " liberal 
 theologv," though it has alarmed manv, does not 
 surpass, nay, does not reach the utterance of a 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 well-known divine of our own time who has 
 never been suspected of dangerous liberalism in 
 theology, the late Dr. Pusey. " Ask any tolerably- 
 instructed Christian person, and his instinct will 
 respond what every teacher of the Church every- 
 where knows to be truth. Ask him, ' Will any 
 soul be lost, heathen, idolater, heretic, or in any 
 form of hereditary unbelief or misbelief, if in 
 good faith he was what he was, living up to 
 that light which he had, whencesoever it came, 
 and repenting him where he did amiss?' All 
 Christendom would answer you, God forbid ! " 1 
 
 In the course of his argument, Taylor has to 
 deal with the claims made on behalf of papal 
 infallibility ( Works, v. 462, scq.). The discus- 
 sion is comparatively brief, but nothing more 
 effective can be found in any of our earlier 
 writers ; and if he allows some fine flashes of 
 irony to play round the absurdities of the posi- 
 tion (and more particularly round the logical 
 process by which the infallibility of the Popes 
 is deduced from the promises made to St. Peter), 
 it is only for a little while, for he recalls to 
 mind " this is not a business to be merry in." 2 
 
 On the whole there is perhaps no work in 
 our Anglican theological literature more sure 
 to arrest and hold attention, more stimulating, 
 
 1 The Responsibility of the intellect iti matters of 
 Faith. (Oxford, 1873.) See the whole splendid passage, 
 pp. 36—46. 
 
 2 See Works, v. 462, sea. 
 
I 71 
 
 1 J- 
 
 TADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 more provocative of thought than the Liberty 
 of Prophesying ; as there is certainly no more 
 brilliant manifestation of Taylor's intellectual 
 
 powers. 1 
 
 In his U nu in Necessarium, or tlie Doctrine and 
 Practice of Repentance (1655), Taylor expressed 
 himself on the nature of original sin and the 
 extent of man's corruption in a manner which 
 it is difficult to reconcile with the teaching of 
 the Church in her Articles of Religion. The 
 Bishop of Rochester (John Warner) and the 
 Bishop of Salisbury (Brian Duppa), to whom 
 he inscribed the volume, each wrote to Taylor 
 letters expressing strong disapprobation of the 
 views set forth ; and it is said that the wise and 
 learned Sanderson was moved even to tears by 
 what he considered Taylor's departure from 
 the scriptural language of the Church- In our 
 own day Coleridge came to the conclusion that 
 Taylor's system was "bond fide Pelagianism," 
 though of course Taylor had denied the imputa- 
 tion. It is impossible in this place to discuss 
 the question raised; but I shall venture to say 
 that Taylor's language, though incautious, seems 
 to me capable of a more favourable construction. 
 
 In his earlier years Taylor had for a time 
 
 1 When the student has mastered the Liberty of Pro- 
 phesying for himself he may consult with advantage 
 S. T. Coleridge\r Notes on English Divines; Tulloch's 
 Rational Theology; and Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen's Hora- 
 Sabbatica (First Series). 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 133 
 
 been thrown into close contact with Roman 
 Catholics. It is said, indeed, that at one period 
 he lived on terms of intimate friendship with 
 the clever Franciscan, Christopher Davenport 
 (better known as Sancta Clara), one of the 
 chaplains of Queen Henrietta Maria. 1 And all 
 through Taylor's life the suspicion of Roman- 
 izing tendencies haunted his reputation with the 
 general public. But in truth his capacity for 
 generously appreciating and acknowledging good 
 points in Romanism made him a far more 
 formidable opponent than writers blinded by the 
 bigotry of extravagant Protestantism. 
 
 In 1654 there appeared the first edition of 
 Taylor's work, entitled, The real and spiritual 
 presence of Christ in the blessed Sacrament 
 proved against the doctrine of Transubstantiation. 
 The phrase " real presence," which had already 
 been occasionally adopted by Anglican writers, 
 but was more commonly appropriated to the 
 Roman doctrine, Taylor now, whether wisely or 
 
 1 Sancta Clara was author of many theological works, 
 but is now remembered chiefly for his Paraphrastica 
 Ex posit io Artiailorum Confessionis Anglicame (1646), 
 a hopeless and somewhat ludicrous attempt to interpret 
 the XXXIX. Articles in a sense compatible with the 
 doctrines which they were, in the main, expressly written 
 to condemn. This book, with an English translation, 
 was republished by Dr. F. G, Lee in 1865. The book 
 has been justly described as "a mere trick of proselytizing 
 controversy, and not a wise trick cither." ( The Guardian, 
 March 28, 1866.) 
 
<34 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 unwisely, claims as the expression of the doctrine 
 of the Church of England. Taylor's arguments 
 against transubstantiation need not here engage 
 our attention ; but it may be interesting and 
 serviceable to state his own position, his own 
 positive teaching ; and this can be done effectively 
 by a few quotations. 
 
 " We [' sons of the Church of England '] by 
 the real spiritual presence of Christ do under- 
 stand Christ to be present, as the Spirit of God 
 is present in the hearts of the faithful, by blessing 
 and grace; and this is all which we mean, beside 
 the tropical [i. e. metaphorical] and figurative 
 presence." 
 
 " By spiritually they [Romanists] mean ' pre- 
 sent after the manner of a spirit '; by spiritually 
 we mean ' present to our spirits only,' that is, 
 so as Christ is not present to any other sense 
 but that of faith, or spiritual susception." 
 
 " The wicked receive not Christ, but the bare 
 symbols only, but yet to their hurt." 
 
 On what is called a non-local presence of 
 Christ's Body and Blood in or under the species 
 of bread and wine, Taylor remarks, " / wish the 
 words were sense, and that I could tell the 
 meaning of being in a place locally and not 
 locally; . . . but so long as it is a distinction 
 it is no matter; it will amuse and make a way 
 to escape, if it will do nothing else." 
 
 " Take cat and This do are as necessary to the 
 Sacrament as Hoc est corpus mcum, and declare 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 135 
 
 [t. e. make clear] that it is Christ's Body only 
 in the use and administration." "It is Christ's 
 Body only in the taking and eating." 
 
 On the phrase " sacramentally present," often 
 used with no definite meaning, Taylor writes, 
 " Christ's Body is sacramentally in more places 
 than one, which is very true, that is, the sacra- 
 ment of Christ's Body is : and so is His Body, 
 figuratively, tropically, representatively, in being, 
 and really in effect and blessing." 
 
 Such is Taylor's teaching on the Eucharist. 1 
 No one who is familiar with Taylor can doubt 
 that he was a man of profoundly reverential 
 temperament. But he thought it no part of 
 reverence to shut the eyes of his intelligence 
 at the bidding of those who would palm off 
 upon him unfounded or unmeaning propositions 
 as " mysteries of the faith." 2 
 
 The last work from Bishop Taylor's pen was 
 also on the controversy with Rome. It was 
 undertaken at the united request of his brother 
 prelates in Ireland, and appeared under the title, 
 A dissuasive from Popery. This treatise deals 
 in an effective and popular way with most of 
 
 1 It is well to bear this in mind when one peruses the 
 letter printed in Eden's edition of the Works (v. 317, seq.) 
 on the Reverence due to the Altar, which shows how 
 ceremonial observance of a marked kind may be com- 
 patible with a belief that many now-a-days would scorn- 
 fully speak of as " un-catholic." 
 
 - Coleridge's laudation of Taylor's Real Presence will 
 be found in Notes on English Divines, i. 2<So. 
 
136 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 the points in dispute between England and 
 Rome. 1 
 
 The overthrow of the Church establishment 
 in the course of the Great Rebellion scattered 
 the clergy. Some were imprisoned ; some lived 
 in hiding and wandered from place to place ; 
 some, as best they could, continued after their 
 sequestration to minister to the flocks that had 
 been committed to them ; some escaped to 
 France or the Low Countries and only returned 
 at the Restoration ; some managed somehow to 
 reconcile themselves to submitting to the de 
 facto authorities of the day. 
 
 Despite the many distractions of those evil 
 times the intellectual activity of our ecclesi- 
 astical writers was remarkable. Notable at 
 home were Sanderson, Brian Walton, Hammond, 
 Jeremy Taylor, and one who deserves mention 
 as the first of our Church historians, the wise 
 humourist, Thomas Fuller. Abroad were Bishop 
 Bramhall and Dean John Cosin, afterwards 
 Bishop of Durham. 
 
 Cosin (1595 — 1672) spent some sixteen years 
 of exile, ministering to the English royalists 
 
 1 The Real Presence and the Dissuasive have been 
 published in the convenient form of a single volume 
 (under the editorship of Dr. Card well, Principal of St. 
 Alban's Hall, Oxford), which in its last edition (1852) 
 may be commended to those who do not possess the 
 whole Works of Taylor. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 137 
 
 who were numerous in Paris, and labouring 
 assiduously to counteract the unceasing efforts 
 of Roman proselytizers. To the necessities of 
 controversy we owe his Scholastical history of 
 the Canon of the Holy Scripture (1657), a solid 
 piece of work, and his Historia Transnbstantia- 
 tionis Papalis, published posthumously in 1675. 
 
 Before the civil war no one had been more 
 vehemently assailed by the Presbyterian party 
 for his alleged Popish tendencies ; and he was 
 forced to suffer many indignities on account of 
 his excellent book of Devotions. Subsequently 
 none of the clergy suffered from more persistent 
 and rancorous persecution at the hands of the 
 Puritan party. He was in his day one of the 
 most distinguished men of the "High Church" 
 school ; but his doctrinal teaching was not what 
 might perhaps be at the present time expected 
 from a " High Churchman." Thus, in his work 
 on Transubstantiation he asserts " the unanimous 
 consent of all Protestants with the Church of 
 England " in maintaining " a real, that is a true, 
 presence of Christ in the blessed sacrament." 1 
 He maintains that Christ did not give His Body 
 " to be received by the mouth," and declares 
 that " reservation " is impossible because Christ 
 is " present only to the communicants." But, 
 like every sound Anglican, he forcibly contends 
 that our faith does not cause the Presence, but 
 only apprehends it. 
 
 1 Chap. II. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Equally surprising to the modern reader, 
 unacquainted with the history of opinion, is 
 this High Churchman's concurrence with Bram- 
 hall 1 in a certain recognition of the reformed 
 " sister Churches " abroad. Indeed, Cosin's rela- 
 tions towards the French reformed Church were 
 not only altogether friendly, but even reached, 
 in practice, a measure of intercommunion. 2 
 
 Bramhall (1593 — 1663), Bishop of Deny, and 
 afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, though not 
 figuring as so prominent an historical personage, 
 has left to our theological literature larger and 
 more valuable bequests. His controversial 
 treatises against Rome were occasioned by the 
 attempts of Romish prosclytizers to change the 
 faith of the exiled king. M. de la Milletiere 
 and an Englishman named Smith, titular Bishop 
 of Chalcedon, accused the Church of England 
 of " criminal schism " from the one and only 
 true Church of Christ. In a succession of able 
 treatises Bramhall not only repelled the charge, 
 but retorted it with telling effect upon the 
 Church of Rome. Jeremy Taylor prophesied 
 truly when he declared that in the learning, 
 judgment, and piety manifested in these writings, 
 BramhalFs " memory will last unto very late 
 succeeding generations." 
 
 1 Vindication of Grot ins, p. 614. 
 
 " See Brewer's Memoir (pp. xxviii — xxxii) prefixed to 
 his edition of the History of Popish Tninsubstantiation, 
 and, more particularly, Cosin's Letter to Mr. Cordel. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 139 
 
 Bishop Bramhall also deserves notice as being 
 one of the first of our English divines to grapple 
 the false philosophy of unbelief, — more particu- 
 larly the fatalism taught in effect by Hobbes of 
 Malmesbury. Bramhall, said Taylor, "washed 
 off the ceruse and meretricious paintings " from 
 the "new vizor" with which Hobbes had dis- 
 guised the ugliness of " the Manichean doctrine 
 of fatal necessity." 1 
 
 Another of the " confessors " under the Puri- 
 tan persecution was Henry Hammond (1605 — 
 1660), as good, kind, and generous as he was 
 high-principled, learned, and devout. A charm- 
 ing portrait of this excellent man has been 
 lightly sketched for us, by the pen of Dr. Fell, 
 in one of the best short biographies in the 
 English tongue. But we are concerned here 
 with Hammond as an author. 2 His writings 
 embrace Annotations on the whole of the New 
 Testament, on the Psalms, and on a part of the 
 Book of Proverbs, and controversial treatises 
 against Rome, and against the Presbyterians 
 and Independents of England. 
 
 1 Works, viii. 417, 418. In Bramhall, says Taylor, 
 "was visible the great lines of Hooker's judiciousness, of 
 Jewel's learning, of the acuteness of Bishop Andrewes." 
 
 2 At an early age Hammond made such extraordinary 
 progress not only in Latin and Greek, but also in Hebrew, 
 that his biographer declares that a knowledge of these 
 tongues "seemed rather infused than acquired." At a 
 later time he added to his attainments a knowledge of 
 Syriac, and this proved helpful to him in his Biblical 
 studies. 
 
140 
 
 PADDOCK. LECTURES 
 
 The Annotations are the work of a true 
 scholar. He was keenly alive to the interest 
 and importance of textual criticism, and had 
 entered on the task of a collation of Greek 
 MSS. of the New Testament. The distractions 
 of the age, and the hardships incurred through 
 his loyalty to the Church and the Crown, pre- 
 vented his pursuing his labours in this direction ; 
 yet his biblical annotations are even in this day, 
 with its multitude of commentaries, seldom 
 consulted without profit. His primary object 
 throughout is, quite in the modern spirit, to get 
 at the literal sense of Scripture. The Annota- 
 tions deserve special notice for Hammond's 
 recognition of the important significance of 
 heresies of a Gnostic character, as bearing on 
 the interpretation of the Epistles. He antici- 
 pates the drift of modern thought in seeing the 
 " Antichrist " of the New Testament in Gnosti- 
 cism rather than in Popery, as many earlier 
 writers of distinction had imagined. And again, 
 as Fell has pointed out, he laboured assiduously 
 at the special study of the " Hellenistic dialect" 
 as distinguished from classical Greek. Here 
 too he tapped a vein of inquiry that has since 
 proved rich in results, and is not yet exhausted. 
 
 Of Hammond's controversial writings we can 
 refer only to his defence of Lord Falkland's 
 short but cogent discussion, Of the infallibility 
 of the Church of Rome (that "main architectonical 
 controversy," as it is styled by Bishop Pearson, 
 
PADDOCK LKCTURKS 
 
 141 
 
 iii his appreciative preface to that excellent 
 work) ; his book on Schism and its defence ; his 
 reply to Blondel on the Ignatian Epistles (for 
 which he received the thanks of Archbishop 
 Ussher) ; and his View of the new Directory and 
 a vindication of the ancient Liturgy of the Church 
 of England. The last-named discussion has 
 lost but little of its interest, and will be found 
 abounding in useful comments on the Book of 
 Common Prayer. 
 
 The work of Hammond which attained greatest 
 popularity was his Practical Catechism, meant 
 for the instruction of those who had already 
 been taught the Church Catechism. It was 
 much used, and passed through many editions. 1 
 Its form is cumbrous, abounding in long questions 
 and elaborate answers ; but it is interesting in 
 our day as exhibiting the doctrinal teaching of 
 one of the leading churchmen of the seven- 
 teenth century and (as testified to by its wide 
 acceptance) of a very large number of the 
 Anglican clergy. The student who is interested 
 in the Eucharistic controversies of our own time 
 will find much that is instructive in Hammond's 
 discussion of the Sacraments. 
 
 Another sufferer for his principles, whose 
 memory will be ever associated with the cause 
 of sacred learning, was Brian Walton (1600 — 
 1 661), consecrated Bishop of Chester at the 
 Restoration. After the sequestration of his 
 
 1 The issue in A. C. L. is said to be the sixteenth. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 ecclesiastical preferments he devoted himself 
 in his retirement to the construction and issue 
 of his great Polyglott, which, after being five 
 years in printing, appeared in its completed 
 form in 1657, in six large folios. It is an 
 imperishable monument of the learning and 
 unflagging energy of this distinguished scholar, 
 and remains to our own day an essential aid 
 to the stud} - of the biblical texts. 1 This truly 
 valuable contribution to the critical study of 
 the sacred Scriptures did not pass without the 
 censures of some. John Owen, the eminent 
 leader of the Independents, dreaded that the 
 exhibition of so many variations in the text 
 would lead to Popery or infidelity, 2 and Walton 
 felt constrained to furnish a reply. It was 
 a decisive and complete vindication of his 
 work. 3 
 
 In connection with Walton's work the name 
 of Edmund Castell (1606 — 1685) must not be 
 omitted. He was one of the numerous oriental 
 scholars who assisted in the work on the Poly- 
 glott ; but his chief claim for notice is his great 
 Lexicon Heptaglotton, upon which he had laboured 
 
 1 Walton's Prolegomena to the Polyglott have been 
 separately printed, at Leipzig (1777), 8vo, under the 
 editorship of J. A. Dathe, and at Cambridge (1828), 2 vols. 
 Svo, with additional notes by Archdeacon YVrangham. 
 
 2 Vindication of the purity and integrity of the Hebrew 
 and Greek texts of the Old and New Testaments, in some 
 considerations on the Prolegomena, etc., 1658. 
 
 3 The Considcrator considered, etc., 1659. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 143 
 
 for eighteen years. 1 This work has lately been 
 described by a competent authority as marking 
 " an epoch in Semitic scholarship." 2 
 
 Another eminent orientalist associated with 
 Walton was Edward Pococke (1604 — 1691). As 
 early as 1630 he had discovered the Syriac texts 
 of the second Epistle of St. Peter, the second 
 and third of St. John, and St. Jude, and, en- 
 couraged by Voss, made them known to the 
 learned world. 3 After a long stay in the East 
 he was made (the first) Arabic Professor, and 
 given a canonry at Oxford. Some time after 
 (1649) he was expelled from his canonry by the 
 authority of Parliament. 4 In later and happier 
 clays he published learned commentaries on the 
 prophets, Micah and Malachi (1677), Hosea 
 (1685), and Joel ( 1 69 1 ). 
 
 But it remains to notice the English Hebraist 
 of widest repute among the learned of the seven- 
 teenth century — John Lightfoot (1602 — 1675). 
 Like some other good men brought up under 
 
 1 2 torn., folio, 1669. The languages included are 
 Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan Hebrew, Ethiopic 
 Arabic, and Persic. This book ruined the compiler. It 
 cost him more than ,£12,000, involved him in debt for 
 ,£1800, and when printed found scarcely any sale. After 
 the Restoration he was made chaplain to the King and 
 Arabic Professor at Cambridge, and given a prebend at 
 Canterbury and some other Church preferment. 
 
 2 Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole. 
 
 3 Versio et Notce ad IV. Epistolas, Syriace, etc., Lugd. 
 Bat. 1630, 4to. 
 
 4 Cromwell's brother-in-law was appointed in his place. 
 
H4 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Puritan influences, he had no such conviction 
 of the primary imjjortance of episcopacy as 
 would prevent his accepting the new ecclesiastical 
 regime. The worthy Strype (whose painstaking 
 researches into the history of the Reformation 
 period are a rich mine of valuable material), in 
 the introduction to his collection of Lightfoot's 
 Remains, attributes his action to his having been 
 deceived by " the smooth and fair pretences " of 
 the Presbyterian part}-. Strype expresses his 
 conviction that Lightfoot " afterward was con- 
 vinced how he had been trepanned ; " and in 
 proof alleges the fact of his read)- compliance with 
 episcopacy as revived at the Restoration. To 
 such conduct doubtless an uglier name than 
 credulity could be given, but we should be grossly 
 ignorant of the time if we did not perceive that 
 there were men of the highest character to whom 
 the question of the form of Church government 
 was very much a matter of indifference. Through 
 the influence of Archbishop Sheldon at the 
 Restoration, Lightfoot was continued in the 
 mastership of Catherine Hall, and also given 
 ecclesiastical preferment. But though he makes 
 ample acknowledgment of the clemency of 
 Charles II. and of the kindness of Sheldon, he 
 makes no confession of guilt. He had served 
 in the W estminster Assembly, and had taken 
 a very independent line upon several occasions. 1 
 
 1 See his interesting Journal of the proceedings. 
 Works, vol. xiii. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 145 
 
 On the subject of the lay ruling-elder in the 
 Christian congregations of the early Church, his 
 testimony did not reach the measure that was 
 looked for by his friends of the Presbyterian 
 " platform." 1 His welcoming back the restoration 
 of episcopal government can be well understood 
 without any imputation of unworthy motives. 
 But we are concerned rather with his works 
 than with his character. 
 
 Lightfoot's reputation is mainly based on his 
 attempt, largely successful, to illustrate the New 
 Testament from the knowledge of Jewish usages, 
 phraseology, and modes of thought, as they may 
 be gathered from Talmudical literature. This 
 is, without doubt, a vein of inquiry well worth 
 being carefully wrought ; yet in some particular 
 instances its value has been much over-estimated. 
 Other labourers abroad have pursued their 
 studies in this direction ; but in England little 
 has been done since the publication of Lightfoot's 
 Hone Hcbraiccc et Taliiiiidicce. His works on 
 The Temple Service, and on The Temple, especially 
 as it stood in the days of our Saviour, also abound 
 in curious lore drawn from Rabbinical sources. 2 
 
 It was in connection with Semitic studies 
 that William Beveridge f 1638 — 1708), afterwards 
 Bishop of St. Asaph's, first attracted notice. At 
 the early age of twenty he published in Latin 
 
 1 See Works, iii. p. 243. 
 
 - The Harmony of the Four Evangelists and his 
 topographical studies of Palestine are of less importance. 
 
 L 
 
1 4 6 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 his treatise on the Importance and use of the 
 Oriental languages, especially Hebrew, C/ialdec, 
 Syriac, Arabic, and Samaritan, together with a 
 Syriac Grammar '(1658). This work was intended 
 for the benefit of those who desired to profit 
 from Walton's labours. But Beveridge's learning 
 extended in other directions. His greatest work, 
 on the Canons of the ancient Church, 1 is 
 characterized by profound learning ; and its 
 merits have been recognized abroad as well as 
 at home.' 2 Beveridge himself published little 
 in the English tongue ; but his Discourse 011 
 the XXXIX. Articles (which in its full and 
 correct form did not appear till 1840) is an able 
 defence of" the doctrine of the Church of England 
 as consonant to Scripture, reason, and the 
 Fathers." For piety no less than learning, 
 Beveridge is deservedly one of the most honoured 
 names among English theologians. 
 
 Among the Semitic scholars who assisted 
 Walton in his great undertaking was Herbert 
 Thorndike (1-1672), who had been Master of 
 Sidney College, Cambridge. He was versed in 
 Syriac and Arabic as well as in Rabbinical 
 Hebrew, and contributed the various readings 
 of the Syriac to the Polyglott. To him we owe 
 a large body of theological treatises. These 
 works made little impression at the time; but 
 
 1 Synodicon, sive Pandect a Canon urn SS. Apostolorum 
 ct Conciliorum, etc., 1672, 2 torn, folio. 
 
 2 As, e.g., by Van Espen. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 147 
 
 they have been reprinted in the Library of 
 Anglo-Catholic Theology, with an admirable 
 biography by Mr. A. W. Haddan. In most of 
 his writings Thorndike exhibits a desire to 
 reconcile, as far as might be, the contrariant 
 doctrines of Rome and England ; and among 
 divines of repute he (like Montagu at an earlier 
 time) touches the high-water mark of the 
 conciliatory movement. Indeed, if we trust 
 Bishop Barlow, the wise Sanderson had Thorn- 
 dike in his mind's eye when he wrote of some 
 " children of the Church " who had " over-run 
 their Mother," had used " her name without her 
 leave," and had thus " causelessly brought an 
 evil suspicion upon her." His mature judg- 
 ment on various questions in dispute may be 
 most safely sought for in a work published only 
 just before his death, The Reformation of the 
 Church of England better than that of the Council 
 of Trent. Thorndike indulges in theological 
 speculation to an extent not ventured on by our 
 more sober divines. A peculiar interest attaches 
 to him as being, I think, the first to ventilate 
 views on the Eucharist which with little modifi- 
 cation afterwards took definite shape in the 
 theories of the non-jurors. To appreciate his 
 position in some of his earlier writings we must 
 remember that "the tragedy of the Church of 
 England," and its extinction as a Church estab- 
 lishment, seemed to him to allow his suggesting 
 a more comprehensive doctrinal basis for its 
 
148 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 possible reconstruction hereafter. In judging 
 of the Epilogue to the Tragedy of the Church of 
 England, Mr. Haddan has justly observed — " It 
 is one thing to pull a house to pieces which is 
 standing uninjured, in order to remedy unessen- 
 tial defects ; another to suggest improvements 
 in rebuilding of a house at the time in ruins." 
 Thorndike is defective in the arrangement and 
 presentation of his thoughts, and his style is 
 laboured and difficult. Nevertheless the patient 
 and painstaking reader will find much to repay 
 his labour in the study of his learned and 
 thoughtful discussion of many weighty problems. 
 
 As in the case of Beveridge, it was at an 
 early age that Edward Stilling-fleet (1635 — 1699), 
 afterwards Bishop of Worcester ( 1 689), published 
 the first of a long series of able works. His 
 Irenicum, or Weapon-Salve for the Church's 
 Wounds, appeared in 1659. The time was the 
 critical moment when hopes ran high that the 
 Church of England might when restored be 
 adapted to embrace the many more moderate 
 Presbyterian divines who were not unwilling to 
 accept an episcopal form of government, if 
 " lordly prelacy " were so modified as to allow 
 the second order of the ministry a larger voice 
 in the management of ecclesiastical affairs. 
 Young Stillingfleet, writing with a desire to 
 effect a peace, takes up the position of our 
 earlier theologians, that no particular form of 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Church government was expressly commanded 
 in Holy Scripture, or could be established on 
 the grounds of natural reason. The arguments 
 in favour of this opinion occupy the main part 
 of the volume, and he concludes by suggesting, 
 as a return to primitive practice — (i) that 
 presbyters should act as " the senate to the 
 bishop " ; (2) that dioceses should not be larger 
 than would permit of the personal inspection of 
 the bishop, and that a bishop should be placed 
 in every great town ; (3) that a provincial synod 
 should be held twice each year ; and (4) that 
 " none should judge in Church matters but the 
 clergy." Whatever may be thought of the 
 arguments as to the form of Church government 
 being " a mere matter of prudence, regulated by 
 the Word of God," some of the practical sug- 
 gestions of Stillingfleet have commended them- 
 selves in our own time to the independent 
 Churches of the Anglican Communion, while the 
 great increase of the episcopate in England 
 shows that he had anticipated in spirit the need 
 of the reduction in the size of dioceses. 
 
 The Ircnicum was certainly a remarkable 
 work for so young a man. Warburton compares 
 it with Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, and 
 regards it as a masterly plea for toleration. It 
 is more properly a masterly plea for such 
 reforms in the Church as would give less show 
 of justification for the complaints of Protestant 
 dissent. There is nothing inconsistent in this 
 
•So 
 
 I'ADKOCK LECTURES 
 
 carl)- w ork with his later treatise, The Unreason- 
 ableness of Separation from the Church of 
 England ( 1 68 1 ). 
 
 Stillingfleet's Origincs sacra:, or a rational 
 account of the grounds of Christian faith as to 
 the truth and Divine authority of the Scriptures 
 and the matters therein contained (1662), reached 
 a third edition by 1666, and has been again and 
 again reprinted. Modern inquiries into the 
 origin of the Pentateuch leave no doubt of the 
 inadequacy of this work to meet the difficulties 
 of our time. But its learning and ability cannot 
 be reasonably questioned. " Let any competent 
 person," says one of the acutest critics of our 
 time, 1 "read the chapters on Ancient History 
 in the first Book of the Origines, and the account 
 of the laws against the Christians in Book II., 
 c. 9, and he will see that those who sneer at that 
 great work are themselves the proper objects of 
 pity or contempt." 
 
 The anti-Roman treatises of Stillingfleet, his 
 Origines Britannica?, or the antiquities of the 
 British Churches? and his unfortunate contro- 
 versy with Locke, must, with regret, be here 
 passed over in silence. 
 
 1 Bishop Fitzgerald in Aids to Fa/fh, p. 45. 
 
 2 The best edition is Mr. Pantin's (Oxford, 1842), to 
 which is added Bishop W. Lloyd's Historical account of 
 Church Government as first received in Great Britain and 
 Ireland. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 Moral theology in the seventeenth century — The English 
 casuists : Perkins, Ames, Sanderson, Hall, Taylor — 
 Joseph Mead — Hales of Eton — The Cambridge 
 Platonists : Whichcote, Smith, Cudworth, More — 
 Bishop Pearson — Barrow — Bishop Bull — The anti- 
 Roman pamphleteers. 
 
 In continuing the review of the more eminent 
 divines of the seventeenth century our attention 
 may be transferred for a time from works con- 
 cerned with doctrinal controversies, or biblical 
 learning, to certain important studies in a special 
 field of inquiry where the English Church has 
 been in general gravely deficient — I mean moral 
 theology. 
 
 The word "casuistry," as generally used, carries 
 with it an evil connotation. It suggests notions 
 of deceit and trickery. Men have come to 
 think of it as the studied art not of ascertaining, 
 but of evading duty. Yet it is obvious that in 
 the course of daily life complex cases are con- 
 stantly occurring where duty is not clear, or 
 where (apparently) two or more duties seem to 
 conflict with one another. Hence, call it by 
 '5' 
 
152 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 what name we will, there arises the necessity 
 of dealing with such cases. To be one's own 
 casuist is not always the course of discretion ; 
 and a good and sensible man will often with 
 advantage ask the aid of one who is well- 
 informed, wise, and practised in the exercise of 
 moral discrimination. Cases, for instance, are 
 frequently arising out of the relations of human 
 law to conscience, and out of the numerous 
 questions that concern the obligations to truth, 
 as between man and man, where duty is by no 
 means obvious. The regular practice of habitual 
 confession (as in the Roman Church) has, of 
 course, strongly stimulated casuistical studies ; 1 
 but, even where the practice is not general, a 
 faithful pastor will be frequently consulted in 
 cases of difficulty ; and experience shows that 
 the rough-and-ready answer of our first thoughts 
 is by no means to be always trusted. 
 
 It is worthy of notice that it was among 
 divines of the Puritan school that casuistry was 
 first studied with any care in the reformed 
 Church. William Perkins (1558 — 1602), who 
 had been a Fellow of Christ's College, Cam- 
 bridge, and attained a considerable repute as a 
 preacher and commentator, gave special atten- 
 
 1 Jeremy Taylor observes, "The careless and needless 
 neglect of receiving private confessions hath been too 
 great a cause of our not providing materials apt for so 
 pious and useful a ministration." — Dactoi' Dubitantium, 
 Preface. 
 
I'ADIk )CK LECTURES 
 
 153 
 
 tion to this subject. 1 He was followed by 
 another and more distinguished Cambridge 
 student, William Ames (1576 — 1633), who had 
 studied under Perkins, and came afterwards to 
 be Professor of Divinity at Franeker, in Fries- 
 land. His volume, De conscicntia ct ej'iis jure, 
 vel casibus (1630), deals with many problems, 
 some of the inner and spiritual life, some of 
 practical conduct. The solutions of the cases 
 are sometimes affected by the peculiarities of 
 Puritan theology ; and not infrequently a Puri- 
 tan bias is discernible ; yet on the whole the 
 works of both Perkins and Ames are marked 
 by good sense and sound reasoning. Ames 
 points to the serious lack of the discussion of 
 cases of conscience by Protestant divines. To 
 him is due the happy metaphor (which, by the 
 way, the conscience of our eminent casuist, 
 Jeremy Taylor, permitted him to borrow without 
 acknowledgment) that through this deficiency 
 of sound teaching among ourselves the children 
 of Israel were compelled to go down to the 
 Philistines {id est, nostri studwsi ad Pontificios 
 authores) to sharpen, every man, his share, his 
 coulter, his axe, and his mattock. 2 
 
 Robert Sanderson (1 587-1662), Regius Professor 
 of Divinity at Oxford (i642),and after the Restor- 
 
 1 The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience was a 
 posthumous work, appearing in 1606 ; reprinted separately 
 1614, and in Perkins' collected Works. 
 
 2 Prcrfatio ad lectorem. 
 
154 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 ation Bishop of Lincoln (16C0 — 1662), 1 stands 
 out above the earlier writers by the reason of the 
 thoroughness of his examination of fundamental 
 principles, as well as by his superior intellectual 
 acumen. The seven Lectures (1646) delivered 
 at Oxford, Dc jufanienti promissorii obligationc 
 (suggested by the parliamentary imposition of 
 the Solemn League and Covenant), and the 
 ten lectures (1647), De obligationc conscientice, 
 are works of solid and permanent value, and 
 abound (especially the latter) in applications 
 pertinent to many questions of our own time. 
 In thoroughness, accuracy, and soundness of 
 judgment, Sanderson seems to me to far surpass 
 his more brilliant contemporary, the author of 
 the Ductor Dubitantium. In these lectures 
 Sanderson, who had as early as 161 5 published 
 a work on Logic, 2 which long held its place as 
 the manual in use at Oxford till it was at length 
 superseded by Aldrich, employs habitually and 
 familiarly terms of the Aristotelian philosophy 
 now little used and imperfectly understood ; 
 but, as Dr. Whewell has justly observed, " in 
 his hands these technicalities become really 
 instruments of an effective and methodical dis- 
 cussion of his subject." 3 " It would be difficult," 
 
 1 It is to Sanderson's pen we owe the Preface of our 
 present English Book of Common Prayer; and an admir- 
 able piece of work it is. 
 
 - Logicce Artis Compendium. 
 
 3 Preface to WhewelPs edition of De Oblig. Consc., 
 1851. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 155 
 
 writes the same authority, " to discuss most of 
 the moral questions which form the latter part 
 of the work in a more satisfactory manner than 
 is there done." Not only as an intellectual 
 exercise, but as furnishing him with principles 
 constantly applicable to one of the most im- 
 portant duties of a physician of souls, Sander- 
 son's work on Conscience may be strongly com- 
 mended to every student preparing for the 
 ministry of the Church. 1 
 
 There have been hapjDily preserved to us a 
 few examples of cases of conscience on which 
 Sanderson was specially consulted, together with 
 his answers. They are well worth studying as 
 instances of sagacity and sound judgment. 2 
 
 Sanderson, as a preacher, showed his marked 
 predilection for the discussion of ethical ques- 
 tions of daily interest. His sermons, cleared of 
 the mannerism of the period and the (more 
 than usually frequent) antique forms of phrase- 
 ology and structure, supply a rich treasury to 
 the modern preacher. King Charles I. num- 
 bered Sanderson among his favourite chaplains ; 
 
 1 The late Bishop of Lincoln (Christopher Wordsworth) 
 required a knowledge of this work from candidates for 
 Holy Orders. It is to be regretted that the old translation 
 by Lewis (1722) was employed by the Bishop as the basis 
 of the English edition published (1877) by him ; for 
 though some corrections have been made, the rendering 
 is still in many-places faulty. 
 
 2 See vol. v. of Jacobson's adm : rable edition of Sander- 
 son's Works. 
 
156 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 and his saying, reported by Izaak W alton, " I 
 take my ears to other preachers, but I take my 
 conscience to Mr. Sanderson," aptly marks the 
 distinguishing characteristic of this great divine. 
 
 "Of all Divinity," wrote Hall, Bishop of 
 Norwich, " that part is most useful which de- 
 termines cases of conscience." From his pen 
 we have a small bod)- of Resolutions and De- 
 cisions of divers practical cases of conscience, in 
 continual use among men. The cases are fort}' 
 in number, some connected with questions aris- 
 ing in trade and commerce, some arising out of 
 that fertile source of doubts, the marriage laws, 
 etc. ; all are in the true sense practical, and are 
 dealt with in a thoroughly practical manner, 
 with competent learning and admirable good 
 sense. " I could be easily more voluminous," 
 wrote Hall, " though perhaps not more satis- 
 factory." It could be wished that the writer 
 next to be noticed had been actuated by a like 
 spirit. 
 
 Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, begun 
 in earlier years, was completed in his forced 
 retirement at Portmore on the beautiful shores 
 of Lough Xeagh, and was published in 1660. 
 It is divided into four books, dealing respectively 
 with (I.) Conscience in general ; (II.) Divine 
 Laws; (III.) Human Laws; and (IV.) The 
 nature and causes of good and evil. In the 
 course of the work a large number of " cases " 
 are treated and resolved. Like everything from 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 157 
 
 his pen, it exhibits copious, perhaps over-copious 
 reading, not always pertinent, and a fertile and 
 even luxuriant fancy. But it often lacks that 
 precision of thought which the subject demands. 
 It is tedious and verbose, and is more service- 
 able in illustrating our conclusions than in help- 
 ing us to reach them. Many of its pages will 
 entertain the curious reader with a vast variety 
 of citations drawn from all quarters, the Greek 
 and Latin classics, the Fathers, the Schoolmen, 
 the Canonists, the Civilians, and the later 
 Humanists. Those whose literary taste is formed 
 on Burton's Anatomy of MdancJioly will enjoy 
 many parts of the Ductor Dubitantium ; and 
 Taylor, moreover, possesses an imaginative 
 energy of his own which is lacking in " Demo- 
 critus Junior." But one who seeks the solution 
 of some moral problem is tempted to become 
 impatient under this unprofitable and often 
 impertinent display of reading. To what is 
 properly the science of ethics Taylor contributes 
 little or nothing that is of value in his long 
 discussions on the nature of conscience ; but 
 despite his wearisome prolixity, and his occa- 
 sional subservience to human authorities, his 
 large-minded practical judgment generally serves 
 him in good stead when he deals with the reso- 
 lution of " cases." We are bound, however, to 
 say that frequently his decision is more sound 
 than the reasons which he alleges in its support. 
 Few questions reveal the general tone of a 
 
153 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 casuist better than those which relate to truth 
 and its obligations. In the cases proposed, 
 Taylor is not betrayed into the follies of ex- 
 travagant rigorism, and yet maintains a high 
 standard of duty. Occasionally he appears not 
 to know his own way clearly out of the labyrinth 
 which his fertile intellect has constructed. But 
 we may reject as wholly baseless the imputation 
 of Hallam, 1 that on the subject of " a probable 
 conscience " he approaches " the decried theories 
 of the Jesuits." On the contrary, the vicious 
 doctrine of " probabilism " is distinctly con- 
 demned and repudiated. 2 
 
 Taken as a whole, this work, upon which 
 Taylor laboured longest, brilliant as it is in 
 many parts, is not the outcome of a precise and 
 accurate mind, and as a contribution to moral 
 theology its value is slight. 3 
 
 From the course of the main stream of 
 Anglican divinity moral theology must be 
 counted only as a little bay or by-water, where, 
 notwithstanding its attractions, we cannot afford 
 time to linger. We again push out into the 
 central current. 
 
 The works upon which chiefly rests the repu- 
 
 1 Literature of Europe, iv. p. 154. 
 3 Duct. Du/u't., Book i. chap. 4. 
 
 3 It was Taylor's experiences in hearing confessions 
 that first suggested the Ductor Dubitantium. The ex- 
 cellent John Evelyn was one to whom he acted as 
 "spiritual father."' 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 159 
 
 tation of Joseph Mead 1 (i 586 — 1638), the recluse of 
 Christ's College, Cambridge, are his Clavis Apo- 
 calyptica, and kindred studies on the Revelation 
 of St. John and the prophet Daniel. On the 
 merits or demerits of his treatment of these diffi- 
 cult subjects I am quite incompetent to offer an 
 opinion. It must suffice to say that with most 
 of those who have made prophecy a subject of 
 study, the esteem in which Mead is held seems 
 rather to have increased than diminished in the 
 course of time. But there are other writings of 
 his which have made a distinct impression on 
 theological opinion. Of these we may particu- 
 larly refer to his work on The Christian Sacrifice 
 (1635). This brief treatise, scholarly and candid, 
 admirably arranged and lucidly written, deserves 
 the careful study of every one interested in the 
 eucharistic controversies of our own time. The 
 kindred tract, On the name Altar or QvaiaaTjjpiov 
 anciently given to the Holy Table, was written 
 before the acrimonious controversy on the sub- 
 ject had broken out, and forms an interesting 
 contribution to the study of Christian antiquities. 2 
 The distinctive feature of Mead's treatise is his 
 display of the proofs that the ancient Church 
 offered the bread and wine, first " to agnize " (/. c. 
 acknowledge) God " the Lord of the creature," 
 
 1 So he himself spelled his name, though it is more 
 ommonly written " Medc." 
 
 2 Some small corrections arc made by Bingham 
 {Antiquities, Book VIII. chap. vi. § 12). 
 
i6o 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 the Giver of the gifts ; and, secondly, as symbols 
 of the broken Body and shed Blood of Christ, 
 "to represent and inculcate His blessed passion 
 to His Father." 1 He guards himself from mis- 
 apprehension by insisting at length on the 
 teaching that this latter sacrifice " was placed 
 in commemoration only ; " or, as he otherwise 
 puts it, " the Christian sacrifice is an oblation of 
 thanksgiving and prayer, through Jesus Christ, 
 commemorated in the creatures of bread and 
 wine." This commemoration is before God the 
 Father, "and is not a bare remembrance or 
 putting ourselves in mind only (as is com- 
 monly supposed,!, but a putting of God in 
 mind." 
 
 It is worth observing that some two years 
 after Mead had given expression to these views, 
 the Scottish Prayer-book (1637), as revised by 
 Laud, inserted the rubric in the Communion 
 Office — " The Presbyter shall then offer up and 
 place the bread and wine prepared for the 
 Sacrament upon the Lord's Table ; " and thus 
 was recognized the first oblation of the elements 
 in accordance with primitive usage. And so 
 the rubric stands at this day in the commonly 
 received text of the characteristic Liturgy of the 
 Scottish Episcopal Church. At the time of the 
 revision of the English Prayer-book in 1661 an 
 unsuccessful attempt was made to introduce a 
 
 1 Field {Of the Church, appendix to Book III.) had 
 indicated the same line of thought. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 161 
 
 similar rubric. 1 It was probably an unreasoning 
 dread of anything which looked like an approach 
 to Rome that prevented any general accept- 
 ance at the time of Mead's teaching ; but so far 
 as concerns the making the memorial of the 
 Sacrifice of Calvary before the Father, it re- 
 appears at a later date in the writings of Arch- 
 bishop Bramhall, of Bishop Patrick, of Thorn- 
 dike, of Bishop Bull, and of all of the non-juring 
 school. 2 
 
 A few years later than the publication of 
 Mead's work on The Cliristian Sacrifice, another 
 Cambridge man, Ralph Cudworth (1617 — 1688), 
 published his True Notion of the Lord's Supper 
 (1642), where the design of the author is to show 
 that the Eucharist " is not a sacrifice, but a feast 
 upon a sacrifice . . . not the offering up of some- 
 thing to God upon an altar, but the eating of 
 something that comes from God's altar, and is 
 set upon our tables." 3 This was Cudworth's first 
 essay in literary work, and was published when 
 he was only twenty- five years of age. Except 
 for its early indication of extensive reading, it 
 
 1 The Prayer-book of the American Church in this 
 follows the English Prayer-book. 
 
 2 Mead's Discourses, preached in his College Chapel, 
 contain many careful studies of the sense of difficult 
 passages of Scripture, and well deserve, together with his 
 work on The Christian Sacrifice, to be reprinted. 
 
 3 Waterland, in his Review of the Doctrine of the 
 Eucharist (chap, xi.), discusses the objections made to 
 Cudworth. 
 
 M 
 
l62 
 
 r.unx k:k lkcti kks 
 
 gave little promise of the powers exhibited in 
 his great work, the Intellectual System of the 
 Universe. Its radical defect is the total incom- 
 petence of his theory to account for the language 
 of even the very earliest writers of primitive 
 Christian antiquity. Here Mead's superiority 
 is quite overwhelming. 
 
 It has been stated (and there is nothing im- 
 probable in the statement) that while Chilling- 
 worth was engaged on his Religion of Protestants, 
 he had asked for the views of a friend, who, 
 though then unknown by his writings, had a con- 
 siderable reputation in a learned and cultivated 
 circle. This was " the ever-memorable Mr. John 
 Hales of Eton College." 1 Hales (1584 — 1656) was 
 a man of refined and sensitive nature, an exquisite 
 scholar, and marked by a very wide and varied 
 culture, " as great a master " — to use the words 
 of Bishop Pearson — " of polite, various, and 
 universal learning as ever yet conversed with 
 books." He shrank from controversy, and lived, 
 as far as might be, in retirement, occasional ly 
 diversified by the society of poets, wits, and 
 courtiers, rather than of ecclesiastics. His in- 
 fluence during his life-time was due to his 
 familiar conversation in the circle of his culti- 
 vated associates. He had an obstinate dislike 
 to allowing anything of his to be published ; 
 and almost everything of his that we now possess 
 
 1 So styled on the title-page of the Golden Remains. 
 
PADD< >CK LECTURES 
 
 we ow e to the care with which friends cherished 
 his writings. 
 
 In his early years Hales had been present, 
 though only as a curious spectator, at the Synod 
 of Dort, and it was there probably he acquired 
 the strong repugnance to ecclesiastical bigotry 
 and intolerance which was afterwards a settled 
 feature of his character. At Dort, as he himself 
 expressed it, he "bid John Calvin good-night" ; 
 and it is plain he bid good-night not only to 
 Calvin and the Dutch Calvinism of the Five 
 Articles, but also to the narrow and persecuting 
 spirit that would restrict the communion of 
 Christ's Church to those who symbolized with 
 the triumphant party. It may be that afterwards 
 his comprehensiveness ran too far in the direction 
 of laxity. But, at any rate, the drift of his 
 thought and feeling was quite in accord with 
 the spirit of Chillingworth's treatise. And in 
 Hales we find the germ of Taylor's Liberty of 
 Prophesying. 
 
 If we may accept the story, his little paper, 
 Concerning Schism and Schismatics (not printed 
 till 1642), was prepared for the use of Chilling- 
 worth (about 1636), and, having been handed 
 about in manuscript, made no small stir. In 
 the tract itself it must have been rather what 
 was suggested than what was asserted, which 
 gave offence. One can hardly read it without 
 feeling that the author had in his mind's eye the 
 hard rigour with which Archbishop Laud (who 
 
164 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 was tolerant to doctrinal variations) had been 
 pressing ceremonial uniformity. " If the special 
 guides and fathers of the Church," says Males, 
 " would be a little sparing of encumbering 
 churches with superfluities, or not over-rigid 
 either in reviving of obsolete customs, or im- 
 posing new, there would be far less cause of 
 schism or superstition ; and all the inconvenience 
 were likely to ensue would be but this, they 
 should in so doing yield a little to the imbecility 1 
 of their inferiors, a thing which St. Paul would 
 never have refused to do." And in the matter 
 of belief he boldly refutes the notion " that men 
 of different opinions in Christian religion may 
 not hold communion in sacrts." He urges that 
 " opinionum varietas et opinantium unitas " are 
 not incompatible. All of which, to be sure, is 
 quite true ; but the practical question as to the 
 permissible extent of doctrinal variety he does 
 not seriously attempt to grapple. Elsewhere he 
 is frequent in insisting on the view that errors 
 in doctrine are more pardonable than any falling 
 short of the high standard of the Christian 
 character. The presentation of this side of 
 truth was indeed much needed in his day, and 
 perhaps in our own day it is not without its 
 value. In a spirit that reminds us of Justin 
 Martyr and more than one early writer of the 
 
 1 The word is obviously used with a reference to 
 Rom. xv. 1, where we find in the Vulgate imbecillitatcs 
 infimtorum. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 I6 5 
 
 Alexandrian school, he exclaims, " The man of 
 virtuous dispositions, though ignorant of the 
 mystery of Christ, be it Fabricius, or Regulus, 
 or any ancient heathen man, famous for sincerity 
 and uprightness of carriage, hath as sure a claim 
 and interest in the Church of Christ, as the man 
 deepest skilled in, most certainly believing, and 
 openly professing all that is written in the holy 
 Books of God, if he endeavour not to show his 
 faith by his works." 1 The large and generous 
 current of Hales' human sympathy, and his ap- 
 preciation of all that is good wherever it is to 
 be found,are characteristic features of his writings, 
 and make him one of the most delightful, stimu- 
 lating, and wholesome of the divines of the 
 seventeenth century. He appears as quite uncon- 
 nected historically with the School of Cambridge 
 divines who came, at a later time, to be spoken 
 of as the " Latitude-men," though his tone is in 
 many respects similar to theirs. 
 
 The shameful controversial animus that im- 
 puted Socinian views to Hales had not a shadow 
 of justification. His Confession of the Trinity 
 has been happily preserved, 2 and sets at rest 
 the question, which in truth should never have 
 been raised. And the warm eulogy of the great 
 champion of orthodoxy, Bishop Pearson, prefixed 
 to the Golden Remains, and unqualified by the 
 
 1 Sermon, " Of dealing with erring Christians," in 
 Golden Remains (edit. 1673), P- 37- 
 
 2 Golden Remains, p. 257. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 slightest hint at censure, may satisfy any as to 
 the soundness of Hales, while it is entirely 
 creditable to the large-hearted and generous 
 spirit of Pearson himself. Pearson had known 
 Hales personally, and it is quite remarkable 
 how the somewhat cold and judicial temper of 
 the critic warms as he recalls his own " lone 
 
 o 
 
 experience and intimate acquaintance " of Hales. 
 " He really was," he declares, " a most prodigious 
 example of an acute and piercing wit, of a vast 
 and illimited knowledge, of a severe and profound 
 judgment," and his genuine goodness, Pearson 
 goes on to say, was even more wonderful than 
 his " intellectual perfections." 
 
 As we approach the period of the Restoration 
 there comes into some prominence a little group 
 of Cambridge men associated together in earlier 
 days by college ties, and, as time went on, by a 
 prevailing community of view in their way of 
 regarding religious questions. They came to be 
 known as the " Latitude-men," and sometimes 
 as the " Cambridge Platonists." The most 
 eminent among them were Benjamin Whichcote 
 (1610 — 1683), John Smith (1618— 1652), Ralph 
 Cudworth (161 7 — 1688), and Henry More (161 4 
 -1687). 
 
 To explain satisfactorily the origin of this 
 coterie, or " set," as we should now style it, 
 would demand a minute knowledge of the history 
 of life and thought in the Cambridge colleges 
 during the reign of Charles I., to which I cannot 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 pretend. 1 The leading figures of this little band, 
 Whichcote, Smith, and Cudworth, were all mem- 
 bers of Emmanuel College, the Puritan founda- 
 tion of Sir Walter Mildmay ; and the influences 
 by which they had been surrounded were cer- 
 tainly not of a kind to attach them to the royalist 
 and Church party. We find some of them at a 
 later period accepting offices and emoluments 
 in the University from which the royalist divines 
 had been expelled under the usurpation. It is 
 quite impossible to believe they had any real 
 sympathy with the dogmatic system of the 
 Westminster Assembly of Divines. We are 
 scarcely in a position to judge their conduct 
 or pronounce on the moral problems which 
 they were compelled to solve in practice. It 
 is satisfactory to know that Whichcote, when 
 advanced to the Provostship of King's College, 
 not only refused to subscribe the Solemn League 
 and Covenant, but was sufficiently influential to 
 protect from such an intolerable test all the 
 Fellows of that foundation. 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine how during the 
 miserable distractions, civil and religious, which 
 then embittered English life, thoughtful and 
 quiet-loving men would seek to avoid the con- 
 tentious questions of theology, and turn their 
 attention to the great fundamental truths that 
 
 1 Mr. J. B. Mullinger's interesting essay, Cambridge 
 Characteristics in the Seventeenth Century (1867), may be 
 consulted. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 lie at the basis of all religion, and to the moral 
 and spiritual aspects of Christianity. On ques- 
 tions of Church government it is likely enough 
 that they were really indifferent. Henry More 
 puts the matter with considerable force when he 
 says, " If the external form of Church government 
 were of such mighty consequence as that this 
 ought to be called antichristian, tJiat reputed 
 jure divino, and that it were essential to a true 
 Church to have such or such a kind of govern- 
 ment rather than another, Christ would have 
 left more express command and direction con- 
 cerning it." And on the dogmas of Calvinistic 
 theology the Cambridge men were content in 
 general not actively to debate them, but by their 
 positive teaching partly to divert attention from 
 them, and partly to silently undermine them. 
 It is a real and serious defect that the corporate 
 character of the Church was imperfectly realized, 
 and that the sacramental system of the Church 
 had little significance for them. 
 
 They shrank from acrimonious controversy. 
 They sought to escape from the clouds and 
 storms of our lower airs by living on elevated 
 heights and in the somewhat rarefied atmosphere 
 of philosophical speculation. But both with 
 Whichcote and with Smith a deep religious 
 veneration for conscience, as the immediate 
 voice of God, was a constant check to any 
 tendency to unprofitable vagueness. With them, 
 if with any men, religion was " a practical thing." 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 169 
 
 To speak of the best of these writers as 
 " mystics " is very likely to mislead. They 
 dwelt much, it is true, on the personal relations 
 of the soul to God. But nothing can be more 
 intellectually severe than their resolve to guard 
 against the self-deceptions that come under the 
 guise of immediate revelations. 
 
 " Intra tc, quaere Deum, seek for God within 
 thine own soul." " To seek our divinity merely 
 in books and writings is to seek the living among 
 the dead : we do but in vain seek God many 
 times in these, where His truth too often is not 
 so much enshrined but entombed." " The soul 
 itself hath its sense as well as the body : and 
 therefore David, when he would teach us how 
 to know what the divine goodness is, calls not 
 for speculation but sensation — Taste and see 
 how good the Lord is." " There is an inward 
 beauty, life, and loveliness in Divine Truth which 
 cannot be known but only when it is digested 
 into life and practice." These words from Smith, 
 greater in every sense than his master Whichcote, 
 will, better than any attempt of mine, put us at 
 the centre of the spirit of the Cambridge school. 
 
 On the intellectual side, as it is not difficult 
 to understand, the Cambridge Platonists were 
 engaged largely in the statement and defence 
 of the primary truths of natural religion. Thus 
 it was with Whichcote ; and in the few Select 
 Discourses of John Smith that have come down 
 to us we have treatises 011 " Atheism," " the 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 existence and nature of God," " the immortality 
 of the soul," and " superstition " in the sense of 
 " an over-timorous apprehension of the Deity." 
 Again on " Atheism " and " the immortality of 
 the soul " we have from Henry More two elabor- 
 ate works ; while the greatest product of the 
 Cambridge school, viewed from the side of 
 thought and power of philosophical speculation, 
 Cudworth's unfinished Intellectual System of the 
 Universe, is directed almost wholly against the 
 atheistic and fatalistic tendency of the writings 
 of Hobbes. It is a work marked by profuse 
 erudition and, what was rarer among English 
 divines, by great philosophical insight. 
 
 While in his day More was much more 
 generally esteemed, and secured a large sale 
 for his works, the reputation of Cudworth has 
 grown with years ; and both the Intellectual 
 System and his little posthumous work on 
 Eternal and Immutable Morality will always 
 have a respected place in the esteem of philo- 
 sophical theologians. 
 
 It was with such deep fundamental and 
 primary principles of religion, rather than with 
 any parts of developed systems of distinctively 
 Christian dogma, that the Cambridge school 
 were mainly occupied. 1 
 
 1 The name "Latitude-men," or " Latitudinarians," 
 points to the line of large tolerance as to varieties in 
 belief, which, notably, these Cambridge men advocated, 
 though, as we have seen, a like spirit was manifested by 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 I/I 
 
 If in a company of well-informed persons 
 the question were asked, " Who were the three 
 greatest among the masters of theology in the 
 Church of England ? " the answers made might 
 probably vary either as to the selected names, 
 or as to the order in which they were placed ; 
 but it would be strange indeed if any of the 
 replies did not include among the three the 
 name of Bishop Pearson. And, beyond all 
 doubt, John Pearson (1612 — 1686) possessed in 
 a high degree a rare combination of great 
 natural gifts, trained and disciplined, with great 
 attainments in learning. In him we find eru- 
 dition, not only wide but minutely exact, and a 
 critical faculty keen and penetrating. In him 
 we find sound reasoning which never builds, as 
 in the case of some who have great reputations, 
 a huge superstructure of top-heavy inference 
 upon an insufficient or rickety base. In him 
 we find a judicial capacity that seems never 
 
 others of the more " churchly " school ; while the term 
 "Platonists" seems to have been attached to them on 
 account of the prominence given by some of them to the 
 teaching of Platonism, more particularly as it took shape 
 in the writings of the later or Neo-Platonic school, repre- 
 sented by Plotinus and Proclus. Dr. Tulloch in his 
 Rational Theology, etc. (vol. ii.) deals at length with the 
 Cambridge Platonists, and gives some account not only 
 of the leaders but of the minor members of the school, as 
 Culvcrwel, Worthington, and others. An interesting 
 lecture on Benjamin Whichcote by Bishop Westcott will 
 be found in Masters in English Theology (pp. 147 — 173). 
 
1/2 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 swayed by prepossessions, that looks at the 
 evidence, all the evidence, and only the evidence, 
 before pronouncing judgment. 
 
 Pearson has left us not more than two works 
 of any considerable length ; but each of these is 
 in its way a masterpiece, — the Exposition of tJie 
 Creed (1659) 1 and the V indicia: Epistolavnm S. 
 Ignatii (1672). 
 
 Pearson, like so many of the clergy of royalist 
 sympathies, had been deprived of his parochial 
 charge ; yet, unwilling to be idle in his Master's 
 work, he accepted the invitation of the parish- 
 ioners of St. Clement's, Eastcheap, in London, to 
 deliver to them a weekly lecture. These lectures, 
 on the Apostles' Creed, his hearers requested him 
 to publish ; and this he did, after recasting them 
 in the form that we now possess in the Exposition. 
 
 The plan of this great work is to give in the 
 text an exposition of each article of the Creed, 
 supporting it " upon the written Word of God," 
 and avoiding with rigid strictness " inserting the 
 least sentence or phrase of any learned language." 
 To this determination, systematically carried out, 
 the book owes much of its success. It deals 
 with a complete and definite circle of truth, the 
 essentials of Christianity ; and the result is a self- 
 contained treatise, sufficient for its purpose, and 
 
 1 The third folio edition of 1669 was apparently the last 
 that was revised by the author, and it is taken as the basis 
 of our best edition, that of Rev. T. Chevallier, as revised 
 by Rev. R. Sinker, Cambridge, 1S82. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 173 
 
 available to every intelligent person of ordinary 
 education. The solidity of Pearson's reasoning, 
 and his studied care to keep clear of " doubtful 
 disputations," carries the student on from step to 
 step with few occasions for hesitating and de- 
 murring. To those who acknowledge the authority 
 of Holy Scripture (for that is assumed) Pearson on 
 the Creed is a book that nearly everywhere carries 
 conviction. 
 
 Again, when we turn to the copious notes we 
 have a great store-house of erudite illustration, 
 draw n from all quarters, admirably arranged, and 
 distinguished from too many displays of learning 
 in being thoroughly pertinent. In this as in all 
 his w orks the most cursory remarks, the merest 
 obiter dicta are precious. As was said of Pearson 
 by one who was himself competent to judge — 
 Richard Bentley — " the very dust of his writings 
 is gold." I would add that even the silence of 
 Pearson, where some would expect him to speak, 
 is often highly suggestive. 
 
 In his constant reference to Christian antiquity 
 as a guide to the interpretation of Scripture 
 Pearson is a typical Anglican theologian. In his 
 epistle dedicatory to the parishioners of St. 
 Clement's he puts his position briefly — " In Chris- 
 tianity . . . whatsoever is truly new is certainly 
 false." And the same principle is expressed in 
 his Latin Sermon, preached at Cambridge ad 
 c/ernm, on the text, " Stand ye in the ways and 
 see and ask for the old paths" (Jer. vi. 16), where 
 
174 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 the preacher cried aloud, "Shun novelty, inquire 
 w hat was from the beginning, consult the sources, 
 go to antiquity, go back to the Fathers, look to 
 the Primitive Church." Here he declares is the 
 defence against Rome. Here is the defence 
 against Puritanism. 
 
 The English style of Pearson is not one of his 
 strong points. His sentences are often long and 
 laboured, and are sometimes disfigured by awk- 
 ward constructions. 1 Still the attentive reader 
 will seldom miss the sense. The Exposition is 
 indeed a great possession of the English Church. 
 The late Bishop of Brechin (A. P. Forbes) used 
 to say, " The man who has mastered his Pearson 
 on the Creed may be reckoned a considerable 
 theologian." ' 
 
 Comparatively few are capable of truly esti- 
 mating the value of the second work of Pearson 
 which we have named ; but it is in truth perhaps 
 an even greater effort of his extraordinary powers. 
 The V indicia; Epistolarum S. Ignatii' 1 was an 
 answer to Daille's attempt to show that the letters 
 attributed to Ignatius were really productions long 
 posterior to his time. " It was," writes Bishop 
 Lightfoot, " incomparably the most valuable con- 
 tribution to the subject which had hitherto ap- 
 
 1 The frequent construction commencing with " being 
 that " (though not peculiar to Pearson) is extremely rare 
 in our good writers, and is now entirely obsolete. 
 
 2 Editions in 1672, 1698, 1724, and in A.C.L., edited by 
 Archdeacon Churton, 2 vols. 1852. 
 
PAD! OCK LEC1 URES 
 
 '75 
 
 pearcd, with the single exception of Ussher's work. 
 Pearson's learning, critical ability, clearness of 
 statement, and moderation of tone, nowhere 
 appear to greater advantage than in this work. 
 If here and there an argument is overstrained, 
 this was the almost inevitable consequence of the 
 writer's position as the champion of a cause which 
 had been recklessly and violently assailed on all 
 sides. . . . Compared with Daille's attack, Pear- 
 son's reply was as light to darkness. In England 
 at all events his work seemed to be accepted as 
 closing the controversy." 1 
 
 It is impossible here to notice the minor works 
 of Pearson, though all of them arc of interest, and 
 some are of considerable importance, 2 and we 
 will conclude our brief account with the words of 
 a contemporary, by no means always friendly to 
 divines of the school which Pearson represents, 
 Bishop Burnet — Pearson " was in all respects the 
 greatest divine of the age : a man of great learn- 
 ing, strong reason, and of a clear judgment." 3 
 
 The great and varied powers of Isaac Barrow 
 (1630 — 1677), mathematician, scholar, and theo- 
 logian, conjoined with his sound and masculine 
 judgment, made him a notable figure among the 
 
 1 Apostolic Fathers, Part II. vol. i. p. 320. 
 
 2 The. Minor Theological Workshave been collected and 
 edited by Archdeacon Churton. Oxford, 1844, 2 vols. 
 
 3 Oiun Times, iii. 142. See also an excellent criticism by 
 Archdeacon Cheetham in Masters in English Theology. 
 
i 7 6 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 man)' eminent men that distinguished the reign 
 of Charles II. 
 
 Barrow's abilities showed themselves early. 
 He was about nineteen years of age when he 
 became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 He was then for a time an eager student of the 
 experimental and natural sciences, chemistry, 
 anatomy, and botany, then beginning to gain a 
 footing at that University. Some five years 
 later he would have succeeded to the Professor- 
 ship of Greek but for the forcible abduction, as 
 the story goes, of one of the electors favourable 
 to his claims. The next year (1655) he set out 
 upon his journeyings on the Continent and in 
 the Levant. He was qualified to profit by 
 foreign travel. His mind was already well 
 stored ; and both the present and the past were 
 to him full of interest. At Paris he inquires 
 into the condition of the French Protestants ; 
 and turning to the ancient seats of learning 
 he laments that there were no successors to the 
 power or erudition of Gassendi or Mersenne, of 
 Petavius or Sirmond. The Sorbonne he con- 
 trasts very unfavourably with his own College. 
 At Florence the treasures of the library and the 
 museum engross him. In Turkey he made a 
 study of Mohammedanism which afterwards 
 bore fruit. 1 At Constantinople he read the 
 works of its greatest prelate, St. Chrysostom, 
 his favourite among the Fathers. 
 
 1 In his treatise E pi '/owe Fidei et Religionis Turcica, 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 i/7 
 
 After some four years abroad, returning by- 
 Germany and Holland, he reached England, 
 and immediately obtained ordination from 
 Brownrigg, the deprived Bishop of Exeter. 
 
 At the Restoration the Professorship of Greek 
 at Cambridge fell to his lot, and not long after- 
 wards, as an acknowledged master in a totally 
 different line, he was appointed, first, Professor 
 of Geometry in Gresham College, in London, 
 and two years later Lucasian Professor at 
 Cambridge. Those who are competent to judge 
 assign to Barrow a high place among English 
 mathematicians, some, indeed, a place second 
 only to his illustrious pupil, Isaac Newton. 
 Such w as the man who now turned to devote 
 his whole powers to the study of theology. 
 Barrow's best known work is his Treatise of the 
 Popes Supremacy. It had not received his final 
 handling and adjustment when the author's life 
 was brought to an untimely close in his forty- 
 seventh year. But even as it is, it is a masterly 
 and exhaustive discussion, and in its main 
 contention has never been refuted, nor indeed, 
 as we think, is capable of refutation so long as 
 history is history. Later writers have only 
 added further proofs and illustrations to his 
 solid and convincing argument. 
 
 On Pearson's elevation to the bishopric of 
 Chester (1672) Barrow succeeded him as head 
 of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is interesting 
 to note that the two most able and scholarly 
 
 N 
 
1 7 8 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 treatises on the Creed, in the English tongue, 
 should have come from the pens of two suc- 
 cessive Masters of Trinity. As distinguished 
 from Pearson's work, Barrow's " Sermons on the 
 Creed," as has been justly remarked, 1 dwell " on 
 the vital and operative, rather than on the 
 formal and scientific side of our faith." And 
 we may add that while Pearson is more minute, 
 and precise in the treatment of details, Barrow's 
 lines are drawn with a bolder hand and have a 
 larger sweep. His mind is more philosophic in 
 its bent, and he is more alive to the movements 
 of thought and speculation in his own time. 
 His arguments are elucidated by a more varied 
 range of illustration, and are from time to time 
 suffused by a glow of genuine emotion. His 
 robust and practical judgment puts on one side 
 many of the scholastic subtleties that occupied 
 Pearson, and he sets himself to grapple with the 
 main and central forces of unbelief. 2 Pearson's 
 work is bet'ter suited for the technical theologian ; 
 Barrow's appeals to the theologian, but also to a 
 wider circle of thoughtful men interested in 
 religion. 
 
 Barrow's elaborate and exhaustive sermons 
 are mainly concerned with questions of life and 
 morals ; and when he deals with dogma, it is 
 
 1 Dr. Wace in Classic Preachers of the Church of 
 England (first series), p. 48. 
 
 2 This is well illustrated by the different treatment of 
 the first Article of the Creed. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 179 
 
 almost always because of its direct bearing on 
 conduct. An illustration of this remark will be 
 found in his four great sermons on The Doctrine 
 of Universal Redemption. 
 
 Barrow's temper of mind, at once truly 
 reverent and yet averse from all obscurantism, 
 is exhibited very clearly in his short treatise on 
 The Doctrine of the Sacraments. The questions 
 about which there have been endless wranglings 
 are brushed aside, or, more correctly, are simply 
 disregarded, and the whole energy of the author's 
 powerful understanding is directed to the inter- 
 pretation of the sense of Holy Scripture. 
 
 George Bull (1634 — 17 10) had been ordained 
 in the days of the Commonwealth by Dr. 
 Skinner, the deprived Bishop of Oxford. 1 He 
 was in his seventy-first year when he was 
 elevated to the bishopric of St. David's. In the 
 parish in which he ministered in his early days, 
 he found that much antinomian teaching was 
 current, and he set himself to study the question 
 of Good Works and their relation to Justification. 
 From an unwillingness to add to the rancour of 
 popular discussion upon this subject he resolved 
 to submit his views to the limited circle of the 
 learned in the Latin tongue; and in 1670 he 
 published his Harmonia Apostolica? 
 
 1 He was made deacon and priest in one day at the 
 early age of twenty-one. 
 
 2 The full title is Harmonia Apos/olica, sen, Biiuc 
 
i8o 
 
 l'ADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 It is difficult to understand in our day how 
 Bull's work was met by such vigorous opposition, 
 and that on the part of some able Churchmen 
 as well as of dissenters. He was accused of 
 departing from the teaching of the Reformers ; 
 but he himself maintained that his views were 
 really in accord with the authentic Confessions 
 of the reformed Churches, which he held had 
 been misunderstood and misapplied. The truth 
 is Bull maintained with all our theologians that 
 (i) the moving cause of man's justification is the 
 mercy of God, and (2) that the meritorious 
 cause is solely the satisfaction (the obedience 
 and sufferings) of our Lord. The only question 
 was as to the condition required on our part for 
 our justification. Was it faith merely, or faith 
 and repentance, and, if opportunity permitted, 
 faith operative of good works? The discussion 
 is now quite outworn ; and I can adopt the 
 language of the acute Bishop Thirlwall with 
 reference to J. H. Newman's Lectures on Justifi- 
 cation (which, in the main, symbolize with Bull). 
 " After the closest attention given to the subject, 
 I view it as one of words, involving no real 
 difference of opinion." Indeed, with the ex- 
 ception of a few extreme fanatics whose names 
 are now forgotten, those who have been most 
 
 Disscr/ationes quorum in priore doctrina D. Jacobi de 
 justificatione ex opcribns explanafur ac defenditur : in 
 posteriore consensus D. Pauli cum Jaeobo liquido demon- 
 stratur. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 iSi 
 
 eager in contending for "justification by faith 
 alone" have always asserted that "justifying 
 faith " cannot be without repentance, and, if 
 opportunity allows, good works. 
 
 It is not on the theological side, but on the 
 side of biblical exegesis that the interest now 
 lies. The relations of the writings of St. James 
 and St. Paul remain a curious problem in the 
 study of the New Testament literature. On 
 that side of the question Bull will not satisfy 
 modern criticism ; and I make bold to say 
 much more that is really helpful in the dis- 
 cussion will be found in the short twenty-third 
 lecture of Dr. Salmon's Historical Introduction 
 to tlie Study of the Books of the Neiv Testament 
 than in the once famous treatise of Bishop 
 Bull. 1 
 
 The controversies in which this work involved 
 the author need not here occupy us. His 
 Examen Censurce and Apologia pro Harmonia 
 (1676) are of value chiefly in further elucidating 
 his position. 
 
 The two other principal works of Bull are 
 concerned with the doctrine of the divinity 
 of Christ. The Defensio Fidei Nicence (1685) 
 is occupied in showing from a careful examin- 
 ation of the anti-Nicene writers that the faith 
 
 1 Hallam seems to me to much overrate the importance 
 of the Harmonia Apostolica when he reckons it " the 
 principal work" in our theological literature of the period 
 1650 — 1700. 
 
I 82 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 formulated at the Council of Nicaea was con- 
 sonant with the teaching of the Church in the 
 first three centuries. He had in view through- 
 out admissions of Petavius as to the unorthodox 
 character of teaching to be found in the early 
 Fathers, which had been eagerly seized upon 
 by Arian and Socinian writers. A later work, 
 the Judicium Eccksice Catholicce (1694), was 
 written against those who, professing themselves 
 to believe in the truth of the Nicene doctrine, 
 argued that nevertheless after the example (as 
 they alleged) of the anti-Nicene Church an 
 acceptance of that truth should not be made 
 one of the terms of church communion ; and 
 that consequently the Nicene Council, though 
 right as to the doctrine defined, was unjustified 
 in adding an anathema to the definition. Both 
 of these discussions are conducted by an elabo- 
 rate examination of anti-Nicene history and 
 literature ; and on the interesting and difficult 
 subject of anti-Nicene Christology no student 
 can afford to dispense with the aid to be found 
 in Bull's writings. 
 
 The value of the first of these two works was 
 recognized by the University of Oxford con- 
 ferring on the author (who had never graduated 
 even in Arts) the degree of Doctor of Divinity. 
 The second obtained a more remarkable dis- 
 tinction, in a message from the great Bossuet 
 conveying to him " the sincere congratulations 
 of the whole of the clergy of France." 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 I8 3 
 
 More has perhaps been made of the compli- 
 mentary language of Bossuet (which occurs in 
 an informal letter addressed to the pious lay- 
 man, Robert Nelson 1 ) than it deserves. But, 
 however this may be, the astute author of 
 L'Histoire des Variations, while conveying his 
 praises of the Judicium Ecclesia? Catholiccr, re- 
 quests that Bull would inform him what he 
 meant by the phrase Eglise Catholique. " Estce 
 l'Eglise Romaine," he writes, " et celles qui luy 
 adherent ? Estce l'Eglise Anglicane ? Estce 
 un amas confus dc societez separees les unes 
 des autres ? " . To these questions of Bossuet 
 Bull replied in his work on The corruptions of 
 the Church of Rome in relation to ecclesiastical 
 government, the rule of faitli, and form of divine 
 worship, in answer to the Bishop of Meauxs 
 queries. The death of Bossuet prevented his 
 receiving this reply, but the work remains a 
 powerful indictment of Rome from an acknow- 
 ledged master of the literature of the early 
 Church. Bull expresses some surprise that 
 Bossuet could have for a moment supposed it 
 possible that by " the Catholic Church " he had 
 meant the Church of Rome, when in the Judicium 
 itself, when speaking of her declension from 
 primitive purity, he had exclaimed in the words 
 of the prophet, Quomodo ejfecta est meretrix urbs 
 fi 'delis! And he then gives his definition of "the 
 
 1 The letter is printed in Nelson's Life of Bull (pre- 
 fixed to Burton's edition of Bull's Works, p. 329). 
 
[84 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Catholic Church " as " a collection of all the 
 Churches throughout the world who retain the 
 faith once (u7ra£) delivered to the saints. . . . All 
 the Churches at this day which hold and profess 
 this faith and religion, however distant in place, 
 or distinguished by different rites and ceremo- 
 nies, yea, or divided in some extra-fundamental 
 points of doctrine, yet agreeing in the essentials 
 of the Christian religion, make up together one 
 Christian Catholic Church under the Lord Christ, 
 the supreme Head thereof." . . . "A union of all 
 the Churches of Christ throughout the world under 
 one visible head, having a jurisdiction over them 
 all, and that head the Bishop of Rome for the time 
 being . . . was never dreamed of amongst Chris- 
 tians for at least the first six hundred years." . . . 
 " My constant judgment of the Church of Rome 
 hath been, that if she may be allowed still to 
 remain a part or member of the Catholic Church 
 (which hath been questioned by some learned 
 men, upon grounds and reasons not very easy 
 to be answered), yet she is certainly a very 
 unsound and corrupted one, and sadly degene- 
 rated from her primitive purity." Bull proceeds 
 to expose in detail what he regards as " corrup- 
 tions." He boldly declares that most of the 
 " superadded articles of the Trent creed " are 
 " manifest untruths, yea, gross and dangerous 
 errors." We need not follow him in detail ; but 
 it may be worth while to indicate the views of 
 this eminent patristic scholar on the Eucharist. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 I 85 
 
 He denies that there is in the Eucharist "an 
 offering up again to God of the very Body and 
 Blood of Christ substantially present under the 
 appearance of bread and wine" {Works, ii. 254). 
 He asserts that Christ is offered " commemo- 
 ratively only " ; but adds that " this commemo- 
 ration is made to God the Father, and is not a 
 bare remembering or putting ourselves in mind 
 of him." ..." In the holy Eucharist, therefore, 
 we set before God the bread and wine as 'figures 
 or images of the precious blood of Christ shed for 
 us and of His precious body ' (they are the very 
 words of the Clementine Liturgy), and plead to 
 God the merit of His Son's sacrifice once offered" 
 {Ibid. p. 252). He by express mention accepts 
 Mead's view as exhibited in The Christian Sacri- 
 fice} And, on another aspect of the Eucharistic 
 controversy, though he does not commit himself, 
 Bull evidently leans to the view, which he attri- 
 butes to Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, that "by 
 or upon the sacerdotal benediction the Spirit 
 of Christ, or a divine virtue from Christ, descends 
 upon the elements and accompanies them to all 
 worthy communicants, and that therefore they 
 are said to be, and are, the Body and Blood of 
 Christ — the same divinity, which is hypostati- 
 cally united to the Body of Christ in heaven, 
 being virtually united to the elements of bread 
 and wine on earth.'" 2 
 
 1 See p. 1 59. 
 
 2 This is, it will be seen, substantially the doctrine of 
 the non-jurors. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 The published Sermons of Bishop Bull are only 
 twenty in number, but many of them are really 
 considerable doctrinal treatises, the outcome of 
 careful research, and are well worthy of study. 
 
 The activity of the Romish party in England 
 during the reign of Charles II. had excited 
 suspicion and dislike ; and when a convert to 
 Rome ascended the throne in the person of 
 his brother, even reasonable men began to fear 
 the consequences. Events speedily proved that 
 their fears were not ill-founded. The arbitrary, 
 illegal, and violent action of James II. in his 
 relations to the Church and the Universities 
 roused the warmest indignation throughout the 
 country. The divines of the Church were quite 
 ready for the emergency, and, so far as well- 
 reasoned argument could go in her defence, the 
 Church had nothing to fear. For some years 
 both before and after James's accession the clergy 
 had taken in hand the popular exposition of the 
 main points of our controversy with Rome. The 
 pulpit was loud in its exposure of Roman pre- 
 tensions. 1 The press teemed with pamphlets and 
 more elaborate controversial literature. None 
 exerted themselves more earnestly and effectively 
 than those who were reckoned the " High-church- 
 men " of the day. Among the leading writers 
 of all schools can be reckoned men of recognized 
 
 1 The saintly Bishop Ken drew vast crowds in London 
 to hear his animated and well-reasoned arguments against 
 the Romish aggression. 
 
PADDOCK LKCTURKS 
 
 I8 7 
 
 learning and ability,some already in high station, 
 and man)- who afterwards attained distinction 
 and eminent place. From among the best know n 
 names may be mentioned William Wake (after- 
 wards Archbishop of Canterbury), Dean George 
 Hickes (known at a later date as perhaps the 
 most learned among the early non-jurors), 
 William Lloyd (known to the learned world for 
 his historical researches, 1 and to the public as 
 one of " the Seven Bishops "), William Cave, 2 
 Symon Patrick (afterwards Bishop of Ely), 
 William Sherlock, Henry Wharton, John Tillot- 
 son and Thomas Tenison (afterwards successively 
 Archbishops of Canterbury), Thomas Comber, 
 Edward Stillingfieet, Daniel Whitby, William 
 Clagett, Henry Aldrich (Dean of Christ Church), 
 and Gilbert Burnet. 3 Many of the more valuable 
 
 1 His Historical account of Church government as it 
 was in Great Britain and Ireland when they first received 
 the Christian religion was reprinted in 1842. 
 
 2 His Primitive Christianity reached a fourth edition 
 in 1682, it was reprinted in 1839 and 1849. The lives of 
 the Apostles and The lives of the most eminent Fathers of 
 the Church have also been popular. Among his more 
 learned works the most valuable is his very useful Scripl- 
 orion ecclesiasticorum historia literaria, etc., 2 vols., folio, 
 1688-98. The best edition is Oxford 1740-43 (super- 
 intended by Waterland). It was reprinted Basil 1741-45. 
 A new edition with the results of subsequent discovery 
 and research is much needed. 
 
 3 The reputation of few men has suffered more from 
 the rancour of political and ecclesiastical party spirit than 
 that of Burnet. But time has helped to vindicate his merits. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 tractates of these authors and others were 
 collected in the next century by Gibson, Bishop 
 of London. 1 
 
 His History of the Reformation of the Church of England 
 with its great collection of authentic records deserves 
 a place in every library next to the Ecclesiastical Memorials 
 of his contemporary, Strype. In spite of all attempts to 
 depreciate it, his Exposition of the XXXIX. Articles is a 
 work of lasting value, and though more recent investiga- 
 tions have done much to supplement it (especially, as by 
 Archdeacon Hard wick, on the historical side), it has not 
 been wholly superseded by any of the numerous recent 
 works on the same subject. 
 
 1 A Preservative against Popery. 3 vols., folio, 1738. 
 This was printed in 18 vols. 8vo, 1848-9. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 Prolonged suspension of the controversy with Rome — 
 Controversy on civil allegiance — The " Bangorian con- 
 troversy" — The great controversy with the Deists, 
 Bishop Berkeley, Bishop Butler — Warburton's Divine 
 Legation — Paley — The controversy with Arianism and 
 Soeinianism — Waterland— The Eucharistic theories 
 of the non-jurors — Their views as to the invalidity of 
 Lay-Baptism — -Biblical criticism and exegesis in the 
 eighteenth century — Ecclesiastical history — Con- 
 clusion. 
 
 It remains for us now to make a rapid general 
 survey of the theological literature of the Church 
 of England in the eighteenth century. The sub- 
 ject deserves careful study ; and, did time permit, 
 one might well bestow on it a larger considera- 
 tion than is here possible. It is no doubt true, 
 that as the general literature of England, to 
 whatever cause it may be attributed, showed a 
 singular decline in works of distinctive power 
 and creative energy, so the theological literature 
 of the same period contrasts unfavourably with 
 the works of the earlier writers. Yet having 
 made this acknowledgment, one cannot but 
 
 regret that there has been a tendency to unduly 
 189 
 
190 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 underrate the labours of the eighteenth century, 
 and to regard contemptuously an epoch that did 
 much valuable, if not very brilliant work. 
 
 The most noticeable feature of the theology of 
 this period, when contrasted with that which 
 preceded it, lies in the fact that our divines were 
 no longer directly concerned in polemics with 
 Rome. They were mainly engaged in a yet 
 more momentous conflict — the struggle with 
 various forms of unbelief, and more particularly 
 disbelief in a supernatural revelation. 
 
 The Revolution settlement had removed the 
 more pressing and urgent fears of Romish ag- 
 gression upon our liberties, civil and religious. 
 On its literary side the controversy with Rome 
 seemed, as it were, suddenly extinguished. The 
 engagement had been long, and of varied for- 
 tune ; but political events practically closed the 
 campaign on its literary side. As it turned out, 
 the band of Anglican pamphleteers in the reign 
 of James II. fired the last volley; and for a 
 century and a half the old enemy made no 
 appearance in the field of Anglican controversy. 
 If I may trust my memory, there was not pro- 
 duced during the whole of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury so much as even one considerable treatise 
 directed against the ecclesiastical pretensions or 
 dogmatic errors of Rome. The civil government 
 passed several stringent, and even harsh, legis- 
 lative enactments against " Papists " ; and the 
 mass of the English people settled down to a 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 191 
 
 contented and, very generally, unintelligent 
 Protestantism, mostly quiescent, but occasionally 
 roused into passion, when stirred by some dread 
 of political change. The clergy, whether " high- 
 church " or " low-church," whether members of 
 the ecclesiastical establishment or non-jurors, 
 were all united in their strong and steady 
 aversion from Rome and Romanism. 
 
 For many years after the flight of James II. 
 the clergy were much distracted by controversies 
 arising out of questions of conscience connected 
 with the subject of political allegiance. It is 
 only unthinking persons who can make light of 
 the difficult moral problems which originated in 
 the imposition of the oath of allegiance and, 
 afterwards, of the oath of abjuration. Good 
 and able men solved the problems in different 
 ways ; and it would be a mistake to assume 
 that the noble self-sacrifice of those who de- 
 clined the oaths makes any presumption in 
 favour of the soundness of their judgment. 
 W ith the unreasoning the man who suffers for 
 his convictions is too often reckoned to be neces- 
 sarily in the right. But the combination of honest 
 convictions with stupidity, or with erroneous 
 theories, is common enough. And the political 
 conceptions of the non-jurors, if examined in the 
 light of modern thought, would perhaps scarcely 
 stand the test of sound reason. At any rate, 
 to make a belief in the indefeasible rights of 
 hereditary monarchy an article of ecclesias- 
 
ig2 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 tical communion was a melancholy and fatal 
 mistake. 
 
 On the controversies arising out of the ques- 
 tion of civil allegiance and the position of the 
 deprived bishops a vast quantity of pamphlet 
 literature issued from the press. It was often 
 marked by much embittered feeling, and for a 
 time distracted many good men from more 
 profitable studies. 
 
 The Sacheverell sermon and its political 
 consequences further accentuated differences 
 which had arisen within the bounds of the 
 Church established, and a few years later the 
 flood-gates of party animosity were flung wide 
 in the " Bangorian controversy." This acrimon- 
 ious strife originated in the extreme and danger- 
 ous latitudinarian notions as to the character 
 and constitution of " the Kingdom of Christ," 
 propounded in a sermon published (1717) by 
 Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor. Feeling ran high 
 and was largely intensified by the jealousies of 
 the political parties of the day. A crowd of 
 pamphleteers engaged in the literary fray, and 
 it is said that some two hundred publications on 
 the questions in debate have been counted. On 
 the side of Church principles no one distinguished 
 himself more than William Law, whose Serious 
 Call and Christian Perfection continue to be 
 highly esteemed among works of a practical and 
 devotional kind. " In mere dialectical skill," 
 writes one whose sympathies and violent pre- 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 193 
 
 judices are not on the side of William Law, 1 
 " he had very few superiors. That he was more 
 than once victorious over Hoadly no candid 
 Whig can deny." This controversy, though 
 now forgotten, was not idle or frivolous. It 
 concerned principles of essential and permanent 
 importance. 
 
 But the main intellectual force of the Church 
 was concerned with a controversy that cut far 
 deeper into life than questions as to civil 
 allegiance, and the permissible measures of 
 ecclesiastical latitude. A succession of writers, 
 some of whom were men of no mean ability, 
 attempted openly or, as was more common, 
 under a thin disguise of professed orthodoxy, to 
 undermine the very foundations of the Christian 
 faith. In the preceding century the writings 
 of Hobbes, as we have seen, had been rightly 
 measured as distinctly anti-christian, if not 
 really atheistic, in their tendency. And, earlier 
 than Hobbes, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in 
 works of much ability, had sounded the key- 
 note which ruled all the deistical writings of the 
 eighteenth century, viz. the sufficiency of natural 
 religion? 
 
 1 Lord Macaulay. 
 
 2 The divergence of the faith of Lord Edward Herbert 
 from that of his brother George, the saintly poet, reminds 
 one of the similar phenomenon of our own time in the 
 religious histories of the brothers Newman, and the 
 brothers Froude. 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Towards the close of the seventeenth century 
 the need of an apologetic literature was distinctly 
 felt. The pious Charles Leslie, formerly Chan- 
 cellor of Connor Cathedral, and afterwards a non- 
 juror, published in 1694 his Short and easy method 
 with the Deists, a work which attained great 
 popularity. He was followed on the other side 
 by a fellow-countryman of much ability, John 
 Toland, whose Christianity not mysterious ap- 
 peared in 1696. And, as time went by, the 
 positive thesis of the sufficiency of natural 
 religion was accompanied, as was absolutely 
 necessary if the thesis were to be maintained, by 
 attacks on the authenticity of the Scripture 
 histories, and more particularly on the miraculous 
 element in them. In truth in the deistical 
 controversy of the last century, we have an 
 anticipation of one of the most important con- 
 troversies of our own age. New aspects of the 
 debate have been presented, some new features 
 have come into view ; but anyone who desires to 
 face the attack of our nineteenth-century unbelief 
 should familiarize himself with both the attack 
 and defence of the preceding age. 
 
 Among any considerable body of writers 
 engaged in a controversy that interests the public 
 there will always be some who are silly and 
 incompetent. Whether the writers pose as the 
 antagonists, or as the champions of orthodoxy, it 
 is inevitable that some will be pretentious weak- 
 lings ; and it is probable that the party will be 
 
PADDOCK. LECTURES 
 
 195 
 
 attended by one or more buffoons. But by these 
 its strength must not be measured. And there 
 can be no greater mistake than to depreciate the 
 ability of the leading writers among the English 
 deists. The splendid powers of the great sceptics 
 of a later generation, Hume and Gibbon, none can 
 venture to despise ; but even such writers as 
 Toland and Tindal, Collins, Morgan, Shaftesbury, 
 and Bolingbroke, cannot be lightly dismissed. 
 Nor did the Church of England in their clay 
 lightly dismiss them. In fact there is scarcely a 
 writer of any distinction for the first fifty years of 
 the century who did not contribute something, 
 w hether essay or sermon, pamphlet or elaborate 
 treatise, to the controversy with the deists. To 
 one or other of Toland's works replies were made, 
 among others, by Dr. Samuel Clarke, Bishop 
 Peter Brown, the metaphysician, and Thomas 
 Brett, the learned non-juror. Anthony Collins 
 was answered, directly or indirectly, by Bishop 
 Chandler, Bishop Gastrell, Bishop Hoadly, Bishop 
 Sherlock, and, with incomparable learning and 
 wit, by Richard Bentley under the guise of 
 Pliilcleutherus Lipsiensis} The coarse attack 
 of Woolston on the miracles of our Lord received 
 replies from Bishop Gibson, Bishop Smalbroke, 
 and Bishop Zachary Pearce. Tindal's Christianity 
 as old as the Creation was met by W aterland, Law, 
 
 1 Bentley, as a young man, had won his spurs by his 
 Boyle Lectures (the first of that long series) on The folly 
 of atheism and {what is now called) deism, 1692. 
 
196 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 and Conybeare (then Rector of Exeter College), 
 Bishop of Bristol ; and the other minor deistical 
 writers were not disregarded. 1 
 
 The general questions at issue were discussed 
 with much power and exquisite grace and fresh- 
 ness in a work composed on the western side of 
 the Atlantic, in his " alcove " near Newport, in 
 Rhode Island, by George Berkeley, shortly after- 
 wards to be elevated to the see of Cloyne.' 2 It 
 is of no common interest to observe that in this 
 work, AlcipJiron or the Minute Philosopher, written 
 on American soil, we have " the germ of the whole 
 argument " 3 of the greatest of all Christian Apolo- 
 getics, Butler's immortal Analogy of Religion, 
 natural and revealed, to the constitution and course 
 of Nature (1736). 
 
 The Analogy was the outcome of years of quiet 
 meditation in a country parsonage. The great 
 controversy had long occupied the author's 
 thoughts ; but it was probably Tindal's Chris- 
 
 1 See Leland's J Hew of the principal deistical writers . . . 
 and some account of the answers, etc., 4th edition, 1 764, 
 2 vols. 8vo. 
 
 2 Beside Leland's well-known View the student may 
 consult Lecture III. in Dr. John Cairns' excellent work 
 on Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century (1881) and Lechler's 
 Geschichte des Englischen Deisinus ( 1 84 1 ). From the side 
 sympathetic with unbelief the subject is treated in Leslie 
 Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth 
 Century, 2nd edit., 1881. 
 
 a According to a most competent judge, the late Bishop 
 (W. Fitzgerald) of Killaloe. See his life of Butler prefixed 
 to his admirable edition of the Analogy, p. xxxvii. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 197 
 
 tianity as old as the Creation (1730) that had the 
 high distinction of being the immediate occasion 
 that called it forth. It was not of Butler's method 
 to name the authors whose principles he contests, 
 but it is certain that upon this book Butler 
 constantly keeps his eye. 1 
 
 But our obligations to Butler do not end with 
 the Analogy. His services to Christian ethics in 
 his Sermons are of the highest order. Nowhere 
 else do we find so complete, so convincing, and, 
 let me add, so stimulating and inspiring a 
 demonstration of that cardinal truth of practical 
 religion, the supremacy of conscience in the 
 system of human nature. Apart, too, from their 
 intellectual force, the Sen/ions reveal to us what 
 we should not have otherwise guessed, that 
 Butler possessed a depth and ardour of feeling 
 which is not always combined with great powers 
 of close and accurate reasoning. When one has 
 read Butler's two wonderful sermons on The Love 
 of God he is tempted to apply to him words used 
 (I shall not venture to say how truly; of Goethe — 
 " His heart, which few know, was as great as his 
 intellect, which all know." 
 
 It is wholly impossible to present in a few 
 words any just estimate of the extraordinary 
 w ork upon which the reputation of Warburton 
 chiefly rests — The Divine Legation of Moses. 
 No writing of the century attracted such general 
 
 1 Bishop Fitzgerald, ut supr. p. xxxvi. 
 
198 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 attention, or roused more conflicting sentiments. 
 To base the supernatural character of the Mosaic 
 legislation on the assumption, or, if you will, the 
 fact, that it ignored the sanctions of a future 
 state of rewards and punishments, was as offensive 
 to many Christians as it was startling and per- 
 plexing to unbelievers. The work is disfigured 
 indeed by much intellectual arrogance. But de- 
 spite the malevolent detraction of some and the, 
 scarcely less injurious, extravagant laudations 
 of others, The Divine Legation must always 
 remain a monument of the extraordinary abilities 
 of the author. Whatever may now be thought 
 of the paradox which it so ingeniously main- 
 tained, none can fail to wonder at the striking 
 originality, the wide and curious, if not always 
 very accurate, learning, the power of imagin- 
 ative prognostic, and the dialectical skill so 
 bountifully exhibited. 
 
 The closing years of the century brought into 
 prominence the name of Paley. His Principles 
 of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), based 
 on utilitarian doctrine, was in its day extremely 
 popular. 1 The Hora? Paulimc (1790) was, in 
 my judgment, his greatest work. It is an argu- 
 ment conducted in the true spirit of historical 
 criticism ; and whatever may be thought of some 
 few details, the general effect is with reasonable 
 minds convincing and final. The View of the 
 Evidences of Christianity (1794) attained an even 
 1 In 1S03 the 14th edition made its appearance. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 IQ9 
 
 greater popular success. Its real merits are 
 unquestionable ; but in several parts it lies much 
 more open to hostile criticism than the Horce 
 Paulina:. Paley's last important work, his Natural 
 Theology (1802), brings us within the confines of 
 the present century. Its characteristic merit 
 is the force and lucidity with which it exhibits, 
 in particular examples, the argument from design 
 in nature. Recent speculations as to the doctrine 
 of Evolution and the Origin of Species may de- 
 mand a new setting (so to speak) of the argument, 
 and a readjustment of certain positions ; but 
 the argument itself must remain potent and 
 convincing as long as man remains a rational 
 creature. 
 
 The eighteenth century has been styled the 
 wvum rationalisticum y 1 and the Church may 
 accept the designation without fear of reproach, 
 for, discarding appeals to authority, she feared 
 not to meet her opponents on their own ground. 
 After all has been said, human reason, under- 
 standing thereby the whole complex nature of 
 man's spiritual being, must of necessity be for 
 man the ultimate arbiter of truth and falsehood. 
 The century began with Samuel Clarke's Being 
 and Attributes of God (1704) and his Discourse 
 concerning the unchangeable obligations of natural 
 religion and the truth and certainty of the L hristian 
 Revelation (1705) ; it ended with Paley's treatises 
 on the same subjects. The eighteenth century 
 1 By Cave. 
 
200 
 
 I'ADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 was in England the age of the Christian Apolo- 
 gists. 1 
 
 Turning now to lesser, though yet most vital 
 controversies, the lapse in the beginning of the 
 century of some of the leading clergy of the 
 Church into Arianism called out the learning 
 and masculine powers of Waterland ; at a later 
 period William Jones, of Xayland, did useful 
 work ; and towards the close of the century 
 Bishop Horsley, a master of clear and powerful 
 reasoning, triumphantly encountered Priestley, 
 the able leader of the Socinians. 
 
 In the beginning of the century Waterland 
 was the most considerable theologian. His 
 Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist as laid 
 doivn in Scripture and Antiquity is commonly 
 reckoned among the classics of English theology ; 
 and certainly no one is entitled to pretend to 
 a knowledge of what can be said on behalf of 
 the teaching of the best-known of our divines 
 on this subject, who has not thoroughly mastered 
 Waterland. Another admirable specimen of 
 Waterland's scholarly method will be found in 
 his Critical History of the AtJianasian Creed ; 
 
 1 One must gratefully remember the services done for 
 Christian apologetics by divines who were not members 
 of the Church of England, such as Leland, Samuel 
 Chandler, Doddridge, and, above all, Nathaniel Lardner, 
 whose Credibility of the Gospel History is acknowledged 
 on all hands as a work of distinguished excellence. It 
 acquired a high reputation in Germany and France as 
 well as at home. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 20I 
 
 and though there have been several interesting 
 contributions in our own day towards the his- 
 torical inquiry into the origin of this Creed, it 
 may be questioned whether any of these have 
 seriously affected Waterland's conclusions. 
 
 It was about this time that a certain school 
 of divines, chiefly non-jurors, gave currency to 
 views upon the Eucharist differing very con- 
 siderably from the more generally accepted 
 doctrine. The chief exponent of these views 
 was one who was not himself a non-juror, John 
 Johnson (1662 — 1725), Vicar of Cranbrook in 
 Kent. In 17 14 (2nd Part, 17 17) appeared his 
 elaborate treatise, The unbloody sacrifice and 
 altar unveiled and supported. The views here 
 expressed were advocated with, occasionally, 
 unimportant variations by the leading non-jurors, 
 English and Scottish, among whom may be 
 named the non-juring Bishops, Hickes (deprived 
 Dean of Worcester), Archibald Campbell, Jeremy 
 Collier, Thomas Brett (editor of the Collection 
 of the Principal Liturgies . . . particularly the 
 ancient, viz. the Clementine, etc., 1720), Thomas 
 Deacon, Thomas Rattray (editor of The Ancient 
 Liturgy of the Church of Jerusalem, 1744), and 
 Robert Forbes. Substantially the same doc- 
 trinal views were maintained by Samuel Seabury 
 (1729 — 1796), first Bishop of the Church in the 
 United States of America, and in the States are 
 still, it would seem, largely prevalent. 1 It is only 
 1 Seabury was ordained Deacon and Priest (1753) by 
 
202 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 the grossest ignorance that can confound the 
 doctrine of the non-juring school with the Roman 
 dogma. Its main characteristic is the emphasis 
 it lays on the bread and wine, after they have 
 been made, by the words of Institution, " authori- 
 tative symbols or representations of Christ's cruci- 
 fied Body and shed Blood," being offered in the 
 Eucharist to God the Father. After this has 
 been done it was proper and (according to some) 
 essential that there should be an expressed prayer 
 of Invocation that God would send the Holy 
 Spirit upon the bread and wine, that, " to all 
 spiritual interests and purposes," they may be- 
 come, :< in power and effect," the Body and Blood 
 of Christ. The bread and wine remain what 
 they were in themselves, but " in power and 
 effect " they are the Body and Blood of Christ, 
 that is, " they are full and authentic substitutes 
 for them," and for spiritual purposes are their 
 " equivalents." The Body and Blood of Christ 
 are not in or under the forms of bread and 
 wine ; the bread and wine are " the sacramental 
 Bod}' and Blood of Christ," because they convey 
 the benefits of the natural Body and Blood to 
 those who worthily receive it. 
 
 These views met with little acceptance in the 
 
 the Bishop of Carlisle, at Fulham, and consecrated 
 Bishop in 1784, at Aberdeen. His teaching on the 
 Eucharist may be gathered from his Discourses and, 
 particularly, his Earnest Persuasive to Frequent Com- 
 munion, 1789. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 203 
 
 Church of England, partly, no doubt, because 
 the non-juring theory of consecration required 
 an express epiklesis, or verbal invocation of the 
 Holy Spirit, which is certainly absent from the 
 authorized form of the English Prayer-book. 1 
 The influence of Waterland 2 was also thrown 
 into the scale against the non-juring school. 3 
 In our own day the eucharistic doctrine of the 
 non-jurors has been scornfully denounced, by 
 some who arrogate to themselves the name of 
 " Catholics," as teaching the doctrine of the 
 " Real Absence." 
 
 A minor controversy, carried on with no small 
 acrimony, broke out in the early part of the 
 century on the subject of the validity of lay- 
 baptism. It seems to have been originated by 
 two distinguished Irishmen, both non-jurors, 
 Charles Leslie and Henry Dodwell. The latter, 
 a learned layman, who had been a Fellow of 
 Trinity College, Dublin, and afterwards Camden 
 
 1 When the American Church framed its Liturgy, it to 
 a large extent followed the Scottish Communion Office 
 and the majority of the ancient Liturgies, where the words 
 of Institution come first, then the Oblation, and lastly the 
 Invocation. 
 
 2 See p. 200. 
 
 3 His very acute, if not conclusive criticism of Johnson 
 will be found in the Appendix to The Christian sacrifice 
 explained 'in his Works, V., pp. 150 — 184. The best suc- 
 cinct account of the non-jurors' doctrine will be found in 
 the Shorter Catechism, contained in Deacon's Full, true, 
 and comprehensive view 0/ Christianity (1734). 
 
204 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 Professor at Oxford, propounded (1706) the 
 extraordinary notion that the souls of men are 
 naturally mortal and are "immortalized" through 
 baptism, but only when that baptism is adminis- 
 tered by persons episcopally ordained. In this 
 extravagant view Dodwell appears to have been 
 singular. But the non-jurors generally accepted 
 the view that the rite administered by any not 
 episcopally ordained was not Christian baptism, 
 or, otherwise expressed, was invalid. 
 
 Up to this period there was no question 
 among the leading divines of the Church of 
 England as to the validity of lay-baptism. 
 Down to the revision of the Prayer-book in 
 1604 lay-baptism was distinctly recognized. 
 After that date, while regarded as irregular, it 
 was not judged to be invalid. The well-known 
 principle, fieri non debet, scd factum valet, was 
 supposed to apply to such cases. The study 
 of the Offices for Private Baptism (text and 
 rubrics) as now used in the Churches of England, 
 Ireland, Scotland, the United States, and the 
 British colonies, will probably be regarded as 
 leaving little doubt that this is the mind of the 
 Anglican Communion. In the case of the 
 Church of England the decisions of the Ecclesi- 
 astical Courts have for practical purposes set 
 the matter at rest. 1 
 
 1 The Scottish Church, while in the last century follow- 
 ing the rigorist view of the non-jurors, has in the present 
 century followed other counsels. And her judgment on 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 205 
 
 In the beginning of the last century the views 
 entertained by the non-jurors were adopted by 
 some of the clergy of the Established Church. 
 Some of the Tory clergy, filled with dread at 
 " comprehensive " schemes, hailed this doctrine 
 as a new weapon against their enemies, the 
 dissenters. Bingham with great learning sup- 
 ported the validity of lay-baptism. Waterland, 
 with greater argumentative power, lent his aid 
 to the newer view. A number of less distin- 
 guished writers engaged in the fray. But after 
 some years of struggle the matter came to be 
 practically settled by the non-jurors generally 
 adopting the view of the invalidity of lay-baptism, 
 and the clergy of the Church of England retain- 
 ing the view of her earlier theologians, and of 
 the Church generally both Eastern and Western. 1 
 
 the subject may be sufficiently gathered from the follow- 
 ing words of her present Code of Canons (1890) — "When 
 a person who applies to be admitted into the Communion 
 of this Church shall express a doubt of the validity of the 
 baptism which he has received, the Clergyman to whom 
 the application is made shall, unless he be satisfied that 
 the proper matter and form ofivords have been used at 
 such baptism, baptize the person in the form of words 
 prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer in cases of 
 doubt : ' If thou art not already baptized,' etc." (Canon 
 xxxviii. § 4). See also Lay-Baptism valid— the doctrine 
 of the Episcopal Church in Scotland : a Charge delivered 
 to the clergy of the Diocese of Edinburgh (1888). 
 
 1 Roger Laurence, then a non-juring layman, wrote a 
 treatise on "Lay-Baptism invalid" (1710), which was at 
 the time much esteemed. On the other side may be 
 
206 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 A few words must be said, before concluding, 
 of the services done during the century for 
 sacred and ecclesiastical learning outside the 
 circles of apologetics and doctrinal controversy. 
 
 In biblical criticism and exegesis compara- 
 tively little was done. But there were honour- 
 able exceptions to the prevailing want of interest 
 on this subject. The labours of some thirty 
 years, concluded only fourteen days before his 
 death, gave the world in 1707 the critical edition 
 of the text of the New Testament by John 
 Mill, Principal of St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford. 
 The greatest living authority on the textual 
 criticism of the New Testament, Bishop Westcott, 
 declares that this work " marks an epoch in the 
 history of the New Testament text," and, " when 
 every drawback has been made . . . remains a 
 splendid monument of the labours of a life." 
 Not unlike the case of Brian Walton, the various 
 readings collected by Mill (said to be 30,000 in 
 number) were treated by Whitby (himself a 
 man of ability and learning) as unsettling the 
 text of Scripture, and, in another quarter, were 
 made much of by the Deists for the purpose 
 of discrediting the authority of the Scriptures. 
 Bentley, as Phileleutherus Lipsiensis, made a 
 brilliant reply. He himself indeed had made 
 
 mentioned the admirable treatise of Bishop Fleetwood. 
 An account of the general controversy (useful though not 
 altogether impartial) may be found in Mr. Elwin's The 
 Minister of Baptism (1889), pp. 224 — 241. 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 207 
 
 considerable preparations for the restoration of 
 the text "exactly as it was in the best examples 
 at the time of the Council of Nice." But this 
 prince of textual critics was forced by the miser- 
 able distractions of his life to abandon his design. 
 Nothing more in this region of inquiry was 
 effected in England till our own time. 1 
 
 In biblical exegesis the century had little to 
 boast. Whitby's Commentaries on the Gospels, 
 Acts, and Epistles, continued during the last 
 century, and indeed for many years of the 
 present century, to be held in much esteem ; 
 but they have been since superseded. 
 
 It may be questioned whether we are entitled 
 to reckon John Ernest Grabe, a learned German 
 settled in England, as an Anglican divine ; but, 
 at any rate, he contributed to our theological 
 learning an edition of the Septuagint from the 
 text of the Codex Alexandrinus (Oxon., 1707, 
 4 vols, folio). Two years before the publication 
 of these volumes Humphrey Hody's learned 
 work, De Bibliorum textibus originalibus, etc., 
 had appeared, dealing largely with questions 
 connected with the Septuagint. 
 
 In Hebrew scholarship the impression made 
 by Bishop Lowth's Prcelectiones de sacra poesi 
 Hcbrceorum (1753) was considerable. It was 
 soon after (1758) reprinted at Goettingen, with 
 additions by J. D. Michaelis. This work has 
 
 1 Whitby's Examen variantium lectionum J. Millii is 
 generally found at the end of his Commentary. 
 
208 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 gone through several editions, both in Latin 
 and in an English translation. 
 
 Dean Humphrey Prideaux's Connection of the 
 Old and New Testaments (1716 — 1718) went 
 through many editions, the 25th (edited by Dr. 
 McCaul) appearing as late as 1858. It is both 
 learned and interesting. 
 
 The published results of patristic studies were 
 few, and are confined almost wholly to the 
 early part of the century. Fell's Cyprian (1682) 
 belongs to the previous age. But we may 
 mention Potter's fine edition of Clement of Alex- 
 andria (17 1 5), a work that has commanded the 
 respect of scholars both at home and abroad. 
 Grabe edited Irenaeus (1702), and, afterwards, 
 some fragments attributed to this Father (17 15). 
 Thirlby's fust in Martyr (1722), the Oxford 
 edition of Ephraem Syrus (1709), and Reading's 
 issue of Valesius' edition of the Greek Ecclesi- 
 astical Historians (1720) may also be mentioned. 
 But the study of Christian antiquity had already 
 begun to languish. 
 
 It would be indeed ungrateful not to recog- 
 nize the merits of Joseph Bingham's invaluable 
 Origines Ecclesiastics, or the Antiquities of the 
 Christian Church (1708 — 1722), an admirable 
 piece of work, executed under such difficulties 
 as attend remoteness from great libraries, narrow 
 means, and infirm health. Though much has 
 been done in our own day in the study of 
 Christian Antiquities, Bingham's volumes are 
 
PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 209 
 
 still essential in the library of every clergyman. 
 Nor should one forget the elaborate History of 
 infant baptism (1705) by William Wall and his 
 Defence of his History (1720), in which the belief 
 and practice of the ancient Church are exhibited 
 with great fulness. 1 
 
 To the study of the history of the Church in 
 Great Britain and Ireland a splendid contri- 
 bution was made in David Wilkins' monu- 
 mental work, the Concilia Magna Britannia et 
 Hibernia (4 vols, folio, 1737), which has been 
 superseded, but only for the early period, by 
 the, unfortunately, incompleted work of Haddan 
 and Stubbs. In this connection may be men- 
 tioned Gibson's useful Codex juris ecclesiastici 
 Anglicani (171 3). 2 
 
 The pre-Reformation history of the Church of 
 England had been illustrated by Henry Wharton 
 in his Anglia Sacra (1691), and a valuable and, 
 for the time, highly creditable attempt to cover 
 the whole field of English Church history down 
 to the end of the reign of Charles II. was made 
 by Jeremy Collier in his Ecclesiastical History 
 of Great Britain (1708 — 1714). 3 The period of 
 the Reformation was dealt with by Gilbert 
 Burnet, who, whatever were his prejudices (and 
 
 1 The best edition is Cotton's (1836), 4 vols. 
 
 2 The second edition, 2 vols, folio, 1 761, is much enlarged 
 and improved. 
 
 3 The best edition is that edited by Lathbury, 9 vols. 
 Svo., 1852. 
 
 p 
 
2IO 
 
 l'ADDOCK LLCTUkL> 
 
 they have been often made too much of), left in 
 the third volume of his History of the Reforma- 
 tion of the Church of England, a valuable body 
 of documents from authentic sources. 1 Another 
 worthy labourer in the same field was his con- 
 temporary, John Strype, whose numerous his- 
 torical works contain a great collection of 
 materials relating to the Church and its eminent 
 men from the Reformation to the reign of 
 James I. 
 
 In bringing to a close this rapid survey of a 
 great literature, extending over two centuries 
 and a half, the lecturer feels like one who has 
 undertaken to act as cicerone of a six-hours tour 
 around and through some large historic city. 
 The multitude of details cannot but be some- 
 what confusing to one who is new to the place ; 
 but the sights of interest, it is hoped, may tempt 
 him to prolong his stay and make a closer 
 acquaintance with what he has seen. We have 
 viewed the encircling line of the town's defensive 
 works, and noticed the frowning fronts of the 
 great fortresses that have been erected from time 
 to time, and have again and again resisted the 
 assaults of hostile armies. We have passed 
 rapidly through the main avenues and principal 
 streets, and observed the more striking features 
 of the city's architecture, — royal palaces, courts 
 
 1 The first vol. appeared in 1679, the second in 1681, 
 and the third in 171 5. 
 
PADDOCK LFCTURES 
 
 21 I 
 
 of law, houses of legislature, museums, galleries, 
 churches. Here and there a passing glimpse 
 has been obtained of pleasant parks and gardens 
 bright with flowers. Have we not seen enough 
 to satisfy us that here is indeed a goodly 
 heritage? — And this goodly heritage is ours. 
 May I not hope that some, at least, of my 
 younger brethren may be tempted to return, 
 and make a fuller and more leisurely acquaint- 
 ance with its wonders and its treasures. I can 
 promise them delight as well as instruction. 
 Even the very lanes and alleys, which we have 
 not entered, conceal many an historic monu- 
 ment that will repay their research. 
 
 But you will ask — " Do such studies bear 
 upon the life and the questions of to-day?" I 
 answer emphatically " Yes." There is no large 
 question of current interest, no matter of present 
 debate in the religious world which has not, in 
 essence and principle, been dealt with by the 
 great masters of the past. Look how, even in 
 the field of physical contests, where the con- 
 ditions of warfare have of late been really and 
 materially altered, our great generals devote 
 their time and energies to study the strategy of 
 the campaigns of Caesar, of Marlborough, of 
 Wellington, of Napoleon. Much more will the 
 advantage of such studies be apparent in the 
 warfare of the world of intellect. Here there 
 has been no discovery of new agencies of 
 destruction, or of new arms of precision. Am- 
 
212 
 
 PADDOCK LECTURES 
 
 bitious ecclesiastical pretensions, untruth, false 
 doctrine, heresy, unbelief have forged no weapon 
 which was not known to our forefathers. There 
 may here and there be some shifting in the line 
 of attack, or some new formation of troops ; but 
 those who know the masters of the past will, I 
 am confident, have no difficulty in meeting the 
 altered tactics. 
 
 " The Lord hath done great things for us." 
 It was in the wisdom He imparted and the 
 courage He inspired that the walls of our city 
 were rebuilded in troublous times, when the 
 great men and our fathers with one hand 
 wrought in the work and with one hand Jield a 
 weapon. It was in the courage He inspired 
 and the wisdom He imparted that the four 
 walls of the city were fortified without, and 
 within the temple was builded. It was in His 
 wisdom and strength that the battles of former 
 times were fought and won. " Yea, the Lord 
 hath done great things for us ahead)-, whereof 
 we rejoice." And the knowledge of the past 
 will help us to look forward with hope, nay 
 rather with confidence, to the future. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Admonition to the Parliament, 49 
 
 Second Admonition, 50 
 Aldrich, H., 154, 187 
 Allen, William, Cardinal, 31 
 American Prayer-book, 161, 203 
 Ames, W., 153 
 Andrewes, Lancelot, 81-93 
 Aquinas, method of the Suntma, 4 
 Atterbury, Francis, vi 
 
 Bacon, Lady Anne, 24 " 
 Bancroft, Archbishop, 28 
 Bangorian controversy, 192 
 Barlow, T., 96 
 Baron (Baro), Peter, 66 
 Barrow, Isaac, 175-9 
 Barry, Bishop, 58 
 
 Bellarmine, Cardinal, 65, 74, 82, 83 
 Benedictines of St. Maur, 2 
 Benson, Archbishop, quoted, to 
 Bentley, R., 173, 195, 206 
 Berkeley, George, vi, 196 
 Beveridge, William, 145 
 Bilson, T., 32-6, 53-4 70 
 Bingham, Joseph, 208 
 Blunt, J. J., 29 
 Bossuet, 5, 182-3 
 Bramhall, J., 46, 138-9, 161 
 Brett, Thomas, 195, 201 
 Broughton, Hugh, 69 
 Brown, Peter, vi, 195 
 Bull, George, 161, 179-186 
 Bullinger's Decades falls into disre- 
 pute, 66 
 Burgon, Dean, quoted, 19 
 Burnet, Gilbert, 175, 187, 209 
 Butler, Joseph, 196 
 
 Cairns, J., 196 
 Calvinism, 64-70 
 Cambridge Platonists, 166-170 
 Campbell, Archibald, 201 
 Campian, Edmund, 65 
 Cartwright, Thomas, 42, 50, 105 
 Castell, Fdmtind, T.47 
 Casuistry, 151 
 
 Cave, W., 187, 199 
 Chandler, E., 195 
 Chandler, S., 200 
 Cheke, Sir John, 11 
 Chillingworth, W., 118-123, 162 
 Church, Dean, 55, 86 
 Clagett, W., 187 
 Clarke, S., 195, 199 
 Cole, Henry, 22 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 77, T26, 132, 135 
 Collier, Jeremy, 20T, 209 
 Comber, T., 187 
 
 Constantii/s, Marcus A >i fortius, 
 pseudonym of Stephen Gardiner, 
 Cooper, Thomas, 52 
 Cosin, John, 136-138 
 Crakanthorp, R., 95-6 
 Cranmer, Thomas, 9-20 
 Cudworth, Ralph, 161, 166, 170 
 Culverwel, Nathaniel, 1 7 r 
 
 Davenant, John, 70 
 
 Davenport, Christopher, 133 
 
 Deacon, T., 201, 203 
 
 De Dominis, Marcantonio, 94 
 
 Doddridge, P., 200 
 
 I todwell, H., 203 
 
 Donne, John, v, 5 
 
 Dort, Synod of, 68, 163 
 
 Fell, John, 139, 208 
 
 Field, Richard, 77-81, 160 
 
 Fisher, i. e. Percy, 114, 118 
 
 Fitzgerald, Bishop W., 150, 196, 197 
 
 Fleetwood, Bishop, 206 
 
 Forbes, A. P., 174 
 
 Forbes, John, vi 
 
 Forbes, R., 201 
 
 Forbes, William, vi 
 
 Fulke, William, 41 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, 72, 136 
 
 Gardiner, S. R., ri2, 116 
 Gardiner, Stephen, 13, 18 
 Gastrell, F., 195 
 Gibson, Edmund, 188, 195, 209 
 
2I 4 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Grabe, J. E., 207 
 
 Haddan, A. W., 99, 147, 209 
 Hales, John, 162-166 
 Hall, Joseph, 65, 123-5, '56 
 Hallam, Henry, cited, 73, 158, 1S1 
 Hammond. Henry, 139-141 
 Harding, T., 22, 25-28 
 Hardwick, Archdeacon, 64, 66 
 Herbert, Lord Edward, 193 
 Herbert, George, 98, 193 
 Hickes, George, 187, 201 
 Hoadly, B., 192, 195 
 Hoady, H., 207 
 Hobbes, T., 139, 193 
 Hooker, Richard, 36-40. 55-64 
 Hooper, John, 17 
 Horsley, S., 200 
 
 Jackson, Thomas, 9.-99 
 Jewel, John, 20-30 
 Johnson, John, 201 
 Jones, W., 99, 200 
 
 Ken, Thomas, vi, 186 
 King, Archbishop, vi 
 
 Lambeth Articles, tie, 66 
 Lardner, X., 200 
 Latimer, Hugh, 9 
 Latitude-men, 170 
 Laud, William, 115-18, 160 
 Laurence, Richard, 113 
 Laurence, Roger, 205 
 I-aw, W., 192 
 Leighton, Archbishop, vi 
 Leland, J., 200 
 Leslie. Charles, 104, 203 
 Lightfoot, John, 143-5 
 Lightfoot, J. B., 103, 174 
 Lloyd, W., 187 
 Lowth, R.. 107 
 
 Martin, Gregory, 41 
 
 Martin Mar-prelate tracts, 52 
 
 Mason, Francis, 93 
 
 Mead, Joseph, 159, 185 
 
 Mill, John, 206 
 
 Montagu, Richard, 94, 1 10-14 
 
 More, Henry, 166, 170 
 
 "yog's Head" /able, 93 
 
 Nash, Thomas, 52 
 
 Xeale, John Mason, cited, 95 
 
 Overall, John, 22, 68 
 
 Paley, W., 199 
 Parker, Matthew, 48 
 Patrick, Symon, 161, 187 
 Pearce, Z., 195 
 Pearson, John, 165, 171-5 
 Perkins, W.. 152 
 
 PItileleutlierus Lipsiensis, 195, 206 
 Pococke, Edward, 143 
 Potter, J., 20S 
 Prideaux, H., 208 
 Puritanism, character of, 44-46 
 Pusey, E. B., cited, 131 
 
 Ouhiquariicular controversy, 65 
 
 Rainoldes, John, 72-77 
 Kainoldes, William, 73 
 Rattray, Thomas, 201 
 Ridles', Nicholas, 9, 15-17 
 
 Sacheverell, 192 
 
 Salmon, George, i3i 
 
 Sancta Clara. See Davenport 
 
 Sanderson, R. 153-6 
 
 Saville, Sir H., 100, 110 
 
 Scaliger, Joseph, 73 
 
 Scottish Prayer-book, 160, 203 
 
 Seabury, Samuel, 201 
 
 Sheldon, Archbishop, 144 
 
 Sherlock, T., 195 
 
 Sherlock, W.. 187 
 
 Smalbroke, R., 195 
 
 Smith, John, 166, 169 
 
 Smith, Richard? 12 
 
 South, R., vi 
 
 Southey, Robert, cited, 98 
 Stillingfleet, E., 148-157, 187 
 Strype, J., 144, 210 
 Stubbs, Bishop, 209 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, 125-136, 156 
 Tenison, T., 187 
 Thirlby. Styan, 20S 
 Thorndike. H., 146-8 
 Tillotson, J., 187 
 Travers, Walter, 56, 105 
 Tulloch, John, 63, 123, 132, 171 
 
 L'ssher. James, 99-108 
 
 Wake, W., 187 
 Wall, W., 209 
 Walton, Brian, 141, 206 
 Warburton, W., 197 
 Ward, Thomas, 42 
 Waterland, Daniel, 161. 195, 200, s 
 205 
 
 Westcott, B. F., 75, 171, 206 
 Wharton, H., 187, 209 
 WheweU, Dr. W., 154 
 W hichcote, B., 166-7 
 Whitaker, William, 65 
 Whitby, D., 187, 206 
 White, Francis, 114 
 Whitgift, John, 50-52 
 Wilkins, D., 209 
 Wilson, Thomas, vi 
 Wordsworth, Christopher, Bp.. 96. 
 Worthington, John, 171 
 
PUBLICATIONS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 <Sorieti) for ilroinotuig (ihristian ^inoUdcbge. 
 
 The Analogy of Religion, natural and revealed, to 
 the Constitution and Course of Nature : to which 
 are added, Two Brief Dissertations : i. Of Personal 
 Identity ; ii. Of the Nature of Virtue. By 
 Bishop Butler. 8vo, cloth boards, zs. 6d. 
 
 A Critical History of the Athanasian Creed. By 
 
 Daniel Waterland, D.D. 8vo, limp cloth. 2s. 
 
 A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Adapted 
 to the State and Condition of all orders of 
 Christians. By William Law, M.A. 12 mo, 
 cloth boards. 2s. 6d. 
 
 A Treatise on the Pope s Supremacy, to which is 
 added a Discourse concerning the Unity of the 
 Church. By Isaac Barrow, D.D. Demy 8vo, 
 cloth boards. 6s. 
 
 The Corruptions of the Church of Rome in relation 
 to Ecclesiastical Government, the Rule of Faith, 
 and Form of Divine Worship : in answer to the 
 Bishop of Meaux's Queries. By Bishop Bull, 
 with a Preface and Notes by the Rev. T. P. 
 Pantin. Fcap. 8vo, limp cloth, u, 
 
 Contemplations on the Historical Passages of the 
 Old and New Testaments. By Bishop Hall. 
 Royal 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The Devotions of Bishop Andrewes. Translated 
 from the Greek by Dean Stanhope. Fcap. 8vo, 
 large type, cloth boards, u. 
 
The Greek Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop 
 of Winchester. From the Manuscript given by 
 him to William Laud, afterwards Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, and recently discovered. Edited 
 by the Rev. Canon P. G. Medd, M.A. Small 
 post 8vo, cloth boards. 55. 
 
 The Apology of the Church of England. By Bishop 
 Jewel. Svo, cloth boards, is. 
 
 Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity in the form of Ques- 
 tion and Answer | an Analysis of the Fifth Book 
 
 of). By the Rev. George Nelson, LL.D. Small 
 post Svo, cloth boards, zs. 
 
 A View of the Evidences of Christianity. By 
 
 William Palev. A New Edition, with Notes, 
 Appendix, and Preface. By the Rev. E. A. 
 Litton, M.A., Author of " An Essay on Miracles." 
 Post Svo, cloth boards. 4s. 
 
 Horse Paulinae; or, The Truth of the Scripture 
 History of St. Paul evinced by a Comparison of 
 the Epistles which bear his name with the Acts 
 of the Apostles and with one another. By 
 
 William Paley. A New Edition, with Notes, 
 Appendix, and Preface. By J. S. Howson, U.D., 
 Dean of Chester. Post Svo, cloth boards. 35. 
 
 Paley's Natural Theology. Revised to harmonize 
 with Modern Science. By F. Le Gros Clark, 
 F.R.S. With illustrations. Post Svo, cloth bds. 4*. 
 
 The Golden Grove. By Bishop Jeremy Taylor. 
 With Portrait and Memoir. Post Svo, cloth 
 boards, is. 4J. 
 
 LONDON : NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, ^Y.C. ; 
 43, Qveex Victoria Street, E.C. 
 Brightox : 129, North Street.