CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ft 
 
 BY THE 
 
 7 
 
 REV. T. E. ESPIN, B.D. 
 
 PBOFESSOB OF PA8TOBAL THEOLOGY, QUEEN'S COLLEGE, 
 BIB MINGHAJI J 
 BECTOB OF HADLEIGH, ESSEX, AND BUBAL DEAN; 
 LATE FELLOW AND TTTTOB OF LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXFOBD. 
 
 LONDON; 
 
 RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE : 
 AND HIGH STREET, OXFORD. 
 1864. 
 
LONDON : 
 GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTl 
 ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The following Essays have in substance been already 
 published in the form of newspaper articles. They 
 have been collected and thrown into their present 
 shape in consequence of requests and suggestions from 
 various quarters. They are, however, by no means 
 mere reprints; but have been since their first appear- 
 ance revised, greatly enlarged, and in parts re-written. 
 
 May 24, 1864. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Wesleyan Methodisui 1 
 
 II. Essays and Reviews . . . . . . .30 
 
 III. Life of Edward Irving 63 
 
 IV. Dr. Hessey's Bainpton Lectures on Sunday .... 94 
 V. Life of Bishop Wilson, of Sodor and Man . . . .113 
 
 VI. Life of Bishop Wilson, of Calcutta 140 
 
 VII. Life of Calvin 166 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS? 
 
 ESSAY I. 
 
 Hie Life of Wesley. By Robert Southet, Esq., LL.D. A New 
 
 Edition. Two Vols., 8vo. 
 History of Wesley an Methodism. By George Smith, F.A.S., &c. 
 
 Vol. L Wesley and his Times. Vol. II. The Middle Age. 
 
 Vol. III. Modem Methodism. 
 The Life of Jabez Bunting, D.D. By his Son, T. P. Bunting. 
 
 Vol. L 
 
 It would be superfluous, almost impertinent, to praise 
 a standard -work like Southey's Life of Wesley. The 
 last edition of it is a cheap and convenient reprint of 
 the best of the earlier ones, that, namely, of 1846, 
 which was edited by the author's son, and contained 
 the marginal notes of S. T. Coleridge ; and in the 
 Appendix a lengthy, interesting, and very learned paper 
 on Wesley and Wesleyanism, by the late Alexander 
 Knox. Such an original, with two such annotators, 
 furnishes a triple cord which must enchain all who have 
 the ability to appreciate, and the taste to relish, first- 
 rate biography, and luminous criticism upon it. Southey 
 was the first who gave any thing approaching to a 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS." 
 
 candid and able account of the founder of Methodism. 
 Previous biographers— and they were several— had 
 been more intent upon promoting the ends of religious 
 faction than on giving an impartial picture of their hero ; 
 and were all of them conspicuously wanting either in 
 the impartiality or the ability to estimate justly his 
 character and his work. And Southey's biography still 
 stands alone. The forty years which have elapsed since 
 its first publication have produced nothing to abate 
 from the repute it at once attained as one of the best 
 works of its very interesting class ; nothing materially 
 to shake the conclusions its author formed about the 
 character he handles in it ; and nothing certainly in the 
 shape of a Life of Wesley which could supersede, or 
 even pretend to compare with it. It is unnecessary 
 to rehearse an oft-told tale, and we shall not dwell on 
 the incidents of "Wesley's extraordinary career. His 
 character has been not less anxiously canvassed and 
 hotly debated since his death than it was in his life — 
 and no two of the authorities now before us are of the 
 same mind respecting it. Some traits of it, indeed, 
 are so marked, as to suggest themselves irresistibly to 
 all tolerably candid, and competent observers. It is 
 scarce possible not to note his eager and impatient 
 temperament, which made hesitation and suspense 
 either in action or opinion intolerable to him ; his 
 credulity, seen in the unwarrantable value he at- 
 tached to sudden revolutions of the mind, and in the 
 encouragement he lent during a great part of his course 
 to some of the more questionable excesses to which his 
 followers gave way ; his logical power, strangely and 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 3 
 
 heterogeneously made up of sagacity and rashness, 
 jumping at consequences careless of the soundness of 
 the footing whence the leap was made ; his remarkable 
 practical wisdom, which consisted, however, rather in a 
 fertility of clever expedients for immediate exigencies 
 than in that prophetic foresight which anticipates and 
 forestalls future issues and distant results. Another of 
 Wesley's deeply-marked characteristics, which his ad- 
 miring disciples in vain try to obliterate, is his extra- 
 ordinary egotism. Had he not possessed vanity enough to 
 believe any thing and every thing respecting himself to 
 be well worthy of recording, he would hardly have found 
 the time and the patience to keep, as he did, a minute 
 diary for some sixty-five years, not only of his actions and 
 his journeys, but of his thoughts, opinions, and obser- 
 vations on men, books, and endless miscellaneous topics ; 
 much less would he have bequeathed such a record to 
 his disciples— a record which, had it "been pcssible for 
 a humble or delicate-minded man to keep it at all, 
 would, of all things, have been kept for himself alone. 
 In all Wesley's works, whatever be their subject, he 
 either finds or makes opportunity to speak of himself, 
 his own views, his own conduct. He evidently seems 
 to himself to stand at the centre of ail things, and 
 regards them as going their appointed ways from him 
 and to him. Southey truly remarks of him, when in 
 the full swing of his career, " The world did not contain 
 a happier man than Wesley, nor in his own eyes a more 
 important one." 
 
 Coleridge's comment is severe — we are persuaded, far 
 too severe — but still on the true line: — "Rooted am- 
 , b 2 
 
4 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 bition, restless appetite of power and primacy, with a 
 vindictive spirit, breaking out into slanders against 
 those who interfered with his ruling passion, and a 
 logical shadow-fight with notions and words, sustained 
 by the fervour of the game, with an entire absence and 
 unsusceptibility of ideas and tranquil depths of being — 
 in short, my-my-my-self in a series of disguises and 
 self-delusions. Such is the sum of Southey's statement ; 
 and are these compatible with the same Wesley at the 
 same time assuredly loving God with all his heart, and 
 with all his soul, and with all his strength ? If it were 
 right and possible for a man to lose himself in God — 
 yet can he lose God in himself, otherwise than by 
 making his self his God ?" — Southey, vol. i. p. 243, note. 
 
 Such a mind is always an active and a versatile one ; 
 and few have equalled, none perhaps excelled, Wesley's 
 industry and many-sidedness. For fifty years he rose 
 at four in the morning. He read whi)e he made his 
 journeys on horseback— a dangerous practice, which 
 cost him one or two serious accidents ; and in the latter 
 part of his life, when increasing infirmities obliged him 
 to use a carriage, he read still more. Hence, during 
 the seasons snatched by economical management of time 
 out of the busiest of lives, he not only kept up the high 
 acquirements in academical lore which he had made his 
 own at Oxford, but mastered most of the modern lan- 
 guages, was well read in almost every science and every 
 study to which he could get access, and kept thoroughly 
 up with the lighter literature of the day — poetry, pam- 
 phlets, and works of fiction. The list of his revised 
 editions of other men's books, of his epitomes, manuals, 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 5 
 
 histories, commentaries, etc. — literally seeming to be 
 almost omni seibili — consists of no less than 118 dis- 
 tinct works, some of them of considerable bulk. When 
 we add to these, several collections of psalm-tunes, of 
 hymns, and of prayers which he published, and the 
 sixteen volumes forming the ordinary edition of his 
 works, we have a monument of ability and energy 
 worthy of the most operose and prolific writers of 
 ancient times. How far superior he was to the very 
 best of his followers in breadth and liberality of mind 
 is curiously illustrated by the following extract from 
 Mr. Smith's second volume : — 
 
 Air. Pawson was a very good man, and a useful preacher ; but 
 beyond the study of divinity his literary taste was of a very humble 
 character. "When Dr. Whitehead had finished his Lite of Wesley, he 
 returned the papers and manuscripts which he had so long retained 
 in his possession, to the book steward, Mr. George Storey, by whom 
 they were deposited in the superintendent's house, in the custody 
 of Mr. Pawson. This preacher, no doubt with the best intentions, 
 took upon himself to examine these pUpers, and to destroy what he 
 thought useless. By this rash procedure, it is feared, many docu- 
 ments of great interest were irrecoverably lost. Indeed, this Gothic 
 spirit did not find sufficient gratification in the burning of manu- 
 scripts. There was in Wesley's library in that house a fine quarto 
 edition of Shakspeare. presented to him by a gentleman of Dublin. 
 The margin of this book was filled with critical notes by Wesley's 
 own hand. Yet Mr. Pawson, regarding this book as among the 
 things which tended not to edification, destroyed it. Fortunately 
 Mr. Moore at Bristol heard of the progressive destruction of the 
 papers, and instantly wrote, protesting against such conduct, and 
 demanding them as Wesley's trustee, — a course which saved the 
 remainder. — Smith, vol. ii. pp. 2iH5, 2i>7. 
 
 Mr. Knox lived for many years in close and familiar 
 intercourse with Wesley, and at one time was a member 
 of the "Wesleyan Society, which, however, he soon 
 
6 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 quitted. As might be supposed, his view of Wesley's 
 character and motives is far more favourable than that 
 of Coleridge, or even Southey. Much must be allowed 
 for the partiality of an old friend ; and there are parts 
 of Wesley's conduct which seem quite irreconcileable 
 with the single-mindedness which Mr. Knox ascribes to 
 him. His conduct to the Moravians, which Mr. Smith 
 judiciously passes but lightly over, was an instance. 
 We do not speak of his turning so sharply and sud- 
 denly on those with whom he had been in close spiritual 
 sympathy. This, which he did in turn to almost every 
 one with whom he held fellowship, arose from the cha- 
 racter of his mind. We find in him no gradual transi- 
 tions. He was driven from point to point by forces 
 partly logical, partly circumstantial ; and he often 
 seemed to be warmest in defending his position when 
 just on the point of abandoning it. In each of his 
 changes he was, as it were, thrust from one stand-point 
 to another with headlong violence ; and almost before he 
 had regained his feet, he assailed with eager, sometimes 
 bitter, reproaches those whose' company he had just left. 
 His letters to the author of the Serious Call are a sin- 
 gular instance of this. But no strength of idiosyncrasy 
 can excuse or even palliate his behaviour to the Mora- 
 vians. He had been received as a friend and a brother 
 at their settlement of Herrnhut; he had professed 
 himself much edified by1;he purity and piety of their 
 lives, and their zeal in Missionary labour ; he borrowed 
 directly from them not a little of his peculiar theology, 
 and of the plan on which he organized his society. 
 Yet, not content with suddenly and utterly separating 
 
CRITICAL BSBA.T& 
 
 from them in 1738, he charged them, Southey tells us, 
 " with heing cruel and deceitful men. He published in 
 his Journal accusations against them of the foulest 
 kind, made by persons who had forsaken their society ; 
 thus giving the whole weight of his judgment to these 
 abominable charges." This, in Southey's opinion, must 
 be considered the most "disingenuous act" in "Wesley's 
 life. Coleridge, not without justice, remarks : " With- 
 out supposing a certain partiality to have stolen, unper- 
 ceived, on Southey's mind, I cannot explain this pal- 
 liative phrase, 1 disingenuous,' for a series of deliberate, 
 revengeful, almost fiendish, calumnies, perpetrated 
 against the light of "Wesley's own recollections." — 
 Southey, vol. i. p. 223, note. 
 
 A point of special interest to Churchmen, and on 
 which their judgment of Wesley must greatly depend, 
 is what his intentions were with respect to the relations 
 between the Church and his own society. Southey's 
 remarks on the so-called consecration of Dr. Coke by 
 Wesley to be a Bishop in America are well worth 
 reading and re-reading : — 
 
 Mr. Wesley had been convinced, by the perusal of Lord King's 
 account of the Primitive Church, that bishops and presbyters are 
 the same order. Men are sometimes easily convinced of what the}' 
 find it convenient or agreeable to believe. Regarding the apostolic 
 succession as a fable, he thought, when this application from 
 America arrived, that the best thing which he could do would be to 
 secure the Wesleyan succession for the United States. . . . Having, 
 therefore, determined how to act, he communicated his determina- 
 tion to Dr. Coke, and proposed, in his character of presbyter, which 
 he said was the same as bishop, to invest him with the same 
 presbytero-episcopal powers, that, in that character, he might pro- 
 ceed to America, and superintend the societies in the United States. 
 
8 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 The doubts which Dr. Coke entertained as to the validity of Mr. 
 Wesley's authority were removed by the same treatise which had 
 convinced Mr. Wesley ; and it seems not to have occurred to either 
 the one or the other, that if presbyter and bishop were the same 
 order, the proposed consecration was useless ; for Dr. Coke, having 
 been regularly ordained, was as good a bishop as Mr. Wesley him- 
 self. . . . Wesley had long deceived himself respecting the part which 
 he was acting toward the Church of England. At the outset of his 
 career he had no intention of setting himself up in opposition to it ; 
 and when, in his progress toward schism, he disregarded its forms, 
 and set its discipline at nought, he still repeatedly disclaimed all 
 views of separation. Nor did he ever avow the wish, or refer to it 
 as a likely event, with complacency, even when he must have per- 
 ceived that the course of his conduct and the temper of his followers 
 rendered it inevitable. On this occasion his actions spoke for him : 
 by arrogating the episcopal authority, he took the only step which 
 was wanting to form the Methodists into a distinct body of separa- 
 tists from the Church. Nevertheless, this was not done without 
 reluctance, arising from old and rooted feelings ; nor without some 
 degree of shame, perhaps, for the inconsistencies in which he had 
 involved himself. From the part which he now took, and the 
 manner in which he attempted to justify it, it may be presumed 
 that the story of his applying to the Greek bishop for consecration 
 is well founded, notwithstanding the falsehoods which his enemies 
 had added to the simple fact. Mr. Wesley's declared opinion re- 
 specting the identity of the episcopal and priestly orders was con- 
 tradicted by his own conduct ; and it may be suspected that his 
 opinion upon the apostolical succession rested on no better ground 
 than its convenience to his immediate purpose. Undoubtedly, as he 
 says, it is not possible to prove the apostolical succession ; but short 
 of that absolute proof which, in this case, cannot be obtained, and 
 therefore ought not to be demanded, there is every reason for 
 believing it. No person who fairly considers the question can doubt 
 this, whatever value he may attach to it. But Wesley knew its 
 value. He was neither so deficient in feeling or in sagacity as not 
 to know that the sentiment which connects us with other ages, and 
 by which we are carried back, is scarcely less useful in its influences 
 than the hopes by which we are carried forward. He would rather 
 have been a link of the golden chain, than the ring from whence a 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 9 
 
 new one of inferior metal was to proceed. . . . Soon after he had 
 taken the memorable step of consecrating Dr. Coke as an American 
 bishop, he arrogated to himself the same authority for Scotland as 
 for America ; and this, he maintained, was not a separation from 
 the Church — " Xot from the Church of Scotland," said he, " for we 
 were never connected therewith ; not from the Church of England, 
 for this is not concerned in the steps which are taken in Scotland. 
 Whatever, then, is done, either in America or Scotland, is no sepa- 
 ration from the Church of England. I have no thought of this : I 
 have many objections against it." He had been led toward a sepa- 
 ration imperceptibly, step by step ; but it is not to his honour- that 
 he affected to deprecate it to the last, while he was evidently bring- 
 ing it about by the measures which he pursued. — Southey, vol. ii. 
 pp. 212—215. 
 
 Mr. Knox's apology for "Wesley's conduct is, that he 
 yielded to the urgency of those about him, and was 
 betrayed by his partialities for individuals into grievous 
 inconsistency. It certainly was one of his character- 
 istics to conceive strong and not always discriminating 
 attachments. His brother Charles once tells him — 
 " Nay, it signifies nothing to tell you any thing, for 
 whomever you once love, you will love on through thick 
 and thin." During the last years of "Wesley's life 
 several circumstances concurred to alienate the Wesleyan 
 body from the Church. The growing influence of the 
 lay preachers, their jealousy of the few clergy who 
 acted with them, their natural desire of placing them- 
 selves on a level with the ministers of other denomi- 
 nations, the disrespect with which the Church began to 
 be regarded by those who preferred the preaching of 
 the conventicle, — all inevitably tended to the result 
 which was not finally consummated till after Wesley's 
 death. That those in whom these tendencies were most 
 
10 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 marked used strong solicitations to induce Wesley to 
 commit those schismatical acts on which so much stress 
 is laid cannot be doubted. The only question is, whether 
 "Wesley's own inclination seconded that of his advisers 
 or not — whether his fault was only that he allowed 
 himself to be misled by importunity, acting on the 
 assailable points of a mind debilitated by extremely 
 advanced old age, or whether he was guilty of the 
 grievous sin of sacrificing his principles to an ambitious 
 desire of consolidating his community, and perpetuating 
 his name. Mr. Knox pleads earnestly for the less unfa- 
 vourable view of his conduct. The point is so important 
 and so interesting that we may be pardoned for making 
 an extract of some length from his remarks : — 
 
 So much did he deprecate a gratuitous separation, that when, 
 some years before his death, I asked him, in a private con vernation, 
 how he should wish his friends to act in case of the Methodists 
 withdrawing from the Established Church, his answer was, " I would 
 have them adhere to the Church and leave the Methodists." It is 
 on the proofs which Mr. Wesley gave to the last of this same feeling 
 every now and then recovering its ascendancy, even after he had 
 yielded to contrarious counsels, that I ground my exculpation of 
 him from intentional duplicity. I submit the particular instances 
 to Mr. Southey's consideration ; he will judge whether they do not 
 give evidence of a mind at distressing variance with itself, and as 
 incapable of forming any politic design for its own purpose, as of 
 detecting the representations of interested prejudiced advisers. The 
 first remarkable instance of the kind to which I allude occurred 
 more than two years after his first ordination for America. A spirit 
 of decided Dissent broke out at Deptford, and Mr. Wesley was 
 urged to allow the Methodists there to hold their Sunday service at 
 Church hours. But he refused compliance on the ground (Journal, 
 1st Edit. Sept. 24, 1786) that " this would be a formal separation 
 from the Church." " To fix " (our service), he adds, " at the same 
 hour is obliging them to separate either from the Church or us ; and 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 11 
 
 this I judge to be not only inexpedient, but totally unlawful for me 
 to do." This remonstrance, however, had but a h - ansient effect, for 
 on the 2nd of January following his words are — " I went over to 
 Deptford, but it seemed I was got into a den of lions : most of the 
 leading men in the society were mad for sepai-ating from the 
 Church. I endeavoured to reason with them, but in vain; they 
 had neither sense nor even good manners left. At length, after 
 meeting the whole society, I told them, ' If you are resolved, you 
 may have your service in the Church hours ;*but, remember, from 
 that time you will see my face no more.' This struck deep, and 
 from that hour I have heard no more of separation from the Church." 
 
 How Mr. Wesley could overlook the encouragement which he 
 himself had given to such movements of Dissent, I acknowledge I 
 do not comprehend. But these expressions not only bear an indu- 
 bitable stamp of feeling, but it is impossible to conceive why, in that 
 instance, he should have spoken otherwise than he felt, and still 
 more, that he should have made such a record without a conscious 
 sense of sincerity. Common policy would have especially forbidden 
 its publication had he been in a state of mind duly to weigh either 
 his own recent measures, or the consequences morally certain to 
 ensue from them. "When those, however, whofn we may suppose to 
 have advised those measures came themselves into power, they did 
 their utmost to suppress this unquestionable evidence of Mr. 
 Wesley's variance with himself, or rather of what were still the 
 unbiassed workings of his heart. In every edition of Mr. Wesley's 
 Journal, subsequent to his death, the former passage (Sept. 24th, 
 1786) is mutilated, and the latter passage (Jan. 2nd, 1787) wholly 
 cancelled. They doubtless hoped to consign this virtual protest 
 against their meditated plan to everlasting oblivion. But I hap- 
 pened to procure the original edition, and thereby had it in my 
 power to quote both passages in a small pamphlet which I pub- 
 lished in England in the year 1794, against the then commencing 
 separation ; and from that pamphlet I have now transcribed them. 
 Their suppression is remarkable, not only for the wily policy of the 
 act itself, but also as it serves to illustrate the kind of influence 
 under which Mr. Wesley was placed during the last years of his 
 life. Some other evidences of his radically unchanged principles 
 (however he might have been seduced to depart from them in those 
 strange instances of practice) could not be similarly put out of view, 
 
12 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 though no endeavour of this kind was wanting. Thus, when Mr. 
 Wesley was in Ireland, in the year 1789, at a distance from pre- 
 judiced advisers, and amongst persons cordially attached to the 
 Church of England, he composed a sermon on Hebrews v. 4, which 
 he published twelve months after in the Arminian Magazine, con- 
 taining as energetic a testimony as could be expressed in language 
 against separation from the Church, and assumption by his preachers 
 of the priestly office. That even in this sermon there are gross 
 inconsistencies and Self-impositions I must allow; but where he 
 urges what he considered the main point, the expressions are self- 
 evidently the language of his heart. Fully aware that there was an 
 ambition amongst his preachers to assume the ministerial office, he 
 tells them — " Ye never dreamed of this for ten or twenty years 
 after ye began to preach. Ye did not then, like Korah, Dathan, 
 and Abirani, seek the priesthood also. Ye knew no man taketh 
 this honour to himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron." 
 He then proceeds — " 0 ! contain yourselves within your own bounds. 
 He content with preaching the Gospel. I earnestly advise you, 
 abide in your place ; keep your own station. Ye were fifty years 
 ago, those of you who were then Methodist preachers, extraordinary 
 messengers of God, not going in your own will, but thrust out, not 
 to supersede, but to provoke to jealousy the ordinary messengers. 
 In God's name stop there. Ye yourselves were at first called in the 
 Church of England, and though ye have, and will have, a thousand 
 temptations to leave it, and set up for yourselves, regard them not. 
 Be Church of England men still. Do not cast away the peculiar 
 glory which God hath put upon you, and frustrate the design of 
 Providence, the very end for which God raised you up." How very 
 unpalatable this language was to those whose counsels had already 
 made the evil too strong for repression, appears from their omission 
 of this sermon in the volume of Mr. Wesley's yet uncollected dis- 
 courses published after his death. He had himself collected into 
 four volumes the sermons he had written for the Arminian Maga- 
 zine, but as he persevered in this labour until within the last three 
 months of his life, enough remained at the time of his death to form 
 an additional volume. But the sermon from which I have tran- 
 scribed the above passage was suppressed, and has never since 
 appeared in any edition of Mr. Wesley's sermons. — Southey, vol. ii. 
 pp. 314—317. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 13 
 
 Southey himself was convinced by these arguments. 
 In a letter, of which not only a copy but a facsimile is 
 given by Mr. Smith, in his second volume, bearing date 
 August 17, 1835, Southey writes — "Mr. Alexander 
 Knox has convinced me that I was mistaken in sup- 
 -posing ambition entered largely into Mr. Wesley's 
 actuating impulses. Upon the subject he wrote a long 
 and most admirable paper, and gave me permission to 
 affix it to my own work, whenever it might be reprinted. 
 This I shall do, and make such alterations in the book 
 as are required in consequence." Although Mr. Knox's 
 paper does, as we have seen, form an appendage to the 
 later editions of Southey's work, yet the change of 
 opinion here confessed is not adverted to in the work 
 itself; and its editor is accordingly sharply censured by 
 Mr. Smith for want of candour. Mr. Smith, however, 
 should recollect that Southey, if persuaded at last of 
 Wesley's integrity and disinterestedness in the main, 
 must at the same time have attributed to him what, in 
 Mr. Smith's judgment, would hardly be less offensive — 
 viz. the weakest inconsistency, not to say imbecility, in 
 respect of those acts on which the modern Wesleyans 
 mainly rely for the justification of their own proceed- 
 ings after Wesley's death. We much fear, however, 
 that Mr. Smith's own volumes must be held to supply 
 painfully convincing evidence, which probably had 
 escaped both Southey and Knox, that Southey's original 
 judgment was not far from the truth : — 
 
 " Mr. Wesley had hitherto ordained ministers only for America 
 and Scotland; hut from this period, being assisted by the Rev. 
 James Creighton and the Rev. Peard Dickenson, presbyters of the 
 
14 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Church of England, he set apart for the sacred office, by the imposi- 
 tion of hands and prayer, Messrs. A. Mather, T. Rankin, and H. 
 Moore, without sending them out of England; strongly advising 
 them at the same time that, according to his example, they should 
 continue united to the Established Church, so far as the blessed 
 work in which they were engaged would permit." Thus Wesley 
 did distinctly make known his opinion of the paramount importance 
 of maintaining the progress of the work of God, even at the expense 
 of his own devoted attachment to the Establishment. He at other 
 times, and by various acts, showed that he regarded even the most 
 useful form, and the most approved ecclesiastical order, as of small 
 importance, when the work of grace in the salvation of men rendered 
 a modification of them necessaiy. Not only, therefore, was " bap- 
 tism, as well as the burial of the dead, performed by many of the 
 preachers long before the death of Mr. Wesley, and with his con- 
 sent," but Mr. John Martin, in reply to persons who had asserted 
 that "the sacrament had never been given in England by laymen in 
 Mr. Wesley's lifetime," says, " Mr. Wesley sent me to the city of 
 Norwich, to a congregation who desired the sacrament ; and I both 
 baptized their children and administered tbe sacrament to the people 
 part of three years; and the preachers who followed me did the 
 same." The following gives a still more decisive account of de- 
 parture from usual ecclesiastical order under the sanction of Wesley. 
 " Before his " (Wesley's) " death, a great number of places had ser- 
 vice in Church hours, and several of them the sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper regularly administered to them. He ordained Mr. 
 Woodhouse, of Owston, near Epworth, and appointed him to preach 
 in his gown and bands, in Church hours, and also to administer 
 the sacrament, although he was only a local preacher." He also 
 permitted " Mr. Hanby to administer the ordinances in the circuits 
 where he laboured," although he had not been ordained. — Vol. ii. 
 pp. 10, 11. 
 
 Our readers can now form their own judgment. 
 Certain it is that Wesley acted either with the most 
 extraordinary prevarication and duplicity, or was misled 
 through most culpable weakness. Certain also it is 
 that if his followers claim his acquittal from the former 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 15 
 
 charge, they must allow that their whole system, in so 
 far as it involves separation from the Church, and 
 organization into an independent and complete eccle- 
 siastical community, is built not upon the uniform 
 principles and mature convictions of their founder, but 
 upon the weak concessions he made in his feeble years 
 to their own importunities. In no case, whether modern 
 Wesleyanism is built upon the treachery or the incon- 
 sistency of its author, can the dishonest suppression of 
 his latest sentiments on these points, as attested by Mr. 
 Knox, be excused. The mode in which this was done 
 irresistibly suggests a suspicion, and something more 
 than a suspicion, that the Conference was not so satis- 
 fied as it professed to be that its schismatical acts could 
 be reconciled with the precepts of him to whom they 
 pretend so ostentatiously to look as their "venerable 
 father." 
 
 Mr. George Smith, the author of the three bulky 
 volumes entitled a History of Wcsleyan Methodism, 
 would seem to be a person of some consideration 
 amongst his co-religionists. We observe that he is 
 entitled to several "handles" to his name, and has 
 made other large contributions to Wesleyan literature, 
 which are extolled in somewhat high-flown strains by 
 the organs of Conference. We cannot congratulate 
 the connexion upon showing a high average of literary 
 ability, if Mr. Smith is one of their best specimens, 
 lie would seem to be sufficiently painstaking, and, for a 
 thorough-going partisan of Conference, as candid as he 
 can conveniently be; but we have seldom perused 
 volumes of more unmitigated dulness than his. Tame 
 
16 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and prosy to an extreme, his facts of all sorts and sizes 
 are exhibited on the same dead level, and in the same 
 uninviting tints, badly relieved by unsuccessful attempts 
 at unction. His present work is, judging from a list 
 appended to the volumes, his most important, as it 
 seems the least uninteresting of his efforts. It has 
 evidently been written under the countenance of the 
 Wesleyan leaders, and with some assistance from 
 them ; and may fairly be considered the Methodists' 
 account and history of themselves. In this point of 
 view the second volume, embracing the middle age of 
 Wesleyanism, is particularly interesting. It contains 
 the narrative of those troubles which immediately and 
 inevitably followed the death of Wesley in March 1791, 
 the issue of which was the severance of the connexion 
 from the Church. 
 
 Mr. Smith describes Methodism after Wesley's death 
 as containing " hundreds of congregations, comprising 
 great numbers of men and women, well instructed in 
 every Christian doctrine' and duty, who walked daily in 
 the experience of the Divine favour, and in the practice 
 of all Christian virtue. Yet although these societies 
 were clearly entitled to rank as Christian Churches, and 
 were actually in possession of every other essential of 
 Christian communion, they were not permitted to re- 
 ceive from the hands of their own preachers those sacred 
 ordinances which form the most striking and distinctive 
 privilege of the Church of Christ." — Vol. ii. pp. 2, 3. 
 The connexion was in fact divided into two parties — 
 those who advocated " the old plan," and those who were 
 for organizing themselves into a complete ecclesiastical 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 17 
 
 community, supplying all the means of grace within 
 itself. The conduct of Conference was politic, and was 
 finally crowned with that result which beyond doubt 
 had been all along sought and desired — viz. the sever- 
 ance of their body from the Church. At first they 
 cast lots about the knotty point, perhaps having in 
 mind the superstitious practice of Biblical sortilege 
 which Wesley frequently resorted to in his difficulties. 
 The lot decided that they should not administer " the 
 sacrament" for the ensuing year — viz. 1793. The 
 letter in which this result is communicated to the 
 Members of the Societies by the President and Secretary 
 of the Conference is so characteristic that we must 
 transcribe it from Mr. Smith's pages, vol. ii. p. 686 : — 
 " Very dear Brethren, — The Conference desire us to 
 write to you in their name in the most tender and 
 affectionate manner, and to inform you of the event of 
 their deliberations concerning the administration of the 
 Lord's Supper. After debating the subject time after 
 time, we were greatly divided in sentiment. In short, 
 we knew not what to do that peace and union might be 
 preserved. At last one of the senior brethren " (Mr. 
 Pawson, the destroyer of "Wesley's quarto Shakspeare) 
 "proposed that we should commit the matter to God 
 by putting the question to the lot, considering that the 
 oracles of God declare that 1 the lot causeth contentions 
 to cease, and parteth between the mighty ;' and again 
 that 'the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole dis- 
 posing thereof is of the Lord;' and considering also 
 that we have the example of the Apostles themselves in 
 a matter which we thought, all things considered, of 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 less importance. We accordingly prepared the lots, 
 and four of us prayed. God was surely then present, 
 yea, His glory filled the room. Almost all the preachers 
 were in tears ; and as they afterwards confessed, felt an 
 undoubted assurance that God Himself would decide. 
 Mr. Adam Clarke was then called upon to draw the lot, 
 which was 'You shall not administer the sacrament 
 the ensuing year.' All were satisfied. All submitted. 
 All was peace. Every conscience seemed to testify 
 that every heart said, ' It is the Lord ; let Him do 
 what seemeth Him good.' A minute was then formed 
 according to the previous explanation of the lots, that 
 the sacrament should not be administered in our con- 
 nexion for the ensuing year, except in London. The 
 prohibition reaches the clergy of the Church of Eng- 
 land, as well as the other brethren. 
 
 " We do assure you, dear brethren, that we should 
 have been perfectly resigned if the lot had fallen on 
 the other side.. Yea, we should, as far as Christian 
 prudence, and expediency would have justified, have 
 encouraged the administration of the Lord's Supper by 
 the preachers ; because we had not a doubt but God 
 was uncommonly present on the occasion, and did 
 Himself decide. 
 
 " Signed in behalf of the Conference, 
 
 "Alexander Mather, President, 
 " Thomas Coke, Secretary." 
 
 This curious transaction — a rare and grotesque com- 
 bination of absurdity, profaneness, and superstition, 
 scarcely surpassed even in the annals of Methodism — 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 1!) 
 
 closed the question for a year ; but at the expiration of 
 that time it was, of course, reopened. Conference judi- 
 ciously contrived to throw the responsibility and the 
 odium of dealing with it on their people themselves by 
 allowing "the sacrament" to be administered where 
 the society was unanimous, or nearly so, for that course. 
 The circular of Conference on this and sundry other 
 subjects in 1794 is again noteworthy; we transcribe 
 one or two of the resolutions, commending them to the 
 consideration of the "Wesleyans of the present day : — 
 " 1st, All ecclesiastical titles, such as Reverend, &c, 
 shall be laid aside, as also gowns, bands, &c. 2nd, 
 Preaching in Church hours shall not be permitted, 
 except for special reasons. 3rd, As the Lord's Supper 
 has not been administered except when the Society has 
 been unanimous for it and would not be contented 
 without it, it is now agreed that the Lord's Supper 
 shall not be administered in future, when the union 
 and concord of the Society can be preserved without it. 
 4th, The preachers shall not perform the office of bap- 
 tism, except for the desirable ends of love and concord," 
 &c— Smith, ii. 691, 692. 
 
 Mr. Smith's chapter upon the Scriptural character of 
 the " "Wesleyan Methodist Church " is instructive. He 
 evidently feels himself, and the hyper-hierarchical 
 system of which he is the champion, to be in a some- 
 what awkward position. In fact, Wesleyanism, as 
 settled by the Conference, is between two fires, to both 
 of which it is impossible, in the nature of things, to 
 make efficient answer at the same time. On the one 
 hand, there is the Church with a polity unquestionably 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 handed down from very ancient times, and, as we firmly 
 believe, coeval with Christianity itself ; with rulers 
 claiming to derive their office and authority from the 
 Apostles; with ministers commissioned through cer- 
 tain and definite channels — channels which the whole 
 Church for ages recognized as the only legitimate ones 
 for conveying such a commission, and which those only 
 reject who have separated from the Church of their 
 fathers. On the other hand, there is the thorough- 
 going Dissenting system, which is Whiggery applied 
 to matters ecclesiastical. This system regards the indi- 
 vidual congregation as the source of authority, and the 
 supreme and sufficient referee in matters doctrinal and 
 ceremonial. On this view, the minister is the minister 
 not so much of Christ as of the congregation ; having 
 such powers and duties as it may entrust to him ; and 
 holding his commission from it. It is true, indeed, 
 that the most thorough-going Dissenter professes to 
 regard the Bible as his rule of faith. That, however, 
 makes little difference, if the interpretation is left un- 
 restrictedly in his own hands. It has been said, not 
 without much truth, that it comes to much the same 
 thing, whether a man writes a Bible for himself or in- 
 terprets the one he has as he pleases. This system, 
 which its friends would call religious liberty, its foes 
 religious licence, is the one to which strong leanings 
 have manifested themselves from time to time in the 
 connexion, and which, soon after "Wesley's death, found 
 an advocate in Mr. Kilham. This gentleman was, 
 agreeably to those instincts of self-preservation which 
 have always strongly marked the proceedings of Con- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 21 
 
 ference, expelled in 179G, and became the founder of 
 the New Connexion. 
 
 Thus does Methodism stand between two systems, 
 with the disadvantages of both, and the advantages of 
 neither. Its ministers have not the prestige and innate 
 authority which attaches to those of an ancient and 
 Catholic community ; while they claim a power not 
 less irresponsible and absolute than any which has 
 ever been challenged as of divine right by the most 
 despotic hierarchy the Church has seen. An awkward 
 consciousness of these things pervades Mr. Smith's 
 defence of the Wesleyan ministry. He addresses him- 
 self first to the Churchmen, and handles his argument 
 in the shallow mode usual amongst Dissenters. He 
 first misapprehends (we use the term, in charity — we 
 might say, misstates) the grounds on which the Church 
 rests her claims, and then triumphantly refutes his own 
 misapprehension. A well-informed man ought not to 
 need to be told that the doctrine of the Apostolical Suc- 
 cession is not affected by denying that St. Peter was ever 
 at Rome, nor even by the impossibility of proving by 
 positive evidence that each and every Bishop in the 
 line was canonically consecrated. It is no new dis- 
 covery that the words tTriaKonog and irptafivrtpoq are 
 applied in the New Testament to the same individuals ; 
 and it is quite obvious that that fact goes no way at all 
 towards showing that the office and authority termed 
 by us episcopal cannot be traced in the New Testament 
 times. But had Mr. Smith been blessed with a fair 
 amount of those logical powers which distinguished the 
 founder of his sect, he woidd have seen ere tbis that the 
 
22 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 principles on which he takes his stand as against the 
 Church ought, in consistency, to carry him into Con- 
 gregationalism. We must admit, however, that he 
 makes out a better case against that antagonist from 
 the opposite quarter. He triumphantly proves against 
 the Independent, and Dissenters of that stamp, that 
 presbyters ought to " rule, lead, tend, and govern " 
 their flocks ; as also that the Apostolic and primitive 
 Churches formed one body, though of many members. 
 But he cannot, or will not, see that although all this 
 vindicates his sect, supposing it to be the ancient Church 
 of the land, it utterly condemns it when it is otherwise. 
 If the laity should be ruled by their presbyters, as Mr. 
 Smith decidedly thinks they ought to be, what was the 
 original revolt of the "Wesleyans from the Church into 
 which they were baptized, but a wicked rebellion ? If 
 the various Christian Churches should form one society, 
 and the principle of " Connexionalism " as exemplified 
 in that closely compacted body the Wesleyan Me- 
 thodists is so thoroughly Scriptural and Apostolic, what 
 else was it than a sacrilegious schism, wrought in 
 defiance of Scripture, the Apostles, and the Church 
 Catholic also, when Mr. Smith's co-religionists would 
 be satisfied with nothing less than setting themselves 
 up as a complete and independent Church to them- 
 selves? Mr. Smith, in his hot pursuit of the "Low 
 Dissenters," pushes the rout too far, and lays himself 
 open to a most dangerous assault from behind. Like 
 the man in Hogarth's famous picture of "The Elec- 
 tion," who sits on the end of the hanging sign, and 
 saws through the beam before him, his most zealous 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 23 
 
 endeavours only hasten his own downfall. On this point, 
 and, indeed, on several others in theTVesleyanism system, 
 those words of Isaac Taylor are striking — " In respect 
 of the position of the Methodist ministers towards the 
 people, which is that of irresponsible 'lords of God's 
 heritage,' the professedly Christian world is thus parted 
 — on the one side stand all Protestant Churches, Epis- 
 copal and non-Episcopal, TTesleyanism excepted; on 
 the other side stands the Church of Rome, with its 
 s}'mpathizing adherents, the malcontents of the English 
 Church, and the Wesleyan Conference. The position, 
 maintained alone by a Protestant body, must be re- 
 garded as false in principle, and as in an extreme 
 degree ominous — Wesley and Methodism, p. 268. 
 
 1 The claims made by Conference on behalf of the Wesleyan 
 ministers are scarcely estimated in their true extent by those out- 
 side of the Connexion. We transcribe the following statement of 
 them given by the Bev. J. B. Marsden [Christian Churches and 
 Sects, vol. ii. pp. 412, 4-13] as that of the Conference of 1835 and its 
 organs : — 
 
 " Christ has empowered the ministers of the Gospel to govern or 
 regulate the Church by salutary discipline : He has committed to 
 them the keys of the Church : in every section of the Church of 
 Christ the pastor must bear the keys, or he is not the pastor of 
 Christ's own making ; it is for the ministers of Christ, the pastors 
 of the Church, to reprove, rebuke with all authority, admonish, 
 warn, and finally, when they judge necessary, to reject offenders 
 from Church communion." " Jesus Christ has not empowered the 
 Church to interfere with the minister in the use of the keys." 
 "The ministry makes the Church, rather than the Church the 
 ministry." " Every thing flows from this source. Humanly speak- 
 ing, the ministry is the centre of light and power : all things grow 
 out of it." " The minister of Christ is your judge as God's minister, 
 and you are not to judge him." [Yet 
 
24 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 We believe that no such phenomenon was designed 
 or foreseen by Wesley himself. Exalted as were his 
 notions of the value and importance of his society, it 
 can hardly be doubted that he regarded it only as a 
 sort of evangelizing supplement to the Established 
 Church. To hold otherwise is to convict him of dis- 
 ingenuousness and folly. Of the former, because he 
 steadily disclaimed any intention of separating from the 
 Church, even while pushed on by his confederates into 
 acts of schism ; of the latter, because, while the society 
 is minutely and excessively organized, it is, at least as 
 Wesley left it, wholly wanting in all the essentials of 
 an independent ecclesiastical community. It is not to be 
 believed that he dreamed of a body of preachers, whom 
 he could not be brought to recognize as clergymen at 
 all, exercising a spiritual despotism over the faith and 
 practice of the members of his societies, such as, if 
 attempted by a priest of the Church, or any number of 
 priests, would bring down an irresistible storm of indig- 
 nation. The Minutes of Conference are the statutes of 
 the Methodist societies. Its members are elected by 
 itself: it is purely self-perpetuated. Its deliberations 
 are secret, its authority absolute, without repentance 
 and without appeal. All is on the platform of the 
 narrowest and most despotic oligarchy. This kind of 
 constitution is thoroughly according to Wesley's auto- 
 Yet something like a quarter of a million of Englishmen actually 
 submit themselves to a priestly authority thus audacious in its 
 claims, and created some sixty years ago by the mere arbitrary fiat 
 of a set of men whom the founder of their sect himself could never 
 be brought to recognize as clergy, or as in any way constituting a 
 Church at all ! 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 25 
 
 cratic temperament ; it is, moreover, intelligible enough 
 if we believe him to have regarded the connexion as a 
 machinery auxiliary to the Church, intended to reach 
 the masses of the people, at that time certainly neglected, 
 in Wesley's opinion unprovided for, by the regular 
 Church system; but it is altogether an unaccountable 
 and incomprehensible polity if we take the orthodox 
 Wesley an view, and believe that Wesley meant it to serve 
 as the scheme for a complete ecclesiastical constitution. 
 
 Hence from the time of Wesley's death to the pre- 
 sent day, continual convulsions have attended the appli- 
 cation of Wesley's regimen to purposes it was never 
 meant to serve. The most serious of these took place 
 during Dr. Bunting's ministry, and in almost all he 
 bore a part, generally a leading part. His personal 
 authority was for many years greater in the society 
 than that ever exercised by any individual, except 
 Wesley himself, and it was always exerted in one direc- 
 tion, i. e. stern repression of any attempts at reform, 
 either of doctrine or discipline. His inflexibility on 
 these points undoubtedly has very seriously diminished 
 the numbers of the society, but has greatly contributed 
 to its homogeneousness and discipline. The Wesleyans 
 may now justly boast of their unanimity. It is a point 
 in which they contrast most advantageously with other 
 denominations, and even with the Church. Yet this 
 excellence, when examined, is seen at once to be not 
 the unity of the Catholic Church, but the singularity of 
 a sect. Wesleyans differ amongst themselves like other 
 people ; but when they differ the agitation is soon 
 settled by a secession, and the founding of a new sect ; 
 
26 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the new ideas will not assimilate to the old economy ; 
 those who hold them withdraw of their own accord, or 
 failing that, are expelled. 
 
 The first volume of the life of Dr. Bunting, the 
 only volume as yet (1864) published, dwells on the 
 childhood and youth of its subject, and on the earlier 
 and less important days of his ministry. It does this 
 with a minuteness which is so curious as at first to be 
 amusing, but which soon becomes tiresome. Much 
 may be justly excused to the partiality of a son : but 
 we could wish Mr. Bunting, in composing his biography, 
 had advised with some sensible literary friend, if such 
 he has — above all, with one not a Methodist. Writers 
 of that persuasion have some striking and very dis- 
 agreeable affinities with the Univers, and with Cardinal 
 Wiseman, in his Ultramontane moods. They hang in 
 profound admiration over the words and deeds of the 
 man they delight to honour as all alike wonderful; 
 they expatiate with zealous adulation over the most 
 trifling details of his person and his belongings ; they 
 call upon us to receive every such crumb of information 
 devoutly and thankfully, and to say grace as over a 
 feast of fat things. These writers aim at unction ; and 
 that being of all graces the least self-conscious, they 
 fall into the nauseous extreme but a short step removed 
 from it — viz. an oily credulity hardly distinguishable 
 from cant. The Life of Dr. Bunting is not by any 
 means a bad specimen of the class of works to which 
 it belongs. Mr. Bunting might write well if he would 
 take off the spiritual spectacles through which he feels 
 it de rigucur to look at every thing, and would mortify 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 27 
 
 the affectation of crowding his pages with fragments of 
 hymns often either stale or stupid, and with Scripture 
 phraseology coolly subsuming the worthies of his own 
 sect under terms belonging" to apostles and martyrs, or 
 perhaps to One greater still. But the Methodist has 
 his reliquary as well as the Romanist ; the latter gar- 
 nishes it with rags and bones, the former with those 
 petty and sordid details of the lower life which can 
 never be transfigured by being handled as sacred sub- 
 jects, but rather, when so treated, vulgarize the lan- 
 guage and style which should be kept sacred, and mar 
 its efficacy when it is wanted for its proper ends. 
 
 "We need not illustrate these remarks by an extract. 
 They will be intelligible to any Churchman who opens 
 Mr. Bunting's biography almost at random. Neither 
 may we — tempting as the subject is, and closely con- 
 nected with "Wesley and his work — enlarge upon the 
 subject of revivals, or of the instantaneous conversions, 
 marked then as now by bodily manifestations, which 
 gave such notoriety to the early stages of the "Wesleyan 
 movement. 
 
 To such pretended marvels, relied on as they are by 
 Methodists as proofs that their new teaching is of God, 
 the witty remarks of Tertullian on the Gnostic mira- 
 cles may, with a little accommodation, be applied: — 
 "Volo igitur et virtutes eorum proferri; nisi quod 
 agnosco maximam virtutem eorum qua Apostolos in per- 
 versum aeniulantur, illi enim de insanis sanos faciebant, 
 isti de sanis insanos faciunt." — DePrcescriptione,ch.xxx. 
 
 It is dangerous to prophesy, and yet there seems no 
 great risk in predicting that Methodism must either 
 
28 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 undergo a thorough change of principles and polity or 
 fall into the languishing state which has crept over 
 more than one once-flourishing and predominant sect. 
 That the process of slow consumption has already com- 
 menced seems likely enough. We do not hear now-a- 
 days of those vast ingatherings of people which were 
 the triumphs of the first preachers. "Wesleyans form a 
 circle — very peculiar, very marked, very respectable, 
 often wealthy, but seeming to dwindle rather than en- 
 large. The excessive interference with the personal 
 spiritual concerns of its members, which is part of the 
 system, always will and always ought to prevent its 
 overspreading the land. Methodism, of all Protestant 
 denominations, is the most un-Protestant. Like the 
 Confessional, it takes the spiritual charge of the indi- 
 vidual out of his own hands. It will not be satisfied 
 without putting its seal on the very thoughts. Nothing 
 in the religious life is left private or uncontrolled. As 
 a consequence, it never reaches to the depths of the 
 soul at all ; it is cognizant of nothing that cannot be 
 talked of and discussed at a meeting. From religious 
 experiences so handled all freshness and spirit soon 
 evaporate ; and the hyper-organized machinery in- 
 tended to generate godliness turns out only a spurious 
 and self-complacent pietism. So it is too often, we 
 fear, with Wesleyanism ; and unless this artificial and 
 intrusive discipline on the one hand, and its highly 
 oligarchical government on the other, be largely modi- 
 fied, its days of popularity and extension are past for 
 ever. And yet reforms in this direction could hardly 
 be carried without driving large numbers of Methodists, 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 29 
 
 and those of the better sort, back to that Church which 
 they never ought to have left, and which, perhaps, had 
 not their own rise coincided with the period of her own 
 deepest sloth and worldliness, might, as we cannot but 
 think she ought, have found means to direct and to 
 utilize their strong zeal and earnest aims at a high 
 standard of religiousness. 
 
ESSAY II. 
 
 Essays and Reviews. J. W. Parker and Son. 
 
 The appearance of this volume is a sign of the times, 
 and a somewhat portentous one. If it were the pro- 
 duction of an individual, it would still be sufficiently- 
 remarkable, for religious speculations such as charac- 
 terize the Essays and Reviews do not adventure them- 
 selves into the world without a sort of consciousness 
 that appreciation at least, if not welcome, awaits them. 
 The laws of supply and demand have an instinct of 
 their own, and they operate in philosophy and theology 
 as well as in commerce. Seldom have we in these, or 
 in any other matters, occasion to say " The hour is 
 come but not the man." " The theologian," Mr. Jowett 
 observes, "may have peace in the thought that he is 
 subject to the conditions of his age rather than one of 
 its moving powers." The role of the thinker, like that 
 of the statesman, seems to be provided for him by some 
 mightier overruling than mere human agencies. His 
 ideas, and the words which convey them, fall on the 
 minds of his generation like sparks on the tinder, and 
 light up a flame which searches through and through 
 existing systems and institutions, consuming the wood, 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 31 
 
 the Lav, and the stubble ; leaving unscathed only what 
 is of durable, because of diviner, material. Such thoughts 
 as these must not be so insisted on as to put out of 
 sight the personal responsibility which attaches to 
 every Christian man ; and in the highest degree to 
 those whose abilities enable them to influence others 
 for good or for evil ; yet they are true so far as they 
 go, and they give to a bundle of essays on the religious 
 topics of the day, such as that before us, a twofold 
 interest. "We are led to think of it not only as an ex- 
 position of the sentiments and conclusions of certain 
 thinkers, but as an index also of the thoughts which 
 are working in the minds of men about us. In both 
 points of view the Essays and Reviews are well worthy 
 of attention. 
 
 Turning for the present away from the reflections 
 suggested by the mere fact that seven learned and dis- 
 tinguished members of our two ancient Universities — 
 five of them, by-the-bye, of Oxford, two of them Pro- 
 fessors of that University, and two others entrusted 
 with chief responsibility in important educational es- 
 tablishments — should be banded together in the joint 
 production of a series of essays like this, let us state 
 the conclusions which these able writers have undertaken 
 to recommend to the Christian public, and more espe- 
 cially to their fellow-Churchmen. And here we must 
 draw a line of demarcation between two of the essays 
 before us and the other five which are bound up with 
 them in the same covers. The first essay, by Dr. 
 Temple, " On the Education of the "World," contains 
 little or nothing which need give pain or occasion 
 
32 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 surprise. It exhibits the broad views of the writer, of 
 course, and is written with a certain tendency to over- 
 generalization and viewiness. But it is little more 
 than an elaborate and sustained exemplification of the 
 common -place analogy which may be drawn between 
 the growth and education of the individual man and 
 those of the human race. Its scope is to exhibit the 
 effect upon the race at large of the peculiarities of each 
 nation and age, and to trace in such effect the over- 
 ruling wisdom which reaches from one end to another, 
 and causes all to work together for the progress of 
 mankind to perfection. The objections to such a theory 
 are as familiar as the theory itself, and we forbear to 
 particularize them — for our limited space must be rather 
 devoted to the strange companions with which Dr. 
 Temple is associated. Along with him, however, may 
 be ranged — at least from our present view-point — 
 Mr. Pattison's essay on " The Tendencies of Eeligious 
 Thought in England, 1688—1750." This very able 
 tractate is almost entirely of a historical character, and 
 affords little opportunity for discussing and enforcing 
 any peculiar opinions which the writer himself may 
 hold. Neither is it like Mr. Pattison to force such 
 opportunity when it is not offered to him by the nature 
 of his undertaking. He is one of those patient thinkers 
 and painstaking writers who carefully possess them- 
 selves of the phenomena belonging to the subject before 
 them, add little de suo, and endeavour to derive their 
 theories from a strict examination of facts and docu- 
 ments. His essay has not the genius and originality 
 which distinguish some others in this volume, neither 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 33 
 
 has it that immediate attraction for the reader which is 
 exercised by discussions of questions which are in daily- 
 agitation ; yet it is perhaps for solid and durable worth 
 the most important literary contribution of the whole 
 seven. The sixty years following the Revolution of 
 1688 are, generally speaking, far too superficially and 
 contemptuously thought of. They are to many amongst 
 ourselves pretty much what " the dark ages " were in 
 popular estimation some forty years ago, and that for 
 pretty much the same reason. They are little known, 
 and are therefore much despised- Mr. Pattison traces 
 with acuteness and intelligence the general bearings 
 of religious opinion and controversy in these years, and 
 exhibits the results of much reading and conscientious 
 investigation with clearness and precision, though in a 
 somewhat laboured and awkward style. He shows — we 
 think successfully — that the Christian writers of those 
 years did their part, and that part a necessary though 
 not a noble one, to advance the progress of Christian 
 doctrine, and to challenge, as against the besetting 
 temptations of society, the obedience of their contem- 
 poraries to Christian precepts. His summary of what 
 was, and what was not, effected by the Christian advo- 
 cates whom it falls within his plan to consider, is 
 instructive : — 
 
 Upon the whole, the writings of that period are serviceable to us 
 chiefly as showing what can and what cannot be effected by common- 
 sense thinking in theology. It is of little consequence to inquire 
 whether or not the objections of the Deists and Socinians were 
 removed by the answers brought to meet them. Perhaps, on the 
 whole, we might be borne out in saying that the defence is at least 
 as good as the attack ; and so, that even on the ground of common 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 reason, the Christian evidences may be arranged in such a way as to 
 balance the common-sense improbability of the supernatural — that 
 "there are three chances to one for revelation, and only two against it." 
 (Tracts for the Times, No. 85.) Had not circumstances given a new 
 direction to religious interests, the Deistical controversy might have 
 gone on indefinitely, and the " amoebsean strain of objection and 
 reply, et cantare pares et respondcre parati " — have been pro- 
 longed to this day without any other result. But that result forces 
 on the mind the suggestion that either religious faith has no 
 existence, or that it must be to be reached by some other road than 
 that of the " trial of the witnesses." It is a reductio ad ahsurdum 
 of common-sense philosophy, of home-baked theology, when we find 
 that the result of the whole is that " it is safer to believe in a God, 
 lest, if there should happen to be one, He might send us to hell for 
 denying His existence." (Maurice, Essays, p. 236.) If a religion 
 be wanted which shall debase instead of elevating, this should be its 
 creed. If the religious history of the eighteenth century proves 
 any thing, it is this : — That good sense, the best good sense, when 
 it sets to work with the materials of human nature and Scripture to 
 construct a religion, will find its way to an ethical code, irreproach- 
 able in its contents, and based on a just estimate and wise observa- 
 tion of the facts of life, ratified by Divine sanctions in the shape of 
 hope and fear, of future rewards and penalties of obedience and 
 disobedience. This the eighteenth century did and did well. It 
 has enforced the truths of natural morality with a solidity of argu- 
 ment and variety of proof which they have not received since the 
 Stoical epoch, if then. But there its ability ended. When it came 
 to the supernatural part of Christianity its embarrassment began. 
 It was forced to keep it as much in the background as possible, or to 
 bolster it up by lame and inadequate reasonings. The philosophy 
 of common sense had done its own work ; it attempted more only to 
 show, by its failure, that some higher organon was needed for the 
 establishment of supernatural truth. The career of the evidential 
 school, its success and failure — its success in vindicating the ethical 
 part of Christianity and the regulative aspect of revealed truth, its 
 failure in establishing the supernatural and speculative part, have 
 enriched the history of doctrine with a complete refutation of that 
 method as an instrument of theological investigation. — Essays and 
 Reviews, pp. 295—297. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 35 
 
 "We have noticed the first and the sixth of the seven 
 papers comprised in this volume of Essays and Reviews 
 — papers which the reader is carefully apprised at the 
 beginning are "written by their several authors in 
 entire independence of each other, and without concert 
 or comparison." It is only due to Dr. Temple and Mr. 
 Pattison, the authors of the first and the sixth of these 
 papers, that this should be stated and recollected, for it 
 is to the other five that we feel it our duty to direct 
 special attention. Though, with one exception, of no 
 extraordinary brilliancy, these five compositions are so 
 unequivocal and so significant in their doctrinal ten- 
 dencies, that their composition by authors of such 
 station and standing as those who own them, and their 
 emission by one of our leading publishers, is not a 
 little noteworthy. We begin with that which stands 
 last in the volume, Professor Jowett's essay "On the 
 Interpretation of Scripture." This essay, though it 
 bears marks of having been finished roughly — the 
 threads of ideas being often broken short off with a 
 hastily written hint thrown in for the reader, in the 
 shape of a parenthesis, as to the direction in which the 
 sequel may be searched for — is still not only the longest 
 and most elaborate, but both in matter and in style by 
 far the most attractive, in the volume. We do not, 
 indeed, observe in it much which need cause surprise to 
 those who have perused the author's other writings. 
 He is, perhaps, more outspoken, and the conclusions to 
 which his method of dealing with Holy Scripture 
 points are less ambiguously indicated. But, on the 
 whole, the essay is little more than the formal enuncia- 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tion, illustration, and defence of principles of exegesis 
 rendered familiar to the student by Professor Jowett's 
 application of them in his work on certain of St. Paul's 
 Epistles. The method in which the Greek Professor of 
 Oxford wishes to deal with Scripture is easily explained. 
 Towards the conclusion of his article he tells us him- 
 self:— 
 
 Of what has been said, this is the sum — " That Scripture, like 
 other books, has one meaning, which is to be gathered from itself 
 without reference to the adaptations of Fathers or Divines: and 
 without regard to a priori notions about its nature and origin. It 
 is to be interpreted like other books, with attention to the character 
 of its authors, and the prevailing state of civilization and knowledge, 
 with allowance for peculiarities of style and language, and modes of 
 thought and figures of speech. Yet not without a sense that as we 
 read there grows upon us the witness of God in the world, antici- 
 pating in a rude and primitive age the truth that was to be, shining 
 more and more unto the perfect day in the life of Christ, which again 
 is reflected from different points of view in the teaching of His 
 Apostles." 
 
 The essay consists of an elaborate attempt to prove 
 that commentators hitherto have made it their business 
 rather to discover what Scripture may be made to mean 
 than what it does mean ; that the whole theological and 
 doctrinal system of the Church is not based on Scrip- 
 ture, but is evolved according to general laws, which 
 control the tendencies of speculation, and according to 
 the exigencies of the Church ; and, when so evolved, is 
 wont afterwards to be sought and found in Scripture ; 
 that no doctrinal system is discoverable or deducible 
 from the teaching of the Bible, and that when we 
 regard the Bible from any such view-point, we entirely 
 miss the spirit of the writers. Mr. Jowett's motto in 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 37 
 
 following up his argument is " thorough ;" he spares 
 nothing, and sticks at nothing. The audacity of some 
 of his statements is startling indeed : — 
 
 Nor for any of the higher or supernatural views of inspiration is 
 there any foundation in the Gospels or Epistles. There is no ap- 
 pearance in their writings that the Evangelists or Apostles had any 
 inward gift, or were subject to any power external to them different 
 from that of preaching or teaching which they daily exercised ; nor 
 do they any where lead us to suppose that they were free from error 
 or infirmity. St. Paul writes like a Christian teacher, exhibiting 
 all the emotions and vicissitudes of human feeling; speaking, indeed, 
 with authority, but hesitating in difficult cases, and more than once 
 correcting himself, corrected, too, by the course of events in his ex- 
 pectation of the coming of Christ. The Evangelist " who saw it, 
 bare record, and his record is true : and he knoweth that he saith 
 true " — (John xix. 35). Another Evangelist does not profess to be 
 an original narrator, but only " to set forth in order a declaration of 
 what eye-witnesses had delivered," like many others whose writings 
 have not been preserved to us (Luke i. 1, 2). And the result is in 
 accordance with the simple profession and style in which they 
 describe themselves ; there is no appearance, that is to say, of in- 
 sincerity or want of faith ; but neither is there perfect accuracy or 
 agreement. One supposes the original dwelling-place of our Lord's 
 parents to have been Bethlehem (Matthew ii. 1. 22), another Naza- 
 reth (Luke ii. 4) ; they trace His genealogy in different ways ; one 
 mentions the thieves blaspheming, another has preserved to after- 
 ages the record of the penitent thief; they appear to differ about the 
 day and hour of the Crucifixion ; the narrative of the woman who 
 anointed our Lord's feet with ointment is told in all four, each 
 narrative having more or less considerable variations. These are a 
 few instances of the differences which arose in the traditions of the 
 earliest ages respecting the history of our Lord. But he who 
 wishes to investigate the character of the sacred writings should 
 not be afraid to make a catalogue of them all with the view of 
 estimating their cumulative weight. (For it is obvious that the 
 answer which would be admitted in the case of a single discrepancy, 
 will not be the true answer when there are many.) He should 
 further consider that the narratives in which these discrepancies 
 
38 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 occur are short and partly identical — a cycle of tradition beyond 
 which the knowledge of the early Fathers never travels, though, if 
 all the things that Jesus said and did had been written down, " the 
 world itself could not have contained the books that would have 
 been written " — (John xx. 30 ; xxi. 25). For the proportion which 
 these narratives bear to the whole subject, as well as their relation 
 to one another, is an important element in the estimation of 
 differences. In the same way, he who would understand the nature 
 of prophecy in the Old Testament, should have the courage to examine 
 how far its details were minutely fulfilled. The absence of such a 
 fulfilment may further lead him to discover that he took the letter 
 for the spirit in expecting it. — Essays and Reviews, pp. 345 — 347. 
 
 Consider, for example, the extraordinary and unreasonable im- 
 portance attached to single words, sometimes of doubtful meaning, 
 in reference to any of the following subjects : — 1, Divorce ; 2, Mar- 
 riage with a Wife's Sister ; 3, Inspiration ; 4, the Personality of the 
 Holy Spirit; 5, Infant Baptism; 6, Episcopacy; 7, Divine Eight 
 of Kings ; 8, Original Sin. There is, indeed, a kind of mystery in 
 the way in which the chance words of a simple narrative, the 
 occurrence of some accidental event, the use even of a figure of 
 speech, or a mistranslation of a word in Latin or English, have 
 affected the thoughts of future ages and distant countries. Nothing 
 so slight that it has not been caught at ; nothing so plain that it 
 may not be explained away. What men have brought to the text 
 they have also found there ; what has received no interpretation or 
 witness, either in the customs of the Church or in " the thoughts of 
 many hearts," is still " an unknown tongue " to them. It is with 
 Scripture as with oratory, its effect partly depends on the prepara- 
 tion in the mind or in circumstances for the reception of it. There 
 is no use of Scripture, no quotation or even misquotation of a word 
 which is not a power in the world, when it embodies the spirit of a 
 great movement or is echoed by the voice of a large party. — Pp. 
 358, 359. 
 
 To attribute to St. Paul or the Twelve the abstract notion of 
 Christian truth which afterwards sprang up in the Catholic Church, 
 is the same sort of anachronism as to attribute to them a system of 
 philosophy. It is the same error as to attribute to Homer the 
 ideas of Thales or Heraclitus, or to Thales the more developed 
 principles of Aristotle and Plato. Many persons who have no diffi- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 39 
 
 culty in tracing the growth of institutions, yet seem to fail in recog- 
 nizing the more subtle progress of an idea. It is hard to imagine 
 the absence of conceptions with which we are familiar ; to go back 
 to the germ of what we know only in maturity ; to give up what 
 has grown to us, and become a part of our minds. In the present 
 case, however, the development is not difficult to prove. The state- 
 ments of Scripture are unaccountable if we deny it ; the silence of 
 Scripture is equally unaccountable. Absorbed as St. Paul was in 
 the person of Christ with an intensity of faitli and love of which in 
 modern days and at this distance of time we can scarcely form a 
 conception — high as he raised the dignity of his Lord above all 
 things in heaven and earth — looking to Him as the Creator of all 
 things, and the head of quick and dead, he does not speak of 
 Him as "equal to the Father," or "of one substance with the 
 Father." Much of the language of the Epistles (passages, for 
 example, such as Romans i. 2 ; Philippians ii. 6) would lose their 
 meaning if distributed in alternate clauses between our Lord's 
 humanity and divinity. Still greater difficulties would be intro- 
 duced into the Gospels by the attempt to identify them with the 
 Creeds. We should have to suppose that He was and was not 
 tempted ; that when He prayed to His Father He prayed also to 
 Himself; that He knew and did not know "of that hour" of 
 which He as well as the angels were ignorant. How could He 
 have said, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" or, 
 " Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from Me ? " How could 
 He have doubted whether, " when the Son cometh, He shall find 
 faith upon the earth?" These simple and touching words have 
 to be taken out of their natural meaning and connexion to be made 
 the theme of apologetic discourses, if we insist on reconciling them 
 with the distinctions of later ages. — Pp. 354, 355. 
 
 "We must observe, in fairness to Mr. Jowett, that in 
 the sequel of the last quoted passage he objects not 
 only to the Athanasian, but to any other precise and 
 definite rule of faith, as, for instance, the Unitarian; 
 and that of the "principles, rules, or truths mentioned" 
 in his enumeration in another of the above extracts, 
 " many have sufficient grounds ;" "but then " the weak- 
 
40 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ness is the attempt to derive them from Scripture." In 
 what sense Professor J owett holds that each and every- 
 one of the Thirty-nine Articles is agreeable to Scrip- 
 ture, as he must have repeatedly declared that he does, 
 we forbear to ask, along with other painful questions of 
 a kindred nature. It is only too plain that the teach- 
 ing of the above, and of many other passages, is directly 
 subversive of the doctrinal system of our Church, and 
 directly antagonistic to her cardinal principles. The 
 three Creeds are imposed on English Churchmen on 
 the very ground that they "may be proved by most 
 certain warrants of Holy Scripture," which is just what 
 Mr. Jowett denies of them ; and it is held to be the 
 characteristic glory and boast of our Church that she 
 requires as terms of communion, and lays down as her 
 standard of doctrine, nothing beyond what Scripture 
 determines, and the (Ecumenical Councils and ancient 
 Fathers of the Church have collected therefrom. But 
 Scripture, according to Mr. Jowett, is no doctrinal 
 standard at all ; and it is these very Fathers and 
 Councils, so repeatedly cited by our Church and all her 
 leading writers as authoritative, which have, in the 
 judgment of Mr. Jowett, overlaid Scripture with a 
 thick deposit of dogma, hiding from mankind the pure 
 ore of spiritual teaching beneath ; and it is these which 
 exemplify the very influences which must be first of all 
 discarded if we would approach Scripture in the true 
 spirit of an interpreter. We cannot follow Mr. Jowett 
 through the series of attacks he makes upon a multitude 
 of tenets generally received as part of " the faith once 
 delivered to the saints." The sweep of his criticisms 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 41 
 
 may be judged of, and their rashness estimated, by his 
 mode of dealing with the doctrine of Original Sin. He 
 says, " The justice of God, ' who rewardeth every man 
 according to his works,' and the Christian scheme of 
 redemption has (sic) been staked on two figurative ex- 
 pressions of St. Paul, to which there is no parallel in 
 any other part of Scripture (1 Cor. xv. 22 — ' For as in 
 Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made live,' 
 and the corresponding passage in Rom. v. 12), notwith- 
 standing the declaration of the Old Testament, as also 
 of the New, ' Every soul shall bear its own iniquity,' 
 and 'Neither this man sinned nor his parents.' " — P. 361. 
 
 Elsewhere Mr. Jowett hints pretty plainly his opinion 
 that the progress of discovery has disproved the Mosaic 
 narrative of the creation of man : he seems quite pre- 
 pared to admit that the human race overspread the 
 earth not from one but from many centres ; and that it 
 may have originated through the development of 
 species. If all this be so, what becomes of the head- 
 ship of our race in Adam ; and again in the antitype, 
 the Second Adam ? What becomes of the Incarnation 
 in all its deeper bearings and significances ? What of 
 the Atonement, the doctrine of which is conditioned by 
 that of the Incarnation ? What of our justification ? 
 What of the general resurrection, if we be in no real 
 sense members of a risen Head ? Wbat of the whole 
 system of the sacraments ? It is hard indeed to believe 
 that Mr. Jowett always thoroughly believes his own 
 arguments. When he speaks of the doctrine of Original 
 Sin as "staked upon two figurative expressions," it is 
 scarcely possible to avoid indignation at a misrepresen- 
 
42 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tation so transparent. It is useless to waste a word in 
 proving, what every tyro in theological reading would 
 easily demonstrate, that the passages themselves and 
 the doctrine contained in them are not inconsistent with 
 individual responsibility. We rather remark that Mr. 
 Jowett quotes two single verses, and intimates that the 
 doctrine in question rests on them alone. We wholly 
 deny that these are the only two passages of Scripture 
 which vindicate the teaching of our Church in her 
 Ninth Article. But if they were so, it must surely be 
 plain to any one who carefully studies the whole of the 
 chapters from which these verses are taken, that it is 
 not on isolated figurative expressions, but on the deep and 
 broad basis of the whole of the Apostle's argument, that 
 the doctrine woidd, in fact, be built. It crops up, perhaps, 
 more explicitly in the particular verses Mr. Jowett refers 
 to, but it underlies the whole reasoning of the weighty 
 chapters themselves in which the verses occur. Assume 
 the doctrine which, on Mr. Jowett's own admission, is 
 indicated in these verses, and the meaning, both of the 
 verses themselves and of the whole context, and their 
 place and scope in the general argument of the Epistles, 
 becomes intelligible : abandon the doctrine, in deference 
 to the difficulties felt about it by Mr. Jowett (in com- 
 mon, be it observed, with the Socinians), as false, and 
 mark the residts. Either St. Paul means to teach it in 
 the above passages, or he does not. If he does, we 
 convict him of error, and that on a very fundamental 
 point : if he does not, he uses language which could 
 not fail to bewilder and mislead in a manner perilous to 
 the salvation of his disciples. On the whole, we shall 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 43 
 
 get no further through, the intricacies of this difficult 
 subject than Pascal, who says — stating the difficulty, 
 however, in language which, although defensible on 
 the authority of St. Augustine, our Church has de- 
 liberately abstained from sanctioning 1 , — " What can be 
 more contrary to the rules of our wretched justice than 
 to damn eternally an infant incapable of volition for an 
 offence wherein he seems to have had no share, and 
 which was committed sis thousand years before he was 
 born P Certainly nothing shocks us more rudely than 
 this doctrine ; and yet without this mystery, the most 
 incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensible to 
 ourselves. Man is more inconceivable without this 
 mystery, than the mystery is conceivable to man." — 
 Pense"es ii. 5. 4. 
 
 But, in truth, it is useless to argue such a point with 
 a thinker like Mr. Jowett. He taxes orthodox theo- 
 logians with coming to the consideration of Scripture 
 prepared beforehand with a doctrinal system which 
 they deem it their duty to discover there. No one is 
 more manifestly guilty of this kind of prejudgment 
 than Mr. Jowett himself. He has made up his mind 
 
 1 The Declaration appended to the Office for Public Baptism of 
 Infants asserts : " It is certain by God's Word, that children which 
 are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly 
 saved." This is borrowed from The Institution of a Christian 
 Man (1537), which runs thus, p. 35 : " By the sacrament of Bap- 
 tism they do also obtain remission of their sins, the grace and 
 favour of God, and be made thereby the very sons of God. In- 
 somuch as infants and children, dying in their infancy, shall un- 
 doubtedly be saved thereby, and else not." The omission of the 
 last words in King Edward's Prayer Book of 1549 is most sig- 
 nificant. 
 
44 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 that certain tenets are not to be believed, or at least not 
 believed as doctrines of Scripture — Original Sin for 
 instance. Hence, when a text comes in bis way in 
 which the Church has been wont to hold the objection- 
 able dogma to be contained, he sets to work at once to 
 explain away the obvious meaning of the words before 
 him. It has always seemed to the simple and straight- 
 forward Christian, and indeed not less so to the learned 
 philologist and theologian, that on many points, at all 
 events, the teaching of Scripture is clear and definite. 
 But an acquaintance with Mr. Jowett's hermeneutics 
 would warn such persons that they are somewhat over- 
 hasty. The sentences, the grammar, the syntax, sub- 
 jects, predicates, and all the elements of a plain piece 
 of didactic composition may be there, as intelligible as 
 possible, and pointing to some Catholic article of faith — 
 the personality of the Holy Spirit perhaps. " Effugiet 
 tamen haec vincula." Mr. Jowett might laugh at all 
 the theological locksmiths that ever tried to forge doc- 
 trinal holdfasts. He has solvents, before the application 
 of which the most solid seeming scheme of doctrines 
 will crumble to nothing. Now St. Paul is speaking 
 according to " a mode of thought " of his times, and 
 the statements are only relatively true : now the ex- 
 pression is figurative, or allegorical, and cannot be 
 pressed into any precise meaning whatsoever ; least of 
 all that which the Church has always attached to it : 
 now the sacred writer is availing himself of an argu- 
 mentum ad hominem — the reasoning is only ex concessis, 
 and by consequence is of no weight to us : now we 
 come upon a Rabbinical dogma, which may be dis- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 40 
 
 missed at once ; did not the Rabbis utter many puerili- 
 ties ? At one time, again, we are bidden to remember 
 that " when our Saviour came into the world the Greek 
 language was itself in a state of degeneracy and decay ;" 
 and are forbidden to argue from its grammatical mean- 
 ing on the usual principles of logic and criticism which 
 would properly apply to more exact and classical writers : 
 at another time it is admitted indeed (as in the texts 
 above quoted respecting Original Sin, and the Per- 
 sonality of our Lord) that Catholic doctrines do at first 
 sight seem to be intended by the writer, but then there 
 are other texts which may be brought up against them, 
 and the two sets, when laid side by side, are pro- 
 nounced plainly Contradictory, and it is readily inferred 
 that we must not try to systematize. Mr. Jowett's 
 handling of Scripture reminds one of Tertullian's cha- 
 racteristic description of the logic employed by the 
 heretics of his day : — " Sequitur qui dialecticam in- 
 stituit, artificem struendi et destruendi, versipellem, in 
 sententiis coactam, in conjecturis duram, in argumentis 
 operariam contentionum, molestam etiam sibi ipsi, omnia 
 retractantem ne quid omnino tractaverit." — De Pra3- 
 scriptione Haeret. ch. vii. 
 
 One of Mr. Jowett's most amusing traits is the per- 
 suasion he has that he is bringing in simpler and more 
 certain principles of exegesis. The truth is that Scrip- 
 ture in his plastic hands becomes what it has been 
 profanely called by a Romish controversialist — a nose 
 of wax, which may be pulled any way at the good 
 pleasure of him who lists to handle it. It may, under 
 Mr. Jowett's manipulation, mean any thing; or, and 
 
46 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 that in preference, nothing — at least nothing definite 
 and particular. His essay may well bear for a motto 
 Fumum ex fulgore. If we could become disciples of the 
 Oxford Professor of Greek, the Bible would seem to us 
 of all books the most deceitful. Inviting us by winning 
 and gracious promises of truths for the head and heart 
 — truths on which the spirit might stay itself as divinely 
 authenticated for its satisfaction — it would seem then 
 to us to keep its promise only to the ear while breaking 
 it to the hope ; we should be baffled in all attempts to 
 realize its statements or reduce them to consistent 
 results; we should have before us the most gigantic 
 instance the world ever saw of magnificent promises 
 coupled with the slenderest performances ; and that in 
 a subject where, above all others, such imposition is 
 wicked and cruel. 
 
 After the shifting quicksands across which we have 
 had to follow Professor Jowett, it is a relief to betake 
 ourselves to solid ground, though it be not of the most 
 inviting character. We notice, therefore, next, the 
 essay of the only lay contributor to this volume — that 
 of Mr. C. W. Goodwin, " On the Mosaic Cosmogony." 
 Mr. Goodwin does indeed deal in no subtleties, but 
 plainly avows his opinion that the Mosaic narrative of 
 the creation is utterly irreconcileable with the dis- 
 coveries of modern physical science, assigns ably and 
 clearly his reasons for being so convinced, and, in con- 
 clusion, examines and condemns the attempts which 
 have been made by Dean Buckland, Dr. Chalmers, 
 Hugh Miller, and others, to show the contrary. It is, 
 of course, argued from this inconsistency, that the 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 47 
 
 Mosaic account is not to be esteemed a narrative of 
 facts ; and Mr. Goodwin betrays also the little respect 
 be bas for tbe writer as a spiritual teacber by attri- 
 buting to bim tbe grossest anthropomorphism. The 
 words, "Let us make man in our own image," are, it 
 appears, to be explained by those in a following chapter 
 — "Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his 
 image!" It is "explaining away" the phrase to in- 
 terpret it that God made man "perfect," "sinless;" 
 and "the Pentateuch abounds in passages showing that 
 the Hebrews contemplated the Divine Being in the 
 visible form of a man." We need hardly give further 
 specimens of Mr. Goodwin's qualifications and bias as 
 an interpreter of Holy Scripture ; nor would he be 
 likely to respect the authority of St. Paul (1 Cor. xi. 7) 
 and St. James (iii. 9) as to the true meaning of the 
 phrase in question. We would therefore simply observe, 
 as regards the general argument of his essay, that we 
 shall, for our parts, rest satisfied about the whole 
 subject so long as we know, as we do, that some of the 
 ablest astronomers and geologists have not found science 
 and Scripture antagonistic. "We may add, that if the 
 savans found their present theories to be in full accord- 
 ance with the Mosaic narrative, it is bard to see how 
 the scientific enlightenment which would now be so 
 great a proof to them of the superhuman wisdom of 
 Scripture could have been other than a hopeless stum- 
 bling-block to all past ages ; and moreover, that this 
 very present accordance of Scripture and science would 
 be of evil omen for the future, since it is certain that 
 
4S 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the further progress of discovery would place the two 
 more hopelessly at variance than ever. 
 
 The Eev. Professor Baden Powell has a characteristic 
 essay on the " Study of the Evidences of Christianity," 
 the upshot of which may be briefly said to be that the 
 Evidences are no proper subject of study at all, but 
 must be relegated to the domain of faith as distinct 
 from fact. The chief stress of the Professor's argument 
 is laid on miracles; and he holds that a miracle is a 
 priori and from the nature of the case incredible ; it is 
 "connected with faith, but inconceivable to reason." 
 We give a brief passage or two, lest— so astonishing 
 must this position seem — we should be thought to mis- 
 represent Professor Powell : — 
 
 Questions of this kind are often perplexed for want of due atten- 
 tion to the laws of human thought and belief, and of due distinction 
 in ideas and terms. The proposition " that an event may be so in- 
 credible intrinsically as to set aside any degree of testimony," in no 
 way applies to or affects the honesty or veracity of that testimony, 
 or the reality of the impressions on the minds of the witnesses, so 
 far as it relates to the matter of sensible fact, simply. It merely 
 means this : that from the nature of our antecedent convictions, the 
 probability of some kind of mistake or deception somewhere, though 
 we know not where, is greater than the probability of the event 
 really happening in the ivay and from the causes assigned. 
 
 This of course turns on the general grounds of our antecedent 
 convictions. The question agitated is not that of mere testimony, 
 of its value, or of its failures. It refers to those antecedent con- 
 siderations which must govern our entire view of the subject, and 
 which, being dependent on higher laws of belief, must be paramount 
 to all attestation, or rather belong to a province distinct from it. 
 What is alleged is a case of the supernatural ; but no testimony can 
 reach to the supernatural ; testimony can apply only to apparent 
 sensible facts ; testimony can only prove an extraordinary and per- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 49 
 
 haps inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon: that it is due to 
 supernatural causes is entirely dependent on the previous belief 
 and assumptions of the parties. . . . 
 
 Testimony, after all, is but a second-hand assurance ; it is but a 
 blind guide ; testimony can avail nothing against reason. The 
 essential question of miracles stands quite apart from any con- 
 sideration of testimony ; the question would remain the same, if we 
 had the evidence of our own senses to an alleged miracle, that is, to 
 an extraordinary or inexplicable fact. It is not the mere fact, but 
 the cause or explanation of it, wbich is the point at issue. The 
 case, indeed, of the antecedent argument of miracles is very clear, 
 however little some are inclined to perceive it. In nature and from 
 nature, by science and by reason, we neither have nor can possibly 
 have any evidence of a Deity working miracles ; for that we must 
 go out of nature and beyond reason. If we could have any such 
 evidence from nature, it could only prove extraordinary natural 
 effects, which would not be miracles in the old theological sense, as 
 isolated, unrelated, and uncaused ; whereas, no physical fact can be 
 conceived as unique, or without analogy and relation to others, and 
 to the whole system of natural causes. — Essays and Reviews, pp. 
 106, 107. 141. 
 
 Our readers will observe that the supernatural ele- 
 ment of Scripture is thus deliberately banished from 
 the region of historical fact. "We shrink from pressing 
 a point which has again and again been abundantly- 
 demonstrated — that the miraculous is inextricably inter- 
 woven with the didactic and the narrative portions of 
 Scripture — and content ourselves with indicating what 
 the Professor thinks of it in his own words. " Mira- 
 culous narratives," he says, " become invested with the 
 character of articles of faith, if they be accepted in a 
 less certain and positive light, or perhaps as involving 
 more or less of the parabolic or mythic character ; or at 
 any rate as received in connexion with, and for the 
 sake of, the doctrine inculcated." He illustrates his 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 view by comparing "doctrines inculcated through, para- 
 bles," which, however, it is obvious to remark, are not 
 to the purpose, because the parables do not profess to 
 be historical, while the accounts of the miracles in the 
 Bible do. It is impossible to avoid the painful con- 
 clusion that Professor Powell regards miracles, pro- 
 phecy, and all that implies a direct interposition of 
 a supernatural power in human affairs — i. e. the very 
 essence and spirit of the Bible, and the idea itself of a 
 Revelation, as purely mythical; invented, doubtless, 
 for good purposes, but of no more historical authority 
 than the legends which adorn early Roman history. 
 It is not that the Gospel witnesses are suspected of dis- 
 honesty ; neither are they taxed with simplicity and 
 credulity ; neither is their number and the cumulative 
 weight of their testimony pronounced insufficient ; but 
 no conceivable amount of evidence ought to make us 
 give credit to a miracle ; the thing itself is beyond 
 belief, even if we saw it with our own eyes. This is, 
 indeed, to be a sceptic with a vengeance ! Professor 
 Powell turns his back at once upon evidence and argu- 
 ment, and tells you that it is useless to waste words ; 
 laterem lavares ; his mind is made up to reject any and 
 every degree of proof which the case admits of. It 
 would be folly to argue with one who gives it out that 
 he is predetermined not to be convinced ; but it is not 
 uninstructive to trace out the root and cause of unbelief 
 so obstinate. 
 
 Professor Powell justifies the suspicion and dread 
 with which an exclusive pursuit of the physical sciences 
 has so often been by good men regarded. Occupied 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 51 
 
 in tracing the working of the laws of nature, and 
 finding these laws to be uniform, the devotee of 
 these branches of knowledge is almost irresistibly 
 tempted to project out of himself his own ideas and 
 impressions, and to fancy the whole universe bound 
 over from and to all eternity by the same unchangeable- 
 ness which marks that portion over which his observa- 
 tions and experiments actually extend. Let it be 
 particularly noticed what Professor Powell's view 
 assumes. It assumes that nature has always and alto- 
 gether been uniform, and it consequently excludes a 
 miracle as absolutely incredible. But such an assump- 
 tion can only be made on the ground, either that there 
 is no Being who has power over nature, which is 
 Atheism, or that if there is, He never did and never 
 will exercise it, which is begging the whole question. 
 The argument of the essay against miracles is, in fact, 
 no argument at all ; it is a simple prejudice striving to 
 cover its nakedness by borrowing the wherewithal from 
 physical science. Each man thinks most highly of his own 
 trade and profession, and is apt to recommend for every 
 purpose under heaven the material which it is his voca- 
 tion to manipulate. Just so it is with Professor Powell. 
 There is nothing to him like the laws of nature, and he 
 is so enamoured of them that he will not listen to the 
 idea of God Himself being above them, and proposes 
 with them to overspread the whole field of Scripture 
 and theology. The points he raises are in all essentials 
 the old objections of Spinoza and of Hume, re-dressed 
 in the language of the present day, and more directly 
 based upon physical considerations. Old objections 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 may often be well met by old answers. The reply of 
 Mr. J. S. Mill, himself no mean authority in physical 
 philosophy, to Hume, is good also for the essay before 
 us: — "A miracle is no contradiction to the laws of 
 cause and effect ; it is a new effect supposed to be pro- 
 duced by the introduction of a new cause. Of the 
 adequacy of that cause, if it exist, there can be no 
 doubt; and the only antecedent improbability which 
 can be ascribed to the miracle is the improbabilitj^ that 
 any such cause had existence in the case. All, there- 
 fore, which Hume has made out is that no evidence can 
 be sufficient to prove a miracle to any one who did not 
 previously believe the existence of a Being with super- 
 natural power; or who believed himself to have full 
 proof that the character of the Being whom he re- 
 cognizes is inconsistent with his having seen fit to 
 interfere on the occasion in question." — System of 
 Logic, Book iii. ch. 25. It is, in fact, the con- 
 siderations antecedent to testimony, as Professor Powell 
 has more than once remarked, which will eventually 
 decide us to give or withhold credit as to the miracles 
 of Scripture. " Once acknowledge aught higher than 
 nature, a kingdom of God, and men the intended 
 denizens of it," says Dean Trench upon the subject 
 before us, " and the whole argument loses its strength 
 and the force of its conclusions. It is like the fabled 
 giant, unconquerable so long as it is permitted to rest 
 upon the earth out of which it sprung, but easily 
 destroyed when once it is lifted into a higher world." — 
 On the Miracles, pp. 68, 69. 
 
 Professor Powell does, indeed, recognize a God in 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 53 
 
 many passages of his essay. We will not carry out to 
 their full significance the principles he advances, and 
 regard his so doing as an incongruous remnant of anti- 
 quated notions cleaving to him, nor as a mere "verbal 
 condescension to the prejudices of weaker men. But 
 we must say that, while acknowledging Him, Professor 
 Powell cuts from under himself and us all ground and 
 reason for going one jot beyond a bare acknowledgment. 
 The Deity, it would seem, does not, and will not, even 
 if He can, interfere with the world and its concerns. 
 "Creation," says Professor Powell, is "rejected," and 
 " is only another name for our ignorance of the mode of 
 production." Nature is "pervaded by self-sustaining 
 and self-evolving powers." Miracles— that is, extra- 
 ordinary interpositions in suspension of these powers — 
 can only be credited on principles which woidd oblige 
 us to believe, if respectably vouched for, that two and 
 two make five, or that a person had squared the circle. 
 If these things be so, why should men any longer 
 reverence, worship, and serve One who cannot, or will 
 not — or at the very least, does not— reward or punish, 
 save or bless? In fact, Professor Powell has got no 
 further in his theology than the Epicureans of old. 
 His Deity is not, and never has been, disturbed by the 
 laborious business of creating and governing the world. 
 
 " Deos didicit securum agere tevum, 
 Nec si quid miri faciat Natura Deos id 
 Tristes ex alto coeli demittere tecto." 
 
 For all practical purposes we make bold to say that 
 the teaching of Professor Powell is indistinguishable 
 from Atheism. 
 
54 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 We must notice more briefly the two remaining 
 essays of the volume. One, " On the National Church," 
 is contributed by the Rev. H. B. Wilson, and its tone 
 and character will be at once understood by most of 
 those who would be likely to read these essays, if we 
 remind them that Mr. Wilson is the author of an essay 
 on " Schemes of Christian Comprehension," which ap- 
 peared in the Oxford Essays for 1857. Mr. Wilson 
 recommends the principle of " multitudinism " as that 
 on which a national Church should be constructed. It 
 is not easy to convey a distinct idea of what Mr. Wilson 
 intends by "multitudinism," nor is that term made 
 much clearer by remarking that it is opposed to "in- 
 dividualism," on which Mr. Wilson conceives our pre- 
 sent Church polity to be too much founded. He is 
 persuaded that the conditions on which the Church of 
 England at present offers the privileges of her com- 
 munion are unwise and unchristian. She ought not to 
 " require any act which appears to signify ' I think.' " 
 "Speculative doctrines should be left to philosophical 
 schools. A national Church must be concerned with 
 the ethical development of its members." It is "wrong 
 to consider the Church to be founded on the possession 
 of an abstractedly true and supernaturally communi- 
 cated speculation concerning God, rather than upon 
 the manifestation of a divine life in man." Along with 
 these attacks upon all dogmatic teaching, Mr. Wilson 
 combines a number of remarks and arguments to show 
 how little there really is of a dogmatic character to 
 which our clergy are at present bound. We must ex- 
 tract as a specimen some of his observations on the Sixth 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 55 
 
 of our Thirty-nine Articles. "We can imagine how some 
 of our Evangelical brethren will stand aghast when 
 they see how that, in their estimation, most prominent 
 and weighty Article, evaporates into almost nothing 
 before the ingenious processes applied by Mr. Wilson : — 
 It has been matter of great boast within the Church of England, in 
 comraou with other Protestant Churches, that it is founded upon the 
 "Word of God," a phrase which begs many a question when applied to 
 the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, a phrase which 
 is never applied to them by any of the Scriptural authors, and which, 
 according to Protestant principles, never could be applied to them by 
 any sufficient authority from without. In that which inay be con- 
 sidered to be the pivot Article of the Church this expression does not 
 occur, but only " Holy Scripture," " Canonical Books," " Old and 
 New Testaments." It contains no declaration of the Bible being 
 throughout supematurally suggested, nor any intimation as to 
 which portions of it were owing to a special divine illumination, 
 nor the slightest attempt at defining inspiration, whether mediate 
 or immediate, whether through, or beside, or overruling the natural 
 faculties of the subject of it, — not the least hint of the relation 
 between the divine and human elements in the composition of the 
 Biblical books. Even if the Fathers have usually considered 
 " canonical " as synonymous with " miraculously inspired," there is 
 nothing to show that their sense of the word must necessarily be 
 applied in our own Sixth Article. The word itself may mean either 
 books ruled and determined by the Church, or regulative books ; 
 and the employment of it in the Article hesitates between these two 
 significations. For at one time " Holy Scripture " and canonical 
 books are those books " of whose authority never was any doubt in 
 the Church," that is, they are " determined" books; and then the 
 other, or uncanonical books, are described as those which "the 
 Church doth not apply to establish any doctrine," that is, they are 
 not " regulative " books. And if the other principal Churches of 
 the Beformation have gone farther in definition in this respect than 
 our own, that is no reason we should force the silence of our Church 
 into unison with their expressed declarations, but rather that we 
 should rejoice in our comparative freedom. 
 
 The Protestant feeling among us has satisfied itself in a blind 
 
56 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 way with the anti-Roman declaration, that " Holy Scripture con- 
 taineth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not 
 read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of 
 any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith," &c, 
 and without reflecting how very much is wisely left open in that 
 Article. For this declaration itself is partly negative and partly 
 positive ; as to its negative part it declares that nothing — no clause 
 of creed, no decision of council, no tradition or exposition — is to be 
 required to be believed on peril of salvation, unless it be Scriptural ; 
 but it does not lay down that every thing which is contained in 
 Scripture must be believed on the same peril. Or it may be ex- 
 pressed thus : — the Word of God is contained in Scripture, whence 
 it does not follow that it is co-extensive with it. The Church to 
 which we belong does not put that stumbling-block before the feet 
 of her members ; it is their own fault if they place it there for 
 themselves, authors of their own offence. Under the terms of the 
 Sixth Article one may accept literally, or allegorically, or as parable, 
 or poetry, or legend, the story of a serpent tempter, of an ass 
 speaking with man's voice, of an arresting of the earth's motion, of 
 a reversal of its motion, of waters standing in a solid heap, of 
 witches, and a variety of apparitions. So, under the terms of the 
 Sixth Article, every one is free in judgment as to the primeval 
 institution of the Sabbath, the universality of the Deluge, the con- 
 fusion of tongues, the corporeal taking up of Elijah into heaven, 
 the nature of angels, the reality of demoniacal possession, the per- 
 sonality of Satan, and the miraculous particulars of many events. 
 So the dates and authorship of the several books received as 
 canonical are not determined by any authority, nor their relative 
 value and importance. — Essays and Reviews, pp. 175 — 177. 
 
 We have no desire to be uncharitable, but we must 
 say that the famous " Tract 90 " contained no special 
 pleading if these observations do not. It seems hard, 
 also, when the two ingredients which go to make up 
 Mr. Wilson's essay — the attack upon the whole system 
 of doctrinal tests on the one hand, and the clever 
 casuistry employed to evade their stringency on the 
 other hand — are laid side by side, to acquit Mr. Wilson 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 57 
 
 of some inconsistency, or to see how he can escape an 
 awkward dilemma. If the exceedingly open teaching 
 which Mr. Wilson exemplifies is permissible under our 
 present doctrinal tests, then surely any further relaxa- 
 tion is most unnecessary ; greater liberty would be the 
 extreme of licence ; if on the other hand our test system 
 deserves to be abolished or greatly diluted, it can only 
 be on the ground that its operation is unwarrantably 
 exclusive ; and it would then seem to follow that Mr. 
 Wilson's mode of explaining these tests away is scarcely 
 right and honest. We quit Mr. Wilson with the 
 remark, which seems pretty obvious, that "multitudi- 
 nism " is a basis which it would prove impossible for a 
 national Church long to retain. If once tried, it would 
 soon become apparent that the jarring opinions mechani- 
 cally confined in one society could not comfortably live 
 therein side by side ; they would presently come to 
 internecine strife ; one or other would prevail ; its 
 antagonists would be expelled ; and the society, if it 
 did not utterly perish in these intestine commotions, 
 would be reorganized on a narrow, polemical, and in- 
 tentionally exclusive basis. Like democracy in politics, 
 " multitudinism " in religion would prove near akin to 
 despotism. 
 
 Of all the essays bound up in this free-spoken volume, 
 there is none more unpleasing than that of Dr. Rowland 
 Williams on "Bunsen's Biblical Researches." Dr. 
 Williams is apt to assume a tone of self-complacent 
 arrogance, which as ill accords with the solemn subjects 
 under consideration, as it does with good taste itself. 
 He held, we believe, once upon a time, very decided 
 
58 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Church views. If so, he is another unhappy example 
 of the proverb, " Corruptio optimi pessima." His own 
 earlier faith might at least have held him from dis- 
 respectful treatment of the tenets on which he himself 
 once rested his own hopes of salvation, and on which 
 his brethren for the most part still rest theirs. He 
 ought to have held sacred, as a matter of feeling, if not 
 of faith, much of what he dismisses with contempt, not 
 without insinuation of corrupt motives against his 
 fellows in the ministry. In justification of these strong 
 censures, we will quote a few lines from the last of two 
 very indifferent stanzas of verses in which, at the end 
 of his paper, Dr. "Williams exhales his enthusiastic 
 admiration for Bunsen : — 
 
 But ah not dead my soul to giant reach, 
 That envious Eld's vast interval defied ; 
 
 And when those fables strange our hirelings teach, 
 I saw by genuine learning cast aside, 
 
 Even like Linnaeus kneeling on the sod, 
 
 For faith from falsehood severed, thank I God. 
 
 The " fables strange " which Dr. "Williams refers to 
 are such as we have been wont to regard as amongst 
 the most sacred elements of our practical and devotional 
 theology, amongst the weightiest evidences of our faith, 
 and the most concerning truths of our creed. A few 
 .specimens may be culled up and down the essay at 
 random. "We are to hold, it seems — in deference to 
 the Chevalier Bunsen and Dr. Williams his prophet — 
 that the verse, "No man hath ascended up to heaven 
 but He that came down from heaven " (St. John iii. 13), 
 is " intelligible as a free comment near the end of the 
 first century, but has no meaning in our Lord's mouth 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 59 
 
 at a time when the Ascension had not been heard of ;" 
 that the Apocalypse is " a series of poetical visions 
 which represent the outpouring of the vials of wrath 
 upon the city where the Lord was slain;" that the 
 Second Epistle of St. Peter is undoubtedly spurious ; 
 that the Pentateuch consists of gradual accretions upon 
 an older and much simpler basis, and is only Mosaic as 
 embodying the fully developed system of Moses ; that 
 the famous Shiloh (Genesis xlix. 10) is to be taken in 
 its local sense as the sanctuary where the young Samuel 
 was trained ; that the prophecies receive their elucida- 
 tion in contemporary history, and the directly predic- 
 tive element in them is being progressively lowered in 
 value; that we must not say that David foretold the 
 exile, because it is mentioned in the Psalms ; that Psalm 
 xxxiv. (" A bone of the righteous shall not be broken") 
 is no prophecy of the Crucifixion, though St. John 
 (xix. 36) asserts the direct contrary ; that Psalm xxii. 
 (" They pierced My hands and My feet ") is altogether 
 misunderstood as applied to the same event ; that " the 
 Man of Sorrows" is the "chosen people in opposition to 
 heathen oppressors," or if any individual at all is in- 
 tended in Isaiah liii. (which is to be regarded as a 
 history), it is no other than the prophet Jeremiah ; 
 that Christ is to be recognized as a " moral Saviour of 
 mankind," justification "a verdict of forgiveness upon 
 our repentance," resurrection a "spiritual quickening;" 
 that "the hateful fires of the Vale of Hinnom may 
 serve as images of distracted remorse ;" that heaven is 
 " not a place so much as fulfilment of the love of God." 
 Such are a few of the doctrinal suggestions which Dr. 
 
GO 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Williams borrows more or less from Bunsen, and re- 
 commends to the thoughtful Christian amongst us. 
 
 These are the leading ideas and principles, or fair 
 specimens of them at all events, which the five writers 
 on whose contributions to this volume we have ven- 
 tured specially to remark have thought it right to place 
 before their fellow- Christians and fellow- Churchmen 
 for their information and guidance — for the rectification 
 of their misunderstandings and the improvement of 
 their lives. That they are ideas and principles fraught 
 with dangerous error, and even utterly subversive of re- 
 vealed religion, few of our readers will doubt. Painful 
 reflections suggest themselves here and there as to how 
 far the writers themselves still retain any real hold 
 upon those truths which are the very characteristics of 
 that religion. While in such men intentional unfair- 
 ness is not to be thought of, it is impossible sometimes 
 to escape the conviction that they are to the full as 
 credulous and uncandid in their doubts and difficulties 
 as some Christian apologists unquestionably are in 
 their replies. It looks sometimes as if it were almost 
 enough for them if any scientific speculation seems to 
 contradict Scripture : straightway it assumes for them 
 a probability which its intrinsic worth by no means 
 warrants, and which they would assuredly not have dis- 
 cerned in it had it made the other way. We observe, 
 for instance, two or three of them unhesitatingly em- 
 bracing Mr. Darwin's theory of the development of 
 species, though it is well known that that theory, so 
 far from being as yet substantiated by proper scientific 
 evidence, is held to be unsound by the greatest living 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 61 
 
 authority on such a point — Professor Owen. However 
 these things may be, it is not hard to discover the one 
 deficiency in their religious system which has led these 
 gentlemen into such unhappy errors. They utterly 
 ignore, we fear they deliberately despise, those func- 
 tions of the Church as subsidiary to Holy "Writ, which 
 are involved when we speak of her as a witness and a 
 keeper. The Church is, in reference to men, the pillar 
 and ground of the truth. It is she who testifies both 
 as to the authority of Scripture, what Scripture is, and 
 what is the doctrine of Scripture on all cardinal points. 
 It is her business to preserve this doctrine from addi- 
 tions, adulterations, and abatements. If her witness is 
 set aside as valueless, and even as prejudicing our views 
 of truth, nothing whatever remains to check the idio- 
 syncrasies of the individual. He may, as the writers 
 before us evidence with melancholy force, find, by one 
 device or another, any thing he pleases in Scripture — 
 or, if he prefers it, nothing definite whatever. "We do 
 not greatly fear that opinions such as those advocated 
 in this volume will obtain currency amongst our laity — 
 nor even prevail to any alarming extent amongst our 
 clergy. What positive teaching there is in it is too 
 vague and abstract to be palatable or even intelligible 
 to the common sense of most Englishmen. Its destruc- 
 tive and negative criticism may, however, do some 
 harm. It is far easier, in such matters, to destroy than 
 to build up. Its chief influence will be with minds 
 naturally of a speculative and sceptical turn ; and, with 
 them, it will tend to the confirmation of doubts, and the 
 shaking of any faith in the religion of their childhood 
 
62 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 which they may still have retained. And thus the 
 Church may lose — we trust and hope only for a time — 
 the allegiance, in heart at least, if not in outward pro- 
 fession, of some few, yet those few not the least able, 
 from amongst those whose best and freshest energies 
 ought to have been dedicated to her. 
 
ESSAY III. 
 
 Hie Life of Edward Irving. By Mrs. Oliphant. Two Vols. 
 
 Edward Irving has been fortunate in his biographer, 
 if not in his life itself. It would scarce have been 
 possible to commit the task of depicting his career in 
 the vivid colours and brilliant effects to which it seems 
 to aspire to hands more apt and skilful for this parti- 
 cular undertaking than those of Mrs. Oliphant. She 
 has for Irving the sympathy and mutual rapport which 
 natives of the same country are wont to have; and 
 Scotch people at least as much as any. She was, like 
 him, brought up in that Presbyterian establishment 
 which looks severe and forbidding enough to those who 
 view it from the outside, but which has, nevertheless, 
 ofttimes enlisted the devoted allegiance of the most 
 imaginative. Lastly, Mrs. Oliphant herself has some- 
 thing of the orator in her, and the trait comes 
 out much more strongly in this work than in her 
 novels. Whilst we cannot but see that a good deal of 
 the dignity and significance of the facts she presents to 
 us is less native to them than derived from her own 
 glowing imagination, yet- the very tendency she has 
 towards the superlative admirably qualifies her to ap- 
 
64 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 preciate and to reproduce in congenial and often very 
 Carlylean style the excellent but enthusiastic and cre- 
 dulous person about whom she writes. It is, indeed, 
 an odd kind of disenchantment which is effected by 
 heating the thoughts well through perusing a few 
 of Mrs. Oliphant's chapters, and then turning to the 
 record of the same transactions in one of the ordinary 
 biographical compilations. To the lady the man she 
 has to deal with was quite a hero. His colossal pro- 
 portions, his " dark apostolic head of hair " — a sort of 
 unearthliness about him, "his aspect, his height, and 
 presence," all with a female biographer have the fullest 
 justice done them. These physical advantages were 
 well calculated to set off the solemn and impassioned 
 pomp of utterance which characterized Irving's elo- 
 quence. " Power and richness, gleams of exquisite 
 beauty, but withal a mysterious and extreme allegoriza- 
 tion," is the criticism of Chalmers on the great preacher 
 in the zenith of his fame. Less friendly critics have 
 detected loose and inconsistent reasoning, inflated and 
 redundant phraseology, a vein of metaphor exuberant 
 indeed, but extravagant and fantastic, a dialect neither 
 Scotch nor English, neither ancient nor modern, often 
 sublime and sometimes ridiculous, in those same ora- 
 tions which Mrs. Oliphant seems unable to rate suffi- 
 ciently highly. Irving unquestionably had, in a high 
 degree, the poetical gift of discerning in commonplace 
 things their grand and mysterious bearings; every 
 thing he approached brightened under the spell of his 
 fervent thoughts and words into the romantic and the 
 sublime. What wonder that such a man, when occu- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 65 
 
 pied with things really great — when giving free rein 
 to a faith so ardent as almost to create for itself the 
 objects after which it reached out — overbalanced him- 
 self at last, and fell, from the very vehemence and 
 excess of his spiritual gifts, into crazy fanaticism and 
 spiritual ruin ? " One of the noblest natures," says 
 Carlyle on "the Death of Edward Irving" {Critical 
 and Miscellaneous Essays, vol. v. Essay L), "a man of 
 antique heroic nature, in questionable modern garni- 
 ture, which he could not wear ! " "It was his own 
 nobleness that forwarded his ruin : the excess of his 
 sociability and sympathy, of his value for the suffrages 
 and sympathies of men." Anyhow, in spite of his 
 delusions and his trait Of vanity and self-opinion, 
 Irving was a man without a mean and selfish thought 
 in him, and one, too, of vast laboriousness, genuineness, 
 and friendliness to all mankind. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant's work has been now for some time 
 before the public, and has well approved itself. Its 
 literary and ethical characteristics lie plain to view on 
 its surface. It presents with faithfulness, though in 
 somewhat strongly-tinted hues, the personal history of 
 a most noble-minded and unworldly man striving in a 
 very commonplace sphere to transmute the hard pro- 
 saic facts of every-day life into something answering 
 to his own expectations, and finally succumbing in the 
 attempt. Such a career is always melancholy, though 
 it is not very uncommon. Fancy and fact often wage 
 war, and ever with the same result. But other and 
 deeper issues arise out of Irving's words and deeds, on 
 which careful reflection must precede judgment. He 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 was the founder of a religious sect ; — or, if his followers 
 demur to such statement of what we mean, the inaugu- 
 rator, at least, of a movement within the pale of Chris- 
 tendom which is giving to this day abundant evidence 
 of vitality and even progress. To review and criticize 
 the motives and events out of which such a movement 
 originated, to estimate its true character and its rela- 
 tions to the Church, form our business; and it is a 
 business not without its elements of difficulty and com- 
 plexity. 
 
 Irving's life, indeed, does not, regarded from the 
 outside, present any very striking features. Born in 
 1792, his earlier days gave no remarkable promise, and 
 were solely distinguished by remarkable robustness of 
 physical constitution. He had extraordinary bodily 
 activity and strength, and the usual relish for exer- 
 cising them. He was sent by thrifty parents from the 
 parish school of Annan to the University of Edin- 
 burgh : — 
 
 At thirteen, Irving began his studies at the Edinburgh Univer- 
 sity : such was, and is still, to a great extent, the custom of Scotch 
 Universities — a habit which, like every other educational habit in 
 Scotland, promotes the diffusion of a little learning, and all the 
 practical uses of knowledge, but makes the profounder depths of 
 scholarship almost impossible. It was nearly universal in those 
 days, and no doubt partly originated in the very long course of 
 study demanded by the Church (alwaj-s so influential in Scotland, 
 and acting upon the habits even of those who are not devoted to 
 her service) from applicants for the ministry. This lengthened 
 process of education cannot be better described than in the words 
 used by Irving himself at a much later period of his life, and used 
 with natural pride, as setting forth what his beloved Church re- 
 quired of her neophytes. " In respect to the ministers," he says, 
 " this is required of them — that they should have studied for four 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 67 
 
 years in a University all the branches of a classical and philosophical 
 education : and either taken the rank in literature of a Master of 
 Arts, or come out from the University with certificates of their pro- 
 ficiency in the classics, in mathematics, in logic, and in natural and 
 moral philosophy. They are then, and not till then, permitted to 
 enter upon the study of theology, of which the professors are 
 ordained ministers of the Church, chosen to their office. Under 
 separate professors they study theology, Hebrew, and ecclesiastical 
 history, for four years, attending from four to six months in each 
 year. Thus eight years are consumed in study." This is, perhaps, 
 the only excuse which can be made for sending boys, still little 
 more than children, into what ought to be the higher labours of a 
 University. Even beginning at such an age, the full course of 
 study exacted from a youth in training for the Church could not be 
 completed till he had reached his twenty-first year, when all the re- 
 peated " trials " of the Presbytery had still to follow before he could 
 enter upon his vocation ; an apparent and comprehensible reason, if 
 not excuse, for a custom which, according to the bitter complaints of 
 its victims, turns the University into a kind of superior grammar- 
 school.— Vol. i. pp. 26, 27. 
 
 During the latter portion of this eight years he com- 
 bined his necessary attendance on Divinity Lectures 
 with the teaching of a newly-established school at 
 Haddington; and subsequently kept school also at 
 Kirkcaldy, where he met with and married, after an 
 engagement of eight years, the daughter of the then 
 incumbent, Dr. Martin. Whilst at Kirkcaldy he passed 
 the necessary exercises, and was licensed as a "pro- 
 bationer " — i. e., was authorized to preach when asked to 
 do so, but had no regular pastoral charge. For some 
 years he waited for the " invitation " which should afford 
 him a sphere for the systematic exercise of his minis- 
 terial functions, and waited in vain. Another and as it 
 should seem an opposition school was established at 
 Kirkcaldy, by no less a person than Thomas Carlyle ; 
 f 2 
 
68 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and Irving threw up . an employment which had never 
 been much to his taste, and resumed his divinity studies 
 in Edinburgh. He was on the verge of expatriating 
 himself for missionary work, in despair of a " call " in 
 his native land, when a chance invitation to preach in 
 one of the Edinburgh churches gave him Chalmers for 
 a hearer. Chalmers, just then in the full swing of his 
 remarkable work at St. John's, Glasgow, happened at 
 the time to be in want of an assistant ; was struck by 
 Irving's sermon ; and eventually engaged his help. At 
 Glasgow, as elsewhere, there seems to have hung round 
 Irving no foreshadow of greatness to come. "Ower 
 muckle gran'nar " was the verdict, as it had been at Kirk- 
 caldy ; Irving was not comprehended by his congregation, 
 and carried away with him little, if any thing, more than 
 the personal attachment he well deserved by his devoted 
 labours from house to house amongst the poor. At 
 this time there was abroad amongst the weavers of 
 Glasgow " that sharp touch of starvation which makes 
 men desperate:" there was " want, most pertinacious and 
 maddest of all revolutionaries," " wolfish and seditious 
 plotting, pikes and risings." St. John's was one of the 
 worst districts in the city, both for poverty and dis- 
 affection, yet its pauperism was kept down by Chalmers 
 out of the weekly and voluntary offerings of his con- 
 gregation, and amongst its foulest haunts and most 
 forlorn recesses Irving moved for a time a singular yet 
 a welcome figure : — 
 
 When he entered those sombre apartments in the Gallowgate, it 
 was with the salutation, " Peace he to this house," with which he 
 might have entered a Persian palace or desert tent. " It was very 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 69 
 
 peculiar; a thing that nobody else did," says a simple-minded 
 member of Dr. Chalmers' agency, " it was impossible not to remark 
 it, out of the way as it was ; but there was not one of the agency 
 could make an objection to it. It took the people's attention won- 
 derfully." A certain solemn atmosphere entered with that lofty 
 figure, speaking in matchless harmony of voice, its " Peace be to 
 this house." To be prayed for, sometimes edifyingly, sometimes 
 tediously, was not uncommon to the Glasgow poor; but to be 
 blessed was a novelty to them. Perhaps, if the idea had been pur- 
 sued into the depths of their minds, these Presbyterians, all retaining 
 something of ecclesiastical knowledge, however little religion they 
 might have, would have been disposed to deny the right of an}- man 
 to assume that priestly power of blessing. Irving, however, did 
 not enter into any discussion of the subject. It was his habitual 
 practice; and the agency, puzzled and a little awed, "could not 
 make an objection to it." He did still more than this. He laid 
 his hands upon the heads of the children, and pronounced with 
 imposing solemnity, the ancient benediction, " The Lord bless thee 
 and keep thee," over each of them — a practice startling to Scotch 
 ears, but acquiesced in involuntarily as natural to the man who, all 
 solitary and individual in picturesque homely grandeur, went to and 
 fro among them. — Vol. i. pp. Ill, 112. 
 
 We must pass on to the second epoch of his more 
 public life. Irving felt himself in the shade at Glasgow. 
 He was merely Dr. Chalmers' " helper." " The Glas- 
 gow people had not had their eyes directed to him ; 
 they saw him always in the shade, carrying out another 
 man's ideas, and dominated by another man's superior 
 influence." There . are men of high attainments and 
 just expectations who have too often to wear out a 
 round score of years in an analogous position in the 
 Church of England ; but for Irving such a lower room 
 was "unnatural." Once more his mind was turned 
 towards missionary work, which had many allurements 
 for his romantic temperament; but in 1821 arrived the 
 
70 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 long-desired " call " in the shape of an invitation from 
 the "Caledonian Church," Hatton Garden. Things 
 were indeed at the lowest ebb with this little congrega- 
 tion, which " successive vacancies and discouragements 
 had reduced it to the lowest point at which it could 
 venture to call itself a congregation," and it felt itself 
 unable to enter into tbe usual bond by which the 
 minister's stipend is " fixed at a certain rate which the 
 office-bearers pledge themselves to maintain." Irving's 
 anxiety to obtain the independent sphere for which he 
 panted overcame this, and other preliminary difficulties, 
 and he entered on his charge " on the second Sabbath 
 of July, 1822," "at the highest pitch of hope and 
 anticipation." Ere long an " exceeding commotion and 
 interest " began to awaken in the sleepy district around 
 the Caledonian Church. In the very next November 
 Irving describes his little chapel as filled to overflowing. 
 But a speech of Canning's in the House of Commons 
 is said to have been the immediate cause of Irving's 
 becoming " fashionable :" — 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh had been by some unexpected circumstance 
 led to hear the new preacher, and heard Irving in his prayer 
 describe an unknown family of orphans belonging to the obscure 
 congregation, as now " thrown upon the fatherhood of God." The 
 words seized upon the mind of the philosopher, and he repeated 
 them to Canning, who "started," as Mackintosh relates, and ex- 
 pressing great admiration, made an instant engagement to accom- 
 pany his friend to the Scotch church on the following Sunday. 
 Shortly after, a discussion took place in the House of Commons, in 
 which the revenues of the Church were referred to, and the necessary 
 mercantile relation between high talent and good -pay insisted upon. 
 No doubt it suited the statesman's purpose to instance, on the other 
 side of the question, the little Caledonian chapel and its new 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 71 
 
 preacher. Canning told the house, that so far from universal was 
 this rule, that he himself had lately heard a Scotch minister, 
 trained in one of the most poorly endowed of Churches, and esta- 
 blished in one of her outlying dependencies, possessed of no endow- 
 ment at all, preach the most eloquent sermon that he had ever listened 
 to. The curiosity awakened by this speech is said to have been the 
 first beginning of that invasion of " society " which startled Hatton 
 Garden out of itself.— Vol. i. pp. 158, 159. 
 
 For some four years Irving continued one of the 
 leading lions of the great city. The West-end, 1500 
 strong at least, invaded the secluded and dingy little 
 chapel. His life during this the culminating period 
 of his course is laid before us with much affectionate 
 elaboration of detail by Mrs. Oliphant, and in truth 
 contains very much to enlist our sympathy and respect. 
 He was not, as some great preachers, a man given up 
 entirely to "getting up" for his weekly appearances in 
 the pulpit. On the contrary, he was unwearied in per- 
 sonal labours amongst the members of his congregation 
 and the poor, was always accessible to his friends and 
 countrymen who needed coimtenance or assistance, and 
 was a centre of hospitality and beneficences not to be 
 counted. There is nothing in the spectacle of Irving's 
 success to mar the satisfaction with which the moral 
 sense regards the rise of " the right man to the right 
 place" by his own merits and fortune. Irving, as soon 
 as his success in London was ascertained, married ; and 
 the Diary written by him for the perusal of his wife, 
 during the first considerable period when the chances of 
 life kept them apart, is one of the most pleasing and 
 touching portions of these memoirs. There are few 
 men indeed who could bear to look so stedfastly and 
 
72 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 sincerely into their inner selves as Irving has done in 
 this Diary, and record the result so unshrinkingly. Still 
 fewer are those whose self-revelation could be exposed 
 to public gaze, not only with decorum, but even with 
 much of ennobling and purifying influence. This is 
 the first and only journal of the kind that Irving kept. 
 It comes before us as a series of letters written whilst he 
 was in London to his wife, who was after the loss of her 
 firstborn " in the sad affectionate shelter of her father's 
 house," — "weak and sorrowful, in the faintest hour of 
 a woman's life." " Few men or heroes," exclaims the 
 enthusiastic biographer, in concluding her chapter of 
 extracts, " have been laid in their grave with such a 
 memorial as envelopes the baby name of little Edward ; 
 and I think few wives will read this record without 
 envying Isabella Irving that hour, of her anguish and 
 consolation." Though this chapter is certainly the 
 cream of the volumes in point of personal interest, the 
 more public issues of Irving's life must absorb our 
 attention, and forbid our attempting extracts from it. 
 
 Irving's fame as a preacher demanded larger scope 
 than the narrow limits of the chapel in Hatton Garden, 
 and the congregation removed early in 1827 to a capa- 
 cious edifice built purposely for it in Regent Square. 
 Here fashion deserted him, and " went her idle way," 
 as Carlyle says, "to gaze on Egyptian crocodiles, Iroquois 
 hunters, or what else there might be." Access to the 
 great preacher was no longer difficult, and therefore 
 was no longer competed for. The new church con- 
 tinued to be well filled, but was never inconveniently 
 crowded, and to the disappointment thus produced 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 73 
 
 some — his friend Carlyle amongst them — have ascribed 
 the darker shadows and perplexing singularities of his 
 later life. His biographer defends him from this im- 
 putation with considerable warmth, and, we are inclined 
 to think, with success. That he had no little love of 
 admiration seems to us evident; nor, in the jumble of 
 inconsistencies which make up every man's personality, 
 is this at all incompatible with that deep and sincere 
 humility which marks his private records. But there 
 is no evidence that Irving was intoxicated by becoming 
 so marvellously yet transiently " the rage." LTis private 
 life continued unaltered in its unobtrusive laborious- 
 ness : " the quaint and simple economics of his house- 
 hold" remained as he had regulated them when he 
 came to London an obscure and almost penniless man : 
 he refused, even on the repeated remonstrances of his 
 elders, to conciliate his fashionable audience by cur- 
 tailing so much as a minute the inordinate length of 
 his sermons. The influences which led Irving astray 
 were of a subtler and less selfish character than the 
 disenchantment of which we are speaking. At any rate, 
 after the removal to Regent Square, Irving's pathway 
 grew rapidly dark, and sloped downwards. His ortho- 
 doxy began now to be questioned. " An idle clergyman 
 called Cole— of whom nobody seems to know any thing 
 but that he suddenly appeared out of darkness at this 
 moment to do his ignoble office" — heard of what ap- 
 peared to him " a new doctrine." The great preacher 
 " declared the human nature of our Saviour to be 
 identical with all human nature;" or, as Mr. Cole 
 represented it — Mrs. Oliphant says misrepresented it — 
 
74 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 taught " the sinfulness of Christ's human nature.'"' 
 Mr. Cole sounded an alarm in a published letter to 
 Irving. There was an outcry ; a stir in divers quar- 
 ters ; and Irving devoted two or three discourses in a 
 collection of his sermons then in the press to a specific 
 exposition and vindication of his views on the subject. 
 Into the details of the controversy that arose we need 
 not enter. Irving's statement of the point of it is 
 clear enough. "The point at issue is simply this, 
 whether Christ's flesh had the grace of sinlessness and 
 incorruption from its proper nature or from the in- 
 dwelling of the Holy Ghost ; I say the latter." Irving 
 evidently never dreamed of his own teaching on the 
 subject being divergent from that of Catholic Chris- 
 tendom ; and when his doctrine was challenged, in- 
 sisted on it as the only mode in which he could hold to 
 that " wonderful reality of union, which made his Lord 
 not only his Saviour, but his brother and kinsman, the 
 true everlasting Head of the nature He had assumed." 
 When stated, as Irving in his cooler and more judicial 
 mood states it, and coupled with the cautions and the 
 riders he introduces, it seems certainly scarce fair to 
 tax him with holding " the sinfulness or peccability of 
 Christ's human nature." For though he taught that 
 Christ took "manhood fallen," it was only in order 
 " to prove the grace and might of Godhead in redeeming 
 it." Christ's flesh he deemed "in its proper nature 
 mortal and corruptible," but deriving " immortality and 
 incorruption from the indwelling of the Holy Ghost: 
 Christ's existence was not in itself secure and unassail- 
 able, but held like a fortress in immaculate purity by 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 75 
 
 the Godhead within." Those were not days when men 
 were versed in dogmatic theology — Irving himself had 
 never received the scholastic training which it needs to 
 grapple safely with such questions in controversy. Had 
 he been thus qualified, he would hardly have given oc- 
 casion to the controversy at all. For in truth the per- 
 fection of Christ's human sympathy noways involves 
 His having assumed humanity under the conditions of 
 the fall. Sympathy depends on fellowship in nature, 
 not on community in individual attributes and acci- 
 dents. Now, sin is no integral part of human nature 
 at all, but is merely an accident superinduced on it. 
 As a matter of experience it is the holiest and purest of 
 mankind who manifest the sweetest and the deepest 
 sympathies for their erring and defiled brethren, and 
 usually they do so in proportion to their holiness. 
 Irving's teaching on the whole of this subject — in 
 which he is followed, we believe, by those who in 
 common parlance bear his name — is moreover theo- 
 logically unsound and pregnant with fatal consequences. 
 We by no means charge such consequences on him ; 
 and should be sorry either to brand him with the name 
 of heretic, or to justify in all respects the treatment he 
 met with from his then co-religionists. Yet it is plain, 
 that to insist on our Lord having taken not manhood 
 only, but fallen manhood, involves Irving in a dilemma, 
 either alternative of which is deadly error. For if our 
 Lord so took humanity as Irving taught, then either 
 He was tainted with original guilt — a supposition ut- 
 terly subversive of the faith as regards the Incarnation 
 and the Atonement — or else the concupiscence and lust 
 
70 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 which belong to fallen humanity, and which in Him 
 were kept at bay, on Irving's theory, by the immanent 
 might of the Blessed Spirit, have not " the nature of 
 sin," a position verging hard on Pelagianism. Mrs. 
 Oliphant not unnaturally declines to thread the intrica- 
 cies and the nice turnings of a question like this. 
 She is content to maintain strenuously the uprightness 
 of her hero, and his sincere belief that his faith was 
 both the original and the true one. She warmly de- 
 nounces the arts which were used to entrap him, and 
 the distortions of his words and sentiments which were 
 resorted to to procure his condemnation. Yet the very 
 tract in which he strove to vindicate his doctrine affords 
 proof positive that his teaching was not a little unsound 
 and dangerous. It is entitled The Orthodox and Catholic 
 Doctrine of oar Lord's Human Nature'; and contains, as 
 Mrs. Oliphant will not deny, "rash and unjustifiable 
 expressions." We can well believe it, though we have 
 not the tract at hand to refer to, for we find Irving 
 quoted as saying in a sermon that our Lord's Body was 
 "devil possessed;" and in a paper in The Horning 
 Watch, that " every variety of human wickedness which 
 hath been realized or is possible to be realized was 
 inherent in His humanity." — (Marsden's Christian 
 Churches and Sects, vol. ii. p. 58.) 
 
 "Whilst Irving was thus put on his defence as regards 
 his orthodoxy, a phenomenon rose above the horizon of 
 the religious world which changed the destinies in the 
 Church of himself and those who held with him. 
 Strange tidings reached him from the parish of an 
 intimate friend in Scotland that the gift of tongues had 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 77 
 
 fallen on a young woman — Mary Campbell — soon fol- 
 lowed up by gifts of bealing exbibiting themselves in 
 another neighbouring household. To Irving's ears 
 these wonders came with all the recommendation and 
 verisimilitude that news long expected carries with it. 
 Some years previously he had taken up with character- 
 istic warmth and glow of imagination the captivating 
 yet bewildering subject of unfulfilled prophecy ; had 
 revelled both in meditation and discourse in interpreta- 
 tions of the Books of Daniel and of the Revelation ; and 
 had persuaded himself and his circle of admirers that the 
 Second Advent of Christ and the Millennium were close 
 at hand. lie gathered from Scripture that this august 
 epoch was to be ushered in by a new epiphany of the 
 miraculous power of God. Amidst such exciting anti- 
 cipations, "the future," as Mrs. Oliphant says, "palpi- 
 tated before the earnest leader and his anxious fol- 
 lowers." These tendencies received stimulus and 
 direction from Irving's ever-growing intimacy with 
 Henry Drummond, who invited from time to time a 
 band of students of Prophecy to his seat, Albury, where 
 for some days they shut themselves up to pray, meditate, 
 and discuss the prospects of the Church of the Future 
 as revealed to the faithful in Scripture. The first 
 gathering of the kind seems to us, who know the sub- 
 sequent history of the individuals who composed it, not 
 a little singular. It consisted of some twenty men, 
 under the " moderation " of the Rev. Hugh M'Neile, 
 then incumbent of the parish. It contained, besides 
 Irving and Drummond, Joseph Wolff and Mr. Dods- 
 worth ! Before the appearance of the " gifts" in 1831, 
 
78 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the divergences which carried these men in so many- 
 different directions had set in, but from amongst them 
 Irving and Drummond were pursuing side by side the 
 path which led them to the foundation of a new sect. 
 They and their friends supported a well-appointed 
 Quarterly, The Morning Watch, which, besides taking 
 up the vindication of Irving's doctrine respecting our 
 Lord's Humanity, discussed Prophecy in its various 
 bearings, and the conditions, uses, &c, of miracles. 
 Soon these enthusiasts persuaded themselves that mi- 
 racles must be regarded not so much as attestations of 
 the Gospel as parts of it. They conceived that the 
 power of working signs and wonders, if not necessarily 
 inherent in a saving faith, is at least an attribute of it 
 in its higher and sublimer walks, and within the reach 
 of all who receive not the grace of God in vain. On 
 such a coterie the intelligence from Scotland fell like 
 the spark on the ready-laid train of gunpowder. Im- 
 mediately the church in Regent Square was vehemently 
 agitated; they had been holding special meetings to 
 intercede for the General Assembly, which had then at 
 its bar in Edinburgh some of Irving's friends and 
 partners in theological opinion, under charge of heresy : 
 they now continued these meetings in the early morning, 
 — the origin of the early Matins of the "Catholic 
 Apostolic Church," — and directed their supplications to 
 interests more immediately their own. " It was for the 
 outpouring of the Spirit that they now resolved to ask ; 
 for the bestowal of those miraculous gifts of which 
 news came without ceasing from Scotland, which 
 were daily hoped for with gradually increasing in- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 7!) 
 
 tensity amongst themselves, and which, if once re- 
 vealed, they did not doubt would be to the establishing 
 of a mighty influence in the great city which surged 
 and groaned around them, a perpetual battle-ground of 
 human passion." Such enthusiastic petitioners were 
 not likely to take long denial. " Among those who 
 prayed every morning for the visible manifestation of 
 God and His wonderful works amongst themselves, 
 there was one at least so intent upon the petition he 
 urged, and so sure that what he asked was in con- 
 formity to the will of God, that his anxious gaze had 
 almost power to create upon the horizon the light he 
 looked for." In July, 1831, Irving was accordingly 
 enabled to announce, "Two of my flock have received 
 the gift of tongues and prophecy." He was much too 
 prepossessed to be an impartial trier of spirits. His soul 
 was naturally akin to the wondrous, and was far indeed 
 from being armed with that ever- watchful distrust of 
 every thing pretending to be above nature which charac- 
 terizes the intellect of this generation. A miracle to 
 Irving was always rather the fulfilment of an antecedent 
 probability than an event against which there necessarily 
 lay the heaviest presumptions. It was to him a merciful 
 unveiling of that Divine energy on which his thoughts 
 ever rested as the true cause of all things to God's 
 people and God's Church. Now, when it was his con- 
 fident and cherished hope to see with his own eyes his 
 Saviour on the Millennial Throne, there was " a certain 
 magnificent probability in the flood of Divine utterance 
 and action for which he prayed and waited." The 
 agreement of more than two or three in that petition 
 
80 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 had likewise to his realizing faith made God Himself 
 responsible for the fulfilment of His own promise to 
 united prayer. Yet Irving forced himself to impose on 
 those who thus brought him a visible answer to his 
 daring yet confident requests a probation which he 
 considered a severe one ; and " proceeded with a care 
 and caution scarcely to be expected of him." After 
 some weeks' suspense, however, Irving was satisfied, 
 proclaimed his conviction from the pulpit, and gave 
 permission for the exercise of those gifts in the con- 
 gregation, which he had convinced himself were of 
 God, and which therefore he dared no longer restrain. 
 There are those still living who will remember some- 
 thing of the scenes which ensued in the chapel in 
 Regent Square, and the excitement, the stir, the ridi- 
 cule, and even the tumults, which these "manifesta- 
 tions," growing week by week in frequency and energy, 
 caused. The trustees of the building were obliged at 
 last, and very reluctantly, to interfere. They appealed 
 in due course to " the Presbytery of London," and this 
 body eventually closed the chapel against Irving on the 
 ground that he had, contrary to the terms of the trust- 
 deed, and to ecclesiastical order, permitted unauthorized 
 persons to speak in the congregation. Mrs. Oliphant, 
 as usual, is angry at the way in which Irving was dealt 
 with. She deems that the Presbyters ought not to 
 have closed the doors of his chapel against him without 
 satisfying themselves that the manifestations objected 
 to by the trustees were not in fact of the supernatural 
 character which they claimed to be. Into no such 
 inquiry did these wary Scotchmen venture. They 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 81 
 
 unanimously " decerned " that the proceedings autho- 
 rized by Irving were in contravention of the discipline of 
 their Church, and of the provisions of the trust-deed 
 under which the building was held, and removed Irving 
 from the ministry he occupied. No one who looks at the 
 matter impartially can reasonably blame either their 
 conclusion or their mode of reaching it. It is scarcely 
 possible to conceive any thing more alien from the 
 decorous and cold usages of Scotch national religionism 
 than the scenes which had been taking place for weeks 
 in Irving's congregation, and which the trustees had 
 tried in vain by private remonstrances to check. 
 
 Thus Irving, and with him the bulk of his congrega- 
 tion, were expelled from the chapel built for their use, 
 and with it they practically forsook also the religious 
 denomination to which it belonged. Eventually, after 
 a season of open-air preachings, and a temporary occu- 
 pation of a large room in Gray's-inn-road, formerly 
 used as a lecture-room by Robert Owen (so strange are 
 the vicissitudes of rooms as of other human belongings !), 
 the great preacher and his adherents found a more 
 permanent asylum in premises in Xewman-street. The 
 " utterances " of course became a more and more pro- 
 minent feature in the nascent community ; which by 
 rapid degrees expanded into a theocratical institution, 
 professing to derive all its discipline and regulations 
 direct from God. Such an immediate transmission of 
 the Divine "Will naturally superseded the ordinary 
 ecclesiastical machinery which Irving and his friends 
 had hitherto regarded as the appointment of the 
 Founder of the Church. It was declared " in the 
 
 G 
 
B2 
 
 CRITICAL ESS ws. 
 
 power " that the Cliurcli no longer retained the privi- 
 lege of ordaining, and that thenceforward all spiritual 
 offices must be filled by the gifted, or those called 
 through the gifted by the Spirit of God. Irving was 
 about this time deposed from his functions in the Kirk 
 by the Presbytery of his native place, which had ac- 
 cording to Presbyterian rule ordained him ; and when 
 he returned in grief and indignation to London, to the 
 little society which he himself had originated and 
 bound together, he was met by an interdict from one 
 of his own prophets, " forbidding him to exercise any 
 priestly function, to administer sacraments, or to as- 
 sume any thing out of the province of a deacon, the 
 lowest office in the newly-formed Church." For Irving 
 himself never laid claim to any of those supernatural 
 powers which he believed to be in such vigorous activity 
 about him ; and showed thereby his sincerity, as well 
 as his humility and good sense. And so " the prophets 
 spoke, and the elders ruled, but in the midst Irving sat 
 silent, listening wistfully, if perhaps the voice from 
 heaven might come to restore him to that office which 
 was the vocation of his life." Never did any the 
 faintest irradiation reach Irving of that mystic light 
 which he had persuaded himself was vouchsafed so 
 abundantly to others, and which he had come to regard 
 as the most precious token of acceptance with God. Yet 
 at last, while he sat in the lowest place, and waited 
 with humbleness, the utterance once more called the 
 forlorn but dauntless warrior to take up his arms, 
 and he received ordination " at the apostolic hands of 
 Mr. Cardale" as "angel or chief pastor of the flock 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 83 
 
 assembled in Newman-street." Whether these multi- 
 plied trials and disappointments broke his heart, or 
 whether his devoted labours and his manifold domestic 
 afflictions exhausted his constitution, it was not long 
 after his re-ordination before his waning strength and 
 wasted look gave sign that his life was ebbing from 
 him. Amongst the delusions which he cherished to 
 the very last was one that God would assuredly restore 
 him to health. He held that the power of disease 
 arises from sin, and that it is consequently the stand- 
 ing of God's redeemed people to bid defiance to its 
 ravages : — 
 
 Dr. Rain}-, who attended him, informed me of various particulars 
 in these last days : but indeed, so touched with tears, after thirty 
 years' interval, was even the physician's voice, and so vivid the pre- 
 sentment of that noble, wasted figure, stretched in utter weakness, 
 but utter faith, waiting for the moment when God, out of visible 
 dying, should bring life and strength, that I cannot venture to 
 record with any distinctness those heart-breaking details. By 
 times, when on the very verge of the grave, a caprice of sudden 
 strength seized the patient ; he sighed for " God's air " and the 
 outdoor freshness which he thought would restore him. He assured 
 the compassionate spectator, whose skilled eyes saw the golden 
 chords of life melting asunder, how well he knew that he was to all 
 appearance dying, yet how certainly he was convinced that God yet 
 meant to raise him: and again, and yet again, commended "the 
 work of the Holy Ghost " to all faith and reverence ; adding, with 
 pathetic humility, that of these gifts he himself had never been 
 " found worth}-." .... Once in this wonderful monologue he was 
 heard mm-muring to himself sonorous syllables of some unknown 
 tongue. Listening to those mysterious sounds, Dr. Martin found 
 them to be the Hebrew measures of the 23rd Psalm, " The Lord is 
 my Shepherd," into the latter verses of which the dying voice 
 swelled as the watcher took up and echoed the wonderful strain, 
 " Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
 fear no evil." As the current of life grew feebler and feebler, a last 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 debate seemed to rise in that soul which was now hidden with God. 
 They heard him murmuring to himself in inarticulate argument, 
 confusedly struggling in his weakness to account for this visible 
 death which at last his human faculties could no longer refuse to 
 believe in — perhaps touched with ineffable trouble that his Master 
 had seemed to fail of His word and promise. At last that self- 
 argument came to a sublime conclusion in a trust more strong than 
 life or death. As the gloomy December Sunday sank into the night 
 shadows, his last audible words on earth fell from his pale lips. 
 The last thing like a sentence we could make out was, " If I die, I 
 die unto the Lord. Amen." — Vol. ii. pp. 399 — 402. 
 
 For Irving personally his biographer has unques- 
 tionably done much. She has cleared his memory from 
 many a cloud of misapprehension and censure of levity. 
 She has brought out his noble personality, " with 
 his imperfections breaking tenderly into his natural 
 grandeur," in a way that exhibits rare skill, exquisite 
 pathos, and never-failing sympathy. If she has done 
 her hero not justice only, but something more, that is a 
 fault on the right side ; which too should have ready 
 pardon, for it is out of the feelings which prompt this 
 exuberant appreciation that the vividness and reality of 
 the narrative grow. Not the least proof that Irving 
 was no ordinary man is in truth to be seen in the 
 fascination he exercised over those who came within 
 reach of his personal influence. We, to whom such 
 influence can only be known as matter of hearsay, may 
 more readily make allowance for the warm tones of 
 personal affection than dispense with a biography like 
 this, which could only be written as a labour of love. 
 The same apology, supported by a further one which is 
 needed by Mrs. Oliphant, as by all writers from the 
 other side of Tweed, for the national propensity to 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 83 
 
 grandiloquence, must serve also to excuse the somewhat 
 inflated and not always correct style in which these 
 memoirs are written. "We demur to the titles of 
 " Martyr and Saint," with which Mrs. Oliphant crowns 
 Irving. But we are grateful to her for having given 
 us a most eloquent and moving portraiture of a man 
 whose life was unquestionably pitched in a high key, 
 and who was unsparingly consistent in striving after 
 his ideal by thought, word, and deed. 
 
 There is something in the life of Irving as a whole 
 very tragic in effect. To have been so lofty in aspi- 
 ration, so pure in life, so gifted in intellect, and yet 
 to have been the victim of one of the most miserable 
 illusions to which a man ever sacrificed himself, is a 
 spectacle to inspire both pity and fear. Here is a man 
 faithful to death, and humble too, given over to " strong 
 delusion that he should believe a lie." Such a fact at 
 its first presentment gives a shock to the moral sense. 
 That Irving had indeed his faults and his weaknesses 
 is but to say that he was human ; that the appalling 
 mistakes which desolated his later Life had their vantage- 
 ground in the defective elements in his character is 
 obvious. Yet where there was so much that was noble 
 and good it seems as if life had dealt hardly with him, 
 and his lot were a cruel one. From his life, as from 
 that of so many other good men, we may draw in about 
 equal measure example and warning. "What more 
 splendid than that divine faith which carried him 
 through the waste imbroglio of falsehood and disap- 
 pointment to an end so peaceful? What more im- 
 pressive in the caution it gives than the spectacle of 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 one so able and so good so palpably misled in the 
 greatest matters that the homeliest understanding could 
 not avoid convicting him? The Gospel has no more 
 effective weapons than its fundamental truths as set 
 forth in the Creeds, and no more certain and peculiar 
 fruits than righteousness and peace. Irving did ill to 
 postpone these things to unfulfilled prophecy and mi- 
 raculous signs. Very significant is what is told of him 
 just before he first went to London. He is spoken of 
 as " not patient of the usual orthodoxy." " You are 
 content to go back and forward like this boat," he is 
 reported to have said to a party of friends on the 
 waters of the Gairloch, " but as for me I hope yet to 
 go deep into the ocean of truth." The genius which 
 thus disdains "the usual orthodoxy" is at least as 
 dangerous to its possessor and the Church as it is rare. 
 A minister of the Gospel needs very especially sobriety 
 of judgment and a chastened self-distrust. 
 
 It may be well to add a few words on the " splendid 
 mischief" which marred Irving's career — especially as 
 there are not a few amongst our poor people who share 
 with more or less distinctness the error of Irving, that 
 miracles are a proper portion of the Gospel dispensation. 
 The line which divides the spurious from the genuine 
 miracle is, speaking generally, clear enough. An extra- 
 ordinary performance — e.g., a cure or an utterance with 
 tongues — is worthless for evidential purposes, except it 
 be absolutely inexplicable on any other hypothesis than 
 the presence of superhuman agency. We must in all 
 reason and reverence attribute an act to the immediate 
 interposition of God only in the last resort. If a dead 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 87 
 
 man be restored to life, or a disease, plainly organic, 
 be suddenly cured, and no less, we will admit, if men 
 all at once speak real languages which they have never 
 learned, such events are no doubt miraculous. All such 
 wonder works, however, when adduced as testimony to 
 the truth of a doctrine or the authority of a Church, 
 involve two questions which should always be kept 
 distinct — (1) whether the event ever happened at all ; 
 (2) whether the cause of it was Divine interference. 
 The one is a question of fact, the other of argument ; 
 and the answers to the two may in the same case be 
 quite different. Now, as regards the Irvingite miracles, 
 and we might add those of the Wesleyans and other 
 modern fanatics, and many of those of the Romanists, 
 the facts need not be challenged at all, but the inferences 
 can by no means be allowed. " The tongues" have 
 not yet been found correspondent with any language 
 spoken on the globe ; — some of the most gifted prophets 
 amongst them (e. g., Mr. Robert Baxter and Mary 
 Campbell) have recanted, and confessed that they 
 simply uttered hysterical incoherences. The cures are 
 remarkable, but one and all admit of explanation as 
 being of functional as distinct from organic diseases. 
 The most singular case was that of Miss Fancourt, who 
 was healed through the instrumentality of one of the 
 Evangelists. This lady, who was a religious woman, 
 and of a religious family, had been ill of a spine disease 
 for eight years, and during the last two was entirely 
 confined to her couch. We extract a portion of her 
 narrative from Mrs. Oliphant's Appendix : — 
 
 After asking some questions respecting the disease, he added, " It 
 
88 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 is mclancholj' to see a person so constantly confined." I answered, 
 " It is sent in mercy." " Do you think so P Do you think the 
 same mercy could restore you?" God gave me faith, and I 
 answered, " Yes." " Do you helieve Jesus could heal, as in old 
 times?" "Yes." "Do you believe it is only unbelief that pre- 
 vents it ? " " Yes." " Do you believe Jesus could heal you at 
 this very time ?" "Yes." (Between these questions he was evi- 
 dently engaged in prayer.) " Then," he added, " get up and walk 
 to your family." He then had hold of my hands. He prayed to 
 God to glorify the name of Jesus. I rose from my couch quite 
 strong. God took away all my pains, and we walked downstairs. 
 Dear Mr. G. prayed most fervently, Lord, have mercy upon us ! 
 Christ, have mercy upon us ! Having been down a short time, 
 finding my handkerchief left on the couch, taking the candle, I 
 fetched it. The next day I walked more than a quarter of a mile, 
 and on Sunday from the Episcopal Jews' Chapel, a distance of one 
 mile and a quarter. Up to this time God continues to strengthen 
 me, and I am perfectly well. 
 
 Now, as regards this lady, the fact of whose healing 
 as described by herself admits of no question, there 
 was from the first a difference of medical opinion as to 
 whether her malady had ever at any time been any 
 thing more than a passive form of nervous ailment ; 
 and further, whether, if it ever were organic, it had 
 not been subdued, and was only awaiting one of those 
 sudden impulses which in complaints of this sort often 
 emancipate the patient at once and for all. Every 
 word of Miss Fancourt's statement may be allowed, yet 
 there will appear notwithstanding nothing at all super- 
 natural in the transaction from first to last. It is well 
 within the range of natural and ascertained laws, though 
 laws perhaps not of every-day observation. Sudden 
 transports of the feelings have often restored the use of 
 weakened and oven disabled limbs, put to flight serious 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 89 
 
 and even mortal diseases, and unloosened the deadening 
 grasp of palsy. Amongst such moral engines unfal- 
 tering faith is doubtless the most powerful ; but that 
 it is not so because of its religious character, and that 
 its efficacy affords in itself no trustworthy ground for 
 drawing religious inferences, is evident enough from 
 this fact— that terror, joy, and anger have occasionally 
 wrought miracles equally great. The influence of ima- 
 gination in the cure of diseases may perhaps be mea- 
 sured by its influence in causing them : and its power 
 both ways is illustrated in medical works by countless 
 instances. The convulsionaires of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, the cures of Valentine Graterakes in the days of 
 the Commonwealth, and of Prince Ilohenlohe some 
 forty years ago ; and the whole history of Animal 
 Magnetism, ma} r be referred to as examples of what we 
 mean. "We may safely admit that many of the miracles 
 of the middle ages occurred as a matter of fact; we 
 are not prepared to denounce as impostors all the pil- 
 grims who have left crutches and fac-similes of diseased 
 limbs at Holywell, and other such famous fountains; 
 we could only reject the narratives of the cures of 
 scrofulous diseases by the touch of many of our Kings 
 and Queens on principles which would go hard against 
 all that is received as the history of those times. All 
 we doubt about is the agency to which the healing 
 work ought to be credited. The distinction between 
 such marvels and those of the New Testament is ob- 
 vious. It may not be practicable to draw a sharp line 
 of demarcation between the natural and the super- 
 natural ; but it is easy to see that our Saviour's cures, 
 
90 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 or the Pentecostal tongues, as obviously fall beyond tbe 
 utmost assignable range of all the moral agencies in 
 question, as the Irvingite tongues and cures fall within 
 that range. Had we, again, no other marvels wrought 
 by our Saviour than cures of diseases, tbe evidential mo- 
 mentum of His miracles would be less than it is. Taken 
 in conjunction with the raising of the dead, the turning 
 water into wine, the walking on the sea, &c, the tes- 
 timony of Christ's wonder works of healing is conclu- 
 sive ; and the miracles of the New Testament must be 
 taken as a whole, standing or falling together. 
 
 Like the "Wesleyans, the Irvingites rest their claim 
 to miraculous gifts on the promises made to prayer — 
 " Whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye shall 
 receive." Ergo, the promise of God is recorded to 
 bestow whatsoever thing the sincere believer thinks fit 
 to ask. And so the fanatic claims at bis pleasure to pawn 
 the word and to wield the working of omniscience and 
 omnipotence ! God would be unfaithful did He fail to 
 render a direct and visible answer in kind to his demand 
 • for his real or fancied necessities ! To reason with such 
 frenzy would be idle. The instances of our Lord, who 
 prayed for that which it was not the Father's will to 
 grant, and the similar instance of St. Paul, may be 
 suggested. The vital truth should be insisted on that 
 we know not what nor how to pray, as we ought ; and 
 that the very essence of accepted prayer lies in perfect 
 resignation. 
 
 Out of the cardinal error that miraculous gifts arc 
 the indefeasible inheritance of the Christian Church 
 has been evolved the whole system of Irviugism, which 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 91 
 
 has seemingly established itself as one of the numerous 
 denominations amongst us. Without directly excom- 
 municating cither our Church or his own as apostate, 
 Irving and his followers took a line which comes round 
 eventually to pretty much the same result. They argue 
 that gifts and miracles had almost or altogether dis- 
 appeared from Christendom because of the faithlessness 
 and the coldness of Christians. Irving again and 
 again records, in various terms, his conviction that 
 there had been no complete and effective declaration 
 of reHgious truth to men — in these islands at least — 
 for centuries ; as he says once, if not oftener, since the 
 first three centuries. To restore the Church to her first 
 glories, to give her back to her early nearness to her 
 Divine Head, when once more she should be crowned 
 by the sensible and wonder-working tokens of Divine 
 inhabitation, is the mission which the Irvingite com- 
 munity claims. It has no standard of faith other than 
 the Three Creeds, nor will it accept for itself the name 
 and position of a separatist body. Rather does it assert 
 itself as the true and living centre round which the scat- 
 tered bands of Christ's Church militant must unite, 
 and repudiate accordingly all other names than that of 
 " Catholic Apostolic Church." It meets in separate 
 congregations, and uses its peculiar ordinances of wor- 
 ship, but only because it has received special commands 
 from Heaven so to do. It has kinds of ministers not 
 found in other Christian Churches of our latter days — 
 Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, &c. ; but looks upon 
 these, which are found in the first century, as intended 
 for abiding orders in the Church ; fallen, indeed, into 
 
92 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 desuetude from the deadness and lack of faith in the 
 days gone by, but now given back by the good Spirit 
 of God, and, indeed, as necessary to prepare and perfect 
 the Church for the impending advent of her Lord. 
 With such a manifold ministry, and with oracles within 
 their pale perpetually occupied in expanding to per- 
 fection their ritual, the Irvingite community has little 
 indeed about it now which reminds one of its Presby- 
 terian parentage. It possesses, in truth, ceremonies 
 and offices of worship which for complexity, richness, 
 and elaborateness of symbolism, are unmatched by those 
 of any Reformed Church. 
 
 Being such in outward guise, and such in spiritual 
 pretensions, the rise and unquestionable success of this 
 form of religionism is a phenomenon well worthy of 
 the attention of Churchmen. Its adherents at first 
 were chiefly men of wealth and station; — a noteworthy 
 fact when we remark that each member of this Church 
 is under a sacred, and, we believe, a well-kept, obli- 
 gation to devote a tenth part of his substance to its 
 purposes. Of late, however, it has received consider- 
 able accessions from amongst the poorer classes ; and in 
 our large towns is at present probably the most pro- 
 gressive of the sects. At the Census of 1851 it num- 
 bered 6000 communicants ; but this number must have 
 been very largely increased since that date. It has also 
 congregations in Germany and the United States. We 
 need not stay to point out the unsound nature of its 
 ecclesiastical foundations. A Christian society, which 
 carries on its very face an implied allegation that the 
 gates of hell have in fact prevailed against Christ's 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 93 
 
 Church for some fifteen hundred years, stands as it were 
 self-condemned before the "Word of God. Yet its suc- 
 cess, though it will no doubt be transient as that of a 
 sect always has been and always will be, is very signi- 
 ficant ; especially when viewed in connexion with the 
 fact that other sects also, even those which by origin 
 and instinct most revolt from the process, are fain, in 
 order to hold their ground at all, to veneer themselves 
 with an outer surface of ecclesiasticism. The only way 
 for the Dissenting interest to resist a little longer the 
 rising Church feeling of our larger towns is to make 
 Dissent as little unlike the Church as possible. Such a 
 state of things is both cheering and instructive. In- 
 structive because it shows us that a fearless and tho- 
 rough development of our Church's system both of 
 ritual and doctrine is now at last attractive to our people 
 as well as obligatory on ourselves ; cheering because 
 one cannot doubt that Englishmen, when the genuine 
 and precious article is offered them, will not be put off 
 in preference to it either with the singular electro- 
 plating of Churchmanship wherewith the Baptist, the 
 Independent, or the Socinian now-a-days essays to dis- 
 guise his true self ; nor with the false metal, alloyed 
 throughout, though highly polished and profusely deco- 
 rated, which the Irvingite proffers to beguile him. 
 
ESSAY IV. 
 
 Sunday : its Origin, History, and Present Obligation. The 
 Bampton Lectures for 1860. By J. A. Hesset, D.C.L. 
 
 Did any of our clerical readers ever hear " the Sunday 
 question" discussed at a Buridecanal Meeting ? If not, 
 let us advise them to propose the subject in the form 
 Dr. Hessey has adopted as the title of the Bampton 
 Lectures of 1860, for the next conference of the kind 
 which they expect to attend. They will then hear 
 perhaps twenty parish priests delivering themselves 
 pretty unanimously as to the fact of the obligation, and 
 not differing materially as to mode of observance, but 
 holding, respecting the principles on which both obli- 
 gation and observance should be rested, as many dif- 
 ferent shades of views as there are individuals. Dr. 
 Hessey truly remarks that " the clergy are much divided 
 as to the main points treated of in these lectures;" 
 and that " great confusion of thought exists on this 
 deeply important subject." He has therefore done well 
 to select his theme as he has done. If it is for any one 
 it is for a Bampton Lecturer tantas componere Utcs. 
 Without being able to congratulate Dr. Hessey on a 
 decided success, Ave may safely praise the book as one 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 95 
 
 of great and general interest, and a not unworthy suc- 
 cessor to the valuable lectures of Mr. Rawlinson in 
 1859— themselves coming off not badly from a contrast 
 so trying as that naturally suggested by their taking 
 up those of Professor Mansel in 1858. " The Bamp- 
 tons," in fact, would seem to have undergone a revival ; 
 and are latterly become an appreciable addition to the 
 literary total of each season. 
 
 Dr. Hessey is well known as an eloquent preacher. 
 Tlis command of language is well used in the Lectures 
 before us to warm and quicken the otherwise somewhat 
 tedious historical and antiquarian researches into which 
 his subject leads him. We notice indeed occasionally 
 a free and easy style of expression which must have 
 sounded, we think, somewhat oddly in the venerable 
 rostrum of St. Mary's, and before an audience so pecu- 
 liarly decorous and dignified. Dr. Hessey has, how- 
 ever, conducted his delicate and difficult undertaking 
 with rare learning and candour throughout. As a col- 
 lection of materials bearing upon Sunday, its history, 
 literature, antiquities, &c, the Bampton Lectures of 
 18G0 stand altogether without a rival ; indeed, without 
 a second. The writer tells us that " he has had the 
 subject before him for years, and has been in the habit 
 of noting down whatever he found bearing upon it in 
 the course of his reading. His view was formed and 
 his materials were accumulated, for the most part, 
 before his name was proposed to the electors." The 
 authorities and quotations are enormous in number, 
 and heterogeneous in character ; and are judiciously 
 thrown together in an Appendix, so as to leave the 
 
96 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 main current of the argument unimpeded. This col- 
 lection — comprising citations from pretty nearly every 
 writer of note who has dealt with the subject, and 
 coming down even to illustrations from the newspapers 
 of our own day, will hardly be dispensed with by future 
 students in this field ; and its usefulness would be 
 greatly increased by the addition of a copious index. 
 The book, indeed, is destitute altogether both of this 
 and also of an adequate table of contents : in future 
 editions such defects should be remedied. 
 
 Dr. Hessey opens his subject by reciting the leading 
 opinions upon it which have struggled for mastery in 
 England since the Reformation. These opinions may 
 be counted as six ; but they prove eventually reducible 
 to two. " The no-Sabbath, or perpetual Sabbath, opi- 
 nion" (i. e., that of those who maintain that to a Chris- 
 tian every day is a Sabbath, and no one day more so 
 than another), " and that which advocates a Saturday 
 Sabbath, may be omitted from our estimate altogether." 
 The third and fourth views — differing in degree rather 
 than in kind — may be called " the Sabbatarian set of 
 opinions ;" and the fifth and sixth, in like manner, 
 jointly receive the name of " Dominical." The argu- 
 ment held by the advocates of these antagonistic theories 
 is thus stated for them by Dr. Hessey : — 
 
 These Sabbatarians (say the Dominicals) would introduce Judaism 
 into the Christian Church, revive ordinances which have long since 
 passed away, impose upon consciences burdens which the Jews found 
 too heavy to be borne, call acts by the name of sins which God has 
 not so called ; in fact, against the advice of St. Paul, submit " to be 
 judged in respect of the Sabbath days." We find fault with the as- 
 sumption (unheard of in the ancient Church) that the Fourth Com- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 97 
 
 mandinent is the ground of the observance of Sunday ; with the 
 logic which says, because God commanded aforetime that the seventh 
 day should be kept holy by Jews, therefore the first day is to be 
 kept holy by Christians now ; and, as practical men, we find fault 
 with the tristesse and rigour which the Sabbatarian theory of 
 Sunday would introduce into the cheerful dispensation of Chris- 
 tianity. Scotland is an instance in point. 
 
 These Dominicals (thus argue the Sabbatarians on the other 
 hand) evidently cast a slur on the volume of the Old Testament ; 
 evident!}- set at nought the word of God uttered at the Creation 
 and solemnly repeated at the giving of the Decalogue ; evidently 
 use dishonestly a prayer which they breathe every time they pub- 
 licly hear the Fourth Commandment; evidently substitute for a 
 Divine foundation of Sunday, one of mere human invention, the 
 authority of the Church. Besides, as practical men, we fear that if 
 we do not adopt and urge for the Lord's Day the divine sanctions 
 and regulations with which Scripture has invested and ordered the 
 seventh day, men will gradually diminish their reverence for it, and 
 eventually either throw off all restraint upon it, or, a few perfunctory 
 services got through, spend the remainder of it, if not in licentious- 
 ness, at least in frivolity. The Continent may furnish a warning in 
 this matter.— Pp. 16—18. 1 
 
 In discussing these opinions, Dr. Hessey's plan is first 
 to indicate the conclusions to which his investigations 
 have led him. In order to this, he states at the outset 
 a number of positions which he is prepared to maintain, 
 and which the subsequent lectures are devoted to sub- 
 stantiate and illustrate. "We will follow this method, 
 and state the leading features of the result at which 
 Dr. Hessey arrives : — 
 
 That the Lord's Day (a festival on the first day in each week in 
 memory of our Lord's Resurrection) is of Divine institution and 
 peculiarly Christian in its character, as being indicated in the New 
 Testament, and having been acknowledged and observed by the 
 Apostles and their immediate followers as distinct from the Sabbath 
 (or Jewish festival on the seventh day in each week), the obligation 
 
 H 
 
96 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 to observe which is deuied, both expressly and by implication, in the 
 New Testament. 
 
 That in the two centuries after the death of St. John the Lord's 
 Day was never confounded with the Sabbath, but carefully dis- 
 tinguished from it, as an institution under the law of liberty, as 
 observed on a different day and with different feelings ; and more- 
 over, that, as a matter of fact, it was exempt from the severity of 
 the provisions which had been the characteristic of the Sabbath, in 
 theory, or in practice, or in both. — Pp. 19, 20. 
 
 It will be observed bere — as is more fully apparent 
 in tbe sequel — tbat tbe Lord's Day is dissociated en- 
 tirely from tbe Jewisb Sabbatb ; tbat tbe ground for its 
 observance is not laid in tbe Fourtb Commandment ; and 
 tbat a distinct and independent footing is sougbt for it. 
 Tbe Lord's Day may, according to Dr. Hessey, be truly 
 said to be of Divine institution ; but tben tbat expression 
 must be limited to signify no more tban tbat its observ- 
 ance bas tbe sanction of tbe divinely-inspired Apostles : 
 " It is as to its origin mucb on a par with Confirmation." 
 Again, tbe Lord's Day may be said to be of eccle- 
 siastical institution; but tbat title belongs to it in a 
 " bigh and peculiar sense ;" for " the Ecclcsia and its 
 authorities at that time included inspired men, who, in 
 reference to what they practised as regulators of the 
 Church and wbat they ordained, were unable to err." 
 Such is an outline of the view Dr. Hessey takes in 
 tbese able Lectures. His treatment of Sunday, in all 
 its bearings, is very elaborate and thorougb ; and be 
 deals fairly and justly with tbe several schools of opi- 
 nion which come under his review ; yet we fear that he 
 has effected little towards a settlement of tbe contro- 
 versy, except it be in tbe way of furnishing weapons 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 99 
 
 and vantage-ground to the combatants, and this he 
 does to both sides with much impartiality. His theory 
 is neither one thing nor another, and will satisfy 
 neither " Sabbatarians" nor " Dominicals." Too high 
 for the latter, it by no means comes up to the standard 
 of orthodoxy for which the former pertinaciously stickle. 
 Both sides, as is usual in such cases, will be more 
 inclined to censure Dr. Hessey for what he denies 
 than to thank him for what he allows them ; and the 
 Bainpton Lectures for 1860 have accordingly received 
 some severe criticism. We must add a small contri- 
 bution thereto by alleging several particulars in which 
 we think Dr. Hessey's views respecting Sunday, its 
 origin and obligation, are more or less defective and 
 unsatisfactory. 
 
 Dr. Hessey, as we have seen, severs our Lord's Day 
 from the Sabbath of the Jews, holding that the latter 
 was formally abrogated by the Gospel, and that the 
 former, though a Divine ordinance in a special and 
 limited sense, is no ways connected with it, unless it be 
 in the way of suggestion merely. We need not cite 
 the passages from Romans, Colossians, &c, which are 
 brought forward in proof that the Sabbath is done away 
 with for Christians ; they are familiar to all who have 
 considered the question. Neither will our space permit 
 us to discuss the Patristic authorities on which Dr. 
 Hessey relies for his assertion that the Sunday was 
 distinguished by the Church in the earliest times and 
 downwards, from the Sabbath and all belonging to it. 
 The witness of the early Church on this point we inter- 
 pret in a different sense from that which suggests itself 
 
 H 2 
 
100 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 to Dr. Hessey, as will be seen by and by, and we arc 
 far from being convinced by him that the Sunday bas 
 notbing, or next to nothing, to do with the Sabbath 
 and the Fourth Commandment. Ultimately the ques- 
 tion resolves itself into this — Is the religious observance 
 of one day in the week of positive or of moral obli- 
 gation ? A positive precept is, of course, one the 
 reason of which we cannot see, but which binds us 
 because imposed by competent authority : a moral pre- 
 cept is one for which we do see good and sufficient 
 reasons. Prima facie, we imagine, most persons would 
 call the Fourth Commandment a moral one, merely 
 because it is found in "the commandments called 
 moral." Dr. Hessey also allows that the command- 
 ment contains "a moral element," inasmuch as our 
 duty to worship God involves for such creatures as we 
 are fixed times and seasons for so doing. It appears to 
 us that this admission, with one or two obvious corol- 
 laries, implies more than Dr. Hessey woidd be inclined 
 to allow. It renders a reason for the imposition of the 
 commandment, and, a captious person might say, brings 
 it thereby at once within the category of moral. But 
 must the reason which is to be assigned before any precept 
 can be accounted moral and consequently of universal 
 obligation, be necessarily one which is obvious and pa- 
 tent, striking the mind at once when the subject-matter 
 of the precept is thought upon : or does it suffice (as we 
 rather think, — and believe Dr. Hessey would also) that 
 experience and reflection elicit it ? We grant that no 
 reason could be discovered by man's unaided understand- 
 ing why the seventh rather than any other day of the 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 101 
 
 week should be selected as holy, and so much of the 
 Fourth Commandment we, of course, give up as positive 
 and ceremonial. But is this the essence of the command- 
 ment ? Is it not rather accidental to it, just as is the 
 promise annexed to the commandment following ? The 
 substance surely is not only that a fixed portion of our 
 time should be more especially dedicated to God, which 
 Dr. Hessey allows to be " a moral element," but also 
 that that portion should be a seventh. For such an 
 arrangement weighty reasons are not wanting. Expe- 
 rience seems to attest that a holy rest during so much 
 of our days is eminently accommodated to creatures 
 constituted as we are, and in the highest degree expe- 
 dient both for soul and body, not to say necessary for 
 their welfare. Breaches of this commandment bring 
 their penalty in the natural course of things, and quite 
 as uniformly and certainly as is the case with the other 
 nine. Conscience is found to accredit the obligation, 
 and to lift up its voice against the violation of it. It 
 would seem from all this, and much more that might 
 be added, that the Fourth Commandment not only 
 contains " a moral element," but is in substance moral. 
 True, as it stands in the Decalogue, it is surrounded 
 with Jewish sanctions, conditions, and circumstances. 
 "With the disannulling of the Jewish dispensation, these 
 appendages drop off from it and from the other nine. 
 Yet it, with the rest of the Decalogue, remains in sub- 
 stance binding by its intrinsic force and virtue, nor can 
 we discover any fundamental distinction which can 
 mark it off from the other precepts of the same supreme 
 code. 
 
102 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 It must be to a Churchman a strong confirmation of 
 this argument that our Church, after the reading out 
 of the Fourth Commandment, puts into our mouths the 
 same prayer with which she follows up the others, 
 " Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to 
 keep this law ;" and in the general deprecation after 
 the Tenth Commandment, again beseeches God " to 
 write all these His laws in our hearts." Dr. Hessey's 
 treatment of this weighty fact appears to us vague and 
 elusive. It is right he should make his own statement, 
 and the gist of it appears in the following : — 
 
 Do what we will, place the Lord's Day on whatever grounds we 
 please, (unless we adopt the fiction that the first day of the week 
 was the actual seventh from the Creation,) we must spiritualize it 
 in some way or other as we utter the prayer about keeping it. The 
 Sabbatarian spiritualizes it in his peculiar way — i. e. by saying 
 actually of the First Day, what was originally said of the Seventh 
 Day. The man who holds the purely ecclesiastical theory spi- 
 tualizes it in his way, or rather in a variety of ways which will be 
 mentioned presently. He then does no strange thing, but Chris- 
 tianizes the oldness of the letter, who, when he hears the Fourth 
 Commandment rehearsed in his ears, thinks of the day hallowed by 
 Christ's Resurrection, the birthday of the world to life and immor- 
 tality, and desiring grace to observe it worthily, says, " Lord, have 
 mercy upon me, and incline my heart to use rightly Thine own day, 
 the Lord's Day."— P. 204. 
 
 We might argue that this as it stands is hardly con- 
 sistent with the dissociation of the Lord's Day and the 
 Sabbath, for which Dr. Ilessey elsewhere contends. 
 But, passing by this point, we think Dr. Ilessey en- 
 tirely fails to account for the expressions, " this law," 
 " all these Thy laws," above referred to : and unless 
 our Church intended to procure the religious observance 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 103 
 
 of Sunday on the part of her members by a kind of 
 pious fraud, she must have meant to rest that duty 
 directly upon the Fourth Commandment. Dr. Hessey 
 is too candid to havff deliberately and intentionally 
 omitted any considerations adverse to his own view. 
 But he has certainly failed to realize the strength of 
 the argument drawn from the Prayer Book as to the 
 intention of the Reformers and the theory of the Church 
 of England. He refers, indeed, to the declaration of 
 the Articles that " no man is free from obedience to the 
 Commandments called moral," but has not, we think, 
 noticed the significant fact, that our Reformers inserted 
 the Ten Commandments not only in the Communion 
 Office, but added them to the Creed and Lord's Prayer in 
 the Baptismal vow — " the same Commandments which 
 God spake in the 20th chapter of Exodus." Before the 
 Reformation the Creed and Lord's Prayer were regarded 
 as the summary of Christian doctrine. Since the Re- 
 formation, it is the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and also 
 the Ten Commandments, which appear side by side as 
 the triple groundwork of Christian faith and practice, 
 not only in the Communion Office, but also in the Offices 
 for Baptism and Confirmation ; in several Rubrics ; and 
 in the canon which prescribes that they should be all 
 written up in our churches. We cannot see, when 
 these facts are duly weighed, how any other conclusion 
 can be reached than that the Church teaches the Fourth 
 Commandment to be binding still upon us by the au- 
 thority of God, and that the requirements of that 
 Commandment pass on from the seventh to the first 
 day. 
 
104 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 It is not our business to justify the Church of 
 England in assigning the position she has done to the 
 Decalogue. Yet we cannot refrain from reminding 
 Dr. Hessey and "the DorninicJfls" of the solemn and 
 peculiar sanctions attached to this portion of the Mosaic 
 legislation. "What does the terrible sight on Sinai 
 mean? — what the writing of the Ten Words with "the 
 Finger of God ?" — what the remarkable words of Deut. 
 v. 22 (" These words the Lord spake out of the fire 
 with a great voice, and He added no more"), except that 
 the precepts thus guarded with an environment of tre- 
 mendous circumstance stand supreme and alone, not to 
 be blended in their sanctity with other ordinances, but 
 to be regarded as of superior and extraordinary autho- 
 rity and obligation? The Old Testament certainly 
 gives no hint that the Fourth Commandment is of any 
 less eternal force than the other nine. The marked 
 and emphatic language of the prophetical books points 
 quite in another direction ; — and it is noteworthy also 
 that the Sabbath is further separated from the general 
 code by being given to the Israelites in Exodus xvi. 
 earlier than the rest of the Decalogue. 
 
 The early Church, it is true, eschews the term Sab- 
 bath, as applied to the Lord's Day, and does not appear 
 distinctly to rest the obHgation to observe the one on 
 the Commandment which enjoins the other. The rea- 
 son of this seems to us obvious enough. It was neces- 
 sary for the first two centuries to protect the truth 
 against corruption from Judaizers. With her usual 
 policy — a policy which the ecclesiastical annals of every 
 age copiously illustrate— the orthodox carefully avoided 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 105 
 
 words and expressions which, however appropriate in 
 themselves, might give a handle to heretics. It is ob- 
 vious how the turn of the Judaizers might have been 
 served if language had been used respecting the Lord's 
 Day and the Ten Commandments such as is common 
 enough in later writers. Judaism fairly dead root and 
 branch, and the use of the word Sabbath as applied to 
 Sunday having ceased to be objectionable, soon found its 
 way into the Church. 
 
 Dr. Hessey examines and rejects the theory that the 
 institution of the Sabbath is coeval with creation. This 
 part of the argument is a cardinal one, for it is obvious 
 that if the Sabbath preceded the Mosaic law its obliga- 
 tion does not rest merelj' on that law. On this point, too, 
 there seems good reason to differ with Dr. Hessey. Hold- 
 ing as we do that such an observance is founded deeply 
 in the spiritual, moral, and physical needs of man ; 
 bearing in mind that it has always, with but little 
 variety of external circumstance, been a recognized 
 feature in the polity of God's Church for above four 
 thousand years, and was continued, as it were naturally 
 and as a matter of course, when the law given by Moses 
 passed away, — it would seem to us a priori probable, in 
 the absence of evidence to show that it was a novelty 
 characteristic of the Jewish dispensation, that the Sab- 
 bath is as old as the human race itself. Not only is 
 there no such evidence, but there is much in an oppo- 
 site direction. Dr. Hessey tries hard and in good 
 company to weaken the strong testimony of Genesis, 
 chapter ii., verses 2 and 3 : — 
 
 But still, the blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day is men- 
 
106 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tioned so long before it was actually imposed upon man. That is, 
 at any rate, a stubborn fact. How is it to be accounted for ? We 
 may reply with Bede, God sanctified the Sabbath, " non actu et 
 reipsa, sed decreto et destinatione sua, quasi diceret, Quia quievit 
 Deus die septimo, bine ilium diem ordinavit Sibi sacrum, ut indice- 
 retur festus coleudus a Judans." We may remember, that tliough 
 tee may know perfectly well the cosmogony as it is set forth in 
 Genesis, nay, the very words uttered by the Creator during and 
 after the completion of His work, and the counsel and confederation 
 of the glorious Three in One in accomplishing it, there is not 
 sufficient evidence for believing that its great and wondrous tale 
 was disclosed to mankind before Moses wrote it. Genesis was a 
 revelation to Moses, not to Adam. We may urge, with Archbishop 
 Bramhall, " that the sanctifying of the seventh day there, is no 
 more tban the 'sanctifying' of Jeremy 'from his mother's womb, 
 that is the designing or destinating of him to be a prophet ; or than 
 the 'separating' of St. Paul 'from his mother's womb.' So the 
 sanctification of the seventh day may signify the decree or determi- 
 nation of God to sanctify it in due time ; but as Jeremy's actual 
 sanctification, and St. Paul's actual separation, followed long after 
 they were born, so the actual sanctification of the Sabbath might 
 follow long after the ground of God's decree for the sanctification of 
 that day, and the destination of it to that use." — Pp. 136 — 138. 
 
 Against this reasoning it appears enough to quote the 
 words of the text themselves — " On the seventh day God 
 ended His work which He had made ; and He rested 
 on the seventh day from all His work which He had 
 made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified 
 it ; because that in it He had rested from all His work 
 which God created and made." What does this state- 
 ment amount to — a statement which may have been 
 written by Moses before he legislated under God's 
 direction for the Jews? Surely its plain meaning is 
 that God at and from the very beginning consecrated the 
 seventh day and set it apart with a peculiar blessing. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 107 
 
 To God Himself, indeed, no one day can be more holy 
 or restful than another. The honour put upon the day 
 can therefore only have had reference to man, Against 
 the plain teaching of this text the subtle glosses of ex- 
 positors must for ever shatter themselves to pieces. If 
 corroboration be asked for, it may be found in the 
 language of Hebrews iv. What more plain than that 
 Scripture from one end to the other recognizes the 
 hallowing of the Sabbath day, and the right observance 
 of it as required of man, from the very first ; when the 
 Sabbath with the world was "made for man?" Dr. 
 Hessey does not fail to point out, as militating against 
 the opinion of the Sabbatical obligation having a moral 
 character, that no traces of its recognition are found 
 amongst some nations. But it seems on the whole far 
 more difficult, without the Sabbath, to account for the 
 septenary division of time which prevailed amongst the 
 patriarchs, and which is traceable in the annals of more 
 than one ancient people, than it is to explain how the 
 sacred institution, if enjoined on Adam, became exten- 
 sively neglected. If it was so, it only shared the fate of 
 other portions of primaeval revelation. Entrusted for 
 wise purposes to tradition only, the pure religion of our 
 first parents soon became corrupted ; with the majority 
 of mankind it perished utterly; it was kept alive in 
 a certain group of families by repeated interpositions of 
 God ; it was re-enacted and embodied in a durable and 
 objective shape in the law of Moses. The foundation of 
 the Sabbath is laid in creation itself ; nay, the very 
 dividing God's glorious work into six portions, followed 
 by the mystical rest of Him " who fainteth not, neither 
 
108 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 is weary," must be taken as the archetype of man's life 
 in its labours and its repose. Standing thus at the very 
 birth of time and of nature, inwrought thus into their 
 very primordial structure, the Sabbath would seem to 
 be for all generations, and to lay men under a prescrip- 
 tion defeasible only when the ages shall cease to be. 
 
 Differing thus from Dr. Hessey in thinking the Sab- 
 bath to be Patriarchal as distinct from Jewish in origin, 
 our views on other subsidiary but not unimportant 
 points will differ also. Exodus xvi. is carefully dis- 
 cussed by him, and Hengstenberg cited to the effect 
 that there is proof in the narrative of the Sabbath being 
 up to that time a novelty to the Israelites. Hengsten- 
 berg' s opinion deserves every consideration, but on this, 
 as on every other item of the debate, his and any other 
 authority can be confronted by an equal and adverse 
 one ; and the decision rolls back to the inquirer him- 
 self. This being so, we shall not hesitate to give 
 our own opinion, which is that the points raised by 
 Hengstenberg and Dr. Hessey are just as well explained 
 on the ordinary supposition of the Sabbath having died 
 out during the oppression of the taskmaster in Egypt, as 
 they are on the hypothesis that the Sabbath was at the 
 Exodus a novel institution. Indeed, to our thinking, 
 Exodus xvi. has an air of referring rather to a familiar 
 and established ordinance than to a strange one; for 
 surely, if imposed for the first time, it would be accom- 
 panied with that explanation and introduction which in 
 fact is totally wanting. 
 
 On grounds, then, both Scriptural and ecclesiastical, 
 we feel unable to divorce, as Dr. Hessey does, the Sab- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 109 
 
 bath from the Lord's Day. Nor do we feel at all over- 
 powered by the difficulty that if the Lord's Day has 
 inherited its sanctity from the Sabbath, and from the 
 Fourth Commandment, we are bound in consistency to 
 keep the Saturday and not the Sunday. Doubtless this 
 would be so if not otherwise ordered by an authority 
 equal to that which sculptured the Ten Words on the 
 table of stone. We should not dare, on human autho- 
 rity, to tamper with or to disturb one jot or one tittle of 
 commands conveyed to man as were these. But nothing 
 can be plainer than that the New Testament sets aside 
 with adequate authority the Jewish Sabbath, whilst at 
 the same time forbidding us to break one of the least of 
 God's commandments. Couple with this the example 
 of the Apostles and of the Apostolic Church in honour- 
 ing the day of the Eesurrection, and the significant 
 name applied to it, apparently quite casually, by St. 
 John, " the Lord's Day," points on which the testimony 
 of the New Testament is rightly estimated and dwelt 
 upon by Dr. Hessey as clear and decisive, and the 
 grounds and obligation of observing Sunday seem to 
 us definite enough. They are, to sum up, the law of 
 nature; or if it be preferred, a law of the God of 
 nature, emanating indeed from His supreme will, yet 
 primordial and palmary ; a law re-stated and re-enforced 
 on Sinai, obligatory on us now as it has always been on 
 man, though stripped on plain warrant of the New 
 Testament of trappings which adapted it for the Jewish 
 economy, and invested with a new and a Christian 
 environment such as befits the spirit of the later dis- 
 pensation. 
 
110 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 To point out that a theory is dangerous, and likely 
 to lead to ill consequences, is of itself no sufficient re- 
 futation. A theory, if deserving of consideration at all, 
 justly asks to be appraised by its reasons, not by its 
 results. The truth on all matters which it is our duty 
 to discuss must be honestly spoken, and the God of 
 truth will provide for the issues. But having stated 
 why we cannot accept Dr. Hessey's solution of the 
 Sunday question as altogether adequate, and having 
 indicated briefly the outline of that which seems to us 
 sounder and more complete, we have earned a right to 
 say that we think ill results in practice would follow 
 should Dr. Hessey carry all his hearers and readers 
 with him. It cannot be demonstrated from the New 
 Testament alone that the observance of Sunday is bind- 
 ing, as the undoubted will and command of Cod, upon 
 all who acknowledge the authority of the Bible. For 
 Churchmen, indeed, there remains the injunction of the 
 Church — fortified, in this case, by the antiquity and 
 universality of the Sunday festival. Far be it from us 
 to make light of the authority of the Church on such a 
 matter. But for the sake of others we should be sorry 
 that the obligation to hallow the Lord's Day should be 
 rested wholly or chiefly upon this footing. The fact 
 that the Apostles hallowed this day we, with Dr. Hessey, 
 hold to be established from the New Testament, — and 
 a weighty fact it is. But it cannot from that fact alone 
 be inferred that the obligation is a perpetual one. The 
 Church has on wise grounds dispensed with several ec- 
 clesiastical arrangements which were originally founded 
 by the Apostles, and which are accredited by Scripture ; 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Deaconesses, for instance, — the Love Feast, — the Kiss 
 of Peace. "We have looked anxiously at this point, and 
 must avow that Dr. Hessey's theory fails in our judg- 
 ment to show a satisfactory reason why the Sunday is not 
 to be regarded as one of those ecclesiastical ordinances 
 which may be ordered by the Church variously as 
 spiritual expediency shall require. It is unlikely, in- 
 deed, that the Church would ever exercise such powers 
 as regards the Lord's Day, if she had them; though 
 such an exercise has more than once been mooted. 
 But it seems to us important that the sanctity of the 
 Lord's Day should have a foundation as universal as is 
 the name of Christian itself, and Dr. Hessey's theory 
 plainly provides for it one which, however adequate to 
 us, is but partially recognized. He cannot produce any 
 positive command from the New Testament ; the mere 
 example of the Apostles is not necessarily obligatory 
 in all things ; from the Old Testament he cuts us off. 
 The belief, happily all but universal amongst religious 
 men in England, that Sunday is to be kept holy on no 
 other and no meaner command than that of God Him- 
 self, is far too precious and far too salutary for us to 
 welcome any opinions which might tend, however un- 
 designedly, to shake it. 
 
 In the practical part of his subject Dr. Hessey 
 will secure a far more general concurrence. His 
 last chapter treats of the mode in which Sunday 
 should be kept, and its remarks and suggestions are 
 large-hearted, wise, and pious. Indeed it is cheering 
 amidst the great diversity and multitude of theoretical 
 opinions about the Lord's Day, to see such a concord 
 
112 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 amongst religious men as to the right and desirable 
 mode of keeping it. Englishmen have long acquiesced 
 in a sort of national and traditional mode of spending 
 the day. Ours are times when the why and the where- 
 fore of every thing are agitated and sifted : and Sunday 
 observance must, amongst the rest, undergo its share 
 of questioning. Dr. Hessey has by no means disposed 
 of all — if indeed he has of any— of the difficulties which 
 surround the question, though he goes thoroughly into 
 it, — honestly grapples with it, and brings to bear upon 
 it great learning, impartiality, and patience. "What- 
 ever be the issue of the debates now rife, about " Sun- 
 day, its origin, history, and present obligation," we 
 hope that the practical accord which has hitherto sub- 
 sisted amongst us will not be disturbed. The reverence 
 so generally paid to Sunday by our people of all deno- 
 minations, and even by • those not decidedly religious, 
 is very intimately connected with the prosperity and 
 greatness of England, and with her character as a 
 Christian nation. 
 
ESSAY Y. 
 
 The Life of the Right Reverend Father in God Tliomas Wilson, 
 D.D., Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man. Compiled chiefly from 
 Original Documents, by the Kev. Johx Keble. Two Vols., 8vo. 
 J. H. Parker. 
 
 There is no work of ecclesiastical biography which 
 was better worth doing well, and none which more 
 needed to be well done, than the Life of Bishop Thomas 
 "Wilson. "We must add that there is no one who could 
 more fitly take up the task than the respected author of 
 The Christian Year. Of lives of Bishop Wilson there 
 were indeed two extant already ; the older and original 
 one compiled by the Rev. Clement Cruttwell ; the later, 
 written in 1819 by the Rev. Hugh Stowell, Rector of 
 Ballaugh, Isle of Man, the father of Canon Hugh 
 Stowell, of Manchester. The former of these is suffi- 
 ciently meagre and imperfect, and is, in fact, only pre- 
 fixed as a sort of Introduction to the Bishop's works, 
 which were first published, under Mr. Cruttwell's super- 
 intendence, in 1781. It is interesting to note that 
 Mr. Cruttwell was a medical man at Bath, and had 
 under his charge the Bishop's only surviving son and 
 heir, Dr. Wilson. Dr. Wilson entrusted to his pro- 
 fessional attendant the editing of his father's works, 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and the editor was so impressed by the example and 
 writings of his author that he changed his profession 
 and became a clergyman himself. Mr. Stowell's bio- 
 graphy of the Bishop went through three or four 
 editions, and is written in a spirit thoroughly appre- 
 ciative, not to say enthusiastic, as regards its subject. 
 Indeed, it furnishes one amongst many pleasing proofs, 
 and Mr. Keble himself might be suggested as another, 
 that it is possible to have very decided Church prin- 
 ciples of what may be even thought of a strong party 
 complexion, and to take a leading part in maintaining 
 and defending them, and yet by piety, consistency, and 
 disinterestedness, to conciliate the hearty affection and 
 respect of those whose ecclesiastical sympathies are 
 quite of an opposite tone. But Mr. Stowell's Life of 
 Bishop Wilson, though valuable as having preserved 
 local traces and anecdotes gleaned on the very scenes of 
 the Bishop's labours, is written in a somewhat stilted 
 and conventional style. It is, in fact, throughout an 
 Evangelical sermon on a High Church text ; and is so 
 occupied in edifying the reader that very much which 
 is essential to any thing like a complete and true con- 
 ception of the Bishop's character and labours is alto- 
 gether unnoticed. Mr. Keble's Life of the Bishop, now 
 given to us in two good-sized volumes, and forming the 
 concluding portion of the " Anglo- Catholic Library," 
 is therefore on every account welcome : welcome as 
 from a pen which always enriches our literature when 
 it adds to it ; and welcome because filling a manifest 
 gap in our ecclesiastical annals. In a literary point of 
 view it would be possible enough to find fault with 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 115 
 
 Mr. Keble's work. It is in truth somewhat long, and 
 in parts somewhat heavy. There are very numerous 
 and copious extracts, for the most part now made 
 pttblici juris, from, the Registers of the diocese of Sodor 
 and Man, from the Rolls-office at Castle Rushen, from 
 the Sacra Private, Letters, and other memoranda of the 
 Bishop. The biographer's modesty, fidelity, and scru- 
 pulous veneration for his subject, have oftentimes de- 
 terred him from that free and bold use of his ample 
 materials which in such a hand would vastly have 
 increased the attractiveness and interest of his work. 
 The documents given are often of a legal and technical 
 character, and often might have judiciously admitted 
 of abridgment. So, too, the repeated records of cases 
 of discipline, following one after another with little 
 variation of symptoms or treatment, might, so far as 
 we can see, have been summarized with advantage after 
 a few specimens had been given in integrity. We must 
 add, however, Mr. Keble's characteristic apology : — 
 
 Among many defects of which he is himself conscious, and many 
 more, doubtless, which the reader will too easily discern, the com- 
 piler would wish to add one word in excuse for the length to which 
 this Memoir is extended, and another for the freedom with which 
 the Bishop's private thoughts, and the follies and frailties of many 
 with whom he had to do, are here exhibited. One answer will 
 serve for both. It was not within the writer's skill to tell the 
 truth concerning him adequately with less minuteness or with more 
 concealment. And as he found that in approved histories of times 
 even nearer our own, the personal faults of those concerned in 
 public transactions are not passed over, so far at least as they may 
 reasonably affect men's judgment on those transactions, he did not 
 shrink from taking the same liberty in this case ; the rather, that 
 very many of the painful matters thus brought forward were more 
 
 i 2 
 
116 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 than mitigated by after rej)entance and amendment. — Preface, pp. 
 viii, ix. 
 
 In outward and worldly incidents the life of Bishop 
 Thomas "Wilson presents little that is striking. He 
 was the son of a Cheshire yeoman, whose family, how- 
 ever, had long been of established respectability in the 
 neighbourhood. He was born in 1663, educated at a 
 good grammar-school in Chester, and removed at 
 eighteen to Trinity College, Dublin, with a view to 
 studying for the profession of medicine. We do not 
 find that he distinguished himself at college; indeed, 
 his present biographer has to plead for a verdict of 
 " not proven" as to certain charges of indolent and 
 irregular habits advanced on the strength of some 
 entries found in the buttery books of his college, which 
 place on record the fines incurred by Wilson for infrac- 
 tions of academical rules. It would seem, however 
 difficult some of these items may be to explain, that 
 Wilson's college life must have been characterized on 
 the whole by exemplary conduct and earnest application 
 to study. Certain it is that the judgment of his friends, 
 and those wise and good ones, pointed decisively to the 
 ministry as the occupation for which he was peculiarly 
 fitted, and so strongly was this felt by his ecclesiastical 
 superiors that he was ordained Deacon by Dr. Moreton, 
 Bishop of Kildare, on the same day as the cathedral 
 church of the diocese was reconsecrated after being 
 rebuilt, whilst yet short by several months of the ca- 
 nonical age, and without a title. His leading friend at 
 this time was Mr. (afterwards Archdeacon) Hewetson, 
 a man of wealth and position, and, above all, of decided 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 117 
 
 piety and churchmanship, whose acquaintance he had 
 made at Dublin. Rarely have we met with any thing 
 more real, sober-minded, and earnest than the paper 
 entitled " Mich. Hewetson's Memorandums concerning 
 the Consecration of the Church of Kildare, and the 
 Ordination of his dear friend Tho. "Wilson, with some 
 Advices thereupon." Hewetson gave Wilson on this 
 day " another precious little relic " which yet remains, 
 "the little memorandum-book which his friend gave 
 him soon after the ceremony, having first inserted in 
 his own handwriting the foregoing account of the day's 
 proceedings. It is a very small duodecimo, bound in 
 black leather, with brazen clasps, and answers exactly 
 to the description given of it by Cruttwell." Mr. Wilson 
 set a great value on it, carefully preserved it, and con- 
 tinued to enter in it minutes of such occurrences as he 
 thought worthy of notice, as well as his prayers on 
 particular occasions. "The occurrences for the most 
 part are entered at one end of the book, the prayers at 
 the other ; between them both, however, they fall very 
 short of filling up the whole book, 158 pages. It seems 
 that when this was not in the way, he just took up some 
 other vacant MS. book, and inserted the prayer or 
 memorandum where he found room for it. And so it 
 came to pass that his Sacra Privaia diffuse themselves 
 through four or five volumes, of which the original, and 
 in some respects the most interesting, is this gift of 
 Hewetson's." 
 
 "Wilson was next year provided with a cure and 
 maintenance by his maternal uncle, Dr. Sherlock, the 
 author of the well-known Practical Christian. Sherlock 
 
118 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 was rector of Winwick, which at that time had three 
 chapelries attached to it ; for one of which, Newchurch 
 Kenyon, now a rectory with 2500 souls, then a hamlet 
 five miles from the mother church, Wilson was accepted 
 as curate. He remained here, residing with Sherlock 
 till that "kind and pious uncle" died in 1689, and, 
 indeed, for three years afterwards under the next rector, 
 Thomas Bennet, afterwards Master of University Col- 
 lege, Oxford. "We cannot do better than quote a page 
 or two from the narrative of this part of Wilson's life. 
 They will illustrate not only Mr. Keble's manner of 
 handling his subject, but more than one trait also of 
 that subject's character ; his self-denying charity, his 
 systematic management of it as of every thing, and his 
 peculiar mode of seasoning all his doings with prayer : — 
 
 Wilson's stipend at Newchurch was 30Z. per annum, only one- 
 third more than what had sufficed him at the University. But as 
 he lived with his uncle in the parsonage of Winwick, and was an 
 excellent economist, he was enabled out of this small allowance to 
 set apart one-tenth for charitable purposes, if indeed he had not 
 done so from the first hour that he had any thing which could he 
 called an income, that is, from his first going to the University ; for 
 so much seems to he implied in a memorandum dated 1G93, when 
 he was leaving Winwick for Knowsley: "Having hitherto but 
 given a tenth of my incomes " (the plural seems used purposely, to 
 denote all his means from whatever source), " I do for the future 
 purpose to give " so much more. — Vol. i. p. 31. 
 
 The earliest entry on the subject in his existing 
 papers shows that the setting aside of money for alms 
 was with him a devotional act, a solemn sacrifice. It 
 consists of the following prayer, " Before laying aside of 
 Alms for ye Poor" with certain texts prefixed : — 
 
 It is by Thy bounty and providence, O God, yt I want nothing 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 119 
 
 wch is needful eithr for my soul or body ; Be pleas'd in mercy to 
 receive this small acknowledgment of my thankfulness for ye many 
 favours wch by Thy goodness I every day meet with, and give me 
 grace yt while I am able, I never turn away my face from any poor 
 man, yt Thy face and ye light of Thy countenance may never be 
 turned away from me. 0 Lord my God ! whatever I have prepared 
 for Thy poor cometh of Thee, and of Thy own do I give Thee. 
 Pardon all my vain expences, and teach me so to husband the riches 
 wth wch I am blessed, that I may always have wherewith to offer 
 a testimony of my duty and gratitude to my great Benefactor, to be 
 bestowed on those poor people whom Thou shalt direct me to 
 relieve. And grant, 0 Lord, that if ever it should be Thy pleasure 
 to change my circumstances into a worse condition, give me grace 
 yt I may bear it patiently, knowing assuredly yt my treasure is in 
 heaven, to wch place I most humbly beseech Thee to bring me for 
 ye sake of J. Xt. Amen. 
 
 The manner in which he made this dedication was (we are in- 
 formed) as follows : — On the receipt of all monies, he regularly 
 placed the portion designed by himself, as well as what was given 
 him by others for charitable uses, in the drawer of a cabinet, 
 with a note of the value, to be kept sacred for the use of the poor, and 
 on no account whatever to be touched for any other purposes. The 
 fomi of the note, as follows, is copied from the original : — " Jan. 29, 
 1750. Put into this drawer Twenty Pounds British, being one 
 year's money, the bounty of the Right Honourable the Lady Eliz. 
 Hastings, for the year, and payable at Martinmas, 1750. Thomas 
 Sodor and Man." If the money placed there was his own, the note 
 differed only in distinguishing from whence, or how, the money had 
 been paid to him. And into this sacred repository, called " the 
 Poor's Drawer," at first a tenth, then a fifth, a third, and at length 
 the half, of his revenues, were placed ; and whenever he deposited 
 the poor man's portion, he did it with the same awe and reverence 
 as if it had been an offering to Heaven. 
 
 In Wilson's several memorandum-books, this prayer exists in four 
 several forms, and is a good specimen of his practice of re-writing 
 his devotional pieces over and over with slight variations, rather 
 than composing fresh ones for the time being, which to many 
 (Bishop Taylor, for example) seems to have approved itself as the 
 more natural way. Doubtless "Wilson's feeling in this, as in many 
 
120 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 other characteristic practices, was eminently that of our most genial 
 poet : — 
 
 " The child is father to the man. 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety." 
 
 Another department of active charity in which Bishop Wilson 
 was eminent throughout his pastoral life was administering medical 
 aid to those who stood in need of it. For this he was especially 
 qualified, having been at first intended (as we have seen), and in 
 part educated, for the medical profession. And he made it, as 
 might be expected, matter of special devotion. The precious 
 memorandum-book contains two prayers, written seemingly about 
 the same time with that on giving of alms. — Vol. i. pp. 32, 33. 
 
 Sherlock had been chaplain to the great Earl James 
 of Derby, and had been entrusted by his son and 
 widowed mother with the task of restoring Church 
 order in the isle and diocese of Man after the troubles 
 of the Great Rebellion. To this excellent man and 
 consistent Churchman we must under God attribute the 
 main part in the forming and disciplining of "Wilson's 
 character and opinions, and also, in all likelihood, his 
 introduction to the family of Derby. In 1692 Wilson 
 " accepted from William, ninth Earl of Derby, an ap- 
 pointment to be his domestic chaplain, and tutor to his 
 only son, Lord Strange." To these offices was added 
 that of Master of the Almshouse at Lathom. We must 
 not dwell on the fidelity and discretion with which, 
 under circumstances more than once of a trying cha- 
 racter, Wilson acquitted himself of duties in themselves 
 delicate and difficult, and sure to be more than ordi- 
 narily so for an uncompromising and sincere Churchman 
 like Wilson to carry out., in the house and family of a 
 great English nobleman of the seventeenth century. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 121 
 
 His zeal and fidelity were so remarkable, that in 1697 
 "Wilson had the bishopric of Sodor and Man pressed 
 upon him by his patron, in whose gift as Lord of the 
 Isle the see then was. Lord Strange was now eighteen 
 years old; the bishopric had been vacant four years; 
 the Crown, at the instance of the Archbishop of York 
 as Metropolitan, was urgent that an appointment should 
 be made without delay, and the earl practically forced 
 it upon his chaplain. " The bishopric was, of course," 
 as Mr. Keble observes, " the greatest trust, though far 
 from the most eligible benefice in the earl's gift ; of 
 course, also, Wilson must at once have been thought of 
 as the very person to be charged with it : what remained 
 of Lord Strange's education might be otherwise pro- 
 vided for, more easily than a competent Bishop for the 
 poor neglected island could be found." The ordinary 
 income of the see seems at that time to have been about 
 300/., whilst all the appurtenances of it, the house, the 
 demesnes, &c, were in the most dilapidated condition, 
 and the cathedral was an absolute ruin. "Wilson had at 
 once to raise and disburse a sum equal to four and a 
 half years' income, in order to put things in barely 
 tenantable condition. Yet at that very time he writes — 
 
 " My Lord Derby offered me the Parsonage of Baddesworth in 
 Yorkshire to hold it in commendam with my Bishoprick ; I refused 
 it as utterly inconsistent wth my duty, and an obligation I have 
 sometime since laid myself under of never taking two ecclesiastical 
 preferments with cure of souls; and especially where I must 
 necessarily be absent from one of them ; and of wch resolution it 
 does not yet repent me yt I made it." His patron was of course 
 fully aware of the poverty and dilapidated condition of the see; and 
 it might seem, as no doubt it did to many, that there would be no 
 inconsistency in accepting for a time the help which this second 
 
122 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 vacancy at Badsworth placed so seasonably within his reach. Some 
 might even call it a providential opportunity. But he had " opened 
 his mouth to the Lord," and he could not "draw back." How 
 great this self-denial was will appear further as we go on. And 
 who can say how fruitful in blessing through his episcopate all 
 along such a courageous and faithful beginning may have proved ? 
 Almost all Wilson's predecessors had kept their English prefer- 
 ments, if they had any, by reason of the poverty of the see. His 
 scruples must have appeared at the time very strange and high- 
 flown.— Vol. i. p. 82. 
 
 For fifty- eight years, till liis death, at the age of 
 ninety-three, did this good man abide in the sphere of 
 duty thus allotted him. The island at that time was 
 reckoned so remote as to be a kind of place of banish- 
 ment to those who had to reside in it. Mr. Keble gives 
 some amusing extracts from the letters of Bishop Levinz, 
 Wilson's immediate predecessor, in which he petitions 
 the Primate to procure him " a house and prebend att 
 "Winchester, or something equivalent, that he may have 
 wherewithall to protect him for the future from winter- 
 ing in the severe clime of Man." He speaks of " his 
 Patmos, wheer all the comfort he can promise himselfe 
 is from this topique only, that there he may have time 
 enough for his prayers :" bewails " the confinement of 
 his melancholy retreat," " his disconsolate residence," 
 and " the terrible storms, tempests, and inundations of 
 rayn." Wilson, however, was far from treating the 
 bishopric of Man, as has been too generally done, as a 
 stepping-stone to a more splendid Episcopal throne. 
 He was offered English bishoprics both by Queen Anne 
 and her successor, and refused them on the ground that 
 he should better serve the Church of Christ by con- 
 scientiously and thoroughly administering the smaller 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 123 
 
 overseership than by less perfect occupation of wider 
 duties and grander opportunities. 
 
 The chief interest belonging to the annals of Wilson's 
 Episcopate centres in his revival through his diocese 
 of the primitive ecclesiastical discipline. For at- 
 tempting this the circumstances of the isle offered 
 very remarkable facilities. It was, in fact, a feudal 
 family on a large scale, with the Earl of Derby 
 for its head. Dissenters there were none, or next to 
 none, amongst its 14,000 people. The ancient canons 
 of the Manx Church were yet far from obsolete, and 
 "godly discipline," if feeble and intermittent, had by 
 no means utterly perished either in name or thing. 
 AVilson found no difficulty whatever in procuring in 
 1703 the passing by his own Synod, and the sanction- 
 ing by all the civil authorities of the isle, " the twenty- 
 four Keys," and the Earl's Governor and Council, with 
 the final imprimatur of the earl himself, of a complete 
 series of ecclesiastical constitutions, "in which the 
 existing rules were fully recognized, and provision 
 made for enforcing by their means the whole edifying 
 system of the Prayer Book." The island was subject 
 to the Metropolitical see of York, and therefore of 
 course "bound by the English canons as any other 
 diocese would be ; with this difference, that it was free 
 to carry them out ; the Acts of Parliament which super- 
 sede them in England having no force in Man, because 
 that island was not especially mentioned in them." On 
 this code Mr. Keble remarks as follows : — 
 
 The main characteristic of the Manx ecclesiastical code was its 
 perseverance in supposing that the people suhject to it had faith, 
 
124 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 long after that too flattering idea had been practically given up in 
 every other portion of the Eeformed Church of England. For since 
 the Toleration Act enabling all the world to withdraw themselves 
 from the obedience of the Church, yet to retain their full right to 
 communion with the same Church ; and the previous Act, 13 Car. II. 
 c. 12, abolishing the oath ex officio, and therefore making it impos- 
 sible to protect holy things except in the comparatively rare case of 
 very definite crimes fully established by legal proof; — the English 
 Church had surrendered itself, both in theory and practice, to the 
 hard necessity of doing without the ancient discipline. No blame 
 need attach to its governors ; the discipline presupposes faith gene- 
 rally prevailing; faith, first in the reality and grievous effect of 
 excommunication ; and next, in the real danger of taking a false 
 oath. When these convictions are generally gone from men's 
 minds, Church courts and Church laws may do much incidental 
 good, but they can only help you to the shadow of that for which 
 mainly they were ordained. In the diocese of Man, down to Wilson's 
 time, this faith was still remaining in some tolerable measure. An 
 oath was generally accounted a serious thing: and (as has been 
 mentioned before) there were hardly any Dissenters. To all, there- 
 fore, who had any religion at all, excommunication was a reality. 
 Accordingly we find (and the same is generally affirmed of the 
 Northern civil codes, which in part displaced those of Eome) that a 
 great part of the evidence in many cases lay in the voluntary oaths 
 of one or more of the parties. Thus " in a difference depending 
 betwixt party and party, when one gives it to the other upon his 
 oath absolutely, there shall be no further hearing of that matter in 
 the Spiritual Court." This implies so much trust in men's oaths as 
 to ignore all risk of collusion. — Vol. i. pp. 202, 203. 
 
 From the first the Bishop carried with him the 
 popular feeling of his flock. They went heartily with 
 him from the very beginning of his energetic activity 
 amongst them to the close : — 
 
 We hear and read sometimes of the happy conformity of some 
 well-conducted parish to the plans of some popular and self-denying 
 clergyman. But for a whole diocese we shall hardly meet with 
 any thing, at least in modern Church history, superior or even 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 125 
 
 equal to this. Cruttwell in few words expresses most significantly 
 the effectiveness of the reformed Manx canons, when he remarks 
 that they "supersede virtually the Preface to the Commination 
 Office." And he adds, no doubt from trustworthy information, 
 " Lord Chancellor King was so much pleased with these constitu- 
 tions, that he said, ' If the ancient discipline of the Church were 
 lost, it might be found in all its purity in the Isle of Man.' " — Vol. i. 
 pp. 211, 212. 
 
 The Bishop had been largely instrumental during 
 the first year of his Episcopate in obtaining for the 
 island an advantageous settlement from the Earl of 
 Derby of certain civil grievances under which its in- 
 habitants laboured. He never ceased also in many 
 negotiations with the Lord, the successive Governors, 
 and sometimes with the British Government, to identify 
 himself with the interests of his people, and to act 
 wherever he rightly could do so as their firm and very 
 able champion. His zeal for their temporal good as 
 well as his boundless charity, his personal gentleness 
 and dignity, and his impartiality, brought about the 
 willing acceptance of an ecclesiastical regimen which, 
 in modern times at least, is quite without a parallel or 
 even a second. In minutely recording the working of 
 Wilson's discipline, and commenting upon it, Mr. Keble 
 occupies two-thirds of the volumes before us. Some of 
 Wilson's canons are curious enough, and evidently 
 characteristic of a very rude state of society : — 
 
 " As in Law 22, the use of certain reproachful words is made 
 punishable by wearing the ' bridle ' at the market cross, or to make 
 seven Sundays' penance in several parish churches." A very severe 
 censure, it may seem, for just calling a man a dog. Perhaps among 
 the Manxmen of that time it might be a higher affront than we 
 now account it, and so likely to lead to a breach of the peace. As to 
 
126 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the "bridle," it is a kind of gag, which being put in a person's 
 mouth, hinders him or her from speaking articulately. A specimen, 
 made by the order of Bishop Wilson, was lately, perhaps is still 
 now, shown as a relic at Bishop's Court. Law 23 has a still 
 stranger sound. It ordains that " common whores be drawn after a 
 boat in the sea during the Ordinary's appointment." And there 
 are repeated instances of its being carried out in Wilson's time as 
 before: just as in an early stage of English criminal law, "open 
 lewdness grossly scandalous .... was punishable by the temporal 
 judges, not only with fine and imprisonment, but also with such 
 corporal infamous punishment as to the court in its discretion might 
 seem meet, according to the heinousness of the crime ;" such punish- 
 ment, for example, as "whipping at the cart's tail," to which 
 Shakespeare makes Lear allude as to no very unusual thing. This, 
 in the Isle of Man, was changed into being dragged, without whip- 
 ping, through the water, at the stern of a boat, which was called its 
 "tail," probably in allusion to the other punishment. The Manx 
 fashion seems the less unseemly as well as the less severe of the 
 two. Law 19 provides a special censure for one stiiking a minister ; 
 another indication of an uncouth state of society. He is to be 
 " excommunicated ipso facto, and do penance, and after satisfac- 
 tion given to the law, to receive absolution, and be received at the 
 church stile into the church by the minister reading before him 
 the fifty-first Psalm, and before the congregation to repeat his 
 schedule after the minister." There is something in this severe, but 
 not surely unloving. The offended person saying the Psalm for the 
 offender, and so making himself partaker of his penance, expresses 
 any thing but revenge or priestly haughtiness. — Vol. i. pp. 201, 
 202. 
 
 Accordingly we read again and again of penances 
 performed "bare-footed, and bare-legged, and bare- 
 headed, covered over with a white linen sheet, and a 
 small white wand in his hand." And in some cases the 
 severest inflictions were carried out where they seem to 
 our mind peculiarly shocking and barbarous : — 
 
 " Katharine Kinred, though rigorously dealt with before for her 
 frequent instances of whoredom (this being the fourth bastard child 
 
CKITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 127 
 
 she has born), is now found to be in a manner irreclaimable, in 
 regard neither the corporal nor the spiritual punishments inflicted 
 have had the due effect upon her ; she, after imprisonment, penance, 
 and dragging in the sea, continued still remorseless. This her 
 hardened and impenitent state loudly calls for the most dreadful 
 sentence — viz., to be excluded from the society of Christians, but 
 that a gross ignorance, and a degree of unsettledness and defect of 
 understanding, might hinder the expected impression of it on her 
 soul. For this time, therefore, it is ordered that she be twenty-one 
 days closely imprison'd, and (as soon as the weather will permit) 
 dragged in the sea again after a boat, and also perform public 
 penance in all the churches of this island ; after which, if she be 
 found worthy, she shall be received into the Church's peace; or 
 otherwise, which we pray God prevent, she will fall under the fearful 
 sentence before-mention'd." This is signed by the Bishop and 
 both the Yicars-General. The first part of the sentence, it appears, 
 was executed, and the penances in the several churches began. 
 They took a long time, for the earliest reported dates May 24, 1719, 
 the latest July 24, 1720 ; and at last a real impression seems to 
 have been produced upon the poor half-witted creature. The cer- 
 tificates of the clergy all run in this strain : — " I do hope she'll 
 become a true penitent, considering the defect of her under- 
 standing ;" — "did penance in appearance becomingly;" — "with a 
 degree of concern not to be expected of her ;" — " as became a peni- 
 tent ;" — " with as much submission and discretion as can be ex- 
 pected of the like of her." The Bishop's conclusion is — " This 
 unhappy woman gives very many promises of leading a better life 
 for the time to come. In hopes of this, and that age and the 
 experience of the troubles she has met with, and the good advice 
 and frequent admonitions she will have from her pastor, may prevail 
 with her to lament the sins she has been guilty of during the 
 remainder of her life, and that she may, according to her capacity, 
 bring forth fruits meet for repentance, I do desire that she may, 
 after performing public penance, be received into the peace of the 
 Church according to the form appointed for that purpose. — Given 
 under my hand, this 13th of Aug., 1720." 
 
 The result in this case, as far as we are told it, appears to justify 
 Bishop Wilson's idea — which was, I suppose, that a dull and very 
 childish heart and mind, hardened by ill habits, could scarcely be 
 
128 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 turned into a better way without some bodily and outward in- 
 fliction ; and he adopted that which the law of the land pre- 
 scribed."— Vol. i. pp. 296. 298. 
 
 For ten years " the Discipline," launched thus amidst 
 general approval, was carried out with a high hand. 
 The decrees of the Consistory Court were summarily 
 backed where necessary by the civil power ; and as Man 
 did not enjoy the advantage of constabulary, a soldier 
 from the nearest garrison was at once despatched on the 
 demand of the officer of the Spiritualty to enforce obe- 
 dience to the sentence. Wilson, though a strict and 
 watchful disciplinarian, proved himself a considerate 
 and even tender one. Again and again do the entries 
 in the register record remissions and relaxations issued 
 by the Bishop to offenders on representations from the 
 clergy that the penitence seemed deep and hearty ; and 
 such indulgences are wont to be accompanied by a few 
 pithy and discriminating words of remark or exhorta- 
 tion, such as would be sure on a rude yet sensitive race 
 to tell almost as much as the penances themselves. But 
 in Man, as in larger communities, the harmony between 
 Church and State did not continue perpetual. In 1713 
 Governor Mawdesley was removed, and superseded by 
 Captain Alexander Home. This man would seem to 
 have been ignorant, coarse, and self-sufficient, rather 
 than deliberately malevolent; and the then Lord of 
 the Isle, James, tenth Earl of Derby, who had in 1703 
 succeeded Earl "William, the Bishop's patron, was a 
 good deal like his subordinate. A Mrs. Henricks was 
 under excommunication for gross immorality, followed 
 up by contumacy. She took the unheard-of step of 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 129 
 
 appealing from the ecclesiastical authorities to the 
 Governor and the Earl. Home received and enter- 
 tained the appeal, in spite of island custom and ordi- 
 nance to the contrary; and "thus the Governor and 
 the Bishop were committed to something like mediaeval 
 warfare for years to come." Mrs. Henricks was pro- 
 tected in goods and person from the penalties of the 
 Consistory Court, and peremptory orders were issued to 
 the Bishop, of course in vain, to cancel her excommunica- 
 tion. This quarrel soon became complicated and aggra- 
 vated by others. The Bishop had always exercised the 
 power, as did Bishops in the most primitive times, of 
 remitting or reducing penalties imposed by the spiritual 
 courts. But as the fines levied in these courts went in 
 usum Domini, Governor Home and his clique chal- 
 lenged the Bishop's right in this particular as operating 
 to the prejudice of the Lord. A claim was set up also 
 on behalf of the Earl's retainers for exemption from 
 Church censures ; and the Governor took on him to 
 order briefs to be read in the churches without the 
 sanction of the diocesan, and went so far as even to 
 deny the Bishop's authority to summon his Convoca- 
 tion of Clergy at pleasure : — 
 
 We may notice, by the way, that two at least of the points now 
 mooted between the spiritual and temporal courts were in sub- 
 stance the same (though on so minute a scale) with some of those 
 which had divided whole nations and Churches — not to say the 
 whole of Christendom — in the middle ages. The Lord's claim to 
 have his household exempt from spiritual discipline corresponds 
 with Henry the Second's quarrel against Becket for presuming to 
 excommunicate the King's tenants. And the Bishop's summoning 
 his Synod at will was the prerogative of which the other Henry, in 
 the sixteenth century, showed himself so jealous, and which he so 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 effectually extinguished. Thus, as in so many other points, the 
 annals of this small Island of Man prove to be a sort of miniature 
 reflection of far more important histories. — Vol. i. p. 465. 
 
 The quarrel proceeded through the usual stages. 
 The Bishop is cited before the Governor and Council 
 to answer for his alleged offences; and of course he 
 refuses to appear. At length, on June 29, 1722, "his 
 entry in Episcopalia is ' St. Peter's Day. See the 
 Epistle ' " (that is, St. Peter in prison, the Church 
 praying for him, and his deliverance by an angel) : — 
 
 " I and my two vicars were carried to prison by three soldiers for 
 not paying a fine of 90?., most arbitrarily imposed upon us." It 
 was a day already memorable in the Bishop's calendar, as we have 
 seen, for more than one special favour — the day of his entering into 
 holy orders, and of the deliverance of his father and brothers from 
 shipwreck. It is interesting to observe that he enters this impri- 
 sonment in the list which he kept of " Special Favours," as well 
 as in that of " Merciful Visitations and Chastisements." In the 
 former, " I had the honour of being imprisoned for a faithful dis- 
 charge of my duty." In the latter, " I and my two vicars-general 
 were fined 901., and imprisoned in Castle Eyssin (sic) for cen- 
 suring and refusing to take off the censures of certain offenders, 
 which punishment and contempt I desire to receive from God, as a 
 means of humbling me," &c. The joy of the confessor and the 
 submission of the penitent, — were they ever more touchingly 
 blended, more simply expressed? — Vol. ii. pp. 518, 519. 
 
 An appeal to the King in Council, though obstructed 
 by Lord Derby and his officers in every possible way, 
 effected at last the Bishop's release after an incarce- 
 ration of nine weeks, but not until from harsh treatment 
 and confinement he had lost the use of his right hand, 
 which he never wholly regained. The breach thus con- 
 summated between the Lord of the Isle and the Bishop 
 continued unabated during the governorship of Home 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 131 
 
 and his successor Horton, and the discipline of course 
 suffered accordingly. Yet it is interesting to note that 
 whilst submission to it was in great measure volun- 
 tary, or at least could only be enforced by strictly spi- 
 ritual sanctions, it was still very largely operative. 
 Many offenders, and those not always of the humbler 
 classes, yielded themselves to it, and sometimes were 
 brought round to do so after lengthened periods of con- 
 tumacy. Many did so when they well knew that the 
 active interference of their temporal sovereign woidd 
 be gladly afforded to support them in braving the 
 Bishop's utmost displeasure, and some did so in spite of 
 downright opposition and persecution from the Governor 
 and the soldiery. Wilson had throughout his trials 
 the hearty sympathy of his people — partly, no doubt, 
 as the victim of lawless oppression from which they 
 themselves suffered at times not a little ; and from 
 which they were Hable to suffer just what the ruling 
 powers thought fit to inflict ; but partly also because 
 they saw in him " their faithful pastor and unwearied 
 benefactor." When he was carried to prison "the 
 concern of the people was so great that they assembled 
 in crowds, and it was with difficulty they were re- 
 strained from pulling down the Governor's house by 
 the mild behaviour and persuasion of the Bishop, who 
 was permitted to speak to them through a grated 
 window." During his confinement, which was in the 
 Keep of the Castle, " the regular prison of the island, 
 a dreary dungeon where prisoners were crowded to- 
 gether in dark and damp cells," "several hundreds 
 assembled daily under the windows to receive his in- 
 k 2 
 
132 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 structions ;" and they showed their respect for him in 
 the most acceptable way in their power by obeying his 
 precepts when he could no longer enforce obedience. 
 " Things went on according to the promise given to 
 Israel in their festive season, ' Neither shall any man 
 desire thy land, when thou shalt go to appear before 
 the Lord thy God thrice in the year.' Bishop Wilson 
 used to tell his friends that 'he never governed his 
 diocese so well as in the time of his imprisonment ;' 
 and that ' if he could have borne the confinement 
 without injury to his health he would have been content 
 to remain a prisoner during life, for the good of his 
 flock, who were more pious and devout than at any 
 other time.' " His release was a day of general jubilee 
 throughout the island. The populace, restrained by the 
 Bishop from spreading their clothes under his feet, were 
 hardly contented with scattering flowers in his path, 
 lining the road all the way from Rushen Castle to 
 Bishop's Court, and making " a loud and merry noise " 
 with " flutes made of the elder-tree." 
 
 But we must not pursue the details of Wilson's epis- 
 copate further. That he was eminently successful as a 
 Church ruler is beyond possibility of question. Nor 
 did his success arise merely from the exceptional ad- 
 vantages he enjoyed in being Bishop of a small island 
 diocese, exempted from the latitudinarian enactments 
 to which the Church's other dioceses in his time were 
 subjected. The interesting pages before us abound in 
 striking proofs of the extraordinary personal ascendancy 
 he acquired over his people. During his old age we 
 read — 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 133 
 
 It is related of him that a short time before his death, whilst he 
 was coming down from his bed-chamber, a crowd of poor people 
 were assembled in the hall waiting to receive his benediction and 
 his alms, when he was overheard by them uttering the following 
 ejaculation, " God be merciful to me a sinner, a vile sinner, a mise- 
 rable sinner !" . . . All his cry was for mercy. — Vol. ii. 958. 
 
 And again, at his funeral — 
 
 The mourners might be said to be all the inhabitants of the Isle, 
 except those who were kept at home by necessity. They gathered 
 from all quarters to attend him to his last home as they or their 
 fathers had done thirty years before to escort him from his prison 
 to his earthly home. And since from the palace to the churcli, a 
 distance of more than a mile, there were of necessity frequent 
 resting-places, at every such pause there was a contest among the 
 crowd who should have the honour of carrying the precious remains 
 for a few moments on their shoulders ; and such of them as were 
 admitted esteemed it a peculiar honour. — Vol. ii. p. 965. 
 
 Still more striking is the policy adopted by one of 
 the Manx incumbents, some sixteen years after Wilson's 
 death, when he found his people abandoning the church 
 for the chapel — 
 
 He tells his parishioners from the pulpit, "Next Sunday, good 
 people, Bishop Wilson will preach here in Manx." And it is 
 astonishing what multitudes it brings together, " insomuch that the 
 church cannot contain them, and heard with such silent attention, 
 that it quite overpowers himself, and fills his heart." And " since 
 he has begun to use these divine discourses his people are returning 
 fast to their parish church, and are more frequent communicants." 
 —Vol. ii. p. 969. 
 
 And yet, though thus personally honoured and be- 
 loved, and though his work was taken up when it fell 
 at length from his dying hands and carried on by a 
 like-minded successor, Bishop Hildesley, still it is 
 undeniable that the island now exhibits few tokens of 
 the deep and clear religious impression which a man of 
 
134 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Wilson's stamp might be expected to make. "Within 
 a few years of Wilson's decease Wesleyanism Avas 
 triumphant in Man. Three-fourths of the population 
 caught at once the contagion of that feverish reli- 
 gionism; nor do the subsequent annals of the island 
 enable us to reverse in any considerable degree the 
 unfavourable judgment to which such a grave fact 
 points. The Manxmen proved most pointedly that in 
 spite of Wilson's energetic and lengthened labours 
 amongst them, they had no real hold on Church 
 doctrine and fellowship, and no prophylactic against 
 sudden and utter declension from a system in which 
 they had been so ably trained. After Hildesley's 
 episcopate the island cooled down quickly to the 
 ordinary low spiritual level of the times ; and rushed 
 at once therefrom into red-hot Methodism. In spite 
 of the halo of reverence which still encircles Wilson's 
 memory, there is in the island he loved so well as 
 little sympathy for his principles as may be found in 
 Cornwall or Wales. How shall we explain the speedy 
 and total disappearance of a system, so venerable and 
 excellent in itself, so generally received, and so vigo- 
 rously administered during three generations of Manx- 
 men? The causes of this are various, and some of 
 them obvious. Wilson was not on the whole happy in 
 his clergy. His choice was always limited, from the 
 necessity of providing men who could officiate in Manx. 
 Nearly all the benefices of the island, too, were in the 
 gift of the Lord ; and Earl James during his long feuds 
 with (lie Bishop took pains to fill them on every oppor- 
 tunity with men as little like the Bishop as possible. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 135 ■ 
 
 Even his Archdeacon was Lord Derby's nominee, and 
 during a great part of his struggles Archdeacon Hor- 
 robin was amongst his most troublesome opponents. 
 Horrobin was one of those men of whom our own days 
 have plenty ; he was benevolent in instincts, excellent 
 probably in intentions, but plagued with that non- 
 theological cast of mind which leads a man to keep 
 uttering the deadliest heresies whilst he is all the 
 while blissfully unconscious of having spoken any 
 thing except the most scriptural and Catholic truths. 
 Then again the abolition, soon after Wilson's days, of 
 the peculiar and insular exemptions, jurisdictions, and 
 usages which had belonged to Man, tended no doubt to 
 obliterate "Wilson's work, which had found its oppor- 
 tunity and force mainly in the exceptional circum- 
 stances of the diocese. The emasculated ecclesiasticism 
 into which the English dioceses had sunk invaded Man 
 soon after the middle of the eighteenth century ; and 
 "no wonder if the more earnest of the flock caught 
 somewhat too eagerly at an apparent revival of the 
 sort of sympathy they were longing for, though it 
 came in another form and from another quarter." Yet 
 even so we can scarce think the phenomenon in ques- 
 tion adequately accounted for. We are not sure that 
 the records of Wilson's administration do not suggest 
 the idea that the discipline was rather laid on the 
 people ab extra than rooted in their personal convictions 
 and interwoven with their principles. That they will- 
 ingly submitted to it is clear; but was it not rather 
 because Wilson imposed it than because they themselves 
 understood and valued it ? They would seem to have 
 
136 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 been in many respects unprepared for Wilson's system, 
 and therefore it took no root in them. For Church 
 discipline, like personal asceticism, is no end in itself, 
 nor is it wholesome ex opere operato. If it do not, 
 through its severities, enlighten and stimulate the 
 conscience of the penitent, it is rather apt to harden 
 than to convert, and to serve to an unspiritual 
 mind as a kind of substitute for real compunction. 
 Wilson applied the discipline vigorously, and could by 
 his authority secure outward observance of its terms. 
 But he could not in person supply to the whole diocese 
 that individual treatment of penitents without which 
 the white sheet and the public confession are unavailing 
 for spiritual health, and he had scarce any coadjutors able 
 to second effectually his own efforts in this department. 
 We wonder, too, whether his manifest shortcomings in 
 the aesthetic and ritual sides of Churchmanship had any 
 thing to do with his fleeting hold, for practical pur- 
 poses, on the Manx mind. Mr. Keble has more than 
 once to note the good Bishop's deficiencies in these 
 particulars, which, however, are of course only the 
 confessed deficiencies of his age. The churches and 
 buildings Wilson was instrumental in erecting are, if 
 possible, more ugly than their date would lead one to 
 expect ; and there is not one symptom throughout his 
 career that the clear and firm hold he himself had on 
 Catholic truth, and enforced by dint of authority and 
 logic on others within his reach, had any tendency to 
 embody itself in reverent and rich yet sober ceremony 
 and usage. And yet this element, always important to 
 creatures constituted as we are, is especially so to the 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 137 
 
 less learned and cultivated of us. The Manxmen were 
 religious, but they would be a striking exception to the 
 usual rule as to a somewhat rude race if their religion 
 did not yearn after outward and visible expression, and 
 this Wilson's system did not apparently supply. The 
 faith which can sit altogether loose to external forms 
 and symbols belongs only to highly cultivated intel- 
 lects ; and those, too, intellects of superior power and 
 originality. 
 
 TTilson's work, so carefully set forth in these volumes, 
 will make the modern Churchman often recur in his 
 own mind to the question of the revival of Church 
 discipline in our day and country. The speedy 
 downfall of the system he set up in Man is, if fairly 
 considered, no just argument against such revival. It 
 may be that he used the outward appliances of the 
 Church's discipline far more extensiveby than was war- 
 ranted by the inner working of the Church's doctrine. 
 The two assuredly should go hand in hand ; nay, disci- 
 pline will only grow and flourish when deeply rooted 
 in faith and knowledge of the doctrine. But then, on 
 the other hand, sound teaching, especially in its prac- 
 tical applications, loses a most powerful authentication 
 and support when not pointed and vindicated, where 
 necessary, by wholesome discipline. Authoritative dis- 
 cipline stands to the practical life much as ritual does 
 to faith ; and both discipline and ritual are important, 
 indeed essential, for much the same sort of reasons ; — 
 those, namely, which arise from our consisting of body 
 as well as of mind. There can be no doubt that the 
 question of the restoration of Church discipline is a 
 
138 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 very urgent one. The legislative enactments of Bishop 
 Wilson's days have made such restoration hard to re- 
 concile with the continued union of Church and State, 
 at least in its present form ; and it may be that a re- 
 vision and modification of the terms of that union will 
 be brought about through the endeavours of Churchmen 
 to regain for the Church her ancient powers for good. 
 Any how, it is plain enough that the utter abeyance of 
 discipline, and the reduction of the Church's office to 
 little more than one of mere good advice and remon- 
 strance, is abundantly mischievous. Mr. Keble's vo- 
 lumes will furnish much valuable matter for thought to 
 those whose minds are turning towards these questions. 
 
 In another particular our own days seem to be running 
 into an evil opposite to that which beset Bishop Wilson's. 
 It may be that a neglect of the outward guise of reli- 
 gious truth was amongst the shortcomings of that good 
 man, as it was unquestionably of his contemporaries. 
 It may be that, had there been given him, as there often 
 is not to hard, sharp, and practical intellects, a per- 
 ception of the vast importance of this element, he would 
 have left his mark for good more durably on the scene 
 of his protracted and self-denying labours. But let us 
 in our generation be sure, on the other hand, that ritual 
 and ceremony will never serve as a substitute for defi- 
 nite teaching of the Catholic truth in our ministers, 
 intelligent apprehension of it by the people, and un- 
 swerving profession of it in both. The outward trap- 
 pings of Catholicity may be readily assumed by the 
 spurious -and counterfeit "Churches" about us which 
 compass town and hamlet to make one proselyte. The 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 139 
 
 collects, the canticles, and the liturgies of Fathers and 
 Bishops may be purloined for the purposes of Salem 
 Chapel. The priestly garments may, by a sort of spi- 
 ritual felony, be donned by those whose very existence 
 as a denomination arises out of a denial of the priestly 
 office. Conventicles of ultra-gothic structure are rising 
 around us in ludicrous inconsistency with the transac- 
 tions which are to go on within them. If we lay an 
 exclusive, or even excessive, stress on architecture and 
 ritual, we rest our claims on those parts of our case which 
 are most easily simulated ; and expose ourselves again 
 from an opposite quarter to the danger which has been 
 sometimes incurred by our Evangelical brethren, of 
 making the Church so like Dissent that to the vulgar, 
 ever unapt to distinguish, there seems nothing to choose 
 betwixt them. Catholic truth, in combination with Ca- 
 thoHc ritual and circumstance, can be found in one society 
 alone. Steady teaching of the one to the understanding, 
 steady presentation of the other to the senses, in the 
 decent moderation of the Church of England, cannot 
 fail to win and keep our people within the safe fold. 
 
ESSAY VI. 
 
 Life of the Right Rev. Daniel Wilson, D.D., late Lord Bishop 
 of Calcutta, and Metropolitan of Lndia. By the Rev. Josiah 
 Bateman, M.A., his Son-in-Law and First Chaplain. Two Vols. 
 Murray. 
 
 Primary Charge of the Bishop of Calcutta. Calcutta : Bishop's 
 College Press. 
 
 Bishop Wilson's Journal Letters, addressed to his Family during 
 the first nine Years of his Indian Episcopate. Edited by his 
 Son, Daniel Wilson, Vicar of Islington. Nisbet and Co. 
 
 The name of Daniel "Wilson will call up in the minds 
 of our readers reflections of a very mixed character. 
 He was, and gloried in being, forward as a leader of a 
 theological party within our Church ; and, as must 
 always be the case with such, received in no measured 
 terms censure from his adversaries, and encomium from 
 his friends. Yet we are sure that few Churchmen, be 
 their peculiar shade of views what it may, will fail to 
 find common sympathies and common interests with 
 one whose personal piety was deep and fervent, if 
 somewhat wanting in breadth ; whose Churchmanship 
 was sincere, honest, and even intense, though decidedly 
 sectarian in tone; and whose whole conduct, with all 
 its shortcomings, was full of zealous endeavour to act 
 out principles which he sincerely and consistently held. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 141 
 
 Few also will grudge a grateful acknowledgment of the 
 vast services rendered to the Church by Bishop Daniel 
 Wilson in one of her widest and most difficult fields of 
 labour. The work which met him in India was one 
 which required and stimulated the natural vehemence 
 and positiveness of his character; and, human nature 
 being what it is, if "Wilson had had fewer faults, he 
 would have probably achieved fewer successes. He 
 was not of " the singular few " — 
 
 Who, gifted with predominating powers, 
 Bear yet a temperate will. 
 
 On the contrary, he was often arbitrary, and sometimes 
 very unjust to those who differed with him. Such 
 failings, however, were but the wrong side of his very 
 excellences, and were far better for the Church to bear, 
 especially in such a sphere as India, than the vacil- 
 lation of purpose and feebleness of rule which might 
 have been, while men are what they are, expected but 
 too probably from a Bishop of larger intellectual gifts 
 and more liberal views. The Church in India demands 
 pre-eminently — at least, evidently did so when Daniel 
 Wilson assumed the chief government of her — a strong 
 and resolute ruler. It must not be forgotten also that 
 the conflict between Christianity and heathenism dwarfs, 
 in a manner exceedingly difficult for us at home ade- 
 quately to realize, the controversies which agitate a 
 settled Christian community. In private life we see 
 those who have no natural distresses and anxieties 
 sedulously manufacturing for themselves artificial ones. 
 And so it is with a flourishing and a peaceful Church. 
 The Church in her missionary walks cares compara- 
 tively little about minor degrees and differences of opi- 
 
142 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 nion amongst those who are all of them her true and 
 attached sons. Hence Wilson stood, we think, higher 
 in the estimation of Churchmen of all kinds in India 
 than he did at home. He impressed us in England, 
 whether in person or through his Charges and sermons, 
 chiefly in the character of a somewhat intolerant, and 
 even coarse, partisan ; but the Church in India knew 
 him also as the uncompromising champion of her 
 rights, interests, and dignities against the civil and 
 military powers, which more than once threatened 
 during his Episcopate to reduce her to an entire and 
 helpless dependence — as the friend whose purse was 
 never spared when any of her numerous necessities 
 presented itself, and whose unsparing exhortations, 
 thus backed by example, produced an outflow of libe- 
 rality which quite changed the aspect of her missionary 
 stations — as the chief pastor, to whom, not less than 
 to his lamented predecessor, Heber, might be justly 
 applied the title of " first missionary in India ; " who 
 was incessantly on Visitation throughout his vast 
 diocese, cheering the scattered labourers of Christ, and 
 leaving behind him wherever he had passed new life 
 and hope in the Churches ; whose homely rebukes, if 
 they sometimes lighted amiss on those whose allegiance 
 to the Gospel and the Church was as genuine as the 
 Bishop's own, and sometimes were directed against 
 trifles which it would have been more dignified quietly 
 to discountenance, were also addressed with primitive 
 boldness into quarters in which they were urgently 
 called for, and denounced with a holy disregard of per- 
 sons and of consequences the crying sins and follies of 
 the lax social system of India. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 143 
 
 But we have, almost unawares, been speaking of 
 Daniel "Wilson as Bishop of Calcutta, somewhat forget- 
 ting that the biography before us traces his life up to 
 his very childhood. 
 
 He sprang originally from that class which has given 
 so many illustrious names to our annals, and which 
 has, to say the least, exhibited its full share of those 
 qualities which we are apt to think especially charac- 
 teristic of our nation — vigorous independence of charac- 
 ter, and capacity for rising in the world — we mean the 
 class of well-to-do yeomen. His father belonged to a 
 junior offshoot of a Derbyshire family of this description, 
 which had settled in London, and acquired consider- 
 able wealth in the Spitalfields silk trade. The future 
 Bishop was apprenticed at an early age to an uncle in 
 the same line of business ; and neither at school nor 
 in the early days of his apprenticeship does he seem 
 to have exhibited any decided promise of future emi- 
 nence. He lay, indeed, for a time under the baleful 
 shadow of the infidelity, and consequent looseness of 
 morals, which were then (1796) fashionable, and under- 
 went at eighteen years of age that metamorphosis of 
 character which is known as "conversion," and is re- 
 garded by some of his school of opinion as essential : — 
 
 One evening (he says) I was as usual engaged in wicked discourse 
 with the other servants in the warehouse, and religion happening 
 (humanly speaking, I mean) to he started, I was engaged very 
 warmly in denying the responsibility of mankind, on the supposition 
 of absolute election, and the folly of all human exertions, where 
 grace was held to be irresistible. (I can scarcely proceed for wonder 
 that God should have upheld me in life at the moment I was cavil- 
 ling and blaspheming at His sovereignty and grace.) We have a 
 
144 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 young man in the warehouse whose amusement for many years has 
 been entirely in conversing on the suhject of religion. He was saying 
 that God had appointed the end — He had also appointed the means. 
 I then happened to say that I had none of those feelings towards 
 God which he required and approved. " Well, then," said he, 
 "pray for the feelings." I carried it off with a joke, but the words 
 at the first made some impression on my mind, and thinking that 
 I would still say that " I had done all I could," when I retired at 
 night I began to pray for the feelings. It was not long before the 
 Lord in some measure answered my prayers, and I grew very uneasy 
 about my state. — Vol. i. p. 8. 
 
 In this part of his life we shall not follow his 
 biographer's somewhat tedious details. We would only 
 point to the fact that the London apprentice, from the 
 above slight occasion, entered suddenly, with bitter 
 penitence and humiliation for the past, and earnest 
 struggles after light and grace, on that course of self- 
 discipline and hard study which led him, eventually, to 
 the Metropolitan throne of India. The case is remark- 
 able enough ; and while we protest against the error of 
 those who regard sudden conversion as all-important, 
 and as the only sure warrant for Christian confidence, 
 it may teach us that such spiritual revolutions, however 
 sudden, are sometimes genuine and real, and that they 
 may even be perhaps God's not least frequent mode of 
 dealing with men. 
 
 It is not surprising that in this frame of mind 
 a desire should soon have manifested itself towards 
 holy orders. After some difficulties with his parents, 
 who very properly required some evidences of stability 
 in his purposes before approving of them, he was at 
 last permitted to prepare himself for Oxford, and was 
 matriculated at St. Edmund Hall in 1798. He had 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 145 
 
 many difficulties to contend with. His father allowed 
 him but a hundred guineas per annum for his college 
 expenses ; which, however, he contrived to make suffice. 
 The college records show that his battels averaged 
 about 85. per week. " Not once," says his biographer, 
 "does the word debt appear directly or indirectly in 
 his letters or journal." He was very backward in 
 classical learning, but soon repaired this deficiency by 
 determined diligence, supported by his robust health. 
 Rising at half-past five in the morning, he allowed 
 himself but one hour in the day for exercise, and passed 
 for the six years of his student life about twelve hours 
 of every day in hard study. The state of religion in 
 the University at that time would seem to have been 
 deplorable indeed. Mr. Bateman gives an illustration 
 which speaks volumes : — 
 
 A most accomplished member of St. John's, an excellent scholar, 
 and one who was deemed a model of an undergraduate of those days, 
 not only never read his Bible, but did not possess one. Being re- 
 monstrated with by a friend, his rejoinder was, " How can I help 
 it ? Do you think that I could by any possibility go into Parker's 
 shop and ask for a Bible?" — Vol. i. p. 50. 
 
 In such a society those who made any profession of 
 religion were marked men ; and Wilson, with a circle 
 of like-minded friends at the Hall — some of whom have 
 since been widely known in the Church (as, e. g., Dr. 
 Marsh, Archdeacon Spooner, and Dean Pearson, of 
 Salisbury) — acted up to all the observances of the 
 " most straitest sect " of Evangelicalism. This part of 
 his biography records meetings for prayer, reading of 
 Scripture, mutual exhortation, &c. ; and we find him 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 on one occasion sorely wounded in conscience because 
 he had "sat an hour at tea, and did not introduce 
 spiritual discourse." The opportunities of demonstrat- 
 ing their acquirements then afforded by the University 
 to undergraduates were but few. There were no 
 " Honours," and the Examination for degrees was little 
 better than a form, if not a farce. But Wilson gained 
 one of the University prizes, the English Essay, finding 
 a congenial subject in "Common Sense." It is in- 
 teresting to recall the fact that when he had recited 
 his Prize Essay at the Commemoration he was followed 
 on the rostrum by Heber, who that year gained the 
 prize for his English poem on "Palestine." "Wilson 
 was ordained in 1801, and served for nearly two years 
 as curate at Chobham, in Surrey, under the well- 
 known Richard Cecil. He was not, however, forgotten 
 at Oxford; and in 1803 he returned to the University 
 as Vice-Principal of St. Edmund Hall. His promotion 
 was speedily followed by his marriage. This con- 
 nexion proved in every way a fortunate one. Daniel 
 Wilson, though by no means what is called a domestic 
 character, would seem to have had a large share of 
 domestic blessings showered on his path. His father- 
 in-law bought in 1801, for 5000^., and bequeathed to 
 him, the living of Islington. This valuable piece of 
 ecclesiastical property still remains in the family, and 
 metropolitan Churchmen can testify that the spirit of 
 the Bishop still governs the exercise of the rights per- 
 taining to it. 
 
 Wilson's tenure of office at Oxford lasted for more 
 than eight years. There is little of general interest 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 147 
 
 in what is narrated of it. He discharged his aca- 
 demical duties with his accustomed energy, and the 
 Hall throve under his management. The characteristics 
 which marked his rule in a larger sphere are dis- 
 cernible enough in his government of the little Hall 
 at Oxford. " He was very strict in the enforcement of 
 University regulations upon others, and in the observ- 
 ance of them himself. He was almost the last man 
 who wore bands, and thus obtained for himself the 
 sobriquet of ' Bands Wilson.' " Notwithstanding his 
 "donnishness," he cultivated social intercourse with 
 his pupils, and introduced those " religious tea-parties " 
 so long associated in Oxford with St. Edmund Hall. 
 These triste festivities, as our Oxford readers of some 
 little standing will be well aware, survived by many 
 years Wilson's connexion with Oxford; and, indeed, 
 still perhaps flourish in one or two congenial quarters 
 of the University, though we suspect that their native 
 place now knows them no more, — or has them, if at 
 all, in a theological spirit far other than that of Daniel 
 Wilson. 
 
 In 1809 Wilson was selected by Cecil as his suc- 
 cessor at Bedford Chapel. This place of worship oc- 
 cupied a conspicuous position in London for many 
 years as one of the strongholds of the Evangelical party 
 in our Church. Its origin and destruction are worth 
 recording : — 
 
 St. John's Chapel was built in the reign of Queen Anne and the 
 days of Dr. Sacheverel. It stood upon ground belonging to the 
 trustees of Rugby School, and within the boundaries of the parish 
 of St. Andrew's, Holbom. The tradition is, that the Queen, looking 
 L 2 
 
148 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 favourably on Dr. Sacheverel, and desirous of promoting him, sent for 
 the patron of the rectory of St. Andrew's, which was then vacant, 
 in order to express her wish that the Doctor should he appointed 
 rector. The presentation belonged to the noble family of Montagu, 
 now merged, by the marriage of the heiress, in the Dukedom of 
 Buccleuch and Queensbury. Some intimation of the Queen's pur- 
 pose having transpired, a " clerk " was selected, and duly appointed, 
 before her Majesty's summons was obeyed, and her wish expressed ; 
 and then with courteous words the impossibility of compliance was 
 pleaded. Queen Anne, however, was not to be so baffled. The 
 newly appointed rector was made a bishop. This not only vacated 
 the living, but placed the next appointment at the disposal of the 
 Crown. It was instantly conferred upon Dr. Sacheverel, and he 
 lived and died rector of St. Andrew's. Some of the citizens were 
 greatly offended at the appointment, and, as a safety-valve against 
 the pressure of High Church doctrines, combined, and built St. 
 John's Chapel in Bedford-row. If this was indeed its mission, it 
 has been accomplished; and now the place which once knew it, 
 knows it no more. 
 
 One Thursday evening in November, 1856, when the verger was 
 about to ring the bell and summon the congregation for the usual 
 week-day evening sei-vice, he could produce no sound. Still many 
 were assembled, and divine service proceeded : but when the minister 
 ascended the pulpit, he perceived, from signs not to be mistaken, 
 that the whole of the immense and massive roof had shifted and 
 sunk, and might at any instant crush him and the whole congrega- 
 tion. A very short sermon naturally, and most wisely, followed 
 this discovery : and that was the last sermon preached in a chapel 
 where the truth as it is in Jesus had been so long and so faithfully 
 held forth by a succession of able and pious ministers. — Vol. i. pp. 
 171, 172. 
 
 Proprietary chapels involve many very unsatisfactory 
 principles. Often they are, as was the one before us, 
 the fruits of party feeling, and they very obviously 
 tend to perpetuate it. They have helped to loosen the 
 ties between parishioners and tbeir parish church, and 
 so to bring about that disorganization of the parochial 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 149 
 
 system which unhappily exists in our large towns. 
 Their multiplication has served as a sort of substitute 
 for that subdivision of our enormous metropolitan 
 parishes, and increase of parish churches, which are 
 the proper and only adequate remedies for the spiritual 
 destitution of London, or of any other large town. "We 
 have too often built proprietary chapels, and excused 
 ourselves from the efforts necessary to do the Church's 
 work in the Church's way. Very properly are they 
 called chapels rather than churches ; for their ministers 
 are rather preachers than pastors. Their audiences 
 consist simply of the renters of pews, bound to their 
 ministers by no tie except mere preference — i. e. their 
 arrangements are substantially and in principle those 
 of Dissent. Doubtless, however, they have had the re- 
 luctant approval of our Bishops as the only means at 
 hand, though not the best, of meeting the difficulties 
 by which we are surrounded; and "Wilson's manage- 
 ment of St. John's proves that large opportunities of 
 ministerial usefulness may be found even under the 
 unfavourable circumstances which surround a proprie- 
 tary chapel. One fact deserves to be repeated here, to 
 the credit of "Wilson's churchmanship. He was suc- 
 ceeded, not immediately, but while the congregation 
 remained in substance as "Wilson had made and left it, by 
 Mr. Baptist Noel. Notwithstanding the popularity and 
 influence which Mr. Noel enjoyed, he was followed in 
 his secession from the Church by not more than twenty 
 of the congregation of St. John's. 
 
 Though "Wilson had no parochial charge, there was a 
 good deal of machinery of various kinds attached to 
 
150 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the chapel. There were, amongst other things, large 
 Sunday-schools conducted by members of the congre- 
 gation ; and the first District Visiting Society was 
 established, we are told, in connexion with it. He 
 took charge of the candidates for Confirmation fur- 
 nished by families attending on his ministry, and on 
 one occasion presented to the Bishop no less than 375 
 of them. He took a leading part in the formation of 
 the Lord's Day Observance Society and the Church 
 Missionary Society, and an active share in the manage- 
 ment of most other similar bodies in the metropolis. 
 The collections made for charitable purposes during his 
 ministry at the proprietary chapel were extraordinary, 
 often exceeding 200/. on a single occasion. Above all, 
 his connexion with the "Clapham Sect" was there 
 consolidated, and the way thus paved for his subsequent 
 advancement : — 
 
 Amougst.the regular attendants were John Thornton and his 
 sons — names suggestive of singular goodness and beneficence. 
 There sat Charles Grant with his family, and two distinguished 
 sons, the one, afterwards as Lord Glenelg, President of the Board of 
 Control, and Secretary of State for the Colonies ; the other as Sir 
 Robert Grant, Governor of Bornbay. There also sat Zachary Ma- 
 caulay, accompanied by his son, the legislative counsellor of India 
 and historian of England ; ennobling literature, and now ennobled 
 by it. Dr. Mason Good was there ; a physician of high repute, the 
 master of seventeen languages, and translator of the Psalms and 
 the Book of Job, who from a disciple of Belsham, was now " sitting 
 at the feet of Jesus." Near him might be seen Mr. Stephen and 
 his family, Mr. Cardale, Mr. Bainbridge, Mr. Wigg, Mr. Charles 
 Bridges, and many others of high repute and piety. Lawyers of 
 note, also, who afterwards adorned the bench, were pew-holders in 
 St. John's. The good Bishop Ryder often attended, and Lord Cal- 
 thorpe, Mr. Bowdler, the "facile princeps," as he was termed, of 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 151 
 
 the rising barristers of his day, and Sir Digby Mackworth. Mr. 
 Wilberforce was frequently present, with his son Samuel, " to take 
 care of him." The late Duchess of Beaufort, also, often sought to 
 hear him, with many members of her family. Individuals of every 
 " sort and condition " were thus assembled — high and low, rich and 
 poor, one with another. Thirty or forty carriages might often be 
 counted during the London season, standing in triple rows about 
 the doors ; and though there was, as is too often unhappily the case 
 in proprietary chapels, but scant accommodation for the poor, yet 
 they loved to attend, and every vacant sitting-place was filled by 
 them the moment the doors were opened. — Vol. i. p. 178. 
 
 It is this part of his life which gives the highest idea 
 of Wilson's powers. His health was unimpaired ; his 
 industry inexhaustible; his personal influence great, 
 and unsparingly exercised ; his pulpit eloquence at its 
 zenith : — 
 
 Those who have known him in the decline of life, or those even 
 who have only known him in Islington, have no idea of his power 
 in the pulpit of St. John's. In the decline of life peculiarities 
 often crept into his discourses ; and in Islington local and parochial 
 matters were frequently introduced : there was nothing of the kind 
 at St. John's. There was a seriousness in his manner, before which 
 levity shrank abashed; an occasional vehemence, which swept all 
 obstacles before it; a pathos and a tenderness which opened in a 
 moment the fountain of tears ; and a command which silenced for a 
 time the mutterings of unbelief. 
 
 His literary labours, his journeys on behalf of various 
 societies, and the controversies in which, during these 
 years, as, indeed, throughout his life, he was hotly 
 engaged, we must not dwell upon. In 1824 he under- 
 went a very severe and tedious illness, and on his 
 recovery found himself, by the death of the incumbent, 
 in possession of the family preferment of Islington. 
 We must pass over the eight years he spent there very 
 briefly. The parish had been in the care of a "fine 
 
152 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 specimen of the old school of divines," but was, as Mr. 
 Bateman considers, " asleep." It was soon thoroughly 
 stirred by Wilson's restless energy ; and after con- 
 siderable agitation, and some resistance, subsided and 
 stiffened down into the decided Evangelical contour 
 which its uncompromising vicar was resolved it should 
 wear. "Religion became prominent," observes Mr. 
 Bateman, "and worldliness drew back complaining 
 and murmuring — 'There is no such thing as getting 
 a comfortable game at cards now, as in Dr. Strahan's 
 time.' " In one respect all will admit his merits. No 
 sooner had he entered on his new charge than, finding 
 the one church there was in Islington wholly inade- 
 quate to the wants of the population, he at once set 
 himself to work, and during the first years of his 
 incumbency built three new churches, obtaining for 
 them from one source or another no less than 35,000/. 
 
 His connexion with India commenced in a somewhat 
 curious manner. Turner, the fourth Bishop of Cal- 
 cutta, visited Islington on his appointment in 1829, and 
 requested suggestions from Wilson, as an experienced 
 and devoted clergyman, respecting his duties in India. 
 Wilson's thoughts were thus turned towards the East. 
 On Bishop Turner's death, but a few months after he 
 had reached his diocese, Wilson manifested great anxiety 
 to secure the appointment of a good successor, and 
 corresponded on the subject with his friend Charles 
 Grant, then President of the Board of Control. The 
 bishopric was offered to several eminent clergymen, 
 and by them declined. Wilson at last, after various 
 other suggestions, took the singular and characteristic 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 153 
 
 step of offering himself, and, after some delay and 
 difficulty, was appointed in 1832. He found Church 
 matters in his immense diocese either in utter confusion, 
 or in the less complicated hut even less satisfactory con- 
 dition of simple non-existence. Wilson's two imme- 
 diate predecessors had occupied the see but a few 
 months — we might almost say weeks — each ; and before 
 them the lamented Heber, who succeeded Middleton, 
 the first Bishop, not much longer. The diocese itself 
 comprised the enormous territory now divided amongst 
 no less than sixteen Indian, Australian, and Polynesian 
 Episcopates. No wonder that the establishment of the 
 bishopric had " not been attended with its full effects." 
 The vast palace at Calcutta, provided by the GoA'ern- 
 ment, was a blank. "When the Bishop arrived he 
 found just so many chairs and tables ordered in from 
 the bazaar as sufficed to make the noble rooms look 
 miserable. ' Why is this ? ' he asked of Archdeacon 
 Corrie, to whom he had written from England, re- 
 questing him, without limit, to provide such things as 
 were needful. ' I thought, my lord, that there was 
 enough to last for six months,' was the reply of the 
 Archdeacon. He had acted with all simplicity, on the 
 impression produced by past sad experience, and had 
 not admitted the idea that life would be prolonged 
 more than six months." Wilson was the very man to 
 bring all this into order. The palace was at once 
 "completely and handsomely" furnished. The sixty 
 or seventy servants " designated by a simple and ap- 
 propriate livery." The " silver sticks appertaining to 
 his rank, and left by his predecessors, were put into 
 
154 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the hands of his Hurkaru and Chobdar, and generally- 
 used." And the Bishop was not less zealous in taking 
 on himself his spiritual authority than in surrounding 
 himself with the "pomp and circumstance" of it. The 
 times, indeed, were against him. In those days (1832) 
 the whole constitutional status of our Bishops was 
 threatened. The enemies of the Church were bold ; 
 her friends were timid. Prime Ministers were bidding 
 the Bishops set their house in order. It was not a 
 period when a Bishop of Calcutta might expect to 
 receive much consideration, or to meet with support 
 either from Government or public opinion in making 
 the authority of his office felt. But all this did not 
 deter "Wilson. No sooner had he landed than he found 
 himself involved in a question of jurisdiction with the 
 Presidency chaplains, who refused to recognize the 
 Bishop's authority in his own cathedral. The clergy 
 had been used to act independently, and to look to 
 Government for guidance and indulgence. " They had 
 yet," says Mr. Bateman, "to find they had a Bishop." 
 This lesson they were soon taught. The chaplains were 
 in no sense incumbents, but merely stipendiaries acting 
 under the authority of Government, and by the Bishop's 
 licence, and were consequently removable from place 
 to place at a moment's notice. The cancelling of the 
 licence was an obvious step ; it was without hesitation 
 taken by Wilson, and at once left the rebellious chap- 
 lains without powers, and entirely hors de combat. On 
 his jurisdiction being admitted, the Bishop, having 
 thoroughly vindicated his office, restored the chaplains 
 to their functions. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 155 
 
 "We must not follow him through the various matters 
 which he had to contest with the Indian authorities, or 
 with his refractory clergy. He was generally, if not 
 always, right in his claims ; and, judging from the 
 success which attended him, not injudicious in pro- 
 secuting them. It is amusing enough to find Daniel 
 Wilson having to defend himself to his friends, as his 
 correspondence shows he had to do, against charges of 
 extreme Churchmanship ! Yet such allegations were 
 not made without what must have seemed, to those who 
 advanced them, strong semblance of reason. He issued 
 a general circular, prohibiting the chaplains and mis- 
 sionaries from taking part in Divine service with 
 ministers of other denominations. He showed great 
 anxiety to give the churches in his diocese an eccle- 
 siastical character, taking pleasure to see them provided 
 with chancels, spires, &c, and contributing liberally 
 himself towards such purposes. His reflections on the 
 plan, which by noble self-sacrifice he at length found 
 the means to carry out, for building the new cathedral 
 at Calcutta, are worthy of note, as is also his description 
 of the consecration : — 
 
 I figured to myself my beautiful spire, rising up two hundred and 
 twenty feet — the fine deeply buttressed Gothic nave, chancel, and 
 transepts, marking the massive grandeur of the Christian religion — 
 the magnificent organ sounding out, " Thou art the King of Glory, 
 0 Christ" — my native presbyters, in their snow-white vestures, 
 walking down the aisles, the Christian neophytes responding in the 
 
 choir — and Jesus acknowledged as the Lord of all As I 
 
 drove to the cathedral at ten o'clock, the whole space around it was 
 filled with carriages of all descriptions in the most picturesque 
 groups. The clergy and laity were waiting my arrival, surrounded 
 with multitudes of spectators. I made my way through them with 
 
156 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 verger and pastoral staff; and then proceeded up the middle aisle to 
 the communion-rails. The petition for consecration was then read. 
 I assented ; and then the procession began, repeating as usual the 
 twenty-fourth Psalm. The other forms having been gone through, 
 the morning service commenced, the organ leading superbly in the 
 chants. Colonel Forbes was sitting near me. I turned to him and 
 said, " How beautifully the voice is heard !" When I ascended the 
 pulpit, there was all around me a sea of heads reaching to the door- 
 way and outer steps. At the Communion, the thirty-five clergy 
 kneeling at the rails, and the five ministering within, presented to 
 my mind an overwhelming sight. — Vol. ii. p. 172. 
 
 These things, however, though we fear some of our 
 brother Churchmen might have taken fright at them 
 if ventured upon by any High Church Bishop at home, 
 were surpassed by the Bishop's letter to the Govern- 
 ment, on its being proposed to permit the various sects 
 of Christians in India to be married by their own 
 ministers. Although Mr. Bateman does not give this 
 document, we remember to have seen it quoted in a 
 very trustworthy and independent book, Mr. Gr. Camp- 
 bell's Modem India ; from which we give our readers 
 the benefit of an extract, containing words of the 
 Bishop's own : — 
 
 The ecclesiastical establishments of the Government are solely 
 for the benefit of its own Christian servants, and certainly are not 
 chargeable with any attempt to proselytize ; but that their head has 
 a sufficiently strong opinion of the position and privileges of an 
 Establishment may be judged from a letter publicly addressed by 
 the present Bishop of Calcutta to Government in this nineteenth 
 century, when it was proposed to permit the various sects of Chris- 
 tians in India to be married by their own ministers, and he expressed 
 his fear of the result "if a person calling himself a Dissenting 
 minister is now, for the first time since England was a Christian 
 nation, to stand in the place of the priest in holy orders, with the 
 authority of a Divine commission derived through successive conse- 
 crations and ordinations from the apostolic ages." — P. 208. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 157 
 
 We commend these sentiments of a thoroughly Evan- 
 gelical Bishop to the consideration of those Churchmen 
 amongst ourselves who especially look up to him as an 
 authority. Such opinions we believe to have been 
 general amongst those excellent men whom Wilson 
 especially followed and revered; and it is worth the 
 consideration of those who now repudiate them, whether 
 they are doing so upon conscientious and deliberate 
 conviction, or whether they may not, in the heat of 
 controversy, and in the recoil from dangerous extremes, 
 have come somewhat short of the right standard of 
 Churchmanship, as they unquestionably do of the 
 measure of it set by such men as Wilson. For we think 
 that no candid reader of this biography would fail to 
 mark the difference between his " Evangelicalism," and 
 much that is now current as such. The former had its 
 peculiarities, of course — its Shibboleths — as every school 
 of opinion will always have, and many of them were odd 
 and arbitrary enough ; — but it was, after all, something 
 of larger sympathies, more decidedly Church instincts, 
 more generous, more liberal-minded, than a large sec- 
 tion of that which now claims the same name. It has 
 been often said that Simeon, Cecil, Wilberforce, and 
 others would have been High Churchmen had their 
 minds been formed within the last thirty years. The 
 assertion is one which does not admit of proof ; yet 
 certainly, when they are claimed by some of our con- 
 temporaries as their fathers in the faith, the legitimacy 
 of the descent seems sometimes very questionable. 
 
 Not the least interesting of "Wilson's ecclesiastical 
 conflicts was the one he had with the Church Missionary 
 
158 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Society. The missionaries of that Society had indeed 
 officiated in India since Heber's time with the Bishop's 
 licence ; but his authority over them was uncertain 
 and undefined. Wilson soon found that their Society 
 was setting up in his diocese a spiritual imperium in 
 imperio, and keeping it moreover in lay hands. Mr. 
 Bateman's account of the quarrel, which lasted for 
 three years, and threatened at one time to lead to the 
 secession of the Bishop and his friends from the Society, 
 is not of the clearest. He passes over this ugly and 
 inconvenient chapter in the history of the great Evan- 
 gelical missionary institution as smoothly as may be ; 
 but the general nature of the points at issue can be 
 tolerably well made out. The Society expected the 
 Bishop to license its nominees as a matter of course, 
 without question asked or reason given ; thus reducing 
 his functions to a mere form. The Corresponding Com- 
 mittee at Calcutta actually went so far as to set the 
 Episcopal office entirely at nought, and to appoint mis- 
 sionaries without the recognition of the Bishop at all ! 
 Not satisfied with this, the Society denied to the Bishop 
 all power of Visitation as regards its missions, and all 
 jurisdiction over its stipendiaries in India ! The remark 
 of Archdeacon Corrie, as regards the men under whose 
 influence these pretensions were put forward, is weighty, 
 and has a wide application: — "When an object spi- 
 ritually good in their view comes before them, they 
 care little whether it be attained by the rules of the 
 Church of England, or by any other." At length, by 
 the mediation of friends, the breach was healed. The 
 point of superintendence was conceded to the Bishop, 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 159 
 
 and that of licensing compromised. The rule of the 
 Society on the latter point now appears to be to submit 
 its ordained Missionaries for licence to the Bishop of 
 the Diocese in which they may be stationed, and then, 
 in Bishop "Wilson's own words, " the Bishop expresses 
 by granting or withholding his licence, in which the 
 sphere of the missionary's labour is mentioned — his 
 approbation or otherwise of that location." Certainly 
 the terms of the concordat are by no means too favour- 
 able to the Episcopal power. It would seem that the 
 Society still possesses, though it do not exercise, the 
 power of stationing its servants in any part of a colonial 
 diocese it may think proper. 
 
 Mr. Bateman's narrative of the seven Visitations 
 accomplished by the Bishop during his long Episcopate 
 is in parts most interesting ; especially so that of the 
 first Visitation, on which the writer attended on the 
 Bishop as chaplain. The gorgeousness and luxuriance 
 of the tropical scenery, and the strangeness of the men 
 and the manners he encountered, warm Mr. Bateman's 
 naturally somewhat stiff and bald style of writing into 
 eloquence ; and the incidents of this first Visitation are 
 given with a freshness and vivacity which is wholly 
 wanting in most parts of the work. One incident 
 which befell the Bishop is sufficiently amusing : — 
 
 Hurry Holkar held a Durbar to receive the Bishop -with due 
 honour. A little before sunset the party proceeded to the town 
 and palace, on five huge elephants, covered with most gorgeous 
 trappings, which had been sent for them. Swarms of Mahratta 
 cavalry were in attendance, commanded by one of Holkar 's sons. 
 The procession was characterized by all sorts of frantic demonstra- 
 tions — the shouts of the people, the galloping of horses, firing of 
 
160 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 pistols, and clouds of dust. The ai-med camels formed a striking 
 feature in it. On the back of each a swivel gun is mounted, and 
 when calm they march in ranks. But now, whether partaking of 
 the excitement, or frightened at it, they defied alike their riders and 
 their nosebits, and were galloping wildly over the plain. A gallop- 
 ing camel is a strange sight. In vain the rider pulls back the 
 head and lays it on the hump ; the animal still pursues his headlong, 
 or rather headless, career. Nothing brings him to his senses but 
 fierce blows upon the nostrils thus brought within the reach of the 
 rider. Long avenues led into the town. Wild peacocks were 
 grouped upon the trees, and hunting leopards chained to many 
 of the doors ; the populace poured out into streets straight and wide, 
 from houses handsome and well built, by thousands and tens of 
 thousands. At length the palace was reached, and at the top of a 
 narrow and somewhat shabby staircase Holkar received his guests, 
 shook hands, and led them to the Durbar. In this case no seats 
 were provided, and all were obliged to sit as best they could. 
 Conversation was rapid, and was enlivened, but not interrupted, 
 by music and dancing. In about half an hour all rose to leave. 
 Then followed the bedizenment with flowery wreaths around the 
 head, neck, and wrists, which was smiled at and submitted to, as a 
 matter of etiquette. But the Bishop winced when Holkar rubbed a 
 whole handful of oily attar over the front of his best dress-coat, and 
 was evidently in despair when the anointing was followed by a 
 shower of rose-water. In vain he afterwards rubbed, and was 
 rubbed ; the visit to Holkar cost him a suit of clothes. The Vizier 
 was more merciful to his suite, and a little persuasion averted the 
 compliment. But all alike bore off the wreaths of flowers, and, on 
 arriving at the Residency, presented any thing but a clerical 
 appearance. — Vol. ii. pp. 93, 94. 
 
 Mr. Bateman's narrative, especially in this part of 
 it, is aptly supplemented by the recent publication of a 
 large selection from the Bishop's letters. Those letters 
 only have been given which had not been already 
 quoted in the biography. They were thrown off rapidly 
 as events occurred ; and addressed as they were to 
 members of his family, they convey with no little 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 161 
 
 freedom and vigour his first fresh impressions of India 
 and Missionary work during the earlier days of his 
 episcopate. 
 
 The vastness of the territories assigned to the super- 
 intendence of "Wilson is strikingly displayed by the 
 summary given of this Visitation : — 
 
 And thus ended the longest Visitation, perhaps, on record. The 
 outlines of British India had been well-nigh traced. The confines 
 of Bumiah, China, Thibet, Caubul, had been nearly touched. The 
 Ganges, Sutlej, Brahmapootra, Cavery, and Nerbudda rivers had 
 been crossed or navigated. Commenced on August 25th, 1834, it 
 concluded (with two intervals rendered necessary by the climate) on 
 March 14th, 1837. Two years and a half were thus occupied, and 
 more than thirteen thousand miles traversed b} r sea and land. — Vol. 
 ii. p. 138. 
 
 The Episcopate in India is beset with other difficulties 
 than those arising from climate and extent of territory. 
 Some of these are common to all, or nearly all, mission- 
 ary work amongst the heathen — e. g. those arising from 
 polygamy ; but there are others peculiar to India. Not 
 the least is caused by the system of caste, against the 
 retention of which amongst the converts Wilson first 
 made a decided stand. The social institutions of India 
 are a highly organized scheme, which has for ages been 
 inwrought into the daily life of 150 millions of civilized 
 people ; and caste is the very basis of them all. The 
 demand first peremptorily insisted on by Wilson that 
 caste should be utterly renounced in the native Churches 
 is undoubtedly a serious — humanly speaking, a fatal — 
 obstacle to the success of missionary work in India. 
 It places Christianity at an enormous disadvantage — 
 far greater than any it would seem ever to have had to 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 surmount elsewhere. In primitive times nothing is more 
 noteworthy than the care and judgment with which the 
 new doctrine was withheld from direct intermeddling 
 with the institutions, whether social or domestic, of the 
 society into which it was introduced — however alien 
 those institutions might be from its spirit — as, for 
 instance, slavery was. What was faulty was left to be 
 abolished or ameliorated spontaneously by the new mo- 
 tives which Christianity brought with it. And thus 
 was the heathen world renewed and transfigured, it 
 knew not how, until it had by unmarked degrees grown 
 into the holier and kindlier life of a Christian people. 
 It must be henceforward far otherwise in India. Chris- 
 tianity has declared internecine war against the whole 
 social and domestic framework of native life. Every 
 convert must in a manner embrace " counsels of per- 
 fection ;" he must forsake " his father and his mother, 
 and all that he has," before he can be received as a 
 disciple at all ! The chapter which records Bishop 
 Daniel Wilson's visit to the mission stations of Southern 
 India, where the caste system had been permitted to 
 take root, and to establish itself, is most exciting. The 
 Bishop was resolute ; and in spite of opposition, which 
 even threatened his personal safety, he assailed the 
 mischief dauntlessly as usual, purged the Churches of 
 it, and left them diminished in number, but settled on 
 a better and a sounder basis. For we believe that no 
 alternative was left him. The caste system is not 
 merely social ; it must not be compared, as it often is, 
 to the different ranks and degrees of society. It is 
 rooted deep in the first principles of Hindooism, and its 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 163 
 
 ramifications, its obligations, and its symbolism are 
 religious throughout. We believe that the Apostles 
 would no more have tolerated it than they would the 
 partaking of an idol sacrifice, or the observance of 
 heathen religious festivals. In India its retention was 
 found, indeed, to facilitate the coming over of the na- 
 tives to Christianity, but to afford, on the other hand, 
 only too successfully, temptations to apostasy. It was 
 eating out, not the vigour of spiritual life, but the very 
 existence of it in the native Churches ; and Wilson's 
 determined measures with it, while they have, doubt- 
 less, retarded the general ingathering of the millions of 
 India into the Church of Christ, have at all events 
 secured that that conversion, when it is at last granted 
 to the prayers of Christendom, will be a real and 
 thorough one. 
 
 It is time that we should say something of the 
 manner in which Mr. Bateman has discharged himself 
 of his undertaking. Due allowance must be made for 
 the partiality of a near and attached connexion, and 
 when this is done, there will not be much left to 
 complain of. In general the reader is left to form 
 his own judgment. The countless letters of the Bishop 
 which yet remain, his journals, his sayings and doings, 
 form the staple of the book ; and Mr. Bateman has 
 supplied connecting matter, on the whole, of no very 
 considerable amount. This is sometimes awkwardly 
 put together, and consists largely of that bizarre mosaic 
 of Scripture phrases in which some Evangelical writers 
 think it pious and respectful to speak of one another, 
 and which, if ever appropriate, certainly is so for em- 
 m 2 
 
164 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 balming the memory of Daniel Wilson, who rejoiced 
 in it as much as one of Sir Walter Scott's Puritans or 
 Covenanters. To those whose religious life was quick- 
 ened by Daniel Wilson's fervid piety, and to the wide 
 circle which knew him personally as Bishop, adviser, or 
 friend, the laborious and lengthy memoir before us will 
 not seem tedious. But the general public will wish 
 Mr. Bateman's extracts had been fewer, and the whole 
 work condensed into half its present bulk. Yet those 
 who read it — and every one may well do so who desires 
 to know how a deeply sincere Christian man should 
 live, and a devoted missionary Bishop labour — will not 
 close it without sharing in some degree the author's 
 respect and affection for the man whose life is thus 
 thoroughly laid open. Wilson's Episcopate was not, 
 indeed, very successful in a missionary point of view. 
 But he has, partly from the length of time he was 
 enabled to give to the work, but not less from his 
 untiring zeal, his decision of character, his firm mainte- 
 nance of the rights of the Church, and his attachment 
 to ecclesiastical order and discipline, done for the future 
 of Christianity in India more than any one other indi- 
 vidual. To him belongs the chief credit of the sub- 
 division of his immense diocese, and the erection of 
 Calcutta into a Metropolitan see — a precedent which 
 has since been advantageously followed in South Africa 
 and Australia. Out of his large fortune, and the in- 
 come of 5000/. a year which he received from the 
 bishopric, he left behind him only 6000/. in all : his 
 cathedral, his churches, his societies, his charities, had 
 absorbed the rest. To him, more than to any other 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 165 
 
 individual, belongs the credit of having laid widely 
 and deeply the main foundations of that goodly branch 
 of the true Church of Christ in India, the fabric of 
 •which we look to those who follow him to rear. Well 
 does he deserve the eulogium pronounced upon him by 
 his successor in his clear-headed and sensible Primary 
 Charge : — 
 
 Whatever could be done by consistent piety and princely muni- 
 ficence, that Daniel Wilson did for his diocese. This cathedral in 
 which we are assembled to-day, with the missions and schools con- 
 nected with it, the Additional Clergy and Church Building Societies 
 (of which the latter has contributed to the erection of sixty-six 
 churches), owe their origin entirely to his energy, and in a great 
 degree to his unfailing liberality. Still more may we rejoice in the 
 thought that for nearly twenty-six years this diocese enjoyed the 
 benefit of his firm but gentle and eminently practical wisdom, his 
 missionary zeal and Christian goodness. TJiey rest from their 
 labours, and their works do follow them ; while we must unite 
 together in the prayer and the effort that we may not be unworthy 
 of those who have ( gone before us, but may do our part in carrying 
 on the great work which they have left unfinished. 
 
ESSAY VII. 
 
 Calvin; his Life, Labours, and Writings. Translated from the 
 
 French of Felix Bungeneb. T. and T. Clark, Edinburgh. 
 The Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin. By Dr. 
 
 D'Aubigne. Vols. I. and II. Longmans. 
 Institutes of the Christian Religion. By John Calvin. A New 
 
 Translation by Heney Beveeidge, Esq. Two Vols. T. and 
 
 T. Clark, Edinburgh. 
 
 A great revolution will be found to comprise a period 
 of destruction and an after-period of reconstruction ; 
 and each period will exhibit its master-minds and its 
 leaders of men. That most momentous of all revolu- 
 tions, or, to speak more correctly, that great series of 
 revolutions, which we roughly speak of as " the Refor- 
 mation," went of course through these two phases. 
 To the first and earlier epoch belongs — in the Church 
 of Germany, Luther ; in that of Switzerland, Zuingle : 
 to the latter epoch must be assigned Melancthon and 
 Calvin, and Calvin pre-eminently. 
 
 A German thinker would easily philosophize the rela- 
 tions of these Protestant chiefs differently, though hardly 
 inconsistently. Those relations have, for instance, been 
 laid out, so to speak, on the platform of human nature 
 itself; as if religion might be described as springing 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 167 
 
 out of the conscience, mounting next to the under- 
 standing, and reaching finally outwards into the life 
 and habits, and through them into the connexion and 
 intercourse of man •with man. Viewing the matter 
 thus, we might describe it as Luther's mission to rouse 
 the conscience, and to guide men into the right path of 
 peace ; Zuingle's, to vindicate by appeal to reason and 
 Scripture the Reformed doctrine, which would hinge, 
 considered as against Romanism, on the tenet of justi- 
 fication by faith only ; Calvin's, to renovate and regu- 
 late the life and conversation of the Christian professor, 
 and to organize him with his fellows into a community 
 which should stedfastly reproduce, socially and poli- 
 tically, what the Gospel of the Reformation had aimed 
 to make him individually. 
 
 Such theories will not bear being pushed too far. 
 Nevertheless they have a considerable modicum of veri- 
 similitude about them, and serve conveniently to col- 
 ligate and group the facts of the history. Calvin's 
 work, whether in theology or ecclesiology, whether in 
 doctrine or discipline, was a work of systematizing, 
 development, and consolidation. It is not too much 
 to say that he first gave a scientific existence to Pro- 
 testant theology on the Continent; enabled the ad- 
 herents of the Reformed Faith to realize distinctly and 
 to formidate what they professed ; and to stand before 
 tbe world not merely in a negative and polemical cha- 
 racter, but with a definite, compact, and logical system 
 of belief, practice, and discipline. We do not mean 
 that Calvin's organization of Continental Protestantism 
 either proceeded altogether on right principles, or took 
 
168 
 
 CKITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 in no weak and false elements; much less can we 
 endorse the absolute and exclusive claims made for his 
 system by its author ; and to English notions and ways 
 Calvinism is assuredly but Little congenial. But Limit- 
 ing our view to the Continental Reformation, and 
 stating facts without reference to their attributes, the 
 theory as to the relations of the great Reformers and 
 their several labours may well stand in its main outlines 
 as above indicated. 
 
 There is Little in the life of Calvin of a striking and 
 dramatic character, so far as outward events are con- 
 cerned. He was born at Noyon, in Picardy, in the 
 year 1509, the year of Henry VIII. 's accession to the 
 throne of England. His father, Gerard Chauvin or 
 Cauvin, — a name latinized after the manner of the time 
 when the son became famous into Calvinus, — had become 
 " apostolic notary, fiscal attorney of the county, proctor 
 of the chapter, and secretary of the bishop, functions 
 which were more honourable it appears than lucrative, 
 especially for a man burdened with a numerous family. 
 Gerard was favourably regarded by the nobility, by 
 the clergy, and above all by the bishop, Charles de 
 Hangest." Bungener, p. 6. The father's opportunities 
 pointed clearly enough to the vocation which should 
 be chosen for some part at least of his family. John, 
 always remarkable for the gravity and seriousness of his 
 demeanour, was naturally destined for the Church. Gerard 
 Chauvin accordingly availed himself of his favour with 
 the nobility to procure for his son education along with 
 the children of the noble house of Mommor. Finding 
 the expense heavy, Gerard Calvin procured from the 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 169 
 
 bishop for the boy, then twelve years old, "a small 
 office which happened to be vacant, that of chaplain to 
 the chapel called the Gesine." An expedient of this 
 kind was not uncommon in those days, and it is note- 
 worthy as illustrating the abuses which had crept over 
 the Church. Some years afterwards the father pro- 
 cured for Calvin, through the same influence and for 
 the same purposes, the cure of Marteville, afterwards 
 changed for that of Pont L'Eveque. Calvin received 
 the tonsure in 1521 ; and appears more than once to 
 have preached to his parishioners at Pont L'Eveque, 
 that being the only pastoral function he could dis- 
 charge, since he never took Holy Orders from the 
 Romish Church. He was in due course sent to study 
 at Paris, and there under Corderius laid the foundation 
 of that clear and vigorous Latinity which afterwards 
 distinguished him. At Paris, too, he was much in the 
 society of Robert Olivetan, a fellow-countryman and a 
 relative, who had early imbibed what were then termed 
 "Lutheran" notions. Much uncertainty hangs over 
 details ; but it is probable that Calvin, hitherto a 
 fervent and even bigoted Churchman, began from his 
 discussions with Olivetan, and afterwards under Oli- 
 vetan's advice and direction, to read the Scriptures 
 for himself, and to be shaken in his allegiance to his 
 old faith. He prosecuted, however, his studies with 
 characteristic ardour and perseverance, and was noted 
 as yet amongst the professors of his college as a student 
 of rare promise. His life was even now pitched in the 
 same tone and key which it retained to the end. He 
 was austere and ascetic in his own habits, and unsparing 
 
170 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 in his censures of youthful follies and faults in others. 
 " Mirum in modum religiosus, et severus omnium in 
 suis sodalibus vitiorum censor," says Beza, his first 
 biographer and successor at Geneva. The appropriate 
 sobriquet of " The Accusative " was bestowed on him 
 by his fellow-students. At any rate he afforded example 
 as well as precept. " It is a long time," it was said, 
 "since Sorbonne or Montaigu had so pious a semi- 
 narist." " Absorbed in his books, he often forgot the 
 hours for his meals and even for sleep. The people 
 who lived in the neighbourhood used to show each 
 other as they returned home in the evening a tiny and 
 solitary gleam, a window nearly lit up all the night 
 through." D'Aubigne, i. 518. About 1527, whilst 
 pursuing his studies at Paris, and feeling the first 
 impulses of that spiritual agitation which then was 
 rapidly reaching one after another amongst the leading 
 minds of his nation, he received from his father the 
 order to lay aside divinity and to betake himself to 
 jurisprudence. The motives for this change are not 
 altogether clear. The law may have seemed then a 
 surer road to wealth and honours ; but it is more 
 probable that the father desired to remove his son from 
 Paris, and had hope that amidst different studies and 
 new associates he might shake off the heretical ten- 
 dencies which had begun to manifest themselves in 
 him. At any rate he removed first to Orleans, where 
 Pierre l'Etoile, better known as Petrus Stella, the 
 acutest lawyer in France, and afterwards President of 
 the Parliament of Paris, was lecturing ; and afterwards 
 to Bourges, to study under the celebrated jurist Alciati. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 171 
 
 At Bourges he learned Greek from Melchior Wolmar, 
 who had been imported by the munificence of Francis I. 
 from Germany, as Alciati had been from Milan. The 
 knowledge of Greek brought with it that of the Greek 
 Testament; and this to Calvin, as to others, was like 
 the opening of a new spiritual world. 
 
 At Bourges his leanings towards Lutheran views 
 began openly to show themselves. The first effect of 
 the new ideas which Olivetan and Wolmar had been 
 instrumental in opening to him had been, as often was 
 the case, merely to throw him more energetically into 
 the exercises of piety prescribed by his Church. He 
 rejected the new light as a temptation of Satan ; he 
 confessed himself more diligently, and sought to banish 
 his misgivings and to allay his conscience by penances 
 and alms-deeds. But an intellect like Calvin's could 
 not be put off with expedients of this kind. His 
 questionings, his smitings of conscience returned again ; 
 he had to bottom these matters for himself ; and under 
 the guidance of his Greek Testament he found at last 
 peace of mind and satisfaction in a clear and firm grasp 
 of the Protestant doctrine of Justification. No sooner 
 had he attained to something like a settled state of 
 mind, than he began to proclaim his settled convic- 
 tions to others. He had already attracted so much 
 attention by his application and learning, that we find 
 him on occasion called on to supply the professor's 
 place ; and he was, amongst other foreign divines and 
 jurists, asked his opinion on the then much canvassed 
 divorce case of Henry VIII. At this juncture Calvin's 
 father died, and he found himself at liberty thence- 
 
172 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 forward to follow without interference the hent of his 
 own inclinations. After visiting Noyon and settling 
 the family affairs, he renounced for ever the legal 
 studies, which left, however, deep and marked traces 
 on his genius, his writings, and his conduct ; theology 
 took the final precedence of jurisprudence ; the "science 
 of God," said Calvin, "is the mistress science, the 
 others are only her servants." And he returned in 
 1529 to Paris, the focus of the new life and light 
 stirring in the nation. 
 
 He found the capital in profound agitation. There 
 were to be seen " in the University quarter," says Dr. 
 D'Aubigne, "the pupils of Daniel and Vatable, with 
 the Hebrew or Greek Testaments in their hands, dis- 
 puting with every body. ' It is thus in the Hebrew 
 text,' they said; 'and the Greek reads so and so.'" 
 Calvin, of course, " did not disdain polemics ; following 
 the natural bent of his mind, he attacked error and 
 reprimanded the guilty." Paris was full of Lutheran 
 congregations, gathering more or less in secret. The 
 strength of the movement party had greatly and rapidly 
 increased, and the Sorbonne had resorted to the weapon 
 of persecution. There seemed, indeed, at the time every 
 prospect that all attempts at suppression would fail; 
 that France would openly espouse the cause of the Re- 
 formation, and even place herself at the head of the 
 Protestant States in a crusade against the allied Impe- 
 rial and Papal powers. The traditions of the past, not 
 less than the political tendencies of the day, seemed to 
 mark out a role of this sort for her. " Gallicanism," 
 as opposed to " Ultramontanism," had in substance 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 173 
 
 made its appearance in the arena of French politics 
 long before. The great University of Paris, under the 
 guidance of Gerson, had more than a century ago 
 adopted the principle that the Pope is subject to a 
 General Council. Louis XII. but thirty years pre- 
 viously had cited Pope Julius II. before him, and had, 
 in conjunction with the Emperor Maximilian, attempted 
 to get together a General Council to reform the Church. 
 Nay he had, in testimony of his thorough-going de- 
 signs against the Papacy, caused money to be coined 
 with the inscription, " Perdam Babylonis nomen." Of 
 Francis I. great hopes were for many years entertained 
 by the Reformers. Hereditary policy, as well as un- 
 mistakeable expediency, inclined him to favour the 
 opponents of extreme Papal pretensions. Personally 
 he was a splendid patron of learning, and that in those 
 days went a long way towards identifying him with 
 the friends of the Reformation. His sister Margaret 
 of Valois, afterwards Queen of Navarre, a great favourite 
 with him, made no secret of her attachment to the 
 Reformed tenets, and protected and encouraged the 
 pastors in every possible way. The sequel soon showed, 
 however, that the king cared little for religion at all, 
 and that the little care he had was not to be bestowed 
 on the Reformed manner of it. Though he intrigued 
 with the Reformed princes of Germany, lent them sup- 
 port in order to embarrass his rival Charles V., invited 
 Melancthon to Paris, and professed great anxiety to 
 discover means towards a peaceable and effectual re- 
 medy of abuses in the Church; yet finding ere long 
 that the religious prejudices of the mass of his subjects 
 
174 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 were decidedly Papal, and that his coquetting with the 
 Protestants was becoming dangerous, he had no hesita- 
 tion in whitewashing his character for orthodoxy by 
 letting loose the doctors of the Sorbonne upon the 
 Lutherans of his capital. Persecution grew hot soon 
 after Calvin's return to Paris, and ma^r were put to 
 death. Calvin at this time published his first book, 
 Seneca's treatise De Clementia, with a Commentary. 
 It can hardly be doubted, when we consider the ab- 
 sorbing interest of rehgious questions at that time, 
 Calvin's active share in the discussion of those ques- 
 tions, and the severities towards his friends which were 
 being enacted continually before his eyes, what the 
 motive was which suggested this little work. Calvin 
 sought in a safe form to recall to the King and the 
 Church authorities of the day the duty of toleration 
 and mercy, and to shame them by exhibiting the 
 larger-heartedness which even heathen philosophy in- 
 culcated. The book, however, produced no result what- 
 ever, except indeed that of involving Calvin in con- 
 siderable pecuniary anxieties. Calvin's stay in Paris 
 was cut short by a very curious incident. Nicholas 
 Cop had been elected rector of the Sorbonne, and 
 according to custom had to inaugurate his tenure of 
 office by a sermon on All Saints' day. Cop was a 
 friend of Calvin, had imbibed something of his views, 
 and rashly accepted Calvin's offer to compose his dis- 
 course for him. Great was the astonishment and dis- 
 may of the doctors, instead of the time-honoured defence 
 of the faith and denunciation of heretics, to hear 
 from a chief seat of orthodoxy, in the Mathurins' 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 175 
 
 church, an unsparing onslaught on the merit of good 
 works, and a fervent and lucid vindication of the Lutheran 
 tenet of justification hy faith only. An attack so auda- 
 cious could not he overlooked. Cop had to fly in- 
 stantly to Switzerland. Calvin's share in the business 
 became known, or, at least, suspected, and " the parlia- 
 ment was glad of the opportunity which at last offered 
 for arresting him. Warned in time, 'he escaped,' as 
 Desmay relates, 'by a window, and ran to the St. 
 Victor suburb, to a vinedresser's, and changed his 
 clothes there.' Meanwhile the famous criminal lieu- 
 tenant, Jean Morin, was searching his papers, which 
 betrayed the names of several of his adherents. The 
 greater part of them, like himself, were obliged to 
 flee." — Bungener, p. 28. 
 
 This was in 1533. The affair however was, by the 
 good offices of Margaret of Valois, allowed in time to 
 drop; and after passing some time at her court at 
 Nerac, Calvin in 1535 returned to Paris. The imme- 
 diate occasion of his journey seems to have been to 
 accept a challenge from Michael Servetus to dispute 
 with him respecting the doctrine of the Trinity. Ser- 
 vetus had published at Hagenau, in 1531, his work 
 "De Trinitatis erroribus," and in the year following 
 his "Dialogorum de Trinitate Libri Duo." He had 
 been for some j^ears engaged in maintaining his positions 
 on this mysterious doctrine against the leading Protes- 
 tant Divines ; and his selection of Calvin for an opponent 
 is one amongst several proofs of the leading position 
 which that Keformer was by this time acquiring. 
 Servetus, whether from fear of his opponent, or, as is 
 
176 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 more likely, of the Sorbonne, did not appear to take up 
 his gage; and the two did not meet until Servetus 
 some twenty years afterwards rashly placed himself in 
 Calvin's power at Geneva. 
 
 Calvin's stay at Paris this time was but short. Perse- 
 cution, suspended or greatly mitigated for a time, broke 
 out again with fresh violence. It was, indeed, pro- 
 voked by the imprudence of the Reformers. They had 
 been let alone on the understanding that they would 
 keep tolerably quiet. This condition the hot spirits 
 among them neither could nor would observe. Speech 
 being interdicted, they carried on the war against 
 Popery by anonymous tracts and handbills. Morning 
 by morning the streets were found placarded with 
 little stinging theological squibs. On Oct. 18, 1535, 
 they went so far as to post copies of " True Articles on 
 the horrible and great abuses of the Papal Mass " on 
 the walls of the Louvre, and even on the doors of the 
 king's chamber. This violent and indecent proceeding 
 is believed to have been mainly concocted by Farel, 
 afterwards Calvin's leading ally in Switzerland. The 
 consequences of it were terrible to the Protestants, and 
 even fatal to their interests in France. The king, 
 already irritated by their troublesomeness, seized at 
 once the advantage thus given him against them, and 
 hastened to respond to the exhortations of the Papal 
 partisans. By way of extinguishing the ill odour he 
 had contracted amongst Churchmen through allying 
 himself with the German Protestants, the heretic King 
 of England, and even " the Grand Turk," he broke out 
 at once with merciless rigour upon the unhappy Pro- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 177 
 
 testants of Paris. " On the 29th of January, 1535, a 
 splendid procession issued from the church of St. Ger- 
 main l'Auxerrois. That host which the Reformers out- 
 raged by persisting in calling it bread, was carried under 
 a canopy, borne by the four chief dignitaries of the 
 realm, the Dauphin, and the dukes of Orleans, Yen- 
 dome, and Angouleme. The king walked behind, 
 bareheaded, with a torch in his hand, as if to make 
 expiation for the kingdom. After mass, which was 
 magnificently celebrated at St. Genevieve's, the king 
 repaired to the episcopal palace, seated himself upon a 
 throne prepared in the great hall, and surrounded by 
 the clergy, and the nobility and parliament in their 
 red robes, declared his intention of granting neither 
 peace nor truce to him who should separate from the 
 religion of the State. ' He had seen,' he said, ' the 
 offence committed against the King of kings by the 
 pestilent wickedness of those who would molest and 
 destroy the French monarchy.' He was above all in- 
 dignant that his good city of Paris, ' from time imme- 
 morial the head and pattern of all good Christians,' 
 had not been sheltered from that pestilence ; and, said 
 he, ' it would be very absurd in us if we did not 
 confound and extirpate these malignants, as far as in 
 us lies.' He enjoined upon all to denounce whoever 
 should belong to the malignants, even though a relative 
 or a brother. Finally, ' As for me, who am your king, 
 if I knew that one of my members was tainted or 
 infected with this detestable error, not only would I 
 give it you to lop it off, but if I were to perceive one 
 of my children infected, I would sacrifice him myself.' 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Philip II., therefore, who later on was to say as much, 
 did but repeat Francis I. And the same day, by way 
 of beginning, six fires, in six different parts of the 
 town, consumed six men, taken almost indiscriminately 
 from amongst those whom the king had just devoted to 
 death. One only was decidedly- more guilty than the 
 rest, Antoine de la Force, the host and friend of Calvin. 
 But the stake was not enough — must not the punish- 
 ment, like the solemnity, be novel and extraordinary ? 
 The condemned, fastened to a long swinging beam, 
 were to be plunged into the flames, then withdrawn, 
 then plunged again, and then withdrawn once more. 
 The king of Frarice, like the ferocious Roman emperor, 
 had wished that his victims should feel "themselves die, 
 and, moreover, he had determined to behold their tor- 
 tures with his own eyes. As he returned to the Louvre 
 he passed the six fires in succession ; six times he saw 
 the abominable swing at work, but he did not succeed 
 in detecting any weakness or regret in the martyrs." — 
 Bungener, pp. 36 — 38. 
 
 From these horrors Calvin fled to Basle, and there 
 made or renewed acquaintance with the leading Re- 
 formers — Capito, (Ecolampadius, Bucer, Grynseus, and 
 others. Here he continued about a year, and here he 
 published the first edition of the great work on which 
 his fame as an author and theologian in great part 
 rests, — The Institutes of the Christian Religion. The 
 earlier bibliographical history of the Institutes is in 
 many respects uncertain and disputed. It cannot be 
 determined, e. g. whether the work was originally 
 written in Latin or in French, whether it appeared 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 179 
 
 anonymously or not, or whether in 1535 or 1536. 
 The earliest extant edition is the Latin one of 1586, 
 But the Sorbonne had issued a special order that the 
 book should be burnt; and it is probable that this 
 policy was so far successful as to have annihilated a 
 French edition of 1535. The Institutes as thus given to 
 the world were by no means the lengthy and elaborate 
 work which we now have under the name. They 
 were as yet little more than a manual or catechism, in 
 which was systematically set forth the faith of those 
 whom Calvin saw persecuted and defamed. It con- 
 sisted of six chapters only, entitled respectively, " Of 
 the Law," " Of Faith," " Of Prayer," " Of the Sacra- 
 ments," " Of the Romish Sacraments," " Of Christian 
 Liberty." Yet though thus of no great bulk, it was 
 by far the most complete, comprehensive, and systematic 
 exhibition of Protestant doctrine that had yet been 
 seen ; and was welcomed with an unprecedented en- 
 thusiasm by those of the reformed persuasion through- 
 out Europe. Paulus Thurius, a Hungarian, salutes it 
 after the manner of the time thus : 
 
 " Prseter Apostolicas post Christi tempora chartas, 
 Huic peperere libro ssecula nulla parem." 
 
 The services thus rendered to his co-religionists by 
 Calvin are well indicated by M. Bungener : " Whether 
 calumniated or not, whether called or not to say 
 what they believed, the Reformed of France wished to 
 be able to say it to themselves, not only article by 
 article, which many could have done, but under the 
 more satisfactory and solid form of a system, and as 
 a whole. Not one of them had yet done or been 
 n 2 
 
180 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 able to do this. The success of the Institutes in every 
 Protestant country soon showed that the same need was 
 felt every where, even where the faith was already offi- 
 cially settled. They wanted something more and some- 
 thing better than a confession of faith. They expected 
 a book which should be a confession, but be accom- 
 panied by all that would be necessary to understand 
 and defend it. The Institutes was that book. It gave 
 to the new Church the definite feeling of its lawfulness, 
 its rights, and its strength. By that clear and concise 
 exposition of apostolic Christianity, that vigorous ap- 
 peal to Scripture, and that haughty firmness in tracing 
 the limits between human traditions and revealed truths, 
 Calvin, in some sort, sealed with God's seal all that the 
 Reformed faith had done, and started it in its new 
 confidence towards the conquests which offered them- 
 selves to its zeal." — Bungener, p. 45. 
 
 The Institutes, thus auspiciously launched, ran through 
 many editions; and Calvin for nearly a quarter of a 
 century was more or less occupied in revising, per- 
 fecting, and expanding them. The first edition, as we 
 have said, contained six chapters only. The next, that 
 of Strasburg, bearing date 1539, numbered seventeen ; 
 that of 1543 has twenty-one ; that of 1559 counts no 
 less than eighty-four. There were, moreover, very 
 many intermediate editions. Of the design of this 
 great work, we must be content to say that it may be 
 conceived as the application to dogmatic theology of 
 the cardinal principle of Justification by Faith only, 
 and the development of that principle in reference to 
 the standing of the human soul as before the three 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 .181 
 
 several Fersons of the Blessed Trinity ; and, lastly, of 
 the relations of the soid to its fellows and equals in the 
 Communion of the Church. Hence in its final shape 
 the Institutes consisted of four great parts or books 
 treating, as M. Bungener describes, of " The knowledge 
 of God and of His creative work ; of Jesus Christ and 
 of His redeeming work ; of the Holy Ghost and of His 
 regenerating work ; and, finally, of the Church, the 
 Body of Christ, the depository of the means of grace 
 and salvation." 
 
 Considered as the production of a young man of six 
 and twenty the Institutes, even in the imperfect and 
 rudimentary state in which they first appeared, have 
 been probably to this day unmatched both in weight of 
 matter and in excellence of style. Neither must we 
 suppose that the fullest and latest edition contained 
 any kind of a retractation or cancelling of what had 
 appeared in the first, nor even any thing in the nature 
 of new principles subsequently discovered and inserted. 
 The smaller book was in germ and outline what the 
 larger and later ones were in elaborate and expanded 
 detail. Nothing that appeared in 1535 had been with- 
 drawn in 1559, with the one significant exception of 
 some strong passages on religious toleration, which the 
 man who had done Servetus to death could not for 
 shame's sake allow to stand ; but all was symmetrically 
 and gradually unfolded, furnished with new illustra- 
 tions, arguments, and applications, and eventually re- 
 modelled. We are not aware, indeed, that Calvin 
 during his whole life ever, strictly speaking, retracted 
 any thing he had once deliberately said or written. 
 
182 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 His way was to' think his subject-matter out with the 
 utmost power of his mind ere he put it forth ; and once 
 parted from him, it might acquire indeed new con- 
 firmation and receive uses at first undreamed of, but 
 remained for ever to its author at least as true to the 
 last as it had been from the first. The cream of the 
 Institutes was, however, for the time found in the 
 preface, which was addressed to Francis I. This 
 striking composition formed the first great public act 
 of Calvin's life; the first open assumption of a lead 
 which was afterwards so readily and all but universally 
 conceded to him by those of his party. Not without 
 reason has Mr. Dyer, Calvin's ablest English bio- 
 grapher, ranked this as one of the three most famous 
 prefaces which the world has ever seen, that of Ca- 
 saubon to Polybius, and of De Thou to his History, 
 being the other two. The preface was, in fact, a formal 
 apology for the reformed faith and its adherents ; and 
 an indignant and even bitter remonstrance with the 
 king of France on his cruelties towards them. " It has 
 often been quoted as the first piece of literary eloquence 
 possessed by the French tongue ; but to the Reformed 
 it was not only the most eloquent pleading till then 
 written in their behalf, it was the model, and, as it 
 were, the programme of all the apologies they would 
 have to write ; and, in fact, even at the present day the 
 order followed by Calvin is that to which recourse is 
 constantly had. The author's name was soon in every 
 mouth, and unanimous testimonies of gratitude and ad- 
 miration sought him out in his retreat at Basle. The 
 Institutes had the success of every book called forth by 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 183 
 
 serious aspirations, giving a local habitation and a 
 name to the thoughts which people the air, saying 
 what every body thinks ; such a book is every body's 
 work, and every body is ready to praise it as his own. 
 Many, nevertheless, were alarmed at having thought 
 all this, and at being in their consciences accountable 
 for a revolution so radically complete. Logically they 
 could object nothing ; it was what indeed flowed from 
 principle, and no one could think of resisting the indo- 
 mitable reasoner. But, and that is what was done by 
 some timid ones, they could abandon the principle 
 itself; they could proclaim themselves enlightened by 
 the enormity of the consequences, and returned cor- 
 rected into the old Romish track. But if the Institutes 
 had this result in some, they became to many others 
 the torch which came to illumine their thick darkness, 
 the banner under which they were about to march, 
 blessing God for having at last granted them to know 
 where they were, and whither they were going." — 
 Bungener, pp. 64, 65. 
 
 From Basle Calvin proceeded to the court of Ferrara, 
 where the duchess Renee, daughter of Louis XII., king 
 of France, was friendly both to learning and to the 
 Reformation. As he was now a person of note, he 
 found it convenient to travel under an alias, and called 
 himself Charles d'Espeville. Not long afterwards he 
 launched the first Latin edition of the Institutes under 
 the name of Alcuin, concealing under this anagram 
 the true authorship, lest his name, already hated by the 
 adherents of the Papacy every where, should retard the 
 circulation of the book in Italy. From Ferrara he was 
 
184 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 driven by the remonstrances of the pope and the king 
 of France with the duke; and we find him next at 
 Noyon, where his oldest brother had died, devolving on 
 Calvin the family property. Calvin realized his effects, 
 and, accompanied by his younger brother and sister, 
 left his native town for ever. Returning to Basle late 
 in 1536 he had, in order to avoid the invading armies 
 of the Emperor, to take the circuitous route by Geneva, 
 a circumstance which changed all his after life. His 
 arrival was made known to Farel, who had succeeded 
 in winning over the little republic to a renunciation of 
 the Papacy, and an establishment by law of the re- 
 formed faith. 
 
 Dr. D'Aubigne" gives, as might be expected, a very 
 lengthy narrative of the troubles which terminated in 
 the emancipation of his native city from the yoke at 
 once of its prince bishops and of the pope. The politics 
 of Geneva for the first forty years or thereabouts of the 
 sixteenth century are indeed a curious and not un- 
 interesting study, exhibiting, as they do with much 
 completeness, the working on a very small scale of 
 those mighty political, social, and religious influences 
 which have so often in their struggles convulsed whole 
 nations and continents. But it is quite out of our 
 power to attempt any reproduction of Dr. D'Aubigne's 
 elaborate details. We must be content to indicate with 
 the utmost brevity the circumstances which led to the 
 ascendancy of protestant and republican principles at 
 Geneva. Dr. D'Aubigne gives, however, the etymology 
 of the much-disputed word Huguenot ; and his paragraph 
 and his authority on such a point are too remarkable to 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 185 
 
 be passed by. " The duke's party accosting the inde- 
 pendent Genevans, and gallicizing each in his own way 
 the German word Eidesgennossen (confederates), which 
 they could not pronounce, called after them Eidguenots, 
 Eignots, Eyguenots, Huguenots ! This word is met with 
 in the chronicles of the time written in different ways ; 
 Michel Roset, the most respectable of these authorities of 
 the sixteenth century, writes Hugenots ; we adopt that 
 form, because it is the only one that has passed into 
 our language. It is possible that the name of the 
 citizen, Besancon Hugues, who became the principal 
 leader of this party, may have contributed to the pre- 
 ference of this form over all the others. In any case 
 it must be remembered that until after the Reformation 
 this sobriquet had a purely political meaning, in no 
 respect religious, and designated simply the friends of 
 independence. Many years after, the enemies of the 
 protestants of France called them by this name, wishing 
 to stigmatize them, and impute to them a foreign, re- 
 publican, and heretical origin. Such is the true etymo- 
 logy of the word. It would be very strange if these two 
 denominations, which are really but one, had played so 
 great a part in the sixteenth century at Geneva and in 
 French protestantism, without having had any connexion 
 with one another. A little later, about Christmas, 1518, 
 when the cause of the alliance was more advanced, its use 
 became more general. The adherents of the duke had 
 no sooner started the nickname than their opponents, 
 repaying them in their own coin, called out, 'Hold 
 your tongues, you Mamelukes ! .... As the Mamelukes 
 have denied Christ to follow Mahomet, so you deny 
 
186 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 liberty and the public cause to put yourselves under a 
 tyranny.' At the head of these Mamelukes were some 
 forty rich tradesmen, men good enough at heart despite 
 their nickname, but they were men of business, who 
 feared that disturbances would diminish their gains. 
 The term Mamelukes put them into a great passion. 
 ' Yes,' continued the Huguenots, ' Sultan Selim con- 
 quered the Mamelukes last year in Egypt ; but it seems 
 that these slaves, when expelled from Cairo, took refuge 
 at Geneva. However, if you do not like the name . . . 
 stay, since you deliver up Geneva through avarice, we 
 will call you Judases !'" — D'Aubigne, pp. 118 — 120. 
 
 The Reformed faith had, indeed, found its way to 
 this city at an early date from the neighbouring Swiss 
 protestant churches which had been created by the 
 labours of Zuingle and his followers. The progress of 
 these doctrines had been at Geneva, as elsewhere, 
 greatly assisted by the ignorance and profligacy of the 
 clergy, and had likewise had a special advantage from 
 the treachery of the prince bishops, who engaged them- 
 selves in perpetual intrigues to betray the liberties of 
 the free city to the neighbouring and powerful dukes 
 of Savoy, of whom they were generally family con- 
 nexions. The last de facto bishop (Pierre de la Baume), 
 alarmed at the disaffection which his treachery and 
 misgovernment had caused, fled from the city and in a 
 manner like our own James II. abdicated in 1533. 
 For the rest we may conveniently borrow a few words 
 from Hooker, who gives, it will be remembered, a con- 
 cise account of the introduction of the Calvinistic dis- 
 cipline into Geneva by way of preface to his own great 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 187 
 
 work : " At the coming of Calvin thither the form of 
 their civil regiment was popular, as it continueth at 
 this day ; neither king, nor duke, nor nobleman of any 
 authority or power over them, but officers" (syndics) 
 " chosen by the people yearly out of themselves to 
 order all things with public consent. For spiritual 
 government they had no laws at all agreed on, but did 
 what the pastors of their souls could by persuasion win 
 them unto." — Hooker, Preface, ii. 1. In this state of 
 things Calvin " fell at the length upon Geneva ;" and 
 was straightway solicited by Farel to take up his abode 
 there, and to assist in organizing and consolidating the 
 still weak and unsettled Protestantism of the state. 
 
 Farel is too important a person both in himself and 
 in his relations to Calvin to allow of our omitting 
 to give some account of him. A Frenchman, like 
 Calvin, and some ten years his senior, he had in early 
 life been an ardent student; and by perusal of the 
 Bible had been led to the reflections which converted 
 him from an enthusiastic zealot for the pope into a no 
 less enthusiastic evangelist of Protestantism in its ex- 
 tremer forms. His zeal was from first to last uncom- 
 promising, violent, and restless ; he could not be quiet, 
 and was banished from France amongst the earliest 
 sufferers in the persecutions. He betook himself to 
 Basle, and there made himself an enemy, as he did 
 every where else, and one not absolutely unfriendly to 
 the cause of the Reformation, in the person of Erasmus. 
 This learned and clever man, like a vast number of 
 wise and thoughtful churchmen throughout western 
 Christendom, was convinced at once of the urgent 
 
188 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 necessity for an extensive reformation of the church, 
 and for the preservation, along with the reforms, of 
 ecclesiastical unity, apostolic discipline and govern- 
 ment, and catholic ritual. Such ideas were for a time 
 entertained by Calvin himself, as they were during a 
 large part of his course by Luther, and by Melancthon 
 perhaps to the very last. Calvin soon persuaded him- 
 self not only that truth and purity of doctrine are the 
 paramount considerations, but also of the much more 
 questionable assumption that these supreme blessings 
 were not to be hoped for without an utter subversion of 
 the ecclesiastical institutions of Christendom, and a re- 
 building of them afresh from the very foundations. 
 With characteristic thoroughness Calvin hated the 
 " temporizers " as much, if not more, than the " mass 
 priests " themselves. Farel in this, as in other things, 
 was quite one with him, and outvied him in coarseness 
 and violence. Farel stigmatized Erasmus as " Balaam ;" 
 and Erasmus retorted by nicknaming Farel, not with- 
 out a certain sly verisimilitude, " Phallicus." Erasmus 
 at length made Basle too hot for Farel, who retired to 
 Berne ; and at length in his crusading zeal found his 
 way to Geneva. " Au mois d'Octobre (1532) vint a, 
 Geneve un chetif malheureux predicant nomme Maitre 
 Guillaume," says the sister Jeanne de Jussie, who has 
 left an amusing account of the expulsion of the nuns 
 from the city. "A little man of mean appearance, 
 with a vulgar face, a narrow forehead, a pale but sun- 
 burnt complexion, and a chin on which appeared two 
 or three tufts of a red and ill-combed beard," is the 
 unattractive sketch given of him by Mr. Dyer. He made 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 189 
 
 his appearance, however, on a scene well suited for the 
 display of his remarkable character. The Genevese 
 were in full and open rebellion against their spiritual 
 and temporal rulers ; and had both from the reaction 
 against superstition and tyranny and from their natural 
 bent given way to a general licence of habits and 
 manners which loudly called for vigorous interference. 
 "Such was the city," says M. Bungencr, "or rather 
 the camp, which Farel wished to subject to all the 
 strictness of Gospel morality. Obstacles multiplied, 
 but Farel did not lose courage ; he felt himself bound 
 to struggle on to the last ; and if the work of God was 
 to go down at Geneva before the obstinacy of man, it 
 was the duty of the minister of God to uphold it until 
 the very last moment. Small of stature and in aspect 
 mean, — contemptible, as St. Paul said of himself, — before 
 the rebels he rose to the height of indignation and 
 faith. Their eyes were abased before him ; and though 
 murmurs attended him, it was from afar, and they were 
 to be hushed again the moment he turned round. In 
 the pulpit he was unsparing. His word rolled like 
 thunder ; and his invectives were showered down upon 
 those who despised the Gospel. He was rich in those 
 expressions which would now be called scarcely evan- 
 gelical, but which we might more justly call simply 
 unpolished, for nothing is more evangelical at bottom 
 than the indignation that armed him." — P. 99. FarePs 
 reckless zeal and physical energy had, however, effec- 
 tually prepared the way for the peculiar genius of 
 Calvin. The monuments of idolatry and superstition 
 had been destroyed root and branch, and with them, 
 
190 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 no doubt, many an innocent appendage of devotion and 
 of decency ; and the ascendancy of the reforming inte- 
 rest in the state had been secured and vindicated. But 
 the Romish party was yet strong, and had potent allies 
 outside the city walls. Farel had cleared the stage, 
 but could do nothing to replace what he had swept 
 away. He felt the arrival in Geneva of a man like 
 Calvin to be a godsend indeed, and was instant and im- 
 portunate on him to undertake the pastorate for which 
 himself had prepared the way. Calvin was reluctant, 
 and hung back; he pleaded his unfitness to grapple 
 with the turbulent populace of Geneva; he declared 
 himself best fitted to serve the good cause by his 
 writings ; he required Farel to let him go back to his 
 books. "Thy studies," said the zealot, "are a pretext! 
 I tell thee that if thou refusest to associate thyself with 
 my work, God will curse thee for having sought thyself 
 and not Christ." It was, as Calvin said, " as if God 
 from on high had stretched out His hand to stop me." 
 And so Calvin was prevailed on to take up his abode at 
 Geneva; and was named at first a "teacher in theo- 
 logy," and soon afterwards regularly appointed by the 
 magistrates to the ministry. 
 
 Calvin was not a man to be second where he gained 
 standing at all. Farel's ruder and more boisterous 
 nature fell at once into the second place ; and in what 
 it subsequently effected at Geneva, did simply as Calvin 
 planned for it. Calvin at once began with characteristic 
 resolution and thoroughness to order and settle every 
 thing in church and commonwealth. The Genevese 
 populace had been noted for its gaiety, fickleness, and 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 191 
 
 licentiousness, qualities which had been quite as much 
 humoured as subdued by the capricious government of 
 the prince bishops ; who, so long as their revenues and 
 dignity were respected, and the outward observances of 
 religion kept up, had left their subjects to do much as 
 they pleased. Calvin saw " how needful bridles were 
 to be put in the jaws of such a city," and " how dan- 
 gerous it was that the whole estate of that church 
 should hang still on so slender a thread as the liking of 
 an ignorant multitude is, if it have power to change 
 whatsoever itself listeth. "Wherefore, taking unto him 
 two of the other ministers" (Farel and Courault) "for 
 more countenance of the action (albeit the rest were all 
 against it), they moved and in the end persuaded with 
 much ado the people (July 1537) to bind themselves 
 by solemn oaths, — first, never to admit the Papacy 
 amongst them again; and, secondly, to live in obe- 
 dience unto such orders concerning the exercise of their 
 religion and the form of their ecclesiastical government 
 as those their true and faithful ministers of God's word 
 had agreeably to Scripture set down for that end and 
 purpose." — Hooker, Preface, ii. 1. These "orders" 
 were embodied in a code of " Articles of Church Go- 
 vernment," which in effect reduced Geneva ffo a theo- 
 cracy. These institutions were at a later period drawn 
 out into a much completer form, and carried into far 
 more detailed application. Reserving our description 
 of them therefore for the present, we follow the history 
 of Calvin's pastorate. This, with its rigorous and search- 
 ing application of discipline, soon became very burden- 
 some to the light-hearted and frolicsome Genevese. 
 
192 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 " The syndics and the council of Geneva seem for a time 
 to be new men, and Calvin's adversaries are obliged to 
 acknowledge at least the perfect impartiality which pre- 
 sides at the infliction of the penalties. One of the first 
 punished is a counsellor, Ami Curtet ; another a citizen 
 of high station, Matthieu Manlich. An obstinate 
 gambler is set in the stocks for an hour, with his 
 playing cards hung round his neck. The author of a 
 base masquerade is condemned to ask pardon on his 
 knees in the cathedral. A man guilty of perjury was 
 hoisted up on a ladder, and remained there several 
 hours, with his right hand fastened to the top. An 
 adulterer and his accomplice were ignominiously paraded 
 through the town. A woman who made head-dresses 
 was condemned to two days' imprisonment for having 
 immodestly decked out a young bride. Some parents 
 were punished for having neglected or refused to send 
 their children to school." — Bungener, p. 112. 
 
 " When these things," as Hooker says, " began to be 
 put in ure, the people also (which causes moving them 
 thereunto themselves best know) began to repent them 
 of what they had done, and irefully to champ upon the 
 bit they had taken into their mouths." Murmurs and 
 discontent ensued, and were either sternly suppressed 
 or contemptuously disregarded by the resolute pastors. 
 The disaffected appealed to Berne, where the Reforma- 
 tion had been carried out in somewhat less unsparing 
 fashion. At Berne the Eucharist was administered 
 with unleavened bread ; the fonts were left and used in 
 the churches ; Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Lady 
 Day were observed ; and last, but in the judgment of 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 193 
 
 the gay Gcncvcsc by no means least, brides came to 
 church, perhaps we ought rather to say to " meeting," in 
 flowing tresses. The discipline and ceremonial of Berne 
 furnished a convenient cry for the disaffected in Geneva 
 to take up. They soon formed a distinct party, were 
 stigmatized by the stricter sort as the Libertines, and 
 they found many friends amongst the leading men in 
 the state. 
 
 The Bernese watched with no little anxiety the 
 growing heart-burnings and disorders amongst their 
 neighbours. Berne was a leading state in Switzerland ; 
 it was mainly through her support that Geneva had 
 held her own against the dukes of Savoy, the prince 
 bishops, and the popes; the Bernese magistrates 
 naturally expected to be listened to about the matters 
 in dispute, and they interposed their good offices, re- 
 commending Calvin and his colleagues to make some 
 little concessions. Nothing of the kind, however, would 
 Calvin and Farel listen to ; and they remained obsti- 
 nate even when a Synod of the Protestant churches 
 held at Lausanne had decided on general conformity to 
 the usages of Berne, and the civil magistrates of Geneva 
 had resolved, as became them, on compliance. As Easter 
 Sunday drew near, Calvin and Farel not only declined 
 to use the prescribed unleavened bread, but even to 
 administer the Communion to their backsliding flocks 
 at all. The magistrates retorted by prohibiting them 
 from preaching, an order which the pastors so flagrantly 
 trampled under foot as to mount their pulpits on Easter 
 Day, and to inveigh bitterly against both the dissolute- 
 ness of the people and the supineness of the rulers in 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 enforcing discipline. M. Bungener, with a want of 
 impartiality which is unhappily too common in his 
 book, suppresses all mention of the prohibition of the 
 magistrates, which certainly is very important as an 
 explanation of their next step. The daring rebellion 
 of the pastors was such as could not be overlooked. 
 Next day sentence of banishment was passed, and Calvin 
 and Farel had to quit Geneva within three days. " So 
 be it," said Calvin ; " it is better to obey God than 
 man." 
 
 These words, and indeed the whole business, are very 
 characteristic and significant. One might have sup- 
 posed that a man of Calvin's discernment would have 
 made little of the trifles round which the whole quarrel 
 revolved. But this is only one amongst many proofs 
 which those times furnish, that ceremonies were not by 
 the Reformers regarded as they are by us. " Ro- 
 manism," as M. Bungener remarks, " had so ruled by 
 ceremonies and forms, that it was scarce possible to 
 retain any of them, and especially to return to any 
 of them, without seeming to restore it more or less, and 
 seeking to do so altogether." Calvin also thought, and 
 probably with reason, that the Libertines rather took 
 these matters up as pretexts than found in them the 
 real grounds of their hostility. Explain it as we may, 
 certain it is that Calvin risked the very existence 
 of that civil and ecclesiastical polity on which his 
 heart and mind were fixed in order to maintain points 
 like these. He hazarded his own personal success in 
 life, rejected the authority of the other sister Pro- 
 testant churches, and braved the scandal to the cause 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 195 
 
 of the Reformation which the sudden and conspicuous 
 overthrow of the Genevan institutions caused, for the 
 sake of shearing off the hride's tresses, and making 
 people work on Christmas Day ! He would compromise 
 nothing, concede nothing, and retract nothing. It is 
 important to note that on his own principles he could 
 not do so. Puritanism has many close and subtle affi- 
 nities with Popery ; and M. Bungener parries Romish 
 attacks against Calvin's ordinances at Geneva by a very 
 successful " tu quoque," based upon the equally minute 
 and vexatious regulations of the Holy Father at Rome. 
 The childish preciseness of such governments, and the 
 stolid tenacity with which frivolous details are insisted 
 on by them, are only intelligible on the principle on 
 which Calvin spoke when he declared he would " obey 
 God rather than man ;" and left the Genevan church 
 to its fate rather than bate a jot or a tittle of his sump- 
 tuary and ceremonial precepts. In the very spirit of 
 the old Roman Metellus, " de civitate decedere maluit 
 quam de sententia," and he did so in the persuasion, we 
 may not doubt an honest one, that these things were 
 part of the law of God, against whose statutes no 
 exception must be taken. Religionists of this sort, — 
 the Romanist from his theory of an earthly organ of 
 infallibihty, — the Puritan from his notion that the Bible 
 must be the rule to direct all things, " even so far as 
 the taking up of a rush or a straw" (Cartwright, 
 quoted by Hooker, ii. 1, 2), — see no degrees in duties 
 enjoined by the spiritual authority. To surrender the 
 merest iota of what is in fact the very commandment 
 of God is the rankest impiety; to resist it, rebellion 
 o 2 
 
196 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 against Heaven ; to tamper with it, the most daring 
 presumption. The very thought that what God wills 
 should not be done, or but half done, is a thorn in the 
 side which suffers the saint to have no rest. Impedi- 
 ments of circumstances are but trials of faith, which 
 must succumb before those who bear with them the 
 commission of God. If men are not pleased or suited 
 by what Heaven enacts for them, so much the worse for 
 men. It is not to be expected that those appointed to 
 carry out the will of God can stoop to regard human 
 expediencies or mundane convenience. On such prin- 
 ciples and in such a spirit Calvin laid down and imposed 
 his beloved church discipline and polity. Such, too, 
 was the tone and temper of our own Puritans, the 
 legitimate followers of Calvin. " Whatsoever is not in 
 the word of God is not of faith ; and whatsoever is not 
 of faith is sin." Hence it must be that the Bible con- 
 tains all needful directions for church matters ; what is 
 not found in it is sin, what is found in it is a command- 
 ment of God. It only needs to take one step further — 
 to us certainly a very long one, but to Calvin a very 
 sure one — and to convince ourselves that the Genevan 
 regimen is demonstrable in every part from Scripture, 
 and then we acquire at once an indefeasible sanction for 
 every detail of it. Calvin and his colleagues undoubt- 
 edly saw in their ecclesiastical state the new Jerusalem 
 come down from above. They could not suffer a hostile 
 finger to be laid so much as on the skirts of one of the 
 least of her ministers, nor a stone to be displaced from 
 her battlements, which were the Lord's. Magistrates 
 and councils could not make and unmake God's laws at 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 197 
 
 pleasure. The municipal bodies, it is true, had esta- 
 blished the doctrine and discipline at Geneva ; but they 
 had not therefore the right to subvert them. The 
 majority which had voted the Ecclesiastical Articles 
 was a christian majority, acting according to the will of 
 God, and therefore to be honoured and obeyed. The 
 numbers who two years afterwards cancelled what they 
 had previously enjoined formed an infidel and immoral 
 majority, which stood self-condemned by its very act. 
 Calvin shook off the dust from his feet, and left Geneva 
 to the wrath of God. 
 
 At first the recreant Genevese had a keen sensation 
 of relief, and utterly declined to listen to the interces- 
 sion of the good-natured Bernese municipality, which 
 as usual strove to make peace, to procure the abro- 
 gation of the new ceremonies, and to bring about the 
 recall of the banished pastors. Calvin accordingly 
 proceeded to Strasburg, then a free city, which had for 
 the time embraced the cause of the Reformation, and 
 which afforded a safe asylum for the persecuted Pro- 
 testants of various countries. Here he received an 
 appointment as Professor of Theology, and pastor of a 
 small flock of French Protestant refugees. He con- 
 tinued at Strasburg three years, — years which were im- 
 portant ones in his life in many ways. He made, in 
 the comparative leisure he now enjoyed, the most con- 
 siderable of the many additions which one after another 
 swelled the Institutes to their present dimensions. 
 Especially did the edition of 1539 contain a developed 
 exhibition of his ideas on church government, a topic 
 to which his thoughts had naturally been more than 
 
198 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ever before directed. He gave to the world in the 
 same year his Commentary on the Romans, the first of 
 a long and very important series of exegetical works, 
 which we must not fail to notice more particularly 
 in the sequel. He took part, with other leading Re- 
 formers, in negotiations held under the auspices of the 
 Emperor at Diets held at Worms and at Ratisbon; 
 which negotiations in the end proved abortive, though 
 carried on to some length, and holding out hopes at 
 one time of reuniting tbe severed communities of 
 christians, Papal and Protestant. And last, and we 
 fear from Calvin's point of view we must say least, he 
 took a wife. The transactions connected with his mar- 
 riage have altogether a curious and characteristic air, 
 suggesting irresistibly that Calvin suffered himself to 
 be over-persuaded in the matter, as Hooker did, by his 
 friends. Calvin was advised that a wife would be the 
 best possible nurse for him, would make him more com- 
 fortable, and prolong his life. So he commissioned his 
 friends to procure for him the article they described ; 
 and stated without reserve his wants to Farel amongst 
 others, " Remember, what I desire above all to find is a 
 help-meet. I am not, thou knowest, one of those lovers 
 who adore even the defects of the woman of whom they 
 are enamoured. The only beauty that can please my 
 heart is one that is gentle, chaste, modest, economical, 
 patient, and, finally, careful of her husband's health." 
 Various negotiations were set on foot by his friends, of 
 one of which another letter to Farel gives some curious 
 particulars. "I was offered a lady who was young, 
 rich, of noble birth, and whose dower much surpassed 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 199 
 
 all that I can desire. Two things, however, urged me 
 to refuse : she does not know French, and it seems to 
 me she must be rather proud of her birth and education. 
 Her brother, of rare piety, and blinded by his friend- 
 ship so as to forget his own interests, pressed me to 
 accept, and his wife joined her solicitations to his. 
 What was I to do ? I should have been compelled, if 
 the Lord had not extricated me. I answer that I ac- 
 cept if she will, on her part, undertake to learn our 
 tongue. She asks for time to reflect; and I imme- 
 diately commission my brother, with one of my friends, 
 to go and ask for me the hand of another person, who 
 will bring me, without a fortune, a dowry good enough, 
 if her qualities answer to what is said of them. If, as 
 I hope, my proposal is accepted, the marriage will not 
 be delayed beyond the 10th of March (1540), and all my 
 desire is that thou shouldst come and bless our union." — 
 Bungener, p. 158. This project was not realized. Some 
 details respecting his betrothed, which came to Calvin's 
 knowledge, obliged him to withdraw his promise ; and 
 some months afterwards he seems much discouraged. " I 
 have not found yet," he writes to Farel. " "Would it 
 not be wiser to give up my search?" At length the 
 disinterested efforts made on his behalf were crowned 
 with success. " He found at last what he sought. An 
 Anabaptist, John Storder, who was brought back by 
 him to the Gospel, had died shortly after, leaving a 
 widow and orphans. She was called Idelette, Idelette 
 de Bure or Van Buren, from the name of a small town 
 of Guelderland. Bucer knew her; he had seen her 
 excellent and admirable qualities still further developed 
 
200 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 by the burdens and responsibilities of widowhood. He 
 spoke of her to Calvin, and Calvin's choice was fixed. 
 She brought him as her dower serious piety, watchful 
 tenderness, and a soul equal to every sacrifice." — 
 Bungener, p. 159. 
 
 Though not disposed to flinch from the least of his 
 demands, yet it was plain from the first that Calvin's 
 regrets turned back to Geneva. Scarce three months 
 of his banishment had expired when we find him in- 
 diting a stirring epistle to " his well-beloved brethren 
 in the Lord who are the relics of the dispersion of the 
 Church of Geneva." He defends vigorously his own 
 conduct; he animates his faithful adherents to sted- 
 fastness ; he shows that it was undoubtedly Satan who 
 had "employed the malice" of his opponents "as an 
 instrument of war against the Church ;" he prophesies 
 that all their ways will be seen "evidently to tend 
 to confusion." These predictions were soon verified. 
 Calvin's departure had left every thing in the little 
 state at sixes and sevens. All the institutions — civil, 
 social, and ecclesiastical, had been grouped round him 
 as their centre and mainspring ; and his absence disorga- 
 nized every thing. The example of successful resistance 
 to authority had also proved, as might be expected, a 
 fruitful one. The magistrates could not enforce the 
 laws. All was laxity, powerlessness, and anarchy. 
 The Papal and reactionist faction, which had been re- 
 duced by sentences of death and banishment but never 
 quite rooted out, revived, and became energetic and 
 progressive in the city. Some few retrograded openly 
 to Romanism. The expelled Bishop began to meditate 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 201 
 
 a reoccupation of his episcopal palace. Cardinal Sa- 
 dolet, a dexterous politician, an elegant scholar, and 
 amongst the most skilful controversialists of his party, 
 penned at the Pope's suggestion a letter to the senate 
 and people of Geneva, in which he set forth their 
 present disorders and sufferings as the sad results of 
 disobedience to ancient authority and of revolt from the 
 safe fold of the church. He pointed to a return as the 
 only assured refuge. The letter received a polite ac- 
 knowledgment, but no further response from the Ge- 
 nevese. Calvin, however, from Strasburg flew to the 
 rescue, and penned for bis former flock an answer to 
 Sadolet so keen, thorough, and effective as to close the 
 controversy at once. Tbe effect of this success at 
 Geneva was marked; and it stimulated a reaction, 
 already setting in, in favour of Calvin and his system. 
 " Neither reply nor attempt at reply was made, that we 
 know of, to this answer of Calvin's. It soon ran 
 through Europe. Luther enjoyed it thoroughly. He 
 realized all the power and promise of a controversy 
 conducted with so much ease, frankness, and vivacity. 
 ' Here is a writing,' he said, ' which has hands and 
 feet. I rejoice that God raises up such men. They 
 will continue what I have begun against Antichrist, 
 and with tbe help of God they will finish it.' When 
 Sadolet received the epistle he may also have received, 
 at the same time, some details upon the effects it bad 
 produced at Geneva. In the first place, there was tbe 
 satisfaction always felt on reading a work which says 
 precisely what a man would have said of himself, had 
 he known how to say it : then there was the joy of the 
 
202 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 victory, for the victory over Sadolet was evident and 
 incontestable ; and as victory always draws after it the 
 undecided, it was the joy of all, or nearly all. In many 
 it was easily transformed by Calvin's friends into grati- 
 tude ; they dared say publicly there was no one like 
 him for such services. They re-perused the eloquent 
 apology, which he made in passing, for his ministry at 
 Geneva, and they allowed themselves to be moved by 
 words so true and noble : ' Though discharged for the 
 present from the administration of the Church of Geneva, 
 nevertheless this cannot deprive me of bearing towards 
 her a paternal love and charity; towards her, I say, 
 over whom God once ordained me, and so has obliged 
 me for ever to keep faith and loyalty with her.' " — 
 Bungener, pp. 145, 146. 
 
 Calvin's leading opponents at the same time dis- 
 credited themselves by intriguing with the potentates 
 whose territories encircled Geneva, and who were 
 always on the watch for an opportunity of annexing 
 this little free state. This sort of treachery as it was 
 most dangerous, so it was most hateful to the Genevese ; 
 and the doubts to which repeated examples of it gave 
 rise as to the patriotism of the Libertines did much to 
 complete the reaction in Calvin's favour, and to esta- 
 blish the preponderating influence he eventually ac- 
 quired. In 1540 the council charged Amy Perrin " to 
 find means to bring back Master Calvin." Calvin, 
 however, was in no haste ; he pleaded his engagements 
 in Germany, his students, and his flock at Strasburg ; he 
 professed disinclination to face again the agitation and 
 opposition which his past experience told him must be 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 203 
 
 expected at Geneva. As Calvin hung back, the Genc- 
 vese of course became more urgent. They passed re- 
 peated resolutions in amusing variety on the absorbing 
 topic of his return in all their various assemblies. The 
 smaller council on October 13th resolves "to write a 
 letter to Monsieur Calvin to pray that he woidd assist 
 us." The Council of Two Hundred on October 19th 
 determines, "in order that the honour and glory of 
 God may be promoted, to seek all possible means to 
 have Master Caulvin as preacher." On October 20th in 
 the General Council it was ordered " to send to Stras- 
 burg to fetch Master Jean Calvinus, who is very learned, 
 to be minister in this city." Circular letters were 
 written to the governments of Zurich, Berne, and Basle 
 requesting their good offices; Farel was instigated to 
 write characteristically to the coy exile ; Bucer threatened 
 him with the afflicting judgments of God if he turned 
 a deaf ear longer to importunity. At last Calvin gave 
 way, but only in August, 1541. 
 
 " On the 19th of August it was decided to send and 
 fetch him. On the 22nd, thirty-six crowns were allotted 
 to ' Eustache Vincent, our mounted herald, to go and 
 fetch Master Calvin.' The 29th, it was resolved that 
 he shall be lodged ' in the house now occupied by the 
 minister Bernard, to whom another will be given.' 
 The 30th, a letter was written to the Council of Neu- 
 chatel, in order that Farel might be authorized to 
 accompany his friend as far as Geneva. The 4th of 
 September, it was resolved to lodge Calvin in the house 
 called the Chantry, before the cathedral. The 9th, 
 there was another change ; he is to have given him 
 
204 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ' the house of the lord of Freyneville.' Two councillors 
 are commissioned to install him there, seeing that ' he 
 is to be here this evening.' At length on the 13th, 
 ' Master J ean Calvin is arrived from Strasburg, and has 
 excused himself in detail for the long tarrying which 
 he made.' .... 
 
 "Other details have been found in the registers. 
 Thus, on the 20th of September, 'Ordered, that cloth 
 be bought to make him a gown ;' and a few days after, 
 ' The treasurer was ordered to disburse for Master 
 Calvin's gown, including cloth and fur, eight crowns.' 
 On the 4th of October, ' Salary of Master Calvin, who 
 is a man of great learning, and favourable to the re- 
 storation of the Christian churches, and is exposed to 
 heavy expenses from strangers who come this way. 
 Whereupon it was resolved that he should have for 
 wages yearly five hundred florins, twelve measures of 
 wheat, and two casks of wine.' Five hundred florins 
 represented then about three thousand francs, or a 
 hundred and twenty pounds at the present day. 
 
 " The house of the lord of Freyneville was a house 
 which had been formerly sold by the state to that 
 nobleman, who was originally from Picardy. Having 
 left Geneva, he was desirous of selling it, and the 
 council had decided on repurchasing it. Calvin, how- 
 ever, for what reasons we know not, did not enter it 
 till two years afterwards, and was located during those 
 two years in a house close by, formerly the property of 
 the abbot of Bonmont, Aime de Gingins. Both were 
 in the Rue des Chanoines, and corresponded one to the 
 present number eleven, the other to number thirteen. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 205 
 
 Smaller than the houses which have replaced them, 
 each of them had a small garden at the hack ; on the 
 same side the view extended over the terraced roofs of 
 the city, which rose one above another, like the steps of 
 a ladder, and included in the far distance the lake and 
 its shores, the district of Vaud, and the wooded slopes 
 of the Jura."— Bungener, pp. 166, 167. 
 
 Thus did the grateful and obsequious citizens show 
 their love and zeal for their returned pastor and master ; 
 thus was he, as Beza says, "received with so extra- 
 ordinary zeal by that poor people, famishing to hear 
 their faithful pastor, that they took no rest till he was 
 fixed there for ever." 
 
 Calvin's time was now come for realizing those ideas 
 of Church and State which his experiences at Geneva 
 and his reflections during the comparative leisure of 
 Strasburg had led him to form. Those ideas may be 
 found in the fourth book of the Institutes. Even 
 before he set foot in Geneva on his recall, he had made 
 representations to the council of the necessity for " some 
 scheme of discipline agreeable to the word of God and 
 the practice of the primitive church ;" and had com- 
 municated his views in outline. No sooner was he 
 fairly reinstated in his office, than he requested the 
 council to name delegates to confer with him and his 
 brother ministers on the whole subject. Calvin's own 
 proposals were, of course, adopted almost without modi- 
 fication, and were finally voted by the General As- 
 sembly of the citizens on January 2nd, 1542, from 
 which day accordingly the regular and legal establish- 
 ment of the Calvinistic republic must date. 
 
206 
 
 CKITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 The utter subversion of the ancient regime, both 
 ecclesiastical and civil, had left a fair and open field 
 for Calvin's institutions. These, whilst preserving as 
 regards state matters a certain continuity with the old 
 system, amounted in truth to little else than a complete 
 reorganization of church and state, and a reorganization 
 which adapted the latter to the purposes of the former. 
 Calvin's political reforms need not be described. Their 
 purport was direct and plain. They aimed at reducing 
 the power of the democratic element in the constitution ; 
 for Calvin was a thorough aristocrat, and had moreover 
 had already painful experience of the fickleness of 
 popular favour. The government of the state was car- 
 ried on by various councils one within the other, and 
 all eventually controlled by the general body of the 
 citizens, from which they derived their authority and 
 received their election. By making the meetings of 
 the General Assembly very rare, and limiting the busi- 
 ness of them to such as might be brought forward 
 from the smaller or ordinary council, Calvin practically 
 concentrated the power of government in the hands of 
 the latter. The ordinary council consisted of twenty- 
 five members. It consisted of the four syndics annually 
 elected, the four outgoing syndics, and other elected 
 members ; over the choice of whom, however, the council 
 itself possessed such control as to make it in large 
 measure self- elected, and practically to reduce the 
 government to an oligarchy. The executive functions 
 belonged entirely to this body ; and from the duties 
 assigned to it in preparing the business for the larger 
 councils of Sixty, Two Hundred, and the General As- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 207 
 
 sembly, it had in fact the judicial and legislative powers 
 too. This ordinary council was by Calvin's regulations 
 closely connected with the ecclesiastical authorities, and 
 was thus the instrument through which the whole 
 government assumed a theocratic tone. As to the 
 church : " There are four orders or kinds of office," say 
 the ordinances, " instituted by our Lord for the general 
 government of His church, — namely, pastors, then doc- 
 tors, then elders or presbyters (anciens), and fourthly, 
 deacons." The clergy, i. e. the pastors and doctors, 
 met together in synod, and were called " the Venerable 
 Company," for the regulation of affairs exclusively 
 spiritual, such e. g. as the qualification and appointment 
 of candidates for the ministry. The chief engine of 
 ecclesiastical authority was the Consistory, which was 
 composed of the pastors of the five city churches and 
 twelve lay and elective members. These lay members 
 were annually named by the smaller council on the 
 recommendation of the Venerable Company. Thus, 
 though the lay element was twice as large as the 
 clerical, yet the latter had the great advantage of being 
 fixed, whilst the former was annually changed, and 
 besides practically owed its appointment and authority 
 to the clergy. Calvin appears ere long to have taken 
 on himself the perpetual presidency of the (%nsistory : 
 and we can under these circumstances well understand 
 how, as Hooker says, " when things came to trial of 
 practice, their pastor's learning would be at all times 
 of force to over-persuade simple men, who knowing the 
 time of their own presidentship to be but short, would 
 always stand in fear of their minister's perpetual autho- 
 
208 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 rity; and among the ministers themselves, one being 
 so far in estimation above the rest, the voices of the 
 rest were likely to be given for the most part respec- 
 tively, with a kind of secret dependence and awe ; so 
 that in show a marvellous indifferently composed senate 
 ecclesiastical was to govern, but in effect only one man 
 should, as the spirit and soul of the residue, do all in 
 all." — Preface, ii. 4. This court had " the care of all 
 men's manners, power of determining all kinds of eccle- 
 siastical causes, and authority to convent, to control, to 
 punish, as far as with excommunication, whomsoever 
 they should think worthy, none either small or great 
 excepted." Within its jurisdiction came all breaches 
 of morality, and of church order, and all false doctrine. 
 The pastors were expected to report to it parents who 
 did not send their children to school, or who themselves 
 neglected their public religious duties. The pastors 
 visited in regular rotation every house within their 
 cure to inquire into the habits of its inmates; and 
 spies, according to some authorities, were employed to 
 watch for infringements of good manners and of dis- 
 cipline, and were paid for their services out of the 
 fines levied on offenders. The court met every Thurs- 
 day ; and where its own spiritual censures seemed in- 
 sufficient^ handed over culprits by an official repre- 
 sentation to the council. It is needless to add that 
 severe pains and penalties of all kinds waited obse- 
 quiously on the behests of the Consistory ; for the civil 
 courts were regulated by Calvin's code, which contem- 
 plated it as the first duty of the state to make and 
 enforce all such laws as conduce to the establishment 
 
CRITTCAL ESSAYS. 
 
 209 
 
 and maintenance of " God's kingdom on earth." Thus 
 the ecclesiastical authorities horrowed all such effective- 
 ness for their decrees as temporal punishments could 
 afford, whilst the odium of these severities seemed to 
 attach rather to the magistrates who were the im- 
 mediate instruments of them. 
 
 Dr. D'Aubigne will, no doubt, give us some graphic 
 details of the administration of Geneva under this 
 system. The instalment of his work now before 
 us, however, does not carry the history beyond the 
 year 1532. M. Bungener rightly characterizes the 
 result of Calvin's labours as the production of a " Pro- 
 testant Rome," and admits that some of his measures 
 " can scarcely find favour with our more enlarged 
 ideas," but is too much of the advocate to give a full 
 and fair representation of the spiritual and social des- 
 potism under which the light-hearted Genevese now 
 found themselves. The Consistory and its agents ex- 
 tended their inquisitorial interference down to the 
 smallest details even of private life ; from the cradle to 
 the grave, from church and market-place to his very 
 dinner-table and his bed-room, the citizen was un- 
 ceasingly guided and superintended almost in every act 
 and thought. Not only were all the grosser vices re- 
 pressed with terrible severity, but lighter peccadilloes, 
 youthful indiscretions, and many things deserving 
 rather the name of follies than faults were rigorously 
 treated. "Works of fiction, cards, all games of chance, 
 and all dancing and masquerading were utterly pro- 
 hibited. Hobdays and festivals of all kinds were done 
 away with except Sunday, if that, indeed, be an excep- 
 
 p 
 
210 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tion which had under penalty to be kept with strict 
 attendance at sermon and seclusion at home. The 
 number of dishes at dinner and dessert was limited ; 
 slashed breeches, jewels, and various of the gayer kinds of 
 silks and stuffs were banned. Bouquets given to brides 
 might not be encircled with gold or precious stones. The 
 bride's dress itself was matter of very careful regulation. 
 It is on record, " Une epouse etant sortie Dimanche avec 
 les cheveux plus abattus qu'il ne se doit faire, ce qui est 
 d'un mauvais exemple, et contraire a, ce qu'on leur 
 evangelise, on fait •mettre en prison sa maitresse, les 
 deux qui l'ont menee, et celle qui l'a coiffee." — Re- 
 gisters of Geneva, cited by Dyer, p. 78. The citizens 
 were not to be from home later than nine at night ; 
 and were strictly to attend all sermons together with 
 their household, and not to fail in being present at the 
 quarterly administration of the Lord's Supper, for so 
 much, neither less nor more, of this means of grace did 
 Calvin ordain for his people. Such are a few specimens 
 of the municipal regulations formed under the control 
 of the Consistory. And they were enforced with un- 
 sparing, sometimes frightful cruelty. Imprisonments, 
 public penances, the stocks, fines, and even tortures 
 and death, were dispensed with no sparing hand. A 
 child was beheaded in 1558 for having struck her 
 parents; a youth of sixteen, for having threatened to 
 do so, shared the same fate. Such incidents as these 
 are passed over in the pages of M. Bungener ; but they 
 may be found in abundance in the Life of Calvin by 
 Dr. Paid Henry, translated from the German by Dr. 
 Stebbing. Dr. Henry's biography is a most complete 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 211 
 
 and exhaustive magazine of materials ; and its author, 
 though a warm admirer of Calvin, is too candid to 
 suppress the facts which his researches have revealed 
 to him. The effects of Calvin's terrorism must to com- 
 plete this part of the subject be noticed ; and as M. 
 Bungcner leaves us here almost without help, we must 
 avail ourselves of that of the more copious Dr. Henry. 
 Quoting a recent Genevese writer, Galiffe, he says : 
 "To those who imagine that Calvin did nothing but 
 good, I could produce our registers, covered with re- 
 cords of illegitimate children, which were exposed in 
 all parts of the town and country ; hideous trials 
 for obscenity ; wills, in which fathers and mothers 
 accuse their children not only of errors but of crimes ; 
 agreements before notaries between young women and 
 their lovers, in which the latter, even in the pre- 
 sence of the parents of their paramours, make them 
 an allowance for the education of their illegitimate 
 offspring; I could instance multitudes of forced mar- 
 riages, in which the delinquents were conducted from 
 the prison to the church ; mothers who abandoned their 
 children to the hospital, whilst they themselves lived 
 in abundance with a second husband ; bundles of law- 
 suits between brothers ; heaps of secret negotiations ; 
 men and women burnt for witchcraft; sentences of 
 death in frightful numbers ; and all these things among 
 the generation nourished by the mystic manna of 
 Calvin." 
 
 "We cannot wonder that such a system was soon 
 found by the people to be but a revival of the Papacy 
 under another shape. "Details," says M. Bungener, 
 p 2 
 
212 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 "are lost in the general survey;" but he himself has 
 embalmed a few characteristic specimens. He tells us 
 e. g. of a " Lyons refugee " who exclaimed, " ' How de- 
 lightful it is to see this lovely liberty in this city ! ' 
 ' Liberty ! ' said a woman of the lower orders, ' we were 
 obliged formerly to go to mass, and now we are obliged 
 to go to sermon.'" Calvin at Geneva, like the Pope 
 at Rome, was undoubtedly "an historical fact;" and one 
 not lightly to be overlooked. " One day in the large 
 hall of the Cloisters Calvin was giving his lectures on 
 divinity — suddenly they hear outside laughter, cries, 
 and a great clamour. This proceeds from fifteen or 
 twenty Libertines." Again, "Some Libertines a few 
 days after disturbed Calvin's preaching by entering the 
 church very noisily ; so a gibbet was raised in the Place 
 St. Gervais, but happily it did service for no one." 
 The daring of the Libertines, notwithstanding such a 
 significant warning, increases. "Some of them call 
 their dogs by his name. When he passes through the 
 streets some hiss ; and others cry Calvin in such a 
 manner as to make it sound Cain," " Raoul Monnet 
 had drawn, or caused to be drawn," a series of licentious 
 prints ; and was for that crime tried, condemned, and 
 executed. The Libertines persisted in giving, contrary 
 to the ordinances, certain names to their children, " to 
 which in Romish times a superstitious meaning had 
 been attached. Claude promised a long life, Balthazar 
 good health," &c. Calvin fought with his peculiar 
 tenacity and indomitable thoroughness against each and 
 every form of Libertinism, though sometimes with but 
 divided success. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 213 
 
 Such a system as that imposed by Calvin on Geneva 
 can only be maintained on two suppositions, both of them 
 diametrically opposed to modern notions, both theo- 
 logical and political. Calvin was possessed on the one 
 hand with the ancient notions as to the functions of the 
 state ; on the other, with the belief that the New Testa- 
 ment, like the Old, contemplated a visible theocracy. 
 The ancients in their political theories subordinated the 
 end, the offices, and the happiness of the individual 
 citizen to the well-being of the whole ; the man existed 
 for the sake of the state. The modern statesman aims, 
 indeed, at securing life and property, but leaves the 
 freest play for individual character and habits which 
 may consist with the rights of others. The institutions 
 of the country grow up under his hand out of the 
 needs and the interests of the particular persons in 
 it. Calvin, on the contrary, begins all a priori. Poli- 
 tically he had an ideal polity, to which without 
 sparing and scruple he bent every element he might 
 have to deal with ; theologically he had, moreover, 
 "a pattern shown to him in the mount," after which 
 it was a duty to God to "make all things." Hence 
 every thing about his regulations, down to "the 
 fringes and the pomegranates," was to be submitted to, 
 whether expedient, convenient, or not. "Nothing is 
 more displeasing to God," he observes in a letter to the 
 Protector Somerset, " than when we, by our human pru- 
 dence, would either modify or retrench, advance or 
 retire, against His will." So persuaded, Calvin was 
 dogmatic and peremptory in enforcing obedience to his 
 doctrine, discipline, and regulations. He was, no doubt, 
 
214 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 naturally of an obstinate and imperious temper ; but it 
 is impossible to study bis cbaracter witbout admit- 
 ting also tbe deptb and tbe sincerity of bis convictions. 
 Wbetber it were rather tbe convictions wbicb created 
 tbe unswerving arbitrariness be uniformly exhibited, or 
 tbe temper which gave absoluteness to tbe convictions, 
 who shall say ? Men act from mixed motives, even 
 when they seem to themselves to be cherishing but pure 
 ones ; and Calvin assuredly was no exception to the 
 rule. 
 
 From 1542 Calvin's reign at Geneva was unbroken. 
 The Libertines from time to time gave him indeed 
 much trouble, and their strength and violence were 
 occasionally such as seriously to endanger the esta- 
 blished order of things. The sect acquired a certain 
 solidity and definiteness of theological standing at 
 Geneva from opposition to Calvin's doctrines, and no 
 little influence from tbe disaffection generated by tbe 
 impartial strictness of his discipline. In religion the 
 Libertines held a sort of philosophic and pantheistic 
 Anabaptism, which was particularly repulsive to a hard 
 and logical intellect like Calvin's : " God is in every 
 tbing and every one ; all therefore that is said, thought, 
 and done proceeds from Him." Such are, in short and 
 coarse terms, the tenets with which the Genevan Liber- 
 tines are credited. Calvin published in 1544 a writing 
 entitled, " To the Ministers of tbe Church of Neufchatel 
 against the fanatical and furious sect of the Libertines 
 who call themselves Spirituals ;" and took witbin bis own 
 jurisdiction the most stringent measures against them. 
 Yet so galling was the pressure of the discipline, and so 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 215 
 
 vehement the discontent with it and him, that he had 
 often need of all his energy and all his resolution to 
 hold his own. " For nine years," says M. Bungener, 
 "he was every moment on the point of being — not 
 conquered, for he was not of those who can be con- 
 quered, — but crushed ; for nine j r ears it was his to expect 
 every month and every week to be expelled from that 
 city which he was nevertheless continuing to render 
 illustrious and powerful abroad ; for nine years he 
 guided Geneva as a vessel on fire, which burns the 
 captain's feet and yet obeys him, and which in combat 
 is not less formidable and feared." The long struggle 
 was at last terminated by a blunder on the part of his 
 adversaries, which gave Calvin an instant and over- 
 whelming preponderance. They contracted criminal 
 relations with France and Savoy, and were drawn in 
 1555 into open revolt against the government of their 
 native city. Their attempt to seize the upper hand 
 by force was easily and promptly suppressed; domi- 
 ciliary visits laid bare their treason; several, and amongst 
 them members of some of the leading families in Geneva, 
 perished by the hand of the executioner ; many others 
 were banished ; and Calvin's supremacy and the autho- 
 rity of his institutions continued thenceforward un- 
 questioned and undisturbed. 
 
 The current of Calvin's energies, during the ten 
 years which afterwards remained to him on earth, 
 ran principally in the channels of administration at 
 home, hard study and writing given chiefly to his 
 Commentaries, and controversy. " The work of Calvin 
 embraced every thing. The former disciple of Alciatus 
 
216 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 was the jurisconsult of Geneva, no less than her divine ; 
 the public archives contain many files of law papers 
 annotated by his hand. In civil cases his sagacity and 
 his legal knowledge are admirable ; in criminal cases, 
 his severity, as was to be expected, is great, but great 
 especially towards those who knew the good and 
 voluntarily chose the evil. He wishes that the human 
 judge, like the Supreme Judge, should require much of 
 him to whom much has been given. Often also the 
 jurisconsult had to merge into the diplomatist. Calvin, 
 whom we have already seen interfering in the critical 
 matter of the pretensions of Berne and of the banished 
 Libertines, was the soul, and sometimes the agent, of 
 all the negotiations in which Geneva had to take 
 part." .... 
 
 " But great affairs were far from being the only ones 
 on which the Reformer was consulted ; details, curious 
 and strange, have been preserved as to the services 
 sometimes required of him. That Robert Stephens, 
 the printer, should have consulted him on printing, 
 and should even have owed to his counsels a part of his 
 reputation, is readily understood; but if any trade 
 somewhat novel and delicate requested permission to 
 establish itself at Geneva, the council would send the 
 people to speak with M. Calvin to show him their 
 wares, and to work under his eyes, and, according to 
 his opinion, the authorization was granted or refused. 
 One day, a surgeon comes, and the council wishes 
 Calvin to be present at the examination he has to 
 undergo. Another day, it is a dentist, whose art is 
 new, for hitherto men had only been drawers of teeth, 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 217 
 
 but he announces himself as taking care of and repair- 
 ing them. He is sent to M. Calvin, and Calvin re- 
 ceives him, puts himself into his skilful hands, and 
 recommends him to the magistrates. It was he who, 
 already in 1544, had endowed Geneva with a trade of 
 which the profits were a great help in hard times ; 
 Genevese cloths and velvets had a great sale in France 
 until the reign of Henry IV. Sully is much lauded 
 for having established the French manufactures; but 
 Calvin had done no less at Geneva." — Bungener, pp. 
 329, 330. 
 
 It would be tedious to give any detailed narrative of 
 the negotiations which led to the Consensus Tigurimis, 
 a concordat effected in 1546 under the ascendancy of 
 Calvin amongst the leading Swiss churches, by which 
 the Calvinistic doctrine respecting the Eucharist was 
 accepted instead of the Zuinglian. Nor can we trace 
 the progress of his controversies with Pighius and 
 Castellio upon Predestination, nor with Westphal and 
 Heshusius respecting Consubstantiation. These dis- 
 putes were conducted by Calvin with an energy and 
 ability peculiarly his own, and with a vituperative 
 bitterness characteristic both of himself and of the 
 times. Nothing was too vile and too gross to be flung 
 at the heads of those who differed from him ; and it 
 mattered nothing what the value of the difference might 
 be. Pighius, one of the most distinguished scholars of 
 the day, who had had the Emperor Charles Y. for a 
 pupil, died exhausted by hard work in 1542, whilst his 
 wordy strife with Calvin was still pending. Some time 
 after, having to take up again his favourite subject 
 
218 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 against a new opponent, Bolsec, Calvin seizes the op- 
 portunity to show that the theological animosity was 
 not quenched even by the death of its object. " Pighius 
 died a little after my book was published," he observes 
 in the introduction to his tractate de Etcmd Predestina- 
 tione Dei bearing date in 1551, "wherefore not to insult 
 a dead dog I applied myself to other lucubrations." 
 Yet he takes up the name of the dead Pighius, thus 
 insultingly, only to offer a greater insult to Bolsec, 
 who is "too insipid an animal" to serve as an opponent 
 at all ! Bolsec was originally a monk, but had em- 
 braced the Reformed faith, studied medicine, and mar- 
 ried and settled at Geneva as a physician. He dared 
 to challenge the dominant predestinarian tenets, and 
 was imprudent enough to do so publicly in the cathe- 
 dral. After many unseemly altercations he was 
 banished for life, under pain of a whipping should he 
 ever again be found within the city or territory. Towards 
 the Lutherans one might have thought Calvin would 
 have observed some little moderation and decency, 
 especially as regards the doctrine of the Eucharist, on 
 which he like them was at issue with the Zuinglians. 
 But Calvin has no toleration for the least departure 
 from the clear and straight line of his own dogmatism 
 either on the one side or the other. He acknowledged 
 a real, though spiritual, presence of the body and blood 
 of the Saviour to the faithful receiver of the sacrament. 
 For Zuingle, whom he seems to have regarded as a 
 sort of rival, he has hardly ever a good word ; and 
 Zuingle's opinion that the Lord's Supper is a mere 
 commemorative rite, he abhors as " profane." "West- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 219 
 
 plial, on the other hand, held with Luther that the 
 body and blood of Christ are given in and with the 
 sacrament to the faithful ; but Calvin has nothing for 
 him and his notions but anger and invective, badly 
 excused by the bitter apology he makes in the preface 
 of one of his contributions to the controversy, that " a 
 bad ass makes a bad driver." The melancholy busi- 
 ness of Servetus demands more careful notice, not less 
 from its own importance than from the deep emotions 
 to which it has given rise both at the time and ever 
 since. 
 
 Servetus, — whose proper name was Miguel Servede, — 
 was a native of Yillanuova, in Spain. He had already 
 crossed Calvin's path, as we have seen ; and the years 
 subsequent to 1534 had not passed without communi- 
 cation between them. Servetus was beyond question a 
 clever man, with a mind acute and restless, ever craving 
 after novelty, and blessed with an unwavering confidence 
 in each successive development of its never-ending and 
 incoherent speculations. He had studied law at Tou- 
 louse; physic at Paris; and had dabbled in theology 
 at Basle, in Italy, Germany, and wherever else he 
 could find listeners for his eccentric opinions. He 
 rendered one town after another too hot to hold him 
 by his disputatiousness ; and at length after various 
 adventures found it necessary to lay aside his own 
 name and to settle down quietly at Vienne as "Dr. 
 Villeneuve." In 1546 he had written his " Restitutio 
 Christianismi," and submitted it to Calvin. This work 
 went beyond any thing Servetus had written in its 
 wild and fanatical conceits. Not content with advo- 
 
220 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 eating the Millcnnarian hypothesis, and with maintain- 
 ing that the earthly reign of Christ was close at hand, 
 Servetus further proclaimed himself to be the Michael 
 of the Revelation who was to compass the overthrow of 
 the Dragon ! We can readily imagine the scorn and 
 abhorrence such blasphemous folly would excite in 
 Calvin ; — Calvin who himself declined to write a Com- 
 mentary on the Revelation because he was " altogether 
 unable to comprehend the meaning of the very obscure 
 writer of that book." Calvin had been in the habit of 
 occasionally exchanging letters with Servetus on theo- 
 logical subjects; but on the receipt of the MS. of the 
 " Restitutio Christianismi," he broke off the corre- 
 spondence at once with a harsh epistle of reproof, 
 referring Servetus to the " Institutes " for any further 
 information he might require on the topics on which 
 they had been in communication. Servetus retorted 
 by forwarding to Calvin a copy of the " Institutes," 
 garnished with a number of manuscript notes con- 
 taining bitter refutations and criticisms. The hard 
 words of Servetus had evidently sunk deep into Calvin's 
 memory. About this time he wrote to Farel about 
 him; observing that Servetus had offered to come to 
 Geneva, "if he would allow him." "But," Calvin 
 goes on, " I will not give any pledge ; for if he do 
 come, and my authority avail any thing, / will never 
 suffer him to depart alive." 
 
 " Dr. Villeneuve " could not keep quiet and be con- 
 tented to practise, even though with much success, as 
 a physician, at Yienne. In an evil hour he got the 
 " Restitutio " secretly printed in 1552 ; and though he 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 221 
 
 did not circulate it thereabouts, a copy unfortunately 
 reached Geneva, and fell into the hands of Calvin. At 
 Geneva lived one William Trie, an exile from Lyons 
 for the sake of religion. His relations, however, had 
 not yet abandoned all hopes of him, and one of them, 
 named Arneys, carried on an exchange of controversial 
 letters with him, in one of which he pressed Trie with 
 the well-worn argument from the diversities of Protes- 
 tantism. Trie, who was pretty certainly advised by 
 Calvin, retorted that discipline was strict at Geneva ; 
 but that in Papal France, whilst the truth was 
 quenched in blood, the most monstrous heresies were 
 vented with impunity. He instanced the " Restitutio," 
 printed amongst Arney's own neighbours at Yienne, 
 and full of the grossest blasphemies against doctrines 
 held sacred by all Christians, such as the Trinity. 
 Arneys communicated with the ecclesiastical autho- 
 rities of Yienne, and in the end Servetus was appre- 
 hended and handed over to the Inquisition. The only 
 point in this part of the story that we need notice is that 
 the evidence on which Servetus was tried, and eventually 
 convicted, as the author of the book, and condemned to 
 a heretic's death by the Inquisition, was obtained by 
 Arneys from Trie, and by Trie from Calvin. Calvin 
 supplied some printed sheets of the " Restitutio," and a 
 number of letters addressed to him in former times by 
 Servetus. For the time, Servetus avoided his fate by 
 making his escape from prison. What led him to the 
 madness of flying for refuge to Geneva is uncertain. 
 Perhaps he was only passing through on his way else- 
 where, though some authorities assert that he remained 
 
222 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 undiscovered in the city for a month. He was on the 
 very eve of departure when he was recognized by Calvin 
 amongst his congregation, denounced, and arrested. 
 The after proceedings are sad enough and disgraceful 
 to every one concerned : to Calvin above all. The pro- 
 secution was undertaken at first by La Fontaine, for- 
 merly a cook, but then a student of theology and acting 
 as secretary to Calvin. Thirty- eight articles of charge 
 were exhibited against Servetus, most of them alleging 
 heresies extracted from the " de Trinitatis Erroribus " 
 and the "Restitutio;" but not a few of them of a 
 personal land, charging Servetus with insulting in his 
 writings and letters various Fathers and Theologians, 
 ancient and modern ; and last, but in such a place by 
 no means least, the thirty-eighth count accused him of 
 defaming and reviling Calvin and the Church of 
 Geneva. "When the charges came to be argued, it soon 
 appeared that La Fontaine was no match for the veteran 
 controversialist to whom he was opposed ; and he was 
 accordingly summarily set aside, and Calvin, the real 
 accuser throughout, entered the lists in person against 
 a man who was in truth his own prisoner. Servetus in 
 vain protested that if he had committed any offence at all 
 it was not at Geneva, since the books incriminated had 
 not been printed or circulated there. In vain did he urge 
 his ignorance of the laws of the territory in which he had 
 so unhappily become a sojourner, and ask for an advo- 
 cate to plead for him and to guide him. In vain did 
 he appeal to the higher and larger councils : in them 
 Calvin's influence was not so assured, and his appeal 
 was disallowed. The rigour of his imprisonment was 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 223 
 
 gradually increased, and he was denied towards the last 
 the common necessaries of cleanliness and health. Calvin 
 and the pastors not only appeared in open court against 
 him, hut stirred up the passions of the people from their 
 pulpits to demand his Mood. Servetus himself acted 
 a most unwise part. He was aware that strenuous 
 efforts were being made outside his prison walls to save 
 him, and calculated on the strength of his friends with 
 a hope so sanguine as to make him too often confident 
 and audacious. The Libertines, glad to lay hold of any 
 handle against Calvin, made the cause of Servetus their 
 own, and laboured hard to get it carried before the 
 more popular assemblies where their strength lay. 
 Thus Calvin was driven on in his persecution of Ser- 
 vetus by strong motives of political and religious par- 
 tisanship, as well as that of private animosity ; and he 
 threw into the contest all his vehemence, bitterness, 
 and unswerving determination. He overwhelmed Ser- 
 vetus both in public court and in his prison with in- 
 vectives and reproaches; which the miserable man, 
 goaded by sufferings and insults, and emboldened by 
 the hope of succour from Calvin's enemies in the State, 
 was not slow to return in kind. To such a pitch of 
 excitement was Servetus worked up, that le tried to 
 change places with his persecutor, and demanded of the 
 council that Calvin should be imprisoned as a heretic, 
 and his goods confiscated. The end of altercations 
 between such men so placed could not be doubtful. 
 Servetus was on Oct. 26, 1553, condemned to be burned 
 as a heretic. Calvin's legislation had left the old code 
 of Geneva unaltered as regards the crime of heresy } 
 
224 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and the very next day was appointed for the execution. 
 It was only on the morning of the 27th, at the time in 
 fact at which he was led out to death, that Servetus, by 
 hearing the formal sentence read at the Town Hall, 
 learned the dreadful fate which was on the instant 
 waiting for him. " He threw himself horror-struck," 
 M. Bungener tells us, " at the feet of the judges, and 
 besought as a favour that he might be beheaded." His 
 supplications were fruitless ; and he fell into a sort of 
 stupor broken only by groans and cries for mercy. 
 With a refinement of barbarity, which charity may just 
 allow us to hope was mere thoughtlessness, Farel was 
 the minister selected by Calvin to accompany the 
 doomed man to the stake. Farel's conduct was to the 
 last, as might be expected, harsh, inconsiderate, and 
 unpi tying. He upbraided Servetus with his errors, and 
 reproached him for his obstinacy. " His sole task," says 
 M. Bungener, "was to harass Servetus in his last 
 moments in order to extort from him some word which 
 might be considered a disavowal of his errors." When 
 the victim was attached to the stake, on the little hill 
 of Champel, just outside the city, and the fire was 
 lighted, it was found that the executioner had, either 
 from cruelly or ignorance, heaped up nothing but green 
 wood ; and the bystanders, shuddering at the piercing 
 shrieks which issued from the smoke, ran and threw 
 on faggots, and so ended the torments of Servetus in 
 about half an hour. 
 
 About the whole of this affair the less said by Calvin's 
 admirers the better. From first to last of it the con- 
 duct of the great Reformer merits the most utter con- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 225 
 
 demnation. Excuses and palliations may indeed be 
 suggested, but any tbing in tbe sbape of a defence 
 of bim is to a candid mind out of tbe question. He 
 migbt, indeed, with good reason bave thought himself 
 bound to demonstrate in so conspicuous an instance 
 that the true reformed faith was not less jealous of 
 orthodoxy than the Papacy. The taunt so often since 
 levelled against Protestantism was even then in vogue, 
 that it is in effect identical with atheism, and amounts 
 substantially to a licence to every body to believe 
 and teach what he pleases. Geneva was at the time 
 the capital city, as it were, of the reformed religion 
 of the Continent; and we can readily comprehend 
 the anxiety of him who represented that city in the 
 eyes of Christendom to clear it from all suspicion of 
 unsoundness or indifference as to the fundamental doc- 
 trines of the creed. That Servetus was thus unsound is 
 beyond possibility of question. He had been known for 
 years in every theological coterie of Europe as a most 
 daring and foul-mouthed impugner of the doctrine of 
 the Trinity. He had, moreover, rejected infant bap- 
 tism, a crotchet pecuHarly damaging to him at that 
 time, as it tended to identify him with the pestilent 
 sect of the Anabaptists. Some of the doctrinal errors 
 laid to his charge sound strange to us when regarded 
 as items in a capital indictment, as e. g. the allegation 
 that in some notes on Ptolemy's Geography he had 
 questioned the statements of the Pentateuch as to the 
 ancient fertility of the promised land; but statements 
 like this were regarded with pious horror by the con- 
 temporaries of Servetus. So far as severity can be 
 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 justified by detestableness of opinions in him who was the 
 object of it, Calvin is entitled to the fullest allowance. 
 Neither can we doubt that the adoption of Servetus by 
 the Libertines contributed greatly to enhance the harsh- 
 ness of his treatment, and to ensure his destruction. 
 The cause of Servetus became identified with that of 
 faction and treason in the state, and of subversion and 
 licence in religion and morals. Nor can we doubt that 
 the Libertines thought far less of Servetus, though they 
 espoused his cause, than of the defeat they would inflict 
 on Calvin by delivering Calvin's enemy. But such apo- 
 logies do but little to dilute the black guilt in which this 
 memorable deed has for ever enshrouded the name and 
 the memory of the great Reformer. The stubborn facts 
 remain that Servetus had crossed Calvin's path in the 
 way of personal opposition twenty years before the trial 
 at Geneva ; that Calvin had after an angry correspondence 
 declared that if Servetus came to Geneva he should 
 never leave it alive ; that Calvin had done his utmost 
 to slay Servetus by the hand of the Inquisition ; that 
 Calvin caused the arrest of Servetus in a city where the 
 unhappy man was only tarrying for a season as a way- 
 farer and fugitive, and where he had done no wrong ; 
 that Calvin himself drew up and personally pressed the 
 indictments; that he used his paramount influence to 
 prevent the removal of the case to a court where the 
 accused would have stood a better chance ; that he wrote 
 to Farel whilst the trial was going on to express a hope 
 that "the sentence would be capital;" that he did nothing 
 to soften the rigours of harsh imprisonment ; and, lastly, 
 that he aggravated the bitter hour of a most painful death 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 227 
 
 by forcing on the sufferer, instead of a minister of con- 
 solation, the coarsest and most implacable of his foes. 
 It is to the whole circumstances of the case, rather 
 than to the fact that Servetus was burnt for heresy, 
 that we must attribute the general execration with 
 which the deed was heard of throughout Christendom. 
 It seems totally useless to try, as does M. Bungener, to 
 shelter Calvin behind the general opinion and practice 
 of the age. The reformed Swiss churches were asked 
 their advice whilst sentence was not yet passed ; and it 
 is a misrepresentation to sum up their judgments as 
 does M. Bungener. " There was a complete and awful 
 unanimity," he tells us, — "Servetus must die!" In 
 truth and in fact not one single church distinctly ad- 
 vised the execution of Servetus. Their letters are worded 
 with caution, and are really nothing more than exhor- 
 tations to the council of Geneva to be firm and severe 
 with so pestilent a heretic. Bullinger, indeed, advised 
 capital punishment; so did Beza, Calvin's close ally 
 and eventual biographer and successor ; so did Farel, 
 reminding Calvin, in a letter which no truly Christian 
 minister ought ever to have written, that Servetus had 
 been "his greatest enemy." But the general sentiment 
 of the reformed churches was one of utter condem- 
 nation of the deed. They thought, as we do, that 
 Servetus was done to death by a man who was his 
 private foe, and that in the most horrible of ways ; 
 under pretext, indeed, of religion and justice, but with 
 a premeditation which made these sacred names a 
 mockery, and by a magistracy which was Little better 
 than a band of Calvin's creatures. The history of these 
 q 2 
 
228 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 times leaves, indeed, little for any party to boast of in 
 the matter of toleration. In the days when Calvin was 
 compassing the death of Servetus at Geneva his own 
 co-religionists were undergoing martyrdom in France ; 
 and our own land saw Anabaptists harassed with fire 
 and sword by Edward VI., the adherents of the national 
 church similarly treated by Queen Mary, and not long 
 after the Papists persecuted by Elizabeth. But the 
 plea drawn from the intolerant spirit of the times will 
 not go very far in the particular case before us. Calvin 
 had himself years before eloquently expounded the 
 duties of toleration ; and, at the very time when he was 
 hunting Servetus to his doom, he was writing letters 
 full of invective against the cruelties practised on his 
 own friends. And, lastly, we cannot but think that 
 one who had in so many things revolutionized whole 
 systems of theory and practice might, on a point which 
 had clearly been distinctly brought before him, have 
 been expected to be somewhat in advance of his con- 
 temporaries. The arrest, the trial, and the execution of 
 Servetus are, therefore, a series of crimes of which the 
 guilt belongs almost undividedly to Calvin, and which 
 form a deep, dark, and ineffaceable blot on his memory. 
 
 Calvin's health had been always frail, and his hard 
 labours and many anxieties at Geneva rapidly ruined it. 
 In 1509 he had a violent attack of ague, through which 
 he was but poorly nursed, if nursed at all. The follow- 
 ing years witnessed him yet making head against his 
 tasks, though " pains in his head, pains in his legs, 
 pains in his stomach, spitting of blood, difficulty of 
 breathing, the gout, and the stone," gave even more clear 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 229 
 
 tokens of the approaching end. He continued, however, 
 to preach, but in Feb. 1564, a violent fit of coughing, 
 with the rupture of a blood-vessel, choked his utterance, 
 and put an end for ever to his public ministrations. 
 He lingered on, however, till May, in quiet and calm 
 decay. He received the magistrates who, on his asking 
 an audience, paid a visit to " the humble dwelling of 
 the Rue des Chanoines, in all the pomp of public 
 ceremony ;" he saw the pastors, and exhorted them, as 
 he had done the magistrates, in a body; and finally 
 " gave his hand to each one after the other, which was 
 with such anguish and bitterness of heart in every one, 
 that I cannot even recall it to mind," says Beza, " with- 
 out extreme sadness ;" and finally, on the 27th, peace- 
 fully expired. His will had been made a few days before ; 
 and his whole effects when sold under it brought but 
 300 crowns. An immense procession of citizens and 
 strangers accompanied him to the cemetery. " The 
 Church wept," as M. Bungener observes, " for her head, 
 and the State for her chief citizen and surest protector 
 under God." "His defects, which had already been 
 effaced by his glory and his services, had completely 
 disappeared in the pure halo with which death encircles 
 the Christian's brow ; and willingly would all those 
 multitudes have graven upon a magnificent monument 
 the testimony of their unreserved admiration, their 
 deep gratitude, and their profound veneration. But he 
 had enjoined that every thing should be done ' after the 
 customary fashion,' and that customary fashion, which 
 was observed almost down to the present day, was that 
 no monument should be raised upon any grave, however 
 
230 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 illustrious the deceased might be. The earth alone, 
 therefore, covered the remains of Calvin, and he had no 
 other official epitaph, than this half-line inscribed by 
 the side of his name in the Consistorial register : 
 ' Went to God, Saturday the 27th.' Were his bones 
 left longer in peace than those of the vulgar dead ? 
 None can say. At all events, for more than two cen- 
 turies that grave has been dug over again and again, 
 like the rest, by the sexton's spade ; and for less than 
 twenty years a small black stone has marked the spot 
 where Calvin perhaps reposed, for it is only a tradi- 
 tion." — Bungener, p. 248. 
 
 Calvin's theology and the institutions in which he 
 embodied it are certainly unlovely, and they are in no 
 small degree also narrow, shallow, and hard. But they 
 are throughout pervaded by an intense faith and an 
 unflinching consistency ; and they supplied perhaps 
 the only bulwarks able, humanly speaking, to withstand 
 the refluent wave of Bomanisrn which, in Calvin's 
 latter days, came upon the Beformed churches of the 
 Continent. By the middle of the sixteenth century 
 the Beformation had been brought to a stand in Europe, 
 and the adherents of the Bapacy were re-uniting their 
 scattered ranks, and preparing for a vigorous and con- 
 certed effort to regain their lost ground. The order 
 of the Jesuits had arisen to lead and direct their 
 efforts ; an agency of consummate skill and of regulated 
 versatility ; and formidable not less from numbers than 
 from its great and rapid extension. The powerful re- 
 action which thus set in carried many churches back ; 
 but it was throughout the greater part of Protestant 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 231 
 
 Europe successfully confronted, and nowhere more 
 successfully than where the Calvinistic system had 
 occupied the ground. That system gathered up into 
 a definite organized shape, the faith, the Church life, 
 and the private practice of Protestantism ; and gave 
 unity, definiteness, and point to those aspirations after 
 purer and less artificial modes of religion which Luther 
 and Zuingle had aroused. After Calvin had done his 
 work the Romish theologian had no longer the ad- 
 vantage of contrasting the clear authoritative decrees 
 of his own Church with the dissonant and dubious 
 voices of her multifarious opponents. Then stood forth 
 against Papal infallibility a champion with a summons 
 equally peremptory, and at least equally imposing ; 
 and one too whose followers were equally resolute and 
 fanatical. Calvinism manifested the reality of its hold 
 on the nations, by working through their religion upon 
 their politics and their public institutions. Dr. D'Au- 
 bigne describes its influence, not without a certain 
 pardonable pride and exaggeration, in his opening 
 pages, as follows : — " The great movements in the way 
 of law and liberty, effected by the people in the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries, have certain relations 
 with the Reformation of Calvin, which it is impossible 
 to ignore. As soon as Guy de Bres and many others 
 returned from Geneva to the Low Countries, the great 
 contest between the rights of the people and the re- 
 volutionary and bloody despotism of Philip II. began ; 
 heroic struggles took place, and the creation of the 
 United Provinces was their glorious termination. John 
 Knox returned to his native Scotland from Geneva, 
 
232 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 where he had spent several years ; then popery, arbi- 
 trary power, and the immorality of a French court 
 made way in that noble country for that enthusiasm for 
 the gospel, liberty, and holiness, which has never 
 since failed to kindle the ardent souls of its energetic 
 people. 
 
 " Numberless friends and disciples of Calvin carried 
 with them every year into France the principles of 
 civil and political liberty, and a fierce struggle began 
 with popery and the despotism, of the Yalois first, and 
 afterwards of the Bourbons. And though these princes 
 sought to destroy the liberties for which the Hugenots 
 shed their blood, their imperishable traces still remain 
 among that illustrious nation. The Englishmen who, 
 during the bloody persecution of Mary, had sought an 
 asylum at Geneva imbibed there a love for the gospel 
 and for liberty. When they returned to England, a 
 fountain gushed out beneath their footsteps. The 
 waters confined by Elizabeth to a narrow channel, rose 
 under her successors, and swiftly became an impetuous 
 roaring flood, whose insolent waves swept away the 
 throne itself in their violent course. But restored to 
 their bed by the wise hand of "William of Orange, the 
 dashing torrent sank into a smiling stream, bearing 
 prosperity and life afar. Lastly, Calvin was the founder 
 of the greatest of republics. The pilgrims who left 
 their country in the reign of James L, and, landing 
 on the barren shores of New England, founded popu- 
 lous and mighty colonies, are his sons, his direct and 
 legitimate sons ; and that American nation, which we 
 have seen growing so rapidly, boasts as its father 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 233 
 
 the humble reformer on the shores of the Le- 
 man." — D'Aubigne, vol. i. pp. 5 — 7. 
 
 Nor must we limit the effects of Calvinism to those 
 lands where it effected an express and recognized lodg- 
 ment. In our own country it must be credited, as Dr. 
 D'Aubigne hints above, with all that we are wont to 
 associate in literature, tone of thought and feeling, and 
 our daily habits with Puritanism. It would be utterly 
 in vain to deny that the ascendancy of Puritanism in 
 the seventeenth century, short-lived as it was, worked 
 a very marked change in the English nation. The 
 national character was altered thereb}* in such a way 
 that some of its most striking traits, as they at present 
 suggest themselves to foreigners, were infused into it 
 between the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign and 
 the death of Cromwell. The pilgrims of the May- 
 flower carried, indeed, with them to the western world 
 the prolific seeds of Presbyterianism, and the kind of 
 aristocratic republicanism which best consorts with 
 Presbyterianism ; but enough was left behind in Eng- 
 land to leaven our people in perpetuity. It only needs, 
 by way of illustration, to point to the popular notions 
 amongst religious persons in England as to the observ- 
 ance of Sunday. We by no means say that those 
 notions are incorrect or unfounded; but assuredly, 
 whatever be their warrant, they came in with Puri- 
 tanism. Few who are well acquainted with our poor 
 will deny that in large tracts of country what religion 
 there is amongst them is of a Puritan type. And 
 though, in 10G2, the reaction was strong, yet our 
 forms of worship retain, and are likely to retain, several 
 
234 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 peculiarities which they owe to the disciples of Calvin. 
 He set the example of choosing for each sermon a well- 
 defined and single text and subject. He almost created 
 the congregational psalm -singing, which is now so much 
 cultivated in England, and has always flourished in 
 more strictly Calvinistic communities. "Psalm-singer 
 and Reformed were synonymous words in France," 
 M. Bungener tells us. The ejected of 1662 were dis- 
 tinctly Calvinistic in their theology and church system ; 
 and it was through them that non-conformity acquired 
 that respectable and recognized standing within the 
 pale of English Christianity, which it has now so long 
 had. In other Christian lands there is scarce any real 
 religion except that which follows the type of the 
 national church. Other modes have either died away 
 or been uprooted by persecution. Amongst ourselves 
 we have a form of doctrine and discipline, which is not 
 only recognized by the State, but exclusively established ; 
 and yet side by side with it exist manifold other 
 denominations not less secured by law in liberty of 
 conscience than the Church is in its privileges. 
 Whether this national peculiarity be an opprobrium 
 to our Church, and a calamity to the cause of the 
 Gospel amongst us, or whether it indirectly work 
 good in stimulating our clergy by a wholesome rivalry 
 and competition, may be a question. Certain it is that 
 our modern non-conformists must thank Calvin for 
 imparting that importance and cohesion to their prin- 
 ciples which enabled them to win their way, first to 
 toleration, and afterwards to a political power and 
 religious influence so great as once to overthrow, and 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 235 
 
 more than once to threaten, the very existence of the 
 Church as a national institution. 
 
 And yet admitting all this to the full, it is easy to see 
 that M. Bungener, in common with many other con- 
 tinental Protestants, vastly overrates, or rather utterly 
 mistakes, the importance of Calvin as regards the English 
 Reformation. Speaking of the pastor Des Gallars, who 
 was sent on request of Elizabeth's Privy Council to take 
 charge of the French Protestant refugees in London 
 about 1560, M. Bungener says: "Des Gallars remained 
 three years in London ; and we see him, on his return, 
 charged to bring back to Calvin and Geneva the most 
 lively testimonies of the gratitude of the English. 
 Thus there was established between England and Geneva 
 that close alliance which was and still is sealed by the 
 great name of the reformer. The mighty monarchy 
 and the little republic were to be sisters before God, 
 sisters even before men, so much does moral grandeur 
 efface, even in the eyes of the world, every inequality ; 
 and if one of the two had to give up the name of sister 
 for that of mother, England would give that name to 
 the city of Calvin."— P. 279. 
 
 Now it is clear that our English Reformers, Cranmer 
 and his associates, owe nothing whatever to Calvin. 
 "Whether we speak of their formularies of doctrine, 
 or of their ritual arrangements, it is demonstrable 
 in either case that they borrowed nothing from Cal- 
 vinistic sources, that the few new elements they did 
 introduce belong to quite another and an opposite 
 school of Protestantism from that of Geneva, and that 
 they worked altogether on principles essentially different 
 
236 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 from those adopted by Calvin. As regards forms of 
 worship, indeed, Calvin was as much an enemy of what 
 is termed "free prayer "-as any high churchman; but 
 in drawing up his " Directory " for the use of his con- 
 gregations in 1545, he chose to become an author rather 
 than a compiler; and regarding the ancient liturgies 
 of his church as utterly and incurably tainted with the 
 corruptions of Romanism, he made a clean sweep of 
 them all, and proceeded to build up a totally different 
 system with new materials. The altars and images at 
 Geneva were of course abolished ; but with them went 
 the stone fonts ; and the church bells were cast into 
 cannon. Our own Reformers, on the contrary, did not 
 aim at originality in these matters. They altered only 
 where was clear and strong cause for doing so. They 
 merely abridged, corrected, simplified, and re-arranged 
 the ancient and established English offices and ceremonies. 
 The language of the original preface to our Prayer Book, 
 which stands now as part of the introductory matter, 
 and is entitled " Of Ceremonies," is very remarkable. 
 It not only betrays a total unconsciousness of any break 
 of continuity in our devotional usages, such as we are 
 apt to suppose must have occurred at the formal and 
 legal establishment of the Reformation, but distinctly 
 implies the substantial identity of the revised offices 
 with those which were to be now superseded. So far 
 from deferring to Geneva, it was to the reformed 
 Breviary of Cardinal Quignon, published at Rome in 
 1536, and sanctioned by the Popes in succession until 
 superseded by the Trent Breviary, that Cranmer and 
 his coadjutors went for some of the main improvements 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 237 
 
 they introduced ; and from that Breviary they actually 
 copied, in some passages verbatim, the announcement 
 of their reasons for revision and of the principles 
 observed in conducting it, which this preface contained. 
 The second reformed Prayer Book of 1552 represents 
 indeed a period when the more thorough-going party 
 attained its greatest strength in the Church, and the 
 foreign Protestants had a very considerable influence both 
 at court and with the bishops. Had Edward VI. lived a 
 few years longer, it is possible enough that the English 
 reformation might have been assimilated to the Genevan 
 type. But even the Prayer Book of 1552 is on the 
 whole, like its predecessor, conservative in its tenor. 
 It carries, indeed, further than heretofore the omission 
 of ceremonies and usages which had unhappily been 
 associated with superstition, and it abolished some things 
 which the maturer judgment of the Church in later 
 times has replaced ; but the main body of the old 
 worship of the Church was left as it has since remained 
 intact. Even in the Prayer Book of 1552, thus repre- 
 senting the nearest approximation which our Church 
 as a community has ever made towards the principles of 
 Geneva, there are scarce one or two slight and doubtful 
 features of likeness to Calvin's Directory. The peni- 
 tential introduction (Sentences, Exhortation, Confes- 
 sion, and Absolution) prefixed to our daily offices in 
 1552, and the use of the Decalogue in the Communion 
 Office which belongs to thesame date, have been thought 
 by some to have been suggested by a Latin translation 
 and adaptation of Calvin's Directory, introduced into 
 London in 1551, for the use of the French Protestant 
 
238 
 
 CRITICAL "ESSAYS. 
 
 refugees by Valerandus Pollanus, Calvin's successor in 
 the pastorate at Strasburg, but afterwards an exile. 
 That the resemblances pointed out really exist there 
 can be no question : yet they are slight and transient ; 
 and the ritualists have abundantly shown that precedents 
 of vastly greater antiquity and authority than Calvin and 
 Pollanus, may be quoted for the whole of the additions 
 in question. The probability is that the want of some 
 such opening of the services had been felt since 1549 ; 
 that the ancient and primitive usages were known to 
 warrant it ; and that the compiler of the introduction 
 worked with the Directory of Pollanus before him, 
 though how cautiously and independently he used it will 
 be clear to any one who will be at the trouble to com- 
 pare the one with the other. We might note especially 
 the language of the Confession, where, if the English 
 Reformer had the Directory in his mind at all, it was as 
 a warning rather than an example ; for the language of 
 the Directory implies doctrine about original sin, which 
 our own Church has never sanctioned. 
 
 The Articles of Religion are as little Calvinistic as 
 the Prayer Book. It is difficult, indeed, to wrap up 
 more blunders in a few words than may be found in 
 the celebrated saying, "We have a Popish Liturgy, 
 Calvinistic Articles, and an Arminian clergy." The 
 charge, as regards the Articles, is founded on the very 
 great but very common error of styling all kinds of 
 Predestinarians " Calvinists." With as much truth 
 might it be said that Mormonites are Methodists, be- 
 cause neither of them are Romanists. There were 
 many strong Predestinarians before Calvin ; and since 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 239 
 
 his days there have been many called Calvinists, who 
 would have utterly repudiated more than one cardinal 
 and energetic element of his teaching, and have been 
 entirely disowned by him. Arminius, to take one con- 
 spicuous instance, held language on the subject of the 
 Divine decrees which would justify us, in the ordinary 
 loose way of speaking, if we were to characterize him 
 roundly as a Calvinist 1 . Yet it is in this, as in other 
 matters, not without reason that Calvinism, the name of 
 the species, has extended itself to the whole genus. In 
 Calvinism we have the most stern, uncompromising, and 
 thorough-going exhibition of Predestinarian opinions. 
 Election is the Alpha from which the whole theology sets 
 out, and the Omega to which it mounts and in which it is 
 closed. Every other tenet, fact, or truth which comes 
 across the theory of Decrees in its logical march is set 
 aside, annihilated, or explained away. Yet Calvinism 
 is but one of many dogmatic systems in which the doc- 
 trine of Predestination has played a conspicuous part ; 
 and it is one, too, which from its hard and sharp out- 
 lines should be least of all confounded with any other. 
 " The Five Points " of Calvinism are the essential cha- 
 
 1 Take, e. g. the following from his fifteenth Public Disputation, 
 " De Divina Praidestinatione :" " Pradestinatio est decretum bene- 
 placiti Dei in Christo, quo apud se ab seterno statuit fideles vita 
 aeterna donare. Fideles autem dicimus, non qui tales propriis 
 meritis aut viribus erant futuri, sed qui Dei beneficio gratuito et 
 peeuliari in Christum erant credituri." It is scarce possible to 
 doubt that Arminius, the great adversary of Calvinism in his day, 
 had before him in writing the former of these sentences, Section 2 of 
 the Disputation, our own seventeenth Article, which is often thought 
 so decidedly Calvinistic. 
 
240 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 racteristics, which lie who holds in their entirety, and he 
 only, is a Calvinist, and he who rejects in any part or 
 degree is none. These points are, (1) Predestination, of 
 some individuals to life, of the others to damnation; 
 (2) Particular Redemption, i. e. that the Saviour died for 
 the elect only ; (3) Original Sin ; (4) Irresistible Grace ; 
 (5) Final Perseverance. There are few candid persons 
 who will deny that the tenth of our original forty-two 
 Articles was utterly contrarient to the fourth of these 
 points, or that the present sixteenth Article is against 
 the fifth of them, or that the second and thirty-first 
 Articles are not fairly irreconcileable with the second 
 of them. The language of the ninth of our Articles, 
 too, about original sin, comes short by a vast interval of 
 that of the Calvinistic confessions 2 ; and in no part of 
 our authorized Church documents is there a word to be 
 found which can be wrested into approval of the ter- 
 rible tenet of Reprobation. The seventeenth of our 
 Articles, which seems superficially so Calvinistic, is not 
 in reality so at all. It was not borrowed from Calvinistic 
 sources ; and, indeed, it seems to have been an original 
 composition. When analyzed it will be found to consist 
 
 2 Compare the language of our ninth Article with that, e. g. of 
 the Westminster Confession. This, in its sixth Article, declares man 
 by his fall as " wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul 
 and body ;" and as " utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite 
 to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil." In similar terms the 
 Confessio Helvetica, Art. VIII., describes our " nativa corruptio, 
 qua, concupiscentiis pravis immersi, et a bono aversi, ad omne 
 malum propensi, pleni omni nequitia, diffidentia, contemptu et odio 
 Dei, nihil boni ex nobis ipsis facere, immo ne cogitare quidem 
 possumus." 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 241 
 
 of little more than a series of texts, the upshot of which 
 is to show us that when living in obedience to the laws 
 of God, we may humbly trust that God hath chosen us 
 unto life ; to discourage the entertainment of any other 
 thoughts or hopes on the subject than such as these ; 
 and to exhort all to take the promises of God in the 
 broad form in which they are made, and to act upon 
 His commands without cavil. The anxiety of the 
 framers of the Article was certainly not to lay down clear 
 definitions on those subjects which Calvin regarded as 
 fundamental to faith and piety, but to guard against 
 fatalist perversions and abuses. The seventeenth Article 
 is scarcely even Augustinian in its tenor, much less 
 Calvinistic ; and between Augustine and Calvin there is 
 a gulf fixed which might seem to some not wide, but 
 which in truth places them in two totally different 
 regions of theology and church life. 
 
 Augustine had in his days to deal with a new and 
 dangerous tendency to overrate the power of unassisted 
 human nature for good, and to ascribe an intrinsic and 
 proper merit to man's works. To assert, as Pelagius 
 and his followers did, that we may obtain salvation at 
 our pleasure if we will, was obviously to render the 
 Gospel superfluous. The heresy may perhaps have 
 arisen in an honest desire to quicken men, amidst the 
 decay of primitive love and zeal which the fifth century 
 saw, to holier and stricter lives, and to more self- 
 denying endeavour; but its deadly character is none 
 the less certain because its inventor meant well. Au- 
 gustine opposed it with the determination and energy 
 which the crisis required ; and, to shut out its perver- 
 
 R 
 
242 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 sions, insisted far more emphatically than any preceding 
 doctor of the church had done on the naturally fallen and 
 helpless state of man, on our need of Divine help from 
 first to last in the work of salvation, and on the sovereign 
 power of grace in that work. Viewing his writings from 
 the stand-point we occupy since the Calvinistic contro- 
 versies, we may perhaps without presumption think that 
 this great father might well have spoken with more of 
 caution and qualification on these high themes. But 
 his purpose was to enforce and to extol the necessity 
 and the supremacy of that grace which others had un- 
 scripturally undervalued and dispensed with. His pur- 
 pose was to vindicate for God, the rightful owner, those 
 impulses for good, and that steady perseverance in 
 well-doing, which had been arrogantly claimed as 
 belonging to self-sufficing man. He never cries up 
 the naked Divine decrees against God's own ap- 
 pointed instruments and channels of grace; and it is 
 here that his Predestinarianism parts so unequivocally 
 from that of Calvin. When once it is held as a primary 
 axiom that a sentence is passed as regards each and 
 every man before his birth, whereby he is inevitably 
 fated either to salvation or to perdition, the means of 
 grace fall at once into the background, and with them 
 the whole machinery by which men are brought into 
 the fold of the church, and nourished when there. 
 Augustine unquestionably taught that baptism duly 
 ministered conferred a mighty spiritual gift on each 
 and every receiver who did not oppose a bar. Calvin 
 could not consistently teach so ; for grace, if given at 
 all, was in his view, and in his view first of all Chris- 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 243 
 
 tiari doctors, irresistible and irrevocable. To teacb, e. g. 
 broadly, tben, that baptism carried with it any real 
 blessing would have been tantamount, on his principle, 
 to asserting that every baptized person must be saved. 
 It is not a Little remarkable that Calvin's doctrine 
 about baptism furnishes the only conspicuous example 
 of inconsistency and prevarication to be found through- 
 out his opinions. He was far from intending utterly to 
 reject primitive authority ; he had the dislike of a rival 
 for the Zuinglian doctrine of the sacraments ; yet if a 
 man's salvation must be absolutely and simply de- 
 pendent on a secret and eternal decree of God, much 
 more must the efficacy of the means of grace be so ; 
 and the outward sign could have no proper and in- 
 trinsic connexion with the inward benefit. Calvin's 
 followers, then, were but following the lead of Calvin's 
 own irresistible logic when they went one step further 
 in these matters than he, and held simply that the 
 sacraments are signs of grace already given, and posi- 
 tive ordinances which the faithful will observe out of 
 love and obedience, rather than as moral necessaries of 
 salvation. Thus did Calvinism prey upon and eat away 
 the sacramental system of the church ; and it was only 
 acting with an instinct thoroughly of a piece with its 
 theory when it broke short off the line of succession from 
 the Christian generations before it, and inaugurated for 
 itself de novo a doctrine, a discipline, and a regimen 
 peculiar to itself. 
 
 It is needless to say that during the Reformation 
 period there was no father so constantly in men's 
 mouths as Augustine. The corruptions of the later 
 r 2 
 
244 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 mediaeval church, formulated and systematized by the 
 Schoolmen, had in fact resulted in practical evils sub- 
 stantially identical with those against which Augus- 
 tine was driven to contend. The teaching to which 
 the people were accustomed, however explained by the 
 theologians, had resulted in something which was 
 essentially indistinguishable from Pelagianism. Men 
 were in effect exhorted to win heaven by their works. 
 Against such errors the writings of Augustine furnished 
 a perfect magazine of arguments, and his name and 
 authority in the Church were second to none. Hence 
 the constant appeals to him by the Protestant contro- 
 versialists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; 
 hence the reintroduction of the old troubles about Pre- 
 destination and Election ; and hence, as, it seems to us, 
 the necessity for framing an article amongst the doc- 
 trinal definitions of the Church of England on this 
 perplexing subject. It was, we can hardly doubt, to 
 guard against extremes and abuses into which those who 
 had as it were sat at the feet of Augustine might easily 
 fall, that our seventeenth Article was designed. 
 
 It is in truth little less than chronologically 
 impossible to maintain that our Reformers, in the 
 Articles of 1552, intended to settle the Calvinistic doc- 
 trine of Election, or any thing about it. For, in truth, 
 the principal and pertinent elements of that doctrine 
 had not come into notice when those Articles were 
 drawn up. There is historical evidence to show that 
 our Articles were designed, compiled, and communicated 
 by Archbishop Cranmer to the bishops, in the course of 
 1551, though several months passed before they were 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 245 
 
 finally ratified and published. Now the work of Calvin, 
 JDe ceternd Dei Prcedestinatione, bears date according to 
 its dedication January 1, 1552. This work was the 
 result of his controversy with Bolsec on the subject of 
 Predestination, and of the agitation and discussion of 
 that doctrine which had arisen in 1551 amongst the 
 Swiss churches. It is quite true that some years 
 previously, viz. in 1543, Calvin had dealt with the 
 subject of Grace and Free "Will in his answer to 
 Pighius ; neither can we concur with those who regard 
 his doctrine of Predestination as a discovery of his 
 later years. But it is equally true, on the other hand, 
 that up to 1552, without shunning a topic to which no 
 little space is allotted in Scripture, he had handled it 
 with most wise caution, prudence, and reserve ; and 
 had by no means, as he subsequently did, developed 
 it methodically, or laid it down as above all things 
 to be inculcated and applied by the preacher. The 
 work against Pighius was not a complete tractate on 
 its subject; and the earlier editions of the Institutes 
 by no means assign that leading place to Predestination 
 and Election, which most readers might expect. With 
 Calvin, as with others, controversy first drew out into 
 clear conception and emphatic expression the dis- 
 puted tenets ; and it was only too characteristic of the 
 man to assert, with ever-increasing positiveness and 
 severity, positions which though not new to him he 
 found to be perpetually challenged by others. Whilst 
 our Articles were under consideration, the Reformed 
 churches were as yet at one on every leading principle, 
 if we except the sacraments only. The doctrine of the 
 
246 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 divine decrees was only just beginning to cause a stir 
 in Switzerland; and the agitation did not reach our 
 own land until the reign of Queen Mary was over. 
 It is a very striking fact, to which attention has been 
 drawn by Archbishop Laurence (Bainpton Lectures, 
 pp. 44, 45), that whilst the copious work of Foxe, the 
 Acts and Monuments, goes with no little detail into 
 the opinions of the several martyrs during the Marian 
 persecution, and into the controversies in which they 
 were engaged, Predestination does not appear in it as 
 a moot question, nor is Calvin so much as alluded to 
 throughout. Those who suffered were charged some- 
 times with the heresies of Luther, sometimes with those 
 of Zuingle, but not with the peculiar dogmas of Geneva. 
 In truth, the influence and reputation of Calvin, and 
 the heats and debates to which his Predestinarian 
 views gave rise, belong, so far as England is concerned, 
 to a stage of our Church history clearly subsequent to 
 that under consideration, and broadly distinguished 
 from it. Cranmer and his coadjutors aimed at defining 
 in our national confession of faith the position of the 
 Church of England as regards the adversaries who 
 then stood forth against her, the Romanists, on the one 
 hand, and the Sectaries, principally the Anabaptists, 
 on the other. They neither did, nor, unless they had 
 had the gift of prophecy, could intend to determine 
 either on the one side or the other the Quinquarticular 
 controversy. 
 
 Far different was the state of things after the re- 
 formed faith had been reinstated by Queen Elizabeth. 
 The exiles of Mary's reign came home again with the 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 247 
 
 accession of her sister in great numbers. They had 
 been hospitably sheltered in the day of their trouble 
 by their continental brethren, amongst whom those of 
 the Swiss churches had honourably distinguished them- 
 selves by their kind offices. They returned fascinated, 
 as might be expected, by the imposing system of doc- 
 trine which Calvin had by this time developed to its 
 full proportions, and had pushed to ascendancy amongst 
 the Swiss and neighbouring Protestant churches ; and 
 they were not less enamoured of the " godly dis- 
 cipline " and institutions in which that doctrine was 
 embodied and applied. The necessary ejection of re- 
 actionary bishops and incumbents obliged our rulers 
 to fill many sees and parishes from the band of the 
 returned exiles; and Calvinism thus gained, for the 
 first time, a broad and firm footing amongst our au- 
 thorized teachers, and in the religious thought of the 
 nation. A great change, as regards the general esti- 
 mation of Calvin in England, quickly took place. In 
 King Edward's time we find him tendering advice to 
 the Protector Somerset, and to Cranmer ; and evidently 
 anxious to influence, if not to guide, the course of the 
 Reformation, then actively proceeding in our Church. 
 His overtures however were completely neglected ; and 
 our Reformers turned for such advice and help as they 
 needed to Melancthon and the Lutherans. But in 
 Queen Elizabeth's time the powerful Calvinistic ele- 
 ment introduced after 1558 began to work. " The In- 
 stitutes" became ere long a popular, and at length a 
 standard treatise, and were commonly used as a text- 
 book for divinity students at the universities and by 
 
248 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 bishops' chaplains. "Of what account the Master of 
 the Sentences was in the Church of Rome, the same 
 and more amongst the preachers of reformed churches 
 Calvin had purchased; so that the perfectest divines 
 were judged they which were skilfullest in Calvin's 
 writings. His books almost the very canon to judge 
 both doctrine and discipline by." — Hooker, Preface, ii. 
 8. " What should the world doe with the old musty 
 doctors? Alleage Scripture, and shew it alleaged in 
 the sense that Calvin alloweth, and it is of more force 
 in any man's defense, and to the proofe of any asser- 
 tion, than if ten thousand Augustines, Jeromes, Chry- 
 sostomes, Cyprians, or whosoever els were brought 
 foorth. Doe we not daily see that men are accused 
 of heresie for holding that which the fathers held, 
 and that they never are cleere, if they find not some- 
 what in Calvin to justify themselves?" — MS. note of 
 Hooker, in the title-page of " A Christian Letter," &c. 
 quoted in Keble's note as above. 
 
 Yet even in 1563 and 1571, when Calvinism was 
 popular and powerful amongst us, and the Articles of 
 Religion were thoroughly and carefully revised, no 
 infusion of Genevan doctrine into them took place. 
 One or two omissions were made by way of conciliation 
 to the more ardent Reformers, and one or two others 
 to the more moderate Romanists ; but the wary pilots, 
 who then guided the ecclesiastical fortunes of England, 
 kept as clear as ever of Swiss precedents. In truth, 
 Archbishop Matthew Parker, and those on whom he 
 principally relied, were not of the band of the Marian 
 exiles. They were far more observant of the policy 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 249 
 
 of Cranmer and of Ridley, and far more watchful of 
 the principles of primitive antiquity, than desirous to 
 remodel their doctrine upon a Predestinarian basis, 
 or to build up a discipline after the pattern urged on 
 them by Calvinistic zealots. In fact they toned down 
 in one or two slight, but significant points, the lan- 
 guage of the seventeenth Article 3 ; and for what they 
 required in the way of new matter, resorted to the 
 Lutheran confession of Wirtemburg as their predeces- 
 sors had to that of Augsburg. 
 
 Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, the Predesti- 
 narian party within our Church attained its greatest 
 influence. The two Archbishops were decidedly friendly 
 to it ; and no little disfavour and even persecution befell 
 those who ventured to question the received dogmatism. 
 The Articles of Religion were naturally found to be 
 obscure and defective; and to speak on some points 
 "very dangerously." The Lambeth Articles of 1595, 
 the " Nine Assertions Orthodoxal," were beyond doubt 
 intended as an addition to our formularies, such as 
 should give unchallenged and perpetual possession of 
 the Church to the then popular school. This attempt 
 failed; the Puritans, disappointed in their hopes of 
 revolutionizing the national Church after their pattern, 
 gradually but decidedly seceded from her ; and taking 
 
 3 The words "in Christ" were added to the expression, "those 
 whom He hath chosen out of mankind," in order apparently to 
 avoid lending any appearance of sanction to the dogma of arbitrary 
 decrees. In the last paragraph a no less remarkable omission was 
 made. Originally that paragraph began thus : " Furthermore, 
 although the decrees of predestination are unknown to us, yet we 
 must receive," &c. The words in italics were left out in 1563. 
 
250 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 up a position of antagonism, delivered her for ever 
 from any fears that Calvinism would gain the upper 
 hand within her pale ; but did so at the cost of a terrible 
 conflict, wherein both altar and throne fell for a time 
 before the stern and gloomy but energetic and organized 
 fanaticism which Calvinism seems above all other 
 schemes of faith to inspire. 
 
 Our Church then has given no formal sanction, nor 
 any thing approaching to it, to the "Five Points." 
 The utmost that can be claimed is, that her doctrinal 
 formularies are framed in such a spirit of moderation, 
 as to permit beneath their broad statements the holding 
 of Calvinism as not unlawful and prohibited. Yet if 
 the Articles are patient of a Calvinistic interpretation, 
 they are certainly not more than patient of it; they 
 assuredly do not solicit it. Not only their remarkable 
 omission of cardinal points in the Predestinarian scheme, 
 but the general tenor of their teaching upon Baptism, 
 upon the Atonement, and upon Original Sin, are averse 
 from such construction. In this point of view a Cal- 
 vinistic theologian must ever regard the Articles as un- 
 satisfactory, halting, and even inconsistent. The same 
 reproaches must be borne by Augustine and all his fol- 
 lowers up to Calvin. Can any thing, if we look at it as 
 mere matter of argument, be more illogical than to lead 
 off in theologizing with emphatic declarations about the 
 sovereignty of grace, and the feebleness of the human 
 will; and then to allow that of those born again by 
 the gift of grace, very many are lost after all, and that 
 because their will did not co-operate ? Yet something 
 of this sort Augustine and his more Catholic followers 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 251 
 
 have maintained. It is only removing the difficulty 
 one step further back, leaving it utterly unsolved, 
 to invent an election within the elect ; and to suggest, 
 as in some of his luter works Augustine seems to do, 
 that of those called to grace many do not attain to life 
 because there has not been vouchsafed to them the 
 further and higher vocation to glory. If we start with 
 the principle that grace is supreme and solitary in the 
 work of salvation, we are argumentatively shut up to 
 the conclusion that grace is, if given at all, irrevocable 
 and irresistible. Grace is given only by the will of 
 God : " and who hath resisted Ilis will ?" 
 
 Such reasoning has always seemed to a certain class 
 of minds unanswerable; and we have no mind to 
 quarrel with that verdict. But it only seems to us to 
 demonstrate on the one hand that that same reasoning 
 is misapplied in these high and mysterious subjects ; 
 and on the other that Calvinism is a system which is 
 essentially rationalistic in character. It is quite pos- 
 sible in divine philosophy to start with most indubitable 
 principles, to draw inferences from them in which no 
 logical flaw can be found, and yet to be landed after all 
 in consequences which are clearly erroneous and repug- 
 nant to Scripture. The Church universal, indeed, has 
 a promise from her Head and founder, that she shall be 
 guided in such questions of doctrine as in the course of 
 her warfare she may have to entertain and to resolve. 
 But the individual theologian can claim no such 
 guarantee ; and when he takes in hand to systematize 
 and to construct dogma, he is liable to all those short- 
 comings and miscarriages which affect man's under- 
 
252 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 standing in any other employment of it. Those who 
 know most of the ways of God are, like children on the 
 brink of the ocean, ignorant of infinitely more than 
 they see. It is few minds that can master and survey 
 at once even the several tracts of divine truth which are 
 revealed ; and there are almost if not altogether none 
 who can adjust the manifold parts of it in their due rela- 
 tions and proportions. A theologian, therefore, is always 
 and necessarily wrong if he insists on imposing as God's 
 truth a scheme of belief which, however logical and 
 scientific, is in all its details and applications of human 
 authorship. 
 
 The cardinal vice of the Calvinistic theology has 
 been often pointed out. It lays hold of the grand 
 truths connected with God's sovereignty and man's 
 impotence for good ; and constructs a system thereon as 
 if these were the only principles relevant to faith and 
 piety, or at least as if none other could rank with them 
 in dignity and practical value. Reasoning from these 
 truths, the Calvinist stretches his daring deductions far 
 beyond the proper province of the human understand- 
 ing, and far beyond the limits of Revelation ; and under- 
 takes to lay down for us what have been and are from 
 and to all eternity the counsels as regards our salvation 
 of Him whose outgoings are from everlasting, and " His 
 judgments like the great deep." " Thus and thus must 
 God have decreed ; thus and thus and on these grounds 
 will He adjudge at the end of all things." The several 
 members of the argument move on like the files of a 
 well-appointed army, serried and irresistible; what 
 seems available is assimilated at once and falls into place ; 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 253 
 
 what withstands is thrust aside or swept away. In the 
 end we are brought to a religious fatalism, which can 
 hardly, by a happy inconsistency, of which we gladly 
 allow that Calvinists are constantly guilty, be other than 
 destructive of all those beliefs and motives whereby our 
 hands are quickened to good and our lives preserved 
 from apathy and despair. 
 
 There is a certain sort of men, narrow in mind but 
 keen and active, with little genius but a fair share 
 of ratiocinative faculties, with a hold on what they 
 do know all the faster because they know only half the 
 truth, who will always tend towards Calvinism. For 
 similar reasons this scheme of religion has an attrac- 
 tion for very many of us towards the decline of life. 
 Imagination has then ceased to disport itself with the 
 freshness and exuberance which it had in early years ; 
 the passions have grown cooler ; the intellect takes the 
 lead, and finds congenial exercise in the elaborate and 
 rigorous reasonings which characterize Calvinistic theo- 
 logy; then the world, too, has proved both puzzling 
 and disappointing ; endeavours after self-discipline and 
 improvement of others have seemed to bear but scanty 
 fruit ; and the religious Stoicism of Geneva presents 
 itself as supplying at once a theory of God's dealings 
 which experience has shown much to recommend as 
 probable, and which braces the mind for that which yet 
 remains to be endured. Calvinism will thus always 
 hold its ground amidst the many and various aspects of 
 religious thought and faith, for it suits well a certain 
 and not a small class of minds ; and it has, moreover, a 
 manifest affinity and seasonableness for a mood and 
 
254 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 temperament by no means uncommon after the best of 
 our days in this world are past and gone. 
 
 Such reflections explain and justify the allegation 
 that Calvinism is essentially rationalistic. For ra- 
 tionalism is not a title which belongs properly and 
 peculiarly to any particular set of religious opinions, or 
 opinions about religion, but rather to a certain method 
 of arriving at conclusions in the province of religion, be 
 those conclusions what they may. The rationalist is 
 one who holds what he holds not as matter of faith, 
 but as the result of argument which has convinced 
 his understanding. The non-rationalist need not hold 
 that which his reason gainsays ; on the contrary, he 
 ought to be able to give a good account in reason of the 
 hope that is in him ; but the principle on which he first 
 believed was not argument but testimony, not demon- 
 stration but authority, not reason but faith. The Cal- 
 vinistic system ever makes its appeal to the reason ; 
 and, viewed thus, is far more thoroughly, far more 
 purely rationalistic than any system of religious tenets 
 the world ever saw, except perhaps its own proper and 
 usual corruption, Socinianism. Calvin lays out the 
 scheme of salvation for you in clear sharp lines, and in 
 logical sequence. His word to you is, " Accept the 
 covenant, appropriate it, and live." The business of the 
 minister is simply to declare and explain the terms of 
 the bargain God has been pleased to make, in order to 
 rescue some few from their otherwise inevitable doom. 
 The destruction of the very idea of common worship, 
 and the dislike of any thing and every thing in the 
 shape of symbolical and ornate ritual, follow of course. 
 
CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 255 
 
 "Where religion is made a simple affair of the under- 
 standing, preaching, i. e. enlightening and informing 
 men's minds as to the method of salvation, is the 
 one thing needful. The communities which have held 
 stedfastly to Calvin's theology have, therefore, been 
 more consistent than himself when they have reverted, 
 as they have done, to the Zuinglian doctrine of the 
 sacraments, which Calvin worked so hard to uproot ; 
 and when they have even abandoned the "Directory," 
 wherein some few shreds of liturgical notions yet lin- 
 gered, and by limiting their ministers to extempo- 
 raneous effusions, have turned their very prayers into a 
 sermon. 
 
 The understanding when elevated into a destructive 
 pre-eminence over the other facidties, as it is in the 
 Calvinistic system, is not likely to be satisfied for long 
 with the function of drawing conclusions from assigned 
 premises. It will go on to scrutinize principles too; 
 to ask on what grounds they rest, why those particular 
 ones are entitled to exclusive authority. It was not for 
 nothing that Laelius Socinus lived and thought for 
 several years at Zurich, before he migrated to Poland 
 in 1551, and began to propagate his heresy. It is 
 not an accident that the Calvinistic churches gene- 
 rally, with the exception indeed of the Scotch Esta- 
 blishment, have lapsed utterly and hopelessly into 
 Socinianism. Particular parts of the Genevan dogmas, 
 no doubt, may bear a share in the blame of provoking a 
 reaction against their harshness. Their one-sided pre- 
 sentment of Christ's work for us as almost solely one of 
 vicarious satisfaction, and their exaggeration of the truth 
 
256 
 
 CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 as regards the fall of man, transgress or overpass so griev- 
 ously both experience and reason, both Scripture and 
 primitive teaching, that when propounded they can 
 hardly escape being contradicted, and they can hardly 
 be contradicted without inducing error in the opposite 
 extreme. Yet it is, perhaps, rather in its naked intel- 
 lectualism that we must seek the true ground of the 
 powerful affinity which Calvinism undoubtedly possesses 
 for Socinianism, and through this for unbelief. 
 
 Calvin's own town furnishes the most striking and 
 the most melancholy example of these last remarks. 
 Geneva, which inflicted a slow and torturing death 
 on Servetus for rationalism, has in our days ex- 
 pressly and officially repudiated all confessions of faith 
 whatsoever. Where in old times it was penal to be 
 absent from sermon, travellers now report but a few 
 scores as surrounding on a Sunday the pulpit whence 
 Calvin preached. "Whilst we write, the news has arrived 
 that the Consistory, — Calvin's Consistory ! — has re- 
 cently rejected a proposal made by some of the pastors 
 to celebrate its founder's tercentenary. Romanism at 
 present seems to be at Geneva the rising faith, and to 
 offer the only hope and prospect of winning back to 
 something like a visible profession of Christianity one 
 of the most irreligious, though by no means the most 
 immoral, cities of the Continent. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SCIUARE, LONDON. 
 
liiifli 
 
 1 1012 01245 3587 
 
 Date Due 
 
mm 
 
 HI